Chapter Seven

Katherine watched the deck and property beyond for several minutes. Another swell of guilt hit as she again pictured the little girl out in the storm, collapsed or shivering somewhere nearby, the snow covering her, concealing her, ingesting her small body into the landscape. Dead. She saw the little girl dead among the trees, frozen like some demonic sculpture, grisly and hopeless.

Don’t be so dramatic, she told herself.

But Katherine knew all too well that since the drowning death of the Japanese boy, she could no longer see or think of children without also thinking of death. Even in the most mundane circumstances—passing them on the street, seeing them frolic on a playground or having dinner at a restaurant—their innocent faces always turned to death masks.

It hadn’t always been like that—she’d once loved to interact with and watch children at play while visiting the lake—though for most of her adult life the subject of children, generally speaking, had been a sore one. Early in their relationship, she and James had decided against having children, not because they disliked them, simply because they preferred instead a life of freedom and time together. But neither quite realized the extent to which they would be forced to defend that decision over the years, and how it would open them to frequent ridicule. In the minds of many, a woman with no desire to give birth was heretical and somehow blaspheming against God and nature, as if the path to becoming a worthy and complete human being could only be found through reproduction.

James had shared her feelings on the subject, agreeing that children would complicate their lives and change things to a degree he was not comfortable with. He was happy with her, their cat Barney, the lake, their home and his writing. He was content, and together, they were whole. Once, not so very long ago, they had been whole.

“It’s true,” she said, converting her thoughts to audible words as she had when James was still in the house with her, by her side and able to hear them. “Weren’t we whole once, James, the two of us, not so very long ago?”

The wind blew snow against the sliders in answer. Katherine moved closer, eyes sweeping the property, shotgun in hand. How ridiculous I must look, she thought. What an absurd ass I’ve become, standing here with this old gun watching the falling snow; frightened of a lost man and his young daughter and every other goddamn thing in the world and in my head.

Katherine refocused her attention on the property, and once satisfied that the man was neither lurking nearby nor waiting for her at some point between the slider door and her vehicle, she fumbled keys from her purse and stepped outside.

She hadn’t any idea just how cold it was. Closing the slider behind her and tucking chin to chest, she scanned the area while moving quickly down the deck steps. As she crossed the small section of yard to her Bronco, she looked over at the rows of cabins. Dark and draped in fresh snow, they sat quietly amidst the still forest. Sprinkled about an otherwise pristine vista, they seemed more neglected and in an even greater state of disrepair than normal.

The remnants of a path that wound its way up into the surrounding forest caught her attention, the snow not quite as deep there yet, the shape of the path still visible, though barely, through the storm. She remembered the last time she and James had walked that path, hand in hand early one evening after dinner. Though both had crossed into their forties, he’d felt strong as he had in his twenties, she thought, his body still trim and sinewy, his gait vibrant. Before the madness only Katherine had begun to question her vitality, never James. Think old and you become old, he’d told her. My God, Kate, we’re only in our early forties, we’re still kids! To James, time had always been irrelevant, age a boundary strictly psychological in nature. It’s all in your mind, kiddo.

Ironic, she thought. Perhaps he’d been right all along.

With the heavy shotgun held awkwardly down against her side, she turned away from the path and glanced again about the grounds. The man and little girl were nowhere in sight.

Moving quickly as she could in the snow, she reached the Bronco and pulled open the driver-side door. It gave a loud squeaking moan that echoed across the lot as she hopped up and slid inside the cab.

The steering wheel was freezing even through her knit gloves, and both the windshield and back window were coated with a thin film of ice. Thankfully, the engine turned over immediately, so she flipped on the defrosters and hugged herself a moment, her view obscured by vaporous breath.

Through clouds of mist and icy portals along the windows, she watched the area as best she could; shifting her head from side to side in an attempt to see as much as possible. The man could be anywhere, and unless she saw him coming, he could easily creep up on her undetected. Being inside the cab produced a sudden and eerie sensation. Like being entombed, she imagined, here in this cold little open space, sealed off from the outside world yet still able to feel it. Odd, how being inside something as unexceptional as a car or truck gave a false sense of safety—separation from the rest of the world—as if once within its confines one became invisible. Like watching life from some other place, she thought, some separate place.

Yes, James whispered to her. Yes.

Though the heat filling the cab had taken the edge off the initial chill, another wave of cold hit her. She shuddered violently, but once it passed she dropped the Bronco into Drive and stepped on the gas. The tires whined, sliding against the ice beneath them. The Bronco rocked then lurched but didn’t move. “Sonofabitch,” she muttered. The windshield wipers squeaked with each pass, doing little to increase visibility through the swirl of thick flakes. She watched the heavily wooded road through the seemingly endless ocean of stark white, but saw no signs of life. But for the sound of the engine, the landscape was deathly silent.

After a few more attempts she realized the Bronco was hopelessly stuck. Without someone to help her push she’d never get it moving.

Katherine threw open the door, jumped down from the truck with the shotgun in tow and crossed back to the base of the deck steps.

An uneasy feeling of being watched swept through her.

She looked back over her shoulder and watched the forest a moment.

Ignoring the icy spikes tickling her cheeks, she turned and started up the steps when something on the perimeter of her peripheral vision caught her attention.

Light.

The windows of the first cabin, the one closest to her house, were filled with soft yellow light. She dropped back down off the first step and started hesitantly toward the cabin. The door was ajar, but—how could that be possible? They were padlocked shut once the summer season ended and the electricity for the cabins had been shut off months prior. Yet from all appearances, the door had not been damaged, and what was coming from within was most certainly light.

He’s here with us, watching us even though we can’t see him, James had told her. He’s all around us and yet I…I’ve never felt so alone. Why, Katherine? Why do I feel so alone?

She recalled an old painting she’d once seen in a book featuring fourteenth century art, a darkly conceived vision of a sickly thin man being led toward the open mouth of Hell by a great number of hideous winged demons. The name of the artist escaped her, but what had always struck her about the piece was the expression on the man’s face. Even all these years later she could remember it with startling clarity, because rather than terror or sorrow, the artist had made an intriguing choice and instead given his doomed soul a look of abject loneliness. In the midst of all that evil and darkness, hand in hand with a brood of horrible and frightening creatures, the man was anything but alone, and yet Katherine had never seen anyone so utterly solitary in all her life. At least not until the day James had expressed the same feelings. He’d looked like the face in the painting, surrounded by his demons yet completely, hopelessly alone.

But he had not been alone. There were others among them; just as he’d told her.

She knew that now.

Heart pounding, Katherine clutched the shotgun tight and glanced at the ground between herself and the cabin. Crouching, she squinted through the spinning snow at a quickly fading set of tracks, and as her mind searched for answers, in one panicked motion, she stood up and looked back at the house.

It appeared just as she’d left it.

Katherine stood frozen in place, chest heaving, mind racing.

“Hello, Katherine.”