It Brought the Snow
by E. H. Young
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
Alex dragged his feet as the narrow road entered the woods, and finally allowed his face to contort into the frown he had been suppressing since that morning. The trees obscured sight and sound of the city, and Alex found himself profoundly, peacefully alone. The misting rain had begun to let up. It left a clinging fog on the ground and a sharp, wet smell in the air.
Something caught Alex’s eye, a splash of red in the filthy half-melted slush lining the side of the road, turning it into a pink slurry. This was the forest: animals fought and ate and died here; it wasn’t a shock to see a spatter of blood every once in a while. And another, a reddish smear clinging to the muddy bank that rose to Alex’s right. The forest itself began a few feet up it, a tangle of clinging vines and the trunks of trees obscuring his view to no more than a few feet.
There was no path, or even any gap in the trees, but there were a couple of deep gouges leading into the underbrush, long and distorted, as though an animal had clawed its way up the bank. Alex looked around and saw no other signs of any struggle. There was no one on the road and, if he stopped and listened carefully, he could just hear the occasional car on a distant highway. He walked a few feet down the road to where the bank dipped down, closer to the level of the road, and found a faint trail leading into the woods.
He stood for a minute, indecisive, and then climbed the bank. He followed the trail a ways in, scanning the ground, and headed back to his right, hoping to see more signs of whatever had left the blood.
He didn’t know what he expected to find, the only dangerous animal around was the occasional bear, but the tracks, if that was even what they were, had been narrow and close together; whatever had left them was definitely not a bear.
He walked for a few more minutes, moving slowly on the uneven ground, careful not to slip in the sucking mud that caked the forest floor between patches of forest herbs. At first, his eyes remained on the undergrowth, but as his search began to prove fruitless his gaze wandered upwards. He took in the sights and sounds and smells of the forest, letting them calm him.
He breathed in the scent of pine and muddy water, and something else, sharper, sour. He wrinkled his nose and looked around. His eye fell on a patch of wide green leaves, interspersed with a few fleshy, wan-looking yellow flowers: skunk cabbage. He approached them, staying to the higher, drier ground at the edge of the patch, and the smell got stronger. It was sour, organic, a little greener than actual skunk, not altogether unpleasant.
The flowers were strange, nearly the same color as the surrounding leaves, but cup-shaped, with a little nubbly stalk in the center. Most stood straight up, but some were bent to one side or lay flat, as though they had been trampled. The mud in the patch had been disturbed, and there off to one side was another little spatter of blood, half-folded into the marshy soil. He had found the trail again.
He soon found more of the same tracks he had seen earlier, but he studied them more closely this time. They were sunk deep in the mud and ill-defined but he could see they were oblong and wider at the front, with long toes, though deformed by the sucking mud. They were too big to be a raccoon or a fox, but maybe a big dog. Or a wolf.
That gave Alex pause. He didn’t think there were wolves in the area, but he wasn’t completely sure. He wondered if he should turn back and tell someone, like Animal Control. His phone had no reception here, and for the first time since entering the woods he felt uneasy at the depth of his isolation.
He stood still and strained and found he could not hear anything but the faint cries of distant birds and the dripping of water. He had gone in on a fairly straight path and had a good head for landmarks; he thought he could still find his way back pretty easily.
Something made a noise behind him, the muffled snapping of a twig, a gentle splash a little more pronounced than the sounds of rain. Alex froze, sucking in his breath involuntarily. A nebulous fear came creeping in, and he turned and started back the way he had come, his heart beating a little faster.
It was getting a little hard to concentrate, to find features of the landscape he recognized. He slid in some mud and went down on one knee. He was breathing heavily now, and he could smell something: a warm, brownish tang that battered its way into his nose. Before he could identify the smell, he saw its source: a body, rent apart and glaring obscenely red against the green and brown and gray of the forest.
It had once been human and recently, too. It still wore a pair of dirty cargo pants and half a neon-green jacket, and it was still steaming very slightly in the cold air, but it had no more identifying features. Its head and most of its torso were missing, and Alex could see viscera and white pieces of bone lying nearby.
Alex was transfixed for a moment by the grisly scene, but the sound of something rustling nearby brought him back to his senses. He slid backward down the slope he’d been climbing and ran in the other direction, his breath coming in painful gasps, sliding in mud and clambering on hands and knees where the terrain was uneven.
He lost track of where he was going, clawing his way through thorns and hanging branches, unable to see for more than a few feet. When, at length, he reached the road again, he subsided into a dogged, catatonic jog. A car pulled up beside him.
* * *
He awoke from a daze at the sound of a telephone ringing, and found himself sitting in one of a row of metal chairs along a wall, across from a desk where a female police officer sat talking on the phone. He looked down at his shoes, still soaked in water and coated in mud. They’d left smudges on the scuffed linoleum floor. He took a deep breath and held it. When he couldn’t hold it anymore, he let it out, counting to ten. His mind edged around the images he had seen in the forest, and he felt the need to distract himself.
He looked around. He could see “Saxman Police” emblazoned in reverse on the window behind the desk, above a shield backlit by the sun shining in the window. There was a cup in his hand. It felt warm. He took a sip. Tea, long over-brewed. He got up and something fell off his back, a heavy plaid blanket. He looked at it for a second and then picked it up, wrapping it around his shoulders again.
He wandered until he found a kitchenette, passing by a few rooms, some with blinds covering the windows. He passed a few uniformed policemen and a few people in street clothes. None of them seemed to mind him, though a couple of them gave him worried looks.
He poured out the tea in the metal kitchen sink. He reached up to one of the wood laminate shelves and his hand stopped, he saw the clock. It was only 4:00 pm. It had been two-thirty when he’d left work.
Distantly, he heard a door slam shut, and quick footsteps. Boris appeared in the doorway. Alex dropped the cup into the sink and ran to his brother, again grateful for his mass, his solidness. Boris wrapped his arms around Alex as deep, gasping sobs rent their way out of his chest.
The next couple of hours were a blur. A detective questioned him, asked how he’d found the body. He told them he’d been hiking, didn’t mention the blood trail and the strange tracks. With a sickening jolt, he remembered the neon jacket the corpse had been wearing. He gave halting descriptions of the couple he’d given directions to.
The detective exchanged a look with another officer. Boris peered at them, tight-lipped, his arms folded.
“Look, officers,” he snapped, “I know you want to catch whoever did this but my brother has been through a lot today, and he’s told you all he knows. I want to take him home so he can get some rest.”
Alex was bundled, grateful, into the car Boris had borrowed from their mother. In the parking lot, Alex noticed Boris was limping.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I slipped on some ice earlier.”
His expression was so closed off and Alex was so relieved to be out of the station that he didn’t press him further. Neither of them spoke during the drive home. With a start, he remembered the strange hunter who had come into the shop that morning. He thought uneasily that he should have told the police about him, but the thought of returning to the station filled him with dread. He’d call the station tomorrow. For now, though, he felt bone tired. He closed his eyes, pretended to sleep.
Their mother met them at the front door, white-faced with worry, and took Alex’s coat. He took a hot shower, changed clothes without speaking to anyone, and fell asleep curled on the couch in the near-darkness of the winter afternoon.
He awoke, once, to the voices of Boris and his mother, arguing in hushed tones. He lay still, rigid, and listened, staring into the dark, his eyes not yet adjusted to the gloom.
“It’s happening again, isn’t it?” said their mother, her voice low but steady.
“I didn’t want to...” The rest of Boris’ response was too low to be heard.
“But you did. You can’t just ignore it, hoping it will go away. It didn’t work for your father, and it won’t work for you.”
“I know, I just—”
“I love you.”
“Mom—”
“I love you, Boris, but this can’t continue.”
“Mom, help me.”
“What am I supposed to do? I have Alex to think of.”
He heard someone sigh, and the scrape of a chair on the kitchen floor, and neither of them spoke again.
* * *
When he woke again it was full dark. He didn’t have his watch on and realized uncomfortably that he must have lost it in the woods. He stood up and stretched and peeked out the kitchen window. He could see a dark shape sitting on the table in the yard: Boris. Alex pulled on his parka and snowboots and crept outside.
When he was a few feet away, Boris turned. “Alex, you’re awake.”
There was a flatness in Boris’ voice that made Alex uneasy. It was winter, and still very dark out. It was windy, clouds scudded overhead, throwing them into periods of relative light and darkness. In the chiaroscuro of orange streetlights, Boris looked very small. His parka engulfed him, and his hands shook as he lit a cigarette. The flame quivered, went out, and he let his arms fall to his sides. “I have to leave.”
So, that conversation between Boris and Mom wasn’t a dream, Alex thought. He blurted, “Don’t go. Not again. I can't.—”
“I hurt someone, Alex.” His brother’s voice shook. “In the woods. I didn’t mean for you to see...” He faltered as Alex’s stomach lurched.
“Boris,” Alex said slowly. Confronted with it, it now seemed that a situation like this one had been inevitable. Alex felt fear but not surprise. He took a deep breath, coming to a decision. “Boris,” he said again, “whatever you did—”
“No.” Boris stopped him. “Don’t do that. Listen to what I have to say, first. I left Ketchikan to get away from you and Mom.” He paused. “To protect you.”
“Then why did you come back?”
“I need you to do something for me. You’re the only one I can trust.”
He took something out of his pocket. In the ambient light of the moon and streetlamps, Alex made out a small pistol and magazine. He could see a bullet peeking out of the clip, gleaming silver-white in the gloom.
“Boris...” said Alex again, pulling back instinctively.
“I’m serious. I tried to do it myself but...” His voice broke.
Alex felt sick. He stood up and his eyes flicked from the gun to Boris, who was standing as well. He crossed the space between them in a few quick steps and put the gun in Alex’s hand. Alex backed away.
A gunshot cracked through the frigid air. Alex saw Boris stagger, go down on one knee, his left hand showing palely over his chest. Alex still held the pistol but it wasn’t pointed at Boris, his finger wasn’t on the trigger. Where had the shot come from? The moon and stars were obscured, again, they were plunged into darkness. He went towards his brother but Boris put a hand out,
“Stop.”
His voice was loud, clearer than it should have been for someone with a shot in the chest, and it had a deep, resonant quality that jarred Alex. He stopped. Boris let out a strangled cry and went down on his hands and knees. Alex took a step forward anyways.
Once, when Alex was fifteen, he had seen a raccoon get run over by a car. He’d been standing at the side of the road, near enough to hear the bones break. The popping, rending sounds he heard coming now from his brother reminded him of that, and he felt a gripping panic that drained the blood from his extremities. His legs felt numb, he tried to step back, to turn and run, but his feet wouldn’t move. He could hear Boris moving, shifting, but couldn’t see him.
He heard movement a little farther off, not from his brother but from behind him, approaching footsteps crunching on gravel and frozen grass. He saw a flash, the reflective surface of a hunting knife showing luminous in the dark, above where Boris knelt. Instinctively he raised the gun, took aim at the gleaming silver streak and pulled the trigger. He heard a cry, unmistakably human, and the light shining on the blade winked out.
Where Boris had once stood was a black outline, carved out of the dark of the forest. A single yellow eye snapped into view and then out again. He could see movement in the black-on-blackness, the suggestion of a hulking silhouette with a muffled, furred outline.
Alex stood rooted to the spot, and the gun slipped from his hand. “Don’t leave me,” he called.
The thing that had taken the place of his brother let out a low, resonant, rattling growl and slipped away into the forest.
Copyright © 2015 by E. H. Young
