“Everything is white up there. So white it can blind you. And they’re white. They’re like ghosts, just appear out of nothing. You don’t see them coming, but they can see you. You’re out there and you think you’re hunting them, but you’re not. You’re just trying to catch sight of them before they kill you. The truth of it is they’re hunting you as soon as you step on the ice. If you’re lucky, you get a shot off before they take you down. There’s a story I can tell you about that someday. ’Bout work I did in Alaska. But that’ll have to wait for another time, another place. I can’t tell you about it today.”
Jonathan hadn’t seen Rich in years, but he suddenly wanted to find him and ask him to tell that story. For some reason, it seemed important right then, the idea of being stalked by something sinister that blends in so well with the world around that it’s invisible. It follows, it waits, it watches every day, and by the time most people notice, it’s too late.
Chapter Seven
On the eve of Halloween, just one week before he would leave, Jonathan and Mary took Jacob to the traditional Halloween parade down the streets of neighboring Collinsville. Originally begun as a small event for Collinsville residents only, with a smattering of children and adults feigning celebrity as they marched down the center of town, it became such a draw that the board of selectmen finally opened the parade to kids from all over, knowing full well their parents would spend money like fiends getting liquored up in the trendy, little outdoor cafés that lined the parade route. Now it was an event that drew easily two thousand people each year. Collinsville was the perfect town square for a Halloween event. It was set beneath a cemetery on the slopes of a hill so steep it boggled the mind as to how the corpses and coffins remained in place and didn’t slide down the mountain and break open on Main Street. Abandoned factories with broken windows and brick facades lined a slow, dark river, which became deep just before a subsurface dam, and then gracefully gushed over, flowing beneath a walking bridge connecting the town to a paved river-walk path that stretched miles downstream. Collinsville had previously specialized in blade-making – axes, saws, knives and any sort of industrial cutting tool. The new restaurants and cafés decorated their walls with old Collinsville creations – crude, bladed steel instruments that seemed vaguely menacing but quaint at the same time. The factories were slowly being converted to apartments, antique shops and art galleries in a small-town version of gentrification.
Jacob, like any boy his age, was excited to dress up, to run through the night, to collect candy from neighbors. He was dressed as a mad scientist, an easy enough costume, which, thankfully, cost very little to create – a simple white jacket, some iron-on lettering, blood spatter, gloves and goggles. His naturally messy hair was trussed up into spikes, jutting out in different directions. Some fake glasses gave him the look of intelligence gone awry. He was picture-worthy even for people who didn’t consider him the center of their world.
Jonathan and Mary were never desperate or organized enough to arrive at Collinsville ridiculously early in order to park in the center of town. Conner and Madison would probably have the finest parking spot available. They also attended every year, parading their children, taking pictures, telling everyone that everything was wonderful. Jonathan recognized he was here to do the same thing, and somehow it seemed a bigger lie.
They parked along the river walk outside of town and joined other families who walked beneath the looming trees beside the river. It was dusk and quickly growing dark. The warmth of the sun faded off, and a mist rose from the black waters and drifted through the trees. As they approached the town, Jonathan could hear the laughter, the voices of revelry just beyond the walking bridge and behind the old brick buildings. The other families shuffled along, their children jumped and ran, and their parents called them back. Jacob walked quietly and calmly and Jonathan wondered to himself if something was wrong. The fear every parent secretly harbors that their son or daughter is somehow different – that they were not playing properly with other kids, not behaving like normal kids – crept into his mind. Jacob, at times, seemed morose and isolated. He had no brothers or sisters, and there was no best friend up the street with whom he played. And with that concern came guilt. How could any child come out ‘normal’ with a father like him?
But it wasn’t just Jacob’s quiet manner at a time when he should be a bounding barrel of excitement and joy; the whole evening seemed off. Jonathan knew he had been avoiding the night, hiding inside with the lights on, but now his open-air presence in the darkness couldn’t be helped and he felt an insane sense that something stalked through the trees between the walking path and the deep river. He couldn’t describe it exactly; it was like knowing a song on the radio but being unable to remember the name until hours later. Perhaps it was just a memory, a key revelation sneaking up in slow and horrific fashion. The tops of the trees rustled in an unfelt wind; their brittle orange-and-brown leaves brushed together in a whispering dirge and then floated to the earth like confetti.
They crossed the bridge out of the woods and into town. Jacob grew tired of walking and Jonathan carried him for a time. More people began to appear. Other parents smiled as they passed, commented on his costume, and, naturally, Jonathan and Mary returned the compliments until, five minutes into
