Snowblind (39 page)

“Pokémon,” Detective Keenan said.

Jake flinched. “What?”

“You had Pokémon cards in your hand,” Harley said. “Spread out, the way you would if you were playing, so don’t tell me you were getting ready to sell them on eBay or some shit. You’ve got about five seconds to explain yourself, Jake. Convince me you’re not some kind of…”

Harley glanced away, shaking his head, not wanting to speak the words.

Jake hated it. At twenty-four, he was old enough to know that the older people got, the harder it was to make close friends, and he and Harley had been close.

“Harl,” he said, ignoring Keenan. “I swear to God, it’s not what you think.”

Detective Keenan stood up, staring at him, a little spark of hatred in each eye. “Tell me right now, kid. Is Zachary Stroud in this house?”

Jake stared back, thinking of trying for Keenan’s gun and knowing how ridiculous an idea it was.

“It’s not what you think, Joe.”

“Jesus Christ!” Keenan said, sneering as he spun around, glancing around the living room. “The whole city’s been looking for the boy and he’s right here? Everyone’s given him up for dead!”

Keenan paused, then stormed over to Jake, one hand on his gun. “Is he alive, Jake? Tell me the boy’s alive?”

“He’s alive,” Jake said. “But he’s not Zachary Stroud.”

Detective Keenan jerked his head, gesturing to Harley.

“Officer Talbot, search the house. Find the boy.”

Harley looked like he wanted to spit in Jake’s face. He opened his mouth to speak and then thought better of it, turning to leave the living room.

“Listen to me, Harley. You can’t take him out of here! It’s not safe, you understand?
The ice men are going to take him back.
If you take him out into the storm they’ll come for him, and they’ll probably kill you while they’re at it!”

As if he hadn’t spoken, Harley stormed from the room. Moments later Jake heard doors slamming open and closed, then heavy footfalls on the stairs. The wind still gusted hard, rocking the house and making the beams creak, and snow whipped at the windows, but Harley Talbot’s footsteps were the loudest sound that Jake had ever heard.

His heart breaking, he looked at Detective Keenan.

“Please, Joe, you’ve gotta listen.”

Keenan’s upper lip curled in disgust. “Don’t even talk to me.”

Upstairs, Isaac began to scream. They heard Harley’s voice, too, trying to reassure the boy, but the sounds of struggle continued and got closer.

“What the hell?” Detective Keenan muttered.

When Harley reappeared, he had Isaac over one shoulder.

“Jesus, Harley, put the kid down!” Keenan shouted.

Harley complied, but the second that Isaac’s feet were on the ground he started punching the massive cop, screaming at him.

“Damm it!” Harley snapped.

He knelt and tried to put his arms around Isaac to restrain him. The boy grabbed his right arm with both hands and bit him hard. Harley swore and gave him a little shove and Isaac fell on his butt on the hardwood planking, then scrambled to his feet and rushed through the living room.

“Zack, listen,” Detective Keenan said, crouching to try to intercept the boy. “We’re here to help you. I know you’re in…”

The boy dodged around him and threw his arms around Jake.

“Don’t let them take me, Jake. Please don’t let them. I can’t go out in the snow.”

“I know, I know,” Jake said, kneeling down to take the boy in his arms. Cupping the back of Isaac’s head in one hand, he clutched the boy to him and looked over his shoulder at Harley and Detective Keenan.

“I tried to tell you. This isn’t what you think.”

“Then what the hell is it?” Harley demanded.

“The kid’s in shock,” Detective Keenan said. “After the accident, he’d have to be. I don’t know if you did anything to him or if you’ve just got some bizarre idea that you’re helping him, but—”

“You’re not listening!” Jake snapped.

Isaac had calmed enough to turn to face the officers. Jake stayed on his knees beside him, the Schapiro brothers united.

“Okay,” Detective Keenan said, frowning as he tried to make sense of their closeness. “What is it, then?”

“Twelve years ago, Joe … there were demons in that storm.”

“Demons,” Harley echoed, a terrible sadness in his voice. Pity in his eyes.

“I saw them with my own eyes. They came right through the screen of my bedroom window and dragged my little brother, Isaac, out into the snow. The screen didn’t give way … they pulled him out.”

“I remember hearing about this back then,” Keenan said. “But you’re a grown man now. You can’t possibly—”

“It’s true,” Isaac said quietly, his voice full of such pain that the others in the room could not help but stare at him. He lowered his gaze, scuffing his foot, fearful but not surrendering. “They took us all, everybody who died that night, and they’ve kept us ever since … till a few days ago. We got away, but they know we’re here and they’re out there now, in the blizzard, hunting for us. I’m sorry for the boy whose body I’m in. He hit his head and when he got out of the car his parents were drowning and he tried to save them. He went into the river and dove under the water and tried to smash the window but he was too little and then he was choking and swallowing the water and he was going to drown when I went inside of him.”

Keenan and Harley stared at him openmouthed, neither of them knowing what to say next.

“I’m sorry,” Isaac said. “But I think he did something to his brain, going that long without breathing right. I can’t even feel him thinking in here with me.”

“Holy shit,” Harley whispered.

“Harley. Joe,” Jake said. “Meet my little brother, Isaac.”

Detective Keenan backed up. “No. No way, man. Do you have any idea how crazy you both sound? You’ve had three days up here by yourself to mess with this kid’s head. His parents may be gone but he’s still got family.”

Something in Keenan’s expression suggested that he doubted his own words, like he struggled with a memory he wished he could forget.

“Joe,” Harley said quietly.

Keenan shot him a hard look. “Don’t even think about it. Get your cuffs out.”

“No!” Isaac shouted.

Harley took out his handcuffs but he looked unsure.

Jake put an arm around Isaac. “I can’t let you do this, Joe.”

Detective Keenan pulled his gun. He didn’t take aim, but suddenly the weapon was in play, and Jake slid Isaac behind him, blocking his brother with his own body. Harley started toward him with the handcuffs.

“Don’t make this ugly, Jake,” Harley said, obviously troubled. “Whatever this is, we’ll work it out.”

“Are you kidding me?” Jake snapped. “Keenan’s got his gun on us! What are you going to do, Joe, shoot a kid? If you guys don’t believe him, nobody will, and if you bring him out in that storm I’m going to lose my brother all over again!”

“Jake,” Detective Keenan said. “You lost Isaac a long time ago. There is no ‘again.’ Nobody wishes there were more than I do, but there are no second chances.”

Isaac stepped out from behind Jake.

“There might be,” the boy told him. “Charlie Newell says you cried over him and Gavin. They weren’t much older than I was and they’ve been suffering all this time. We all have. Maybe it’s not really a second chance, but we don’t want to suffer anymore. We just want to rest. Don’t you think Charlie deserves to rest.”

The gun shook in Detective Keenan’s hands. His eyes were wide and damp and he trembled with something that did not seem much like rage until he turned and looked up at Jake and sneered.

“You son of a bitch,” he said, “putting this shit in the head of a ten-year-old. What is
wrong
with you?”

“Joe—” Jake began.

“You have to listen!” Isaac cried.

Detective Keenan stared at the boy as if trying to see inside him. In that moment’s hesitation they all heard the storm blowing outside.

“Officer Talbot,” Keenan said, “I swear to God if you don’t cuff him right now I am going to shoot
you
instead.”

Harley swore under his breath but he moved toward Jake. When Isaac tried to interfere, Harley shoved him onto the couch and grabbed Jake by the arm, slapping a cuff on one wrist. Jake shouted and shot an elbow into his gut, got away for a second before Harley grabbed the back of his neck with one huge hand and slammed him to the floor, one knee on his back, forcing his other arm around. Jake fought against it until he thought his arm would break, and at last there was nothing he could do about it. The cuffs were on.

“Stop!” he screamed. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

Jake twisted around, trying to get Harley off him, and saw Isaac beating on the huge cop’s back and arms and head until Keenan grabbed Isaac from behind, holstering his gun.

Such was the brutal tableau on display when they heard the front door open, all of them turning toward the sound of a woman’s voice.

“Jake?”

Two figures stepped into the foyer, dusted with snow, and then stood at the living room entrance, staring inside with wide eyes. One of them was Jake and Isaac’s mother, but it was the other whose presence astonished him. Even then, in the middle of the chaos, he couldn’t help thinking how beautiful she looked.

“Miri?” he said.

Something shimmered in the air behind them and Jake wondered if they had brought someone else along.

“Let him go!” his mother said, rushing into the room. “Harley, for God’s sake, what are you doing? You’ve had dinner at my house. What do you think you’re—”

Isaac rushed at her, throwing his arms around her waist. He buried his face in her chest and began to sob, trying over and over again to speak to her but unable to get out the words. At last, breath hitching, everyone in the room staring, he spoke a single word.

“Momma.”

Allie Schapiro stared down at him, her eyes welling. She searched that unfamiliar face—the face of a stranger—and pushed the hair away from his eyes to get a better look.

“Isaac? Is it really…”

She sank to her knees and embraced him.

“This is a goddamn madhouse,” Keenan said.

Outside, the wind began to scream and they all stiffened. Jake spun around, staring at the windows. Had he seen something flit by out there? The fear that had been enveloping him wrapped itself around him like a shroud. Once upon a time, twelve years earlier, Isaac had watched the ice men dancing in the snow and made the mistake of thinking them harmless. Playful. They couldn’t make that mistake again.

The house shook and a barrage of noise filled the air, beams creaking and glass rattling, and then they could heard a terrible sound, like a hundred iron hooks being dragged along the roof and outer walls of the farmhouse.

“They’re here, Momma,” Isaac cried, spinning around in terror, eyes wide. “Don’t let them take me again.”

Jake looked at Harley. “Get these goddamn handcuffs off.”

“This is impossible,” Detective Keenan said.

Miri snapped her fingers in front of his face twice. “Wake up, Detective. The impossible can kill you.”

TWENTY-ONE

Keenan spun around, trying to figure out where the sounds were coming from, and then he realized they were coming from everywhere. His thoughts were a maelstrom of doubt—whom did he believe, here? Whom could he trust? Despite the icy air and the plummeting temperature in the room, he felt beads of sweat dripping down his back and wondered if he might be having a nervous breakdown.

Breakdown? It’s not that simple. I’m losing my damn mind.

Losing his mind, because with every word out of the mouths of these people, he kept seeing the face of that rookie, Torres, in his head, and trying to tell himself that the young, seemingly unbalanced cop had not said the words Keenan thought he’d heard in The Tap the night before:
“I’m betting you still remember what my skin smelled like when it burned.”
He’d thought Torres was having some kind of psychotic episode, convincing himself that he was Gavin Wexler. Hell, given his age, they might have gone to school together. Or so Keenan had told himself.

Now, he didn’t know
what
to think.

The fingers of his right hand twitched and descended toward the gun he’d just holstered. He had to force himself not to draw the weapon, worried that he might pull the trigger. Instead, he stared at Zachary Stroud. The kid might be orphaned, but somehow he’d survived … if he was still even Zachary Stroud. The way he held on to Allie Schapiro—kids didn’t clutch at strangers that way. He knew her, saw her as his mother, but if Keenan allowed himself to follow that train of thought it would lead him to things he simply refused to believe.

Harley had moved behind Jake and was taking off the handcuffs.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Keenan demanded. He felt like he was floating, like the people in the room around him were retreating into shadows and he was starting to lift off the ground. “He’s in custody, dammit!”

Harley froze and stared at him, eyes narrowing. Could the younger cop see how untethered from reality he had become? Keenan thought perhaps he could, and it was almost a relief when Harley hurried to him, moving between Allie Schapiro and Miri Ristani.

“Joe, snap out of it,” Harley said, grabbing his arm.

The whole house shook with a massive gust of wind, boards groaning, and the Stroud boy cried out again, this time pointing at the window. Keenan glanced over and thought, for just a second, that he had seen a face at the glass, an obscene mask of ice with jagged teeth and eyes that were hideously, cruelly intelligent. He turned away, shook his head to clear it, and looked again to see that it had been only a pattern of snow stuck to the window screen.

Harley grabbed the front of his jacket and hauled him up onto the tips of his toes, so they were practically nose-to-nose.

“Detective Keenan!” he shouted. “Wake the hell up!”

Keenan flinched, inhaling sharply, as if Harley had struck him. He shook himself loose and for a moment he just stood there listening to the pounding of his heart. When he turned to look at Allie and the boy again, Miri and Jake were with them … and beyond them, in the shadows at the corner of the room, stood what could only be a ghost.