AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Great,” she grumbled, wearily resting her forehead on her husband’s shoulder. “Ghost deer. Is that a step up from a haunted staircase at least?”
“Look!” Her daughter pointed at the screen. “Ghosts don’t poop!”
Sure enough, a buck had paused in front of the camera, lifted his tail, and let loose.
Her son brightened, then started to clap and laugh.
“Poop!” he shrieked. “Ghosts don’t poop!”
She and her husband shared a discreet high five.
“Thank you,” she whispered to him.
Her husband put the camera back on its tree trunk, but they never needed its anti-ghost evidence again. Her son stopped waking her complaining of a naughty ghost on the stairs, and she and her husband were satisfied that a busy deer trail and the region’s steady northwest cold-weather wind explained the path’s bizarre cleanliness and hollow appearance.
There in the hidden place, she felt the idea of the trail and its wind-culled snow run through her like a revelation. It was the obvious choice. All those artificial mansions were the closest possible source of help.
Stay under the eaves of the house so there’s less snow. Duck under the windows to be out of sight. One hundred feet to the graveyard. Two hundred fifty feet down the path to those houses. It’s a little farther, but it’s much better than that uphill distance to the nurse’s house. You’d be behind the house. Hardly any windows face that direction. You wouldn’t be so exposed.
“Though, of course,” said her husband, “you don’t know anyone who lives back there, either. Never bothered to meet them. All superior because you think their houses are ugly.”
She shook off the intrusion of her husband’s imagined voice. Thought of how tantalizingly close she was to the old front double doors. Pictured the bar that swung on its little nail falling into place again when the door shut.
It’ll lock you out.
The thought of crossing that threshold, of that little bar swingingclosed, locking her away from the children, made her exhale a pained whimper.
There was the extra key in the plastic hide-a-key rock. Extremely well hidden now under the snow. So not impossible to get back in, but nearly, especially if the Corner was still in the house.
But slippers? A robe? And underneath it only underwear and an old T-shirt, drenched in sweat. Could the cold kill you?
Her brain flicked through the contents of the office. Nothing there that would help keep her warm.
But he pushed something around in the hall closet when he was searching for us before. Something made aclatter-whooshnoise like cloth on hangers.
She rubbed her neck above where her son’s head rested. Felt the slick bite of cold air on skin.
You should just wait! Be patient. He’ll give up. The sun will scare him away. For all he knows someone’s supposed to visit tomorrow. Certainly he’ll expect the plow. Wouldn’t want the plow guy to see his car. See him.
But what if he parked somewhere else? Walked? And the plow guy wouldn’t call the police, not about a strange car. He might remember a car later. After something happened. Which does you no good at all.
The three-day weekend unspooled before her, looking as clean and uncannily empty as that groomed trail through the trees. With school canceled early in anticipation of the storm, she’d prepared for a quiet long weekend at home alone with the kids. She’d felt galvanized out of her recent lethargy by the coming nor’easter. She’d made sure there was plenty of gas in the generator. She’d done all the massive piles of laundry just in case they lost power while home alone, folded it, and put it all away in one go for the first time in nearly two months. She’d ordered and picked up groceries just as the snow started falling. She’d swept the ashes out of the fireplace, out of the enormous beehive oven in the living room, remembering her husband making pizza there, all of them happy and full andwarm. Brought in plenty of firewood so that they could roast marshmallows, make s’mores, as a special treat. She had told the children that depending on the condition of the roads, they could pick out a Christmas tree on Saturday or Sunday.
It’s not like your dad would notice if he didn’t hear from you. Not like your husband is going to check in. Or your father-in-law.
Yes, she’d assembled a weekend that required no other people but that she had been determined to make look like normal life.
But the Corner doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know no one will notice you’re gone. How could he know?
He knew it was just the three of you alone here. You can’t know what he knows. How long has he been watching?
She touched the knot on her head. Winced.
And you were just so pleased with yourself, getting all that ready for the weekend. Doing small and happy things for the kids after all these weeks of you being so incapable.
Another blast of cold cut through her. Involuntarily her eyes were drawn to the vent, where the wind whistled through.
She froze, throat closing. There was an undulating movement in the darkness outside the vent. Vague shapes slowly took form in the thin moonlight that traveled into the entry from the four small transom windowpanes above the front door. Round yellow eyes, unnaturally large, stared at her from the other side of the vent.
