Snowblind (40 page)

“There!” Keenan shouted, pulling his gun, knowing bullets would do nothing. “All of you get back!”

“No!” the Stroud boy said, looking at him with wide, desperate eyes. “He’s here to help! That’s Miri’s dad!”

Gripping his gun so hard that his knuckles ached, Keenan watched the ghost drift to the boy and kneel in front of him.

“Hello, Isaac,”
it said.

Keenan’s jaw dropped at the sound of its voice and a ripple of emotion went through him, some combination of wonder and horror that he had never felt before.

“You got away, Niko,” Isaac said. “We all thought we could get out, too.”

“I know, pal. I know.”

Of all things, it was the sorrow in the eyes of a ghost, the regret in the voice of a dead man, that brought it all home to Keenan. He glanced around the room at the people gathered there and realized that they were a family. Allie had been in a relationship with Niko at the time of the blizzard that had killed Niko and Isaac, and here they were. Niko and his daughter. Allie and her boys. Keenan stared at Zachary Stroud and the boy’s story came back to him, the firsthand account of a ghost who had watched a boy try to save his drowning parents and ended up nearly drowning himself, brain damaged by oxygen deprivation.

This wasn’t Zachary Stroud at all.

Sound rushed in. It had been there all along, the scraping at the farmhouse’s walls and roof and the rattling of the windows, but he had been lost inside his head for a minute or two. Now he felt as if he had woken from sleep to discover that the ordinary world had been a dream and this land of impossible things was reality.

“There are others,” he said, looking at Jake. “How many are we talking about?”

“All of them, I think,” Jake said, but he could barely take his eyes off the ghost in the room. “Either like Isaac or … I don’t know, maybe like that.”

“No,”
the ghost said.
“There are no others like me.”

“We found Gavin Wexler and his father,” Allie said quickly, glancing around at the walls as if they were closing in. “They’ve possessed Eric Gustafson and a policeman named Torres—”

“Torres,” Keenan said. “God, it all makes sense now.”

“Nat Kresky was acting weird,” Harley said. “Like he couldn’t—”

Miri threw up her hands. “Solve the mystery later, guys. We need to get somewhere they can’t reach us and right now. Allie and I have seen these things up close—”

“The cellar,” Jake said, picking up Isaac—
And now I’m thinking of him as Isaac
, Keenan thought—and rushing out of the room.

“Move it!” Keenan snapped at Harley, but the other cop was already moving.

Miri and Allie raced after Jake and Isaac, each but the boy holding a flashlight, and Keenan and Harley brought up the rear. When Keenan glanced into the corner where he’d seen the ghost, Niko Ristani had gone. A flush of warmth went through him, relief that the dead man had abandoned them, but when he hustled into the corridor and saw the others rushing for the cellar door, which Jake held open, the ghost appeared again, standing just behind Jake and urging them on.

He forced himself to breathe, to just keep moving. To believe. These people were depending on him.

His teeth chattered. It had become so cold in the house, and so quickly, that the chill cut through his jacket and made the gun feel like ice in his hand. Miri went downstairs first, followed by Allie and Isaac, the little dead boy who held his mother’s hand to keep from falling.
Just move,
Keenan told himself, trying not to be thrown by his thoughts.

“You think this door will hold?” he asked, looking past Jake at the ghost of Niko Ristani.

“If anything will,”
the ghost replied, his voice seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere.
“It’s sturdy and secure and the weather stripping will lessen the chance of a draft. The storm is weakening; we just have to hope it spins itself out before they can get to you.”

The whole house seemed to sway. It sure didn’t feel to Keenan like the storm was weakening.

“Go,” Jake said, nodding to him and Harley as he dug into his pocket and pulled out a jangling set of keys. “I can lock it from inside.”

Harley patted him on the arm—all forgiven, apparently—took out his flashlight, and hurried into the cellar after the others. With the ghost looking on, Keenan paused.

“Jake…”

“Now’s not the time.”

Keenan nodded. “Lock it up tight.”

He had his foot on the top step when they all heard a massive crack and a splintering of wood, followed by a crash.

“One of the vents. The attic or the bathroom,” said the ghost. “They’re inside.”

Keenan felt like his heart shriveled up in his chest, felt the prickle of heat on the back of his neck even as the air filled with ice crystals, fogging their breath and frosting their hair, and he had the lunatic idea that it might snow inside the house. Jake came at him and Keenan turned, hurtling down the steps as Jake locked the door behind them. The darkened stairwell gave way to the eerie yellow glow of the cellar, flashlight beams crossing in the swirl of dust, picking out the gleam of cobwebs. The furnace had fallen silent, a metal monolith in the corner, and stacks of old boxes and two huge old televisions took up most of the wall space. A small, doorless entryway led into a smaller room, and Keenan saw the edge of a clothes dryer in the dim light.

“How do we fight these things?” Harley asked, drawing his gun as he turned to Miri and Allie. “Is this gonna do me any good?”

“I have no idea,” Miri said. “But quiet down, will you? Maybe they won’t hear us.”

“They don’t have to hear us,” Isaac said, reaching out for his older brother’s hand. “I feel them up there. I feel how hungry they are. And if I can feel them, I’m pretty sure they know I’m here.”

The little boy turned to his mother. “You should go. You could get away if you left me here.”

“I can’t,” Allie said, her voice quavering. “I lost you once. I’ll die before I let you go again.”

Isaac’s voice got very small. “I don’t want you to die. I don’t want any of you to die.”

Keenan tuned them out, focusing on the door lost in shadows at the top of the stairwell. It shuddered with the wind and he knew that whatever these ice men were, they were definitely inside, now. Cabinets and doors banged shut with the breeze of their passing and things fell over, crashing to the floor. He wondered where the ghost of Niko Ristani had gone, but he imagined the spirit had hidden itself away. If these things wanted him back, he’d be a fool not to hide.

But he wouldn’t have gone far. Not with his daughter here. Keenan turned to look at Miri. Of all of them, she seemed to be the steadiest, as if none of this surprised her. It made him wonder how long her father’s ghost had been visiting her. Whatever happened, she would fight. They all would, because they all had something to fight for.

He watched Jake and Miri exchange a loaded glance. Jake checked to be sure Isaac was safe with their mother and then went to her, the two of them sharing a brief, powerful embrace.

“Sorry I didn’t answer when you called,” she said. “Long story.”

“I didn’t leave a message,” Jake replied, studying her. “And yet here you are.”

“A story for another day,” Miri said. She pushed the ringlets of hair away from her face, reached out and caressed his cheek. “I’d say it’s good to see you—”

“Let’s save it for tomorrow,” Jake said.

Keenan heard the hope and the courage in Jake’s voice and read many of the unspoken words in the air. He looked back at the door at the top of the stairs and knew that none of them stood a chance. The only person with any possibility of getting out of this was already a ghost, and he had vanished.

Pushing away from the bottom of the stairs, he went to the pile of old boxes and then started checking the shelves behind them. He holstered his gun and started digging through boxes.

“Harley,” he said. “Look around for things to burn.”

“Burn?” Miri said. “You’ll kill us all. There’s nowhere to run down here.”

Keenan shot her a grim look. “Fire’s about the only thing I can think of to combat these things. If we can make it too hot in here for them, maybe we can outlast them.”

“I don’t think that will work,” Isaac said. “They carry the winter with them. A fire…”

The boy trailed off, but Keenan was barely listening. He couldn’t just sit and wait for death without fighting back. As Harley and Jake and Allie started to go through the boxes, he slipped his flashlight into his right hand and went into the laundry room. A workbench in the corner included a table saw and there were tools hanging over it. Any of them would have made an effective weapon against something made of flesh and blood.

“Oh boy,” Miri said from behind him.

She had come into the laundry room, and when he turned, he saw what had shaken her. Above the washer and dryer was a small, rectangular window he hadn’t noticed before. The concrete wall had a crack that led away from the corner of the window frame.

“Shit,” Keenan whispered.

He held a hand up in front of the window and felt the cold air that blew in from outside. Climbing on top of the dryer, he looked outside. The snow still fell, but the flakes had gotten smaller and it drifted gently from the sky. The wind kicked up a bit, but nothing like the gale that had been battering the house.

“It’s barely a blizzard anymore,” he said, turning to face her. “The worst of it that’s been hitting the house must be coming from them. It can’t be long, now.”

Another crash came from overhead and Miri flinched. Her eyes shone with fear.

“We don’t
have
long.”

Keenan knew she was right. He looked at the small window, thinking that Isaac would fit through, and probably Miri and Allie, but that he and Harley and Jake would never manage it. Jumping down from the dryer, he shone his flashlight around the laundry room and froze as its yellow beam picked out a heavy metal door at the back. Hanging his head, he chuckled softly.

“Is that a bulkhead door?” Miri asked.

Keenan grinned, then hurried past her to poke his head back into the main area of the cellar. Harley, Jake, Allie, and Isaac all looked up at him, dropping whatever conversation he’d interrupted.

“We’re done hiding,” he said. “We stay here, we’re dead.”

“We can’t fight them,” Harley said.

“Who said anything about fighting?” Keenan replied. “We stand a better chance of outlasting the storm if we’re on the move, and the cars are just down the end of the driveway. Put your butts in gear. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

“You’re crazy,” Allie told him.

As if summoned by her words—and perhaps he had been—Niko’s ghost resolved itself into being beside her in the gloom.

“No,”
the ghost said.
“I’ve been watching them. They’re playing with you. They’ll be down here any minute, but most of them are inside the house now, or above it. If you run, you may not make it, but if you stay you are all going to die.”

Jake swore under his breath. “I guess we’re running, then. I just wish I’d brought a coat.”

Miri followed Detective Keenan up the steps, the frigid wind stinging her cheeks. The moment she emerged at the rear of the farmhouse, she realized that the blizzard had diminished. The snow still fell and the wind still blew, but the whiteout had ended. She could see all the way across the yard and into the trees. Turning, she saw the massive drift that marked the roadway and heard the scrape of a plow at work. It was this last, mundane detail that made her think that all would be well, that somehow they would make it out of this alive.

Keenan beckoned the others out of the cellar. “Move it. Before they realize…”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence.

Jake came up after Miri. When he emerged, he reached for her and she took his hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps it was and always had been precisely that. Amid her fear and desperation, she felt a wave of bittersweet emotion, so reassured by his presence and yet cursing herself for all the time she had spent running away from the life they could have had.

“Quickly,” she said to him.
Run,
she thought,
before they can ruin us again.

“Come on,” Keenan whispered, clomping across the deep snow. He turned to look up at the roof of the farmhouse, his expression urgent with fear and expectation, but the ice men were nowhere to be seen.

Miri and Jake hesitated until his mother and Isaac had cleared the bulkhead, and then the gigantic cop, Harley, emerged behind them. His badge gleamed silver in the night.

“Go. We’re right behind you,” Allie said.

Jake nodded, gripped Miri’s hand more tightly, and the two of them started hurrying across the yard as best they could in the deep snow. It had not hardened to ice but still the noise of their passing was considerable, the crunch and shush of each step and the rustle of their clothing spreading out to fill the white silence. Miri had never been in better shape in her life but already her legs felt heavy from the effort, and she heard Jake curse under his breath. Running in snow like this was impossible. The best they could do was slog their way to the road, cutting a diagonal path across the yard.

Halfway across the property, barely discernible in the falling snow, her father’s ghost watched her progress. Transparent, fading in strength along with the storm, he waved her onward and she bent into the hard trudging. Snow went down inside her boots and she had to bring her knees practically to shoulder height with each step, but she forged a path.

She and Jake had come up almost parallel with Keenan when they all heard Allie utter a little cry behind them. Miri turned to see that Isaac had fallen. The boy struggled to right himself in the snow, one arm plunged deeply as Allie held his other, trying to help him up.

“Dammit,” Jake said. “I’m an idiot. It’s too deep for him.”

He started back toward his brother, but he hadn’t gone two steps before Harley lifted Isaac into his arms.

“Hang on, kid,” the massive cop said. “Whoever you really are.”