Photo credit: Dave MacIntyre
[Being the third installment of Robert J Wiersema's original holiday tale of the ghostly and the miraculous. Read the first part here and the second part here.]
After the bus pulled away, Dustin stood for a long moment in front of Rainbow’s End Herbal as if unable to move. The cold air burned in his nose, the wind blowing snow into his face like tiny shards of glass.
Across the street, the park was a moonscape of unbroken snow, rising in humps and gentle knolls over picnic tables and benches. Every bare branch was rimed with white, and seemed to shine against the rich light.
Snow sky, bruised pink-grey and luminescent, and the strange electric silence of the storm, the squeak of the snow under his shoes as he started up the street.
Henderson.
It felt like a dream, or a memory, everything just out of focus or hyper-focused, everything the same as he remembered but changed somehow, just slightly unfamiliar. Tangibly the same, but different.
He pulled his jacket tightly around himself as he cut through the walkway by the bank, the narrow alley between it and the fabric store, enjoying a moment of being out of the wind. He wasn’t dressed for this. Maybe if he’d had more time to plan…. But then, his options for winter were pretty limited. He didn’t snowboard and he didn’t ski, so he didn’t have any actual cold-weather gear. And, like Stan always said, all you really needed to make it through a Vancouver winter if you weren’t outdoorsy was a good scarf.
Of course, Dustin didn’t even have that.
Stopping in the walkway, he re-tucked his shirt, stomped the snow off his shoes, and buttoned his jacket. It wouldn’t cut the wind entirely, but it was better –
A shadowy figure moved across the far end of the walkway.
Dustin’s heart twitched in his chest, and he felt every muscle in his body tighten.
He stood in the walkway, not breathing. Listening.
But there was no sound, nothing but the whisper of the falling snow.
He waited, every instinct telling him to go the other way.
Survival skills.
But this was Henderson, not Vancouver. No bashers here.
He took two steps toward the end of the walkway. “Hello?” he called out quietly, shocked by how sudden, how loud, his voice seemed.
Nothing.
Another few steps brought him to the end of the walkway, across the street from the high school parking lot.
The street was empty. Not just quiet: empty. But then, it would be – he checked his watch – this time of night. Christmas Eve.
It must have been a trick of the light. He looked down at the smooth, unbroken snow at his feet. No footprints. No trace.
A trick of the light.
He exhaled heavily and, setting his shoulders, walked into the storm.
As he walked, he started thinking about a story that he had read for English class in high school, a story about a snowstorm on the prairies, and somebody getting lost on the way from the barn back to the house and freezing to death, something about a smudge of paint on the door.
At the time, in Vancouver, where winters are measured in rainfall, he hadn’t been able to imagine how that would even be possible.
Walking through the storm, though, he began to have a sense.
The snow seemed to come at him from all sides. His face stung, slick and cold from where the flakes had melted, his pants wet, his feet burning cold in soaked shoes. The wind grabbed at his coat, twisted him, tried to wrestle him off his path.
But it wasn’t far.
He could have shaved off some time with shortcuts through fields and yards, but thinking of that story, he stuck to the sidewalks, the careful geometry, the sharp corners, the streetlights –
He stopped.
Someone was standing under the next streetlight.
“Hello?” Dustin called out.
The figure was grey and indistinct in the heavy snow, hard to see, but it seemed tall, thin.
“Hello,” he called out again, hurrying forward. For some reason, he felt none of the fear, none of the trepidation he had felt in the walkway by the bank. Whether it was how cold he was feeling, or to shake off how alone he was, he was actually happy to see someone else out in the night. He wanted to talk to someone.
Anyone, apparently.
“Hello?”
He moved as fast as he could, paying careful attention to his footing, not wanting to step off an unnoticed curb or slip on a patch of hidden ice.
But the figure was gone.
When he reached the streetlight, there was no trace of him. Dustin was sure he had seen him – sure, in fact, that it was a him – but there was nothing under the streetlight that even hinted that anyone had been there. The snow was unblemished, crisp and sparkling in the light.
“What?”
He felt oddly saddened. He had been, he realized, looking forward to meeting whoever it was, talking to them. It didn’t matter that it was a stranger: they were both out here in the storm, they both –
The figure was standing under the next streetlight, less than half a block away. Close enough that Dustin could almost see him, could almost make out his features. Dark clothes, dark hair, a flash of red at his throat.
“Hey!” he called out, hurrying forward again, not wanting to lose sight of him.
It felt like moving in a dream: the closer he got to the streetlight, the farther Dustin seemed to move away from the figure.
And he wasn’t surprised when he got to the light post to find himself alone, out of breath, warm from his haste.
He willed himself to stare at the ground, the unbroken, powdery snow. He knew better than to look up. He wouldn’t. It was all in his head.
There was no one there; he knew that. It was all in his imagination.
But he couldn’t help looking up, looking ahead to the next streetlight.
Where the figure was standing, facing him.
Although he couldn’t make out the man’s features, Dustin felt as if their eyes met over the distance between them.
The man turned a gloved hand quizzically, as if to ask Dustin what he was waiting for.
Dustin shook his head and started forward. He wouldn’t hurry, he wouldn’t run. This was all in his head.
Despite that inner voice, though, he couldn’t help the wrench of disappointment he felt when he got to the lamppost, only to find himself alone again. His chest was burning, and he leaned forward, trying to catch his breath.
When he straightened up he expected to see the man under the next streetlight, expected whatever game it was his head was playing to keep on.
But there was no one there, only a tight swirl of blowing flakes in the bright.
He blinked, hoping to prove himself wrong, but it didn’t help.
There was no one there. He was completely alone.
He nodded. That was fine. That was probably the best way to deal with delusions: not to miss them when they were gone.
Now he just had to –
He stopped.
It couldn’t be.
In following the mysterious figure, he had lost track of where he was. He knew he had been moving in generally the right direction, but he was stunned to find himself standing at the head of his parents’ driveway. Bordered by trees, a crisp, unbroken plain of snow led up to the house, which shone like a beacon in the stormy night.
Dustin turned for home.
[To read the fourth installment of "Just Like the Ones He Used to Know" go here]
