Page 36 of A Killing Cold

This time I remember the flashlight. Because the clouds are covering the stars, I don’t get far before I have to turn it on. I hate the necessity of it—how it constricts my world to the circle of light, marks me out as separate from the dark of the world around me.

The door is unlocked again. I step past the wax stains on the floor; tonight, I head straight upstairs. Again I pause at the bedroom doorway, waiting for memories that don’t come. Trying not to permit myself disappointment, I go over to the vanity. It’s still there: the dragonfly.

I run my fingers over its bumps. It’s too big to slip into a pocket.Not like the little treasures I used to collect. They were all meaningless: a stray button waiting to be sewn back onto Joseph’s shirt, a lighter, a tiny pink shell.

I’ve been so good. Somostlygood. There were the photographs in Alexis’s bag, but I hadn’t meant to find those, had I? I was only looking for a book. There’s this place. But does this even count? It called me here. I only answered.

I walk over to the bed frame, trying to imagine it with a mattress, a bedspread, a blanket rumpled after a night of sleep. I shut my eyes and think of fingers running through my hair, picking out tangles.

Hush, my baby. Only good dreams allowed.

My eyes snap open. The voice was as clear as if it whispered in my ear.

Red scarf, I think, and I try to picture it, but all I can see is blue fabric. And then the other image arises, the one I can’t escape—a face that is now familiar, half-steeped in shadow, antlers jutting from his brow. With it comes the sensation of a scream at the back of my throat, and my heart races—

No. I can’t go there. Not yet.

Red scarf, I think. And a ghost whispers in my ear.

“There you are,” her mother says. The girl doesn’t know why her mother sounds so upset. She isn’t hiding. She’s lying on her floor with her crayons spilled out around her. On her paper, spindly trees stand crookedly around stretched figures in triangular dresses, blobs of yellow on their heads. The princesses. She’s working on their castle now, carefully angling the V of the roof.

“Look what I made,” she says, but Mama doesn’t even look at it. She grabs the girl’s backpack, starts shoving clothes in. “Mama?”

“We have to go,” Mama says. Her voice is tight and angry. No—scared. “We have to go before he gets here.”

“But—”

“Now,” Mama says. She zips the backpack shut. The zipper catches.She swears and yanks on it, then puts the straps over the girl’s arms. Grabs her hand. Then they’re heading down the stairs. A suitcase waits by the door already, and Mama lifts it in her other hand, grunting from the effort.

The girl isn’t wearing her coat. The snow immediately begins to soak into her sneakers—her boots are still inside, by the door, but she doesn’t say anything, too scared to object. Her mother drags her along, and the girl has to scramble to keep up. The car is up ahead, the door already open, suitcases in the back. Mama picks up her pace.

“Wait!” the girl cries. “We forgot Teddy Too.”

“There’s no time,” Mama says. Her eyes flash with regret. “I’m sorry, honey. I’ll buy you a new one later. Here, give me your backpack.” She takes it from the girl’s shoulders. Half-inside the car, she rearranges bags, shoving them into place.

She isn’t looking. And it isn’t so very far back to the cabin. The girl backs away, step by careful step. And then she turns and runs. She’ll be so quick her mother won’t even notice. And she doesn’t. There’s no cry, no hand grabbing the girl’s arm, just the trees around her rattling with a harsh wind. There’s a crack—she’s heard that sound before. Trees crack when it gets cold sometimes. The sapexpands. Mr. Liam taught her that fact. She’ll tell her mother when she gets back to the car.

She will be so fast, the fastest ever. And she will get Teddy Too and she will be back before her mother even notices she is gone. There he is now, right on the bed with the daisies crawling across it. She has him in her arms and she is pelting back down the stairs again in a blink.

Hanging on the hook by the wall is her mother’s blue scarf, the beautiful one that Mr. Liam gave her the day he gave the girl Teddy Too. Her mother says it is Too Expensive, but she wears it every day and the girl knows she’ll be very sad if it’s gone, and maybe if the girl remembers it, Mama won’t be quite so angry that the girl went back (even if she did go so so so fast).

With the scarf in one hand and the bear under her arm she runs back, grinning. She holds the scarf aloft. Her mother will see it and shewill see that it was a good idea, the best idea, to go back and there will be no yelling.

But her mother isn’t there. The car is where it was and the back door is still open but she doesn’t see her mother. And then she sees—

Her mother’s feet. She’s sitting on the ground, her legs stretched out in front of her. Teddy can’t see the rest. She’s hidden behind the door.

“Mama?” Teddy says. She steps around to see.

Her grip goes slack. The wind gusts; it rattles the trees. The blue scarf lifts from her hand, and for a moment, it flies.

The memory is not a cohesive thing. It is moments, images, convictions, a feeling in my gut. Blue spills across the snow; it becomes red. Sun shines between the trees, but the next moment I remember night, and in it, the single crimson star. My mother’s voice is clear and vivid and then it’s gone, wind between my outstretched fingers.

We were here, and then we had to leave. But something happened.

Something terrible.

The scarf was blue, I think, and that’s correct—but it’s wrong, too, somehow. I’m missing something. But I can’t reach for it. I don’t want to.

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