“Fine,” they said together.
When they’d gathered enough, Vern tied up the cloth into a satisfying bundle and headed back with the children toward the cabin. “I want a turn carrying it,” said Feral.
“Then when will I get a turn?” Howling asked.
Vern was about to reason out a compromise, but the matter was forgotten when the trio reached the clearing. The children headed forward leaving Vern and the rose hip bundle behind.
“Let’s build a snow fort,” said Howling, and immediately took on a managerial role. “Gather up the snow like this, see? Then pack it.” Feral was happy to be directed, and soon the children had forgotten Vern’s presence.
Now was her moment for some quiet time with Lucy. “I’ll be back soon,” Vern called out.
“Where you going?” asked Howling.
“Over there,” she said, pointing to the woodland beyond the clearing where she’d spotted some aspens in the mountain’s understory of trees.
“Don’t be gone long, Mam,” said Howling authoritatively. “When we finish, we’re going to play a game where we’re bears protecting our cubs and you got to be a monster trying to eat them. We’ll defend the fort, and you’ll attack. Okay?”
“I’ll be back, and I’ll be the most gruesome monster you ever seen.”
Vern sped toward the aspens limberly. These days, especially when she kept on top of taking her naproxen, the hurt in her joints and limbs merely teased. She hadn’t needed regular doses of hydromorphone in a month. She took them only at night, when the day’s movement caught up with her and even lying down to sleep was agony.
Vern reached the aspen and climbed up along the trunk and branches. Once she found a good place for it, she settled into a perch and slid out her knife. She jammed the point of the blade into the tree and carved her and Lucy’s initials the way Lucy had once done herself. A plus sign in the middle. A heart around.
Lucy had told Vern that she was the only person in the world Lucy could stand, and that she guessed that was love. It was childish to cherish so saccharine a memory, but Vern had clung to it because it was the first time she’d felt loving a girl wasn’t something grotesque. The moment held special resonance today after a morning that had gone so wrong. Gogo had unequivocally spurned Vern’s freak sexuality.
As Vern finished the carving, she scouted her surroundings for signs of Lucy. “You there?” she asked. Nothing but mountains for days.
She was about to give up when she felt a prickle on the back of her neck. An invisible presence. Behind her.
“Lucy?” she whispered as her skin erupted into gooseflesh. She closed her eyes, pressed her palm over the carving, then counted to three.
She flicked her eyes open with the expectation Lucy would be there in front of her, but the presence surrounding her was not that of her best friend. She’d succeeded in bringing on a haunting, but not a kind one.
Instead of Lucy, bodies. They swung from the bare branches of the aspen tree. All moved in unison, pendulums on the same grandfather clock. Vern had summoned a chorus of hangings.
“Stop,” she cried out, voice wavering. “Leave me.”
But upon hearing her voice, the bodies awoke. At once, their eyes opened, the force of their gaze upending Vern. Screaming, she startled backward, tumbling off the tree.
With a thud and a crack, she landed. Above her, a canopy of the dead hung. One body, writhing in its noose, broke away from the swarm. Gargling and coughing, it squeaked Vern’s name.
Vern panted, immobilized by the fall. “Vern,” whined the corpse.
“Leave me be,” she commanded, though her voice did not convey confidence. “Or else I’ll make it so you never come back,” she threatened.
Another body disentangled itself from the hanging mass. “Vern,” it croaked as it flailed inside of its rope prison.
“I said leave me!” she cried, this time with more conviction. “Leave me now, or perish.” These hanging bodies were not mere recordings. Conscious, they called to her. They were echoes of something living, and that meant, as long as Vern wasn’t bluffing, her threat of death held power. “Leave!”
The two breakaway bodies dissolved first. Next, all the others. Their decomposed matter rained down in a shroud of dust upon her. She coughed as the ashen particles entered her mouth.
“Vern! Vern!” she heard from the clearing. It was Gogo. The children must’ve gone to her when they heard Vern screaming. “Vern!”