The Winter Box Read online

  One good thing about this cold, he thought, was that it should slow the bleeding from their cuts, maybe even freeze the blood into makeshift bandages. The thought wasn’t much of a silver lining, though. They might not be in danger of bleeding to death, but the cold would kill them just as effectively, and probably a good deal faster. What the fuck was the wind chill, anyway? Minus a hundred? Sure as hell felt like it.

  As they walked, he thought the sky was beginning to lighten, and for the first time since all this began, he felt a spark of hope. Evidently he and Heather had slept longer than he thought and dawn was approaching. The storm raged on, so he doubted visibility would improve tremendously, but he’d take any advantage they could get. Even a little light might prove the difference between life and death for him and his wife.

  Wife.

  He and Heather had been married so long that the word had almost lost its meaning for him. But now, holding her hand—although he could hardly feel it—and fighting for their lives, he understood what it meant. What husband meant, too. The words were promises. Of love, yes, but much more than that. Of partnership. Of support. Of a bond that only seemed deep at the beginning, but which could grow far deeper in time. If tended to, cared for, and honored. It had been a long time since he had done any of those things, and the realization filled him with shame, sorrow, and regret. It wasn’t just him, though. The same thing had happened to Heather, if to a lesser degree, but that was no excuse. Each partner was expected to do his or her share of the heavy lifting in the relationship, and neither of them had done any for a long time, him more so than her.

  But they were together now, weren’t they? Working as a team, fighting for mutual survival, all the petty day-to-day bullshit that built up over the years of a marriage stripped away, meaningless and forgotten. If they made it out of this alive, maybe things would change between them. Maybe they wouldn’t. But right now, right here, for this moment, they were truly husband and wife again, and for that he was grateful.

  The light had continued to increase, and now he could make out Heather as a grayish silhouette at his side. He turned to her, intending to tell her he loved her, when a sudden violent gust of wind and snow hit them from behind. He lost sight of her and felt her gloved hand slip from his. He experienced a moment of panic, fearing now that they were separated, he would lose her, but then the wind diminished, the blowing snow lessened, and he could see her again, more clearly this time. He reached out to take her hand and drew her close to him.

  “I love you,” he said.

  She stood naked before him, her young skin bluish-white. Her eyes were like ice chips, and when she spoke her breath coated his face with frost.

  “I know.”

  * * *

  Heather started to shout for Todd, but he reached out and took hold of her hand once more, and the panic that had begun to build in her died before it could be fully born. It wasn’t that she was afraid of trying to make it through the storm on foot alone—although that was part of it—but she didn’t want to lose him. She wanted him to live, for his own sake, for hers, and for the two of them. Before this night, she had all but given up on their marriage. But now, after everything they had been through tonight, she was willing to keep fighting for it, for as long as it might take. They’d had something good once. No, something fantastic, and if they could bring it back to full life, she thought it could be far stronger than it ever had been before. Maybe they could make it work, maybe they couldn’t. But they had to try.

  They continued trudging on, fighting the storm, and Heather became lost in her thoughts. She was heartened by the approaching sunrise, and even more so when—worried that her hand had become too numb to feel his and they might have been separated—the snowfall lessened, and for the first time since they’d left the house, she could see Todd. But what she saw made her scream.

  He reached for her with blue-tinted arms, enfolded her in his frozen embrace, and pulled her close.

  * * *

  The storm is over now. The sky is clear and the sun shines bright. Its light brings no warmth, though, not to this frozen landscape. But light is like that sometimes. It reveals but doesn’t comfort.

  There are no houses here. No trees, no vehicles, no anything. Just snow—ivory-white and glistening—stretching outward in all directions. No, that isn’t altogether true. There is something in the midst of all this white. Two somethings, a man and a woman. They’re kneeling in the snow, arms wrapped around one another, faces close, foreheads touching. Their skin and clothes are coated with a thick layer of ice, and while they do not move, do not breathe, they are at least together. And they shall remain this way forever.

  A gentle wind swirls around them, and although they cannot hear it, along with this wind comes the happy laughter of a young couple, very much in love, and deeply content.

  About the Author

  Shirley Jackson Award finalist Tim Waggoner has published over thirty novels and three short story collections of dark fiction. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program. His most recent novels are Eat the Night and Supernatural: Mythmaker. You can find him on the web at www.timwaggoner.com.

  About the Publisher

  DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.

  To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at www.darkfuse.com.

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