So, when the sled cracked the snow and my head cracked the dashboard, this knocked some much-needed sense into me. That is not my mother, I told myself. She’s been dead for almost three decades. That is a wraith. It wants to kill or eat or drain or do whatever it is they do to us.
All kinds of lights were flashing on the instrument panel. Warnings of disconnected parts, of low fuel, of an overheated battery. A soft alarm played on a loop, losing strength each time it chirped. I pulled myself away from the wheel, and tried restarting the engine. No luck; it didn’t even grind. It was pretty much exactly what I had expected.
I swiped at the blood that gushed from my nose with the back of my hand. It was warm against my upper lip.
I turned. Mia had fallen halfway onto the floor. Her upper half remained on the seat. Her body was twisted, but by no means broken. If anything, she looked a tad uncomfortable—that is, if she could be more uncomfortable than she already was in her current condition.
The sled had collided with the embankment at less than twenty miles per hour. I hit the brake at the last possible moment, but I hit it hard, which helped reduce the impact. The snow was packed tightly, but no match for our vehicle. Still, it had beat up the front end and broke what was left of the headlights, but mostly it just absorbed the blow. Had we hit the steel walls or a building, I don’t think Mia would’ve survived. For once, instead of killing us, the snow had done the opposite. It kept us alive.
I grabbed Mia’s legs and lifted them back onto the seat. The blankets no longer covered her bare flesh, and dried (and fresh) blood coated her inner thighs. She stirred at my touch, opened her eyes, and mumbled, “What’s going on?”
“Hang tight,” I said, not wanting to worry her. I took off my coat and threw it over her body just as her eyelids fluttered and closed again. A t-shirt beneath a sweater beneath a hoodie wasn’t enough to keep me warm in this terrible cold, but thankfully, the adrenaline helped in that regard. For a moment, at least.
But when the monster called my name from the pitch-blackness behind us, fresh chills rippled down my spine.
The alarms and lights on the dashboard had stopped. The wind no longer blew. The world had become graveyard-quiet.
Except for the voice.
“Graaaady! Are you all right, my sweet pea?”
The voice of my mother, but was it my mother’s true voice? Had the wraith excavated it from my memory banks and used it to gain my trust? I can’t say for sure, but real voice or not, it took everything within me not to run to it.
“Come here and let momma kiss your boo-boo.”
“It’s not her,” Mia moaned. Her head rocked from side to side. “Whoever it is out there, it’s not them.”
“I can’t believe how big you’ve gotten. A man now! But you’ll always be momma’s little boy, won’t you, Grady?”
I didn’t realize I was crying until the freezing tears crackled on my cheeks.
Footsteps echoed along the tunnel’s walls, slow and even.
Labored.
I searched for the bag Eleanor had packed. A can of bug spray, a lighter, and possibly a flashlight were inside. I knew that, but the crash had caused the contents to spill all over the floor, so I was reduced to slapping until my hand hit something.
First the cold cylindrical can of Off!, and then the lighter.
It was time to face the music.
The footsteps quickened as I crawled out of the snowmobile. I sparked the lighter, and they stopped on a dime. The brightness from the small flame illuminated my mother’s face. My hands shook, the fire wavered, and I almost dropped the Bic. That face…it looked exactly the same as the face in the pictures. At first, I thought her red shoulders and slightly burned cheeks were also lifted from those images, but that wasn’t the case.
“Grady, I know you’re a big man and all, but you know you’re not supposed to play with fire. Go on and put it out before you burn yourself, my dear.”
“You’re not my mother,” I growled.
“Yes, I am, Grady! I brought you into this world myself.” Her smile faltered, and she averted her eyes to the road. “The truth is, baby, I just couldn’t handle raising you. I got scared and I ran right on down to sunny Florida. I’ve been there a long time. But now, hon, I wanna come home. Just give me another chance. Let me make it up to you.”
The words brought a sickening pain to my gut—because of how much I wished they were true.
I stepped forward.
The apparition raised its arms and covered its face. The exposed skin reddened.
“Stop it! Stop it right this instant, young man!” It kept its feminine voice until the last part of the sentence, where it fell into a deeper register. It sounded demonic, like when you played someone talking in reverse.
“Go to hell,” I said.
The thing’s arms dropped, the hands turned into gnarled claws, and the face shimmered as it began changing into someone else.
Now the voice bellowed in that demonic tone. “I’m already there, Grady! Your poor old mommy’s burning up while the Devil laughs and stokes the flames!” The figure’s frame started shrinking. The hair disappeared. The clothes went from a blue sundress to something charred and tattered. The eyes that resembled mine fell from their sockets; one melted, goo rolling down its cheek, while the other dangled on a blackened optic nerve.
No longer was it my mom.
Now it was the dead boy who lived and died on Swan Drive, the boy I had failed.
“Why didn’t you save me, Mr. Fireman? Why did you let me burn?”
“Stop—” The fingers on my left hand twisted the bug spray from
