Dan Simmons - A Winter Haunting

“Not yours?” he said, pausing to hitch up the chafing backpack straps.

“Definitely not mine,” Clare said in that offhand tone of casual cruelty that somehow seemed strangely attractive to him then—cosmopolitan, perhaps.

But Dale had wondered about that topography of a lifetime later, both before and after Clare and the sure grasp of his sanity had left him. Recently, it had amused him to think that the ribbon of his life might be twisted in a mad Möbius loop, curling back on and through itself, inside becoming outside, losing entire dimensions even while acquiring some impossible continuity.

Christmas had been on a Tuesday this year. Dale half expected to be arrested or dragged off to the loony bin by the weekend, but although Deputy Presser showed up to check on him—to make sure that he hadn’t left—on Saturday and Sheriff McKown came by late on Sunday, no one grabbed him and clasped him in handcuffs or strapped him into a straitjacket.

Both times Dale saw a sheriff’s car coming up the snowy drive, he was sure it was C.J. Congden. What would he do if it was? He had no idea. Each time the car drew close enough to be identified, Dale felt something like a sense of disappointment that it wasn’t Congden.

“How are you doing out here, Professor?” asked Sheriff McKown on Sunday afternoon. Dale had just been leaving for a walk, and the sheriff walked down to where Dale had paused near the large gasoline tank behind the generator shed. “Everything all right?” asked the sheriff.

Dale nodded.

“This amount of snow is something after all these warm, dry winters, huh?”

Dale asked, “Have you found the five skinheads?”

The sheriff had removed his Stetson and rubbed his fingers around the brim in a motion that reminded Dale of one of C.J. Congden’s habits. Perhaps all cops with cowboy hats did that. “Nope,” he said. “Their families haven’t heard from them, either. But there is one piece of interesting news.”

Dale waited.

“We have an old bachelor farmer who lives north of you who’s gone missing,” said McKown. “Bebe Larson. Him and his old Chevy Suburban disappeared on the day before Christmas Eve.”

“Do you think I killed him as well as the skinheads?” asked Dale.

McKown put his Stetson on slowly. “Actually, I was thinking that maybe Mr. Larson ran into your friends on County Six and they might have borrowed his truck and maybe him as well.”

“You think those boys are capable of kidnapping?” said Dale.

“I think Lester Bonheur is capable of anything,” McKown said flatly. “And the others are just along for the ride.”

Dale shrugged. “I’d like to go into Oak Hill sometime this week to get some provisions,” he said, amusing himself at the use of the word “provisions.” Pretty soon he’d be talking like one of his mountain man characters.

“That’d be fine,” said Sheriff McKown. “I trust that you’ll be coming back here until we get all of this other stuff cleared up.”

“Does all this other stuff include the return of my property, Sheriff? The over-and-under, I mean.”

McKown rubbed his chin. “I think we’d better hang on to that weapon until we find those boys, Professor Stewart.” The small man hesitated a moment. “Have you been taking the Prozac?”

“Yes,” lied Dale.

“The other prescription stuff too?”

“I haven’t had to,” Dale said. “I’ve been sleeping like a baby.” Like the dead .

“Have you talked to this Dr. Williams in Missoula again?”

“I haven’t been away from The. . . from the farm,” said Dale. “No phone.”

“Well, maybe you can talk to her when you come into Oak Hill.”

“Maybe,” agreed Dale.

When the sheriff got back in his vehicle, Dale leaned over and tapped on the driver’s-side window. The glass whined down. “Sheriff,” said Dale, “are you and your deputies going to be checking on me every day?”

“Well, we’re concerned about you, sir. And there’s this outstanding issue of the false report.”

Dale said nothing. Snow was falling gently on his bare head and eyelashes.

“But why don’t you give me a call when you’re in Oak Hill this week, just tell us when you’re heading back here. Then we’ll drop by sometime later in the week and make sure everything’s all right here.” When Dale just nodded, McKown said, “Well, if I don’t see you before Tuesday, you have a Happy New Year, Professor Stewart.”

Dale stood back and watched as the sheriff’s car turned around in the quickly falling snow and headed down the snowy lane. He noticed that the car’s wheels rolled over the fresh paw prints in the snow as the sheriff drove away.

That afternoon Dale changed his mind about buying plastic sheeting for the second floor and nailed up two sheets to cover the opening. The thin cotton did almost nothing to keep the cold air from flowing down the staircase, but the barrier offered some psychological relief.

Dale worked on his novel all the rest of that afternoon and evening, forgetting to eat, forgetting to pause even to go to the bathroom. The house grew quite cold as night approached, but Dale was lost in the hot summer days of his childhood and did not notice. He was almost three hundred pages into the novel by then, and although no distinct plot had emerged, a tapestry had been woven of leafy summer days, of the Bike Patrol kids wandering free around Elm Haven and the surrounding fields and woods during the long summer days and evenings, of endless hardball games on the dusty high school ball field and wild games of hide-and-seek in the deep woods near the Calvary Cemetery. Dale wrote about the Bootleggers’ Cave—not deciding whether his band of friends would find it or not—and he wrote about friendship itself, about the friendship of eleven-year-old boys in those distant, intense days of dying innocence.

When he looked up from the ThinkPad, it was after midnight. His computer and desk lamp were the only lights on in the house. A cold draft curled through the Old Man’s study. Dale saved his book to hard disk and floppy disk, checked DOS for any phantom messages—there were none—and walked through the dark house to the kitchen to make some soup before turning in.

“Dale.” The whisper was so soft as to be almost indistinguishable from the hiss of the hot water heater or the rough purr of the furnace waiting to light again. “Dale.” It was coming from the top of the darkened staircase.

No, not darkened. There was a light on the second floor, up there behind the taut, white wall of sheet. Seeking out no weapon, not even thinking about finding the baseball bat or crowbar, Dale climbed the cold stairs.

The light was only a dim glow from the front bedroom. The candle again . A shadow moved between the bedroom door and the wall of translucent white sheet. Dale watched as the center of the sheet seemed to ripple in a stronger breeze, then bulged ever so slightly outward. He moved to the top step and leaned closer. Six inches from his face, the sheet took on the definite impression of a nose, a brow, eye sockets, full lips.

Michelle or Clare?

Before he could find a resemblance, the bulge receded, but another disturbance moved the thin cotton toward him lower down. Three ripples, then five. Fingers. Dale looked down and could see the perfect shape of a woman’s hand, palm toward him, fingers straining against the sheet. He waited for the sheet to rip free of the nails. When it did not, he moved his own left hand to within an inch of that slowly moving white hand in the cloth. Less than an inch. His fingertips were millimeters away from touching the pressing fingertips through the sheet.

“No,” whispered Dale. He turned and went slowly downstairs. When he looked up the staircase again, the glow was gone and the sheet was as flat and vertical as the edge of some ageless glacier. He went into the kitchen and made some tomato soup, using the last of his milk to mix half-and-half with water in the can just as his mother had shown him when he was ten years old.