Broken Angels

82

Roland could wait no longer. He pulled on his gloves, his knit cap. He did not look forward to walking blindly through the woods in a snowstorm, but he had no choice. He glanced at the fuel gauge. The van had been running, heater on, since they had stopped. They were down to less than one-eighth of a tank.

"Wait here," Roland said. "I'm going to look for Sean. I won't be long."

Charles studied him with deep fear in his eyes. Roland had seen it many times before. He took his hand.

"I will be back," he said. "I promise."

Roland stepped out of the van, shut the door. A sheet of snow slid from the top of the vehicle, dusting his shoulders. He brushed himself off, glanced through the window, waved to Charles. Charles waved back.

Roland made his way down the lane.

The trees seemed to close ranks. Roland had been walking for nearly five minutes. He did not find the bridge Sean had spoken of, or much else. He turned around a few times, adrift in the miasma of snow. He'd lost his bearings.

"Sean?" he said.

Silence. Just the empty white forest.

"Sean!"

There was no reply. The sound was muffled by the falling snow, deadened by the trees, swallowed by the dusk. Roland decided to head back. He was not dressed properly for this, and this was not his world. He would return to the van, and wait there for Sean. He glanced down. The blowing snow had all but obscured his own footprints. He turned, walked as quickly as he could in the direction from which he had come. Or so he believed.

As he trudged back, the wind suddenly picked up. Roland turned his back to the gust, covered his face with his scarf, waited out the blast. When it ebbed, he looked up and saw through a narrow clearing in the trees. There was a stone farmhouse, and in the distance, perhaps a quarter mile beyond, a large trellis and what looked like a tableau of amusement-park displays.

My eyes must be playing tricks, he thought.

Roland turned toward the house and suddenly sensed noise and movement to his left-a snapping sound, soft, unlike branches underfoot, more like fabric rippling in the wind. Roland wheeled around. He saw nothing. Then he heard another sound, this time closer. He shone his light through the trees and caught a dark silhouette shifting side to side in the illumination, something partially obscured by the pines twenty yards ahead. In the falling snow it was impossible to tell what it was.

Was it an animal? A sign of some sort?

A person?

As Roland slowly approached, the object came into focus. It was not a person, or a sign. It was Sean's coat. Sean's coat was hanging from a tree, powdered with fresh snow. His scarf and gloves lay at the base.

Sean was nowhere to be seen.

"Oh my," Roland said. "Oh Lord, no."

Roland hesitated for a few moments, then picked up Sean's coat, shook off the snow. At first he thought the coat had been hanging from a broken branch. It had not. Roland looked more closely. The coat was hanging from a small pocketknife stabbed into the bark of the tree. Beneath the coat, there was something carved-something round, about six inches in diameter. Roland trained his flashlight on the carving.

It was the face of the moon. It was freshly cut.

Roland began to shiver. And it had nothing to do with the frigid weather.

"It is so delightfully cold," a voice whispered, riding on the wind.

A shadow moved in the near dark, then it was gone, dissolved into the insistent flurry. "Who's there?" Roland asked.

"I am Moon," came the whisper, now behind him.

"Who?" Roland's voice sounded thin and scared. It shamed him.

"And you are the Snow Man."

Roland heard the rush of footsteps. It was too late. He began to pray.

In a blizzard of white, Roland Hannah's world went black.