Matt Hults - Anything Can Be Dangerous

Kate, too, scanned their surroundings. “Should we go back?”

Jacob strained to hear into the depths of the forest before answering. He thought he heard a low chanting in the distance, a repetitive cadence that he soon realized was his own heartbeat pounding in his temples.

He looked ahead of them, beyond the bones. Twenty feet away the woods opened onto a ledge overlooking the valley.

“No,” he answered. “Whoever did this did it a long time ago. Let’s just keep moving and put it behind us.”

He adjusted Sadie’s seating on his shoulders and moved forward, not looking up when he passed under the bones. Kate followed.

They cleared the trees, all squinting against the glare of the snow. The valley floor lay below them, looking like a vast frozen lake. On the opposite side, a palisade of pines hid the view of the town. The sun hunkered on the horizon behind them, creating a silhouette that looked like a row of black fangs.

Jacob gazed in disbelief.

Kate gasped even as he looked to his watch.

“Jacob, the sun—”

“I see it,” he croaked.

“But how?” she asked. “It wasn’t even noon when we left.”

“I know.”

Sadie shifted uneasily. “Is it going to get dark now?”

Jacob patted her leg but couldn’t summon the saliva to answer. He looked back into the cave of trees where they emerged from the woods and the shadows that seemed dim beforehand had become impenetrably black.

“Jacob how—” Kate pleaded.

“I don’t know!” he shot back, then muted himself.

He stepped onto an outcrop and stared out at the valley. What had first appeared as a blank white palette now looked streaked with oranges and purples, divided by long, pointed shadows. Their brilliance faded with each passing second.

There was no denying it—they’d walked for less than an hour, yet his watch showed that it was five minutes to sunset.

“Let’s go back,” Kate whispered.

Jacob nodded his agreement and gestured to the left. “This way looks less rocky.”

He started walking, but a crisp noise suddenly cut through the stillness and his right leg sank up to his crotch. He buckled over, straining every muscle in his back to keep Sadie from tumbling off his shoulders.

“Shit,” he yelped.

Sadie screamed. Her small hands clutched his head.

“Hon—” Kate started, but Jacob cut her off with a shout.

“Stay back! I can’t feel anything underneath. I think we’re on a snow shelf or something. The way this land slopes away… Christ, we could be fifty feet off the ground.”

“Can you get back up?”

“I don’t know.”

He tried to push up with his left hand and it disappeared into the snow up to his elbow.

“Damn,” he cried. “Quick, take Sadie and back away slowly.”

Kate moved forward, easing her weight down with each step. The snow crunched underfoot. Below them, phantom sounds issued from something unseen, something Jacob knew could’ve only been hunks of packed snow breaking loose and dropping to the rocks.

“Don’t come any closer,” he shouted.

Kate froze, her arms outstretched. Sadie mewed at the force of his voice.

“It’s okay, baby,” Kate said. “Just hang on.”

Jacob sank another inch as he maneuvered Sadie off his shoulders with his free hand, struggling to keep her balanced.

“Momma!”

“I’m right here,” Kate said, her voice miraculously calm. “Just move slow and come to me.”

Jacob reached.

Sadie reached.

Kate clutched the girl’s hand.

And the shelf collapsed.

Jacob saw the crack open in the snow inches from his wife’s boots, giving them enough time to lock eyes before he and Sadie plunged six feet, dropping with the slow motion fluidity of a Hollywood special effect.

Sadie’s hand pulled away, leaving her empty mitten in Kate’s grasp.

Jacob saw the scream form on his wife’s lips, her cold-blanched face creasing in horror. But then the section she stood on followed suit, breaking off before the cry left her mouth.

The two massive slabs of snow shattered into a thousand hard fragments, engulfing them in an avalanche. The world went black. Jacob’s ears filled with a rumbling white noise. He felt Sadie yanked from his hands as the flow engulfed them, tumbling him end over end, contorting his body regardless of all efforts to curl into a ball.

With each roll and twist he expected a fist of granite to punch a hole in his ribcage or smash open his skull. But then he came to a halt in mid-summersault, suspended upside down in the snow.

He tried to move. His muscles flexed, straining each fiber, but the snow had packed tight around his body, immobilizing him in a frosty embrace.

Panic bit into his senses. He imagined Sadie trapped somewhere nearby, buried alive. The back of his throat seared with pain as he fought to scream through a mouthful of snow.

Something slammed into his back.

A hand grabbed his coat.

“Jacob,” Kate cried.

He felt the pressing weight of the snow shoved aside, and her shouts grew louder. She hauled him free just as his lungs seemed ready to explode.

He gasped for air, ignoring the frigid sting of it as he drew in breath after breath.

Kate helped him up, wiping snow from his face, and he exhaled a great sigh of relief when he saw Sadie standing next to her. The young girl’s eyes glistened but looked bright and alert.

“Are you all right?” Kate asked between sobs. “Is anything broken?”

Jacob shook his head. He looked up, shocked to find the ledge that they’d fallen from now towering three stories above them.

“I thought I lost you,” he said to his wife.

“Ditto,” she replied.

He reached out and hugged them, clinging to his wife and daughter as his own emotions evolved into tears. The last rays of sunlight bled out of the valley as he gazed over his wife’s shoulder, leaving the sky a deep shade of crimson.

When he finally released them, Kate regarded him through wet eyes. A faint grin dimpled her fiery red cheeks.

“Now the hard part, right?”

Runny nose. Freezing ears. Chapped lips.

None of the other pains compared to the ache in Jacob’s feet as he plowed onward through the dark.

Three hundred yards from the cliff the wind picked up, coming out of the north.

“Cover your face,” Jacob said to Sadie as another gust hit them. He held up one hand to shield his own face from the cold, and the suede material of his driving gloves felt like stiff rawhide on his skin.

With the sun gone, the valley had turned into a shimmering white sheet that glowed in the starlight. The forest had before a black ring around them, with the only sounds coming from their feet and the morose howl of the wind.

Jacob was trying to think of something to say when his wife beat him to it.

“Look,” Kate cried. She pointed through the flying snow.

Jacob peered past her, making out five figures moving toward them. He refused to believe his own eyes at first, worried the wind was playing a trick on them, but when the black shapes moved closer he knew he wasn’t imagining it.

“I’ll be damned,” Jacob said.

Both he and Kate waved their arms over their heads, signaling the newcomers. Jacob counted five people, their features lost in the dark. The shape in the lead waved once in reply.

Jacob pushed on to meet them, a fresh surge of hope charging his spirit.

“Are we glad to see you,” he said once they’d neared within speaking distance.

The men remained silent as they approached. All five appeared to be American Indians, clad in camouflage snow pants and jackets with bright orange hunting vests. Rather than rifles or shotguns, however, they sported more traditional bows and arrows that looked handmade.