Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: A Suspense Magazine Anthology

Tonight Is the Night Shannon Kirk

George Talent is going to do it tonight. He’s sick of waiting, fretting for the right moment. The right words. Tonight is the night, dammit! Indeed, he says those words, “Tonight is the night, is the night, is the night,” in his native New England accent, to his own ruby face and Santa-round nose and salt-n-pepper beard, right out-loud to himself in the rearview mirror of his Richard’s Mountain company truck — the white one with the double cab, the one with chains on great snow tires. Well, the whole fleet has chains in this kind of blizzard.

Settled in his intentions, George turns off the crackly news, coming in on wonky radio waves tonight, given the weather. After the dread peddlers were done with their blizzard forecasts and dire warnings, as if a typical blizzard isn’t just another groundhog’s night in Vermont, a hyper-boy newscaster pitched high on another trauma going on in the mountain region: some weird-ass brutal murders. The newscaster even named what all presumed was a serial killer, “The Spine Ripper,” based on the common style of the kills.

Flippin’ psychos, more of ’em as time goes on and growing sicker, George thinks. It’s the damn internet giving crazy ideas. But who cares, got nothing to do with me. Tonight is the night, no matter what.

George cranks off the ignition, pushes open the driver’s door, and slides out. Standing in the open door, given the fast snow infiltrating his cab, he works quick to shove his keys with the Strand Bookstore keychain deep in his cavernous man-jean’s pocket. He next grabs his camo-print Duck Hunters’ Guild wallet from the center cubby and shoves it in an even-deeper butt pocket. He nods deference to an important book of brown leather he leaves in the center cubby, adjacent to his sheathed hunting knife.

“I do love you, Lady, but time’s moving on. It has to be tonight. You’ll always, always be my girl. Tonight is the night,” he says to the book.

Before back-stepping in the snow to shut his door, he checks the mini clock embedded in the dashboard. Noting it’s 12:05 a.m., he resolves that his work day has near begun, shuts the door, and presses “lock” on the universal fob that works on all vehicles in the Richard’s Mountain fleet of trucks. As he walks to tonight’s first destination, he, like a carefree child, rakes four fingers through the snow-plastered decal on the side of his truck. Four thick lines now etch the decal’s snow-capped peaks and evergreen base and Richard’s Mountain in luscious red script on the top curve, and 99 trails, 99 dreams, 99 ways to fall in love on the bottom curve.

It’s true midnight now, meaning it’s time for breakfast or a mid-drinking snack in the townie/mountain staff bar: Malforson’s Bar & Grill. “Grill” being quite a euphemism, since there is no grill and only two items are on the flippin’ menu.

But whatever, whatever, it’ll do. Always has.

George makes his way towards the bar, which most passersby fail to see from this curvy mountain road. Set in a depression of land, only one story, and near-surrounded by snowy pines, it could be, on dark nights — especially stormy nights like tonight — just a roadside shadow. Up close, it appears as a cozy troll cottage baked of gingerbread, with its brown shingles, smoking chimney, and low-hung windows with drifts of snow in each pane. Amber battery candles sit on the sill of each window, firmly cementing the joint as one Santa’s more jaded elves might frequent after a long night of making tinker toys and bobsleds.

Another mountain staffer ambles behind George, having locked his own company truck. George hears the beep of this worker’s universal fob and twists to nod a hello. The co-worker, Kyle something or other, he’s new, brand new, nods back.

Where’d Kyle whatshisface come in from? Colorado? Marquette? Who cares. Not tonight. Don’t care.

“Hey there, George,” Kyle New Boy says.

“Hey,” says George, scrunching his eyes to avoid a deluge of snow from the sky.

George doesn’t wait for Kyle, and this isn’t George being rude. This is him teaching new boy the ropes. There are rules, laws, amongst staff and townies in the hidden cocoon of Malforson’s Bar and Grill. And one law is no talking outside. Another is no monopolizing a single-solitary person’s short-time inside, before a mountain shift. One can talk to the whole bar, if the whole bar is listening, but one-on-one ear beatings are strictly banned. Kyle doesn’t rush to catch up to George, so hopefully new boy gets it.

And so, the regular night routine clicks in to begin.

But this is no regular night. No! I won’t let another night pass. Tonight is the night.

It is the beginning of the work day for the skeleton crew that grooms the slopes in the middle of profit-promising blizzards, such as tonight; and it’s the middle of a drinking night for the Cliffs and Norms of the village. This is their Cheers. The binary menu fits both sides of the divide: eggs-n-bacon sandwiches in tinfoil, kept under a humming heat lamp is one choice; and palm-shaped sliders cooked in a toaster oven is the other. Mostly the sliders are meant to soak up the townies’ constant rum and cokes and dozens of draws from the tap, and the egg-n-bacon hockey pucks are for mountain staff. Sometimes the staff and townies mix up the menu between themselves; a grease-dripping slider from the toaster before an all-nighter in a snowcat is a great way to start one’s work-night. But no matter what, no matter what, there’s not a damn fool townie who would take even a drop of drip coffee meant for the mountain’s night staff. That would be sacrilege. Also sacrilege would be mountain staff taking a townie’s designated seat at the bar. Coffee and stools are sacrosanct, the détente formed to accommodate the demilitarized zone of Malforson’s.

These are the intricate, unstated but firm, laws of Malforson’s: no ear-beatings, only communal talking if the community as a whole is listening, no coffee for townies, no designated bar stools for mountain staff. Laws.

Breaking any could lead to violence. Possibly justified homicide.

There are other laws, too.

Such as, one law, seems to George, is that not a mugger in here is permitted to believe any of George’s amazing, and true dammit, tales. Nor do any of these fools believe he’ll ever actually profess his love to Karen’s face.

But dammit. Tonight is the night to profess his love. Screw these muggers at the bar. Who cares what they believe.

George, at six-foot-five and straight-up turned fifty this year, doesn’t flinch under the sheets of snow layering him like fancy-pants buttercream on a normal-old cupcake. He doesn’t sway a fraction from the frigid, whipping wind. Doesn’t slip even a second on the black ice hidden under accumulating powder on the walkway from parking lot to black bar door. A long-term employee of Richard’s Mountain, he’s wearing his strap-on cleats over steel-toe boots. His internal temperature is a furnace anyway, so he’s not cold, especially since he’s in a Richard’s Mountain, arctic-tundra, gortex, smoretex, whatever newfangled fabric coat. Fine.

Whatever, he thinks, while spiking into the black ice and pulling the black handle on the black door. Big deal we got a storm. It doesn’t matter. It’s tonight. Tonight is the night. I’m talking to Karen if she’s willing to listen. I hope I haven’t waited too long.

In a short mudroom of sorts, George takes off his coat in a way that shimmies any snow to the metal grate floor, meant to capture snow and send it to a well beneath. In hanging his coat on a wood peg, he slides out a thin empty thermos from an inner pocket. Next, he bends to remove the strap-on cleats from his boots and sets them in his regular cubby, one amongst a total of fifty, lining both sides of the bar’s foyer. In behind him bustles new boy Kyle, who, breaking a Malforson’s law, speaks.

“George, right? It’s George?”

“Yeah.”

“We have to take our spikes off here?”

“Yeah,” George says, nods, and walks off.

Again, George isn’t being rude, he just has to get this new kid to get it. He can’t be seen being cornered into talking with some wolf pup. George is barely accepted, even after twenty years on the mountain, in this townie-dominant bar. He can’t allow himself to be one of the staff the townies ask the owner to bounce. A terrible fate, for there’s no other joint in Richard’s Village open past ten p.m. for food, and eating in the resort bar at midnight means mingling with well-heeled skiers from New York City.

George doesn’t like being reminded of New York City.

Ugh, he cringes, setting a hand to his heart to think of New York City.

But no! No more! No more wallowing on heartbreak of the past! Tonight is the night.

He’s going to tell Karen during their night shift on the mountain. Even in this fog-out, blinding blizzard, which at the crack of dawn will bring all the gosh-damn city skiers. Yep, tonight’s the night for love in Vermont, no matter how much snow-catting and limb trimming and lift clearing they need to do on every one of the 99 trails of dreams and ways to fall in love.

Tonight!

George makes his way to a non-designated middle stool at the bar. New boy Kyle sits two stools over, and the entire bar gasps. A woman at a table by a window with an amber candle says, “Oh shit, here we go.”

George closes his eyes. Now he’ll have to talk to Kyle. It’s incumbent upon him to correct Kyle’s gaffe, given that staff instructs staff and townie instructs townie. No other mountain staffers are present yet; George swivels to confirm. Not his beloved Karen, thank goodness. But she never comes to Malforson’s anyway. And no annoying Bob yet. Not even ever-present Old Eli. So, dammit, George has got to do it.

“Look, kid. You can’t sit there, right. That’s Pete’s chair. You best move before he...”

The bartender, named Kemper, with white rag in beer mug steps up and helps, “Before Pete gets back from his piss, yeah.”

“Boy, you better hurry up,” George says, trading an eyebrow-twitch with Kemper the bartender. This Kyle is in his thirties, George guesses, but George calls all of the newbies, “Boy,” until they prove themselves worthy to have an actual name.

Kyle doesn’t, as he should, immediately stand. He continues sitting, his lips pursed, looking at George as if evaluating.

“Right,” Kyle says.

George squints an eye, wondering if he’s going to have to bulk up and fight. Wouldn’t take much. George is a lumberjack of redwoods compared to Kyle’s kindling-gathering frame. But George doesn’t like violence. He especially doesn’t want to fight tonight, tonight is a night for blizzard love.

Kyle breaks the gaze, stands, and says, “Well then. I’ll move,” not apologizing or noting any concession to established laws and norms as the new kid on the block.

As Kyle moves away from the stool, Pete rushes from the bathroom to reclaim his spot and shoots a glare at Kyle. Kyle raises his arms and says, “Settle old boy, no problem.” To this shocking affront, Pete flares his nostrils at George and says, “You best get your boy in control.”

George low-rumble groans. He can’t disclaim Kyle just yet, for an unstated rule is that mountain staff must cover mountain staff. Never know if you get caught in a drift in a blizzard, on the cold side of Richard’s, and need someone to race a tread patch to a shredded one on your snowcat before you freeze to death at 2:00 a.m.

“He’ll get the hang of it. Won’t you, Kyle?” George says.

“Sure, George, sure,” Kyle says, eyes narrowed on him. “Hey, Bartender, how about the news instead of the game?”

George hangs his head between his shoulders, as if an exhausted parent to a never-ending shit stream of bad behavior from a toddler. It’s like a rapid fire series of law breaking from this insolent Kyle. Nobody calls Kemper “Bartender.” And nobody, absolutely nobody — not even the oldest townie — asks Kemper to change the channel.

“Look, Kyle,” George intervenes before a townie steps up to face off with Kyle. That’s how quick the violence rises over such infractions in Malforson’s. The détente is actually a tinder box. “I’ll spell it out. You’re going to have to sit on over at that dark table by the bathrooms and keep your thoughts to yourself. See where nobody’s sitting? That’s for the new guys. You got some time there before you can get on up over here. K?”

“You know what?” Kemper the bartender says. “I’m in a good fuckin’ mood, guy. How ’bout I welcome you with this one-time prize, yeah? Here ya’ go.” Kemper clicks away from a re-run of a famous Patriots’ game over to the news. Immediately a weatherwoman with giant blonde hair is being tossed around on screen at the lakefront in Burlington. Wind, snow, typical blizzard words of hysteria and dire warnings to stay in and keep those generators ready. Hopes that people stocked up on milk and water and bread. Typical. None of the bar occupants, except maybe Kyle, listen to a word of it.

Kyle doesn’t say thanks for the channel change. Doesn’t smile. He walks backwards, nodding in turn at Pete and George and Kemper. He plucks at a phantom toothpick in his teeth with his tongue. George thinks he sees Kyle mouth the words “rude boy” to him, but George won’t allow himself to think that’s what Kyle said. A shiver runs down George’s spine, thinking on a violent day in his past when those same words were said by a stranger. No, no, he didn’t. He couldn’t have. I’m imagining things. Besides, don’t escalate this.

“Gotcha, cowboys. I’ll sit here at the table in the dark then,” Kyle says.

Kyle, tucked away at the least favorite table, sits tight. He accepts a black coffee from a waitress and catches an eggs-n-bacon hot disc tossed to him by Kemper. Otherwise, he disappears into the worst table’s shadows. He glares at the TV news, or he could be glaring at George or Pete, given that they sit directly under it. Or maybe Kemper, who moves behind the bar, under the television.

George proceeds to order and dine on both a greasy slider and a bacon-n-cheese, partly to show his solidarity with both factions in the bar. And partly to abide his hungry nerves.

He’s back to thinking on his plan with Karen.

“Tonight’s the night,” he says to Kemper.

“No shit,” Kemper says.

“Hell yeah. I’m going to rip off the Band-Aid and declare my love. I got to.”

“Big man like you, no way. Too chicken. Will never happen,” Kemper says, in good cheer.

“Yeah, well,” George says. “You’re wrong. Throw me in another slider. Extra cheese. And more coffee.”

Kemper goes about his work.

A number of townies and a couple more mountain staff have filtered in in the meantime. The entire while, Kyle has remained in shadow and silent. Now that the bar is more filled, people sitting at tables by the windows with candles, a few more at the bar, and a smattering few within the two green booths on a side wall, a bees’ hum of voices is rising. As with most major weather events, especially a blizzard, the outside has pushed the dark matter between barflies tighter. So this will be a communal conversation night.

Townie Pete, next to George, kicks it off with his loud booming voice.

“Well, now, George. Ain’t it was a night like this, what... seven, eight years ago? After you lost your Blessed Martha, bless her heart, may that good woman rest in peace.” Pete pauses to make a sign of the cross. As if in rote-practice in a Catholic mass, the entire bar, but for new boy Kyle, says, in clunky unison, “Bless that Blessed Martha. May she rest in peace.” George nods thanks to their deference for Martha.

“Anyway,” Pete continues. “Wasn’t it sometime years after, after Our Blessed Martha was stabbed by a, what you try to tell us? A robot?” The whole bar laughs, except for Kyle, who is still glaring at the TV or Kemper, or Pete or George. It’s hard to tell the angle of Kyle’s sightline, given the shadows of his exile.

George rolls his eyes. “Here we go. Go on then, get it over with. Go on with what you got to say, Pete.” These muggers are never going to believe George’s amazing true tales. And a robot did stab Martha. But whatever. “Whatever, Pete, whatever. Go on then.”

Pete, chuckling, says, “Hold on, hold on,” and takes a massive gulp of his rum and coke. It might be his tenth of the night. “Oh boy, George, you and your tales. So was after Blessed Martha, I know, but you come in a night after a blizzard just like this. And ho boy, did you lay one fresh pile of shit on us. I’ll never forget. You ever gonna forget it, Kemper?”

“Hell no,” Kemper yells, while setting down George’s extra-cheese slider.

“You ever gonna forget, Sue?” Pete says, swiveling to see a woman, sitting at the end of the bar, her designated townie seat. She has the frown lines of a lifelong smoker, and, incongruously to this deep dark forest of a troll bar, wears a shiny green sequined tank top.

“I ain’t ever gonna forget it, Pete. Neva,” Sue says. She tips her own rum and coke at George in salute. George tips back, even while he rolls his eyes, annoyed they don’t believe his true tales, but also willing to take a ribbing. He is, after all, a lover in his hot-furnace lumberjack core. And what none of these muggers knows is, he can, when he tries, be an actual poet. But whatever. Whatever. Let them roast him. He can take it. Because tonight is the night for telling Karen, no matter what. Ten years he’s been lonely, without his blessed Martha. It’s time for love again.

“Hey, I know this tale, Pete. Let me tell it,” annoying mountain staffer Bob interjects. Bob is sitting in one of the green booths. Kyle is still glaring at the news, or at Pete or at George or at Kemper, it is so hard to tell. George doesn’t want to call Kyle out because that would only escalate whatever it was it seemed Kyle wanted to previously escalate. George thinks it’s best to let the regulars roast him, finish his night breakfast, and get to the mountain.

In the background, the news has shifted from dystopia-level storm reports to the dominating news story of the last few weeks, the one George was listening to in his truck. All about some sick human-body filet artist that the authorities can’t seem to identify or catch. “The Spine Ripper is believed responsible for an alarming eight unsolved murders this winter thus far,” the newscaster says.

But the regulars are well into a communal story, and the news has to rise to the level of Mount Washington blowing and revealing herself to be a secret volcano for these muggers to quit a communal story.

“Go for it, Bob,” Pete blesses, ignoring the news. “Go on, tell that wild George tale.”

“Right, right. So, was a blizzard just like this,” Bob says, picking up the thread. “George here, he had the cold side of the mountain that night. I had Front Face. Anyway, we all worked all night. The next night, we’re back in here rearing up for another long night shift. George comes in. This George right here, you, George,” Bob says, pointing at George.

“No shit, Bob. I’m George,” George says, shaking his head to Townie Pete to indicate his opinion that co-worker Bob is daft.

“So, you, George, you’re a friggin’ kick. You pop in here, all big guy chest out, blustering about how on the cold side of the mountain, come 2:00 a.m. the night a’fore, a pack of coyotes comes up and surrounds your snowcat. Yipping and barking at you mad. And they’re threatening and jumping up and snipping away at the door and all, so you’re holding it tight.” Bob stands from his green booth and reenacts George’s first reenactment. Bob is pulling and pulling on air as if holding closed the door to a snowcat. “So, then, you say. Then, you notice that the alpha was standing directly in front of the point part of your plow blade, and under a full moon, which was blurry white, what with the snow. I remember you gave that detail, George. You’re good, a good storyteller, yeah. Anyway, that alpha bitch coyote stared at you as if a snorting bull, getting ready to charge one of them there marionettes with the red cape.”

“Oh my fucking hell, it’s a matador, you idiot. Not a marionette,” George says.

The bar laughs. But Bob is not derailed. He laughs himself and continues. “So anyway, Madam Coyote Bitch is about to charge and have her pack charge when a bark from behind her made her turn her head. Up steps Blessed Martha’s hound Cope, you said. Her very dog who ran off to the woods when she was stabbed by a robot, oh my Lord in Heaven, that’s what you claim. You hadn’t seen Cope in years, until that night with the coyotes. Seeing Cope, you near passed out. You got out of your cab, threw Cope an eggs-n-bacon, because you say you always carry a “pocket snack” from the bar, and Cope, well Cope she damn well took it! Cope growled at the coyotes, who hurried up behind her and waited. Cope was always a smart hound. And then, snap, the pack fled, along with Cope. You said your Martha was looking out for you is what. Oh what wild bullshit, George. A hound and coyotes living together. What extraordinary bullshit, you blubbering romantic.”

The entire bar is roaring now. Except for Kyle, who continues glaring on at the television, or at Pete or at George. Can’t be Kemper this time; Kemper’s shuttled to a somewhat hidden corner with the fireplace to add another log.

“Oh my God, George. Oh my God. And then, then, you say, up on a crest under the blurry moonlight, Old Cope, that magnificent hound, howls at the moon.” Bob pauses to howl at a fake moon in the bar, “Awhoooo.” He sits back down in his green booth, knuckles his table, and says, “Shit, George, it’s amazing you survived. Good thing you can communicate with animals. Sure as fuck can’t talk to a human woman no more. Amiright, y’all?”

“Hell right. How long you been crushin’ on Karen, George,” Kemper asks.

“Bite me,” George says.

A log rolls in the fire and embers sizzle; the flames jump at the fresh air and lick high against the brick back of the fireplace.

George takes a moment to look around at the crowd as they break off in diminishing laughter. He notes Kyle still staring at him, or Pete or overhead to the TV. Not laughing along.

“There was that other time,” Townie Pete says, twisting around in his bar stool to face the crowd, which causes all interior noise, except the crackling fire and the TV voices, to cease. Pete continues, “It was come this last here spring, what was it? This spring, I think. When the rivers were bloated and freezing ass cold. George comes in and says how he passed a bare-naked-ass man, bathing in the river, right off the main road. Great straight out in the open. Had himself a towel wrapped ’round his head like a lady out of the shower, was that it, George? And a body brush and all, scrubbing his pits. His dangler was free out in the freezing cool air.”

Bob, the daft co-worker, rises again from his green booth, thrusts his groin forward, and wiggles his fingers over his crotch, pantomiming along to Pete’s rendition of the story.

Pete chuckles at Bob and his finger dangler and continues his roast. “Everybody knows a fool would freeze his literal balls off in such arctic water. George gives us all these crazy details about how the dangler guy looked like a snowman, with a round bald head on a round neck on a round torso with round arms, round legs. ‘He was a person made out of snowballs,’ George here told us. Can’t be true,” Pete says. “Ain’t nobody else report such an insane sighting.”

“To Tall Tale George,” Sue yells.

And the entire bar, except for Kyle, raises their beers and rums and cokes and coffees to George. “To Tall Tale George,” they yell.

Except for Kyle. Kyle glares on in the same direction he’s been glaring since he sat.

“Gruesome remains of Middle Tech college student, Christine Heilan, found this morning by Tyson’s fishing hole. Her body had been, like others, split up the middle, her spine removed, and a fishing hook left in her lip,” the news says.

“Why the fuck they give us these details?” Bob yells, flinging his arm in accusation at the television.

“Because it’s after fucking midnight is why,” Kemper says. “They give more after the babies are in bed. I’m putting the Pats back on.”

And to this, the crowd cheers.

Kyle stands, throws cash on the least-favorite table, and walks out.

George waits several minutes for Kyle to leave and tilts his face to Kemper with a bemused look. “So the new guy’s a bit of a... what would you call it?” George says.

“He’s a stalka, that one, alright. I’d watch that one,” says Sue, answering for Kemper. Sue’s the Richard’s Village townie who reads tarot cards for tourists. “He’s not right in the noggin’,” she adds, tapping her temple. Sue’s a New Englander through and through, several generations deep of Yankee blood, so thick, seven heirs more and living in Texas would still carry her accent of dropped r’s and long a’s. And like any soul stitched out of old Vermont sticks and true Vermont stones, Sue knows a thing or two or ten about witchcraft and judging who’s worth your time and who can disappear down a running river. In fact, when Sue voices her opinion on anyone it’s rare, but always right. And to her pronouncement about Kyle, several men in the bar say, “Ayup.”

George considers Sue’s words and nods a couple solemn beats at her. Her throat and chin are uplit in a tint of green from her sequined top, like she might, indeed, be a true witch.

He ticks his tongue as a way of saying he agrees with her.

“Alrighty then, I’m off. Big blizzard night. Gotta get em’ powder perfect for the morning rush,” George says, standing and extracting his Duck Hunters’ Guild wallet. He throws a twenty to cover his $12.00 worth of finished food and coffee and a takeaway breakfast sandwich, which Kemper, without having to be asked, tosses to George. George pushes his thermos for filling, and Kemper obliges. George tells Kemper to keep the change.

Everyone quiets and stares at the screen when an alert sounds the “Breaking News” alarm — which must be fucking huge if the station would go so far as to interrupt this famous Pats’ game. The newscaster narrates along to a sketch now being shown. “Just in. A woman who claims to have escaped a man who kidnapped her and her friend, and who she watched slice her friend on the bank of Poison River, in the manner we’ve previously reported on other victims, has provided this sketch.”

“Oh my gawd,” Sue says in a hush.

“What the fuck?” Bob says.

Kemper, who tends to be the most sane and most sober, and therefore generally regarded as the genius of the bar, looks to George and says, “Hold up, George,” stopping George, who’s standing now and about to push in his stool. “That your man? Your snowball man, bathing in the ice river?”

George looks up to see a sketch of a man with a round bald head, round neck, round torso, and round arms, just like he saw, the one bathing in the bloated spring river.

“Holy shit,” George says. “That sure does look like him.”

“You gotta call the Staties, George? Let ’em know?” Kemper says, but with questions littering his words.

Several people in the bar mutter, “What?” with scrunched brows, questioning whether any of George’s tales could possibly have an ounce of truth.

“No fucking way that’s George’s phony bologna bare-ass snowman,” Pete says, to which daft Bob scoffs and laughs, but with less assuredness than when he told his own George tale.

George considers their comments while looking at the screen. He takes his filled thermos as Kemper hands it to him, turns, and walks to the door. He knows he saw a bare-ass man made of a stack of circles bathing in the river this last spring, just like he said, but these muggers always make him question his own tales. I know what I saw. Right?

Anyway, whatever, whatever! He yells at his own mind. You can think more on it as you snowcat tonight, don’t listen to these muggers putting doubt in you. Focus on the plan with Karen. Tonight is the night no matter what!

As George goes through the motions of slipping back into his spikes and Richard’s Mountain coat, placing his eggs-n-bacon pocket snack and thermos in coat pockets, and walking to his truck, he sets his intention on Karen, but also on the lost love in his life. Ten years ago, George had love in his life. Ten years ago, in fact, he was with his beloved Martha, a fellow Vermont duck hunter who he’d met in the guild.

One day, after one year of dating and duck hunting together in Vermont, George bit his bottom lip, as Martha perused used copies of poetry books in New York City’s Strand Bookstore, where they liked to go on mini-weekend vacations to browse poetry, for Martha, and mysteries and thrillers and fishing and hunting guides for George, and also for Martha. And sometimes historical fiction, if it involved tales of royalty. To them, amongst the “eighteen miles of books,” as the Strand advertised, they felt they were in a “heavenly displacement.” Yes, indeed, the Strand for them was a celestial atmosphere that allowed for a feeling of floating above the otherwise green-shining, leaf-littered, snow-packed, streams-rushing, beautiful but predictable, seasonal cycles of home-base Vermont.

On this day in the Strand with Martha, having near bit through his bottom lip, Martha pulled from a shelf a rough-leather copy of Emily Dickinson poems, which copy George knew she’d pull, for he’d planted it there. He’d previously rushed in ahead of her, saying he had to find a bathroom, and in the process and hurry he accidentally stomped another man’s foot. He was so nervous and wanting to surprise Martha so bad, he simply couldn’t stop to help or apologize. His entire attention became laser focused on his mission with Martha.

And there’s something in George’s subconscious about all of this, the rushing, the foot stomp, that has always been an unsettling undercurrent to him. For he shouldn’t remember that part at all, but he does. And today, in walking in his spikes in a blizzard back toward his company truck, that beginning part, the rushing and colliding with another in the Strand, is strangely clear as a bell.

But George shakes away strange thinking and continues on in his remembrance of Martha. Steeped now within the outside world of the blizzard, a howl of wind greets him, or some howl. Cope? Nahh, just the wind. It ain’t Old Cope. Can’t be still out in the world, no, not Cope. I miss you, Cope. I miss you, Martha.

George walks on in the onslaught of snow. He walks slow, safe, in his grip shoes.

Back in that high emotion day in the Strand, as he knew she would, when Martha flipped to the copyright page to check the copyright date in the planted leather Dickinson, for she had a collection to curate, Martha gasped. Therein, written on Richard’s Mountain letterhead, was this note:

It might not have been worthy of Dickinson, but it was nature centered and spoke of the freeness that love brought. The protection. He’d wanted to throw into a magical maelstrom all the locations where they loved being together, Vermont, duck hunting, walking Cope on mountain trails, the Strand, in books about all kinds of tales, as if some gravity-free, magical heaven in which they lived, always in love’s safety.

Anyway, this was his intention, a rather subjective inspiration he gleaned in sneaking reads of Martha’s Dickinson collection, after Martha fell asleep at night. This proposal, this very poem, was a full year, night after night, in the planning and editing and fretting he’d be able to rise to the exalted pedestal Martha deserved.

He watched while she read, her eyes widening in surprise.

He held his breath.

Martha looked up, at first in a stare, no smile.

And then, Martha smiled. Martha broke down and cried. Martha said yes, and Martha gasped, and said yes, yes, yes, a gorgeous, unending song of yesses.

“This is the best poem ever written in the history of all poems,” Martha said through yesses and tears.

They forehead-to-forehead rolled their heads together in the poetry section of the Strand; Martha clutching the proposal note to her heart, and George clutching the Dickinson to his heart. George swears that in memory of this moment, a blackness, or a presence, some something was watching them with evil eyes, in the shadows of the perpendicular stack. He swears he felt that evil presence exactly then, and not in retrospect, after what happened to Martha four hours later.

George is five feet off his truck now, and those four lines he drew on the side are all gone. The Richard’s Mountain decal has been re-covered in side-swept sticky snow. Drifts of snow lean half-up the chained tires, and the white roof of the truck has its own flat hat of snow, as does the hood. So isn’t it odd, George thinks, that his footsteps are still visible by his driver’s door?

Those aren’t my boot prints.

George quick presses the unlock button on his universal company fob, yanks open his door, and his heart fills with fire. Raging, wild, destructive fire.

The cubby is empty.

Martha’s special leather Dickinson is gone.

So, too, is George’s hunting knife.

George backs away from the door. Looks everywhere all over the parking lot, but it is hard to see. The snow is falling sideways, and seemingly, upside down in this wind. He sees no moving person. The howling wind further obscures his senses. He notes the outlines of cars and trucks in the parking lot. Kyle’s is gone.

Had to be fucking Kyle, that prick. Bob, Eli, the others, they’re still in the bar and wrapping up to come to shift. Kyle’s got a universal fob. That prick.

George is alight now. He jumps his big body into the cab, yanks the door shut. He cranks on the engine and immediately heat blasts into the double cab and up on the windshield. He hits his powerful windshield wipers, which makes short life of the layer of snow that accumulated while he was inside.

He doesn’t wait for the engine or cab to heat; he jams into reverse, rocks the tires back and forth a few times, and guns the gas to launch out of his parking space, swerving onto the mountain road, which, thanks to the Mountain’s extra tax payments, has been plowed and salted ten times already tonight.

Richard’s Mountain is the Vermont mountain that consistently holds the record for most open lift days with clearest access roads. And such aggressive maintenance means the mountain is always short on, and therefore, hiring staff. Always.

That bastard, Kyle! I’ll knock him into next winter!

George’s rage to get to the mountain and find Kyle, who surely took his knife and book, makes George feel he is driving through the thickest of road shadows, snagging his progress. He can’t get there fast enough.

A fear tickles at the back of George’s mind. He looks in his rearview mirror and sees headlights approaching. He thinks maybe the headlights approach too fast, but whoever is behind slows and keeps at a distance. In truth, although the roads are plowed and George thought he was gunning it, he crawls, as does whoever is behind him, at 20 m.p.h.

In looking again in his rearview mirror, a sudden recollection replays in his mind. That same day, the very day he proposed to Martha, they were driving home to Vermont. She was smiling in a cushiony happy way in the passenger’s seat of George’s civilian Volvo, as they crossed the Mid-Hudson Bridge. It was then that George, like tonight, had a creepy feeling on his neck when he looked in his rearview mirror. Tonight, as he does the same, he tells himself he is not seeing what he saw back then, again, now, tonight. Back then when he looked in the rearview on the Mid-Hudson, in broad daylight, there, in the car behind, the driver of a gray Ford four-door wore a robot head make out of a cardboard box. Two holes for eyes. Red balls, or suction cups, were glued on as buttons. And wires, maybe un-bent hangers, were antennas.

The robot waved at George through the rearview mirror.

Back then, George fluttered his eyelids, thinking he was hallucinating. He opened his eyes wide, and sure enough, still there. A man, George could tell from the hairy waving hand, with a cardboard-box robot head, was driving, riding up on George’s bumper, as if following.

“I’m pulling off for gas in Poughkeepsie,” George said to Martha.

“Maybe I’ll get us some Combos and Cokes in the store then,” Martha said. “And a bone to bring home to Cope.”

“Sounds good,” George said, distracted and keeping one eye on the still-waving robot behind. He didn’t want to alarm Martha. Didn’t point any of this out, which he might have normally, had he thought this to be some roadway stranger prank. George felt it was something different. He’d tell her once they were safe off the highway.

They pulled into the Poughkeepsie gas station. He remembers pumping the gas and feeling safe, for he didn’t see the robot driver pull off behind them. Martha was in the store. There were no other customers. When done with the gas, George pulled up to the air machine on the side of the station to plump one of the Volvo’s tires. Then, in a snap, as Martha came out and rounded the station’s corner, the gray Ford pulled in fast, drove to the side of the station a half-length beyond George, who was busy with the air nozzle on the driver’s side front tire. The man with a robot head sprung from his car, ran to Martha, stabbed her three deep times in the chest, and, later confirmed, in the heart, returned to his car and, before throwing his body back in to speed off, yelled to George, “Payback, rude boy.”

It was three seconds and done. Martha died of blood loss and body trauma ten minutes later in George’s arms. He cried to police that a man in a robot costume did it, had followed them over the bridge. Had called him “rude boy,” and that this was “payback,” but George had no clue what any of it was about. The police could only confirm, given the strangest angles of two separate exterior cameras at the station, that indeed a gray Ford with no plates pulled in, as George said, and a man, of whom all they could see were his legs and thrusting knife, stabbed Martha. They could see George fully, airing his tires, and caught unaware and in shock the full three seconds the murder took place.

When George got home, after all the official fuss, three days later, Cope sniffed Martha’s dried blood on George’s sweaty undershirt and fled into the Vermont mountains.

In looking through the rearview now, George calms a half fraction to realize he can’t make out the driver behind, as it is too dark between snowfall and the driver’s headlights colliding with George’s taillights, and so, not much can be seen except a blur of black and white. So George cannot confirm, this way or that, whether a man dressed as a robot pursues him again. But he has that same prickling feeling.

Chill the fuck out and get to that asshole Kyle.

George pulls into staff parking at Richard’s Mountain. He wastes not a second in parking, exiting, and shouting to the General Manager of the mountain, who’s waiting on staff in the parking lot, wearing his multi-pocketed managerial coat.

“Where’s Kyle?” George yells.

The General Manager walks up to George, looking up from a shielded clip-board and from under a wide brimmed hat. Snow falls between and on the two men. “Prick’s gone, George. Just left. You seem about as pissed as I for that fucker.”

“He just left the bar. He couldn’t have gotten here more than ten minutes before me.”

“Yeah, that’s right. He got here about five minutes ago, and I was waiting for him. After he parked, I made him give me the keys, and told him to hike his sorry ass with security back to his staff cottage and clear out by 2:00 a.m.”

“Holy shit. What the fuck did he do?”

“He ain’t who he says he is. He started last week, yeah. Promises about referrals, all that shit. Well I let him start, dumb fucking me, while I wait on references and background to clear. His name sure as fuck isn’t Kyle whateverthefuck he said his name was. When I faxed his picture to all the referrals, not a one knew who he was. So I have a cop buddy run his prints. This prick just got out of Rockingham Prison two weeks ago. He ain’t no Kyle, he’s some Brett Brickadick, whatever, asshole, who cares. Did nine years for killing a lady in Keene while robbing her in a home invasion.”

“Well the bastard stole my knife and worse yet, the book I gave Martha to propose.”

“Not the Dickinson?”

“Yeah, the Dickinson.”

“Shit.”

As they were talking, another couple of staff trucks had pulled in. Bob, Eli. A few others. They didn’t interrupt the big boss with George, and quick-stepped to the staff lounge to punch in. Another car arrived as well, a non-descript Bronco that could have been gray or white. That person now walks toward the big boss and George. A parking lot lamp shines a cone of light around the big boss and George; this new man remains in the blackness just beyond. His features are undefined given the snow and shadows.

“Ah, Reeker. Reeker, come on here, come closer. Reeker, this is George, head of engineering. You’ll ride with him tonight. He does cold side of the mountain, so he’ll show you what working a blizzard is all about. We have to be open by 9:00 a.m., no matter what. We got a record to maintain.” From one of ten exterior pockets on his manager’s utility coat, the big boss pulls out and shoves a giant, weather-proof walkie in George’s hands. He does the same to Reeker. “Take him up.”

George hadn’t really focused on Reeker as he approached and the boss said all this. He was fuming so hard in his mind his eyes where clouded, which was doubly easy given the blinding snow. But now, now that Reeker is in the spotlight, George shrinks within himself.

A round-head man, with round neck, round torso, round arms, round legs. He can’t tell if he’s bald, for Reeker wears a thick knit hat.

“Hi there, I’m Reeker,” Reeker says to George.

George outstretches his hand, shaking. Reluctant. He’s speechless.

The big boss is called to address something in the staff lounge and runs off.

“Right, then,” George says to Reeker.

George is not ready to accept that he might be standing in the presence of the Spine Ripper. Nah. That’s nuts. He’s just spun up about Fake-Kyle, he tells himself. I’m spun up. The news sketch could have been any round, white man. I just want to tell Karen tonight.

As if on a mind call, George’s walkie sizzles.

“Karen to George, Karen to George,” Karen calls. She has deep cracks in her voice from frying her vocal cords to an earned brokenness, after spending twenty years of her life as an estate auctioneer and then crying herself voiceless at her husband’s grave — a grief so deep she had mental and physical laryngitis a full year, some years ago. George always smiles to hear the strength in how she owns her scars, as if her grief and her vocal strain are braided with her soul. He gets it. He does. Now, widowed at age fifty-two, and having moved here from sunny California to start over, Karen’s worked as Safety Captain for the past two years.

“George here, Karen. Good night to you, over,” George says. His heart is a pure mixture of excitement to hear her, but outright fright in looking at Reeker who doesn’t blink, staring at George in a way that is not seeing George, but seeing thoughts he has about George. The man has black eyes. The man has dead eyes. George, the lumberjack, feels two feet tall and ten pounds total. He fears Reeker could chew him; literally, eat him alive. George eye-measures Reeker as taller and bulkier than even himself. He’s a large man to a large man.

“How about we finish those decoys tomorrow. By a fire. I’ll make you chili, over,” Karen says on the walkie. Because the truth is, Karen and George have played at being best friends for the past year. She doesn’t like to duck hunt, that’s not her thing. But she does like to paint decoys with George in his heated greenhouse painting room, while they listen to crime podcasts and audiobooks. And she makes him chili. George always tells Karen how he likes her sun-washed blonde hair under her hot pink hat, and how he truly loves her chili. Yes, the feeling is a mutual one, George is sure.

“I never say no to your chili, Karen. I’m heading up with the new guy, Reeker, over,” George says, but only half in the conversation, for he’s staring back at Reeker. Something is off. The man hasn’t blinked.

“Tell him to turn his walkie on, over,” Karen Safety Captain says.

Reeker doesn’t look down at his walkie as he turns it on. He stares on at George, nimble like a master surgeon with the switch on the walkie.

“It’s on, over,” George says.

“He number four? Over.” Karen asks.

On the back of Reeker’s walkie is a round #4 sticker.

“Yes, ma’am, over,” George says.

“Good check, I got him. And you’re eight-ball as normal? Over?”

“Yes, ma’am, number 8, over.”

“Alright then, good check. Take him up. You have cold side, as usual. Don’t let your Cat tumble on the steeps. River’s a rager in this storm, over.”

“Copy. You in your perch? Over.”

“Snug as a bug, and my dashboard is lit like a Christmas tree. All set, over.”

“Alrighty then, we’re heading up. Out.”

“Out.”

After driving George’s regular Cat out of the barn, past other Cats and several snowmobiles, all with thick, deep treads, George and Reeker sit side by side. Reeker had given a few, rather sparse, answers to George up to now about where he came from and who he was. All George knows is Reeker had come in from another mountain out west and he was living in an apartment in Bloom, Vermont. That is all.

The roar of the Cat engine, the corkscrew-howling wind, and the crush of Cat treads on snow, causes a clatter of vibration through the cab. Reeker sits straight as a pin, silent, and staring out the window, never blinking despite the wild thrust, back and forth, of the scrapers and the thudding of heavy falling snow on the windshield that makes most men blink.

They’re halfway up Front Face when Reeker swivels in his seat to face George. He says nothing. Waiting two beats, fearful to acknowledge a man staring at him in such close quarters, for he fears doing so will make it true, George finally braves a slow look at Reeker.

Reeker’s black eyes stare back, and in this moment, all doubt leaves George. This is the same man who he’d seen naked and bathing in a stream in the spring. And this is the same killer the news had warned about in a victim’s sketch.

Reeker tunnels cold eyes, black eyes, dead eyes, no emotions into George. Says nothing.

Nobody at Malforson’s will believe this tale, if George lives to tell it. But son of a demon from hell, I’m looking into the dead soul of the Spine Ripper.

Then, as George is about to slam on the brakes and punch him square in the jaw, or do something, Reeker spins to his own door, opens it, looks over his shoulder, and yells, “Forgot my thermos,” before jumping out of the moving snowcat.

George slams on the brakes, jams the locks on both doors, and searches the rearview mirror through the back glass, which also has wild scrapers scraping, to see nothing. No Reeker. Nobody. Nothing.

George can’t safely turn the snowcat around at this angle on this part of Front Face. He has to continue straight up to Malforson’s lift landing and turn around. Malforson being a long-ago village founder, hence the bar name, hence the landing.

George’s nerves are on fire, electrified. Prickles, like a million pins, poke up from his core and out his skin, everywhere all over his body. Like when the paramedics gave him blockers to fend off possible tachycardia on the day Martha died in his arms.

He looks to the passenger seat and sees that Reeker has left his walkie, the #4 sticker facing up to the ceiling.

George depresses the talk button on his own #8, “George to Karen, George to Karen.”

He gets static in return. He tries several more times in his drive to the top.

At the top, the Malforson lift floodlights allow for visibility, although blurred through driving snow, around the entire landing area, where George starts to turn the Cat. The light bleeds into the snow-drenched evergreens some several dozen feet to the side and backside, which is the cold side of the mountain.

A seam between Front Face and cold side rivers down the side of the mountain, and mid-way down, after and between numerous evergreens, ski glades, and snowmobile trails, sits Karen’s Safety Headquarters, a log cabin that the staff calls “The Perch.” Down below Karen’s Perch, and still within the seam, are three staff cabins. One of which should be emptied by now by fired not-Kyle. And down below and behind those and where nobody goes at night, is the roughest part of a rumbling river that snakes around the backside base of Richard’s Mountain and through the village and along the highway, the highway stretch being where George had first seen the naked Reeker. He knows it was Reeker.

As George turns the Cat and marries his headlights with the floodlights of the lift landing, he sees running through the trees, down the seam, and toward Karen’s Perch — a man with a robot cardboard box on his head.

George blinks slow. He’s still there.

George doesn’t wait to consider doubts about all of his wildest tales colliding tonight. He doesn’t care if he is insane and imagining his robot foe. He needs to face all of this lunacy. He stops the Cat, jumps out, and runs headlong for the robot man. It is not Reeker. The man ahead has the frame of a skeleton with skin. This man wears the same jeans and boots as fake-Kyle in the bar. George remembers logging Kyle’s mid-calf Timberland’s when he removed his snow-cleats in Malforson’s mudroom.

“Kyle, it was you! You killed Martha!” George yells. “Stop!”

Robot Man stops, turns, and pauses as George stops short. Facing George, he opens his coat, withdraws the Dickinson, and flings it flat, like a skipping stone, to sink deep in snow between two birches.

Next, he pulls George’s hunting knife from his back pocket.

“I guess it’s mano a mano now, rude boy,” Robot Man says.

In the cold, the smell of George’s breakfast sandwich, still hot given the aluminum wrapper, wafts. It blooms around him.

“Take off that fucking box,” George yells. His rage will not allow him to assess the danger of a man with an extended knife. He feels his rage and his need to remedy Martha’s murder makes him a triple lumberjack and must-be Kyle a toothpick.

Robot Man removes the robot box, throws it to the side.

“Remember me now, rude boy? Ten years ago?”

It is indeed Kyle, but George does not remember him from ten years ago.

“You’re a fucking psychopath. I have no idea who you are.”

“Of course you wouldn’t, rude boy. Of course some big man like you wouldn’t see an insignificant ant like me and would stomp on my foot and walk away. No apologies.”

“That day in the Strand? I accidentally stepped on you? This is why? That’s why you murdered her?” George’s voice is hysterical now, he can barely contain himself from launching at Kyle, hell with his own hunting knife in Kyle’s hands.

“You know, rude boy, that’s the thing with big men like you. You never think you need to care about the people you push out of your way. You never think that maybe, maybe us insignificant ants are mightier than you. Never think we’re a threat. Well I’m a fucking threat, rude boy. I’ll snake away from you, and I’ll kill Karen before you catch up. I’ll take all your life away, make you as insignificant as an ant. I was on my way for you, yeah, when I got popped 9 years ago. I’ve grown madder at you every single fucking day I sat in that cell box. I got your plate number. I knew who you were.”

George lunges for Kyle, but Kyle, true to his word, turns swift and snakes away, down the seam of the mountain, towards Karen, weaving between trees. George is having difficulty keeping up with the snake despite his gripping cleats, but as Kyle is leaving the web of light between trees, a galloping beast leaps in the air and onto Kyle. Kyle is stomped by the animal into the deep snow.

George sees his knife at the base of a Douglas fir, a tree owning layers of umbrella limbs that shield the earth beneath from too much snow. He grabs the knife and, looking at the animal that leapt, sees a familiar figure. It’s Cope all right. Several coyotes stand around in a circle, yipping at Kyle, and yipping at George’s pocket with the breakfast sandwich.

“Cope, off him now, Old Girl. Good Girl. Off.”

Cope, barking mad, backs off Kyle, who struggles to get out of the snow and off his back. George quick steps to Kyle, throwing Cope the breakfast sandwich, bends, and grabs Kyle around his scrawny neck with one bear claw of a hand. With his other, he holds the now unsheathed knife to Kyle’s temple. “You’re coming with me to the river,” he says.

George knows the cold side of the mountain like the back of his own ass. He’s the only one who can work it. He’s got Kyle tied with safety rope, hands and feet, sitting in his passenger seat, right where Reeker was only twenty minutes ago. George is not calling Karen on the walkie now. George has definitely forgotten he wanted to tell Karen he loves her tonight. He has a killer to kill. He has a wrong to right. He has his love’s murder to vindicate.

Has George ever been this homicidal?

No, not ever. But love will do that to you sometimes. Ten years of grief and guilt, guilt for not saving her, that will do that to you sometimes. Being stalked for ten years by a psychopath who wears a homemade robot head, that will fucking do that to you sometimes. Knowing your haste and inadvertent rudeness, a simple second of stepping on a stranger’s foot, led to death. Such snap insanity, such freak and fatal instances, will do that to you sometimes.

At the bottom of the cold side of the mountain, after barreling through the steeps, blind through the dark, which George did not fear, for he’s numb now, they reach the raging river, cold as arctic ice. This violent river never freezes given the constant current.

It’s loud here from the roiling water and the howling wind, which funnels through the basin’s valley. It sounds like a freight train colliding with a rocket during blast off. Around where George has dragged Kyle, light from the snowcat illuminates a bubble of river bank. George’s legs are a foot deep in snow as he removes, with one meatpaw of a hand, the ropes from Kyle’s hands and feet. The ropes go in the river. The entire while, George holds Kyle around his neck. He could crush his windpipe with a mere fraction more of pressure.

It must be 2:00 a.m. now, and, having left his gloves in the cab, George’s thick fingers are beginning to prickle in tightened circulation.

Ignoring Kyle’s throttled cries, which are drowned by the sounds of a train and a rocket, George lifts Kyle as if he’s a single log and thrusts him in the freezing cold water. The wild current sucks Kyle in and away, bangs his head against boulders, drowns him, crushes him, kills him of hypothermia in ten seconds flat.

George watches all ten seconds, and when he looks away for a break, there along the bank, in the far-reach edge of his snowcat’s light, stands Reeker, naked, his hat off, bald. He wears only snowshoes, which, George guesses, the fucker must have stowed in the woods or stolen from a staff cabin. He’s here premeditated. All his round parts, all there, now. Reeker holds a bar of soap in his hands. It dawns on George that this is the Spine Ripper’s modus operandi: Reeker cleans himself in freezing river water before a kill. At least George hopes it’s before, and that nobody from the mountain is already dead. He thinks this because he doesn’t see a body dragged here, waiting to be fileted and deboned, as other bodies were left at other watering holes.

“Reeker,” George says.

Reeker stares back, that same black-eyed, emotionless expression. Despite this blizzard, despite this cold air, despite it all, George notices the man is aroused. Reeker enjoys the fright he’s causing George, the power is a sexual charge. This threat is real. Sure enough, Reeker makes known his weapons by drawing George’s eyes to a tree stump, upon which sits a long serrated knife and a small carving knife.

They must have been in his coat pocket.

He looks to Reeker’s snowshoes.

Shit.

George is sinking deeper in the heavy snow where he stands, and now it’s too late. He might as well be in cement. He’s stuck. He can’t turn and run. He can’t reach any better packed glade, covered in powder, but at least not as keeping as this quicksand. And even if he could run, this larger man, this brutal murderer, would catch him in those snowshoes of his, thrust a knife in George’s back to slow him. Then gut him. Filet him.

George is out of moves, and he knows Reeker knows it.

“Saw you kill that man, George,” Reeker says, smiling by pushing both lips together in the middle and up. No blinking. His slow tone and cool demeanor changes when he lunges sideways for the tree stump and grabs the long serrated knife. He holds the handle with one hand and keeps the point poking into the palm of the other. He does that weird mouth middle push up thing again, watching George, who’s struggling and failing to lift his legs and step away. George keeps sinking.

“You threw him right in the river, George,” Reeker says. He slow blinks. Takes a step to George, and George counts the time it takes for Reeker to reach him: three snowshoe steps in three seconds. And in those three seconds, George’s body takes over, acting on pure instinct. He falls to his ass, which hard tree fall frees his feet, like a heavy redwood falling and dislodging its root ball: physics. As Reeker lunges down to follow George, leading with his long knife, George sets his spiked cleat feet to Reeker’s hip joints and pushes. George pushes the entire weight of his grief, of his guilt, in the thrust, sending Reeker to shimmy backwards — just far enough. Puncture holes from the cleats spray blood on the snow, quickly covered by more falling snow.

In this very second, a roar interrupts, something louder than the water and the wind. A dim light grows brighter through the trees, but blurred, as all is blurred in this blizzard. Out of the trees, a snowmobile bombs out of what was a blackened trail and straight into Reeker, punting him to the river’s edge. The snowmobile stops. Backs up. Revs and shoots forward, plowing Reeker into the river.

The river sucks Reeker’s circle-stacked body in, greedily dunks him, drowns him, bobbing, screaming and swallowing water, crashing his round skull into boulders, and freezing his balls off in fatal hypothermia in ten seconds flat.

George is on his ass stunned.

The snowmobile driver stands with her legs straddling the snowmobile seat. She takes off her helmet, releasing her sun-drenched California hair.

She looks over to George. “Oh, thank God, George. Thank God. The news kept escalating warnings. They pieced together his name, this guy, he didn’t even try to hide his identity. Reeker’s the Spine Ripper! I tracked you both by your walkies. They got the upgraded GPS, thank God. Thank Goodness I got here in time, George. I love you!”

“I love you, Karen! I love you!” George yells. He yells it over and over, a gorgeous unending song of I love you’s as he cries in the snow, on his lumberjack ass, in a blizzard, professing his love for a woman who saved him. He cries, too, with relief that she didn’t see him kill the first killer, for that is a tall tale George will never tell, not to Karen, not to those muggers at Malforson’s. Nobody’s ever going to find either body; this roaring river swallows bodies into deep glacial canyons, pinning them under any of thousands of sunk logging trees, dozens of feet deep. That’s why the forest rangers won’t let anyone kayak it, no matter their skill. Everyone will hear about Reeker, for Karen and he will tandem tell that tale, but Reeker’s gone and no witness no longer to George’s crime. As for Kyle, everyone will think he slunk off in the night, disappeared himself into a new identity.

Ayup.

This Kyle tale stays with George, and probably with his ghost overseer, Martha, who protects him from their heavenly displacement, above these gorge streams, and in her afterlife dog, walks on mountain trails. She’s with Cope all right. She is Cope.

Yes, for sure, George doesn’t want any mugger to know about Kyle. So he better go find that damn robot head and get rid of it for good. And to punctuate that thought, to underscore that objective, a howl overtakes all noise. George turns to see Cope howling at the blurry moon, right there, within the trail Karen bombed down. When done, Cope bends her head and picks up a leather book in her teeth. She runs off to join her coyote pack.