Hoarfrost Read online

  I watched Jason's unmoving body and tried to breathe in the wet air, the seawater rushing up and carrying away blood and bits of bone, the bottoms of my feet stinging as the salt water dampened the cuffs of my jeans. I fished a nearly-empty pack of smokes from my pocket and pulled one out, my hands shaking, the cigarette bent as it hung from my lips. But my matches were wet and stained red and I spat the cigarette from my lips, and when the wave came up on the shore again, the sea carried it away. I looked back at Jason, still and dead.

  My vision went funny and I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them again. Jason hadn't moved, but the air around him shifted in waves, like trying to watch a scrambled television channel. The sound of the sea became muted, then was quiet. The ravens overhead cawed down at me without sound. I touched the back of my head, wondering if I'd fallen harder than I realized. I looked back at Jason's body again, touching something wet and sticky and painful on the back of my head. Then I blinked and Jason disappeared. The sand where he had lain was clean but for the barnacles and the broken seashells. No sign that a man had just died there.

  "What the hell?" I said, and it was the only sound I could hear in the crushing silence. The world around me was buzzing, but not audibly. I could feel it coursing through my body. I reached out to touch the place Jason had been, hoping I was seeing things, hoping this was a dream. My hands felt bare ground where his corpse had been and I fell back, shaken. I looked around me, a lump in my throat. I looked at the house, the windows dark now, no trace of Mirabel. The keys she'd dropped on the ground were gone.

  I stood, the pain that had wracked my body vanished, the lack of pain more jarring than the agony. I turned and took a step toward the water. The waves had stopped lapping onto the shore, and appeared to be shuddering in place under the gray light, giving the impression they were trembling. And then a noise, a cracking, shifting, popping. I watched the water as it turned white, a fine layer of crystals forming on top. I recognized the noise then. Ice. The crystals atop the sea grew, and I watched a coat of hoarfrost travel as if it were alive, crawling up the shore, covering the sand, the barnacles, the broken shells. It stopped when it got to me. I looked up at the sky, but my ravens were as gone as Jason Halloran's body.

  "What the fuck is this?" I said aloud, my voice booming in the near silence. A perfect circle surrounded me, the hoarfrost covering everything else. I turned to see Jason's house, shining with icicles as if crusted in diamonds. When I looked back to the sea, there was a warm light in the distance, just beyond the horizon. I squinted. It couldn't be the sun, the clouds were too thick. The wind blew across the water and there was an odd tang, like the sharp smell of electricity.

  The warm light brightened, expanded, until it filled the horizon. It lifted up and blossomed out, rising up into the sky. Then it seemed to grow larger at an alarming rate, the burning smell in the air stronger, filling my mouth with the taste of smoke. I realized the light wasn't growing, it was moving, shifting and tumbling and crashing like an ocean wave, rising up, filling up the sky with fire, sliding across the ice as if the two belonged together, as if fire and ice were always meant to work in synchronicity, the ice of the sea not melting a bit, the hoarfrost growing ever higher around me. And when I looked above me again, the sky was made of fire.

  When the blistering wave hit, I felt the heat of it. The sky was bright, as if the very clouds had become tinder, and the ice on the sea burned white and gold and red as the fire made its way inland. Tears fell down my face as I choked on smoke. I ducked as the fire crashed all around me, my eyes blurring from the heat, but it didn't touch me. It didn't burn a single hair on my head. I watched as everything in its path was reduced to ash. My heart was beating in my ears and set the time for the carnage. One heartbeat and the field of sweetgrass was gone, replaced with hard, blackened earth. Two heartbeats and the house was gone, nothing but cinders left as the fire passed. The forest beyond the house disappeared at four heartbeats. By six heartbeats, there was nothing. As far as I could see, all that was left was ash and smoke, and as the wave of flame receded in the distance, the hoarfrost crawled along the decimated landscape, covering the charred earth once again with ice.

  "You've done this," said a voice. I froze when I heard it, tears instantly wetting my cheeks. I turned slowly.

  "Daddy?" I whispered. It was him, he was standing in front of me, narrowing his eyes. He looked just the way he looked that last night when he took me home. When he'd slapped my face, striking me for the first and last time. "You're not real. I saw you die."

  "You've done this, Frankie," he said, raising a hand and pointing a finger at me.

  "I didn't," I said, staring.

  "But you will," he said, still pointing at me. "There's something inside you, we always knew. You're not yourself when it touches you. You can stop this, Frankie, but you have to be strong. Do what's right, you hear me? I didn't raise a sinner."

  I swallowed hard and felt my tears dry up. I scowled back at him. "The fuck you didn't."

  "Don't speak to me that way."

  "You lived in sin and you left it on my skin," I said, my voice coming out in a whisper. "You could have stopped them, Mom and Becky. You could have ended it. You'd be alive now if you listened, you arrogant bastard. I wouldn't be standing here if you cared enough to let Beatrice help me. I wouldn't be a killer if you'd saved me. Why the fuck didn't you save me, you son of a bitch? Why didn't you save me?"

  He took a step toward me and I realized he was wearing the clothes he was buried in. He lowered his hand and his narrowed eyes widened. "The devil's had his claws in you since the day you were born," he said. "No one can save you."

  He turned his back to me and I felt a white-hot anger fill me up. He took a step toward the sea and I grabbed at him, angry, ready to fight. But my hand slid through him like smoke, and then he was gone. And when I blinked again, the hoarfrost disappeared, the waves lapped at my feet, and I was standing on the beach, covered in Jason Halloran's blood. I cried out as the pain returned. When I stumbled, I fell onto Jason's corpse. And when I looked up at the house, Mirabel was watching me through the wide, shining windows.

  TWO

  I rolled off Jason's corpse and lifted myself to my feet. The ravens were screaming again, the waves were crashing, my heart was beating in my ears.

  "What are you doing, doing, doing?" said a voice echoing in my head. It was growing dark and in the far distance I could hear sirens. I had to get out of here. I saw the keys Mirabel dropped on the ground.

  "Killing a killer, same as always," I said, swallowing down bile. It wouldn't help anyone to panic right now, it wouldn't help anyone if I cracked and went batshit crazy, not with what I knew was inside of me. I turned to see the wraith, wrapped in shadows like a cloak, hooded face an absence of light so dark it hurt to look. The hallucination was still fresh in my mind, so vivid that it felt real. It was like my nightmares, surreal and vivid, but ultimately it would fade and I would barely be able to recall it by the end of the day. The dreams were getting worse, though, and starting to seep into reality. Like today.

  I could still taste smoke.

  "We didn't tell you to kill him, him, him," said the wraith, pointing to Jason Halloran.

  "I don't do what you say anymore."

  "We gave a task, task, task. What are you doing here? He still has her, her, her. Your sweet sister, in Cain's service. We won't help you save her until you follow orders."

  I limped past the wraith and my vision went white as I bent to pick up the keys. I waited for the pain to pass, the ground cutting into my feet. I tried to remember where I'd taken off my boots, and I looked toward the house to see Mirabel still in the window. I had to get out of here. I was covered in blood and I’d just killed a man. Where I'd taken my boots off was highly unimportant. I held the keys tightly in my hand and made my way toward the sweetgrass.

  "Cain will hurt her. Don't you care, care, care?"

  "I care," I said, walking gingerly. I could see lights flashing
on the other side of the bay. It was lucky Jason had chosen such an isolated place to live. Not lucky for him, though. "Just let her die,” I said. “Let her go. It's better that way."

  "We don't have that power, power, power."

  "So you'd let my sister go if you could?" I was walking toward the house as quickly as I could, but I was still maddeningly slow.

  "We'd let you go, too."

  "We," I laughed. "Are you a collective now?"

  "We told you to kill him. Why are you here, here, here?"

  "I think that's pretty obvious. I'm fleeing the crime scene."

  "We told you to kill Thomas Dekker, Dekker, Dekker." I stopped, rage in my belly. I could feel the power inside me, the dark substance that I didn't understand. It moved and shifted and grew agitated, jumping under my skin. The ground beneath my bare feet rumbled, opening up cracks in the dirt all around me, the sweetgrass falling away into the chasms. I closed my eyes, trying to control it, and after a moment, the ground stopped shaking. I opened my eyes and looked at the wraith.

  "Don't say his name," I said through gritted teeth. "Don't you ever say his fucking name."

  The ravens swarmed down, a tornado of feathers around the wraith. And when they took to the air again, the wraith was gone.

  I passed the cops on the lonesome, two-lane highway that wrapped around the edge of a short stone cliff just above the sea. The Honda was not a bad car, and even barefoot, the soles of my feet slick with my own blood and gritty with sand, I was able to drive with little effort. The back of my rib cage sent waves of agony through my body, and I thought about stopping when I saw a gas station on the horizon. But my shirt was shredded and covered in red darkening to rust, and my hands were sticky with Jason's blood and flesh, so I continued on, down the highway. I took the exit into Bellingham, and turned the car into the parking lot of the motel near the highway I'd checked into.

  I pulled the dwindling pack of Lucky Strikes out of my pocket and finally lit a cigarette with the car lighter. I cracked the window and let out the smoke in a shaky breath, feeling pain in my lungs as I coughed. If Dekker were with me, he would watch me closely with concern. But the thought of him sent a cold stab into my belly and I stubbed out the barely-smoked cigarette in the ashtray.

  My chest ached and it had nothing to do with a broken rib. The memory was sharp and sudden and made me feel dizzy with its crispness. A motel room, cheap and smelling of a tobacco pipe. Dekker in bed, an empty bottle of whiskey on its side. It had been easy, getting him drunk. And it hurt. I felt the pain all night, but when Dekker finally succumbed to exhaustion, tears sprung up in my eyes and cascaded down my cheeks. I was afraid my sobs would wake him, so I gathered my things quickly and headed for the door.

  Don't look at him, I told myself. Just don't look at him. Remember what happened last time.

  I couldn't stop myself. I turned to look. I felt something inside me wrench, as if someone had grabbed hold of my insides and twisted.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered. "I want to stay." I opened my mouth to say more, but that was it. I wanted to stay and that was all. I left him my car, my cherished Challenger, the only thing left from my dad. I walked to the street and stuck out my thumb. I didn't take his wallet. I didn't take money or clothes or the motel shampoo. I just left. I left and it was the right thing to do. But goddamn if it didn't hurt like hell.

  I paid for my room five days in advance, in case I didn't come back from Jason Halloran's house right away. I knew I wouldn't really die, not for good. But I had a bone to pick with my so-called employer. I wanted to speak to him in person, and thought my chance to meet him would most likely happen in that empty hollow between death and life, the desolate crossroads where I'd first met the wraiths. I parked in the back corner of the motel parking lot.

  I was nearly to my room, walking along the boardwalk that led down the rows of doors, when I saw the car. There wasn't another Dodge Challenger like that, and I knew it right away, parked across the street, empty. My hand was on the doorknob, my heart hammering in my throat.

  "I know you're there," said a deep, muffled voice from the other side of the door. My mouth went dry. "You may as well come in."

  I closed my eyes, trying to breathe. A long moment passed and it seemed the world had gone quiet again. No cars, no laughter or TV laugh tracks coming from the rooms, the owner stopped yelling at his slovenly son in the office across the parking lot. I half expected the sky to turn to fire. A raven landed on the sidewalk next to me and I opened my eyes. He blinked at me gravely, seeming almost sympathetic. A truck blazed by on the street, honking its horn, breaking the spell. I turned the knob.

  It was dim outside, but the blackout curtains had been drawn in the room and no lights were on. I blinked in the darkness. I could feel him there, smell him, feel the heat and soul of him. There was movement and a lamp flicked on. And he was there. Sitting in my motel room in a ripped vinyl chair, a gun balanced gently on his knee. His eyes were cold when I found the courage to look at his face.

  "Hey, Frankie," Dekker said. "Where've you been?"

  "Dekker." I barely had breath to say his name. I sank back against the closed door, having no energy to propel myself any farther into the room. I winced.

  "You're hurt," he said, with no indication that he was planning to help. He watched me as if I were a specimen in a jar. I remembered the shine in his eyes as he had his hands around Roo's throat back in Montana. The sheer joy I'd seen on his face as he squeezed...

  "Are you going to kill me?" I said softly.

  A brief cloud of hurt passed over his features, clearing almost immediately. "No," he said. He seemed to notice the gun for the first time and picked it up off his leg, setting it on the floor, near his foot. "I'm not here to kill you, Frankie." He sounded tired.

  I pushed myself off the door with some effort and staggered to the bed, easing myself down and closing my eyes. "That's a shame," I said. "I've been trying my best to die."

  "Same old Frankie."

  "Never claimed to be anything else."

  He was quiet for a long time. I wanted him to come over and tell me it was all okay, I wanted him to say he knew why I left and he didn't care, I wanted him to get angry and scream. But all he did was watch me.

  "How'd you find me?" I opened my eyes and turned my head slowly to look at him. The day had caught up with me and everything hurt. There was a whistling wheeze when I drew in breath.

  "I'm a detective."

  "You were a detective."

  "It never really leaves you," he said. "Besides, I have friends. If I want to know something, I have all the resources to damn well know it. I've known where you went, Frankie. I know what happened in Spokane. I know what you did in Gold Bar, Washington. That was a doozie. Rocked the whole state, finding out about that priest. And the way they found him, that was fucked up. Not that he didn't deserve it."

  "So you've got friends in low places," I said, "I get it. So what?" It hurt having him here, the way he was looking at me. A cold, broken stare, every word like an accusation, each syllable a blow to the chest. I struggled for air again.

  "Why did you leave your car?" he said, leaning forward. His brow furrowed, lines in his face that hadn't been there before, bags under his eyes. "You love that car. It's your dad's car."

  "It's yours."

  "I don't fucking want it,” he snapped. I flinched, sending another wave over me, this time physical. "I just mean," he shook his head, took a breath, and when he let it out he met my eyes, neutral coolness the only discernible emotion. "It's your car, Frankie. It doesn't belong to me. It's a part of you."

  "I wanted you to have something," I said, my voice weak. I wouldn't cry in front of Dekker. I couldn't. This whole thing would fall apart if I cried. "And it was the only thing I had to give."

  "I can get my own car," he said. "It just reminds me..."

  "What?"

  "It reminds me of things I'd much rather forget."

  I swallowed thickly, nodding."Did y
ou come here to return my car?" My voice wavered. Dangerously close to tears. I was so dizzy, so tired, but I would not fucking cry in front of Thomas Dekker.

  "No," he said. "I need you."

  My eyes widened. "What?"

  "I mean, I need your help with something. It's right up your alley."

  "I can't. Dekker, I...I can't."

  "You'll change your mind when you hear about it. This isn't some stunt to get you back. Not that I ever had you. You were pretty clear about that."

  "Yeah," I said, "I was."

  "Fine," he said, anger seeping into his words. "Just listen. You think it's too much to ask you to listen?"

  I closed my eyes again, emotion swelling in my chest. I couldn't do this. I couldn't be here looking at him. It hurt too much. "I'm listening," I said, wheezing again as I tried to catch my breath.

  "Bodies," he said. "They're washing up on shore in a little town down the Oregon coast. Middle-class, people with clean backgrounds, professionals and well-to-do housewives, couple of small business owners. Every couple of days, someone washes up."

  "That doesn't really sound–"

  "I wasn't finished." I opened my eyes to see him, sitting on the edge of the chair, elbows on his knees. His gaze was intense.

  "Okay," I said. "Go on."

  "They're frozen. Solid. No indication of how they got that way. They were, nearly all of them, seen the day before by friends or family, and found dead before they could even file missing persons."

  I frowned. He had my attention. "Frozen," I said. "Like before?"

  "Covered in hoarfrost."

  I remembered my hallucination, the frozen sea, hoarfrost crawling up the shore. And a sky made of fire...

  "Do you think it was Cain?" I said.

  "I don't know. But just before the corpse washes up, the sea freezes."

  I stared at him. "What did you say?"