John Saul (34 page)

Joey hesitated, his eyes clouding for a split second, but then he nodded. “I promise,” he agreed. Then, his grin flashing once again: “But you better hurry. It’s really starting to snow out there. Hey! Maybe we’ll get snowed in! Maybe there won’t be any school tomorrow! Wouldn’t that be neat?”

MaryAnne smiled ruefully; she would be hearing exactly the same chorus from Logan the minute she picked him up. At least Joey’s just like all the rest of the kids where snow is concerned, she thought as she climbed into the Range Rover and turned on the ignition, the more the better, and if school closes, it’s just a lucky break!

Putting the car in gear, she turned it around and started down the drive.

Joey, watching her go, felt the grin he’d been struggling to maintain begin to slip away.

Deep inside him, he was once again feeling the first stirrings of the same nervousness that had come over him the night before and driven him out into the darkness.

Only a moment ago, when he’d been out on Sheika, racing across the field in the freezing rain, he’d felt wonderful, an exuberance building in him that had made him whoop with pure joy. The moment he’d come into the barn, though, the joy had drained out of him, and the first feelings of being trapped had begun to form in the pit of his gut.

Now, as he began rubbing down the big mare, he could feel his nerves taking on that familiar edge, feel the howling elements outside beckoning to him, the wilds of the mountains summoning him.

He tried to ignore the feeling, tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, but as he continued working on the horse, the urge inside him grew stronger.

Sheika, sensing something different about the boy, began to grow nervous, pawing at the floor, and jerking her head against the restraining lines that held her in the cross ties.

T
he rain had turned completely to snow by the time MaryAnne got to the school, and as Logan and Alison dashed down the steps and raced across the lawn, she gazed worriedly up at the gray sky. She had never experienced the kind of storm that sometimes came raging down from the Arctic at this time of the year, and the blackness of the clouds made her shiver even in the warmth of the Range Rover. She pulled the shearling coat tighter around her neck.

“Isn’t this neat?” Logan asked, scrambling into the front seat and slamming the door behind him. “I bet they don’t even have school tomorrow! I bet we get snowed in!”

MaryAnne smiled at her son. “I wouldn’t start getting my hopes up. It’s barely the middle of September, and I suspect this is going to blow over. By tomorrow it’ll probably all be melted.”

“It will not!” Logan argued. “Mike Stiffle says it’ll be eight feet deep and we won’t even be able to get out of our house! He says—”

“It sounds like what he says might be just a little exaggerated,” MaryAnne cut in, pulling away from the curb and turning up the windshield wipers to clear away the thickening snow.

“Michael and Andrea Stiffle are jerks,” Alison announced from the backseat, causing her mother to glance at her in the mirror.

“Oh? And what brought that on?”

Alison slouched moodily in her seat. “I just don’t like them, that’s all.”

“They were talking about Joey,” Logan offered, his voice
taking on an angry edge. “They said—” But before he could finish his sentence, he noticed that Joey wasn’t in the car. “Where is he?” he asked, his anger at the Stiffle twins giving way to concern about the boy he already thought of as his big brother. “The doctor didn’t make him go to the hospital, did he?” Though he wasn’t exactly sure what kind of hospital Joey might have been taken to, he still remembered how frightened Joey had been this morning that he might have to go to one.

“He’s fine,” MaryAnne assured him. “He’s at home taking care of Sheika.”

Mollified, Logan’s ten-year-old mind immediately shifted gears again. “I wish I could have stayed home and taken care of the horses today.”

“Oh, really?” MaryAnne drawled. “Well, let’s see—all you would have to do was muck out the stalls, then get some hay out of the loft, then feed all three of them. Then after that, you could have started grooming them, and there’s a lot of things to do in the tack room. The saddles need to be polished, and—”

“He didn’t have to do all that,” Logan interrupted her, finally figuring out that his leg was being pulled.

“What did the doctor say?” Alison asked from the backseat. “Is something really wrong with Joey?”

MaryAnne hesitated, wondering just how much she should tell Alison and Logan about what Dr. Corcoran had said this morning. They were on the edge of town now, and as they headed up the valley she could see that the snow was sticking to the pavement ahead. It seemed to be coming down harder every minute. Her fingers tensing on the wheel, she finally spoke. “He’s having some trouble adjusting to his parents’ dying. The doctor doesn’t think it’s anything terribly serious, but Joey’s bound to have some times when he feels very angry about what happened.”

“Well, why shouldn’t he be?” Alison asked, the fear of Joey she’d felt the previous night giving way to a wave of, sympathy. “It’s not fair—both of his parents are dead, and now all the kids are starting to talk like it’s his fault! Mom, it’s really awful! The way some of them are talking, you’d think Joey was some kind of monster or something!”

MaryAnne felt a sharp pang of guilt as she realized that only this morning she herself had asked Clark Corcoran a question that certainly could have been interpreted in exactly the same way. And she clearly remembered the moment of panic she’d experienced less than an hour before, when she’d come down from the attic to find that Joey was not in the house. If she herself was starting to wonder if Joey’s problems went much deeper than the grief he was feeling, what must everyone else be—

She felt the car lose its traction as she started into a corner, and she automatically stepped on the brake, then remembered that was the worst thing she could do, and just as quickly released the pressure on the brake and steered into the skid. An eternal second later the tires caught again. As she slowed down to a crawl, she expelled a sigh of relief.

“Watch out, Mom,” Logan complained. “You almost went off the road. Dad always says women can’t drive in snow!”

“Your dad’s not here to do the driving, is he?” MaryAnne snapped with more annoyance than Logan’s comment had deserved. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I didn’t go off the road, did I?”

As Logan lapsed into sulky silence, MaryAnne focused her concentration on driving. A few minutes later they pulled into the yard in front of the house, which was already covered with an inch of snow. She steered the Rover around to a spot near the back door, and all three of them piled into the kitchen. Outside, the snow was falling harder. The wind coming down from the mountains was churning it across the field and low drifts were already forming against the storage sheds beyond the barn. “It makes me cold just to look at it,” MaryAnne said. “Alison, why don’t you build us a fire in the living room, and I’ll make some hot cocoa. Call Joey down from his room, will you, Logan?”

She was just starting to heat milk for the cocoa when Logan came back. “He’s not up there,” her son reported. “He’s not here at all.”

Struggling to conceal her sudden panic from Logan,
MaryAnne quickly pulled the shearling coat back on, added the knitted cap, then wound a scarf around her neck and lower face. Finally she opened the back door and ran out to the barn, opening the door just far enough to slip inside. Sheika was back in her stall, but there was no sign of Joey.

“Joey?” she called out, her fear rising. He couldn’t have taken off—he just couldn’t have! He’d promised to stay in the house! “Joey!”

She heard a movement from the loft, and peered vainly upward into the darkness above. “Joey? Are you up there?”

“I’m coming down,” she heard him call, and instantly her panic began to subside. But when he scrambled down the ladder a moment later and turned to face her, she gasped.

Joey’s face—and the front of his clothes—were covered with snow.

“Joey?” MaryAnne breathed. “What on earth—”

The boy moved toward her, his step slow, almost uncertain. “I was watching the snow,” he said, so quietly that MaryAnne could barely hear him. “I opened the door up there. You can see all the way up into the mountains.” He frowned, as if puzzled about something. Then, sounding worried: “I was just standing there, Aunt MaryAnne. I wasn’t doing anything.” His voice changed again, and MaryAnne thought he seemed frightened. “I really wasn’t doing anything wrong!”

He’s afraid, MaryAnne thought. He’s afraid of me! She went to him, slipping her arms around him. “Of course you weren’t! But look at you—you’re all covered with snow. You must be freezing!” She could feel him shiver as she hugged him close. “Let’s get you inside. We’re going to build a fire and have hot chocolate, and you can take a nice long hot bath. How does that sound?”

Silently, not trusting himself even to speak as the terrible sense of panic began to close in on him once more, Joey nodded and let MaryAnne lead him back to the house. As they stepped out of the barn, though, and MaryAnne pulled the shearling tight around her throat, Joey felt himself begin to relax again.

And he wasn’t cold, he realized. Despite the driving snow and subfreezing temperature, he wasn’t cold at all.

Joey stared at the steaming bathtub. He had stripped naked in what had felt to him like the stifling heat of his bedroom, and now as he gazed at the tub full of hot water, he felt no desire to lower his body into it. He was already sweating in the tiny room, and even as he prepared to step into the tub, he felt a strange heat deep in his bones.

A heat that had nothing to do with the warmth of the room, for even when he’d sat in the open door of the hayloft, facing directly into the wind as it blew down the valley, driving the snow before it, he hadn’t noticed the cold against his skin.

All he’d felt were the calming effects of the wind and snow, driving out the terrifying nervousness that had been building inside him. With the wind whipping his hair and the snowflakes biting at his face, the hollow, empty feeling in his belly and the strange urge to escape—not just from the house, or the ranch, but even from himself—that almost indescribable feeling of wanting to crawl out of his own skin had instantly eased. It had seemed to him as if the elements outside were calling to him, the forest beckoning, the mountains whispering in his ears.

He remembered it all, every detail of it etched into his mind. It had been almost like living in a dream, and he’d imagined he could hear sounds that he knew were impossible. The wind in the trees certainly would have blotted out what had sounded to him like a deer pushing through the heavy underbrush down by the creek, and he knew that he couldn’t possibly be hearing a rat skittering across the floor of the barn twelve feet beneath him.

Yet it had seemed that he could, and when he’d seen the Rover come into the yard, he hadn’t been surprised, for he’d even heard the sound of its quiet engine mixed into the whistling of the wind.

He’d even imagined that he could see each individual snowflake, picking one out as it rode on the wind, following it as it twisted among the others, only losing it when it
finally fell to the ground to disappear into the white blanket that was building in the yard.

Even his nose had detected scents he’d never noticed before, faint aromas of the creatures of the forest—no more than wisps carried to him on the wind, but each of them distinct, each of them exciting something deep inside him.

Even when he had finally responded to MaryAnne’s call, reluctantly pulling himself away from the euphoria of the elements outside, he had had no sense at all of the chill in the barn. Now, as he sat in the tub, the heat of the water against his skin combined with the peculiar warmth that radiated from somewhere deep inside him to make him feel almost faint.

Sweat was pouring from his forehead, and his mouth kept filling with saliva.

Leaning forward to turn on the cold water tap, he cupped his hands under the icy stream spewing out of the faucet, poured the water over his head, then picked up the bar of soap and began washing his hair.

As he worked the lather into his scalp, he realized that something about his hair seemed different. He could feel a slight roughness he’d never noticed before. Puzzled, he slid down, holding his breath as he dipped his head beneath the surface, running his fingers through his hair to wash the soap away. Only when his lungs began to hurt did he sit back up, his breath exploding as he released the tension in his diaphragm. He picked up the soap again, this time rubbing it on his arms and chest. The strange, tingling sensation worsened. Without warning, a wave of claustrophobia broke over him.

The tub seemed suddenly tiny, and the walls of the bathroom felt like they were closing in on him. He stood up, shaking his body violently, water spraying around the room. The stifling heat choking him, he raised the window over the tub and breathed deeply of the cold air that poured in from outside. Feeling better, he stepped out of the tub, took a towel from the rack on the wall and began drying himself off. Catching a glimpse of his foggy image in the mirror
over the sink, he reached over and wiped the steam from the glass.

He stared at the image in the mirror.

It was no longer the image he’d seen this morning.

His eyes seemed to have narrowed slightly.

The down on his cheeks seemed to have darkened, so he almost appeared to have the shadow of a beard.

He ran his fingers through his damp and matted hair, and once more felt the strange roughness on his scalp. Leaning forward, he examined his scalp more closely.

Tiny hairs were coming out of his skin, no more then specks, almost invisible to the naked eye.

Yet they were there.

He swallowed, staring at the image in the mirror.

What was happening to him?

Panic welled up in him. Suddenly, despite the open window, the bathroom, the house—everything was closing in on him once again.

Rick Martin dropped to the ground, sheltering himself in the meager protection of a fallen tree. The snow was deepening rapidly, and drifts were starting to build as the wind churned down the slope, picking up the icy crystals almost as soon as they touched the ground, tossing them back into the air to mix with the thick, fluffy flakes that seemed to drop out of an invisible sky. He should have been back in the Jeep half an hour ago, but he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, and now he knew he was lost. The quickly building blizzard had cut visibility down to only a few yards.