“It’s not too far. I could jump.”
“No! No, do it like we said! You need to hang off it and carefu—”
Maria lowers herself into a crouch and leaps over the edge. I’m stunned, staring at the space she had just occupied. There is a softwhumph!sound as she lands, but there is no cracking sound of bone shattering, no cry of pain. I’m holding my breath long enough to see liquid flashes of light in my vision when her voice, more distant now, calls out.
“I landed in a bush!” A laugh, high and girlish but not pained. “It was all prickly but I’m okay! I held my hand close to me, just like you said!”
I let out a wavering breath that gathers to mist in front of my eyes. I can see her now, picking her way carefully across the snowy ground. She’s full of adrenaline and that particular fearlessness that comes with youth: a mix of bravado and exuberance, akin only to drunks. Her laughter drifts through the air like birdsong, and I marvel again at her bravery. She’s working her way on the diagonal toward the old greenhouse with the sagging, collapsed roof. I doubt anything other than weeds and gnarly, virulent brambles are growing in there these days, but I want to tell her to steer clear of it regardless. There’s a lot ofbroken glass and severed ironwork. It makes me think of tetanus and histoplasmosis, old spores and rust.
I lean forward and open my mouth to call out, but something catches my eye.
There is a tree beside the greenhouse, half-covered in snow. It is tall, swaying slightly in the breeze. There is something about it that bothers me, as if it has just sidled into view. I squint, trying to see more detail, but then I’m distracted by Maria, wading through the snow in an arc toward where it stands. I wonder if she’s getting cold yet. That sharp wind will feel infinitely less pleasing with wet clothes.
The woolen hat is pulled down over her head, her face no more than a white smudge against the growing dark. My eyes glide back to that snow-humped tree. Just for a moment it had seemed to be shaking violently right on the cusp of my peripheral vision. The robin has stopped singing.
“Nearly there!” I call out, hoping my wobbly voice doesn’t give me away. Maria looks back at me and I give her a thumbs-up. Her eyes look very wide, as if she too has sensed that something is amiss out there in the twilight garden. She looks so small against the vast white tundra and the tall, sweeping pines. A rabbit beneath the shadow of a circling hawk. I consider telling her to come back, but I bite my tongue. She’s almost there, by the greenhouse. Circling, looking at the ground. I glance once more back at the tree standing just a little to her left. Clumps of snow slide away from it as if shaken free.Whumph. Whumph.A sound like punching velvet cushions.
Stop it, I tell myself sternly and with real frustration.It’s thawing. You’re doing nothing except frightening yourself.
But I don’t look away from it. Just in case it moves.
“It’s round about here, I think!” Maria is on her knees, scrabbling with her healthy hand in the snow. I watch her for a few minutes before she moves a few feet to the left and begins the sameprocess, scraping at the ground. Snow piles up around her as if she were trying to bury herself.
How long does it take a person to freeze to death? I don’t know the answer to that, but Idoknow that there’s a madness which comes with hypothermia. I remember reading an article about a fatal Arctic expedition and how, in the advanced stages of hypothermia, two of the explorers had experienced paradoxical undressing—the instinct to strip off all their clothes despite the freezing temperatures. Later came the urge to climb into an enclosed, dark space. That was one of the final stages of the condition, called terminal burrowing. I remember how that dreadful phrase had stuck in my head.Terminal burrowing.My eyes slide back to that tall, swaying tree, and dread plunges cold hands right through me.
Whumph!
Thick clots of snow drop away, revealing a dark mound beneath. It has long, drooping branches like a willow. But willows grow by water, don’t they? I look again at Maria scratching in the hard, frozen earth. Unease digs into me. Nailheads, dragging through my skin.
“Maria, hurry!”
“The box is here! I just need to get it out!”
Terminal burrowing, I think again, my brain circling in a tightening panic.
Whumph! Whumph!
More snow falling away. Now I can see those long branches more clearly. They are thin and tangled, moving in the breeze like seaweed on a spring tide. Like long, filamentous hair.
“Maria! Run!”
My other sister’s mouth is a lipless hollow, cracking open. I lean forward until I can feel the cords on my neck trembling, can hearmy feet drumming against the porcelain sink, heart pounding like an angry fist.
“She’s there! She’s right beside you!”
My other sister looms over Maria, that cavernous mouth dark and wet and stinking. I can hear the wet, gurgling sound she is making, like an engine clogged with fluid. It’s laughter.
Maria glances up at me, fright carved into her features—wild, wide eyes, ghost-white skin. She screams as my other sister’s hair prowls like stringy roots traveling upward, screams and calls my name as if I can help her. As if I am not responsible for this murderous mass of skin and bone and hair.
“Run, Maria! Ru—”
My voice is abruptly cut off as I am jerked backward into the bathroom, a hand snatching at the collar of my T-shirt hard enough to choke me. I’m thrown to the floor, head slamming against the tiles with an audible crack. Warm blood trickles from my temple to my jaw. A flash of metal in Andrew’s hand.Oh shit, I think because at first I think it is a knife, but then it slides into the webbing between my neck and my shoulder, in the place where the skin is taut and thin and there is a deep, scratching pain. My mouth fills with a taste like bleach. The needle, I remember, and then my head feels as if it is swelling. My skull rattles with a buzzing like the sound of a million chain saws. I reach for Andrew but something has happened to my depth of field and my hand snatches only empty air. I have to tell him something. It’s important. I open my mouth but already I have forgotten. I blink stupidly, letting my heavy head loll backward. What was I going to tell him? It had felt very,veryvital. Life-or-death, even. Now there is only a softness, and a blackness bleeding in at the edges of my vision. What was it again? Something about his sister? I open my mouth. I start to say her name. Then I go under, and I am devoured by the dark.
37
A little after six, the doorbell starts ringing and doesn’t stop.
Suzie stares at Teddy across the dining table, her fork in her hand. “Are you expecting anyone?”