Ben wanted to press the pedal to the floor, but he controlled himself. He forced himself to focus on the icy road. He didn’t know what Jake meant when he told him that he had to hurry, but it didn’t matter, because he intended to.
He and Bub were the only ones on the road. No one ever had any reason to go to Swannhaven except for the people who lived there. And Ben thought that most of them were probably as happy as a bear in a cave, because the storm had finished what geography had begun. For a while, no one would intrude upon them in their valley.
Fallen trees had closed a number of streets in North Hampstead, including their main street. Ben had to carry Bub three blocks to the pediatrician’s home. The baby had finally fallen into a restless sleep, but Ben did not know if that was a good thing or not.
Despite the freezing conditions, many people were outside. Some worked to shovel their sidewalks and others walked around in their snow gear, taking in the strange beauty that had descended upon them. Neighbors waved to one another across the street and gathered around broken trees, shaking their heads and looking to the sky. Children tried to sled down their meager hills, and others waged snowball fights that spanned lawns.
Stuck in Swannhaven’s strange little world, it was easy to forget what life could be like. Being among these happy people in their unhaunted town, Ben tried to remember.
48
Charlie watched the window as Mom counted underwear across the hall. She seemed better than when she’d been fighting the house. Dad seemed better, too, but still things did not feel right. A knot of something hard and cold hurt Charlie inside his chest.
He understood why Dad had gone away with Bub, but Charlie did not think Dad should have left Mom and him here. When he thought about it, he felt the knot tighten.
The man was still in the woods. But it wasn’t the man that Charlie was afraid of.
The others were in the kitchen and in the living room. More came in cars from the village. They were dark specks pulling up the long white slope of the gravel drive.
Charlie thought about going downstairs to see what they wanted. But he was afraid. When the chief had spoken to him, there was something in his eyes that Charlie hadn’t understood. But he knew that Hickory Heck would not have been so afraid.
He crept down one of the back staircases. He heard voices in the rooms. Some he recognized, but not all.
Someone was in the bathroom in the hall. The door wasn’t closed all the way, and Charlie looked through the opening.
It was Jake. He was at the sink, washing his face. Blood flowed through his fingers. Charlie thought of the deer he’d seen the man kill. He thought of the way the knife had slipped into its neck and how its fur was lost under a sheet of crimson. Jake’s face was not as bad. His eye was bruised and there was a cut on his forehead. His lip was swollen. Red splotches stained his undershirt.
Charlie leaned against the door to get a better view of Jake, and Jake saw the door move. Their eyes met in the reflection of the mirror. It was strange: They looked each other in the eye, but they weren’t looking at each other at all. Jake turned away and mopped his face with a towel. The towel came away stained pink. Then he glanced back at Charlie in the mirror.
He mouthed a word. Charlie stared at his swollen lips. He thought of the way the deer’s tongue had flicked against its teeth when it died. When Jake mouthed the word again, Charlie left him and made for the stairs.
He wore only socks, and he knew that the others in the rooms wouldn’t hear him.
Now he knew what he had to do. He knew where he had to go.
Mom was in Bub’s room. She was still packing, but there was no time for that now. Charlie wondered if he could make her understand. He did not know if he understood himself. What he did understand was that the man had been right from the beginning. They should not have come here. They should not have waited so long to leave.
Charlie knew he would convince Mom, because he had to.
He thought of what he should say to her, but all he could think of was that one word. The man had said it to him, and now so had Jake. More than that, he knew it was the truth. It screamed through his mind and flowed to every part of his body.
Run.
49
It was nearly dark by the time Ben returned to the barricades at the south pass. Crimson clouds seared the sky like a wound.
He’d left the pediatrician’s with antibiotics, eye drops, and a list of instructions. It was painful for Ben to see Bub in such discomfort, but the doctor had given him medicine, cleaned out his eyes, flushed out his nose, and had not seemed as worried as Ben had been. Still, a pit of foreboding remained in his chest. He knew he wouldn’t feel right until he got his family out of Swannhaven.
From a rise just beyond the pass, he saw that the village was dark and quiet. Though the valley was already cast in shadow by the western mountains, Ben could not see even a glimmer of light from the isolated farmhouses. He wondered if this was how the village had looked when the Iroquois attacked it centuries ago. On a night like tonight, it felt as if little had changed here since that long-ago winter.
The icy snow gleamed in the fading light. The frosted limbs of the tallest trees caught the last flames of sunset. It was almost beautiful.
The Crofts was dark when Ben reached it. There were a dozen cars parked along the drive behind Caroline’s Escape, but not a window was lit. Outside, the air was brutally cold. It burned Ben’s cheeks and hands as he pulled Bub from his car seat.