Chapter 6: The Whiteout
The lobby was a ghost town. The power had flickered back on down here, bathing the empty waiting chairs in harsh, unforgiving light. The Christmas tree in the corner, with its blinking multicolored lights, looked garish and offensive. How could the world still be decorating? How could there be tinsel when Lily was gone?
Marcus was still at the desk. He was staring at a portable TV, watching the weather report.
He looked up as I approached. He saw my face.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to ask. The look of a parent who has left the hospital without their child is a universal language of devastation. It is a hollowed-out look, a thousand-yard stare that sees nothing but the past.
He stood up. He took off his hat. He placed it over his heart.
“Mr. Hayes,” he whispered. “I… I am so sorry.”
I couldn’t speak. I just nodded, a jerky, mechanical motion.
Barnaby whimpered under my coat. He was getting hot. He needed air.
Marcus looked at the coat. He saw the tail sticking out the bottom. He looked me in the eye and winked—a sad, slow wink.
“Roads are bad, Mark. real bad. Take the side exit. It’s closer to the lot. No cameras there.”
“Thanks, Marcus,” I rasped.
I pushed through the side doors and into the blizzard.
The cold hit me like a physical slap. It was twenty below zero with the wind chill. The snow was coming down in sheets, horizontal white lines that erased the world. It was a whiteout. You couldn’t see three feet in front of you.
I unbuttoned my coat and Barnaby jumped down into the snow. The drifts were up to his chest.
He shook himself, the snow flying off his fur. He looked up at me, his muzzle already frosting over. He didn’t pull on the leash. He just stood there, waiting.
“Let’s go home, buddy,” I said. The word home tasted like ash in my mouth. Home was where she wasn’t.
We trudged through the parking lot. I had lost my car. It was buried under two feet of fresh powder. I had to wander the rows, hitting the unlock button on my fob, waiting for the flash of lights in the white darkness.
Finally, a mound of snow to my left flashed yellow.
I spent ten minutes digging it out with my bare hands and a scraper, crying the whole time. The physical exertion felt good. It was pain. It was struggle. It matched the screaming inside my head. My fingers went numb, then burned, then went numb again. I didn’t care. I wanted the frostbite. I wanted to feel something other than the hole in my chest.
I got Barnaby into the back seat. He curled up immediately, shivering. I threw an old blanket over him.
I got into the driver’s seat. The car started with a groan. The heater blasted cold air.
I drove.
The city was abandoned. The blizzard had conquered Chicago. Lake Shore Drive was a sheet of black ice and white dunes. There were no other cars. Just me, the headlights cutting a weak tunnel through the swirling chaos, and the dog.
I drove blindly. I didn’t really look at the road. I let the car drift.
At one point, on a curve near Foster Avenue, the back wheels lost traction. The car fishtailed. We spun. A slow, graceful 360-degree spin in the middle of the highway.
I didn’t brake. I didn’t steer into the skid. I just took my hands off the wheel and closed my eyes.
Let it happen, a dark voice whispered in my ear. Just hit the guardrail. Go over the edge. Follow her. She’s waiting. She’s just on the other side of the snow.
It would be so easy. Just a crash. A moment of pain. And then… peace. Then I would see her again.
The car spun. The guardrail loomed, a jagged metal teeth in the headlights.
From the back seat, Barnaby barked.
It was a sharp, demanding bark. Not a scared bark. A command.
WAKE UP.
My eyes snapped open. I grabbed the wheel. Instinct took over. I pumped the brakes. I steered.
The car slammed into a snowbank on the shoulder, shuddering to a halt inches from the concrete barrier.
Silence returned. just the wind rocking the chassis and the idling engine.
I turned around. Barnaby was sitting up, staring at me. His eyes were amber fire in the rearview mirror. He growled at me. A low, warning rumble.
He knew what I had thought. He knew I had almost given up. And he wasn’t having it.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the dog. “I’m sorry, Barnaby. I won’t do it again.”
He stared at me for another moment, judging me, ensuring I was back in control. Then he lay down with a huff.
We made it to the suburbs an hour later.
The street was dark. All the houses were dark, save for the Christmas lights twinkling on the eaves. Happy houses. Houses with sleeping children waiting for Santa. Houses where death hadn’t visited tonight.
I pulled into the driveway. The house looked massive and menacing. It was a mausoleum now.
I opened the front door.
The warmth of the house hit me. It smelled like cinnamon and pine needles. It smelled like the life we had lived yesterday.
The living room was exactly as we had left it. The tree was lit. The stockings were hung by the chimney—one for me, one for Lily, one for Barnaby.
Under the tree, the presents were piled high. The dollhouse she had wanted. The art set. The wrapped box from her grandmother in Arizona.
They would never be opened. They would sit there, gathering dust, monuments to a future that had been cancelled.
I locked the door. I didn’t take off my coat. I walked into the living room and sat on the floor in front of the tree.
Barnaby walked in. He sniffed the stocking with his name on it. He sniffed the spot on the rug where Lily used to lay and color.
He looked at me. He walked over and sat down. He didn’t curl up. He sat tall, leaning his weight against my side.
I put my arm around him.
“She’s gone, buddy,” I said into the silence of the empty house. “It’s just us now.”
I looked at the clock on the mantle. 2:00 AM. Christmas morning.
And that’s when the phone rang.
It wasn’t my cell phone. It was the landline. The dusty old phone in the kitchen that we never used, the one that only telemarketers called.
Who would call a landline at 2:00 AM on Christmas morning?
I ignored it. It rang again. And again. And again.
It wouldn’t stop. It wasn’t a machine. Someone was letting it ring.
I got up, my legs heavy as lead. I walked into the kitchen. I stared at the phone on the wall.
I picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” I whispered, my voice a wreck.
There was static on the line. Heavy, crackling static, like the sound of a radio tuned between stations. Or the sound of wind blowing into a microphone.
“Mark?”
The voice was faint. Distant. Broken up by the static.
I froze. I gripped the counter so hard my knuckles turned white.
I knew that voice.
It wasn’t Lily.
It was Sarah. My ex-wife. The woman who had abandoned us three years ago. The woman who was supposed to be in Arizona.
“Sarah?” I asked, confused. anger bubbling up through the grief. “Why are you calling? How do you even know…?”
“Mark, listen to me,” she said. Her voice sounded strange. Urgent. Terrified. “I can’t talk long. The signal is… it’s fading.”
“What do you want, Sarah? Lily is… Lily is gone. You missed it. You missed everything.”
“I know,” Sarah said. And then she said the words that made the blood freeze in my veins. “I was there.”
I looked around the kitchen. “What? You were where? At the hospital? I didn’t see you.”
“No, Mark. Not at the hospital.”
The static swelled, loud and screeching.
“I was at the river,” she said, her voice sounding like it was coming from underwater. “I was at the river, Mark. And I saw her. She was walking across the ice.”
“Stop it,” I hissed. “You’re drunk. Stop it.”
“She wasn’t alone, Mark!” Sarah screamed over the static. “She had the dog! She had the dog with her! But Mark… why did the dog have wings?”
The line went dead.
I stood there, holding the receiver, the dial tone buzzing in my ear like a swarm of angry hornets.
I slowly lowered the phone. I turned to look at the living room.
Barnaby was asleep on the rug.
But as I watched, I saw it again. Just for a second.
A flicker. A shimmer in the air above his shoulders. A faint, golden distortion of light that looked, just for a heartbeat, like folded wings.
