The Killing Circle

carry on now only to see the place they’ll find me whenever they do.

Maybe it will be here. Out in the open of the Percys’ field. An unintended circling back to where I started.

A single light appears through the snow. The bulb over the farmhouse porch.

Someone’s home.

I fall to my knees. Across the field, a looming shadow takes its time coming to me. A darkness on its way to swallow me whole. Behind it, emerging from the house, what may be a smaller figure looking on.

Something about the two of them suggests they have always been here. Not just today, but forever. They have all the time in the world.

34

Do shadows cast shadows?

Firelight over a cracked plaster ceiling. Gradations of darkness nudging each other aside. Peeling paint lent a sinister animation. Hooked fingers reaching down for me.

Random connections, mini-hallucinations. I’m aware that this is all they are. Hospital room thoughts.

Except I’m not in a hospital.

No, don’t ask. Just leave it alone—watch the shadows make shadows. Don’t ask.

Where am I?

Now I’ve done it. You can’t deny a query like that once it’s out. It’s the first information we insist upon when we wake.

Which means I am awake.

Which means I’m here.

Out and in again.

There was a gap, anyway, that only blacking out can explain. While away, the timid fire in the hearth has been stoked. The blizzard quieted to the suspended feathers that follow a pillow fight. And though it was unthinkably cold before, just beyond the range of the fire’s heat—where my blue left hand rests, as opposed to the pinkish right—it has dropped a few more degrees.

For a moment or two I entertain the possibility that this could be another abandoned farmhouse altogether, another empty living room with windows that look out into a night dark and confining as a mine shaft. But there’s the broken whisky bottle at my feet. And the chair I’m seated in feels like the one I noticed when I looked into the Percys’ living room. Splintery but solid, its legs firmly planted.

And me firmly planted in it.

Chains looped around my wrists, holding both arms flat to the armrests. Tying ankle to ankle. A bruising yoke around my neck. I can’t see what fixes the chair to the floor but given how it won’t move no matter how I shift my weight, it must be screwed in.

I’m clothed but coatless. Only socks on my feet. I suppose this was done to get a good fit around my chest and legs, but the side effect is an even greater vulnerability to the cold. Without the fire I won’t last long. Even with it, I can feel the sweat turning to frost on my upper lip. The hard air stinging my eyes.

My strength is gone. I never had much to begin with. And there are the tingly black dots of unconsciousness dancing around my peripheral vision, waiting for the chance to bury me.

But I have to try. There’s nothing else to do but try.

I figure the best way to test the chains is to pull on each limb one at a time, seeing if there’s some give anywhere. The concentration required in this—turn this wrist, lift that foot, now that foot—proves that my mind has weakened as much as the rest of me. And while I’m able to twist some parts an inch or two, there is no indication that anything might be slid out if teased a bit more. If I’m to get out of this chair, it won’t be gently.

So I try the hard way.

A crazed spasm. Lunging forward and back, trying to topple the chair. Kicks and punches that don’t go anywhere.

When I’m done I’m still here. Except now I’ve left the door open to the black dots. A nauseous sleep rolling in like fog.

My eyes won’t open. That, or I’m blind. But there is movement somewhere within the house. The sense of vibrations more than the sounds themselves. Hearing as the deaf hear.

A heavy footfall along the upstairs hallway. And something lighter, metallic. A clattering of pots and cutlery in the kitchen.

I try to stand again. It doesn’t work. And this time it hurts.

“Who’s there?” I shout, or attempt to shout, but it’s nothing more than a dry ripple of air. The turning of a newspaper page.

Yet there’s a pause in the sounds. Was I heard? The black dots gathering round again.

Where’s my son?

This finds a way out. A broken cry that carries through the bones of the house.

A minute passes after the echo of it has faded. Nothing other than knuckles of wind against the glass.

And then it resumes. Boots clumping through the floorboards above, the noise of cooking. But no voices in reply. No recognition that there is a man freezing to death in the front room. A father whose only wish is to know if his son is here and could hear him if he could find the breath to speak his name.

A figure beyond the doorframe. Standing in the hallway holding a candle in a teacup. A frantic play of the dim light. Glimpses of fur-topped boots, a knitted toque, the ridged tendons down a white neck.

She doesn’t come forward. Holds the candle to the side so that it won’t illuminate her face directly. A pose struck by the subject of a gothic portrait.

Don’t hurt him.

When my tongue refuses to form the words I try to send this to her through the silence. But she has been pleaded to before. She knows the things people ask for at the end.

Don’t.

A fight for air. And by the time I find it, the hallway is empty.

She is there again when I next wake.

In the room with me, standing in the corner. Still huddled in the deeper darkness, as though shy. But it’s not that. She simply prefers to watch than be watched.

I jump toward her—but the chains restrain the motion to a hiccup jolt.

A small fire flickering its last sparks in the hearth. Outside there is the black clarity that comes with the deepest dives below zero.

“Where is he?” My voice a dry crinkle. The peeling of an onion. “Where’s Sam?”

“Not here.”

“Bring him to me.”

“He’s not here.”