Chapter Five

Winter’s Children

The following day came and went but I spent all of it nursing a hangover. A voice inside my head informed me I should speak to Isabel, but I decided to wait another twenty-four hours, at which time I was due back in the ICU.

I spent the day on my couch, listening to the sound of spring rain. By evening, after the sky cleared, I needed some hair of the dog. I brought a bottle of wine down to the waterfront. I chose a dark Cabernet the color of black currant, or if you wish to be a drama queen, the color of blood. The wine became dulled by the cool Wisconsin dusk, but the buzz was good nonetheless. I sat upon the boardwalk and reflected upon those children whose lives intersected with mine.

I recalled my life in the ICU. I recalled a blur of broken children and sleepless nights. Children with incurable cancer, children with ruptured spleens who bled to death after Daddy backed over them with the car, children who stopped breathing, children who died. Over each subsequent year I saw more and more victims of child abuse and fewer and fewer parents who gave a shit about their kids. Something was wrong with the world. I felt it now more than ever. Dark matter, the phycisists believed, was pulling us further and further from the center.

I thought back to my first few years in medical school. Wasn’t my career initially an attempt to erase the blight upon my soul caused by my one act of revenge? Since graduation I had saved the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of children. I had brought peace and hope to their families in a time of fragility and despair. But the souls of the wicked and unjust were contaminating me. And since the death of my family I had lost my way. The ICU had become death, decay and degradation. Did that world leave me or had I been shedding it like a snake sheds its skin?

My attention was drawn to a clump of beach grass at the south end of the boardwalk. A child’s life vest was just visible within the copper-colored grass. I recognized the Spiderman logo, despite its faded appearance. I must have missed a few things when I last donated stuff to Goodwill. I looked up into the vast sky and said his name aloud. “Gabriel.” My son. Never again would he sit upon this boardwalk with me.

Hundreds of stars shimmered over Green Bay that May evening, a sentinel to the north winds and the recently departed frost. The bay darkened earlier that night, though the preceding days had been growing longer. Spring in this city was a bridge between two worlds, midway between the frosted pallor of the December sky and the lovely scarlet sunsets of July. Spring was a brief time of enchantment in a world that had not completely lost its magic.

I made myself ignore faded Spiderman and let the dark surround me. Gray twilight entombed the evening, and a thin sliver of moon rose above Coucher Island, named by the French explorers for that place where the sun disappeared each dusk.

By the light of the rising moon I sensed I was no longer alone. I cast a weary glance along the shoreline and then behind me toward my house but saw nothing unusual. I ignored the sense of presence and watched the play of moonlight upon the water.

The temperature plummeted, and my breath became visible with each exhalation. I was warming my hands when I heard the voices. Their music caught my attention. Sinewy and muted, their voices were little caverns swallowing notes, producing an empty sound.

Their song sent shivers down my spine and drove my attention south toward the amusement park. The music was carried a great distance by the wind. A choir of frightened boys and girls sang,

“When a child dies, the whole world dims; the darkness will consume you.

When a child dies, the whole world dims; the darkness will consume you.”

The words floated past me northbound on their way to other ears. A haunting melody if there ever was one. “Green Bay is a gateway,” I said out loud. I dare those who don’t believe in ghosts to spend one week along the Green Bay waterfront, listening to the wind.

What was it about that amusement park? The Bay Beach shoreline was seventy-five miles south of the Door of Death. Was there a legend about it as well? I suspected the park was where Amanda and my first “visitor” had entered and departed this world. Children of the Bay. Winter’s children. Those who would never again witness spring or summer. I was one of many who had seen them. Lighthouse keepers from centureis past left handwritten logs describing ghostly visions. Now the children sought me. I turned my face into the southerly wind and caught the smell of death.

A smarter man would have thrown his wine bottle into the bay and then checked himself into rehab. That’s not what I did. I just sat there, mute and motionless. Without fear. Why don’t I feel fear? I felt I was being drawn into a battle I had fought long ago. This feeling did not frighten me. It should have.

I finished the Cabernet, in part because the vintage was pretty freaking good, and silently wished I had someone to talk to. I checked the shoreline one last time but didn’t see any children. I didn’t see any demons either, and with that pleasant thought I checked myself into bed.