Snow(46)

Shawna leaned closer to the window. There was someone out in the yard. Just standing there in the snow, staring at the house.

“Is that Mr. Kopeck?” Shawna asked her mother.

“He’s been there for over an hour now. I shut the lights and locked the doors but he hasn’t moved.”

“But what’s he doing?”

“Waiting,” said her mother.

“Waiting for what?”

“I don’t know. But it can’t be good.” Her mother pointed past their yard to their neighbors’, the Samjakes. “Look.”

Someone was standing in the Samjakes’ backyard, too. The distance was too great to know for certain, but Shawna thought it looked like plump old Delia Overmeyer from over on Port Avenue. Just like Tim Kopeck, Delia Overmeyer was standing up to her shins in the snow, staring at the back of the Samjakes’ house.

“What’s going on out there?” Shawna murmured, her breath blossoming on the glass.

“I got a phone call from Lizzie MacDonald about twenty minutes ago,” said her mother. “She said George Lee Wilson is in her yard, too. Just standing there, staring up at her house, just the same way, Shawna. She said her dog Brutus was out there barking his head off. She called to the dog but he wouldn’t come. He ran out into the yard and disappeared into the shadows. Then she said she didn’t hear him no more.”

A twinge of icy terror rippled through Shawna’s body. “Jared said some kids disappeared down at the school tonight. Said their parents went looking for them but some of them disappeared, too.”

No, that’s a lie, she thought immediately afterward. That’s not exactly what Jared said. He said they were eaten up by the snow. Eaten up like popcorn.

But she couldn’t tell this to her mother. The poor woman already looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Shawna leaned over the counter and pulled the telephone to her ear.

“There’s no answer at Joe’s,” said her mother. Joe Farnsworth was the sheriff.

Shawna dialed the number anyway. It was printed on the phone’s handset in her mother’s spidery handwriting.

Her mother finally let go of Shawna’s wrist. The woman gripped the sill of the window with both hands, her face very close to the windowpane. Her breath was fogging it up, but she was still able to keep an eye on Tim Kopeck out in the yard. Tim Kopeck, who had undoubtedly lost his frigging mind…along with Delia Overmeyer…along with George Lee Wilson…

No. That’s impossible.

The telephone at the other end of the line kept ringing, ringing, ringing. Shawna caught her mother’s worried stare. “No one’s going to answer, Shawnie. Poor Joe’s probably got his hands full tonight.” There was moisture glittering in the corners of her mother’s eyes. “Don’t tie up the line. Lizzie’s been calling every few minutes.”

Shawna hung up the telephone while chewing on her lower lip. “I don’t understand,” she said after a time. “What does this mean?”

“It means—” began her mother, but then the words dried up in her mouth. The older woman’s eyes were locked back on the window. “He’s gone,” she said in a low utterance.

Shawna practically pressed her face up against the windowpane. Her mother was right: Tim Kopeck was no longer standing in their backyard.

Shawna cast her eyes over to the Samjakes’ yard and saw that Delia Overmeyer—or whoever that had been—was also gone.

“Where’d he go?” said her mother. Her voice was paper thin.

“There’s no footprints,” Shawna said. “Look in the yard.”

“What are you talking about? That’s impossible.” But her mother looked and could say no more. It was obvious—there were no footprints in the snow, save for the two divots where, only a moment ago, Tim Kopeck had been standing. It was as if the man had simply vanished into thin air.

Above their heads, rafters creaked. Both women jerked their heads toward the ceiling. It was an old A-frame house built in the early ’70s, and both women had lived in the place long enough to become familiar with all its typical creaks, groans, and rumblings. This sound was not one of them.

“Is something upstairs?” said her mother, still staring heavenward.

“Sounds like someone’s on the roof.”

In the summers, squirrels would tromp about the shingles and drop acorns down on the roof, where they’d roll like tiny boulders down into the gutters. Even those pedestrian sounds had resonated with amplification, and Shawna would imagine squirrels up there the size of small dogs and acorns as big as apples. Right now, whatever was up there sounded like a pickup truck slowly ascending the pitched roof.

“Stay here,” Shawna said.

“Where are you going?” her mother called after her, but by that time, Shawna was already halfway down the hall on her way to the stairs. “Shawnie!”

Upstairs, the house was dark, the moonlight sliding in shafts through the windows. Pausing on the landing, Shawna held her breath and listened for the sound again. But all was silent.

Shawna had loved her father very much and, since his death, thought of him often, but this was the first time since perhaps the funeral she’d actually tried to will him back into existence. If he were here, this wouldn’t be happening. If he were here, she wouldn’t have to be checking the upstairs hallway, the bedrooms, making sure the windows were locked. That had been her father’s job.