“Ah!” Emma flinched, her hands jerked the wheel, and then the van shimmied, first right and then left. Emma fought the impulse to slam on the brakes. The snow was deep and very wet, with a thick layer of compressed ice beneath. The van wallowed, the heavier rear trying to swing past and outrun the front. Oh no no no, God, God, don’t lose it!
“Emma!” Lily screeched. “Look out, look out, look out!”
Emma’s eyes snapped to the road just in time to see a flash, dead ahead: a sudden bright pop like the death of a light bulb after a blown fuse.
“Shit!” Emma jinked right, much too sharply. Already skidding on a knife’s edge of control, the van’s wheels locked, the rear slewed, and Emma felt the van begin to spin at the same moment she realized that this was not lightning dead ahead but a light: a single bald eye, bouncing and bright and very large—and growing.
“NO!” Lily screamed.
ERIC
Poof
1
SNOW BLASTED HIS helmet. The west wind screeched like a cat. Eric wrestled the Skandic Ski-Doo back on course, leaning and carving through deep snow as the sky flared with a flash of lightning. The storm’s fingers pried and tugged at the loose folds of his jacket, slipping in through minute gaps in the zipper, chilling him to the bone. He couldn’t feel his face and, worse, the shakes had him now: one part cold, three parts shock. Fear kept slithering up his throat, trying to suffocate him.
What have I done? What am I going to do now?
A crisp click in his helmet and then a voice sizzled through the tiny speaker: “Eric?”
“Yeah, Case.” His voice came out strained, a little breathless. Come on, get a grip. You’ll just freak him out more than he is already. “What’s up?”
“Do you know where we are?”
“Sure, we’re—” He stopped. They were on a road.
A road?
Whoa, wait, that wasn’t right. When had they left the trail? His eyes flicked left, then right. The sled’s sole headlight was good but not great, and it was like trying to look beyond the limits of a silver fishbowl. He made out a forested hill on the left: a black-on-white expanse that rose beyond the limits of his headlight, the snow-shrouded trees slipping away as he passed. The hill felt large, too high, a little unreal.
Mountains. There were mountains? Actual high peaks? In Wisconsin? Swallowed by dark and snow, he couldn’t see to the very tops, but he just had this feeling that it was true. To his right was a black chasm of a valley, its drop-off outlined in the intermittent wink of green reflectors along a guardrail.
What was going on? His eyes fell to the Skandic’s odometer, his brows knotting to a frown. The gauge said they’d already gone sixty miles. That far? In the storm, their speed hovered around fifteen. Do the math, and they’d been on their sleds for four hours.
That had to be wrong. They ought to be home by now. He tried to recall if they’d passed a single town. There were three on the way to the cabin, seen from the trails as glittering strings laced through the trees like Christmas decorations, but he didn’t remember having seen any towns or lights at all, and now they were on a road curling around a mountain that shouldn’t exist, not in Wisconsin. When had they left the snowmobile trail?
He said, “Case, how long have we been on this road?”
“I don’t …” Whatever Casey said next was garbled by static.
“Say again, Case.”
More static. “I … ember. It …”
Interference from the storm, he guessed, which made some sense. Their system was old and hardwired into each sled’s battery, with headsets plugged into jacks. Eric did a quick peek and tapped the side of his helmet to signal Case to say again. A second later, there was more fuzz, and then Casey’s voice stuttered through the hash: “… said I don’t remember. I’ve been following you and … peekaboo, I see you. You can’t run, you can’t hide, and it’s time, boy, time to come down and play, come and plaaay, come …”
Jesus. “Case?” Eric twisted to look back at his brother. “What are you—”
Whatever had his throat cinched down tight.
Because Big Earl was there, right behind him, slouched in the rumble seat.
Big Earl, who was …
2
“IS HE DEAD?” Casey’s cheeks are streaked with tears; a slick of snot smears his upper lip. His jeans puddle around his ankles. The whippy wood switch has slashed right through Casey’s flannel shirt, scoring the boy’s skin with angry red wheals and splashes of blood. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know.” But that’s a lie. In the space of eight months, the Marines have turned him from a gawky eighteen-year-old kid into a very fine killing machine. So he knows. His right hand cramps, and he forces his fingers to relax. The empty bottle of Miller Lite—Great Taste! Less Filling!—thuds to the cabin’s rough floorboards. Eric watches the bottle roll a halfturn, then another, and butt his father’s left leg.
Big Earl doesn’t flinch, and is beyond telling Eric just how badly he’s going to hurt him. Instead, Eric’s father stares up at the bare rafters, his muddy brown eyes at half-mast, his liverish lips sagging in a slack O. There is something off about Big Earl’s head. That dent in his left temple, mainly. A thick red tongue leaks from the split in his father’s scalp. More blood dribbles from his left ear to soak into a tired braid rug.
A blast of wind buffets the cabin. The windows rattle in their frames with a sound like bones. That breaks the spell. Blinking away from the body, Eric looks up. The afternoon is nearly gone, dark only a couple hours away.
They have to get out. They can’t stay here. He has to think. He can’t think. What’s wrong with him? The world has gone a little soft around the edges, a bit out of focus. The cabin’s hot, the air sullen with the stink of rancid beer and fresh blood. Maybe call the police? No, no, they’ll throw him in jail, and he doesn’t deserve that. This isn’t his fault. Big Earl pulled his gun; Big Earl squeezed the trigger.
They have to get out.
Sidestepping the body and a litter of empties scattered around a puke-green Barcalounger, Eric goes to his brother. “Come on, Case,” he says, gently. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“Oh-okay.” Casey’s flop of blond hair is damp with sweat. His eyes, an indefinite storm-cloud gray and now watery and red-rimmed, slide to Big Earl. Casey makes a strangled sound. “I’m going to be sick, I’m going to …”