Dead of Winter

Chapter 10

Shivering against the knife-like wind, I ducked back inside to grab a coat. While I busied myself with more shoveling and sweeping, Mia bundled Charlie into the car.

Rory followed them out not long after. Since he wouldn't return until after dark, he urged me to keep all the doors and windows locked, just in case our unwanted visitor returned. He didn't need to tell me twice.

With the three of them gone and Ferrilyn still asleep, the house seemed too cavernous, too silent. The enormity of its stillness adhered to me like a wet shirt, clammy and unwholesome. Determined to shrug off the feeling, I tidied away the breakfast dishes, cleaned the kitchen, then gathered a load of laundry to take to the basement.

Nothing helped; no matter how hard I tried to focus on the tasks at hand, my mind, like a carousel, spiriting away from the present, always circled back to the inexplicable. Events for which I had no reasonable explanations. Rory's singular insight—a bear—just added to my utter confusion and now rising anxiety. Although a bear might smell as fetid as something left dead by the side of the road, black bears weren't prone to such fierce attacks.

And when injured, they didn't bleed blue.

Even more disturbing was the image of Nisha that surged to the forefront whenever those ubiquitous thoughts resurfaced. As if reopening her investigation had set something inevitable as karma in motion. Inevitable and just as inescapable. Each incident, building upon the next, became a murky presage from the past.

"Ridiculous!" I slammed the washer door, but as I stomped back to the kitchen, wondered about more straightforward influences. What if Nisha's killer had been someone close to the investigation, someone we knew. And now, having learned of my involvement, wanted to stop me? He could have staked out the house and followed me to Saratoga. Then, awaiting my return, staged both the incident on the road and Taryn's attack. The fetid tarry-like substance left behind, a possible toxic substance, could account for Taryn's off-the-chart behavior.

To be sure, however, I'd need a sample.

I ran downstairs, grabbed a pair of gloves and a specimen container from a stash I kept on one of the basement shelves. After adding a trowel knife to my supplies, I threw on my coat and stepped outside. Holding my breath, I cast a wary glance at the snow-bare pine, which now stood erect beneath the glare of a near-noonday sun. Although shadows clustered beneath its canopy, no foreign shapes, eerie or otherwise, populated its upper branches. Relieved, convinced no stalker would be desperate enough to scale a pine in winter, even for nefarious purposes, I hurried across the drive.

Cold bit into me as I scrambled over the snowbank, hand over hand. In my haste to collect a sample, I'd forgotten my gloves and now regretted that decision. By the time I spotted the substance's landing spot—a divot in knee-deep snow—my fingers felt like blocks of ice.

When another scan of the nearest boughs revealed nothing untoward, I began wading over to it, unable to shake the sensation of being watched from high above. Stop being so silly; it's just a bird or squirrel, I told myself, though I heard no bird song and could see no tracks in the snow.

Hands trembling, I unscrewed the top of the container and set it beside me. At least the substance hadn't frozen. The first stab of the trowel knife returned a generous glob of the malodorous stuff. As I began transferring it into the specimen cup, a cloud swallowed the sun. The wind rose, spraying me with loose crystals and dislodging more snow caps from trees further inside the thicket, which plummeted in thick curtains, cracking small branches before landing with heavy plop-plop-thuds all about.

I'd just finished when, from the shadowed depths of the thicket, I heard someone call my name.

Taryn? The voice sounded like hers, but that was impossible! She lay miles away in the hospital.

"I know you're not Taryn and I know you've been watching me!" Cup in hand, I shot up, whacking my head on a low-hanging bough.

Staggering back, I fought for purchase in the deep drifts. My ankle caught something hard, and I fell, landing flat on my back with a loud grunt.

The trees shuddered again, but through the bare-bone c***k of their limbs, another sound issued forth: an angry feral hiss.

Clutching the still-open container. I scrambled up, pulling my foot out of one of my boots.

A shape loomed through the tree trunks. Even from a distance, it appeared massive, tall beyond belief.

"The police know you've been watching me, too!" I screamed, hoping the lie would be enough. With a final warning for him to f**k off, I launched myself through the snow, losing a wet sock and almost dumping all of the evidence from my cup.

Undeterred, he followed, hissing and clicking what sounded like multiple knives. One blade caught the back of my coat as I reached the large snowbank. Heedless of the sick tearing sound and hollow poof that peppered my wake with a downy storm, I vaulted over the bank.

As I landed in the drive, the sun returned with a vengeance, causing my would-be attacker's sibilant hisses to rise to a painful shrieking crescendo. Pausing when I'd reached the safety of the basement, I turned back, hoping to spot my assailant.

Except for the hollows made by my body, the snow near the pines remained undisturbed. My would-be attacker was no longer visible.

Shaken, I bolted the door then limped over to the shelves for another specimen cup cap. In my race to safety, I'd lost almost half the sample, but still hoped that there'd be enough to undergo analysis.

"Is that you, Amara?" Ferrilyn's head appeared at the top of the stairs. When she saw the hair plastered to my forehead, the torn coat, and one near-frostbitten foot, her eyes grew saucer wide. "Oh, my God! I knew I heard something outside just now." She clattered down the stairs. "What happened? Are you alright?"

"I think our unwanted guest paid us a return visit. This time, he left us a parting gift. Mia found it outside this morning, near the place where he attacked Taryn." Sinking down on a riser, I proffered her the cup.

"What the hell?" Squinting at the contents, she turned the vial in her hand. "Looks like something you'd scrape off the bottom of a bong. Do you think he used this on Taryn?"

"It's possible, although I don't think Taryn was his intended victim."

"Oh, Amara, no, you can't mean..." recoiling, she gawped at me.

"It's possible that Nisha's killer has been shadowing me." Pulling my phone from my back pocket, I punched three numbers on its screen. "It's time to put an end to this."

In silence, we waited on the landing for the police.