“And what did that boy look like?”
Michael looked away and back out to the lake.
“Do you really think he just happened to be there in Coombs’ Gulch that night? That this is all just a big coincidence?”
“I saw other things, too,” Michael said. He slowly lowered the rifle. “I saw stars. I saw galaxies. I saw different times and different places.”
“And did it hurt?”
“I never felt pain like that in all my life.”
Jonathan pointed at the tracks leading into the trees. “Out there is more pain like that. We’re being tricked. Led around like dumb, blind animals. You go out there and you’re just going to find yourself in that place again, except this time it will be permanent.”
“What makes you the expert?”
“Up in the field. You saw something through the scope; what was it?”
“I couldn’t be sure…”
“What was it?”
“It looked like a man.”
“What man?”
“I can’t be sure. It was too far.”
“Tell me. Just say it.”
“It looked like Gene but…not him at the same time. I could only make out a couple of his features. He looked different, though. He looked like he was smiling. I thought it must be my imagination, with everything going on, and when I looked again he was gone.”
“Did that make you think that Gene was still alive?”
“No. Gene’s dead.”
“And yet you saw him.”
“This is different.”
“No, it’s not! Something out there is playing with us. Trying to trick us into following its plan. The best thing we can do is just get back to the cabin.”
Michael looked down and then back out at the tracks. He blinked tears out of his eyes. “I don’t know what to do without him,” he said.
“I know. But we have to do the right thing, the logical thing. We need to get back to the cabin as quickly as possible and get help.”
“What will I tell them? Madison? Brent and Aria?”
“I don’t know.”
The footprints in the snow led out into the infinite. Michael stared at them and Jonathan could see him calculating the odds, toying with the possibilities, a look of desperate longing in his eyes.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll go now.”
Michael lowered his rifle and turned back toward camp.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nothing was dry. Their clothes, the sleeping bags and tent were still damp with melted snow. The air was thick with moisture again. They broke down the tent and Jonathan strapped it to his pack. They were hungry and tired. Jonathan’s stomach felt as if it were eating itself. He searched for food but there was none. Michael stayed silent and cold as the snow. Jonathan watched him for a moment. He pictured the barrel of Michael’s rifle pointed at him. He had the terrifying and lonely sensation of realizing his life was worth far less than another’s. All the years together, growing up, he knew he was on the outside looking in on the Braddick brothers. He thought he understood it, but did not. He caught glimpses of Michael standing at the edge of the trees, staring down at the path of footprints in the snow.
And that loneliness made him wish for home even more – for Mary and Jacob. The times throughout the brief history of their small family during which he was absent – numbed with drink or suffused with regret and rage – stung him all the more now. It made him fearful. Time was strange. It faded away but lived forever. Small and vastly important moments were lost to time and yet somehow echoed through lifetimes, like the light of a long-dead star finally reaching a child’s eye as he stares through a darkened window to the night sky. He felt it. His life, his words and actions, everything he had done lived on forever, infecting the world. He wanted to be a good man, but he feared the echoes of his past grew too loud.
He strained for hope. He told himself he would return home and make it right. The present could be changed, the future rewritten. He tried to tell himself he was not trapped. All those years of regret and guilt and remorse were unnecessary. He told himself they had saved Thomas Terrywile from an eternity of cold, lonely pain. Through death they saved him, yet sacrificed themselves. There was no nobility in what they did, but perhaps there was forgiveness. Perhaps there was a chance at goodness. He felt he could live with it. He felt he could move on from it. He just needed to get home and hold his wife and son and tell them he truly loved them – that everything had been for them – and then it would be different. Then there would be life where there had only been the specter of death.
This was what he told himself and he tried to believe it.
It was just after 8:00 a.m. They could make it to the cabin by dark. They could get in the truck and go home and, in time, put it all behind them.
He looked over at Michael as he stared into the woods. The snow would come again, and then there would be no trace of them left. The fire, the tracks, everything would vanish beneath a white blanket. Thomas Terrywile’s bones rested somewhere at the bottom of the lake.
Jonathan checked his rifle, made sure a cartridge was in the chamber and slung the Remington over his shoulder.
“Are you ready?” he said, but Michael said nothing back. Jonathan wondered how Michael’s life would be now, with half of himself missing, dead and wandering through the trees. “Let’s keep up a good pace. We will get back and get help.”
“There’s no help for this,” Michael said. It didn’t matter where Michael stood, which direction he faced; his eyes looked to the trees.
They left the lake in the woods behind and started up the mountain toward the meadow, at least one thousand vertical feet
