“What’s hunting?” Sadie asked.
“It’s how people used to survive in the wilderness,” Jacob replied. He had to swallow to wet his throat. “Way back before grocery stores people had to hunt animals for food. Now most just do it for sport.”
Sadie shifted on his shoulders. “Sport?”
“Yeah, like a game, to have fun.”
“People kill things for fun?”
“I’m afraid so, kiddo.”
Sadie’s gaze returned to the bones, her young mind no doubt trying to make sense of the notion. “That’s not nice,” she said.
Fifty feet ahead a white glare cut through the trees where they opened into the valley.
“No, it isn’t, sweetheart,” Jacob agreed. “Come on. Let’s keep going.”
They altered course around the tree with the skeleton, Jacob taking the lead. He made it three steps before stopping again.
“Jesus,” he said out of shock.
He’d pushed through a cluster of spruce saplings to behold a towering curtain of fleshless animal remains blocking his path. Thousands of withered hides and stripped bones decorated the forest like gruesome ornaments on row after row of blasphemous Christmas trees.
Jacob stared, mouth hanging open.
Skulls. Femurs. Vertebrae. Ribs.
They adorned branch after branch.
Some hung in groupings meant to resemble the animals they came from, whereas others had been mixed and fitted together to create elaborate abstract sculptures of death.
Jacob thought of the wind chime hanging outside their kitchen window back home and wondered what kind of music this collection would make on a blustery day.
“My God,” Kate said under her breath. In the cold, the word came off her lips like a ghost.
“Was this from hunters?” Sadie asked.
“No,” Jacob replied. He glanced behind them, to the cavernous shadows under the pine trees and the million or so hiding places among the ground clutter and rocks.
Kate, too, scanned their surroundings. “Should we go back?”
Jacob strained to hear into the depths of the forest before answering. He thought he heard a low chanting in the distance, a repetitive cadence that he soon realized was his own heartbeat pounding in his temples.
He looked ahead of them, beyond the bones. Twenty feet away the woods opened onto a ledge overlooking the valley.
“No,” he answered. “Whoever did this did it a long time ago. Let’s just keep moving and put it behind us.”
He adjusted Sadie’s seating on his shoulders and moved forward, not looking up when he passed under the bones. Kate followed.
They cleared the trees, all squinting against the glare of the snow. The valley floor lay below them, looking like a vast frozen lake. On the opposite side, a palisade of pines hid the view of the town. The sun hunkered on the horizon behind them, creating a silhouette that looked like a row of black fangs.
Jacob gazed in disbelief.
Kate gasped even as he looked to his watch.
“Jacob, the sun—”
“I see it,” he croaked.
“But how?” she asked. “It wasn’t even noon when we left.”
“I know.”
Sadie shifted uneasily. “Is it going to get dark now?”
Jacob patted her leg but couldn’t summon the saliva to answer. He looked back into the cave of trees where they emerged from the woods and the shadows that seemed dim beforehand had become impenetrably black.
“Jacob how—” Kate pleaded.
“I don’t know!” he shot back, then muted himself.
He stepped onto an outcrop and stared out at the valley. What had first appeared as a blank white palette now looked streaked with oranges and purples, divided by long, pointed shadows. Their brilliance faded with each passing second.
There was no denying it—they’d walked for less than an hour, yet his watch showed that it was five minutes to sunset.
“Let’s go back,” Kate whispered.
Jacob nodded his agreement and gestured to the left. “This way looks less rocky.”
He started walking, but a crisp noise suddenly cut through the stillness and his right leg sank up to his crotch. He buckled over, straining every muscle in his back to keep Sadie from tumbling off his shoulders.
“Shit,” he yelped.
Sadie screamed. Her small hands clutched his head.
“Hon—” Kate started, but Jacob cut her off with a shout.
“Stay back! I can’t feel anything underneath. I think we’re on a snow shelf or something. The way this land slopes away… Christ, we could be fifty feet off the ground.”
“Can you get back up?”
“I don’t know.”
He tried to push up with his left hand and it disappeared into the snow up to his elbow.
“Damn,” he cried. “Quick, take Sadie and back away slowly.”
Kate moved forward, easing her weight down with each step. The snow crunched underfoot. Below them, phantom sounds issued from something unseen, something Jacob knew could’ve only been hunks of packed snow breaking loose and dropping to the rocks.
“Don’t come any closer,” he shouted.
Kate froze, her arms outstretched. Sadie mewed at the force of his voice.
“It’s okay, baby,” Kate said. “Just hang on.”
Jacob sank another inch as he maneuvered Sadie off his shoulders with his free hand, struggling to keep her balanced.
“Momma!”
“I’m right here,” Kate said, her voice miraculously calm. “Just move slow and come to me.”
Jacob reached.
Sadie reached.
Kate clutched the girl’s hand.
And the shelf collapsed.
Jacob saw the crack open in the snow inches from his wife’s boots, giving them enough time to lock eyes before he and Sadie plunged six feet, dropping with the slow motion fluidity of a Hollywood special effect.
Sadie’s hand pulled away, leaving her empty mitten in Kate’s grasp.
Jacob saw the scream form on his wife’s lips, her cold-blanched face creasing in horror. But then the section she stood on followed suit, breaking off before the cry left her mouth.
The two massive slabs of snow shattered into a thousand hard fragments, engulfing them in an avalanche. The world went black. Jacob’s ears filled with a rumbling white noise. He felt Sadie yanked from his hands as the flow engulfed them, tumbling him end over end, contorting his body regardless of all efforts to curl into a ball.
With each roll and twist he expected a fist of granite to punch a hole in his ribcage or smash open his skull. But then he came to a halt in mid-summersault, suspended upside down in the snow.
He tried to move. His muscles flexed, straining each fiber, but the snow had packed tight around his body, immobilizing him in a frosty embrace.
Panic bit into his senses. He imagined Sadie trapped somewhere nearby, buried alive. The back of his throat seared with pain as he fought to scream through a mouthful of snow.
Something slammed into his back.
A hand grabbed his coat.
“Jacob,” Kate cried.
He felt the pressing weight of the snow shoved aside, and her shouts grew louder. She hauled him free just as his lungs seemed ready to explode.
He gasped for air, ignoring the frigid sting of it as he drew in breath after breath.
Kate helped him up, wiping snow from his face, and he exhaled a great sigh of relief when he saw Sadie standing next to her. The young girl’s eyes glistened but looked bright and alert.
“Are you all right?” Kate asked between sobs. “Is anything broken?”
Jacob shook his head. He looked up, shocked to find the ledge that they’d fallen from now towering three stories above them.
“I thought I lost you,” he said to his wife.
“Ditto,” she replied.
He reached out and hugged them, clinging to his wife and daughter as his own emotions evolved into tears. The last rays of sunlight bled out of the valley as he gazed over his wife’s shoulder, leaving the sky a deep shade of crimson.