Calvin had no desire to commit suicide, either accidentally or deliberately, so he trudged back to his house before the wind wiped out all visibility. It was going to be a bad one. Nobody had exaggerated that.
When he stepped inside and closed the door behind him, the keening wind became muffled. For an instant it felt as if he’d lost his hearing. But then the endless ticktock of the grandfather clock reached him. He hated that sound, was goaded by it. It had marked the endless minutes of his suffering at his mother’s hands. Reminded him of when the universe had devolved into pain and her measured ranting as she had cleansed him.
Sometimes he thought about throwing it outside until the elements killed it, except that the ticking sound sometimes helped carry him away to his new life of purifying others.
He felt cold to the bone from sitting out in the barn for so long, and from the long walk in the wind to get back here. The fire in the woodstove was still cranking out heat, so he went to make himself a hot drink.
It was as he was standing in the kitchen that he realized his thoughts had followed a new path while he’d been out there enjoying his boys. He’d been measuring a spot for his next one, and he realized he was looking for a larger place. To fit something bigger than his usual.
Like that woman he’d seen in the diner. It hadn’t taken him long to find out who she was, some travel writer visiting the town to write about the ski resort. With her husband.
But her look had attracted him: dark, dark hair, a little long like the boys he preferred. In fact, based on that alone, she fit his profile. But she was a woman, taller than he liked, and certainly older. That should have ruled her out.
But somehow it hadn’t. She looked something like his mother. As he sat near his woodstove in a chair that needed new springs, he turned her around in his mind. The more he thought about her, the more she seemed to glow in his memory. Was he imagining it, or were the Fates trying to tell him something?
Twice before he’d been guided to a woman. He hadn’t got the same satisfaction from them, but it had felt essential at the time. Maybe it was part of his mission, a part he didn’t fully understand yet.
But she would be more difficult. Hard to get her away from her husband. Bigger, so therefore stronger. But still a woman, which meant weaker. And fear, as he had learned, could weaken people if it was handled properly.
Once he had her, he could focus on her face and pretend she was one of his boys. He was good at that. Since she was bigger, and more of a challenge, the power that filled him as he took her life might be greater. Her resemblance to his mother at once repelled him and drew him.
He thought about where on the net he would hang her, how she would fit in, and whether he’d feel as good about her as he did about the boys.
The wind strengthened, rattling windows, as he sat thinking for a long, long time. The spider in his web with an especially large and juicy morsel.
It could work. He just had to plan it carefully.
Smiling, he rocked on and thought about that woman.
* * *
“I found a Scrabble game,” Cade announced, emerging from the bedroom.
DeeJay, standing and looking out at the front window, turned. “You can’t even see across the street,” she said. “Heck, I can’t even see the street.”
He came to stand beside her. “So we get a break. It’s kind of pretty, though.”