Chapter 4

4

The Violence

* * *

Angie's body was nowhere to be found, but a rust-colored splotch stained the carpet of the dining room. Here were more bloody handprints, shoe prints, and smudges. It was a crime scene investigator's wet dream. One cotton swab swipe of the mess and the perp would be spending twenty-five to life in a state penitentiary.

I steered clear of it all. Paranoid thoughts of my DNA turning up in their tests and me getting somehow blamed filled my mind.

The first thing Jonesy and I did after we had settled down and gotten our breath back—which wasn't an easy task, considering what we had just gone through—was find the landline. We didn't have to go far, either. An old rotary style phone hung on the kitchen wall near the door. Despite its old style, the thing looked brand new, probably one of those retro type items stores sold for ridiculous amounts of money, expecting the customers not to know you could go pick one of these exact phones up for a whopping two bucks at your neighborhood antique shop. I've always heard you can't put a price on nostalgia, but the big corporations thought otherwise.

Anyway, I picked up the phone and put it against my ear. Jonas leaned over, his eyes wide, waiting.

I heard a dial tone. It was the sweetest sound in the world. I told Jonesy and he literally jumped with joy, drops of melted snow spraying from his clothes.

I wasted no time in dialing the three digits I'd never dialed before. 9-1-1. The tone clicked off, and by this time Jonas had his own ear against the phone with me. After the tone disappeared, a long moment of silence followed. We waited without breathing, or at least I did. Then—

The line rang.

Unfortunately, the line only rang once before it went dead. Nothing. No dial tone, no robotic operator telling me the call couldn't go through. Just dead.

"Try again," Jonas urged.

I hung up, lifted the phone, and began dialing. I didn't get far, however, because the line was still out.

It just wasn't our night.

Jonas took it from me and kept trying. He must've done so for a solid five minutes, me standing there and hoping we'd get something, and him slamming the phone in the cradle, picking it back up, dialing, rinse, and repeat. All to no avail.

"We're fucked," he finally said.

I shook my head, but I kind of agreed with him. There was an unrelenting blizzard outside, a dead woman, a possibly crazy man running around with a rifle, and unexplainable things lurking in the snow. Saying we were fucked might've been putting it mildly, I thought.

Then again, I wasn't going to just give up. We came here for a reason, and I wouldn't let this trip be meaningless. We braved all that snow and those...things to get here.

So I wrapped my arm around Jonas's shoulders and said, "We're gonna be okay as long as we stay smart and look out for each other. Just like in the military, right?"

He managed a smile. "Yeah. Three Musketeers."

"Exactly. So let's stock up and ride this out. Forget about everything else."

"I'll never forget about what I saw. My stepdad's dead. But he was there, Grady. He was real. I could've reached out and touched him if I wanted to, and believe me, I wanted to slug him in the face. Fucking bastard." Jonas shook his head. An angry red color rose to his cheeks."

I knew the story, and you probably do, too. Mom and Dad split up, or Dad maybe dies, then Mom gets with the first asshole she meets, and winds up marrying the guy. He tries to replace your real father, but that'll never happen. Stepdaddy's got a drinking problem, and when he drinks, he likes to push his little stepson and his wife around.

Well, Jonas got pushed around a lot. In middle school, it was less normal if Jonas didn't come to class with a black eye at least once a month. He always had an excuse, too.

"Oh, Danny elbowed me when we were playing backyard football. It was supposed to be touch, but you know how the seventh graders are…" or "I tripped down the stairs and had to go to the ER. My mom about had a fit."

All the usual things frightened victims of abuse say. The black eyes were bad, yeah, but it was much worse than that. Mostly his stepdad hit him in the places long-sleeve shirts and pants hid.

Once, when we were changing in the locker room after gym class, Jonesy took off his shirt, which was something he never did in front of other people. The gym teacher made him because Tevin Inyos had a nose gusher and the blood got all over Jonas—or something like that. I don't know, can't remember for sure, but I do remember seeing all those bruises. His back was more purple and blue than it was skin-colored. I pointed it out because I was young and curious, and Jonas got all embarrassed. It took me a few years to understand why. He told us he fell off his skateboard, but I was pretty sure he didn't have a skateboard. Young me could never understand the truth. My dad wasn't the most loving guy, but he never laid a finger on me. Never would. The fact that someone three times your age and size could was beyond my comprehension. When our gym teacher, Mr. Nolan, saw the bruises he didn't fall for Jonesy's endless list of excuses. Next thing I knew, Jonas had to go stay with his aunt in Canton for the summer, and he didn't come back until his stepdaddy and mom were separated.

Stone and I didn't find out the reason for Jonesy's sabbatical for years, and only when Jonesy got drunk and told us everything. We put most of it together, but hearing it straight from the horse's mouth was much worse. So much worse. I had already hated his stepdad for a variety of reasons, mostly because he was a dickhead who yelled and smashed things when he got angry, but after hearing Jonas's stories about just how bad he was, I wanted to find the guy and kill him myself.

I never did. It was a thunderclap heart attack that happened about six years ago. Jonas didn't celebrate when he heard the news like you'd have expected. He just nodded and went on with his life. He had put that part of his past behind him, and I couldn't blame the guy for that.

"And I don't know how I'm gonna be able to leave this house, not with whatever the hell that was lurking around outside," Jonas said now, sounding close to tears. "I can't face him again, Grady. I just can't."

"It's not him," I said. "Whatever made the projection is real, but your stepdad and the dead boy aren't. I promise."

Jonas bowed his head and said nothing.

We split up and searched the house soon after. We looked for warm clothes, easily transportable food, and weapons. I stumbled upon Ed's gun case. The door hung open, and I thought of taking one but hesitated.

Growing up near the city with a dad who spent most of his evenings after work parked in front of the television, and with no other distant relatives besides a grandma who was old-going-on ancient, I never got into outdoorsy stuff like hunting. I'd never shot a gun. The many hours spent killing aliens in Halo certainly didn't count. Hell, I'd never even held a real gun. Once, Stone's cousin had an air soft party and I faked sick and didn't go. The truth is guns scared the living hell out of me, as I think anything that can end a human life with the mere squeeze of a finger should scare the living hell out of someone.

Jonas, on the other hand, knew his way around a weapon.

I studied the rifles for a few seconds before deciding it best to let Jonas do the handling. I left, wound my way up the staircase to the second level, found the master bedroom, and began sorting through closets. It felt wrong, like I was a burglar looking for hidden jewelry or stashed cash, but it only took the wind's screeching to remind me this was necessary. If I wanted to survive, I needed warmer clothes, and pretty much anything beat an old suit coat and a pair of sweats for protection against these freezing temperatures.

There was one big closet in the back right corner of the room. I stepped lightly, worried about creaking floors. I don't know why exactly, besides the fact that this all felt wrong. Maybe because I thought Ed was still around, waiting in the shadows with his rifle, covered in his wife's blood, crazy-eyed, rage-filled, and ready to put a bullet in my gut. Logically, that was probably bullshit. Ed might've talked funny, and maybe he'd succumbed to a moment of anger, but he was no dummy. Moving Angie's body told me his thoughts were now of cleaning up the mess he'd made. Ditch the evidence, get your head clear, and then get the hell out of Dodge. The blizzard would slow him down, sure, but it would also give him a head start before the cops started looking.

This was all assuming whatever the shadow things were hadn't gotten to him yet.

The shadows.

Man, I still didn't believe I saw what I had seen on our way over here. I thought it was impossible, insane, and most of all, terrifying. I was nearly a hundred percent sure it had been a figment of my imagination, and I would've gone the rest of my life being okay with that assumption had Jonesy not been there with me and not seen the same thing.

"Jonas," I whisper-yelled.

"Coming," Jonas answered. He came up the steps, boards creaking beneath his shoes, and ducked inside the bedroom. A canvas bag swung from each of his fisted hands. Food. Canned goods and bottled waters. "Any luck?" he asked.

"In here." I waved him over to the closet. "I don't think I'll be able to fit into a lot of this stuff, but it looks like your size."

"Doesn't matter. Layers are layers. It's already gotten colder outside since we got here."

"You went outside?"

Jonesy shook his head. "Hell no. I can feel it through the walls, man."

He was right. When I focused my mind on it, I felt it, too. The heat in the house made little difference.

"We better get a move-on," I said. "Grab as much as you can. Jackets, pants, gloves, boots. Some from the other side for Eleanor, too."

"The girl stuff?"

"Yeah, Eleanor'll need it."

"Shit…but it's her mom's stuff. Do you really think she wants to wear her mom's stuff? We could look in her room and grab some of her actual clothes."

"She told me she had nothing for winter. It was all at her apartment in Cincinnati. The stuff she didn't take to college, she donated to Goodwill. Plus, I don't wanna stay here longer than we have to. I don't like it. This place gives me a bad feeling."

"Well, outside gives me a worse feeling," Jonas said. "There's fucking…I don't know what out there. Ghosts? Monsters? Aliens?"

"Those things aren't our friends, I agree. They showed us terrible stuff, but I don't know if projections of the past can actually hurt us."

"I don't wanna find out," Jonas said matter-of-factly. Then he went back to grabbing handfuls of clothes and stuffing them into garbage bags.

I followed suit. The conversation seemed over with. I found a nice pair of rubber boots in the back of the closet. Old and a little snug, but they nearly came up to my knees. With the snow higher than that outside, the boots wouldn't be perfect, but they'd help. I thought I saw another pair for Jonesy, so I got on my knees and crawled farther in, and that was when I bumped something.

Well, someone.

It was dark in the closet, but the sticky stuff on my fingers was red. I saw that clearly enough.

"Oh fuck," I mumbled.

As I tilted my head upward, Angie's dead body toppled over. She couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and fifteen pounds, but dead weight is something else entirely. When she thumped against my shoulders, she took both of us down, pinning me to the floor like a professional wrestler. With a grunt, I shoved her halfway off. More sticky blood clung to my jacket. Some of it had gotten on my face. An overwhelming urge to vomit took hold of my stomach, but I forced it down. This was no easy task. Besides the dead boy, Angie's was the only other corpse I'd seen, and the boy was barely recognizable once the fire had claimed his life. I'll tell you this, seeing a dead body is nothing like seeing one in a horror movie. Maybe it's because you know the person is real and not some character. You know they were breathing and talking and smiling only mere hours ago. You know they were loved and they had loved others. Or maybe it's because you can see the realness with your naked eye…the supple but paling flesh, the dark red blood.

Angie's mouth hung open in a soundless scream, and a rotten smell leaked out from the wounds in her stomach. She hadn't been dead very long, but already decomposition was doing its job.

I rolled away, practically hyperventilating, and reached for the nearest piece of clothing to wipe my face with. What I needed was a bucket of hot, soapy water and a gallon of hand sanitizer.

"Damn," Jonas said, grimacing. He nudged the body with the toe of his shoe. One of Angie's lifeless arms flopped over and slapped the carpeted floor with a muffled thump. "She's dead, all right."

"Jesus, that about gave me a heart attack."

"Should we move her?" Jonas asked.

I shook my head. It was bad enough I'd gotten her blood on me, but now we were talking about tampering with a crime scene. If things hadn't gone to hell already, they were there now. Of course, they'd gone to hell long before that. This was just more icing on top of this fucked-up cake.

"Let's just go," I said. "I'll feel safer with the others."

I led the way out of the closet and bedroom and we started down the stairs. Pictures of the family hung on the wall. Here was a younger Eleanor and Mikey, wearing life jackets and standing on a boat in the very lake that was in the process of freezing behind us. Here was another of Ed with a pair of dark shades, a fishing hat, and a bad sunburn, holding up a large bass from a cut line. Here was Angie, now dead and rotting in her walk-in closet above us, next to a group of grade-schoolers. The plaque some kid in a red polo was holding in the front row read Mrs. Hark's Third Grade Class 2009. She was a teacher, or had been…but now she'd never teach again.

Jonas nudged me onward. Good thing, otherwise I might've started bawling. It was all so damn horrible.

The stairs ended by the front entrance. Near the top of the door was a single window, and the window was completely white. I didn't know if it was because the snow had piled that high or if it had stuck to the glass and gave off that illusion. I hoped for the latter, of course, but there was no telling at this point.

Jonas said, "Maybe we should stay. We can't leave here when those things could be out there waiting for us."

"What about the others back at our lake house?" I said. "They're stuck in an icebox without heat. All they have to eat and drink are hot dogs and beer—"

"You say that like it's a bad thing…"

I ignored Jonas's attempt at humor. Wasn't the time and place for that. "There's nothing for them to wear, either. If we wait much longer, I think they'll be dead by morning."

"Morning," Jonas repeated as if transfixed by the word. "Morning."

"Yeah, the morning…" I said.

He sprung at me and grabbed my shoulders. "That's all we have to do. Wait 'em out. When the sun rises, there's no way those things'll still be around."

"How do you know?"

"Nothing scary hangs around to see the sunrise. Haven't you ever watched a horror movie?"

"Oh, you mean fictitious stuff?" I said with more than a hint of sarcasm. "Stuff that's not real?"

"I know what 'fictitious' means, Grady."

"I wasn't saying you didn't. I was only emphasizing the point, you know, of horror movies being fake."

"I don't follow," Jonas said.

"Just because Dracula is afraid of the sun in the book and the movies doesn't mean a vampire would be afraid of the sun in real life."

"But vampires aren't real."

I rolled my eyes. "Never mind."

"All I'm asking is that we wait. It's a smart decision. I think it's in our best interests. We won't have to wait long, either." He glanced at the clock on the wall above the kitchen table, which was scattered with yesterday's newspaper. The most visible page being the July 4th forecast. Sunny and clear with a high around 86. Hilarious. "The sun rises early in the summer. We only have a few more hours until it does. Three at the most."

"Hours are a long time, especially when you're slowly freezing to death, which is what's happening to the others as we speak…"

"But they have the fire and blankets."

"Blankets are worthless against this weather, and who knows how much wood is left to burn?" I said.

Jonas gave no answer, he just stared at me with desperation in his eyes. I went on and pulled the ace up my sleeve free. This was the last thing I was trying before going out there myself. I didn't want to, but I couldn't leave the others the way they were. If Jonas wanted to stay here, I'd drop off the goods at our lake house and come back, a plan that made my skin crawl. But hey, Stone and Jonas were more than my best friends; they were family.

I said: "Jonas, quit being a pussy, all right? We can beat whatever's out there. As long as we stay together, I know we can. That's how we got here, wasn't it? We had each other's backs like we always do. And this time, we know what to expect."

Biting his bottom lip and furrowing his brow, all signs of him deep in thought, Jonas said nothing. I thought maybe I'd hurt him, bruised his ego and kicked his masculinity below the belt at the same time, which was never my intention, so I began mentally preparing an apology.

As my lips moved to give it, he said, "Fine. I'll go with you. But know that when we both die, I'm kicking the shit out of you in the afterlife. I don't care if God throws me out of Heaven, either."

"Fair enough," I said with a smile. "And funny how you think we're going to Heaven."

He flipped me the bird, an old staple in Three Musketeers' sign language, as we moved toward the door.

But, as it turned out, Jonas never went outside again.

* * *

He got close. By close I mean only a few feet from stepping beyond the threshold of the sliding glass door leading to the deck. Before we went, we made a detour to Ed's gun cabinet. Jonas grabbed a rifle and a box of ammunition. Holding the gun gave him a bit more confidence.

"You ready?" he asked.

"As I'll ever be."

He led the way.

I trailed behind him, my arms full of bags of food and balled-up winter clothes. Jonas had the same, but he also carried something more important than what I carried.

The rifle.

Jonas stopped abruptly. I bumped right into him and dropped one of my bags. Cans clattered on the floor, went rolling into the shadows. I was about to get down and look for them when Jonas said, "Is that...is that Ed?"

I never gave him an answer, but as I craned my head toward the glass door and my eyes settled on the figure standing on the deck, obscured by the frost and the falling snow, I knew it was Ed.

Then a sound like compressed thunder ruptured through the air, and the door shattered.

Things slowed way down.

I blinked, and by the time I opened my eyes, Jonas was on the ground gasping for breath. He didn't breathe much longer, either. If you heard the sounds coming from his throat, all wet and thick with the blood flooding his lungs, you would've been surprised he lasted as long as he did.

My eyes flicked from Jonas and the pool of red spreading around him to Ed, who stepped inside holding the rifle, a little puff of smoke trailing out from the barrel. Glass crunched beneath his bare feet, which had turned a dark color. Ed looked like he was walking death. His cheeks were windburned, his eyes were blank, his lips black with frostbite, but the worst part was the dark, jagged line running down his forehead to the bridge of his nose. I didn't know what it was, and like with most of the world now, I still don't, but I pictured those shadow things reaching toward Jonas when we came over here, and I knew if it had touched Jonas then, he would've never made it as far as he did. He would've become like Ed, a rabid monster wearing the face of a loving father and husband.

Ed leveled the rifle at me now. I put my hands up, but no words came from my mouth. I didn't beg, mostly because I couldn't. The situation froze every muscle in my body. I wasn't sure I was even breathing myself.

Jonas made a croaking noise to my left, and that reminded me I should probably move, or I'd die.

I turned, briefly met Jonas's eyes. His lips moved, and a wheezing breath escaped his lungs. If he said anything I didn't hear it, but he pointed. I followed the line of his finger and saw the rifle that had been slung over his shoulder seconds ago lying a few feet away.

Ed took another step toward me and pulled the bolt. The sound seemed louder than the actual gunshot, somehow.

We perform our best, I think, when we're not thinking. Take sports as an example. If I went into a game of basketball worried about how many points I was going to score or how I'd match up against the other team's biggest players, I'd probably be lucky to put the ball in the basket once or twice, and the team most likely would've lost. But if I forgot all of that, just went out there and played the game I knew and loved, and didn't think or worry about my next shot or the fourth quarter, I'd usually play lights out.

If I had thought about grabbing the rifle on the floor, lifting and pointing it at Ed, and about the consequences and the mess and all that crap, I wouldn't be telling you this story. I'd be dead. I'd have eaten lead and died next to Jonas on the kitchen floor in a stranger's house.

That didn't happen because I didn't think. I just acted.

I snatched the rifle up and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked back and threw me into the kitchen cabinets behind me. Ed was thrown back, too, but an explosion of red sprayed from his midsection. He clutched his stomach, and more red cascaded through his clenched fingers. As he fell to his knees, a momentary flash of normalcy came to his eyes. Another blink-and-you-miss-it moment. Sadly, I didn't miss it, and the realization and guilt of what I'd done hit me hard.

Ed fell onto his side, and his eyes went blank again. Just like that, he was dead.

I scrambled across the tile and grabbed his rifle from him then retreated to Jonas's side. I guess movies had distorted my worldview because I expected Jonas to make it. The heroes always do. At the very least, I expected him to give me his last words, some kind of meaningful advice, and for him to say it was all going to be okay.

None of that happened.

When I looked down at Jonas, his eyes were as blank as Ed's. A rivulet of blood fell from the corner of his mouth, rode the edge of his ear, and pooled in his hair.

I grabbed his hand. It was cold because of the storm, but I thought I felt his flesh growing colder.

The wind blew through the shattered sliding door, bringing bits of glass and heavy snowflakes toward me.

I looked outside. Standing against the white backdrop of still-piling snow were a dozen of those human-shaped shadows. Some were close and getting closer, while others hovered near the lake. I saw no faces or eyes, but they were watching me. I felt that.

I had to go. I hated that I did, that I couldn't mourn Jonas, but if I stayed any longer, I'd become the same thing Ed had become. A blank-faced monster.

I leaned over and kissed Jonas on one bloody cheek, then I swiped a hand down his face, closing his eyes. It was all I could do.

My whole body was shaking, and stars danced at the edge of my vision. I might've fainted if I didn't move on soon.

So I gathered up as much of the goods as I could hold and hurdled over Ed's body, out into the snow.

By myself.

* * *

In the frozen wasteland, all I cared about was getting through the snow and inside to safety. I ran as fast as I could, always looking over my shoulders for the dead boy.

For most of the trek, I was in the clear, but when the house came into view, I saw flames.

It was him.

"Where'd you go, Mister Fireman? You left me out here in the cold, and I was all shivery—"

That was all he got to say because I shot him—it—with Ed's rifle. Doing so proved difficult, especially since this apparition looked so closely to the real boy, but then the bullet hit him, and the illusion shattered. There was a puff of gray smoke and a terrible high-pitched screeching noise and then nothing besides the snow.

I screamed, partially aware of the tears falling down my cheeks. They didn't roll far before the cold froze them.

I kept on running, moved as fast as the snow would let me, which wasn't fast. Each step felt like trying to get out of mud. The temperature zapped all the energy from my muscles and chilled my bones. I thought I'd never reach the place, but I did, thank God, and no other apparitions followed.

"Stone!" I shouted only a few steps from the door. I didn't think I'd make it. "Stone! Mikey! Eleanor!"

The door opened. It was Mikey. He saw me, and I don't know how because the snow had nearly swallowed my body entirely.

Then he and Eleanor rushed out and pulled me in.

I remember that, and I remember babbling about the shadows and about Ed and Jonas. I remember falling to the floor inside. I remember the sweet warmth of the dwindling fire. I remember Stone shouting my name over and over again until my eyes opened and focused on him.

I remember the blackness coming over me as I became unconscious.

* * *

I woke up a few hours later. It was still dark out. I thought it was all a terrible nightmare, that I had drank too much and passed out and then suffered from some very vivid dreams.

I was wrong, of course.

What first gave it away was the cold. Even inside, it was beyond bitter. When I exhaled, a cloud of vapor left my mouth and dissolved as it floated toward the ceiling. My body felt like ice. I hardly had any feeling left in my fingertips, and I was pretty sure I had frostbite on the tip of my nose.

I looked at the clock on the wall in the kitchen to my right. It was eight, but the sun either hadn't risen or I'd slept over twelve hours. I was exhausted, I remember that, but there was no way I could sleep that long.

I sat up. Looked around. Eleanor lay on the couch, asleep. Stone sat in a chair, his head tilted back, a spot of drool falling down the corner of his mouth. Mikey, I didn't see, and that made my stomach flip. Automatically I assumed something had happened to him, that one of those things got him or he'd gone insane like his father. I stood and walked on numb legs down the hallway. He was on my bed, wrapped in about a hundred blankets. His face was the only visible part of him, and his eyes were wide open. Again, I thought he might've been dead, but only until his eyes flicked over in my direction.

"You're awake," he said in a flat tone.

"I am. Thanks for dragging me out of the snow."

"Yeah, no problem." Mikey turned away, and I left him alone.

In the den, the fire barely flickered. I added a few more logs, and that livened it up a bit. Eleanor stirred when one of them popped loudly then her eyes opened when the wind shrieked. Or at least I thought it was the wind that had done the shrieking.

"Sorry," I mumbled.

Her eyes were heavy with sleep. Blue bags had puffed up beneath them. She looked like she had cried a lot, and I supposed she had. In one night, she had lost both her parents.

"Are you okay?" she asked me.

I nodded. It felt cheap saying I was okay while Jonas and Ed were dead, along with probably a million other people who were caught in this seemingly supernatural storm.

She said, "I know you did what you had to do."

"I'm sorry. He killed Jonas, and he was going to kill me—"

"I believe you. I saw him shoot my mom. I saw his eyes, that blank look on his face. But I know that wasn't my dad who pulled the trigger. My dad died before he did any of that."

"I know," I said, but I still felt terrible. I don't think the shock of killing someone had really hit home yet. It would in the oncoming days, I was sure.

Eleanor sighed. "This is…I don't even know what this is. It's beyond insane. Is there a word for that?" She uttered a small, humorless laugh. "Hey, maybe we're all in an asylum—a loony bin, as my dad would say—and we're having the same crazy fantasy."

"I wish," I said, putting my hands out toward the fire. The heat felt good, but short of dousing myself in lighter fluid and striking a match, my body couldn't get enough. I was like a desert after a rainstorm. If you never saw the rain yourself, there'd be no evidence it had fallen at all. "How much did I tell you guys when I came back?" My memory of the situation was spotty. I remembered mumbling, but the words had no meaning to me. Apparently, I already told Eleanor and Mikey about their father, and it didn't take a genius to put two and two together about Jonas since he wasn't with me.

Eleanor told me what I'd said. She cried while she talked. When she finished, I approached her with caution, sat next to her on the couch, and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. She sobbed silently against me for a few minutes.

In her recap of what I'd said after they pulled my near-lifeless and frozen body from the snow, she made no mention of her mother's corpse in the closet. I had struck that from the record. I'd guess I mostly did it because so much more had been on my mind, but I certainly didn't plan on telling her now.

We said nothing else, allowing the silence to settle over us like the snow had.

The wind screamed, the house creaked, and we went on breathing together, wrapped in each other's arms. Her body heat felt better than the warmth of any fire. I could say it was because Eleanor was an actual living being and the flames weren't, but that'd be a lie.

The truth is simple: Eleanor was Eleanor, and no one else would have felt so good against me.

We both eventually dozed, and I swayed in and out of consciousness a few times before falling into a deep sleep. Blessed sleep.

When I awoke four hours later, the clock showed a quarter past noon and the sun hadn't yet made an appearance.

And the snow was still falling.

* * *

Two sunless days later, a rush of freezing air blasted inside the lake house, and woke me up. The wind whistled loudly through the eaves, and any chance I had of remaining asleep disappeared.

"What are you doing?" I said, my voice groggy.

Stone was at the front door, which hung open, but he ignored me. He wasn't wearing anything more than a t-shirt and a blanket. Going out like that would probably kill him.

"Stone," I said, "what are you doing?" This time a little louder so I could be heard over the wind. He turned and met my stare. He looked terrible, like he had a flu virus ravaging through his body. That wasn't it, though. He was torn up about Jonas. I was, too, but there wasn't anything we could do about it without a time machine.

"I'm going to my car," Stone said. He flashed his keys. The fire reflected off of the metal. Without the sun or electricity, it was the only source of light in the lake house.

"You're crazy if you think you're going to be able to drive out of here with that van of yours, man."

Stone squinted. "Really? Do you think I'm an idiot?" No hint of humor in his voice.

"Well, trying to drive in this weather would be an idiotic thing to do."

"I'm not driving anywhere!" Stone shouted. Eleanor stirred beside me. I pulled away, shedding my blankets and covering her, then I turned and met Stone's eyes. They had gone hard and flinty. He looked nothing like the Stone I knew and loved so well.

"Then what are you doing? Because going out there is suicide, friend. There's something outside, maybe more than that, I don't know. I don't wanna find out. Whatever it or they are drove Ed crazy." A collage of images whirled through my brain. The dead boy talking to me in the snow, his body aflame, Angie's corpse soaked with blood and falling over in the closet, Ed all blank-faced and cold-eyed, Jonas bleeding out on the kitchen tile. I may not have known exactly what it was I saw in the snow, but I knew they were there, and they were deadly.

"I believe you, Grady, but I'm not going far. I'll be careful. Besides, I'm only going out to my car and turning on the radio. Relax and don't get your panties in a bunch."

The radio.

I was speechless. How had we not thought of that already? The electricity around here might've been down, but radios received their transmissions via wavelengths, and just because our electricity was out didn't mean all electricity was out. Radios were ancient technology, really, but it seemed that the old tech was the most reliable.

Stone saw the reaction on my face. "Yeah, exactly," he said. "Going outside doesn't seem so idiotic now, does it? I think we're past that point anyway." He shook his head. "Because I'm going insane in here waiting for someone to tell us what's going on. And I don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon. Three people we knew are dead. We're gonna either freeze to death or run out of food, and there's apparently supernatural monsters outside that want us dead. I think we've waited long enough."

Stone lunged forward, his crutches shaking. I crossed the room, about to close the door. Mostly because of the things out there. They weren't far away, I felt that. I felt them lurking, waiting for one of us to step out so they could turn us into mindless beasts, the way Ed was when I shot him. I felt them watching us.

But at the door, hand on the knob, I stopped. Hope swelled in my chest, wonderful and warm.

Outside…there was sunshine. A very small sliver of gold cut through the hazy clouds above. Slanting rays reached the porch. It no longer looked like dusk but coming dawn instead.

"What?" Stone asked.

I pointed. "The sun."

"The sun?" He said it like it was some alien language, then his eyes ballooned to twice their size. "The sun. Holy shit…"

I about screamed with joy as I leaned over and hugged Stone tight. He hugged me back, one crutch tapping my leg.

"Do you think it's going to melt the snow?" he asked.

I peered out through the glass door. "It's a lot of snow."

"It's July."

"Good point."

"I'm going out there now. If there's monsters or whatever, the sun'll keep them back."

A chill went up my spine. Jonas had said the same thing in the Harks' house, but I kept my mouth shut.

Stone went out, and I grabbed the rifle and followed after him in a sweatshirt and some sweatpants I'd taken from Ed's closet. The wind was still fast and harsh and the cold sliced through my layers all too easily, but that didn't stop us. The sun had given us renewed strength as well as hope.

Stone unsurprisingly trucked through the snow with minimal problems. He was just that kind of guy. When he set his mind to doing something, he did it no matter how hard the task was or how long it took to complete. His disability might've slowed him down sometimes, but he never let it completely stop him. I admired the hell out of him for that, but I wished Jonas was here with us.

But he was gone. We were just the Two Musketeers now.

Head on a swivel, eyes narrowed, I scanned the surrounding area, and something on my right stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a towering dark figure.

My heart plummeted, my blood pressure spiked, and my muscles tensed, ready for action.

When I turned, swinging the rifle and locating it, I almost laughed. That towering dark figure was just one of many trees surrounding Prism Lake.

Stone was already at the van, wiping snow from the handle and windows.

Next thing I knew I was heading toward him as he was disappearing inside the driver's side door.

With Stone having cleared the way, I climbed in the back of the van only half a minute later and shut the door behind me just as a nasty gust of wind rocked us. The van's shocks groaned. White flakes continued blasting the windows. Some of the cold air slipped through the cracks and bit at my exposed skin. I barely registered any of it. The prospect of finally learning what was happening proved too exciting.

Stone sat in the driver's seat, wearing an I-told-you-so look on his face. I shook my head as if to say this was crazy. Then I remembered where we were and set the rifle against the door. With my left hand I leaned forward and pointed at the ignition. "Start her up."

Stone took a deep breath. "Now that I'm here, I don't know if I wanna know. I don't know if I'm ready for it."

"I'll do it." I opened my hand for the keys. Stone didn't give them to me. Time was wasting away. We hadn't gone far from the lake house but that meant nothing. There was no magical bubble of protection around the area. If the shadows wanted us, they'd get us. Nothing would stop them. Sure, some things might slow them down, but I figured it wouldn't slow them down for long.

"No. My idea, Grady," Stone said. "Quit trying to steal my thunder." He winked at me, and for a moment he was the old Stone, not shaken or sad. He stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine coughed and rattled, but it didn't start. He tried again. More coughing, and again, nothing.

"It's dead," I said.

"No. I feel it. It's gonna work." Stone's face was a mask of determination. He cranked the key once more and as I was reaching for his hand, afraid he might accidentally break something important, the engine turned over and roared to life. Well, as much as a van's engine could roar to life.

With a laugh, Stone stuck both arms up in a show of victory. I clapped him on the back. Neither of us had noticed the music coming through the speakers. It was a CD of The Notorious B.I.G.'s greatest hits. The song "Juicy" thumped the seats and rattled the mirrors.

Stone paused it, looked me in the eyes, and said, "Moment of truth." His finger pushed the source button. The radio console switched from CD to AUX. The next one, we both knew, was FM radio. Stone stopped and took a deep, shaky breath. The next press of that button felt more than monumental to the both of us. Everything seemed to be on the line. Our sanity, our happiness, our chance of survival.

We both knew this.

I took my own deep, shaky breath and nodded. "All right, do it."

He nodded back. "Together?"

I placed a numb index finger on the button beside Stone's. "Together."

And together, we pressed it.