Chapter 1
Little car, lonely road, night. A bad combination with a blizzard coming on.
Brian’s in the passenger seat, powerless and fidgety and wishing he were elsewhere. Snow falls fast, zooming at the headlights. The village must be close, he tells himself again, except there’s nothing. Not a glow. Not a glimmer in the dark.
His girlfriend, Holly, drives the car like an ice road trucker. Flinty. Sharp. Acting like she always drives in blizzards. She’s expressionless, her eyes stay bolted to the road, and she doesn’t say a word unless Brian speaks first. They’re both twenty-eight but Holly seems older. For a whole strange year, starting last winter, he’s felt as if they were aging in opposite directions.
“I didn’t expect our emergency vacation to be a literal emergency,” he says.
“This isn’t an emergency,” she says. “Just relax.”
Holly rolls her shoulders, trying to loosen up inside her puffy winter coat. Big breath in, big breath out. Brian follows her example but his joints feel locked. His lungs are a pair of tight frozen bottles.
He squints out the windows at the emptiness around them. Barren fields flank the road. Beyond, rolling hills and evergreen forest. The landscape is blanketed with snow from previous storms, and everything is hazy in the vast, wintry dark as if they’re somewhere, anywhere, and nowhere at once.
Brian checks his phone but the map isn’t working. They haven’t passed another car or road sign for miles.
“This is bad,” he says.
“There’s nothing we can do but keep going,” Holly says. “I only wish the snow would quit messing with my eyes. I’m starting to take it personally.”
“Slow down, at least.”
“We’re fine.”
Holly seems miles away as she speeds ahead, coldly in control, as if she’s piloting a military drone.
“We should be home right now,” Brian says, “snuggled up with Hulu.”
“Well, the time travel button on the dash doesn’t work.”
“Do the brakes still work?”
“The eject button might.”
“How am I the only one who thinks we’re being reckless?”
“You’re the one who said we needed a vacation!”
He had, in fact, pressed her for a getaway trip—a chance to reconnect and stabilize a bit. They’d been struggling with each other. Petty fights. Quiet blame. Minor irritations that had deepened to infections. Not to mention they were bracing for an extra-hard winter. But every time he floated the idea of a vacation, Holly shot it down with clinical detachment. She had projects at work that needed her attention. Habits and routines she didn’t want to break. And if they couldn’t reconnect and stabilize at home, how would fucking in an unfamiliar bed make a difference? It felt like running away, she said. It felt like giving in.
Eventually, he asked why she was always so unyielding. They didn’t talk the rest of the night. The following day, she booked the trip.
“I was thinking sun,” he says. “I was thinking beach.”
“I was thinking reasonable credit card bill.”
“I’m only saying we wanted to get away from winter and instead we’re going to a ski village. A place that makes its own snow when it doesn’t snow enough. It’s like you wanted—”
“To face it head-on? I did,” she says. “I do.”
The snow blows down, rushes up, and coils sideways. They might as well be driving half-blind through a corkscrew. There’s less and less blacktop. More and more snow. One minute, the traction’s fine, but then they slip for several seconds. Every quarter mile, the slips are getting longer. A subtle bend, the slightest wiggle—it wouldn’t take much to spin them off the road.
“It’s getting worse,” Brian says. “A dinosaur could cross and we’d never see it coming.”
“Shit, yeah,” Holly says. “I’ve been so focused on the road, I wasn’t even thinking about dinosaurs.”
Brian almost laughs. Holly almost smiles.
“You know what I mean,” he says. “We could crash into anything. Fallen trees.”
“Giant ice sculptures. Reindeer without glowing noses.”
“Blitzen through the windshield. But really, we should stop.”
“And get us buried overnight? Hope the forecast is wrong?”
“Let our senses sharpen up. Storms have lulls. Worst case scenario, we get stuck and have to walk, what . . . two or three miles?”
“I’m gonna push through.”
“Of course you are,” he mumbles.
He regrets it right away.
“That’s me. Hard as ice,” she says.
“Holl, I didn’t mean . . . I don’t think you’re hard.”
“Nope. I’m unyielding.”
“I never should have said that. It isn’t you. It’s us. We always feel—”
“Stuck,” she says. “And now we’re stuck together in the middle of a storm.”
A storm they would have easily outrun if not for Brian. He’d wasted time at home, concerned about the weather, checking the forecast and procrastinating and second-guessing the entire vacation. Instead of leaving earlier, they’d lost a crucial hour.
He hates when his fear of something makes it come true.
“I’m sorry,” Brian says. “This is all my fault.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Anxiety makes me stupid.”
“Belittling yourself doesn’t help me drive. So listen. Starting now, we’re playful and excited.” She smiles like a tour guide working through a headache. “First, neither one of us is crabby or resentful. All right?”
“All right.”
“Second, we’ll pretend we’re flying in a spaceship.” Brian stares ahead, focusing his eyes on the hyperspace effect of driving through
snow.
“We’re lightspeed. We’re making good time,” Holly says. “Now tell me what we’ll do as soon as we arrive.”
“We’ll get a drink,” he says.
“Several drinks. What else?”
“We’ll order dinner in a cozy, overpriced restaurant.”
“And have a nice, safe walk to our little B&B,” she says. “They have a big fireplace in the den.”
“We’ll hog it. No other guests can sit around our fire.”
“We’ll sip another drink.”
“I’ll give you a neck rub.”
“And then we’ll have sex in an unfamiliar bed. It’ll be good.”
“It will.”
“We’re almost there. It can’t be far.”
“There’s a huge, gaudy Christmas tree at the edge of the village,” Brian says. “It’s made of metal poles, all welded together, like an art installation with holiday lights. They keep it up all year.”
“So we’re looking for the tree.”
“We’ll see it any minute.”
Instead, he starts imagining they’re on the wrong road, as if they missed a crucial turn twenty miles back and now they’re driving into nothing, getting farther every second from the safety of the village. The snow falls heavier. The car is too constricted, the air is thick and stale, and Brian feels hot and claustrophobic in his coat.
The windshield’s foggy and the wipers seem futile. Holly tries clearing off the glass with her hand.
She says, “I think I’m in the middle of the road. Where’s the shoulder?”
Brian looks out the window with his heartbeat bumping and a weird, dark shudder at the edges of his vision.
“There’s too much blowing snow,” he says. “I can’t see a thing.”
“Stick your head outside.”
“For real?”
“Just guide me for a sec.”
“I’d rather be inside the car if we’re about to lose control.”
“I’d rather have help and not lose control.”
He often freezes when he’s caught between two opposing fears, but Holly’s crisp, parental voice makes him roll down the window. He’s startled by the rush of in-blown air and pops his head outside. Snow blasts his face. Up his nose. In his eyes.
“Can you see?” Holly yells.
“I think you’re good!”
“Are you sure?”
The bank of snow from earlier storms is broad and inconsistent. By and large, a lumpy ridge delineates the road, but there are stretches where the shoulder and the field are almost even.
“Move a little left!” Brian shouts.
“Better?”
“Yeah!”
He cranes his neck farther out and looks for obstacles ahead. The snow is crazy and kinetic, swirling in the headlights. He feels the winter landscape sprawling out around him. The fields. The hills. The evergreen forest in the distance and the unseen mountains looming in the dark. Everything is bigger. Everything is charged. Too much air floods his lungs until he’s very close to fainting, bursting into tears, or screaming at the goddamned frenzy of it all.
“I think I’m having a panic attack!”
“Breathe through your nose!” Holly says. “You’re doing great!”
His eyes are drawn toward the field beside the car, where a dense swirl of snow masses in the chaos. It’s thirty feet away—maybe closer, hard to tell. A strange, moving shape he doesn’t understand. Is it an optical illusion from the halo of the headlights? An atmospheric oddity created by the storm? Whatever it is, the shape keeps thickening and growing, almost like an animated Rorschach blot.
“There’s something out there!”
“What?”
“Something big!” Brian says.
“Is it a dinosaur?”
“I’m serious!”
He squints, zeroes in, and feels his heartbeat kick— because it isn’t some illusion. It’s definitely real. There’s something in the dark: a giant, white shape that doesn’t blow apart and almost looks solid. Almost like it’s chasing him. The thing seems to swell and coalesce in his direction, and even though the car is speeding on the road, the shape moves too and keeps getting closer.
“Go! We’ve got to go!” he yells.
It’s here. It’s almost on him.
Brian jerks inside and whacks his head against the frame, and for a second every thought is jolted from his head. Snow explodes through the window and whirls around the car. It packs onto Brian, muffling his face, like an airborne avalanche that won’t stop coming. He barely hears Holly shouting through the snow.
His body seems to float—is he outside the car?—and everything is dark.
Then everything is gone.
Chapter 2
It’s blizzard night in Pinebuck.
The village is so compact that its entire cartoon map fits on a souvenir postcard. Pinebuck isn’t a boom-town like the major resorts farther north or west, but it’s popular in snowy seasons—the right-sized place for a solid, modest peak. In the summer, it’s as quiet as a beach town in winter, or Salem, Massachusetts six months from Halloween.
This time of year, viewed from the slopes, Pinebuck looks as if someone built a model village, maybe for a holiday display in a New York City department store, and then magically expanded it and nestled it securely in the evergreen forest at the bottom of a mountain.
There are two roads in. Route 4—the rural highway where Holly and Brian, only minutes ago, were driving in the storm—ends at the intersection with Route 19, which runs south to Hilldeclaire or north to more populated towns.
Greeting visitors at the two roads’ juncture is the Rickman property. The open plot belongs to an energetic senior named Vance Rickman, who lives at the end of a long driveway, away from traffic near the edge of the forest, in a pair of double-wide trailers he welded together. Everyone in Pinebuck knows the Rickman place because of the giant Christmas tree. Vance constructed it himself—a conical sculpture made of welded metal pipes, standing fifty feet tall and festooned with thousands of green LED lights. No one coming to Pinebuck notices the village’s welcome sign. What they notice is the tree, always there, always lit, telling road-weary visitors they’ve finally arrived.
A quarter mile farther is the beginning of Main Street. Only four blocks long, Main Street is crammed with all the usual features and amenities of an adorable vacation village. There’s a tourist center, lots of B&Bs, two cafés, a diner, restaurants, bars, a liquor store, gift shops, a pharmacy, clothes and sporting goods stores, a single-screen movie theater, and a chocolatier.
Parallel to the main drag are several blocks of residential homes, many of which double as B&Bs, and then a smattering of isolated houses at the outskirts. Almost everyone who lives in Pinebuck works in Pinebuck. The homes and yards are well-maintained, and everywhere a sense of orderliness is kept, as if an unfilled pothole or any piece of trash will not only spoil the effect of a curated theme park but directly threaten the cashflow of a village that thrives on winter charm.
Pinebuck doesn’t have its own school, so its kids are bussed south to Hilldeclaire. It doesn’t have a hospital, either, but there’s a well-staffed medical center halfway between the village and the mountain. People with cuts, breaks, or mild concussions go to the medical center. Anyone with worse is raced down to Hilldeclaire.
Tonight, the slopes and lifts are closed, but tomorrow will be different, and everyone is ready. Pinebuck’s always grateful for a walloping dose of snow. Fewer storms, fewer skiers. More storms, more dollars. Kyla Ware, the owner of Winterware Gifts & Goodies, claims she can measure her precise seasonal earnings by how many inches of snow fall between November and April, and there’s a village-wide consensus that less than fifteen feet on the mountain is reason for any business owner to start sweating bullets.
The current forecast is strong, with eighteen inches expected in the village and up to three feet on the mountain. But Pinebuck’s optimism is shadowed, ever so slightly, by memories of the last major snow they had in late November, seven weeks ago. That particular storm kicked off the season with a glorious base of thirty-two inches on the slopes. Rooms were booked
Shops and restaurants were flush with out-of-towners days before the anticipated snowfall. But then a newlywed couple, Mitch and Becky Skylar, vanished in the storm and were never seen again.
Their disappearance cast a pall over the town. It didn’t prevent the usual influx of skiers and profits, but the weeklong search parties, the peculiar details of the couple’s vanishing, and the missing posters all around Pinebuck— featuring a picture of the Skylars, bright and carefree—left a grim, heavy atmosphere all through December.
In the weeks after New Year’s Day, they’re still on people’s minds. No one has to say the Skylars’ frozen bodies might be alarmingly close. A quarter mile into the woods. Thirty feet off the side of Route 4. Hidden in a snowbank nobody’s checked, right behind the Mobile Mart. But in the crannies of their thoughts, everybody knows it, and all anyone can do is wait until spring and see what the melting snow finally reveals.
But tonight, for the visiting crowd and most of the residents, the somber past gives way to the energetic present. The roads are mostly empty but the sidewalks are lively. It’s after 9 P.M. and the village’s overnighters arrived hours ago, beating the dangerous weather, to settle in ahead of the powder and excitement of the morning mountain. Everyone’s enjoying the wind and wild snow, their delicious meals rolling into drinks and desserts, merry lights and music, socializing with strangers, and hurrying from restaurants and pubs back to cozy lodgings, with their gloves on and collars up and buzzy, warm faces laughing in the blizzard.
It’s a bubble of enchantment, magical and whole, like a snow globe right before it’s shattered with a brick. ...
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