Shadow Season (22 page)

LOST IN THE STORM AT NIGHT
, Finn takes account. He has shoes, pants, a torn long-sleeved shirt that offers almost no protection. His cane is gone. The knife is gone. He took off his coat to wrap around Vi. He has no lighter, no phone. He’s fit and strong. Vi is dead. He’s bleeding. The temperature is below zero. With wind chill, maybe thirty below by now. It’s still snowing. There’s no point in calling for help. No one’s within earshot. Who knows if they’d listen anyway. Rack and Pudge might be local heroes, for all he knows. He can’t trust any holler folk. He can’t hear any chimes. He has no idea where he is. Most likely within a half mile of the school, trudging through one of the fields bordering St. Val’s.

Dressed as he is, with no protection, no way to build a fire, he gives himself a very generous thirty minutes before he passes out and freezes to death. He’s already soaked and icing up. Only his blood is warm and it steams as it leaks from his scratches and cuts, rising into his face, sending painful reams of colors and images into his mind that he has to fight through to stay in the cold and the dark.

It doesn’t take long before he’s caked with snow. His
wounds are already numb and he stuffs his hands into his armpits to try to keep some feeling in them. The snow he’s tramping through comes up to nearly his thigh. He thinks that there must be some way for him to figure out where he is, how to walk in a basic grid pattern that will eventually lead him back to the school.

He tries the echo trick to see what he can do with his facial vision. He calls out loudly, “Hup!” Like shouting for a dog to heel.

His voice is immediately swallowed. There’s no echo. What sound the wind doesn’t snatch away, the blanketing snow drives down to the ground.

At first the fear is rampant inside him. His world is consumed by blackness, as always, even though he knows he’s moving through the center of an endless blinding white. It’s an odd contradiction that wants to force itself into his mind. Except that, like the fear, his thoughts have begun to freeze.

SLEEP WANTS HIS ASS ALREADY
.

It’s a kind whisper, a sweet lover making promises.

Despite everything, Finn’s a little shaken to find that he doesn’t want to die. Who knew?

A growing sense of understanding asserts itself.

He’s certain that Danielle is here beside him in the snow.

She’s been following him all this time and has finally seen her chance to impress herself upon him again.

Low booms sound in the distance. They sound like shotgun blasts, but it’s actually ice shifting on the river. It’s the only noise he can hear besides the wind and his own breathing.

He wanders and climbs and crawls through the snow. It takes a while but words begin to drift toward him. A voice makes itself known. It’s his. He’s starting to hallucinate. It’s probably not such a bad thing.

He’s talking about Dani in her wedding dress, how stunned he was to see her so lovely walking down the church aisle. Ray stood shoulder to shoulder with him and said, “You finally did it, you prick, you’ve made me jealous of you.”

“At last,” Finn said.

“It’ll never happen again.” Ray had been right.

Maybe the echo trick will work in Finn’s mind. He has to shout something down the long corridors of his memory and see what bounces back to him.

She’s beside him in the white and in the black, his dead wife.

He puts his hand out.

Their fingertips brush.

He falls and gets up again. He calls out in his mind. It’s a name. It’s Dani. It’s a series of names. It’s Roz. It’s Violet.

He falls and gets up again.

There’s no echo. There’s no response. Now there’s no feeling in his face or anywhere else.

He says something else. Perhaps it’s another name, maybe it’s a word that holds so much meaning for him that he can’t keep it confined to himself. He’s not sure what it is.

He falls to his knees and Dani urges him to stand. He takes a few more hobbled steps, goes down again. He tries to break his fall with his hands but they’re stuck in his armpits. Christ, he’s living out Jack London’s
To Build a Fire
.

Some nameless mountain man tumbles into a creek and tries to keep a fire lit while he slowly feeds it bits of kindling. Failing that, he dreams of murdering his dog and dipping his frozen hands inside its hot carcass. But the panic in his voice scares the dog off, and by the time he gets his arms around it, his hands are too numb to hold a knife. The guy runs around for a while but eventually
realizes it’s all for nothing. With a growing sense of calm, he gives it all up and dies. The dog scampers off.

At least there’s that. At least the dog made it out okay.

If he lives, Finn will fucking scrap the story from his next semester’s syllabus.

Dani brushes his hair out of his eyes. He drops on his face.

With tremors racking him, he rocks to his feet. His teeth chatter so violently that he’s lost a couple of back fillings. He tries to draw his mind more tightly to him, to wear it like a blanket.

Move, he thinks.

Stop moving and you die.

But, seriously, shouldn’t you dig like a dog, get under the snow, make, like, I don’t know… an igloo? He thinks he saw that in a movie once.

He needs to get some insulation.

Finn walks into a tree and smacks his forehead hard. He goes to one knee, impressed he has the strength to resist going all the way to the ground. He manages to lever himself to his feet again. The pain is as sluggish as he is, moving through his skull almost as if it’s limping. He tries to feel the bark and smell the tree, but his nostrils are full of ice and the crisp wind burns away all odor. His hands are too numb to describe to him the tree’s texture. He still can’t pinpoint his whereabouts.

Nausea overtakes him and he vomits.

He holds his hands out to catch it. The idea disgusts him but he thinks this is the kind of thing a mountain man might take advantage of. Jack would know. Jack
would give him the thumbs-up on this, he’s certain. His bile will be warm.

It doesn’t matter either way because he misses his hands. They aren’t working properly anymore.

He hears Ray say, Aw shit, my shoes! You know how much these cost me? They’re Italian. You goddamn prick!

This is your fault, Finn says. How the fuck is it my fault?

I’m here because of you. I’m in the dark because of you.

Don’t blame that shit on me. Christ, you even hit my socks… motherless motherfucker…

Finn tries to bring his arms up to his chest but can’t feel them there. He wants to sleep. But he knows the dreams there will be just as bad as the dreams here, so what’s the point? He thought he had at least thirty minutes, but it hasn’t even been that long. He lets out a brief chuckle, thinking, Weak, how weak.

Ray says, It’s not so bad, right?

No, not really.

Trust me, it’s better than prison. No doubt.

Dani tells him, Don’t listen. Focus on me. Look at me.

Finn tries to open his eyes but the lids feel frozen shut.

You’d think it wouldn’t matter, but it really gets to him. He rubs at his face. Well, he tries to rub at his face anyway. He thinks one of his hands is probably there. Yeah, his palm is mashing his nose. There’s a strange sound of cracking. Has he broken his nose? Has it come
off? Maybe he’s finally, after all this time, falling to pieces, like fragmenting ice. No open casket for him.

Vi, lovely in her coffin, her mother at last loving her. The boy, Mark Reynolds, back from Greece, will have to have his parents search out a new prospect for him. He’s got his kids’ names picked out already. Eleanor and Kenneth. He’s got to find a new girl to give him Eleanor and Kenneth because Vi is dead.

Finn relaxes in the snow. He sighs contentedly.

A beautiful ache moves through him.

Danielle says, Stand up, lover.

SHE DRAPES HERSELF AROUND HIM AND
draws him close. Finn nuzzles her cold throat and feels that she has no pulse. The muscles are taut, though, the neck smooth, it’s where she likes him to lick. It’s where he likes to lick.

She’s in his arms again where she belongs. And he’s here again, where he never should have left.

Okay, so he’s dead.

Thank Christ.

She says to him, I forgive you. It’s done and it doesn’t matter anymore, we’ll never bring it up again. No, it’s over. It’s over now.

My man, my lovely man. My sweet boy, let me hold you. I’ve been waiting so long to have you again.

My girl, you’ve always been my girl, will always be my girl.

Of course.

He asks, What do we do now? Tell me what to do. Where do we go?

Now you come with me.

Where, Dani?

Follow me, my sweet man. I can lead you back to where you need to be.

Back?

Where you need to be.

There’s nowhere I need to be.

Yes, there is. You think you have someone to kill. You’re going to do it soon.

I have to.

You’re not a killer.

I am. I can be. I just stuck a knife through a man’s head.

Because you were forced to. It’s not the same thing, love.

Blood on your hands is blood on your hands.

It’s all right. You’re confused. You’ll understand soon. You’ll accept who you are.

Who I was doesn’t matter. I’ve been remade. I am reborn. The darkness feeds me, Dani. It becomes me.

It wasn’t your choice.

I was chosen for it.

You’re so right, my man. Do you want me to leave?

God no.

Yes, you do. That’s why you’re still trying. It’s why you’re still struggling.

I am?

You are. You want to live. You aren’t finished yet. You still have too much to do.

Am I alive?

You’re dreaming.

I know, and it’s a terrible dream. I dream of murder.

We all do. Now wake up.

I am awake. You’re dead.

That’s right.

And I’m alive.

Yes.

I’m not finished yet.

Stand up, lover. And ask yourself, How did the battle against evil go today?

Finn stirs. He manages to bring his wrist up to his viciously chattering teeth. He bites into himself, enjoying the taste.

RAY IS GOING TO GO DOWN
hard. Carlyle is cutting him loose and so is the force. Everybody wants his ass.

Finn knows that he’s the main reason why. He didn’t cover and didn’t go to bat for his partner, so Ray got caught out in the open with nobody to help divert the heat. A lot of guys would’ve lied under oath and perjured themselves, stolen evidence, and intimidated witnesses. Some would’ve gone even further for their partners, maybe aced one or two key people before they gave their depositions. Finn doesn’t feel a fucking bit guilty, not even when Ray gives him the death glare.

Visiting hours are over by the time Finn gets to the hospital but nobody bothers him as he heads up to Ray’s room. Ray had surgery today and was out of it when Finn called this afternoon.

“They took the foot,” Ray tells him. He throws the covers back and shows off the bandaged stump.

“I heard.”

“Roz told you?”