Anything Can Be Dangerous (11 page)

The world grew darker.

Sadie’s grip tightened on Jacob’s
shoulders.

Under the boughs of the evergreens the
forest became a black and white realm of heaped snow and deep
shadows. What little light did make it to the ground burned in
bright pools around them.

When they first started off, Jacob’s
main concern had been the snow and the cold, but now his mind
conjured images of winter-starved bobcats and man-eating grizzly
bears.

He glanced around, reevaluating the
splendor of the forest.

The tall trunks of the encompassing
trees appeared black in the shadows, their bark jagged and horribly
knotted. Jacob grimaced when he passed under them, happy to get
back into the light.

Ahead, a wide deadfall blocked their
path, and Kate paused to consider her options.

Here, broken branches and more rocks
gave the snow-covered ground the appearance of a mangled corpse
shrouded by a white coroner’s sheet. The fresh scent of pine, which
had filled his lungs with each breath since entering the woods, now
smelled like something meant to disguise a more sinister
odor.

Jacob shook the thought off and
hurried to follow Kate when she turned right and resumed her
trek.

The trees, the darkness, the strange
shapes concealed by the snow … the whole area seemed to exude a
malevolence Jacob wasn’t accustomed to, certainly not it connection
with nature. He couldn’t say what gave him such an unwholesome
impression, but, rational or not, the feeling persisted.

He suddenly wondered if he’d made the
right choice.

A branch snapped.

It sounded off to the left, and Jacob
pivoted to look. A flash of darkness merged with the deeper shadows
under the trees.

He stopped walking.

“
Hello?” he started to say,
but stopped short when another twig cracked to his right. This time
Kate came to a halt.

“
What was that?” she
asked.

Jacob held up a hand to silence her
and continued to listen.

They’d come to another cathedral of
pines, but the staggered ramparts of smaller saplings surrounding
them limited his sight to only a few yards.

“
Probably the deer that ran
us off the road,” he said.

The snow had thinned out a bit under
the larger trees, and Jacob used the opportunity to walk alongside
his wife when they started moving again.

“
Not long and we’ll be
sucking down hot coco at the nearest restaurant,” he said to break
the uneasy hush. “How’s that sound?”

“
Yum,” Sadie cheered. “With
mushmellows, too?”

“
As many as you can
eat.”

Jacob noticed Kate give the area
behind them one last appraisal before joining in. “I just hope we
don’t all end up with pneumonia.”

He smiled at her. “Did you hear the
one about the doctor whose patient died of bronchitis?”

She regarded him with one eyebrow
raised in suspicion.

“
He said he knew the guy
was a goner because of the coffin.”

Kate rolled her eyes but
grinned.

“
Get it? Coughing.
Coffin.”

“
Very clever,
dear.”

Sadie leaned over his shoulder.
“What’s bronto-po-cysus?”

Jacob looked up at her. “It’s like a
really bad col—”

But his reply tapered off when he
spotted what loomed overhead.

He stopped walking.

Kate continued several steps before
turning and tracing his line of sight. She gasped.

A deer’s carcass hung from the
branches of the nearest tree, its skeleton picked clean. It seemed
to float in the shadowy stillness, the tethers of rawhide that
secured it to the tree all but invisible when set against the
backdrop of the snow-frosted forest.

Jacob gaped at it,
captivated.

Ice from the recent storm clung to its
boney crown like transparent flesh, creating a sharp contrast to
the darkness that gazed back at him from the black pits of its eye
sockets.

Sadie mewed. “Daddy, what’s
that?”

“
Bones,” Kate answered for
him. “Probably left by some hunter.”

“
What’s hunting?” Sadie
asked.

“
It’s how people used to
survive in the wilderness,” Jacob replied. He had to swallow to wet
his throat. “Way back before grocery stores people had to hunt
animals for food. Now most just do it for sport.”

Sadie shifted on his shoulders.
“Sport?”

“
Yeah, like a game, to have
fun.”

“
People kill things for
fun?”

“
I’m afraid so,
kiddo.”

Sadie’s gaze returned to the bones,
her young mind no doubt trying to make sense of the notion. “That’s
not nice,” she said.

Fifty feet ahead a white glare cut
through the trees where they opened into the valley.

“
No, it isn’t, sweetheart,”
Jacob agreed. “Come on. Let’s keep going.”

They altered course around the tree
with the skeleton, Jacob taking the lead. He made it three steps
before stopping again.

“
Jesus,” he said out of
shock.

He’d pushed through a cluster of
spruce saplings to behold a towering curtain of fleshless animal
remains blocking his path. Thousands of withered hides and stripped
bones decorated the forest like gruesome ornaments on row after row
of blasphemous Christmas trees.

Jacob stared, mouth hanging
open.

Skulls. Femurs. Vertebrae.
Ribs.

They adorned branch after
branch.

Some hung in groupings meant to
resemble the animals they came from, whereas others had been mixed
and fitted together to create elaborate abstract sculptures of
death.

Jacob thought of the wind chime
hanging outside their kitchen window back home and wondered what
kind of music this collection would make on a blustery
day.

“
My God,” Kate said under
her breath. In the cold, the word came off her lips like a
ghost.

“
Was this from hunters?”
Sadie asked.

“
No,” Jacob replied. He
glanced behind them, to the cavernous shadows under the pine trees
and the million or so hiding places among the ground clutter and
rocks.

Kate, too, scanned their surroundings.
“Should we go back?”

Jacob strained to hear into the depths
of the forest before answering. He thought he heard a low chanting
in the distance, a repetitive cadence that he soon realized was his
own heartbeat pounding in his temples.

He looked ahead of them, beyond the
bones. Twenty feet away the woods opened onto a ledge overlooking
the valley.

“
No,” he answered. “Whoever
did this did it a long time ago. Let’s just keep moving and put it
behind us.”

He adjusted Sadie’s seating on his
shoulders and moved forward, not looking up when he passed under
the bones. Kate followed.

They cleared the trees, all squinting
against the glare of the snow. The valley floor lay below them,
looking like a vast frozen lake. On the opposite side, a palisade
of pines hid the view of the town. The sun hunkered on the horizon
behind them, creating a silhouette that looked like a row of black
fangs.

Jacob gazed in disbelief.

Kate gasped even as he looked to his
watch.

“
Jacob, the
sun—”

“
I see it,” he
croaked.

“
But how?” she asked. “It
wasn’t even noon when we left.”

“
I know.”

Sadie shifted uneasily. “Is it going
to get dark now?”

Jacob patted her leg but couldn’t
summon the saliva to answer. He looked back into the cave of trees
where they emerged from the woods and the shadows that seemed dim
beforehand had become impenetrably black.

“
Jacob how—” Kate
pleaded.

“
I don’t know!” he shot
back, then muted himself.

He stepped onto an outcrop and stared
out at the valley. What had first appeared as a blank white palette
now looked streaked with oranges and purples, divided by long,
pointed shadows. Their brilliance faded with each passing
second.

There was no denying it—they’d walked
for less than an hour, yet his watch showed that it was five
minutes to sunset.

“
Let’s go back,” Kate
whispered.

Jacob nodded his agreement and
gestured to the left. “This way looks less rocky.”

He started walking, but a crisp noise
suddenly cut through the stillness and his right leg sank up to his
crotch. He buckled over, straining every muscle in his back to keep
Sadie from tumbling off his shoulders.

“
Shit,” he
yelped.

Sadie screamed. Her small hands
clutched his head.

“
Hon—” Kate started, but
Jacob cut her off with a shout.

“
Stay back! I can’t feel
anything underneath. I think we’re on a snow shelf or something.
The way this land slopes away … Christ, we could be fifty feet off
the ground.”

“
Can you get back
up?”

“
I don’t know.”

He tried to push up with his left hand
and it disappeared into the snow up to his elbow.

“
Damn,” he cried. “Quick,
take Sadie and back away slowly.”

Kate moved forward, easing her weight
down with each step. The snow crunched underfoot. Below them,
phantom sounds issued from something unseen, something Jacob knew
could’ve only been hunks of packed snow breaking loose and dropping
to the rocks.

“
Don’t come any closer,” he
shouted.

Kate froze, her arms outstretched.
Sadie mewed at the force of his voice.

“
It’s okay, baby,” Kate
said. “Just hang on.”

Jacob sank another inch as he
maneuvered Sadie off his shoulders with his free hand, struggling
to keep her balanced.

“
Momma!”

“
I’m right here,” Kate
said, her voice miraculously calm. “Just move slow and come to
me.”

Jacob reached.

Sadie reached.

Kate clutched the girl’s
hand.

And the shelf collapsed.

Jacob saw the crack open in the snow
inches from his wife’s boots, giving them enough time to lock eyes
before he and Sadie plunged six feet, dropping with the slow motion
fluidity of a Hollywood special effect.

Sadie’s hand pulled away, leaving her
empty mitten in Kate’s grasp.

Jacob saw the scream form on his
wife’s lips, her cold-blanched face creasing in horror. But then
the section she stood on followed suit, breaking off before the cry
left her mouth.

The two massive slabs of snow
shattered into a thousand hard fragments, engulfing them in an
avalanche. The world went black. Jacob’s ears filled with a
rumbling white noise. He felt Sadie yanked from his hands as the
flow engulfed them, tumbling him end over end, contorting his body
regardless of all efforts to curl into a ball.

With each roll and twist he expected a
fist of granite to punch a hole in his ribcage or smash open his
skull. But then he came to a halt in mid-summersault, suspended
upside down in the snow.

He tried to move. His muscles flexed,
straining each fiber, but the snow had packed tight around his
body, immobilizing him in a frosty embrace.

Panic bit into his senses. He imagined
Sadie trapped somewhere nearby, buried alive. The back of his
throat seared with pain as he fought to scream through a mouthful
of snow.

Something slammed into his
back.

A hand grabbed his coat.

“
Jacob,” Kate
cried.

He felt the pressing weight of the
snow shoved aside, and her shouts grew louder. She hauled him free
just as his lungs seemed ready to explode.

He gasped for air, ignoring the frigid
sting of it as he drew in breath after breath.

Kate helped him up, wiping snow from
his face, and he exhaled a great sigh of relief when he saw Sadie
standing next to her. The young girl’s eyes glistened but looked
bright and alert.

“
Are you all right?” Kate
asked between sobs. “Is anything broken?”

Jacob shook his head. He looked up,
shocked to find the ledge that they’d fallen from now towering
three stories above them.

“
I thought I lost you,” he
said to his wife.

“
Ditto,” she
replied.

He reached out and hugged them,
clinging to his wife and daughter as his own emotions evolved into
tears. The last rays of sunlight bled out of the valley as he gazed
over his wife’s shoulder, leaving the sky a deep shade of
crimson.

When he finally released them, Kate
regarded him through wet eyes. A faint grin dimpled her fiery red
cheeks.