Halloween and Other Seasons (21 page)

“What the
—
”

Dust or ash had completely blanketed the road in front of them, and suddenly, incredibly, when the car shifted to the side under him, he knew that they were in trouble.

He stopped the car when he couldn’t see anything at all. Rolling down the window, he put his head out to check how close to the end of the road the car was. With a sudden drop in his stomach, he discovered that not only couldn’t he see the road but that the road was disappearing beneath them, melting in an upward build of dust. To their right was a steep slope that seemed to be growing closer.

“
Jesus
,” he said, pulling his head back in and rolling the window back up, trying not the let his hands tremble.

“Adam
—
”

“Don’t panic.” He wanted to panic himself, but some deeper instinct than fear took over.

Gently, he tried to pull the Windstar to the left, away from the edge of the road. There was no response from the car. It was like being on an icy road in New England winter, only worse. This stuff was worse than ice. It reminded him of some of the dry lubricants he had used at work.

He put his head out the window again, and saw that they were sliding toward the edge of the slope.

He forced the wheel to the left, but it was too late to do anything.

Mary saw the cliff, too, and let out a strangled cry
—
but she quickly muffled it. She reached over the back seat to grab at the two girls, who had begun to wail.

“Hang on,” Adam said grimly.

“
Oh, God
,” Mary moaned.

The car slid over.

Then stopped.

At that moment, as if by magic, the dust storm let up. Adam pushed out his breath evenly, gradually unclenching his hands from the steering wheel, and forced himself to look through the slashing wiper blades and dust-caked windshield.

The car was tipped forward at an ominous angle, but was anchored, at least for the moment. He gave silent thanks for the weighty antiques cluttering the rear of the minivan.

“Mary
—
don’t move.”

She looked wide-eyed at him, still clutching at the crying girls, but said nothing.

Slowly, deliberately, Adam rolled down the window and put his head out.

Just as he’d thought, the car was braced on the brow of the ledge. There was more of it on the road than off, but he could distinctly see the left front bumper dangling over a long, deep drop to the bottom of a shallow canyon.

The sky was an angry, sallow gray-yellow color, filled with swirling dust.

“Oh God,” he said under his breath, and forced himself to begin breathing again.

He brought his head back into the car and rolled up the window.

The car glided forward a foot, then stopped.

“Mary,” he said, forcing his mouth to say the words calmly, “we’re going to have to leave the van.”

She stared at him with animal fear in her eyes. “
No
,” she said. “We can’t. We’ll fall
—
”

“We have to, Mary. I want you to move the kids over to my side; I’m going to get out and then open their door and help them out. I want you to slide across after me.”

The wind was howling again, throwing a ticking hail of ash at the van.

“
Now
, Mary.”

The car edged forward another foot, jerking a little to the right, and once more came to rest.

“Put your baseball cap on, Cindy,” Mary said, trying to sound calm.

“No, Mommy, no! I’m scared!”

“It’s all right to be scared. Just do what I say.”

Adam pulled at his door handle, moving the door open a bare inch.

The dust swirled in at him
—
there was silt nearly up to the floorboards.

Sucking in a breath, Adam stepped out into it.

The viscous dust, like quicksand, took hold, tried to drive him subtly forward toward the precipice.

He put both feet firmly into the silty mass, sliding them back away from the softly insistent pull. It was like the waves they’d played in at the Massachusetts shore, a gentle but strong undertow. Calmly, with light, constant pressure, he pulled open the passenger compartment door of the van, sliding it back on its rail. He tried to keep all pressure out of his hold on the handle; he had the distinct feeling that any slight push from him on the side of the vehicle would send it tumbling off into the valley below.

“Come on, kids,” he said evenly.

“I want to bring my Harry doll!” Lucy said, straining to reach under the seat for a floppy thing made of felt and buttons.

“Leave Harry, we’ll get him later,” Adam said. He reached in and pulled gently on her arm. She resisted for a moment and then stepped out into the mud.

“
Yuck
,” she said, as her little sister, crying, followed.

Adam turned back to help Mary out of the front seat.

“
My God
,” she exclaimed, stepping into the silt and suddenly seeing where the front of the car was. “
Oh, sweet Jesus
.”

The car tipped forward, halted.

“
Lucy!
” Mary screeched.

Lucy had crawled back into the van and was reaching for her Harry doll.

The van began to move again and this time it wasn’t going to stop.

Pushing Cindy down into the dust out of the way, Adam lurched into the back seat, catching Lucy by the back of her light jacket and yanking her out before she could get to the doll.

“My Harry doll!”

For a moment Adam lost his footing in the slippery dust and fell forward, half in the van and half out, still holding the child.

With Mary screaming hysterically, he felt the two of them being pulled over the cliff along with the vehicle. But then his dragging foot miraculously found a rock under the dust and he pulled himself backward, out of the van, bearing his daughter with him.

As he fell to his knees in the dust the van, with agonizing inevitability, slipped over the cliff and was gone. They watched its tail lights disappear like angry red eyes into the surging storm.

“Oh, Adam,” Mary sobbed.

“It’s all right,” Adam answered. As he stood, his hand brushed against something in the mass of dust and he grabbing it; it vaguely resembled a chicken bone but then disintegrated in his hand. He pulled Lucy up after him. She stood unsteadily, crying over the loss of her doll.

He looked into his wife’s eyes, but said nothing.

“Okay, kids,” Adam said, “it’s time to walk.”

As they began to work their way through the silty dust to the lee side of the road, the wind came again, and the dust began to blow.

~ * ~

A flash of lightning, without thunder.

Ahead of them, down in a little hollow, in the midst of the roaring storm, stood a small cottage. Lightning came again, and in this second flash Adam grabbed Mary’s arm and pointed the dwelling out to her.

“I don’t remember anything like that being there,” she said.

“Well, it’s here now. Let’s get the kids down,” Adam answered, peering unsteadily through the whorls of dust.

Mary nodded, and then, in the next lightning illumination, looked behind them.

“
Oh, sweet Jesus
.”

A solid wall of silt was flowing down the mountainside toward them. There was no hint now that there had ever been a road where they stood. It was as if some mammoth volcano had reared up within the mountain and spewed a hundred thousand tons of ash down on itself, obliterating everything. They could see, up the mountainside, by the light of now almost continual, thunderless lightning, a few weather-beaten tips of pine trees, but nothing else. The dust, like liquid, flowed with silent determination down the mountain, toward what had once been the road.

“Quickly,” Adam said, and this time he couldn’t hide the fear in his voice.

There was a broken stone path down the hollow to the cabin, already slicked with viscous silt. They half walked, half slid their way down.

When they reached the front porch Adam saw with sinking hope how delicate and vulnerable the structure was. It was painted an odd dark color that might have looked quaint in summer sunshine but couldn’t hide the fragility of the place.

Above and around it loomed most of the mountain.

The door opened easily. Inside, it looked like some sort of summer weekend place, one large room outfitted with the barest of necessities: a wash sink, cupboard, a few sticks of furniture including a small table with four chairs. Everything was painted in dark colors. There was a low ceiling of unpainted boards, and a picture window that looked out on the mountain and where the road had been.

Mary closed the door, took hold of Adam’s arm and pointed through the window. There was awe and fear in her voice.

“Look.”

Where the wall of dust had been flowing determinedly toward them, covering everything, it had stopped short of the hollow they were in.

“There wasn’t any wall up there,” Adam stated.

“It’s almost as it if’s waiting,” Mary whispered.

They heard a loud creak and felt the cottage shudder.

~ * ~

Night came on, and stayed. The dust storm beat without mercy against the cliffs, drove in whistling tornados around the hollow. Intermittently, lightning flashed, without sound. By its light, they could see the wall of dust at the base of the mountain, hanging over them.

Inside, the small family, in the half-light of candles Mary had found in a cupboard, waited for sunrise.

“It sounds like it won’t ever end,” Adam said. He glanced furtively out the front picture window.

Mary stared at him without speaking.

The wind picked up with renewed fury, blowing its dry, moaning burden of dust against the fragile structure.

“I wish to hell daylight would come,” Adam said.

His wife moved the blankets closer around the two children, who lay side by side on the cabin’s single bed. They slept fitfully, their young minds drifting in and out of reality. “Mommee…” Cindy said suddenly, half asleep, then sank back into unconsciousness with a fitful breath.

For a few moments, there was only the moaning of the wind, the dry sound of ash washing against the front window.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t have stayed outside?” Mary asked abruptly. “I keep thinking of that mass of dust above us. If it comes down…”

Adam took a shuddering breath. “We did the right thing.”

“But
—
”

“
I said we did the right thing
!” He covered his face with his hands. “God, I hope we did…”

Outside, the wind and dust lashed mightily.

With a great rending groan, something above the ceiling was torn away.

The children awoke, screaming.

“My God!” Mary shouted, as Adam thrust himself up to go look outside. “Don’t go near the window!” she pleaded.

But he was already there, peering into the foggy swirls of dust. “I can’t see anything. It had to be part of the roof.”

Mary set about calming the children down. Lucy began to cry, and Cindy, the older, tried to go back to sleep.

“Adam, please, get away from the window!”

“I see…”

Another tearing groan from above.

“
Adam!
”

He shrank away from the window as something hard hit it. It rattled, but, somehow, it did not break.

“What was that?” Mary asked anxiously.

Adam moved cautiously to the window again. “I don’t know. But I thought I saw something moving out there. A light.”

“A
car?
” There was desperation edged by hope in Mary’s voice.

“I don’t see how it could be a car, with the road gone. Maybe some sort of plow or truck…”

Silence stretched between them, as Lucy again fell into a shuddering sleep.

“Mary, I have to go out there,” Adam said finally.

“
No!
”

“This place won’t last the night. I have to see what that light was.”

As if in answer, there came a great rumbling sound from above them on the mountain. Something huge and heavy-sounding slammed into the cottage.

Mary looked with fear from the shuddering back wall to her husband. “You won’t come back.”

“I…just have to know if there’s a safer place for us.” He looked down at the two fitfully sleeping children. “You want me to take the chance of
not
going?”

Mary was silent.

Adam retrieved his parka and began to shrug into it.

The wind and dust whipped into a fierce cacophony of sound, as if waiting hungrily for him to leave the cabin.

He hesitated a moment, looked back at his wife, then unbolted the door and stepped out.

~ * ~

Immediately, the wind tried to yank the door from his hands. Groaning with effort, he pulled the door shut behind him. He stood with his back plastered to it for a moment, trying to see through his dust-blinded glasses.

There
was
movement ahead of him.

Something…

Up where the road had been, the wall of dust was still held in check. Adam tried to pick up some hint of why so much silt could flow so fast so far and then suddenly stop. He knew that was the spot where the car had been washed over the cliff
—
he could see the vehicle canted on its side at the bottom, its headlights like beacons, dust duned slightly up one side
—
and he could swear there had been no natural obstruction, a wall or damn, to keep the wall of dust at bay.

Dry lightning flashed again.

In front of that wall, something did move. A lone figure in a dark parka, barely visible against the black background through the churning wind and dust, was moving along the heaving backdrop, making its way to the path down to the bottom of the valley and the cottage.

The figure made its way to the bottom of the slope.

It stood motionless.

“Hey!” Adam called, but he could feel the word ripped from his mouth and snuffed out by the storm. His lips were coated with dust.

The figure turned toward him.

Carefully, Adam stepped away from the cottage
—
and was immediately thrown down by the wind.