His wife squinted. “Are those buildings?”
Jacob nodded. “It’s probably Ethridge. That’s the nearest town to Montgomery on the map. If we took the road we’d have to detour around Voyager’s National Forest. Going across this valley, we’ll only have to travel three or four miles.”
Kate tucked her chin back into her coat. “All the experts say you’re supposed to stay with your vehicle if you get stranded.”
Again, Jacob agreed. “True, but we’ve got clear skies and almost no wind, plus five hours of daylight. Being that we’re still in the lowlands, I’m betting we can make the hike in well under that.”
He turned and looked at the tower of rock looming over them. “Besides, I’m not so sure I want to camp out under this monster. The sunlight will have those rocks warming up. All it takes is a few drops of melt-water freezing in the right crack after sundown and—BAM—we’re part of the mountain.”
“The forecast did call for flurries tonight,” Kate said.
“Which might equate to another two or three feet of snow in these parts,” Jacob replied. “If we’re going to go, this could be our best chance to do it.”
Kate eyed him. “Aren’t you supposed to order me to stay put while you go act brave?”
He pulled her close again, pressing their cheeks together until their combine warmth chased the cold from their skin. “Leave my little heater behind? Hell, no.”
Kate laughed, her breath tickling his neck. He held her in silence, not needing to speak to relay his dread of what lay ahead if something went wrong. The world seemed to shrink to a pinpoint, and the only thing left was his love for his family.
“It’s just a few miles,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”
Kate nodded, her gaze flicking to where Sadie was drawing squiggles on a tablet of unbroken snow.
“Hey, kiddo,” Jacob called. “Want to go for a walk?”
“Do I get a piggyback ride?”
“Sure thing.”
She ran over and he lifted her onto his shoulders.
“I’m taller than you, Momma,” their daughter declared from her perch. “I’ll beat you.”
“Momma goes first,” Jacob corrected. “Her boots are warmer than Daddy’s shoes. Plus, we can walk in her footsteps so I don’t accidentally trip on something hidden in the snow. You wouldn’t want to fall from way up there, right?”
“Uh-uh,” Sadie answered.
Kate leaned in and gave each of them a kiss. “Follow the leader,” she said.
Turning away, she stepped over the first drift bordering the roadside. Her leg sank up to her thigh in the powder, but she pressed on, moving into the forest, toward the valley below.
Jacob followed.
The first fifteen minutes passed in silence.
The ground sloped steadily downward from the road, dotted by huge boulders that jutted from the snow like colossal stumps of half buried bones. Even Sadie, with her insatiable hunger for new information, fell quiet while they navigated the terrain. The sound of their footfalls became the only noise in the snow-muffled stillness.
Jacob tried to ignore the various discomforts already encroaching upon his awareness as he marched. His cheeks burned. His feet ached. The bridge of his nose felt like a wedge of cold steel had been inserted under the skin. He had hoped that the snow wouldn’t be as abundant here in the forest, but the powerful mountain winds had managed to deposit a minimum shin-deep layering throughout the area.
They trudged onward.
Roughly sixty yards from the road they came to a vast grouping of tall pines. Each tree had to be well over a hundred feet tall, with the space between the ground and their lowermost branches a fifth of that distance.
The world grew darker.
Sadie’s grip tightened on Jacob’s shoulders.
Under the boughs of the evergreens the forest became a black and white realm of heaped snow and deep shadows. What little light did make it to the ground burned in bright pools around them.
When they first started off, Jacob’s main concern had been the snow and the cold, but now his mind conjured images of winter-starved bobcats and man-eating grizzly bears.
He glanced around, reevaluating the splendor of the forest.
The tall trunks of the encompassing trees appeared black in the shadows, their bark jagged and horribly knotted. Jacob grimaced when he passed under them, happy to get back into the light.
Ahead, a wide deadfall blocked their path, and Kate paused to consider her options.
Here, broken branches and more rocks gave the snow-covered ground the appearance of a mangled corpse shrouded by a white coroner’s sheet. The fresh scent of pine, which had filled his lungs with each breath since entering the woods, now smelled like something meant to disguise a more sinister odor.
Jacob shook the thought off and hurried to follow Kate when she turned right and resumed her trek.
The trees, the darkness, the strange shapes concealed by the snow… the whole area seemed to exude a malevolence Jacob wasn’t accustomed to, certainly not it connection with nature. He couldn’t say what gave him such an unwholesome impression, but, rational or not, the feeling persisted.
He suddenly wondered if he’d made the right choice.
A branch snapped.
It sounded off to the left, and Jacob pivoted to look. A flash of darkness merged with the deeper shadows under the trees.
He stopped walking.
“Hello?” he started to say, but stopped short when another twig cracked to his right. This time Kate came to a halt.
“What was that?” she asked.
Jacob held up a hand to silence her and continued to listen.
They’d come to another cathedral of pines, but the staggered ramparts of smaller saplings surrounding them limited his sight to only a few yards.
“Probably the deer that ran us off the road,” he said.
The snow had thinned out a bit under the larger trees, and Jacob used the opportunity to walk alongside his wife when they started moving again.
“Not long and we’ll be sucking down hot coco at the nearest restaurant,” he said to break the uneasy hush. “How’s that sound?”
“Yum,” Sadie cheered. “With mushmellows, too?”
“As many as you can eat.”
Jacob noticed Kate give the area behind them one last appraisal before joining in. “I just hope we don’t all end up with pneumonia.”
He smiled at her. “Did you hear the one about the doctor whose patient died of bronchitis?”
She regarded him with one eyebrow raised in suspicion.
“He said he knew the guy was a goner because of the coffin.”
Kate rolled her eyes but grinned.
“Get it? Coughing. Coffin.”
“Very clever, dear.”
Sadie leaned over his shoulder. “What’s bronto-po-cysus?”
Jacob looked up at her. “It’s like a really bad col—”
But his reply tapered off when he spotted what loomed overhead.
He stopped walking.
Kate continued several steps before turning and tracing his line of sight. She gasped.
A deer’s carcass hung from the branches of the nearest tree, its skeleton picked clean. It seemed to float in the shadowy stillness, the tethers of rawhide that secured it to the tree all but invisible when set against the backdrop of the snow-frosted forest.
Jacob gaped at it, captivated.
Ice from the recent storm clung to its boney crown like transparent flesh, creating a sharp contrast to the darkness that gazed back at him from the black pits of its eye sockets.
Sadie mewed. “Daddy, what’s that?”
“Bones,” Kate answered for him. “Probably left by some hunter.”