John Saul: Black Creek Crossing

For Michael—

Here we go again!

T WAS THE COLD THAT AWAKENED HER, A COLD THAT crept first into her sleep, curling its fingers around her subconscious, making her feel as if she were walking through the woods on a winter night. Snow crunched beneath her feet, and all around her the bare limbs of trees glistened in the moonlight, every branch and twig encased in ice that sparkled with a brilliance that seemed to mirror the millions of stars that twinkled in the clear night sky. The path wound through a stand of birches, and she was striding along with the careless exhilaration of a spring afternoon rather than the sense of purposeful urgency that winter nights always brought.

Then, as the cold tightened its grip, the dream began to change.

A cloud scudded across the moon, and the stars began to fade.

The woman instinctively reached to pull her shawl tighter around her throat and shoulders, but all her fingers closed on was the thin flannel of her nightgown.

Why wasn’t she dressed?

She hurried her step, and only now realized she was barefoot and the cold of the snow was numbing her toes.

She quickened her pace again, intent on reaching home before frostbite began eating at her flesh, but now the path seemed to be vanishing from beneath her feet. She paused, peering through the darkness to find the trail once more, but suddenly everything had changed.

The moonlight had disappeared, and the stars were gone.

The trees, every branch glittering with light only a moment ago, were etched against the clouds in a black even darker than the sky itself, and their limbs, which had thrust upward in celebration, now loomed over her, their branches reaching toward her, their twigs turning to skeletal fingers straining to scratch her flesh.

Searching for the vanished path, she looked first in one direction, then in another. But everywhere she looked the snow was unbroken, as if she’d been dropped from nowhere into this dark and freezing wilderness.

Her heart pounded and she felt a wave of panic rise within her.

But why?

There was nothing to be afraid of — she’d been in the woods a hundred times and had never been frightened.

But somehow this night was different than all the others, the darkness blacker, the winter chill colder, cutting through her nightgown as if the flannel weren’t there at all.

As the wave of panic built, a cry rose in her throat. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out but a gasp so faint she herself could barely hear it, and as she tried to find her voice, her throat and chest constricted until she could barely breathe.

She tried to run then, but her feet seemed mired in the snow, as if it had turned into the thick muck of the marsh behind the house.

The cold tightened its grip, and she shivered, her whole body trembling, and once again her fingers reached toward her breast to pull the flannel of her nightgown more closely around her.

The nightgown was gone! She was naked!

And she was no longer alone…

Somewhere in the darkness, somewhere just beyond the limits of her vision, there was something.

Something that was hunting.

Hunting for her.

Another cry rose in her throat, but this time she held it back deliberately, keeping it in check by the sheer force of her own will.

And finally, though the cold was now threatening to numb her body as the snow had numbed her feet, she began to run.

Too late. Everything was closing in on her — the cold was reaching into her bones, the snow was sucking at her feet, the blackness of the night was all but complete. And the trees themselves were reaching out, scratching at her skin, lashing at her arms, her back, her thighs, her breasts.

She sank to her knees, sobbing, and was reaching out — stretching her arms as if in supplication — when a blow from behind struck her.

Searing pain shot through her, and she pitched forward, sprawling out, and at last a scream erupted from her throat.

And she woke up.

For a moment she lay still on her stomach, gasping for breath, trying to shake the last of the nightmare from her still-reeling mind.

The memory of the forest began to fade, and the grasping limbs and twigs of the trees retreated.

The snow was gone, and she felt only the bedsheet beneath her.

Yet the cold still gripped her. And the pain in her back, instead of fading away, was growing worse. She turned her head to one side and the sense that she was not alone was stronger than ever…

I’m asleep, she told herself. I’m still asleep, and this is only part of the nightmare.

She lay perfectly still, trying to will the last vestiges of the dream away, as she had willed herself not to scream while still held in the grip of the nightmare’s thrall.

Then she heard breathing.

Not the slow and steady breathing of a sleeping bedmate, nor the heavy breath of a lover.

No, this was the breath of an exultant beast, panting in rapture over its fallen prey, and as she lay on the bed trying to clear her mind and gather her wits, she knew with growing certainty that it was already too late.

The agony spreading through her body told her the predator had already struck.

Now, still lying facedown, she heard a change in the predator’s breathing.

Felt it gathering itself together.

Felt it coiling, and knew it was readying itself to strike again.

She had to do something, to throw herself off the bed, to escape from the room, to escape from the house.

Escape from the predator.

Her thoughts were cut off as she felt another blow strike her back, another flash of pain sear her body.

Another scream rose in her throat and erupted into the darkness, and she threw herself over, struggling to flee from the bed and the attacker and the room and the house. But as she twisted around, her eyes locked onto the face that loomed above her.

“No!” she cried. But though she’d screamed as loud as she could, her voice was already reduced to a rattling gasp.

Then, above the face, the knife in the man’s hand caught the moonlight, and for a moment that seemed an eternity, it hovered above her, glowing darkly with her own blood.

“No,” she said again, the word this time no more than a weak plea, and as it died in the night, the knife began to descend.

She watched it arc toward her, her eyes following the blade as it sank into her breast. For a second she felt nothing more than the heaviness of the blow as the fist that clutched the knife struck her chest. It wasn’t until the knife was yanked free of her flesh that the searing heat struck her.

“No…” she sighed once more as the knife rose high yet again.

This time she felt nothing as the blade plunged into her, for already her spirit had escaped her body.

For a moment the woman watched from high above, free from the pain, the cold, and the darkness of the night. Again and again the blade flashed down, slashing at the corpse that now lay still upon her bed. But the spirit hovering high above the bed was no longer concerned with the body that had once been hers. Now she thought only of another.

Her daughter… her little girl… the child she could no longer protect.

Too late… too late…

The eternal darkness swallowed her soul as her husband finished his grisly task…

S THE LAST BELL OF THE DAY RANG, ANGEL SULLIVAN sat quietly in her seat in the last row of Mr. English’s room and waited for her classmates to disappear before she even started stowing her books in her backpack. Finally, when even the chatter in the corridor outside the room had died down, she stood up to pull on her jacket.