he was sure billowed from beneath it. The engine had stalled, but the heater still blew, though little more than the warmed smoke from his motor.
Taking a deep breath, he placed his hand atop his jackhammering heart that he could feel clear through his down parka. He could hear his own breath escaping in rapid spurts. Reaching for the handle of the door, his trembling fingers fumbled with the metal latch for a moment before finally seizing hold, and throwing wide the door. Forcing his shaking legs from the confines of the vehicle, he stepped out into the thickly falling snow.
The white powder on the side of the road came nearly halfway up his shins, soaking through the bottom of his slacks and into his far-too-thin socks. Shuffling through the snow, he approached the front end, from where the enormous gray cloud poured from the engine, staining the storm-throttled sky an even deeper black. The front bumper appeared undamaged, as the car wasn’t even leaning against a tree. He was sure he must have hit one head on. There appeared to be nothing in front of him that had stopped the car, maybe, he had just gotten lucky and the car had stopped all by itself—
And then he noticed it.
A clump of red-stained fur caught beneath the corner of his bright green license plate. Very carefully, a pained wince wrenching his face, Harry knelt and looked beneath the car.
Two glazed brown eyes stared right back at him from beneath the vehicle. The nose of the animal was pressed into the ground; jagged shards of bone protruding from the compressed, blood-matted face. The front hooves were braced against the underside of the hood, bent backward behind the large stag’s antlers, which jutted straight up into the undercarriage of the vehicle. Fragments of the shattered antlers littered the crimson-spattered snow around the animal. Some sort of oil or engine fluid ran black down the antler from the hole it had popped in what he hoped was only the oil pan, and down onto the animal’s lifeless face.
“There was no thud,” he muttered quietly to himself as tears welled in the corners of his eyes.
Trying to force the image of the disfigured and blood drenched animal out of his mind, he trudged through the snow to the trunk of his car, popping it open with the keys he gripped tightly in his hand. Brushing aside a pair of blankets and the briefcase he never seemed to be able to remember to use, he yanked out the heavy metal jack and headed back towards the front of the car. He kicked the thick snow from a patch of earth behind the right front tire. He slid the unit beneath the car and looped the thin metal rod through the hole in the jack. It was a very slow process as he cranked the rod in circles, the jack creaking as it barely raised the car a paltry quarter of an inch at a time.
The frame of the car groaned as the jack tipped slowly backwards, toward the undercarriage of the vehicle, but still it rose slowly, and with enormous effort. Sweat poked through his snow-drenched forehead, his bangs matting to it. He had to wipe them frequently from his eyes. Slowly it rose, the front right tire ever so gently climbing above the white groundcover. It was as if the jack was starting to wear itself in, and he was able to turn it faster and faster, spinning the rod like a baton in front of him until the bottom of the front tire was nearly half a foot off the ground.
With a little tap from his toe, he tested the stability of the jack. Nodding his satisfaction, he walked back around to the front of the car and knelt before the hood, bracing his foot against the left front tire. Gripping the stag by the antlers—and it had to be a five or six point rack—he tugged with all of his might, his face turning bright red as he fought with the lifeless corpse. His eyes felt as though they were going to pop right out of his head as he strained against the great weight, alternately yanking and then tugging, as the body finally gave just the slightest bit and slid a few inches. While the progress was at first promising, his next handful of efforts caused no appreciable change in the positioning of the beast as the antlers were lodged somewhere beneath the hood of the car.
Standing once again, he rubbed the ache in his lower back with his right hand and gasped to try and catch his breath. His lips tightened over his grinding teeth and frustration began to overwhelm him. The snow was falling faster than ever and accumulating at a rate he hadn’t seen since he was a small child with a sled and a smile full of holes. His fists tightened as he endured the onset of a monster headache, his frustration building with each inhalation until finally he couldn’t take it anymore!
“Damn it!” he shouted, channeling all of his frustrations into a swift kick that landed soundly on the front bumper.
The Buick made an audible groan, the jack rattling against the frozen ground upon which it was braced. There was a loud metallic scraping noise, as the hood suddenly lurched directly toward him.
Frantically throwing himself backward onto the ground, a puff of powder landing coldly on his face, he watched the car lean forward, before coming to a sudden and final halt. The hood dropped as the rod from the jack launched like a rocket from the side of the car, taking a chunk of bark from a tree before bouncing into the underbrush. The deer beneath the car made a sound like a large pop, before a swell of gasses bellowed forth from the body, a wave of blood spilling from the ripped back of the animal and rushing towards Harry like a putrid tidal wave. The warm fluid gushed over his outstretched feet and along his backside, drenching him in the momentary warmth as he leapt to his feet to free himself from the carnage.
Staring down at his blood-sapped clothing, he wiped his hands on the front of his pants before turning to look pleadingly into the sky. Shaking his head in dismay, he walked back around to the trunk, stepping over the fragmented parts of the jack that littered the side of the road. He pulled a blanket from the trunk and wrapped himself like a pupa.
Harry looked longingly down the road in both directions, hoping upon hope that there would be a pair of headlights coming his way through the densely packed trunks of the evergreens. Shivering, he shook his head and walked towards the side of the car, once again opening the driver’s side door and clambering in. Jamming the key into the ignition, he tried one last time to start the car, but it didn’t even make an attempt to turn over. The only sound it made was a faint click.
Throwing the door wide, he hung his feet out the door and stared out into the dark night, trying to figure out what in the hell he was going to do.
“Why me?” he muttered, climbing out of the car and tugging the blanket tightly over his shoulders.
Sighing, he plotted his next course of action. He was probably halfway between the convent and the highway, which meant he had a twenty-minute hike—at least—in either direction. With the snow coming down in sheets as it was, there was always the chance that the state patrol had closed the highway and he could stand out there clear until morning before they pushed a plow through and opened the road. That meant easily another hour walk to get back into town, especially in this weather. The only viable option was to head back toward the convent and play upon the mercies of the nuns. Either way, it sounded like it was going to be one tremendously long night.
Smiling to spite fate, he rubbed his eyes and began his trek back up the road to the convent. Keeping his head down so that the snow and wind wouldn’t freeze his face, he watched the virgin white powder as each footfall blasted a tuft of flakes into the air around his knees. The night was so quiet that he was certain he could hear the sound of the snowflakes landing on the tips of the needles of the pines all around him, their branches slowly bowing beneath the weight of the wet accumulation.
Harry could barely see five feet through the thickly falling snow as the storm clouds covered the sky, not a single star piercing the dense mat. Not even the halo of the moon produced any light as it had been enshrouded in black like the rest of the landscape.
In the darkness, each grove of trees looked identical to the last, and he wondered momentarily if it was possible that he was walking in circles. The hike he had estimated to be roughly twenty minutes had already taken close to a half an hour, the heavy snow slowing his movements as though he were trudging through molasses. His legs ached. His throat was parched. All he wanted to do was lie down and chase an ice-cold glass of water with a warm mug of coffee, followed by a serious nap. He could remember playing in the snow for what seemed like days straight as a child without any of the symptoms of the fatigue that now ravished him from the inside out. But couple that with the stress and strain of the current situation and he was just thankful that he hadn’t frozen up and laid down in the back of his car and prayed to make it through the night without freezing.
Phlegm worked into a knot in the back of his throat, freezing around the edges of his nose as it ran in lines towards his chapped lips. The edges of his ears burned as though singed, and his cheeks had passed the point of pinpricks.
Stopping momentarily, he squinted his eyes against the large flakes and stared down the road ahead. There was a thin light, like a flickering candle at two hundred yards, fading in and out through the swaying trees