Howl of a Thousand Winds

by Howl of a Thousand Winds (retail) (epub)

  The light snowfall had stopped. The creature was gone, replaced by the unique and deafening silence of a peaceful snow-covered landscape.

  Brad turned to see Micah. The dark haired man was not breathing.

  One final time, the list maker in Brad's head rattled to life, resurrecting an oldie but goodie from a ninth grade health class involving another still, unmoving body.

  Roll the person into a flat, laying position.

  Begin 30 chest compressions, two per second, two inches deep.

  Tilt the person's head back and lift the chin.

  Pinch the person's nose closed.

  Cover the victim's mouth with yours.

  Blow until you see the chest rise.

  Give two breaths, about one second each.

  Cycle between chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until victim begins breathing on his own.

  Brad carefully rolled Micah on his back, being careful with the right hand that was now twisted and facing the wrong direction.

  With the first compression, Brad thought he felt a muffled crack inside Micah's chest, like the sound of an ice skimmed mud puddle being stepped on following an overnight frost. After the compressions, Brad shifted to Micah's head, pinched the nostrils, and began blowing his own breath into the lifeless body.

  The warm air ricocheted down Micah's throat and into his lungs. With the second cycle, the direct heat melted some of the ice crystals that had embedded in the fleshy walls of the windpipe. By the fourth repetition, the warm air reached the frozen cavern of Micah's lungs, thawing the bronchial tubes.

  By the ninth cycle, Brad began to feel dizzy. Micah's skin began to show tinges of light purple. He was dying; in a way, dead already. Even after being vanquished, the snow monster was winning.

  Brad's reserves of adrenaline were empty. His burned, bruised, and battered body was used up, his anger spent. His list maker was silent.

  All he had left was will.

  The creature had taken countless lives over the eons. It had taken Jimbo. Denny. Vi Enderrin. Even the old caretaker, Mr. Berube, whose stiff body lay less than 50 feet away.

  "You can't have this one!" Brad screamed into the silence.

  Taking a deep breath, he resumed CPR with renewed vigor, refusing to surrender to the departed demon. While he knew most people could not survive without oxygen for more than eight minutes, and that brain damage was likely after 10 minutes, Brad had also read that kids suffering from hypothermia had lived after going 30 minutes without breathing.

  The hope to which he desperately clung was that the frozen breath Aisoyimstan had used in trying to kill Micah might actually be the thing to save him.

  At the start of the 33rd cycle, nearly 20 minutes after the first compression, Brad thought he felt movement under his frozen and numb hands. Scooting back to the top, he saw a tiny wisp of steam puff from opened mouth. Brad pinched the nose, covered Micah's mouth with his own, and exhaled another exhausted but warm breath.

  Micah began to move.

  On the second breath, he weakly tried to slap away whoever or whatever was once again covering his mouth.

  Like a foundering swimmer pulled from a tropical surf, the reporter rolled onto his side and began coughing, each hack expelling a tiny bit of water that had previously been ice inside his body. Brad gently pounded Micah's back, helping the last of the water out of the recovering man's system.

  "Can you hear me?" Brad asked, looking into the pained face of the man who had returned from a cold no living human had ever endured.

  After a minute or two of hard breathing, Micah finally found a voice, but it wasn't the low, almost melodic sound that had accompanied him through most of his adult life. What came out was a raspy, scratchy caw of a longtime heavy smoker, someone with ravaged lungs and a damaged larynx.

  "Hurts," Micah said in a whisper, tapping his chest before moving his good hand up to his throat. He then pointed at his wrecked right wrist. "Really hurts," he croaked.

  "It's time to get you out of here," Brad said.

  Micah closed his eyes and nodded.

  Brad helped him to his feet and guided him to the open vehicle door, careful to avoid hitting the damaged arm.

  His eyes clenched tightly shut against the pain and dizziness, the injured man gurgled a one word contribution while his rescuer held him upright and steady next to the SUV.

  "Pocket," Micah breathed.

  At first, Brad was puzzled, then concerned. Was his compatriot suffering from another unseen injury? Was there more magic that would be needed before this nightmare ended?

  He reached down and felt at the man's front pocket. Relief then prompted him to release a breath he hadn't noticed he had been holding.

  Still balancing the weak man against the vehicle, Brad reached into Micah's pocket. His fingers came back out holding the key to Mrs. Enderrin's Lincoln.

  Once the injured man was buckled in, Brad shut the door and headed to the driver's side.

  He thought once more about placing Berube’s body in the cargo area, but somehow thought it appropriate that the caretaker should remain here, in the woods that had been a part of who he was, serving as a blind and silent sentinel over the property one last time. Upon returning to civilization, Brad would contact the state police, who would inherit the heartbreaking task of notifying Mrs. Berube.

  Before ducking into the driver's seat, the insurance man stopped to take a final look at the destroyed cabin that he prayed he would never see again. It was a prayer that would go unfulfilled, as its two-story image would frequently appear in his fitful and sweat-soaked dreams.

  A movement caught his eye.

  Glancing at the window next to the front door frame, Brad saw three figures. They were looking at him.

  Standing to the right of his father, Denny raised his hand to wave goodbye, offering a solemn but warm grin. It was the visual farewell from a friend who recognized that their paths had crossed for the last time.

  Next to him Mrs. Enderrin stood on two legs, the crutches now a part of her history, smiling the warm and knowing smile of a woman who had finally found her way home.

  Before he could wave in return, or yell out to bring Micah's attention to the scene, the family in the window shimmered and faded away.

  Brad knew it was time for him to go home, too.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  It was one of the coldest days on record.

  Brad consoled himself that the thirty-degree temperature was downright balmy compared to the winters he had spent in Pennsylvania.

  But it was a big deal to the people of Venice, Florida, where freezing temperatures battered a populace unarmored by fleece and down.

  Brad had been one of that populace for nearly a year now.

  Unable to continue in the office where Vi Enderrin had entered his life, and unencumbered by the home which had become a casualty of his divorce, Brad had made a clean break.

  He had found a job in the Sunshine State using an internet career-building website. It was no coincidence that he had chosen the small town on Florida’s west coast, a place where snow and ice were foreigners.

  So while the cold snap had become a topic of discussion, it didn’t phase the Pennsylvania transplant.

  It also didn’t seem to curtail the pre-Christmas partying activities of his co-workers in the insurance office, who had just finished their official company party as an opening act to the drinking and revelry they had planned later in the evening.

  “Why don’t you come with us, Brad?” asked Sandi, an attractive blond from the personal lines department who was donning a maroon “Seminoles” sweatshirt in preparation for battling the cold weather waiting outside. “You need the break.”

  Sitting at his desk, Brad smiled at the invitation.

  “Thanks, but I need to catch up on some of this paperwork before I call it a night.”

  “Come on! They’re calling for snow tonight, which is like ‘when Hell freezes over’. That should be enough
of an excuse to have a good time.”

  “Oh, I’d like to, but there would be Hell to pay if I didn’t get some of these apps finished.”

  Sandi waited in the doorway to Brad’s office for another beat. “Well, we’ll be at Boomers if you change your mind.” She turned to leave, then stopped. “I hope you’ll swing by.”

  His ego and his resolve warred on the battlefield of his mind, a mighty struggle that could go on for hours, maybe days. But his lips, which had been untouched by alcohol for exactly 13 months and 12 days, issued the habitual response which had become his sobriety mantra.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got other plans. Rain check?”

  In the last six months, with his life finally finding some semblance of normalcy, his stack of figurative “rain checks” had begun to accumulate like late notices in a compulsive gambler’s mailbox.

  He knew that he would eventually begin to cash them in and start socializing in places where alcohol was a featured performer, which would be the testing harbinger of his next step in recovery.

  But for now, he would battle his demons alone.

  As had become his trademark since joining Shaw Insurance, the “new guy from up north” would be the last to leave.

  “Okay,” Sandi said. “Don’t bother cleaning up from the party. I’ll take care of it in the morning.”

  After hearing the jingle bells announcing Sandi’s departure, Brad reached into his in-box and pulled out his stack of unopened mail.

  The envelope was buried two-thirds of the way down the pile of policies, renewal notices, and come-ons from disability insurance carriers begging for new representatives.

  Unlike the standard number ten envelopes that comprised the majority of his mail, the peach-colored envelope had the unmistakable shape of a greeting card.

  This time of year, Christmas cards and their politically correct counterparts, holiday greetings, made cameo appearances among the more mundane business mail. Every insurance company the independent agent represented sent cards bearing such endearing and personal messages as “From all of us at Razzle Dazzle Indemnity” stamped crookedly across the bottom.

  But the return address sticker in the upper left hand corner of this envelope didn’t include a slick logo or a sender whose last name ended in “Inc.”

  It was a simple label imprinted with a snowman trimmed in red.

  Brad felt his heart downshift into a dead stop, then rev madly into triple time.

  His fingers trembling, Brad didn’t bother with the plastic envelope cutter, instead clumsily ripping open the envelope along its top seam.

  Inside, the front of the card bore the bigger brother to the red-trimmed snowman featured on the envelope’s label, with the black smile formed by squares of coal appearing as more of a sneer.

  The snowman’s eyes were dark and empty, soulless in a malevolent way that had nothing to do with the fact that it was a mere picture on cardstock.

  Above and below the picture, two lines from an old Bing Crosby carol offered a chilling taunt.

  “Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but in here, it’s so delightful!”

  An avalanche of remembered nightmares threatened to swamp his business façade as the terror of a Thanksgiving weekend from over a year ago began filling his consciousness.

  A prophetic scrap of conversation arose from the moment like a shimmering and deadly gas rising from a bubbling, dangerous tarpit of memories.

  "Einstein proved on paper that energy can’t be created or destroyed, it can only change forms."

  They had been Denny's words; his attempt at an explanation for his unexplainable existence.

  If those words were true, did they apply to the creature Brad had helped destroy in a snow-covered Pennsylvania woods?

  Inside the holiday card he now held in his hand, an artistic rendering of child-like handwriting spelled out the words “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!” But instead of the intended effect -- evoking the joy of a snowfall -- the phrase seemed ominous and foreboding. Brad knew there were other things that came with the snow. Was this card a message? A warning?

  Below the Crosbyism, a handwritten message flowed in light blue ink:

  Brad,

  Thought you could use a little reminder of home in the cold north. They say this is the loneliest time of year. Please don’t spend it alone. I still worry about you. Have a Merry Christmas.

  Love, Sharon.

  Papers on the desk fluttered with the powerful exhalation of Brad’s breath, which he had been holding since ripping open the envelope. Relief washed over him, a viscous emotional lubricant that helped slow his racing heartbeat.

  A nervous laugh erupted from his lips, which quickly turned into a torrential outpouring of hilarity that didn’t abate until tears began forming in his eyes. The appearance of tears served as sawdust in the gears of his soul, jamming his relief-driven mirth into a full reverse of sorrow. The tears that had been born of laughter continued to flow, only now fueled by an overwhelming sense of sadness and loss. The time and distance could remove him from the daily reminders of his former life, but it couldn’t scrub out the pain.

  His tears increased with the memories of his wife and the emptiness that her absence fed, growing into sobs once the unbolted door restraining his loneliness had given way.

  He cried for the void in his life. He cried in self-pity. He cried for the deep love that he had never known, the kind that would keep a woman returning to an empty cabin every Thanksgiving, the kind that could transcend dimensions, the kind that carried people through a lifetime and beyond.

  He cried for Denny, a friend he had known for a few hours but who had burrowed out a place in his heart that would last forever, the model of what he only dreamed he could find in a friend.

  He cried for Vi, lamenting that he would never find a woman of such enormous love.

  Then he cried some more for himself, and the loneliness that would be magnified by the emptiness of his Christmas tree-less home, bereft of presents, and the coldness of his house that had nothing to do with the freezing temperatures outside.

  Brad wiped away the still-flowing tears with the back of his hand, then stood up to find his way to the men’s room for a paper towel to do the job properly.

  A few steps from the door to his office, he noticed the detritus of the recently abandoned office Christmas party.

  The leftovers included a green bottle still a quarter full of champagne.

  With his logic and willpower stilled by the indomitable force of his hurt, Brad grabbed the bottle and turned it upside down before reason and resolve could stop him, pouring the last of its contents into his mouth. The acidic and tingling liquid rattled against the walls of his throat for the first time in 13 months and twelve days.

  Brad put down the bottle and closed his eyes, trying to let the alcohol take over its old job of dousing the memories and blunting the pain. He ignored the fact that the alcohol had served a third, more insidious purpose in his life. While not quite the fuel for so many of the calamitous things which had befallen him in the last two years, it was undeniably the not-so-inert catalyst that had chaperoned so many of his worst moments. There had been leftover liquor in his veins at nearly every turn, including the day he nearly lost his life to a creature his unimpaired mind would have been unable to conjure or imagine. Now, because of that encounter, liquor and horror and snow would be forever entwined in his consciousness.

  At this moment, the wave of reopened emotional wounds curled and crashed into a shoreline of eroding resolve, with the champagne serving as a ragged breakwater. He would worry about sobriety later. Tomorrow would be soon enough. Little Orphan Annie claimed the sun would come out tomorrow. Right now, he just needed for the remembered hurt to go away, and to get through this moment.

  With his eyes closed, Brad was oblivious to the darkening world outside the big plate glass window with “Shaw Insurance” lettered in red and blue.

  Just beyond that window, snowflakes be
gan drifting tentatively to the ground.