Dead of Winter

Chapter 3

The afternoon's snow showers intensified, transforming themselves into a bonafide blizzard. By the time I finished signing my paperwork, they'd turned the world beyond the institute's walls into an extremist's exercise. White land and white sky merged, rendering ground indistinguishable from horizon.  

Wind assailed me the moment the institute's sliding glass doors whooshed open. As I made my way down the wide walkway to the lower parking lot, it slashed at my face, raking its icy claws through my hair. Though the sun wouldn't set for another couple of hours, the pall created by the storm had tricked the sensors on the ornamental lamps that lined the walkway. All winked on in succession at my approach. Swirling and snow and shadows swallowed the white lamp posts, turning their tiny lights into will-o'-the-wisps, tiny golden globes that hovered in midair.

I couldn't believe how much snow had accumulated in such a short time! It wasn't showing signs of stopping soon, either! Over two inches already blanketed the parking lot, turning its parked vehicles into misshapen, slumbering behemoths.

Snow—and ice. 

An obstinate coating, which refused to yield. After hitting the remote starter, opening the 4Runner's door became another exercise. One in complete frustration. The unwanted tug of war with the door handle left me soaked and gasping for breath.

My reward for emerging victorious proved to be yet another unsettling disappointment. The climb into the driver's seat felt like easing myself into a small freezer compartment. To make matters worse, the wipers couldn't cut through the scrim of ice on the windshield.

After cranking the defroster to blast mode, I grabbed the scraper from the glove compartment. Teeth gritted, coat hood yanked low over my brow—thinking the storm would hold off a few hours more, I'd left my hat at home—I exited once more, trading the dead-cold of the SUV's interior for the raging storm. Slip-sliding around the vehicle, I began chipping away at the thin but obstinate layer of ice that coated my ride home like a second skin.

Minutes later, hood askew, frozen hanks of hair dangling like onyx stalactites, I crawled back into the driver's seat. Grateful the heater was working; I wrapped my numb hands around the steering wheel and braced myself.

All I had to do now was go home.

What a ride! The drive back to the converted barn in Bennington took over two hours. Defensive driving didn't even begin to describe the tactics I used to avoid more than one accident (the first of those, a near-miss as I pulled out of the parking lot). Why did storms always bring out the worst in drivers? The slick streets and limited visibility prompting them to take foolish risks with speed and steering they wouldn't have attempted in their wildest dreams.

Night had fallen in earnest by the time I reached Cambridge, NY. With the corresponding drop in temperature, snow turned to sleet. As it pinged off the windshield, the sound of those unrelenting, pebble-like volleys set my teeth on edge.

A few miles down the road, sleet turned back to snow again, making traction even more precarious. Errant wind gusts drove flakes at the windshield in wild bursts, buffeting the SUV with a ferocity that threatened to send it spinning into a ditch.

The sharp angle at which the snow fell, obliterating a decent view of the road, rendered my high beams useless. Low beams and fog lights were no better, both offering a glimpse of what lay less than a few feet ahead of me. Hunched over the wheel, squinting into the gloom, I crawled down Route 22 at roughly the speed of Congress. With only the taillights and wheel tracks of other cars to guide me, I almost missed the turnoff for Bennington.

Once on the old narrow road, familiar ground gave me time to celebrate my recent victory. In just a few days, I'd have Nisha's memories, and with them, the evidence I so desperately needed. Confirmation of a face, a name. Finally, a name! After ten years of not knowing—a decade of false starts and dead leads—I would finally unmask this sinister, shadowy entity, part of me already certain that he was the anonymous "friend" she went to meet at the cabin that weekend in February.

Anonymous, because Nisha refused to tell me his name, what school he attended, or anything about him at all. For all I knew, he could have been someone she met in a dream! His existence was every bit as suspect as their frequent conversations: phone calls that left Nisha glassy-eyed as a sleepwalker. 

Calls that also left no trace. Investigators found no evidence of a single one.

If she'd had another phone—a burner, maybe—it, much like her killer, had vanished into thin air.

I slapped my palm against the steering wheel in utter frustration. That wasn't the confident, sensible Nisha that I'd known. But after our last summer at the lodge, another Nisha had replaced her. A sly, secretive sister, fond of caprice and brimming with perplexities.

'I met him… around,' she'd say, a distracted half-wave denoting the location of their supposed meeting place.

Why wouldn't she tell me?

We shared everything. From toddlerhood, each knew what the other was feeling or thinking, but were incapable of keeping that knowledge secret for very long. Father found our "twin phenomenon" useful, if not hilarious. I'd lost count how many times he'd caught us lying about chores not completed or the mysterious disappearance of change from the blue mason jar on his dresser.

Younger by minutes, though the more skillful of the pair, I knew what my twin sister was thinking, long before the notion solidified in her mind. Sometimes it came as a voice, low but clear, speaking within me. At other times, it manifested in pictures, images so perfect in their detail, I felt as if I could pluck them from my head and hold them in my hands. We were two sides of a mirror, although now, I think Nisha's side seems to have been the older half of that glass. Hers, the liquid reflection of an antique mirror, the darkness within its depths limitless, inscrutable.

With age came skill and with it, even more secrecy. Somehow, Nisha learned how to close off part of her mind, crafting within it a room to which she alone held the key. There could be no other plausible explanation to how she could have hidden him away, kept his identity a secret from me for so long.

After her death, authorities found no trace of Nisha's mystery date at the cabin. No car, clothing, not even a set of footprints. His vanishing, magician-worthy, left in its wake a host of unanswered questions.

Now, knowing I was mere hours away from unveiling that hidden room, I could almost feel the weight of its tarnished brass key in my hand, hear each tumbler of the past protesting as it turned inside a rusty lock.

It came out of nowhere. A blur in my peripheral vision. At first, I wanted to dismiss it as debris flying with the snow, but a large shape bounded into the road. Startled, not thinking, I slammed my boot against the floor. 

Brakes locked. The SUV skidded against the slick surface. As it did, its front tires bumped over something solid.

Thud!

The 4Runner fishtailed, one of its back tires finishing what the front had started. The second jolt lifted me out of my seat, bashing my head against the roof before the SUV juddered to a halt. Shaken, heart jack hammering with a force I could feel in my throat, I collapsed back against the bucket seat. 

With no streetlights and this section of highway untraveled, I didn't know what I'd hit. Something smaller than a deer, I was certain. A deer wouldn't be out tonight, anyway. It would seek shelter, hunker down with its herd. I pushed my hair out of my eyes, trying to collect my thoughts. No, it couldn't be a deer. They didn't move like whatever this was. Although I hadn't had time to register exactly what I'd seen, I could have sworn its limbs were much longer than a deer's legs. 

And, unlike a deer, this crawled on all fours.

Outside, a pained cry pierced the darkness, a feral yowl unlike anything I had ever heard before. Fear shivered through me, followed on its heels by a terrible sense of guilt. When it yowled again, there was no mistaking the sound. 

Oh, God! By allowing my mind to drift, driving on autopilot, I'd accidentally hit someone's dog!

I threw off my seat belt and jumped out of the SUV, leaving it to idle in the road.