“My God, Susan,” Mark said. “My God.”
“… It wasn’t this bad … it wasn’t like this—”
Frost and ice had devoured the home. It was as if they had walked into a nightmare.
As they stepped into the living room, Susan cupped a hand to her lips. A small groan rose from her throat.
Mark saw her horror and turned. The drapes were drawn slightly, and beyond them the window had become a sheet of ice. He moved closer and pulled the coverings wider. Scores of dead spiders were stuck to the window. The two legs he touched snapped off. “Frozen,” he said, his breath rising in front of him.
Susan moved beside him. Her eyes never left the window.
“Where did they come from?” Mark said.
“The basement … they’re Eric’s. Don’t ask.”
Mark moved to the thermostat. The needle was stuck at seventy. He tapped it. “Is the heat on at all?”
“It is. Listen.”
Though faint, they could hear the steady hum of the furnace. Mark knelt before the vent and placed a hand there. No heat. He rose and glanced at the ashes in the hearth. He turned to Susan, and her eyes met his.
“You don’t hide it very well,” she said. “You’ve been wanting to tell me the bad news since we left the police station. Out with it.”
Mark said nothing.
“Whatever it is,” Susan said, “I can take it.”
Mark nodded. “Okay. Here goes.”
Susan listened for nearly twenty minutes with growing apprehension. As he had with the gruesome events about Ellis Finley, Mark had tried to spare her of any grisly details, but this time, she had insisted on knowing it all. But now that she had seen the face of the black beast she had fallen prey to—it had a name, she now knew, the Dark—she wished she had never learned of the terrifying tale of the sad and tormented woodsman. Wished she’d never been touched by the stick.
She stood silently, not knowing whether to tell Mark outright, or simply let it all happen in front of him.
“You’re trembling, Susan.”
“I’m really cold.”
He held her. Rubbed her arms. “Better?”
“No,” she said. “But it felt good.”
“Good … good.”
“Mark?” She saw his unease.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m freezing. I can’t feel my toes.”
“You know what I mean.”
She hesitated. Couldn’t bring herself to tell him.
“I want the truth,” he said. “All of it.”
Susan stirred. Slowly, she pulled away and moved to the hearth. On the mantel, she fixed her eyes on a small diamond-shaped picture frame that held a photograph of her boys. Frost dulled the image, and she took a fingernail and scraped it clear.
“It happened in Hibbing,” she said. “Eckert tried to stab me … with that thing. But it barely touched me.”
“Did it cut you?”
“Yes … no. Just a scrape.”
“In your side.”
She shook her head.
“Where, then?”
She motioned with her hand.
“Has it healed?”
“… No.”
“Has it spread?”
She didn’t answer.
“Susan … Jesus … how bad?”
She had to fight the growing tears. “I don’t want to die, Mark.”
“We’re getting you to the hospital right now.”
“No.”
He looked at her, stupefied.
“What can a doctor do?” she said. “What can anyone do?”
Mark went to say something, but didn’t.
“I’m right,” Susan said. “All they’ll do is poke me and prod me and tell me I’m going to die. And with my luck it’ll be that asshole, Harris Peckham. No thank you.”
“But maybe there is something we can do. Maybe if we stop the Dark—”
“Stop it? You said yourself that man said it was impossible. Look at him.”
“Yes … look at him, Susan. In a few days—”
“I really don’t need to hear this.”
“I’m sorry. But maybe if we do stop it … maybe the infection will reverse itself.”
“And maybe penguins will fly.”
“I know I don’t have the answers,” Mark said. “But we have to try, don’t we? We have to try something.”
Susan took the picture from the mantel. It had been taken two years ago. Five days before the accident. “It’s so fragile. Life, I mean.”
Mark nodded.
“We have to stop it,” Susan said. For the first time for as long as she could remember, she heard resolve in her voice. “But not for me. For them. For all of them.”
She placed the picture back. “Follow me.”