Winter Chills

  Vol. 2

  Layne Adamsson

  A. Q. Hart

  S. J. Lomas

  Dan MacDonald

  Copyright © 2023 by 8N Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover concept and design by Sarah Perry.

  Print ISBN: 979-8-9879774-1-5

  Ebook ISBN: 979-8-9879774-0-8

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. She Gives Me Light

  A.Q. Hart

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  2. Tipping Points

  Layne Adamsson

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  3. All that Glitters

  S.J. Lomas

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  4. Dead Air

  Dan MacDonald

  About the Author

  If you liked this book, try…

  To my mother, who raised a daughter who refuses to suffer in silence.

  To those of us who are more powerful and resilient than we ever thought possible, we will survive to better days.

  She Gives Me Light

  A.Q. Hart

  Why does the moon stay tethered to the earth? The moon, powerful enough to move oceans, to blot the sun from the sky, to affect the very biology and psychology of humankind, why does she stay? Is she trapped? Does the moon throw herself to the apex of each end of an ellipse, only to be brought close again by Earth’s gravity? A body drifting by, caught in an orbit she could not escape. But one day, the earth will weaken, and the moon will peacefully drift away. Or maybe she won’t go so peacefully. Maybe she will crash into the Earth. With all the stars she once knew so painfully far away, with nothing to lose, she will deal Earth a punishing blow before departing.

  The beam of the cold moon shone down on me through the window. The daydream she inspired dissolved into my reality as the shadow of a lazy snowflake crossed my vision.

  For most, the holidays are a hectic time at best and can be a dark time at worst.

  John and I were firmly in the hectic category this holiday, hectic but happy. His parents had come down from Vermont to celebrate with us. His sister, brother-in-law, and their kids had flown from L.A. It had been non-stop entertaining for the entire week. At some points I would have forgotten my own name if John wasn’t right there with a sweet, “Annabel, honey are you alright?”

  John had just left with his sister and her family to the airport to catch their red-eye, all concerned about leaving me here alone, but there just wasn’t room in the car for all of us. And considering the accident, we all agreed it seemed best for me not to be driving right now. It just wasn’t proper to have house guests take a taxi to the airport. I could still see the worry in the corners of his eyes that didn’t match his wide smile as John closed the front door at 8:45 pm.

  As I sat on the couch, surrounded by the whirlwind of mess that three kids under the age of ten hath wrought upon our living room, I reflected on how little attention John’s sister, Judith, gets from her husband. How lucky I was that John and I found each other. We were such a good match, and he was a good man. I could never forget that.

  John had insisted that I just sit and rest while he was out for the two or three hours it would take to get to the airport and back, but looking at the aftermath of the extended visit, I wanted to get a head start on cleaning so John might have a tidy house to return to.

  I started by tackling the piles of wrapping paper and coloring book pages littering the floor. One all the way under the couch caught my eye. I remembered John had accidentally crumpled it up and made our little niece Madeline cry. I pacified her by eating some salt water taffy with her from the container her grandparents had brought. I uncrumpled the drawing and smoothed it against my skirt. It was a drawing of John and I, but my feet were replaced with a fish tail. I had told Maddie I loved the beach so much and hadn’t been back since my accident. Staring at the picture, I could almost smell the salt of the ocean in my nose. I went to the kitchen to make some electrolyte drink. John had said it was important to replace my electrolytes after the accident. I stuck the rumpled paper to the fridge with a magnet before getting out the water pitcher. The wax in the crayons caught the moonlight from the window in some places. Drawing me locked eyes with human me as I sipped my beverage. The brightly colored sport drink was much more thirst quenching than the tap water, but it didn’t really hit the spot.

  Having emptied my glass I felt better and decided to tackle the mess of wrapping paper, packaging, and whatever else was left around downstairs.

  I shuttled back and forth to the kitchen with full bags of trash. A squeak in the floorboards under the area rug by the table that had bothered me all week, nagged me like a bone stuck in my teeth.

  Once all the garbage bags were ferried to the back door, I returned to the area rug. I isolated the exact area where the squeak was worst to just beside the dining table and moved the chairs out of the way. Rolling back the rug, I saw the culprit immediately. A nail was sticking up out of one of the floorboards. We were so lucky none of the little ones had caught their foot on it.

  I’m sure John would be able to fix it, but I didn’t want to bother him with it, and I knew he would be so tired when he got back from his drive. Although I didn’t usually get into the tools, I didn’t see why not. Judith had talked about all her woodturning classes. Why couldn’t I just use a little hammer and surprise John with my small repair? Maybe he wouldn’t need to know, male pride and all.

  I went to the entryway closet and got the small tool bag off the shelf. Placing it by the offending board, I settled down next to it and fished carefully past a small saw and a pair of pliers before I found my target, the hammer. When I pulled it out, the handle was coated in a sticky oil-slick substance. I looked back in the bag and saw the substance in the saw teeth and on the pliers. What a mess. I thought for a moment about the best way to remove any staining it might cause. Baking soda and a spot of dish soap in warm water probably.

  I went to the kitchen and returned, this time with some rubber gloves to protect me from whatever this gunk might be. Now I was ready to remedy the squeaky floorboard. The nail was completely bent over. It would have to be replaced. I had found a small package of nails in the tool bag without the oily residue, thankfully. I wedged the claw of the hammer under the bent nail head and levered the handle away from the nail. The board unexpectedly came away with the hammer.

  Well, not the entire board, just part of it. There was a cut in the board, the edges unstained and without any fastenings. The other nail that should have been holding it down was broken off entirely. Now that I got a closer look at the area, there was a bit of sawdust stuck to the underside of the rug, and the source of the squeak was much more obvious. The space between the floors under the missing floorboard was dark and vacuous. We were so lucky no one lost a foot into the floorboards. What kind of house would they think I kept with the floor in such disarray just under the dining room rug? This was maybe beyond what I dared to fix after all. I took another look at the part of the board that had come up. I had missed it before in my focus on the nail, but the piece of board had a dark mark. Almost like something was burned into it. A pattern of some sort—

  I was staring at the ceiling.

  It was the ceiling above the couch in the living room. This was how I usually came to after one of my episodes, with John by my side. The holiday had taken more out of me than I realized. I must be getting worse. It happened once right before the holidays and again during, which was extremely upsetting for the family. I had been in the middle of teaching little Maddie to play Chutes and Ladders on that very rug and then next thing we all knew I was on the ground. It scared Maddie almost half to death.

  I sat up slowly to see how I felt. No dizziness or nausea like there was sometimes when I had to be laid up in bed for a day. Thankfully it seemed mild. It would stress John out to know I had another fainting spell. I knew he wouldn’t want me in the tools when he specifically asked me to rest. I should at least put everything back so I can casually mention the squeak to him when he gets home. He usually cleaned up my mess when I got like this, and then when I came to he was there to check on me. Looking back towards the table, everything was put back as if nothing had happened. Maybe he had gotten home while I was indisposed.

  “John,” I called out. Only the silence of the house answered me.

  I looked at the clock on the mantle above the fireplace, it was 9:22. If it had taken me about thirty minutes to dispose of the paper, and look at the floor, I had been out for approximately five minutes.

  I tried very hard to remember putting the tools away, putting the gloves away, placing the wood piece back, unrolling the rug, putting the dining set back, walking to the couch, and lying down. I couldn’t remember doing any of it.

  I walked to the entryway hallway and confirmed John was not in the downstairs bathroom. Then I went up th
e stairs, trusting my own constitution less and less every step. He was not in our bedroom, the guest bathroom, nor any of the three guest bedrooms. I was alone in the house.

  Was it possible I imagined the whole thing? Did I clear the wrapping paper away? Was there a squeak at all? Was the floorboard broken? What about that marking on the wood? Was it also a figment of my illness?

  I slowly made my way downstairs, feeling fine physically, but rattled emotionally with so many concerning questions swirling around my head. Could my illness be progressing when I otherwise felt completely fine? Was it all in my head? Could I trust my own thoughts and observations? Was I much worse than we thought?

  I reached the bottom of the stairs. There were two possibilities laid before me. Either I had imagined the entire thing, and I could not be trusted to be on my own at all, or I had just lost some time before I laid down. Neither was particularly desirable, but I had to know which it was, then I could decide which was worse.

  The entryway closet where the tool bag resided caught my eye. That could be the first test, the existence of the sticky oil slick substance on the hammer. I approached the closet, opened the door, took down the tool bag from the top shelf, and sank down to the floor with the bag. Crouched over the bag, I eased open the zipper slowly. The entryway light spilled into the bag, finally falling on the hammer handle, shimmering with the blue-green-purple substance. I wrapped my hand around the hammer as if to make sure it was real. It felt as I had remembered, sticky over the smooth finish of the wood handle. Relieved, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. So I hadn’t imagined the tools. What about the cleaning I had done?

  Leaving the tools on the floor I walked down the hallway parallel to the stairs and entered the kitchen. The bags were stacked neatly by the back door. Ripping one open revealed it was stuffed with wrapping paper like I had remembered. That was another confirmation. Had I imagined the floorboard?

  Leaving the kitchen, I entered the dining room through the arched passway next to the hallway door frame. I eyed the spot in the rug motif where I had isolated the squeak before. As I stepped on the spot, it squeaked comfortably. My favor for which outcome I preferred was revealing itself in my actions. Emboldened, I stacked the chairs beside the table to make room to roll up the rug with surety in my movements. My toes brushed the edge of the carpet as I prepared myself mentally for both outcomes. I slowly rolled the carpet back. The bent nail came into view. What would it mean if I saw the mark on the wood again? What would it mean if I didn’t? A minor delusion. A spot of dream logic in an otherwise confirmed set of circumstances. Maybe I could live with that.

  I tried to visualize what I had seen before and it was hazy and undefined in my memory. I slowly rolled the rug a bit further and saw the bottom of the mark. As soon as I saw the bottom half I could remember what it looked like. I rolled the rug up further to get a better look—

  I was staring at the ceiling.

  Again.

  Why? How could I be looking at the ceiling once again? I bolted upright, the spark of adrenaline in my extremities. I looked at the clock immediately. It was 9:32. If it had taken 5 minutes to check the house for John, check the tools, and get the courage to check the floor again. Then maybe I took a couple minutes to move the dining room furniture. That left just a couple minutes unaccounted for. I looked from the clock to the dining room. It was reset again.

  I walked straight from the couch, through the doorway into the entryway and turned towards the closet. The tool bag was open on the floor before the open closet door. Crouching down next to the tools, I reached down and upended the bag. The discolored handle of the hammer glittered on the floor. When I pressed my finger to it, I felt the stickiness as I pulled away.

  I practically jumped up and hurried down the hallway back to the kitchen. The black plastic bag ripped easily under my fingernails. Wrapping paper scraps exploded into the air and slowly rained down around me.

  I took a moment to think through the dining room piece. I grabbed a pad of paper from a drawer and grabbed a pencil from the cup on the counter.

  I stood before the dining room rug for what I hoped was the third time tonight and reviewed my previously laid out possibilities. Wholesale delusion seemed impossible at this point, considering I could confirm everything but the dining room, unless this was also not real. In which case there was nothing to be done. I had completely lost my hold on reality. The second possibility of lost time seemed basically proven. Taking note of the time would help confirm that. A third possibility was taking form in my mind. I could remember everything except what the mark looked like. It was a smudge in my memory, almost out of focus. The edges of the new hypothesis were formless below the surface of my consciousness. It felt too impossible to be real but simultaneously was starting to feel like the only possibility. I moved the chairs out of the way, one fell over the other in my haste.

  In an attempt to remove the lost time from the equation, I looked at the clock, 9:34, and jotted it down. Kneeling down to the floor at the edge of the carpet, I threw my notes down next to me. The carpet rolled up quickly and familiarly under my hands until I could see the nail and stopped. Continuing very slowly, I rolled the carpet up until I could see just the bottom edge of the mark. I examined the sliver of the round edge. It looked as if it was burned into the wood. Too steady and deliberate to be an accident. Returning the carpet to definitively cover the mark again, I held it in place with one hand as I reached back and grabbed the notepad and pencil. Rolling the rug slowly with one hand, I revealed the bottom sliver of the mark again. With my other hand I positioned the notepad so it blocked my line of sight to the mark. I slowly pushed the rug away so the mark should have been fully exposed based on the size of the blurry smudge in my memory. Deliberately, I blinked.

  I was still looking at the notepad.

  Shifting my weight around carefully, I used my leg to hold the rug back. My hand left the rug and moved towards the mark. I reached my finger out to find it. It was hot to the touch and I pulled away quickly. Tentatively, I ran my finger across it and realized it was not burning, it was biting cold. I placed my finger on it again. I blinked.

  I was still looking at the paper with my hand on the mark, hidden below it. The cold was slightly uncomfortable, but not painful. I pulled my finger away and examined it. It was slightly reddened from the pressure and friction. I rubbed my finger and thumb together. It felt unchanged.

  I traced my finger around the edge to feel for some more information and construct its appearance in my mind. It was basically circular. I found a bisecting line that ran from top to bottom. I found another bisecting line that ran horizontally. I could feel there was something in the quadrants, but I could not feel the details clearly enough. I focused on the notepad I had been looking at vacantly.

  Over the holiday John had insisted we all watch North by Northwest. Thornhill is able to track Eve to the auction by making a rubbing of the message pressed into the top sheet of the notepad through the missing paper above.

  I put the pencil in my teeth and carefully isolated just the top sheet of the pad and placed it over the mark. Pencil retrieved from my teeth, I rubbed the side of the lead over the mark. Slowly the mark was revealed in its entirety. I blinked.

  I was still staring at my loose pencil rubbing of the mark.

  It was indeed a circle, with a vertical and horizontal bisecting line. The top left was blank. The top right had a line drawing of a simplistic eye. The bottom left had a swirl that went counter clockwise from the center out. The bottom right had a broken horizontal line.

  I lifted the paper carefully and stuck my finger underneath to rub the blank space. There were no details my untrained touch could identify. I rubbed a little harder to no avail. I pulled my hand back away and replaced the paper. My finger had the faintest sheen of blue on it. My attention returned to the rubbing as if looking at the symbols would reveal to me how the sight of this combination of marks could bring my sickness on. I had to share this with John. This seemed important, some kind of key to my illness. Maybe I wasn’t sick at all. This was something else. He wouldn’t have to worry. I brought my focus back to the paper, and the right edge of the rubbing caught my attention. It looked like I had caught the previous message in the pad of paper like the detective from the movie. The revealed part looked like, “DO.”