Isaac sucked in a shuddery breath, pressing his forehead to the cold glass. His heart sped up again as he was breathing in tiny gasps. His throat felt as if it was closing up and his lips went dry. It couldn't be real-had to still be a dream-but if he was dreaming, how could he feel the damp, icy cold of the window against his skin? He'd had to pee since he had climbed out of bed and now the urge became terrible.
"Jake," he whispered, afraid that somehow they would hear him.
"Whaaaat?" his brother said, groaning, without turning over in bed.
Isaac began to tremble. He'd thought they might vanish completely but they were still out there. His breath frosted the glass and he felt like crying.
"There are monsters in the yard."
"Go to bed, Isaac. There's no such thing as monsters."
His eyes welled with tears. Yes, there are, he wanted to say. But he knew the tone in Jake's voice. Sometimes they were best friends-they did everything together-and sometimes Jake treated him like they were worst enemies, like everything Isaac said or did, even breathing the same air, was stupid and babyish. Isaac wasn't stupid and he wasn't a baby anymore and when Jake treated him that way he usually just gave it right back to him … but it hurt so much. Tonight, none of that mattered. Tonight, Jake had to listen.
"Come look," Isaac said.
"Go to bed."
"Jake-"
"I'm not kidding, Ike. I already told you. No monsters. No faces at the stupid window. You heard a branch or just the snow hitting the glass. Go to sleep or I swear to God I'm going to pound you."
Isaac thought about screaming, considered going across the hall to wake Miri. He could go to his mother's room but Niko was there and it made him nervous, thinking about bothering them. And the longer he looked out the window, watching those figures slipping through the storm, the more he thought they weren't just dancing … they were playing. There were four of them now, and if they were playing, maybe they weren't monsters after all. Not really.
The snow had built up on the screen so much that he could not see very well and the frost of his breath on the glass had made it worse. Isaac pulled back and wiped at the condensation, then bent to peer outside again.
They were gone.
He blinked and looked again, craning his neck left and right to see if they had gone into a neighbor's yard. It surprised him to realize that he was a little sad, and he unlocked the window and forced it open. The storm had swelled the frame and he had to work at it, the wood squealing a little.
"Ike, what the hell?" Jake murmured. "Close the damn window."
Isaac ignored him, reached out and tapped some of the snow off the screen. He leaned on the windowsill and pressed his face against the screen as the wind gusted past him and the frigid cold invaded his bedroom. The sheer blue curtains billowed to either side but he ignored them, scanning the night and the storm.
"Goddammit!" Jake snapped. Isaac heard him whip back his covers and climb out of bed, heard him grunting as he stormed across the short distance between them. "It's freezing out there!"
"Well, duh," Isaac said, still searching the yards on either side and across the street, forcing the screen a little, trying to get a better look around. "It's a freakin' blizzard."
"Isaac," Jake said, his voice full of menace.
Jake grabbed his brother's arm. Isaac tugged uselessly at his grip, turning toward him as that familiar fraternal anger blazed up.
"Let go!"
"You had a bad dream," Jake insisted. "And if you saw anything outside that wasn't just your imagination, it was Mr. Pappas walking his dog. Nobody else would be walking around out there in the middle of the night."
"It wasn't Mr. Pappas," Isaac said softly, glaring at him.
"Then who-" Jake began, but his words cut off.
His gaze had shifted. Isaac saw that Jake wasn't looking at him anymore but staring past him, at the window, and the terror blooming on his face made Isaac spin toward the window just in time to see the blue-white figures rushing through the storm, long arms reaching forward, long fingers and hands and forearms sliding through the screen as if it weren't there at all, sifting through in a spray of ice crystals and shadows.
Frozen fingers clutched at him, cut his skin, turned his bones to rigid ice, and then they pulled. Isaac hit the screen face-first, his arms coming after. His back scraped the underside of the open window and he flailed his arms, trying to grab hold. A hand grabbed his ankle and only then did he hear the screaming. His own voice, and his brother's.
The tug on his ankle lasted only a moment, long enough for him to be twisted around, to glance back inside his room and see Jake grasping at empty air, screaming his name.
And then he was falling.
Allie burst into Jake and Isaac's room with Niko and Miri only steps behind. She staggered to a halt, staring at the horrid tableau before her. Jake stood beside the window, tears in his eyes and a scream dying on his lips. The window was open but the screen had fallen out. Snow whipped into the room, not much but enough that she could see prints on the carpet where Isaac had been standing moments before. The snow was already melting, the prints disappearing.
"Oh my god," she heard Niko say behind her.
Then she heard herself shrieking the same words as she rushed to the window and looked out, praying she would not see the thing she feared most. But there Isaac lay, twenty-five feet below and not moving.
Jake said something but Allie could not hear him. She turned and bolted for the door, felt Niko try to take her arm and heard his soothing voice but tore free of him and ran out and down the stairs. She flung the front door open, hearing their footfalls behind her but not slowing, not waiting. Barefoot, bare-legged, she plunged into the knee-deep snow and forged a path to the place where Isaac had fallen, telling herself with every step that the snow had broken his fall, that it was so deep and soft it would have been a gentle landing.
The window screen stuck out of the snow like a cleaver jutting from a butcher's block.
Numb, she came upon Isaac and saw right away that it had not been a gentle landing. Her baby boy had broken when he fell. His left leg and his neck were turned at impossible angles. His face was turned up toward her and she saw the panic and fear etched there and felt a cry of grief rip her up inside as it forced its way from her lips.
She dropped into the snow and picked him up, cradling him as she had done on so many nights when he had a fever as an infant. Isaac had been a sickly boy.
"Mom, please!" Jake pleaded behind her. "Come back inside! The ice men will get you! Please!"
Allie barely heard him.
Then Niko was there, one hand on her shoulder, and she glanced back and saw Jake and beautiful Miri standing together in the open doorway, crying and shivering, each also broken in his own way. Allie laid her head back against Niko's chest and released a sob that became a wail.
"We need help," Niko said. "I hear a plow over on Salem Street. The phones aren't working and I can't get a signal on my cell. I'm going to run and flag the guy down. He'll have a radio. He'll … "
The words trailed off. Allie had heard them but wasn't listening, didn't care, couldn't feel anything other than the grief that tore and gnawed and ripped at the cavity inside her chest where her heart had been.
Niko ran back into the house and she heard him talking quickly with Jake and Miri, heard something about shoes and pants and frostbite. Niko rushed out again moments or full minutes later, she could not be sure. Jake called to her, still begging her to come inside.
But Allie could only sit and watch the snow begin to accumulate in the hollows of Isaac's eyes. The wind had dropped to almost nothing, turning the blizzard into a gentle snowfall, and the night had begun to lighten to a gray dawn, all of Coventry covered in ice and snow.
Miri called out to her father, crying for him to come back.
But he never would.
TWELVE YEARS LATER
FIVE
Doug Manning sat at the table in the corner farthest from the door, close enough to the bathrooms to catch the faint scent of stale urine. Chick's Roast Beef had gone downhill over the past few years but he wasn't going to bitch about it. Everything in Coventry-hell, the whole country-had gone downhill. The talking heads on TV said the economy was improving, but most of the guys he knew were still scared shitless that their jobs might evaporate out from underneath them. Either that or they were already unemployed.
Doug himself was just barely hanging on.
The bell above the door jangled and he looked up to see a middle-aged mom headed for the counter with a pair of boys maybe six and eight. The brats stuck their tongues out at each other and raced around their mother, using her legs as a barricade against direct assault. The boys drove her nuts while she tried to order for them and he saw her irritation growing. As she rolled her eyes in frustration she glanced down at them and, despite her pique, gave them a tired smile. It hit him hard, that smile, reminded him far too much of Cherie.
"Anything else?" the Puerto Rican girl behind the counter asked.
"Yeah." The mother sighed. "You can tell me why everyone in this town is so edgy today."
"Bad weather," the girl said.