He looked to the small outbuilding perhaps fifty yards behind and slightly to the left of the house. Not quite big enough for more than a single automobile but considerably larger than a standard shed, he’d spent two full days that summer cleaning it out and driving mountains of junk to the dump only to realize he had nothing of his own to put in there save for some assorted tools, a lawnmower, a generator, a rake and a couple shovels. A large portion of the storage building sat empty, much like Lane himself, awaiting things that would more than likely never arrive.
Both buildings were draped in growing blankets of snow and set back far enough from the road that one could easily drive past without noticing them at all. But for the smoke drifting up out of the woodstove chimney, just barely visible through the swirling snow, there were no immediate indications anyone even lived there.
With the heater off it was quickly growing cold in the cab. In the seat next to him, Vince lay with his chin resting on Lane’s thigh, eyes gazing up at him questioningly. Only three months old, he’d gotten him at six weeks from a small breeder down in Bangor for nine hundred dollars. Lane loved animals but hadn’t had a dog or cat in years because his ex-wife suffered from pet dander allergies. After moving to Edgar and buying the house, Lane had spent nearly five months alone. Given the circumstances that had brought him there, that arrangement initially suited him just fine. He’d wanted isolation, quiet and privacy, that’s why he’d come here after all, but winters were brutal in these parts, and the thought of spending all those months alone was less than appealing. Although he spent most of his downtime drinking and wallowing in his sorrows and was in no position to care for an animal, that lifestyle had quickly worn thin and he decided he needed companionship. A dog seemed a good choice, as he’d always liked dogs and had several as a child. Besides, he needed a change in his life that would force him to be more responsible and clearheaded. He also needed someone to love, someone to love him and someone to take care of and occupy his time, and a puppy certainly fit the bill. He and Vince bonded quickly, and though he’d only had the puppy a little over a month, Lane already couldn’t imagine life without him. He reached down and gave him a gentle pat on the head. “Come on, bud,” he said softly. “Let’s go inside and get warm.”
TWO
Three. Three fingers where once there were five.
His hand is obscene, mangled and stained black. The cold does awful things to the flesh. He stares at it as if noticing it only just then, watching as the odd gelatinous fluid drips from his surviving fingers, falling and splatting on the floor below in thick heavy gobs. What is this clear though copious, jelly-like substance coating so much of him? For reasons beyond his comprehension, he is unable to remember how or why his injuries came to be. It isn’t until he looks in the mirror on the wall and sees the damage his face has sustained that he begins to remember being in the snow and how the bitter ice and cold ate through his skin right to the bone. He considers touching the black and cracked caterpillars that were once his lips, the crusted sores on his cheeks and around his eyes, but thinks better of it.
Something tickles his nose. With his good hand he reaches up and touches his nostrils. Blood. So much, too much, it runs down between his fingers to the palm of his hand.
And then in the mirror behind him he sees…something.
What is that?
A bird, it—it’s a bird, a blackbird. It’s enormous, he thinks, perched there at the window on the far wall, its opaque eyes glaring at him.
Somewhere in the distance he hears a dog barking.
His dog? Is it his dog?
He turns from the mirror and moves slowly toward the window, heart racing, though he has no idea why.
* * * *
Lane grabbed two pieces of cut wood from a bin tucked between the kitchen table and the refrigerator and dropped them into the woodstove. Using a poker, he stabbed at the pieces he’d dropped in earlier, which had been reduced to red-hot chunks that spit sparks as he shuffled them around to make room for the new. Heat wafted up into his face, drying his eyes. He glanced down at Vince, who sat at his feet, tail gently slapping the floor. “I’ve got it going really strong now,” he told the dog. “Be nice and warm in here in no time.” Apparently pleased with the news, Vince toddled over to his little toy basket in the corner, plucked out a squeaky chew toy shaped like a duck then curled up with it next to the table. Lane watched the pup a while, marveling at how happy the little fella was. He envied him, really, and could only hope he’d experience true happiness again himself some day. But then, maybe it was better that happiness continued to elude him (save for those brief and infrequent episodes that seemed to manifest as if mistakenly). Maybe, he thought, I don’t deserve it anyway.
Hands on hips, Lane took in the kitchen a moment. With its dated countertops, cabinets and meager appliances, the whole place looked like something from another era, which, in a way, it was. Due to low wood-slat ceilings and small rooms, the house was always a bit dark. Sometimes it felt warm and cozy, other times claustrophobic, cold and coffin-like. On that morning, with the blizzard approaching, it seemed more like the latter, an old wooden casket destined to be buried beneath foot after foot of snow he could never hope to escape. He thought for a moment. Did he have everything he needed? Once the storm got into full swing the very real possibility of being snowed in for a few days was not something to take lightly. He’d gone to the General Store in town and gotten the necessities but went over the list again in his head, taking inventory in an attempt to be sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. The mudroom, a small area with a cement floor and a broom closet just inside the front door, housed the larger woodbin. He checked it again. Though nearly full, his experience with woodstoves was limited and he had no idea how to correctly gauge how much he’d need or go through over a given period of time. Looked like an awful lot of wood in there, though, could he really go through that in three or four days should he become so snowed in that he couldn’t get to the outbuilding and the piles of wood Clyde Reeve had cut for him? Lane moved to the window, looked out at the growing storm. Even if they got the two feet the news reports claimed were coming, it’s not like he couldn’t get out. Right? Hmmm, he thought. Not like anyone’s going to be plowing. At least not right away. Clyde did say he’d be by to plow soon as he could once the storm had gone, but ‘soon’ had one definition to Lane and another to those living in these parts. Time was slower here, and folks moved through their lives accordingly, without the frenetic sense of urgency city people often wore like a badge of honor. It was a trait Lane found irritating and admirable all at once. He could almost hear his old friend and colleague Russell complaining as he had when he’d come up for a visit just weeks after Lane arrived in town.
“OK, so how long before the inbred family of hillbilly cannibals shows up?”
“Russell, seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“You move to this swill-hole and you’re asking what’s wrong with me?”
Russell had done his best to try and talk Lane out of moving to Maine, and even after he’d purchased the house and moved in, he made one last valiant attempt to convince him to move back to Boston.
“I understand the desire—hell, the need—to get away to a place where no ones knows you or cares who you are,” he’d said, “somewhere you can have the quiet and uncomplicated life of a hermit. After everything that happened, I get it, OK? I don’t agree with it, I don’t think it’s what you need or what’s best for you, but I get it. But here? Seriously? I’ve never even heard of this town.”
“I hadn’t either,” Lane admitted. “I just told the real estate agent I wanted a property somewhere remote and this is what she came up with.”
“I take it there was nothing available on the moon?”
“It suits my needs for now.”
“What needs would those be?”
“Look, I picked this place up for just over fifty thousand dollars. I couldn’t buy a closet in Boston for fifty grand.
”
“I’ve had car loans that were more than that. What does that tell you?”
“No mortgage, no hassles.”
“No people with teeth or reading skills, no running toilets, no resale value.”
Lane chuckled dutifully. “It’s not so bad. Honestly, it isn’t. It’s quiet and secluded and no one bothers me.”
“What the hell do you do up here?”
“There isn’t a whole lot to do. That’s the point.”
“And what do you plan to do for work?”
“Claire and I got a little over three for the apartment and had close to thirty in savings. After we paid the remainder of the mortgage and our other bills off and the lawyers on both sides took their cuts there was two hundred thousand left to split between us. Fifty bought this property and I put the rest in the bank and into various investments. I’m OK for a while.”
Russell Brunel, a short and rugged man with thinning hair and a penchant for wrinkled sports coats, faded jeans and ratty sneakers, looked more like a retired fullback than the high school teacher Lane knew him to be. In fact, in his own high school days Russell had been a star athlete on both the football and wrestling teams, but neither had panned out beyond college and he’d fallen back on his teaching degree instead. He and Lane had met and become friends when both were hired within a few months of each other at the same small prep school in Boston. Until Lane’s difficulties, they’d both worked there for more than two decades, Lane in the English Department, Russell in Math. Though they were the same age, Russell was long divorced and had remained a bachelor ever since, somehow managing to regularly bed most of the female teachers on staff and half the women in the administration office. “And what about your career?”
“My career’s over.”
“You don’t ever plan to return to teaching?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not as if you couldn’t.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I mean the option does still exist if—”
“Would you go back? If you were me, Russ, would you?”
“You know my philosophy. Long as the little bastards keep showing up somebody’s got to get paid to be there and teach them, might as well be me.” He scratched his goatee with a big mitt of a hand. “I do it because I can’t make a living doing anything else. You teach because you genuinely love it and it’s a part of who you are. You did it for all the right reasons.” He shook his head as an expression of disgust crossed his face. “Talk about irony.”
“Well, at this point I don’t know what I’m doing, but I seriously doubt I’ll ever go back, OK?”
“Sure.” Russell had known him long enough to read his tone, and thankfully let it go. “OK.”
“Let’s go have some lunch,” Lane suggested.
“So around here that entails what, killing a bear or something?”
“There’s a decent diner about thirty minutes from here, wiseass.”
“Thirty minutes to eat at a diner. Awesome.”
“It gets worse. It’s forty to the nearest liquor store.”
Russell stared at him, mouth open in mock horror.
“Come on,” Lane said, “let me buy you some lunch.”
But even once the joking was over, Russell remained seated. “Before we go I have to get this off my chest. I’m sorry if I’m being a d-bag but this is just plain creepy. You all alone up here in the middle of nowhere in this little house in the woods, it’s not right. Time like this you need to be around people who care about you, not all by yourself. And do you have any idea what the winters are like this far north? You think Boston’s cold? People die in this shit up here.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“I guess I just don’t see the point. Why not move in with me for a while? I’ve got plenty of room and I’d love to have you.”
“I appreciate it, Russ, I really do. But we’ve been over this. I’m not suggesting I’ll be here forever, but for now this is what I need to do.”
“What, run away and hide?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “At least for now.”
Russell sat forward and gripped the edge of the kitchen table with both hands, as if fearful he might otherwise begin pounding it with his fists. “Goddamn travesty what they did to you.”
Guilt rose in Lane like bile bubbling up into the base of his throat. Per usual, it brought shame along for the ride. “Let’s not go there, all right?”
“I’m just saying, it was—”
“Did you come here to cheer me up and hang out or give me a hard time?”
“I see no reason why I can’t do both.”
Neither man seemed capable of summoning laughter, so they forced a couple smiles instead. “I know you don’t like what I’m doing,” Lane finally said. “I’m not entirely sure I do either. All I do know is that I need some time away and some time alone.”
“I’m just concerned about you.”
“And I appreciate it. But I’ll be fine. This is something I need to do, Russ.”
He released the table and rose to his feet. “Just wait until winter hits. Mark my words. You’ll dig out and have this place on the market the same day.”
His old friend’s face faded into oblivion, replaced by the dimly lit kitchen. He’d spoken to Russell on the telephone several times but hadn’t laid eyes on him since. Due to the school year, the odds of seeing him at any point before next summer were remote at best. But Thanksgiving was only a few weeks away, and then the Christmas season would be in full swing, and he knew Russell would insist he accompany him to his sister’s house in his native New Jersey for the holiday break. Of course Lane had no plans to do any such thing. The way he figured it, by the following summer he’d have had enough time to ponder his past, present and future and be ready to make some decisions. Either he’d remain where he was and live out a solitary life as best he could, or he’d get the hell out of Dodge and start over again somewhere else. Regardless, until then, this was his home, his prison, and hopefully his penance.
Suddenly Lane had an overwhelming need to look outside. Perplexed, he moved closer to the window and peered up at the snow-draped treetops and low dark clouds beyond.
So many places to hide…
Where had that thought come from? Before he could answer his own question the feeling that he was being watched took hold and clamped down on him like a vise. He’d been experiencing on-again off-again intervals of this for a few days now, and although like everyone else he’d had similar feelings before at various points in his life, these episodes were different, more profound. Darker.
Snow whipped between the trees. Lane’s eyes followed, searching the narrow spaces between them, but visibility had already become limited. Nothing out there but a whirl of snowflakes anyway, he thought. He ran a hand through his hair, drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. What was this all about? He’d never felt spooked here before, or even the least bit uncomfortable. Why then was he suddenly so uneasy? True, this was his first winter as far north as Edgar, but Lane was a native New Englander; he’d been through numerous snowstorms and several blizzards in his life, they neither intimidated nor frightened him.
Of course the cattle mutilations and stories of lights in the sky didn’t help. These things had likely nested in his subconscious mind like the disease they were and now he was experiencing the fallout from it.
The wind slammed the carpet of snow covering the ground, causing it to heave and drift as wet flakes spattered and stuck to the window. The house was outfitted with old-fashioned functional shutters, and he considered venturing outside to close and latch them. They’d better protect the windows, particularly once the wind grew increasingly violent and began snapping branches and whatnot. But they’d also completely seal him off from the outside world. He’d no longer be able to see out unless he opened the front or back door.
And if you can’t see out you won’t know what’s coming…
He nodded, though he still had no idea why he was
having such thoughts in the first place, much less agreeing with them. Maybe it was more than the locals and their superstitious bullshit. Maybe it was simply clinical paranoia rearing its ugly head. After everything that had happened, didn’t it stand to reason these kinds of feelings would manifest sooner or later? His life had been wiped away like a stain that no longer existed. Things and people he thought would always be there were gone and gone for good. Would he, could he ever truly feel secure again? After all, his whole world had been torn from him.
“No,” he muttered. “I gave it away.”
I know you want to, Mr. B. It’s OK. I do too.
And just like that Emma was back in his head, smiling that crooked smile and staring at him with her mischievous ice-blue eyes. He’d promised himself he would never again allow her to invade his thoughts, but then, what was one more broken promise?
Teardrops on an ocean…a match on a raging inferno…
Lane wanted to hate her, but thinking of Emma only made him despise himself even more than he already did. What a fool I was, he thought. What a goddamn fool. Some days it still didn’t seem real. Even though he’d paid a very real price (and would likely continue to for the remainder of his life), a small part of him kept hoping it was all some cosmic error or a bad dream he hadn’t yet awakened from. He’d replay the events over and over again in his mind and still struggled to understand how he’d allowed such a thing to happen.
He focused again on the snowstorm. His truck was already caked with a fine coating of white, and the flakes were beginning to spatter and stick to the window, obscuring his view.
Lords Of Twilight Page 2