The Stroke of Winter
Wendy Webb
PROLOGUE
The painter awakened, his head pounding. He was sprawled out on the floor of his studio, his clothes a damp tangle around him, a paintbrush still clutched in his hand.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position and rubbed his bleary eyes, the room coming into focus. A ray of hazy, dusty sunshine streamed in through the windowpanes. An empty bottle of wine lay on its side, a glass broken into shards next to it. The wooden floor was splotched with paint, the colors blending into a mosaic.
What in the world . . . ? He stared at the paintbrush in his hand, turning it around, slowly. Red, streaked with black. He dropped it as though it were on fire.
He scrambled to his feet and whirled around. What was this? How had he gotten here? Why was he here? He didn’t remember coming into the studio. He wouldn’t have. Not after what had happened. He was done with painting. He had made that clear to himself. Yet here he was.
He ran a hand through his hair, straining to reach back in his mind to piece together the previous day. There was lunch with his friend at the Boat Club in Salmon Bay. Yes. He remembered that. The drive back to Wharton. Yes. Twists and turns. Then what? He had read a book on the porch that afternoon, hadn’t he? Opened a bottle of wine. Yes, it was coming back to him now. It had been a nice day.
But . . . what of dinner? What of the evening? It was all a blank. A great empty void.
He groaned as his head pounded. Aspirin. He needed aspirin. And his mouth felt and tasted like a hamster had died in there. He crossed the room to pour a glass of water from the tap in the bathroom, his hands shaking.
That was when he saw the canvases. Four of them. Or was it five? Could he possibly have painted all those in one night? It couldn’t be. He squinted to get a better look. His stomach seized up into knots as he slowly walked closer, one short slow step after another. It felt like he was walking through quicksand.
When he focused on the paintings, his eyes grew wide as he realized what he was seeing. The horror of it hit him like a wave from the icy lake. What had he done?
Oh no. Dear God, no.
CHAPTER ONE
The snow came out of nowhere. Whiteout conditions bore down on Amethyst Bell as she drove from Salmon Bay back to Wharton on what had been a clear December day. The snow was coming down in sheets, the howling wind whipping it sideways with a fury. Amethyst couldn’t see the hood of her car, let alone past it. Anything could be out there in her path. A deer. A dog. A person.
She silently cursed the holiday decorations she had driven to Salmon Bay to buy. Today of all days.
This stretch of roadway was precarious under normal conditions, with a steep, rocky cliff on the lakeside that had seen more than its fair share of accidents over the years. Local legends abounded about the area. People in Wharton said a shroud of evil hung in the air there, a menacing energy that lured motorists over the side with a treacherous siren song.
But Amethyst shrugged off those old tales. She had driven this road hundreds of times on her way to and from her family’s vacation home in Wharton. She’d never been tempted to veer off the cliff, even if she always felt an uneasy tingling up her spine as she drove by it.
Strangeness in the air notwithstanding, she knew she was in a practical sort of danger then, not a haunted one. There were no gas stations, stores, wayside rests, or other places where she could safely stop the car, and she very much wanted—needed—to pull over. She couldn’t see anything but white. But stopping too close to the roadway in whiteout conditions might mean someone wouldn’t see her and could hit her from behind. Too far off it, and she could go over the cliff. With no better option, she inched along, using her memory as her eyes. A turn here, a straightaway there. She held on to the wheel so tightly her fingers ached.
After what seemed like an eternity, she took the familiar sharp right turn into Wharton and exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. A great wave of relief washed over her as she finally rounded the corner of her street. She pulled into her driveway, resting her forehead on the steering wheel as her heart raced. She had made it. She was okay.
She snapped her head up as she heard the yowl of a police siren and could make out the blue and red lights of a squad car disappearing into the whiteness. It was headed up the road toward the cliff. She shuddered, wondering if someone had gone over.
Amethyst grabbed her shopping bags and opened the car door, stepping out into the wind. Her feet sank into at least six inches of snow. Maybe more. Icy pellets punished the skin on her face as she hurried to her front door, closing her eyes against the fury of it.
A memory struck her just then. Amethyst had grown up hearing stories about legendary Lake Superior blizzards, of people losing their way in the blinding whiteness, becoming lost in their own yards, unable to get from their barns to the house and freezing out there. Thinking of them, those poor souls, she was grateful to be standing at her own side door.
Inside, she flipped the light switch. Nothing. She groaned and set her bags on the kitchen table. It wasn’t surprising to find the electricity out in a storm this fierce. But she noticed that all her window shades on the main floor were open, and the bluish hue of the snow outside washed through the rooms of the house. It was never pitch dark in the winter here. The snow lit up the night.
Amethyst—or Tess, as she had been called much of her life because of her childhood inability to pronounce her own name: Ama-tess, she’d say—made her way into the living room and crossed to the fireplace. She had laid it with logs and kindling that morning, thinking she might enjoy a fire after dinner. Taking one of the long matches from the box on the mantel, she was grateful for her foresight. She lit the match and touched the flame to the dry twigs. They crackled and burned, spreading to the logs in moments. The fire settled into a slow burn, illuminating the room with a soft glow.