Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Johnny yelled as the snow churned at his legs, yanking him, flailing, down into an icy maw.
He kicked and wheeled his arms, fighting to free himself from the monster, expecting those colossal teeth to snap his bones.
The more he moved, the more he was mired in snow.
His lifelong fear of blindness was fulfilled, but in white instead of dark.
Snow crammed his mouth, muffling his scream.
Then he was choking.
Johnny’s panic was a storm inside of him, blotting out his thoughts.
He coughed and spat, his body remembering late to seal his lips to keep more snow out of his mouth.
He struggled to orient himself, but he had been dragged into an ice tunnel, barely aware of his awkwardly twisted limbs.
Only muted gray light a foot above him told him which way to find air and sky.
He craned his neck upward, stretching past the clumps of falling snow trying to bury him.
The light was fading fast. Was the monster toying with him?
When would the real pain begin? Thunder shook the universe, but it was only his heart’s frantic beating in this frigid tomb.
“Look what you’ve gone and done now,” Uncle Ricky’s voice said above him.
Johnny tried to call to him, but more frost slipped into his throat. He coughed it free, writhing to try to ease a terrible cramp in his side. His body was contorted in a painful pose.
“Quit moving,” Uncle Ricky said. “Plenty of air pockets, boy. But moving around like that’s only gonna make it worse. You’re in a tree well.”
Uncle Ricky’s old warning flooded Johnny’s memory.
Sometimes deep pockets of soft snow formed under the trees’ lower branches, creating traps.
And he had just stumbled into one. Despite the claustrophobic embrace of the snow, Johnny tremored with relief.
The monster didn’t have him. He still had a chance to save his children.
Johnny blinked snow from his eyes, staring up toward the light, and saw a shadow move above him. Uncle Ricky’s hand reached down. “Grab on,” he said.
Johnny’s right arm was pinned beneath his weight, but he strained to free his left arm from the folds of soft frost. Uncle Ricky’s hand was too far to reach. His fingers were short by six inches.
“Dig yourself out some,” Uncle Ricky said. “Not straight up. Dig at an angle.”
“How am I supposed to dig?” Johnny asked, muffled in snow.
“Well, boy, you better figure it out.”
With his one free arm, Johnny tried to sweep the snow away at a slight right angle, mostly using his elbow to dig.
More snow fell from above, but he had air if he could see light, he reminded himself.
And he was making progress—the snow was soft enough for him to plow a path to try to raise himself a bit higher.
Johnny risked more snow in his mouth to martial his strength with a strangled shout. His arm punched out above the surface. He grabbed Uncle Ricky’s hand.
Even through Johnny’s glove, it felt as rough as tree bark.
With the leverage from his sturdy anchor above, Johnny shifted enough to free his right arm.
He couldn’t reach Uncle Ricky with both hands—or was that just a branch?
—but his searching fingers wrapped around something thinner that must have been his ski pole, laid out above him.
With more confidence now, Johnny levered himself up higher on the small slope he’d dug.
He hooked his left elbow around the branch—he was sure it was only a branch now—and grabbed the ski pole with his right hand to stab it farther away from the well.
It pierced a sturdier chunk of snow nearby and held fast.
Johnny pulled himself out of the tree well. Left arm, right arm.
The branch issued a muffled cracking sound under his fuller weight, but not before Johnny pulled his left leg free, dragging the oversized snowshoe with it.
Then his left knee hit a foundation solid enough for him to grab a higher branch, which rained more snow in his face. But he was pulling himself out.
He crawled the rest of the way clear on all fours, panting from effort and fright as he distanced himself from the deadly well.
The mangled pile of snow marked where he had nearly buried himself.
If Johnny had been capable of joy, he would have screamed with triumph.
His bandage had slipped off in his fall, but his good eye compensated for his missing contact lens.
Occasional blurry edges were better than being buried alive.
But now the aftermath. Snow had seeped everywhere: his ears, inside his jacket and boots.
He was free, but he was shivering in a way he hadn’t been before.
His exertion from trying to climb out of the tree well had covered him in sweat, and now his sweat and the frost were a cold layer across his skin.
His puffer jacket hadn’t kept snow out of his collar, so it had crawled down his back.
The boots had done better—at least his toes still felt dry. But that was all.
Johnny’s sob surprised him because he’d thought he was too weary to grieve.
He was exhausted, and he had nearly killed himself.
This was no kind of rescue. As Uncle Ricky’s phantom had told him back at the lodge, Sharise and Imani would have to rescue him.
Fright had sucked his mouth and throat dry despite the snow he had spat out.
But Johnny’s mind was at its sharpest since the road; a gray veil had lifted while he fought for his life.
A search and rescue team could use a helicopter to look for his family.
He could go back to the Jeep. If the Jeep wouldn’t start, would he have to walk to McCloud?
Even so, his chances of being spotted on the road were good.
Cars weren’t frequent on the road adjacent to the lodge, but traffic was steady enough that the street had been plowed.
Johnny wished he’d been thinking clearly when he first woke up at the lodge.
After what he’d witnessed—after what Sharise and Imani had witnessed with him—his only conscious desire had been to go after his daughters to try to help them.
Pure parental instinct, and shock, had led him this far.
If only he had tried to get real help sooner.
Now the situation had changed. Walking back might take him at least half an hour, and that was a generous guess, since a portion of the walk was uphill, although he would be walking away from the mountain.
And he might be farther from the lodge than he believed, since he hadn’t thought to time his walk.
Time had felt like a mystery since he hit his head on the road.
If not for the snow to blunt the impact, he might have died.
That thing had swished his mighty tail and downed him like a flea.
Those sharpened teeth had bared at him like a mouth full of knives.
He thought he’d imagined the smaller version at his grandmother’s window because it moved so quickly, plausibly a trick of his eye.
But now he knew the truth: It didn’t move like a normal animal.
It had swooped away with Tasha like a wraith, moving as if it were swimming.
No other biological creature on the ground moved that way, only water creatures.
A jellyfish scooting quickly to one side.
An octopus propelling itself with those writhing tentacles.
It was as if a shark had come aboard their car and yanked Tasha out to sea.
Tasha.
Johnny’s stomach cramped with the memory of her screams. His teeth locked hard as he fought not to tumble into the swamp of anguish he would never escape for the rest of his days.
But today—right now—his children had asked for his help.
He never should have tried to go after Sharise and Imani alone, but now that he was out here, how could he leave them behind?
Pushing on was his only choice, although they needed an army, not a city boy who’d fallen into a hole and was on his way to hypothermia. He was wet in this fucking snow, and he wouldn’t bet on his chances to live today.
But everyone dies over some shit. Might as well make that shit something worth dying for, his protagonist, Jamil, said in his last draft of La Petite Mort. Wisdom from a horror movie.
But Jamil was right. He wasn’t dead yet, at least. He was the only person who knew what had happened, who knew where Sharise and Imani were. He was one of the few people who knew who they were—and he was the only person left who knew them best.
He had to get back to the trail. He had lost more precious time.
Johnny checked his pockets. The rifle rounds were still zipped into place, but the partially zippered pocket where he had been carrying the knife was empty.
He had lost it! He patted the snow around him to see if the knife might have fallen before he was in the tree well, but his hands found nothing solid but stones and twigs.
He wasn’t going to risk getting any closer to the unstable snow at the tree’s base.
He had ammunition, but no gun. He was chasing this monster with nothing but a ski pole.
“Fuck!” Johnny shouted, hoarse.
Quit your bitching and keep moving, dumbass. Uncle Ricky’s voice in his head was only his own. Johnny had known that all along, maybe.
The trail, at least, was still in sight. He hadn’t lost his way.
When Johnny stood up, he was vaguely sore everywhere, but he didn’t feel like he had sprained or broken anything to impede his journey.
The shivering was getting bad, but he could walk.
Maybe adrenaline was masking his pain, but adrenaline might get him where he needed to be.
He said a silent prayer of thanks that his snowshoes were still intact.
Johnny hadn’t given God much thought since Mom died, and never in kind terms. But now he was certain it was a miracle that he was still alive—so he believed in miracles today. And if God could lead him to another miracle, praying was a small price.