Autumn Bleeds Into Winter
Jeff Strand
Autumn Bleeds Into Winter © 2020 by Jeff Strand
Cover art © 2020 by Lynne Hansen
LynneHansenArt.com
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author.
For more information about the author, visit http://www.JeffStrand.com
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Acknowledgments
Books By Jeff Strand
1
In the summer of 1979, a few days after my fourteenth birthday, I was in the back of a van with an airbrushed panther on the side, trying to buy an untraceable pistol.
I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska. The kind of safe neighborhood where kids would be turned loose in the morning and left to their own devices until the piercing shout of their mother informed them that it was time to come home for dinner. The neighborhood dogs just walked wherever they wanted, unleashed, and we knew each of them by name.
Oh, sure, we had bullies, but not the kind that left lasting trauma. Throughout the second grade, my friends and I lived in fear of a kid we’d nicknamed Checkers because he always wore a red-and-black checkered jacket. He was a huge, scary-looking kid—a third-grader for sure. If we saw him on the playground during recess, and he saw that we saw him, he’d immediately give chase and we’d flee in terror. Sometimes we’d lose him quickly, and sometimes we’d spend the entirety of recess trying to escape a savage beating that would presumably involve broken bones and spurting blood. The only thing saving us was that his frightening bulk was perfect for intimidation but not so great for endurance in a pursuit.
The playground had some gigantic tires stacked on top of each other. You could climb on the outside of them or also crawl around inside the tires themselves. (I honestly don’t know if they were somehow attached or, by 1970’s playground safety standards, just stacked with the assumption that they probably wouldn’t come crashing down and kill several children.) One day, I was inside the highest tire and when I glanced down, there was Checkers, looking up at me. I was trapped. There was no escape. I was filled with the white-hot terror of a second grader who knows that a bloody nose is in his future.
“I’ve got you now!” said Checkers. Then he let out a maniacal, villainous laugh.
And I suddenly realized that he meant me no harm. While my friends and I were completely convinced of the peril we faced from Checkers, he was just having fun chasing some younger kids around the playground. He never caught us because he didn’t want to. If he had caught us, he would’ve simply released us, like fish.
As I got older, there were other bullies, the kind who might try to trip you in the cafeteria or hurl epithets that were much more acceptable a few decades ago than they are today. But there really wasn’t much in the way of danger. There were rumors that a kid froze to death when he forgot his house key and his parents were late getting home from work, but I didn’t know him and the story didn’t really hold up to close scrutiny. Overall, it was a very safe childhood.
Until some kids disappeared.
And I knew exactly who did it.
I knocked on the side door of the van, which was parked at our designated meeting spot in front of The Old House. The house probably wasn’t older than any other house in the neighborhood, but it had been abandoned for as long as I could remember, and it was falling apart to the extent that even kids who thought they were protected by the invincibility of youth didn’t venture inside. But with the overgrown yard, you could park a van in front of it and not attract any real attention.
The door slid open. A man with greasy long hair and a thick mustache looked surprised to see me.
“Fuck off, kid,” he said. “I’m meeting somebody.”
“You’re meeting me.”
“The hell I am.”
“I’m Curtis.”
The man groaned. “Are you kidding me? What are you, nine?”
“I’m fourteen.”
“Sorry, kid. I don’t sell guns to chubby fourteen-year-olds. Go away.”
“My money’s as good as anybody else’s.”
The man massaged his forehead as if this decision was causing him intense pain. “Fine, fine, whatever. Get in.”
I climbed into the van, which smelled like what I was innocent enough to believe was a dead skunk. I started to pull the door closed.
“Don’t close it all the way,” he told me. “I don’t want you to be able to say I tried to kidnap you.”
I closed the door most of the way. The inside of the van had a mattress on the floor and red blankets. I was not so innocent as to think, “Oh, this must be in case he wants to sleep in his van during road trips!”
He lit a normal cigarette and glared at me. “This isn’t cool at all.”
“Sorry.”
“What do you want a gun for, anyway? You’re not going to shoot your teachers, are you?”
“No.”
“Don’t your parents own a gun?”
“Sure they do. A bunch of them.” This was Alaska. Every household had a gun collection.
“So why don’t you use one of those?”
“Because I don’t want it to be traceable. That’s the whole reason I called you. If I wanted something for target practice, I’d ask my dad to let me borrow a rifle.”
“Why don’t you want it to be traceable?”
“Why are you asking so many
