“I tried to put him up, no pressure, helped him as best I could. I thought maybe in time he’d come around. He did his best too, he really did, but he was never the same. He just kept getting worse.” He forced himself to look at her. “From the moment he lost you he was doomed.”
She nodded, her lower lip trembling slightly. “So was I.”
They were quiet awhile. Sounds of traffic and passersby filled the silence.
“You should see that dog,” Russell finally said. “He still sits all day and night waiting on him. Goes out to do his business, eats, sleeps in short little intervals and spends the rest of his time watching the door or looking out the windows. Almost like he’s trying to bring Lane back by sheer will alone.”
“After all this time you’ll be keeping him I take it?”
“I’ve gotten attached to him. Not sure he’s all that attached to me though. He’s preoccupied. He’s still waiting on Lane, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It almost sounds like the dog knows something we don’t.”
“He does. Think about it. We never got the whole story behind Lane’s breakdown in Maine. But Vince was there. He experienced it firsthand. He knows exactly what happened. We’ve only got pieces, fragments.”
“Sometimes I wake up very late at night,” she explained. “It’s so quiet it doesn’t seem real. I stare at the ceiling, the shadows, and sometimes think maybe Lane’s in the room with me, watching. It’s so strong sometimes, almost like if I just concentrated hard enough I’d be able to make him out in the dark. Then I wake up and realize it was only a dream. And for just a moment I think maybe everything was just one big nightmare, you know? Maybe if I reach over Lane will be lying there next to me. Maybe none of this ever happened at all.” Claire polished off her wine and put the glass aside. “But it has happened, and we’re all slaves to it. Wishing for Lane to somehow miraculously reappear—no matter how heartfelt it may be—won’t make it happen.”
He reached across the table and gave her hand a gentle pat. “We’ll find him, Claire. Sooner or later I know we will. He’s out there somewhere.”
“Are you sure?”
Russell watched the street awhile. “Maybe he went back to the snow.”
“What do you mean?”
“There were nights he told me they wanted him to go back to the snow, that everything would be all right if he just went back to the snow.”
“He’d lost his mind, Russell. They? Who are they?”
“I don’t know,” he answered quietly. “But that dog does.”
* * * *
In the dark and cold, he saw it all, the past, present, the future.
Right there before him. So close and real he could reach out and touch it.
Touch them.
The dog was getting heavy. He’d gotten so big.
Lane put him down, and together they walked through the sea of flakes, deeper into the storm, the night, the snow. When Lane had found a good spot, he sat down then lay back, exhausted. As he sank into the drift, allowing the snow to take him, Vince curled up next to him.
With waves of drowsiness closing in, luring him closer to the darkness, Lane pretended that instead of being cradled by snow he was actually wrapped tightly in someone’s loving arms. Oddly, it was not Claire he thought of, but Marla Snead in her filthy little room with the beads for a door and a large wooden crucifix propped in the corner.
How long’s it been since somebody put their arms around you?
He imagined her there with him a moment, two lost and battered souls finding refuge, forgiveness, peace and tenderness in the endless ice and snow. Just like damnation, revenge and punishment, those things were inherently human, belonging to the realm of flesh rather than spirit.
His fantasies dissipated and only the howling wind remained, the falling snow and the creatures watching from the edges of night, the lords of twilight within each of us, hidden in a blizzard that had raged for eternity and would never, could never end.
It’s within us, Lane. Maybe that’s why we’re so interesting.
As they crawled closer through the swirling snow, bringing with them salvation, damnation, transcendence or perhaps all three, Lane closed his eyes.
From somewhere far away, he saw Vince sitting in a window, waiting.
Who’s to say what reality is…
Waiting for him.
…how it works…
Something wet and heavy slapped his cheek.
…or who controls it?
Vince was licking his face, he was sure of it, and in that strange and harrowing moment, as splintered visions played out before his crippled mind’s eye, Lane fell deeper into darkness, through all the horror, pain, fear and uncertainty into something else. Something extraordinary.
Puppy breath washed over him, and he felt himself smile.
About The Author
Called “One of the best writers of his generation” by both the Roswell Literary Review and author Brian Keene, and praised by masters like author Ed Gorman as “Among the finest dark suspense writers of our time,” Greg F. Gifune is the author of several novels and novellas, screenplays and two short story collections (Heretics and Down To Sleep). His work, which has been published all over the world and translated into several languages, is consistently praised by readers and critics alike, has received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and The Midwest Book Review (among others) and has recently garnered interest from Hollywood. Greg resides in Massachusetts with his wife Carol, a bevy of cats and their dogs, Dozer and Bella. He can be reached online at: [email protected] or through Facebook, or his official web site at: www.gregfgifune.com.
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