The Snow: A Supernatural Apocalypse Novel Read online

  “My dad,” Eleanor said again. She bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes. I thought she was going to sob, but Mikey put his arm around her shoulder and the sob never came. “My dad, he went out into the snow. I don’t know what happened, but when he came back…he was different. I could see it in his eyes.”

  “He looked rabid,” Mikey said. “He started yelling and breaking stuff. I’ve never seen my dad do anything like that. He never gets angry, not even if he’s had too much whiskey like he did tonight.”

  “I came downstairs,” Eleanor continued, and this time the sob exploded from her like a gunshot. She covered her face with both of her hands.

  No one said anything; we let her get it out of her system. Sometimes that’s what a person needs, and it’s all you, as emotional support, can do. After I heard the rest of the story, no amount of sobbing could fix what they’d gone through.

  Eleanor spoke softly: “I came downstairs and he was holding one of his rifles—”

  “The one from over the fireplace,” Mikey added. It was a minor detail, but I had to suppress a shiver. Only a few hours earlier, Stone and I had admired that very rifle with Ed. A levelheaded Ed. And though I hadn’t heard the rest of Eleanor’s story at this point, I could’ve guessed what happened next. I’m sure you could, too.

  There had been an angry man holding a gun, Eleanor and Mikey were covered in blood, and neither their mother or father weren’t with us.

  Eleanor hadn’t said it yet, she had only said her mom had been shot, but I knew. We all knew.

  Angie was dead.

  “He hit her with the gun first,” Eleanor said, “and she started screaming. I was right there and I couldn’t do anything, but I should’ve stopped him. I should’ve hit him or— I don’t know, something. It all happened so fast and I was frozen. I couldn’t—”

  I put my hand on her forearm and met her eyes. I didn’t know the pain she was going through, not truly, but I knew what it was like to feel like you should’ve done more. “It’s okay,” I said, but it wasn’t. Not really. What else can you say? I didn’t completely understand what was going on. It was too early in all the madness.

  “My mom is dead!” Mikey yelled. “It’s not okay! It’s not okay!” He doubled over and let out the sobs he had been holding in. I couldn’t understand his pain, either. I mean, the boy was covered in his mother’s blood, for God’s sake. Seventeen may have been close to adult age, but Mikey was far from it. I knew how your age didn’t matter when you went through something like that.

  Eleanor wrapped her arms around him and he buried his face into her neck, his body shuddering. The sight alone was enough to break your heart.

  “What happened then?” Jonas said, but Stone quickly hit him, and that made Jonas jump.

  “Shut up, dummy,” Stone hissed.

  I gave them a warning glance that said now wasn’t the time, then turned back to Eleanor. “We have to get a hold of the cops. Did you already do that? We’re not getting any service over here. Were you—”

  Eleanor shook her head. “Nothing. I don’t even have my cell. I left it back at home. But we have a landline at home. We never use it, but it works.”

  That was surprising. It seemed most people ditched home phones years ago.

  “Okay, we’ll keep that in mind,” I said, but I really didn’t want to go out in this weather with the clothes I had on. “What about you, Mikey? Do you have your cell?”

  Mikey’s sobbing had lessened. Now he was weeping softly, but he nodded and pulled a Samsung from the pocket of his snow-crusted sweatpants. He kept his face against his sister as he handed it up. Eleanor took it, her hand shaking madly, and held it out for me.

  I tapped the screen. The white light illuminated smears of blood. It was hard to look past, but I did, and I saw the service bar in the top right-hand corner. It showed no bars.

  I hadn’t expected any.

  “No signal,” I said.

  “Fuck,” Stone muttered, and it was Jonas’s turn to hit him. “What was that for?”

  Jonas shrugged. “Don’t curse in front of women and children.”

  “I think this situation merits cursing,” Stone replied. “Don’t be an asshole.”

  Jonas went to hit him again, but Stone blocked it.

  “Where’s your father now?” I asked, ignoring the two across the room.

  “I—I don’t know,” Eleanor answered. Mikey let go of her then and crumpled to the floor.

  I went to him and offered my hand. He took it without looking. The poor kid was in shock. “C’mon, let’s get you warm.” I guided him toward the fireplace and sat him down on the bricks. Eleanor followed, sitting next to him. “Jonas,” I said, “can you go in my room and get Mikey a clean shirt? Might be a little big, but I think it’ll be okay.”

  Jonas nodded and disappeared down the dark hall.

  I didn’t know what to do. None of us did, really. All we knew was that we were stuck in the lake house for the time being. The cars weren’t going to be able to plow through all that snow. The last time I looked out the window it had nearly piled up to the side-view mirrors, and chances were with the temperature plummeting so drastically, the engines wouldn’t work anyway. Or they would’ve had a hell of a time turning over. Besides, cars were useless when you couldn’t see the damn road. What we needed was an army tank, and that wasn’t exactly in the cards.

  All we could do was pray for the morning sun to rise and melt the snow away. Enough for us to get on the roads, at least.

  Even then, I had a feeling it wasn’t going to happen. This all seemed so…final. I was right, of course, but we had bigger problems at that moment in time, and I was about to find out about another of them.

  Jonas came back with an old Cleveland Cavs t-shirt. He tossed it to me, and I gave it to Eleanor. I figured she’d have an easier time getting Mikey to change, but to both of our surprises, Mikey took it and walked on his own down the hall. As he left, the flames flickered in his eyes, showing the tears still streaming down his cheeks.

  Eleanor watched him go, then she put her head in her hands.

  I looked at Stone. He widened his eyes, nodding at her, and mouthed, Go on.

  I mouthed back, What can I do? Because I honestly wasn’t sure.

  Like always, though, Stone was right. She needed comfort, not space. So I reached my hand out, about to set it on her shoulder and give her a reassuring squeeze, but then she looked at me, tears swimming in her eyes, and I made a move like I was stretching.

  It wasn’t very smooth, I’ll admit.

  “Grady,” she said, and the fact she remembered my name actually surprised me.

  “Yeah?”

  She lowered her voice, speaking conspiratorially. “There’s something…there’s something else.”

  I leaned closer because she was barely audible at all.

  “I’m probably crazy,” she continued. “I don’t know…it could’ve been stress and shock.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Go on.”

  I thought I was prepared for whatever Eleanor was going to say.

  I wasn’t.

  “When we ran over here, I saw something…” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hands. “I saw people. Like these shadowy figures. They were just standing there, watching us.”

  “What?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “People?”

  “Yeah, but the thing is,” Eleanor said, “they looked like people, but I don’t think—I don’t think they were people.”

  “People—or things—just standing out there? No one’s crazy enough to do that,” Jonas said unbelievingly.

  Stone crutched toward the fireplace. “I’m a pretty open-minded dude—more so now that I’ve accepted the fact it’s snowing in July—but that sounds…a tad unlikely.”

  “I know,” Eleanor said. “But I saw them.”

  “They’d freeze to death in a matter of minutes,” Jonas said. “And you know they sure as hell didn’t have their winter jackets ready to go. No
t when it was almost ninety degrees all week.”

  “If they were people, yes, but I don’t know what they were,” Eleanor replied. This made me think about the figure I’d seen out in the snow, or thought I’d seen. It looked like an animal of some sort, but after hearing what Eleanor said, I wasn’t sure.

  Just then Mikey came out wearing my Cavs shirt. It was a little baggy, and old and stained in various spots, but it was better than wearing a shirt soaked with your mother’s cold blood.

  “Did you see anything out there?” Jonas asked him.

  “Jonas, leave it,” I said. “Let’s just focus on what we do next.”

  Mikey stopped and looked at us in the den with surprise. “People?” he said. He had a rag in his hand, and he wiped his arms with it. “No, I didn’t see any people.”

  “There,” Jonas said, “that settles it.”

  “Just because he didn’t see something she did,” Stone said, “doesn’t mean they weren’t there.”

  “I did see something,” Mikey interrupted. “But not people. They looked like…spiders.” He shuddered. “But it was probably just shadows, really.”

  Jonas laughed. “Now, that is crazy.”

  I shook my head, a queasiness heavy in my stomach. “Let’s just move on.” Everyone’s eyes settled on me. We needed a plan. If Ed was really out there and out of his mind, we weren’t safe here. “Jonas, you and I need to head over to the Harks’ house.”

  “What? Go out in that? You’re crazy.”

  “You’re throwing around a lot of ‘crazy’ tonight, man,” Stone said.

  Eleanor was shaking her head. I saw a fresh gleam of tears in her eyes. “No, you can’t go over there.”

  “We need to call the cops,” I said. “And you have both a backup generator and a landline, right?”

  Eleanor nodded.

  Ed had thought a nasty thunderstorm was coming on earlier that night. He was worried the power might get knocked off. “If it does, y’all can come on over here. We got a generator. We can even tell scary ghost stories like we’re at summer camp!” Ed had said, laughing.

  “But my mom…” Mikey said now.

  “And my dad,” Eleanor added. “I don’t know where he’s at, but he has guns, lots of guns.” She swallowed, which seemed difficult. “He could do to you guys what he did to Mom.”

  I hated saying it, but it was the truth. “If we don’t get some sort of protection, cops or our own weapons, he could do it to all of us.” I looked at Stone. “You’ll be all right here, yeah?”

  Stone nodded and gave me a thumbs-up.

  “Jonas, are you in? I can go by myself, but I don’t want to.”

  With a steady hand, he grabbed his mostly-full beer and tipped it back. It was gone in about two huge gulps. He crushed the can and tossed it into the kitchen, where it clattered loudly in the sink. Then he wiped the foam from the corner of his mouth with the back of his arm. “Fuck me. Let’s go.”

  We didn’t have much in the way of winter attire. The warmest thing I packed was a pair of sweats and a long-sleeve t-shirt that was riddled with holes and covered in dried paint from when I helped my dad put a fresh coat on the garage. I’m not big on shopping. I’ll wear my clothes until they’re nothing but thread. I have a whole closet full of winter stuff back home, but that wasn’t doing me much good here.

  We raided the closets in the lake house, hoping for left-behind jackets or snow pants or boots. The closest thing we found to that was a tweed suit coat with elbow pads. It fit me pretty well, but like the bear rug, it smelled like dust and old basements.

  “There’s some stuff in our house,” Eleanor said. “Upstairs. My dad has heavy coats and jeans up there.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  We were standing at the door, Jonas and me. I was wearing my long-sleeve tee under the tweed jacket with a dark pair of sweatpants, OHIO STATE written down the right leg. Jonas had a pair of jeans in his luggage, but nothing but tank tops for shirts. Stone suggested the bear rug, to which Jonas laughed. Then the wind had screamed worse than it had all night, and Jonas changed his mind pretty fast. He wrapped himself up in it, and I cinched a belt around his waist to keep it from flapping open.

  It felt like we were preparing to brave the Arctic and not just going a football field’s length down the beach. It was insane.

  Eleanor grabbed my hand. I was wearing socks over each one, a sad replacement for gloves but better than nothing. I could feel the iciness of her skin through the cotton. The way she was trembling, too.

  “Be careful,” she whispered, then she let go and stepped back. In a louder voice: “Both of you.”

  I nodded.

  “All right, let’s go freeze our nuts off,” Jonas said. “Some vacation this is.”

  I turned the handle. The others retreated to the fire, but its heat was nothing compared to the awesome power of the cold that rushed in. Jonas and I slipped outside and closed the door. The wind blew and did most of the hard work. It slammed shut hard enough for me to think the glass would shatter. It didn’t. Not that it mattered much because nothing was stopping the cold in the end.

  The snow was coming down harder than ever. From the porch, I couldn’t even see the hunk of car-shaped white that was my buried Honda only a few feet away.

  “Okay,” I shouted, “stay close. Baby steps.”

  Jonas nodded. We each had wrapped t-shirts over our faces and around our heads. Snow had already crusted over Jonas’s. Mine was sure to follow soon, if it hadn’t already.

  I took the first step down where I thought the porch ended. Jonas latched onto the back of my jacket. We went together. The snow was still fluffy, for the most part, which meant we sank and had to plow through it. It almost came up to my waist.

  Moving was a hell of a workout, that was for sure.

  The wind bit at the exposed flesh of my face and dried my eyes out, but we moved steadily onward. About three minutes into our expedition, I saw the lights of Eleanor’s house through the white wall of snow. Just barely.

  The generator was still working. That was good. The problem, besides the freezing temperature and the constant barrage of snow, was actually my own mind. I kept picturing shadows surrounding us. In the shape of people. In the shape of spiders and coyotes and wolves. On the surface, I knew it was insane, but deep down I had my doubts. The unexplainable had already happened, but where did it end and where did plausibility begin?

  Believe me when I say I had not the slightest idea.

  Jonas bumped into me. I lost my balance and started slipping—tennis shoes were my only option of footwear, unfortunately—but Jonas grabbed me by the waistband before I got lost in the snow, possibly forever.

  “Why’d you stop?” he yelled.

  “What?” I hadn’t realized I stopped.

  Jonas shook his head, the crusted snow falling around him, and pointed toward the house. “Keep going!”

  I did, but it was only a few hard steps later that I stopped again.

  “What?” Jonas shouted.

  It was my turn to point, and I pointed to the right, down the embankment toward the freezing lake, which you could barely see because the snow filled in the gap, but there was a light there. Not made by electricity; it came from flames.

  “Do you see that?” I asked.

  “See what?”

  “The fire.”

  I saw it clear as day. By that, I mean it seemed real.

  “There’s no fire, Grady! C’mon, I’m pretty sure I lost one ball already. I need both. If I go home missing a nut, Miranda’s gonna kick my ass!”

  Shit, Jonas had a wife and twins at home. He was probably an emotional wreck not knowing what had become of them. If God was good, they would be sound asleep, unaware of this monster blizzard, but whether this snow had touched down three hours away or not was something we weren’t sure about. We knew it fell in South Carolina at this point, but that was it. Logic said it fell all over and Jonas, irrational as he could be sometimes, knew this,
too, I’m sure. He had to, and that had to damn near kill him. Who wouldn’t be torn up about their wife and kids’ fate in a freak incident like the one we were living through? If Jonas was, he did a hell of a good job hiding it.

  Maybe if he'd had lasted longer, that emotion would’ve reared its ugly head, I don’t know. Doesn’t matter because Jonas was the first to go.

  The fire I was seeing burned brighter and came closer.

  Or so I thought it did.

  “Grady?” Jonas said. I barely heard him with the whipping wind and my mind focused on the encroaching blaze. I was hypnotized. Frozen.

  A few seconds later, I saw the source of the flames.

  It was the dead boy, the one I couldn’t save. He was still burning, and he was coming for us.

  I don’t remember screaming. I heard the sounds, but I didn’t think they came from me.

  The fire had eaten away most of the boy’s flesh, leaving only a skull, but his eyes were whole and I recognized those as easily as I’d recognize my own face in a mirror.

  Fear throbbed through my veins, colder than anything outside.

  “Why did you leave me?” the boy asked. “I didn’t deserve to die. I had so much life to live, you said it yourself. Didn’t you?”

  I was stunned, unable to move my legs, though I wanted nothing more than to run as fast and as far away as possible.

  A nightmare. That was what I thought it was. Jonas was saying nothing, but I felt his presence next to me. I managed to turn my head, neck creaking, and saw he was transfixed at something else in front of him.

  I can’t say exactly what it was—with the snow and the smoke from the burning boy all around us, it was hard to see much of anything. The best description I can give is the same one Eleanor gave me back at the lake house: a shadow in the shape of a person.

  And this shadow reached toward him.

  Jonas screamed.

  The boy behind me kept talking: “I felt my eyes pop out of my head, Mister Fireman. Did ya know that? When the ceiling came down and crushed me, they popped right out! Then all that fire melted them into goo and I could feel it rolling down my cheeks—”