Paul Curtin - Gray Snow

“Nobody’s coming to kill us,” he said.

“And what if he’s right about all that’s going on?”

“He’s not.”

“Says who? You? You haven’t seen it. You haven’t seen the people eating each other out there.”

“He never said they were eating each other.”

“But you don’t know that.”

“You’re being ridiculous. Do you think there’s some biker gang who’s just going to stroll across the hills of Nowhereland, Pennsylvania and attack us? Come on. We have greater concerns inside our own house than outside.”

She wouldn’t hear it though. She took an hour to fall asleep and even then, she wouldn’t stop clinging to him. When her grip finally loosened, he scuttled out of his sleeping bag. He tiptoed toward the fireplace, grabbed a log from the woodpile, and placed it on top of the coals. The strands of bark and wood fibers burned like fine hairs. The log caught fire, and he sat mesmerized as the flames licked it over and consumed it.

“Thanks for feeding the fire,” a voice came from behind him, hushed but strong.

Michael jumped and twisted around. Travers snored from deep in his throat, and Kelly rolled to the side to get more comfortable on her pillow. Michael’s vision, with a deep purple spot in the middle from looking at the fire, swept over the darkness behind him but saw nothing.

“Relax,” the voice said.

He recognized it that time. “Where are you?”

Sean hushed him. The faint outline of his body, back-lit by a candle in the kitchen, came into focus. The details of the room eventually cleared, allowing Michael to walk without stepping on someone. He tiptoed around the couch, through the kitchen door, and into the orange dim glow of a candle atop the kitchen counter. Sean, his head turned toward Travers sleeping on the couch, looked at Michael.

“Jesus, Sean,” he whispered, “you scared the shit out of me.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Shit?”

“No, saying that name like that.”

“Why do you care? You don’t believe anymore.”

“Just don’t say it.”

“Fine.”

The candle flickered, the shadows dancing on the kitchen walls. “What’re you doing up?” Michael said.

“I could ask the same question.”

“Don’t be difficult.”

“Can’t sleep.”

“Me neither.”

The door to the reserves was cracked open. Sean always made sure it was closed, which meant he had gone down into it. He refocused on Sean. Although the shadows concealed many of his features, the light caught the wrinkles and dark color under his eyes. Lack of sleep can do awful things to a man’s mind. “When’s the last time you had a good night’s rest?”

Sean stared at him. “I thought I told you to stop asking me that.”

“Listen, I know you don’t give a rat’s ass what I think. Or about me for that matter. But I care, all right? I don’t like you, but I care.”

He chuckled low. “Well, I don’t like you either.”

“Fair enough. My wife doesn’t like me too sometimes.”

They both smiled. Sean said, “I don’t remember the last time I slept for more than an hour.”

“You could take a sleeping pill.”

“Can’t do that now.”

“Why not?”

The distinctive sound of someone shifting their weight carried into the room. Sean jerked his head around to watch the couch. “Doesn’t matter.” He turned. “Listen, I really am sorry for earlier at dinner.”

“Just get some sleep, Sean.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

“You’ll be dead if you don’t sleep.”

“Just the opposite, Mike,” he said and sat in an old wooden chair near them.

Michael had nothing more to say. He walked back to his wife and slithered into his sleeping bag. As he was about to close his eyes, he looked across the room. For a moment, the fire reflected in the stranger’s eyes, beady and distant, before he shut them. A dreamy fog was filling Michael’s mind, and he thought nothing of it.

Nothing of the fact that Travers had been snoring only a moment earlier.

MICHAEL CRUISED INTO the kitchen, checking over his shoulder, and leaned against the kitchen island. Elise, mashing the last of the potatoes, watched him. “We need to talk,” he said.

“I’m a little busy making dinner right now.”

“Have you seen him the last hour?”

Elise stuck her finger in the potatoes, pulled up a whipped dollop, and stuck it in her mouth. “Perfect.”

“Elise, you seen Sean?”

“Why?”

She had arranged a set of eight plates and filled them with canned chicken and green beans. One already sat piled high with lumpier mashed potatoes.

“I just saw him a few minutes ago muttering to himself. Nobody else around.”

“Let me handle it.”

“What is it with you and Sean telling me to butt out?”

“Because you do more harm than good.”

She plopped a spoonful of potatoes onto each plate in a clockwise pattern.

Michael sighed and raised his hands in surrender. “Fine.” He stuck his finger into the potatoes on one plate and scooped up a bit. Elise, setting a dish back on the stove, turned as he brought the food toward his mouth. “Stop,” she yelled.

His jaw drew slack, frozen midmotion. “What?”

“Which plate did you take that from?”

“Who cares? That one’ll be mine.”

“Which one?”

“Why’re you being weird about this?”

She ripped a towel hanging over the handle of the oven, reached over the counter, and grabbed his wrist. He tried pulling back, but she held it harder and pulled it toward herself. She wiped the potatoes off and tossed the towel on the counter behind her. She then leaned in toward her brother and whispered, “I spiked Sean’s potatoes.”

“You what?”

“He won’t take the sleeping pills even with Travers leaving tonight—says he needs one more night to make sure he doesn’t come back—and it’s the only thing that will make him sleep, so I crushed it up and whipped them in.”

A smile. That was the devilish little sister he hadn’t seen in a while. “You sneaky little shit.”

“It’s the only way.”

“Pills in the food,” Michael said. “That. Is. Genius.”

Someone flashed in his peripheral, almost as if he or she had materialized. He could tell it was a man from the height and shape of his blurry outline, but he didn’t want to turn, imagining Sean there listening to them. He winced and turned his head.

Travers stood in the doorframe. “I didn’t want to interrupt,” he said.

Michael had no idea how long he had been standing there. They stared at one another, Michael examining Travers’s eyes, searching for any hint of what he might have heard. Nothing.

Travers glanced at the two of them. “I heard someone yell, is all.”

Elise put on the best fake smile he had ever seen. “Michael was trying to steal food before dinner,” she said, chuckling a little. A good touch.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I thought you may have burned yourself. My mistake.”

Michael wanted to ask what he had heard, but he couldn’t back up from the line of questioning if he were to start.

“Do y’all need help with bringing dinner out to everyone?” he asked.

“I think we have it. You can just relax by the fire,” Elise said.

“Well, everyone’s gathered ‘round, ‘cept Sean, ma’am. I heard him upstairs though.”

“I’ll call for him.”

Travers nodded and left. As soon as he went out of sight, Michael looked back at his sister.

“He knows,” she said.