Bill Pronzini - Shackles

Screen door. I leaned up on my knees and managed to take a grip on the handle with fingers that were stiff and had almost no feeling left. Damn thing was locked on the inside. I yanked, yanked again, yanked a third time in a kind of dull frenzy. The hook-and-eye fastening ripped loose and the door came shimmying open in my hand. I batted it aside, got my body between it and the inside door. That was locked, too, but it had a pane of glass in its center. I clawed up the screen door until I was standing, but my left leg buckled when I tried to put weight on it and I nearly went down again. Balanced on one foot, hanging on to the screen door with my left hand, I used my right elbow to break the glass and punch out shards. Reached in, found the locking bolt, threw it. And twisted the knob and tried to walk in and sprawled through on hands and knees instead.

The wind made a whimpering noise, or maybe it was me. I crawled around in a half-circle, managed to shove the door shut again. Flakes of wind-hurled snow whipped in through the broken window, swirling past me into a shadowed areaway that opened into what appeared to be a kitchen. I lifted onto my knees, got my back against one of the areaway walls, and used my shoulders and my right leg to stand erect. The left leg still wouldn’t work; I had to drag it, hobbling on the right one and clutching the wall, to get into the kitchen.

Not much light in there, because the windows over the sink were shuttered. But I could make out a small refrigerator, a table and chairs, a propane stove, some cupboards and a standing cabinet, a dark alcove that was probably used as a larder. An open doorway on the far side led to the other rooms: a big living area with dust covers over the furniture, so that they had a lumpish ghostly look in the gloom, and a single bedroom and bath. That was all. The place smelled of winter cold and damp but not of must or decay. Closed up for a while, but not much longer than late last fall. Somebody’s warm-weather retreat.

I sank onto a couch-shaped piece of furniture in the main room by necessity, not by choice. I just could not stand up any longer. Little shivers and slivers of chill worked through me, and my hands burned and quivered, and my throat was so sore I could barely swallow. Sick. Exhausted. Badly used. But still alive. Can’t kill me, by God, not this way either.

I didn’t sit there long-just long enough for a little feeling and strength to seep back into my limbs. The icy wetness of my clothing, the chill in the room, and the overhanging threat of pneumonia prodded me up again. Get out of these wet things, get into something dry and warm, and do it quickly.

My left leg gave out again halfway across the room. I cursed it and hammered at it with my fists, dragged it under me, dragged myself up. And this time it supported enough of my weight so that I could hobble through into the bedroom.

The double bed had been stripped bare, but when I opened a big oak wardrobe I found blankets, sheets, pillows on an upper shelf. Some items of clothing also hung in there, both a man’s and a woman’s. I gave a heavy plaid lumberman’s shirt a quick inspection; it seemed large enough to fit me. On the floor in there were half a dozen pairs of shoes and boots, and a pair of men’s slipper-socks. I took out the slipper-socks and the heaviest of the blankets, carried them into the bathroom.

Dark in there… and it stayed that way, because when I flipped the light switch nothing happened. Electricity must have been turned off for the winter. I fumbled out of my damp, smelly wrappings, dried myself with a towel hanging from one of the racks. Kept rubbing my body until the skin began to prickle. Then I encased myself in the dry blanket. But still tremors racked me, set my teeth to clacking like old bones being shaken in a box.

It wasn’t until I started to put on the slipper-socks that I realized two toes on my left foot had no feeling. Neither did the tip of the little finger on my left hand. Frostbite? I hurried into the bedroom, over to the window, and opened one of the shutters partway to let in some light. Tiny dead-white patches on the finger and both toes, each surrounded by painful reddened areas. Fine, great. I seemed to remember that the best thing for frostbite was to soak the affected parts in hot water. That sent me back into the bathroom. But when I twisted the hot water tap, not a drop came out of it. The cold water tap was just as dry. The owners must have shut the water off for the winter too.

Was the propane stove in the kitchen hooked up? If so I could melt a pan full of snow, get hot water that way. But it would mean getting dressed, going out in the storm again to collect the snow, and I just wasn’t up to that. I was afraid to reexpose myself to that freezing cold.

I opened the medicine cabinet above the sink, pawed through its contents looking for burn ointment. There wasn’t any, and it was just as well, because now I remembered that you weren’t supposed to put that kind of stuff on frostbite. Keep the bitten areas warm, that was the next best thing to soaking in hot water. The cabinet did yield two other items I needed, though: a bottle of aspirin and a bottle of Dristan cold capsules.

I pulled on the slipper-socks. In the bedroom I rummaged through bureau drawers looking for a pair of gloves that would fit me. Didn’t find any there, but there were some old fur-lined ones in a drawer inside the wardrobe. The glove fit snugly on my left hand but not so snugly that I couldn’t bend the fingers.

I glanced over at the nightstand, where I’d set the bottles of aspirin and cold capsules. I couldn’t swallow any of the medicine dry; even chewed up it would lodge against the fiery constriction in my throat. Maybe there was something to drink in the main room or in the kitchen… preferably something alcoholic. I hated the taste of whiskey, thanks to my old man, but two or three stiff jolts would help warm me. And whiskey was also good for frostbite, because it dilated the blood vessels.

Out to the main room-walking better now, the left leg responding stiffly. No wet bar or liquor cabinet or wheeled bar cart; I even lifted up some of the dust covers to make sure. A tall, shallow redwood cabinet on one wall caught my eye, and not because I thought there might be liquor in it. I moved over to tug at its doors. Locked. Check it later, tomorrow. No time for that kind of work now.

The kitchen again. The cold back there, the wind and random flakes skirling in through the broken window and along the areaway, raised goosebumps on my skin, set up a fresh series of tremors. I drew on the right glove, then made a rapid search of cupboards, the standing cabinet, the refrigerator. Nothing to drink in any of them. I shuffled into the larder, probed among a thin supply of cans and cartons and jars. On a shelf near the bottom, my hand closed around a bottle with a familiar shape.. wine? I took it out to where I could see it more clearly. Wine, all right-a heavy Sonoma County red. Not as good as whiskey but it would have to do.

I got the foil wrapping off the neck. Screw top. Good. I took a tumbler from one of the cupboards, transported it and the wine to the bedroom. Poured the glass full, choked down a third of it with four aspirin and four Dristan capsules, drank the rest in quick little gulps. The heat of it spread immediately, took away some of the chill and eased the trembling. The alcohol went straight to my head: Within seconds I was woozy and I had to sit on the bed.

Lie down, I thought. You’re dead on your feet, it won’t be long before you pass out.

I got up long enough to toss sheets, pillows, other blankets from the wardrobe to the bed, then crawled under the pile, still wearing the slipper-socks and the gloves. Poured wine, drank it, then tugged sheets and blankets around and under me until I was completely covered, wrapped up like a bug in a cocoon. Pretty soon I didn’t feel the cold anymore. The last of the chill gradually went away and then the shaking quit altogether. And at last the warmth and the wine and the medicine combined with exhaustion to drag me down toward unconsciousness.