AllFreeNovel
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What a bunch of bullshit.
Years ago she’d jumped into a calm part of a river where the water was deep and smooth. There’d been a late August sun, hot, dry air. But the water was fresh-melted snow from the Wasatch, and on hitting it she’d gone into shock, inhaled, only kept from drowning because she’d gone straight to the bottom and had involuntarily pushed up off the river rock hard enough that she broke the water’s surface.
This cold was the same. So painful, so sudden, that she choked. Her muscles spasmed, her jaw twinged like glass had been plunged under her ear to the bone.
And this, all this, even with the coat.
Thank God for the coat.
The storm was raging, snow swirling, making things visible, invisible, dark, white.
You should have gotten the fire poker. Waited for him. Hit him. This is too much.
She looked down at her shaking body, at the way the fur coat swallowed her feet.
No. These odds are better. And you’re here now. You’ve got no choice. If you don’t move, something will move you.
“That’s all being an adult is,” said her grandmother’s southern drawl. “Doing one thing you don’t want to do. Then doing another thing you can’t the best you can.”
She breathed the aching air, carefully stepping in places close to the house and protected by the eaves. The snow dusted into her slippers, melting on her feet.
When she turned the corner, the wind ticked down a notch. It was the lee side of the house, the snow shallower. Even so, her face, her head, throbbed with the cold. She took one hand out of her pocket to press to her cheek, her nose. Did the same with the other, alternating sides to warm herself as she moved slowly forward.
The coat smelled worse the more the snow hit it, the moisture doubling the stench of mothballs, neglect, and animal musk.
She had to be careful not to trip on the hem of the too-long coat. Air and ice crept up her legs, whispered through the gaps between the buttons, breathed down her spine, froze the moisture still collected on the notch at the base of her neck.
The coat’s warmth was preternatural. The only spot of hope in the dark, miserable, unfair, and frozen world.
She peeked through a window into the living room. There was no sign of movement. The room sat so still, so empty, it looked colder even than where she stood in the snow. She felt acutely how alone she was, without the children. She hurried past the windows, feeling unseen eyes on her.
One step, another, yes.
She ducked under the kitchen windows, wind howling, cold moisture now seeping through the slipper soles. After she’d passed beneath the windows, she peeked through a pane of the antique, wrinkled glass into the kitchen.
The Corner was coming down the stairs, tilting his head to the side this time where the ceiling cut low to avoid hitting his head again. He appeared watery through the glass, every bit of him distorted and in motion.
Blood filled her ears to pounding deafness and she recoiled from the window, flattening herself against the siding.
Did he see you? He’s down from the attic, down already. They’re alone. Alone! He’s going to start a fire. Smoke them out. Alone!
She groaned, the pull of helplessness yanking out something unseeable from where it was embedded in her bones. The fear, the back roll of her eyes as she imagined her children suffering, made the cold fractionally more forgettable, a little less painful compared with the horror of the Corner’s potential.
Move. Move! You’re past the windows now but…if he spotted you, he’ll follow you. He’ll catch you. You have to go, now. If you stay you’ll never forgive yourself. No one will forgive you.
You wouldn’t deserve forgiveness.
“This is it,” her husband’s voice scratched through her brain. “You can’t lose. You’re not allowed to.”
She ran. Ran alongside the house before plunging into the driveway. The snow was deep there, unprotected as it was, deep enough she gasped at the crystals cutting her calves, her knees. She had to step like a doe through the drifts, the snow pushing the coat up, ice tearing her skin, filling the slippers until each step was frozen.
Don’t lose the slippers. Keep your hands warm in your pockets when you can. Don’t lose your balance.
Thank God for the coat.
The coat’s satin lining claustrophobically adhered to her skin, wettened by the blowing snow sneaking down her neck. She registered a chest-constricting irregularity in her heartbeat. The heart of a prey animal under the animal skin of the coat.
The trees above and ahead cut the storm with awoosh. Even through the torture of the cold, through the heave of her burning lungs inhaling ice, the dark line of the forest frightened her. It loomed, hiding things, looking too vast and angry to let her through.
