It’s so quiet, he was thinking. Not even the wind was—
He stopped abruptly, several hundred feet out, and stared at the tombstone shape of the Heppler toboggan where it jutted from the ice, cocked slightly to one side, its curled nose pointing skyward, its lower half trapped in the frigid waters. Parts of the sled were splintered and cracked, slats sticking out in jagged relief, bindings torn and shredded.
Ray shook his head. He had never seen anything like it. A hole opening and then closing again, crushing a toboggan into kindling. Damn, this was weird!
He started forward, intending to go only another few steps, but the ice gave way beneath him all at once, breaking and snapping apart as if formed of the thinnest crust. Ray threw himself backward toward safety, but he was already sliding down into the freezing waters, the shock of the cold taking his breath away. He went all the way under, then fought his way back to the surface, gasping for breath. His heavy boots and coat dragged at him, and he kicked his way out of them, shucking off his gloves as well, all the while groping desperately for a solid piece of ice on which to find a grip.
“Help!” he screamed, his voice thin and high-pitched. “Help! For God’s sake!”
Thrashing wildly in the freezing waters, he tried to reach the edge of the ice. But his flashlight was lost, its light gone out, and he could not find the edge of the hole.
“Help me!” he cried in a long, desperate wail.
Then he saw the eyes, yellow and bright and all around, slipping through the darkness just at the edge of his vision, watching him struggle.
Waiting.
The ice began to shift. He heard it crack and snap, then felt the water about him lift in a slow wave. The crunching that followed was deep and resonant and filled the whole of the night’s silence. He screamed anew, but something was dragging at his legs, pulling him under. He went down, then flailed back to the surface, gasping for air. No! he was screaming inside his head. Oh, please, no!
He went down again, and this time when he came back to the surface, the ice was in his face, closing over him. He groped for the edge of the hole and managed to get one arm out before the ice locked about his wrist, trapping everything but his hand beneath the surface. He kicked and lunged frantically from beneath, but the ice would not give way.
From above, just where he could see them, the strange yellow eyes peered down at him hungrily. For a few moments longer, his bare hand groped and twitched in the night air. When it finally quit moving, frost began to form on the skin until it looked as if the hand wore a white glove.
The eyes watched a little while longer, then disappeared.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23
CHAPTER 15
It was dark the next morning when Nest rose to go running. Light from streetlamps pooled on the snow outside, and the luminous crystals of her bedside clock told her it wasn’t yet five. She dressed in the dark, pulling on tights and running shoes, adding sweats, then tiptoed down the hall to the back entry where she picked out a rolled watch cap, gloves, and a scarf. A glance at the coatrack revealed no sign of Bennett’s parka. Apparently, she hadn’t come home.
The early morning air was so cold it took her breath away. She jogged up the drive, highstepping through drifts to the road, and began to run. The snowplows had been out early, and Woodlawn was already scraped down to the blacktop in a broad swath that cut like a river through the snow. Somewhere in the distance, the plows were still working, the growl of the big engines and the harsh scrape of the metal blades clearly audible in the windless silence. Nothing moved on the road ahead, and she ran alone down its center, picking her way along the cleanest sections, avoiding patches of ice and frozen snow, breathing deep and slow as she moved out toward the country.