“Thank you, Mrs. Wolf.” Howling chomped on the newspaper next. “Oh yes. Most delicious.”
Somber evergreens buttressed the road. With each mile, the terrain grew hillier, steeper. Bridget forged ahead, her pickup working upward until it turned onto a road up into a mountain. Somewhere along the away, snow had begun falling.
“Shit,” Bridget whispered. Her phone buzzed in a rhythm of harsh triplets.
“What is it?” asked Vern.
“Hold on,” Bridget said, and pulled to the side of the narrow road into tree cover.
“What’s going on?”
“Sheriff’s department,” said Bridget, and pointed to her phone. “I get an alert whenever they’re in range.”
“Sheriff’s department?” asked Howling.
“Like that man who dressed us down after you climbed up that pole,” Vern said, pulling a piece of lint from his hair, instinctively shining him up in case the passing patrol vehicle did notice them.
“A blue-suit,” said Howling, nodding, on guard.
The deputy’s car sped by, red and blue lights flashing chaotically.
Bridget exhaled, relieved. “All right, looks like we’re good to go.”
Vern rolled her shoulders forward and backward. The jolty car ride had stiffened her further. “Let’s take a five-minute break,” said Bridget, assessing Vern. “And when I say five minutes, I mean it. The snow’s picking up. We don’t want to be out here when it gets worse.”
Feral and Howling slid out of the pickup with the same practiced grace they used when hopping from a tree. They each grabbed a stick from the side of the road to play-fight. “I’m gonna take a piss,” Vern said, joining her children outside the car. “Howl, Feral, come with me.”
Vern limped into the nearby woodland, and the babes scampered behind banging their sticks. “Yah! Aha! You’re dead,” they shouted to each other. Their exuberant play accentuated the sunless gloom of the woods. There was nothing like the cheer of a child to expose the starkness of a place.
“I’m not dead, you’re dead!” said Feral, the volume of his voice quieter now that Vern had pulled farther ahead.
“If I’m so dead, then how can I do this? Aha! Washa! Wabam!” said Howling. Vern couldn’t hear what Feral said in reply, the space between her and the children too great.
“Stop dawdling! Keep up!” she yelled back at them, but she appreciated the moment of privacy and partially disrobed before lowering herself into a squat. Cold stung her thighs, her knees, and her ankles, but she was a girl used to the prod of a cruel hand. Perhaps, even, she was a girl who sought out such miseries. She was here now, wasn’t she? She could’ve held it. Vern the masochist. What was it like to feel peace and like it?
The snap of a twig jarred Vern from her self-flagellatory mid-piss thoughts …
“Children?” she called out.
“What, Mam?” Howling shouted back. His voice came from her left. The noise had come from behind her. Vern closed her eyes and listened. Whispering leaves, scraping earth—it was the unique susurration of a body in motion. Whatever had made the sound was on the move, and it was coming up behind her from a distance away in the trees.
Was it Reverend Sherman? Had he finally caught up? It would please the man to end Vern while she was midsquat. The pool of urine trickling toward the inside edges of her snow boots teased her with its human banality. She might die because she hadn’t felt like holding it.
Slowly, Vern turned her head to face the foe behind her. She blinked, eyelids aflutter, and gulped down a spit-wet breath, choking on saliva caught in her trachea. “God of Cain,” she said, and coughed. It wasn’t Reverend Sherman standing there, or any man.
“Vern! Your five minutes is up,” Bridget yelled from afar, but between Vern and the way back to the road was a creature so looming that being next to it was like falling.
“God of Cain, God of Cain,” Vern said. Her breaths were stuttered and half-realized.
The creature, bright white, contemplated Vern with curious hunger, its round eyes vast hollows. It was part animal, part god, and antlers twice its size protruded from its back like bone wings or calcified webs. Vern rushed to stand but tripped over her pants and drawers.
“Children!” she cried out for help. “Bridget!” She scooted away from the godanimal, naked ass scraping against the snow that was just beginning to settle on the ground.
The creature regarded Vern’s escape attempt with amused nonchalance. It smiled at her, hungry.