The Snow and The Darkness

by Matthew Warren Wilson

hour when, from out of nowhere – or maybe from out of heaven, Jason didn’t know – they saw headlights coming toward them. The headlights of a big truck from the look of them. Maybe this was a plow already. But as the lights approached, Jason could tell they were moving too quickly to be a plow. Still, maybe they could get a ride out of here.

  Jason was out of the Acura before either of the women could say a word and he ran around the back of it. All the snow on the ground now made it even more difficult to move quickly, but he was out in the road before the approaching vehicle reached them. He waved his arms in the beam of the headlights. He heard the motor racing, somehow out of place amidst all the eerie silence of the snow and the woods.

  And then the truck was passing him. He had to jump back behind the Acura to get out of its way. It was moving far too fast for the conditions and it didn’t even slow down as it drove by. It was a large pickup truck, black or dark blue. Maybe gray. Who could really tell in the dark? Jason continued to wave his arms at the back of it, shouting, jumping up and down. He watched its taillights disappear, just another victim of the darkness and the snow. It wasn’t until he felt the sinking feeling of hopelessness in the pit of his stomach that he realized how much the sight of the passing truck had boosted his hopes.

  He couldn’t hear the truck’s engine anymore, and the weight of the silence crashing back in around him was almost too much. He shivered. He climbed back into the Acura.

  Valerie was wide-eyed, staring at him. “They just sped past! Who does that? Who doesn’t stop when people obviously need help?”

  Jason just shrugged. Lots of people, probably.

  Again they waited. Again they sat in silence.

  Only ten more minutes passed before Jason heard a thump from the passenger side. “What was that?” he asked.

  Lucy whimpered in the front seat.

  “What was that?” Jason repeated, but then he heard it again. A soft sound like something hitting the car.

  “Oh god,” Valerie breathed. “He’s back. I know it’s him.”

  “Can you see anything?” Jason asked softly, peering through the passenger window, trying to make out any movement out there besides the falling snowflakes. He saw nothing at all.

  “No,” Valerie whispered, “but I know it’s him. I know it.”

  Another thump, this one directly on the front passenger window. Something had been thrown at the car. They weren’t rocks – they were too soft. Snowballs? Was someone throwing snowballs at them?

  “What do we do?” Valerie asked.

  Lucy whimpered again and made another gurgling sound. She crouched down in the front seat, her head barely above the level of the window.

  “I don’t know,” Jason said. Then, “Just wait, I guess.”

  Another snowball—if it was a snowball—hit the hood of the Acura. It sunk into the snow that had accumulated there and left a little hole. Lucy tried to slide down further in her seat, but there was nowhere left to go.

  Whatever was hitting the car was coming from the opposite side of the road. Jason peered around fervently, trying to see who or what might be throwing snowballs at them, but he saw nothing but snow and more snow and dark trees beyond that.

  Something hit the roof.

  Jason was frantically trying to look out all the windows at once. The silence between the snowballs was almost worse than if there had been a barrage of them. And it was just so dark. He couldn’t see a goddamn thing.

  He was sweating. He had the time to think how funny it was that he was sweating while it was absolutely freezing outside.

  Another thump, this one somewhere near the rear passenger door. Valerie gasped. She tried the same technique Lucy had taken, slouching down in her seat, getting her head below the level of the window.

  Silence.

  Falling snow.

  Darkness.

  And then Jason saw Frank. He wore no ski mask now, and he stumbled over the snow bank on the far side of the road as if he’d been pushed. He fell to his knees in the road and Jason could see the splashes of red pattering the snow in front of him. Frank was hurt.

  Jason was out of the car before it all even registered in his brain. He’d seen a hundred war movies where the enemy used this same tactic: use an injured man as bait to lure his allies into the open to be picked off. Jason had never been to war, but he was suddenly sure this was what he was involved in. And still he couldn’t stop himself. That was his brother out there. Bleeding. Did it matter if it was a trap? If he didn’t try to help he would never get over the guilt. Better to be killed himself than to live with that.

  Why was someone trying to kill them?

  Jason only had a few seconds for these thoughts to run through his head. Then he was darting across the road, his feet slipping on the snow and ice, Valerie frantically shouting his name. Jason tried to look in all directions at once, but he didn’t see anything other than Frank. Frank looked up at him, tears running down his cheeks.

  The sight of Frank’s tears drove the point home to Jason: they were in serious trouble. Frank didn’t cry. Frank was the man’s man, the tough guy. If Frank was crying, then they were dealing with something way beyond what Jason was capable of handling.

  Frank made a gurgling sound in his throat and Jason immediately knew that Frank’s tongue had been cut out, just like Lucy’s. But no sooner had that thought registered in his brain than he realized there was no blood on Frank’s face. His face was flushed from the cold, wet from his tears, and slack from shock, but the blood was coming from somewhere else. Then he held up his hands, palms facing Jason, as if he intended to worship his older brother, and Jason saw the blood.

  Frank was no longer wearing any gloves. It would’ve been difficult for him to wear gloves now anyway; all ten of his fingers were missing. Each hand ended in five bloody, raw stumps.

  Jason screamed. He didn’t have any control over it, he just screamed. And even while he was screaming he was bending over and getting one of Frank’s arms over his shoulder, dragging his little brother back up to his feet. They shambled back toward the Acura, Jason screaming the whole time, but Frank remained eerily silent except for the occasional hitching sob.

  Jason tried to watch behind them as they made their way to the car. He saw nothing. Ahead of him he saw Valerie’s pale face in the rear window. Her eyes wide, her mouth an O of shock. To Jason, she appeared to be as frozen as the ground all around them. But he was wrong. As Jason lugged Frank closer to the car, she opened the back door and stepped out. She looked shaky, unsure, but she was preventing them from having to go around to the other side of the vehicle.

  Frank wasn’t doing a very good job of supporting his own weight and he seemed to get heavier with every step. They were moving so slowly.

  The lights didn’t register with Jason until he heard the engine. When he did, he turned his head and was blinded. The headlights came rushing toward him and he couldn’t see anything else, two glowing orbs radiating through the darkness.

  If the truck hadn’t stopped, Jason and Frank would’ve both been squashed flat right there in the road. But it did stop. It was the same pickup that had sped past them earlier. At least Jason thought it was the same one, but there were probably a thousand pickups out here in the boonies that all looked the same. It didn’t matter, though. Here was a working vehicle with four fully inflated tires. It was their salvation.

  Jason had stopped moving when the truck pulled up, but as its driver’s door swung open he began to pull Frank toward it instead of the Acura. The only thing on his mind was getting his little brother to safety.

  A man stepped out of the pickup truck. He had a barrel chest wrapped in a bright red-and-black flannel shirt. His face was hidden underneath the rim of a baseball cap pulled down tightly on his head. With one meaty hand he reached up and pushed the ball cap off his brow, revealing nothing; the headlights were too bright for Jason to make out any features of the man’s face.

  “Looks like you folks done run into a bitta tro
uble,” the man said, and laughed. His voice was deep and his laugh was deeper.

  There was something about that laugh that caught Jason’s attention. He disregarded it, though. The truck and what it represented—the chance to get the hell out of there—dominated everything else inside his head.

  Jason dragged Frank closer to the stranger. Frank was moaning, gurgling, and just barely shuffling his feet. Jason wasn’t sure if he was even still conscious.

  “Mister, please, we need to get out of here. Now.”

  Valerie had paused for a moment when the truck pulled up, but now Jason saw that she had helped Lucy from the front seat of the Acura and the two of them were coming over to the truck as well. Lucy seemed to be doing a much better job of supporting herself than Frank was.

  “Shoor, shoor, buddy,” the stranger said in his deep voice. The sound was like gravel under tires. Perhaps that was only because Jason couldn’t stop thinking about tires moving, moving, moving them out of there. “Shoor, I can help with that.”

  Jason and Frank reached the man. He stood only a foot in front of them, but still Jason didn’t stop moving. This stranger didn’t know how urgent the situation was, and Jason didn’t intend to waste a single second. He pulled Frank toward the open driver’s door of the truck.

  And then time seemed to slow down as too many things happened at once.

  The arm Jason held around Frank’s back was wrenched loose. The stranger in