Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
DESPITE HOW FAST THEY RACED up the Steps of Death, Imani and Sharise missed the four-thirty deadline.
Dad was waiting at the front door. Imani was sure he could see the dead deer and frozen blood in their faces, but he only said, “Looks like you ran the whole way. Come in through the garage and hang up your wet stuff. I’ll unlock the door. ”
His eyes flitted away fast, but Imani saw how pink and glassy they were.
Sharise was too busy complaining about snow in her hair after Imani’s direct hit to the back of her head with a snowball, so she missed how Dad barely looked at them before he closed the door.
A cold spear of dread lodged in Imani’s chest. An impending divorce felt more real every time she saw him.
Maybe that was why she thought of him as Dad instead of Daddy on this trip. She couldn’t cling like a baby anymore. She had to stand on her own.
“We’re probably in trouble,” Sharise said. “But don’t worry: They’ll blame me.”
“No,” Imani said. “I don’t think they even noticed.” Because they have bigger problems.
As they walked toward the side of the house near the cabins, Imani glimpsed the white Jeep still parked outside of the gate.
That was weird. She had made up a scenario about hunters to ease Sharise’s mind, but the Jeep might have something to do with the bloody scene below them.
The two seemingly unrelated facts swam in her imagination as she tried to think of how to link them.
Dad had checked the main house when they arrived, but what about the cabins?
No one in their right mind would go inside the cabin that had been crushed by the fallen branch, which was the closest to the Jeep. But the second cabin could be hiding someone. Instead of staying close to the house, Imani veered beyond their parked rental car toward the leaning shack.
“We’re already late,” Sharise reminded her.
“Just looking,” Imani said. “Doesn’t hurt to be safe.”
“How is that ‘safe’?”
The cabin’s tiny porch buckled beneath Imani’s weight because the wood was so weatherworn.
Imani halfway expected her boot to crash through, but it held long enough for her to peer into the streaked, dirty window.
She couldn’t see anything past the pane.
She tried the rusted doorknob. It rattled, but the cabin’s door was locked. Good.
Relieved, Imani turned around and saw Sharise opening the RAV’s rear door, probably to make sure nothing of hers had been left inside.
Like a snapshot, Imani recalled two gas cans in the shadows at the gas station after she’d pulled them out to rearrange the luggage.
She’d meant to put them back, but the RAV’s rear yawning open made her remember how she’d lined both cans up beside a firewood bin with bright red railings. And left them.
Imani’s lips fell apart. Just like when she discovered the deer’s head—so unexpected and unlikely—she felt like someone in Dad’s movies standing still while everything around them pulled away. The cabins and woods were pulling away. The darkening day was pulling away.
“Hello?” Sharise said. “Let’s go in. I’m freezing, thanks to you.”
Imani’s tears surprised her, but she turned her head to the side and casually wiped her cheek with her shoulder.
She didn’t like crying in front of anyone, but especially Sharise.
Her older sister was much nicer to her since they’d started snowboarding, the wild adventure they shared alone, but Imani had bad memories of Sharise saying, What is it NOW, crybaby?
Loud sounds, sharp smells, bright lights.
So many things bothered Imani that the rest of her family didn’t notice, and suffering in solitude used to reduce her to tears and tantrums. She could blame Sharise for leaving her to load the car by herself, but she’d been glad when Sharise was gone and she could arrange everything the way she pictured it in her head.
Except for those damn gas cans. Dad must have noticed the missing gas cans already.
Maybe that was why he was upset. Imani brushed off her guilt for making a simple mistake. No big deal.
Better than a divorce, anyway.
As promised, the garage’s side door was unlocked, leading to a sterile space with bright fluorescent lights, oddly spotless. The first thing Imani noticed was a single red gas can next to a tall supply cabinet inside the garage door, and her guilt squirmed.
But the tarp over a car drew her attention, and guilt was forgotten. While Sharise took off her jacket and scarf, hanging them neatly on the wooden hooks near the side door, Imani went to the tarp and lifted it to peek underneath. Glossy red paint gleamed at her.
“Holy shit!” Imani said. “It’s a Cadillac convertible!”
The car was vintage, so only the insignia across the grille told her it was a Caddy. Sharise rushed to see, helping her whip off the tarp.
“Forget that Jeep—I’ll take the Caddy,” Sharise said, sliding her hand over the car’s body like it was skin. “Look at this!”
The convertible top was cracked from age exactly like skin, Imani thought.
And why were old cars so ridiculously long and wide?
They were more like boats than cars. This one took up most of the room in the garage, leaving little space for them to squeeze past. As Sharise unfurled the tarp, the sheen and dark red color were pretty, but Imani wouldn’t be caught dead driving such a gaudy car even if she had a license. Driving didn’t seem that great, anyway.
“It’s all yours,” Imani said. “It probably doesn’t even run.”
“I think it does!” Sharise said, giddy. She held up a key ring with a single key she’d swiped from the dashboard. “Finders keepers—right?”
Imani shrugged. She remembered to take off her jacket, helmet, and gloves, but instead of hanging them on hooks beside Sharise’s, she dropped them in a heap near the door.
The sweat sliming her skin from climbing the Steps of Death felt like tiny icicles everywhere.
The garage was cold. She was shivering again.
“You want your jacket to dry, remember?” Sharise reminded her.
Imani sighed, but she hung up her jacket. She had to admit she would be pissed if her jacket was still wet tomorrow. It might not dry no matter what.
She glanced around the cramped garage to see if she could spot a dryer, but the only appliance, right beside the kitchen door, was a large standing freezer turning pee yellow from age, probably once white.
Her eye noticed that the freezer was padlocked, although both the lock and attached hinge were crawling with rust. Interesting. Why would anyone lock a freezer?
“I’m gonna go ask Dad about this Caddy,” Sharise said, brushing past her to climb the two steps to the kitchen door, as if Imani wanted to race her.
Imani lingered behind in the newly emptied space, sinking into her solitude.
It was hard to map a new space with anyone talking around her, so she stayed by herself to get a better feel for this garage.
Superbright fluorescent lights—so ugly and overwhelming—illuminated neatly stacked shelves of lighter fluid and tools.
And that freezer, with the lock so glaring and misplaced, sitting in silence. The plug on the wall behind it was empty. The freezer wasn’t plugged in.
Without thinking about it first, Imani grabbed a crowbar from the tool shelf and stood in front of the freezer, which was as tall as her waist. She tried yanking the top up. Although it gave a couple of inches, the flimsy lock held and wouldn’t allow her to see inside.
Through the door, she heard Mom and Dad ask Sharise how she liked the ski hill.
Imani held her breath, afraid Sharise would narc about the deer’s head, but Sharise only complained about the steps and asked Dad when he would fix the ski lift.
That made Mom and Dad both laugh like, Yeah, right.
Imani closed her eyes with a shiver of relief.
Imani struck at the lock with her crowbar with a snap of strength that surprised her. She’d only been thinking about breaking into the freezer when her arms shot out. Impulse control, her teachers called it. The rusty lock clattered to the floor.
She looked up, expecting Dad to burst in to ask what she was doing, and by the way, why had she left the gas cans behind?
“Dad—I’m so mad you never brought us here before,” Sharise said. “That’s so wrong.”
Imani would have loved to chime in too—she and Sharise had spent a lot of time griping about why it had taken so long for a family trip here, especially after they took up snowboarding—but she was more interested in what was inside the freezer.
She lifted the top, bracing for the stink of rot.
But the only smell, if anything, was clotted dust thick enough to taste.
She must have imagined that she might find the chopped-up deer carcass inside, because she didn’t expect the neat rows of meat packages, piled nearly to the top of the freezer.
The labels on the packages were fading, but she could still see the words McCloud Butcher Stop in a loopy red script.
Inside the graying plastic wrappers, she saw what was left of the butcher’s meat.
If she had chanced upon the freezer fifty years sooner, while the packager was still overrun with maggots and ostentatious stink, she would have gagged.
Vomited, most likely. But now, tamed by time, the contents of the packages looked…
settled. Everything was dry like an archaeological dig instead of a box of decomposing flesh.
Imani was so fascinated that she picked up one of the packages in her gloved hand, light as a feather—the hummingbird’s weight of a shriveled bone—to read the fading expiration date: USE OR FREEZE BY 1-6-80.
“Damn…” Imani whispered.
No one had seen this meat graveyard in—she calculated the number, although math could kiss her ass—nearly fifty years?
“This is craaaaazy…” Imani whispered.