Author’s note: Well, here I am. Doing this thing. Again. You know, that thing where I write 60++ chapters, then suddenly decide, ‘Hey, this kinda sucks’, then just start over from the beginning? Yeah, that thing. The least I can do is make it worthwhile, right? So yeah, I promise more vivid descriptions this time, and other stuff that I picked up over the years in Lit class. (When this thing started, as some of you may remember, I was still only halfway through school --) This is still not some mega project I intend to get published one day, so don’t go expecting a super-epic that will take your breath away. This story, as always, is meant for me, and the pleasure I derive out of it. Thank you.

Prologue

-

‘Love each other, love each other or perish.’

-Tsinga: The Sight, David Clement-Davies

-

16th December 2002

Setting off up North tomorrow, with Steve, Cassie and Lance in tow. I still can’t believe I talked them into it. No wait, they more or less jumped at the idea of a few days away from their parents up in the mountains. I’m more surprised that Aunt Fiona let me get away with the proposal. Oh well, I’m seventeen. The liberties of growing up are just starting to show themselves. I can already tell that for the first three days at least, I’m going to get at least a phone call an hour until she becomes sure enough that I won’t burn the cabin down. I know how much the place means to her.

How much it means to all of us in the family, actually. What’s left of the family, to be more honest. When Grandpa up and disappeared in the mountains four years ago, it turned out that mom and dad were the ones who would inherit it.

Which is of course why it’s mine now.

I’m sure we’ll have a great time up there.

Okay, I confess, that’s the last thing I’m sure about. It’s just occurred to me now; while I’m writing this that the prospect of tomorrow scares me more than it should. And I’m not talking about how Grandpa disappeared. Though there never was an explanation for it, I doubt it’ll happen to us. Grandpa lived up there alone. I’ll have three people with me.

Three people who I haven’t actually met in person for one whole year.

Sure, I get it. That’s the drill now. My foster parents can afford to ship me back and forth between here and New York as much as I’d like. The past two years have been like that. Ever since…

Well it’s not like things will be that awkward, right? We contact each other regularly enough online. Sure, the standard of ‘regular’ has been on a decreasing trend ever since I moved away. What did I expect? That they’d sit around and do nothing until I come around and visit? Some part of me feels like this is a desperate move on my part to keep them as friends.

Because God knows, I don’t have any here.

I don’t know why I waste time worrying about these things. Tomorrow’s going to be just fine.

-

“Here it is.”

Brad Wolfe didn’t wait for their responses as he impatiently opened the car door and stepped out into the cold mountain air, his boots trudging uncomfortably into the deep layer of snow. It was snowing lightly, the way he remembered it the last time he’d been here four years ago. The forest around the shed where they’d parked Steve’s car seemed to call out to him in a silent hello, welcoming him back to a place that he’d before this only been allowed to visit in his memories. He breathed in a cold scent of pine that brought a smile to his face, allowing the chill to seep past the bare warmth of his gray parka and down to his bones. He almost felt like a kid again, almost felt the urge to run up the unseen path ahead of the small, frail looking shed towards the cabin to catch his grandfather by surprise.

“Where is that cabin of yours? I’m freezing my balls off here!”

The nostalgic moment was, of course, ruined by Lance who was now standing beside the entrance to the driver’s seat, shivering exaggeratedly, hugging himself. Ironic considering the fact that he was the one who wore the most amount of clothing- a sweater, and two t-shirts under his dark blue parka, in addition to the bright red and yellow muffler around his face and the matching snow cap that his parents had bought for him days before the trip. Brad noticed that he looked a bit paler now, wondering if it was because of the temperature. Lance had hardly grown taller since they’d last met, though his dark brown hair was kept longer now, almost reaching his eyes behind those same, thick, black rimmed glasses. The expression of discomfort was a trademark he’d apparently not gotten over though. His features seemed to be made for that constant expression which reminded Brad somewhat of a seven year-old who was waiting for a present, at the edge of a tantrum.

Of course, Brad had known him since he was young enough to throw tantrums. It would just seem awkward to see him stamp his feet in the snow now, now that he had the height and weight proportional to that of a depressed teenager who devoured truckloads of chocolate whenever he got rejected by a girl. Which was, sadly, often enough. No, the tantrums had been reduced to snide comments or loud complaints over the years. That expression on his face was what took away any inhibitions Brad would have on shooting him down again.

“That would be an actual problem if you had any,” Brad said, turning to open the trunk of the car where the bags were. “Didn’t that girl rip them off when you tried to stalk her? What was her name…”

“Marlene,” Steve put as he appeared beside Brad with a neutral look on his face. “French class girl,” he added as he took out a black rucksack out of the trunk, shouldering it carefully. If the black-haired seventeen-year old was suffering from the cold as much as Lance was, he did not show it on his face. His skin was slightly tanned from a family trip two weeks ago to California where he’d went surfing. Brad had to wonder how the sudden change of temperature didn’t seem to affect him. He was taller and slightly more muscular now, wearing a large black jacket that still seemed a little too big for him. Brad wondered if he had worked out to impress someone, but decided to ask those questions later. Unlike Lance, Steve wouldn’t spill those kinds of details on his own accord, usually requiring a lot of coaxing from Cassie.

Like Lance, Steve didn’t really seem to have changed much. He still wore that same, neutral look most of the time, smiling slightly if a joke was told, frowning slightly if something annoyed him. You’d have to pay close attention to his mouth to notice the changes. And the lack of words he used to answer questions was a quality the rest of them found endearing, to an extent. Sometimes it just made things awkward when there was no one else around but him.

“Hey man, please don’t bring that up,” Lance said with an annoyed tone. Just as it looked like he was going to launch into one of those high-quality whining sessions he was reputed for, a single snowball made direct contact with his face, cutting his sentence off and leaving specks of snow covering his face and parka.

Steve and Brad smiled at the assailant, the girl standing behind them with a wide grin on her face. “It’s great to have all of us together again,” she said, “Maybe with our combined efforts, we can actually shut him up!” She shot Lance a less-than-apologetic look before she stepped in to take out her baggage- a red duffel bag that matched her coat and the band she used to tie her brown hair in a ponytail that hung past her shoulders. The mischievous grin that she kept on her face as she backed up told Brad that before this trip was over, more random snowballs would be flying around the place. Which was a good thing. Brad worried sometimes that she would at some point grow above those childish pranks. It made her the life and energy of the group.

Despite her childish tendencies, there was no denying that she was getting older. She was the oldest among them, to be more precise. Yet despite her growing level of maturity, displayed by the opinions she shared with the rest with them regarding idealism and feminism, she was still not above pelting you with a water balloon when she felt like it, pulling an innocent face right afterwards. And it was a face that, unfortunately for the rest of them, worked like a charm.

“Wonderful,” Lance grumbled as he shoved past them to take out his own bags before slamming the trunk shut. “Just wonderful. I knew coming out here would be loads of fun.”

“Follow me, it’s not that far off from here. The snow’s covered the path, that’s all,” Brad said, leading them out of the shed, upwards into the forest. The slope grew steeper as they trudged through the snow, but not steep enough to make it dangerous. Brad had to feel his way with his boots first to find the rocks that they used as steps to ascend. They were all still where he remembered them, luckily. As he had promised, they hadn’t walked for ten minutes before the cabin came into view, in a clearing up ahead.

It was the first time Brad had seen the place look so deserted. There was always a light on in there whenever he came in the past, but it had been empty for a while now, checked on only once in a while by his other distant cousin who lived in the nearby town at the foot of the mountain. It was a plain structure, box-shaped and made out of good, unpainted timber with a roof covered with snow. Mounds of snow piled up below the areas where the roof did not cover the ground, though they weren’t as large as the one that almost engulfed the storage shed, another log based building that was situated about ten feet away from the cabin, roughly the width of a car. That was where the snow shovels were kept, along with the generator that provided energy to the cabin. Of course, this meant that before anything else could be done, they would have to dig the door of the shed out by hand.

First things first, Brad took out a set of iron keys attached to a flat log keychain which happily read ‘Welcome to Hope!’, the name of the nearby town. He fumbled with them for a while before unlocking the door, introducing his friends to the place where they would be staying at for the next few days with a large, yellow flashlight he fished out from his backpack. The beam of light introduced his friends to dust, dust, and more dust. Brad was the first to step in, taking a good look at how much work needed to be done before they could actually sit down and breathe. The front door led into the main living room, the twin sofas facing the fireplace shrouded in white cloth, the same as the rest of the furniture in the room. There was a wooden desk and chair in the corner, upon which Brad saw the radio he remembered his father using before. The radio, blanketed in cobwebs was only half as important as the object beside it- a lone ink ribbon typewriter which was probably 50 percent of the reason why Brad wanted to come out here in the first place. His grandfather’s love for telling stories had been passed down to him long ago, along with the love for that ancient machine on the desk which Brad felt would empower him somewhat, more than the laptop he had brought in his backpack.

Above the desk was a small bookshelf which held several, hardcover books that were left behind when he had come here to claim some of them years ago. The kitchen was actually in the same living room, separated by the space occupied by the sofas and the table by a long, wooden counter which gave little room for a simple stove and an oven. The food cabinets were empty- something they would remedy tomorrow with a simple drive back down to town. Behind the kitchen was the small hallway that led to two bedrooms and the single toilet in the cabin. Rather than inspect those as well, Brad settled for dropping his bags onto the wooden floor before turning to face his friends who suddenly all looked like they were going to run back out to the car in a moment’s notice.

“So…do we have to go stay at a hotel now?” Lance asked impatiently.

Brad shook his head plainly. “Not really,” he replied. “It’s not really that bad. If we all pitch in, we should be done by nightfall.”

“Pitch in?” Steve repeated, his eyes looking at the room contemplatively. “Um….you mean we all have to do cleaning work?” There. The slight frown was there. Brad saw it in the dim light of the room. Just as Brad was about to give up hope on convincing them to stay, Cassie stepped forward and turned back to look at them.

“Oh, come on guys. It won’t kill us! Besides, it’ll be the first thing we’ve done together in a long time!” she said.

Lance rolled his eyes. “Why couldn’t the first thing we do together in a long time be something like Monopoly?”

Steve stepped over beside Cassie, and Brad knew he had won. “You always lose anyway,” Steve said plainly.

Outnumbered yet again, Lance knew better than to argue, throwing his arms up in an expression of defeat.

-

A few hours later, after a more than decent amount of hard work, sneezing, sweating and moaning, the cabin looked more bearable for the four of them. The generator was working fine, which gave them electricity, and the water in the bathroom was still flowing, if a little chilly. The bedrooms were the only ones they hadn’t gotten to yet, but they looked content enough where they were, Brad though to himself as he tended to the sausages at the stove. Lance was lying face down on the couch, already half asleep while Cassie and Steve were lying spread-eagled on the bearskin rug between the sofas, staring up at the ceiling looking like runners who had just finished a cross-country race, basking in the warmth of the fireplace that Lance had helped start, being the only one with a lighter.

“Why do you still keep that thing?” Cassie had asked when Lance had drawn it out from his pocket. “I thought you were done with smoking.”

“I am,” Lance replied defensively. “I just keep it around that’s all.”

It didn’t look like Cassie believed him, but she let the matter slide anyway. Brad knew she’d only go on the offensive if Lance did it in front of her. For what it was worth, Brad believed that Lance had quit. Or at least he wanted to anyway, seeing that the three of them had thrown nicotine patches at him for his last birthday…along with a certain stunt that involved handcuffs and a bungee cord. With the dim light of the fireplace, the main lamp that hung above them was kept off. The only electricity used in the house was the small bulb above Brad’s head as he cooked. As tired as they appeared to be, it didn’t seem to ruin their appetite- the sausages were wolfed down quickly before he had even gotten to start with his. Once he was done cleaning up the kitchen, Brad walked over to the other sofa and sat down, still feeling too fidgety to actually lie back. It could have been the coffee Lance had brewed earlier.

“So…you guys don’t want to clean up the bedrooms before calling it a day?” Brad asked.

“No, no thank you,” Cassie sighed, a blissful smile on her face. “I can stand sleeping out on this rug for one night. We can do that tomorrow.”

“Speak for yourself,” Lance panted. “I don’t think I’m going to be doing any more dusting until the world ends.”

“Uh…yeah,” Steve sighed, though whether he agreed with Lance or Cassie, no one could really tell.

Brad was lay back on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. He was about close his eyes when he realized that the generator was still running. Since they were all by the fireplace tonight anyway, they wouldn’t need any electricity for a while. Hesitantly, he got back up onto his feet and called out to his friends. “Hey…uh, guys?”

“Yes?” they replied in unison, though their ‘yes’ sounded more like a sentence going something along the lines of ‘Please go away, we’re tired.’

“I need to go out to the storage shed to turn off the generator. I need someone to come with me to carry the flashlight,” Brad said.

No volunteers. ‘How surprising,’ Brad thought wryly.

Cassie told Lance to go, who in turn told Steve to go. Steve didn’t respond. He was already asleep, much to the disdain of the other two. They sat up reluctantly, facing each other before going for three rounds of rock-paper-scissors (the usual method of settling a dispute), a match which Cassie quickly won. Lance stood up, though he didn’t look happy. Particularly when Cassie jumped up on the sofa he had vacated with a victorious smile on her face.

“No one ever beats her at rock-paper-scissors,” Lance complained as he took the flashlight Brad handed to him. The two of them went out back into the blistering cold, making their way for the storage shed.

“So,” Brad asked as they trudged along, “How have things been this past year?”

Lance shrugged. “I dunno. Same old, same old, I guess.”

“That translates into ‘You still don’t have a girlfriend, Steve is still impossible to fathom, and Cassie is still hyper’, right?” Brad sniggered.

When Lance didn’t respond, Brad stopped and turned to see that he had stopped a few steps behind with a somber look on his face. He had his hands in his pockets as he stared out past the storage shed straight at the frozen lake beside it. “I wish you guys hadn’t brought her up, you know,” he sighed.

Brad raised an eyebrow. “Who? Marlene?”

“She meant a lot to me,” Lance said.

Brad stared at him for a while, wondering what to say. It used to be easy, this kind of thing. But the fact was that he didn’t even know who this Marlene person was, or how she looked like. She’d apparently moved into their old school just a few months after he’d left to live with his aunt. At this point, Brad didn’t know what to say anymore.

“Sorry about that,” Brad said finally. “I didn’t know it was that important to you. But you know we never mean these things anyway, right?”

Lance took a while to respond. Perhaps the chill was what encouraged him to respond in the end. “Forget it. Let’s just get this done with.”

As they opened the storage shed and went in. Apart from the shovels and the generator, the shed held a single oil drum to keep the generator and heaters running, along with a chamber underneath it locked by a trapdoor for storing meat during the winter. The temperature was low enough that it served as a non-electrical freezer of sorts. A lone chainsaw and other tools were stored on a high shelf, alongside an item that immediately caught Lance’s eye.

“Hey, isn’t that….?”

Brad noticed it too, and a look of surprise appeared on his face. He’d expected one of the relatives to take it away. And yet, here it was. He reached his hands up towards the shelf to grab it, accidentally causing a few yellow boxes to tumble down onto the ground, spilling small metal cylinders that reflected the light off Lance’s flashlight. Ignoring them, Brad grabbed it anyway, hefting it before checking the storage chamber to see if it was loaded.

“A hunting rifle,” Brad finished for him. “I guess we have our activity for tomorrow planned out after all.”

“I thought you said your grandfather took it with him the day he disappeared,” Lance put in.

“He probably had two all along,” Brad guessed. It was a better explanation than ‘they magically came home’ anyway. “I don’t have a license, though my grandfather used to. Gave him permission to take out two caribou during hunting season. Again, it’s not mine, but there’s no one out here to catch us anyway.”

Brad cautiously put the weapon back on the shelf before he did what he came to do- shutting off the generator before the two of them left the storage shed, closing the door behind them.

“You think there are any wolves out here?” Lance asked, now suddenly sounding excited.

Brad gave him a cold stare. “Yes, there are wolves out here. No, you will not be shooting them. It’s illegal. Besides, I’m the one who’ll be doing the shooting.”

“Hey, no fair!” Lance protested. “You can’t hog all the fun after all the torture you put us through!”

Lance continued badgering him about it all the way until they reached the cabin. And he continued even when they were inside, which, unfortunately drew the attentions of Cassie and Steve, who suddenly didn’t look so asleep after all. With the prospect of shooting something, suddenly all three of them were alive again, demanding an opportunity to try it out.

“Fine,” Brad said finally, giving in. “But I’ll need to show you guys the basics first. Wouldn’t want you hurting any poor trees.”

When they were still looking at him, he finished, “Tomorrow! Tomorrow morning!” And that finally allowed them to settle back down, Cassie still on the sofa she had stolen from Lance. Lance now lying on the rug beside Steve. Brad now lying down on the other couch, gazing intently at the fireplace, still not feeling quite sleepy enough yet.

“So Brad,” Lance asked, looking up at him, “Why did you bring us out here again? I mean, you could’ve just bunked at my place during Christmas. It would have been like old times. Plus there’s a human population there- better chance of looking for dates.”

Brad raised an eyebrow. “Dates? Me?” Then, in a more noticeably skeptical tone, “You?” The last word was said in perfect unison with Cassie while Steve just gave an amused grin.

“Guys, you’re going to have to find something else to attack soon. This is starting to get old,” Lance told them exasperatedly.

“Anyway,” Cassie said, toying with a loose button on her white shirt, “I actually think Christmas will be just fine out here. It’s a nice change of pace. There’s plenty of snow out here, and we have each other.”

Lance shot her a look, “You have been watching way too much Hallmark,” he accused.

“Says the boy who reads way too much Nicholas Sparks,” Steve put in. That drew a laugh from the three of them.

Lance was sitting up now, pointing an accusing finger at Steve, “Hey, keep pushing it and I will spill a story involving love letters in which you don’t feature in such a positive light!”

Steve put on his poker face. Which was, okay, the same as all his other faces. But Brad and Cassie noticed the slight eyebrow twitch which got them sitting up as well. “Hey!” Cassie shouted.

“You guys remember the rules! No secrets!” Brad finished, a playful grin on his face.

“So Lance, spill,” Cassie teased. “You know you want to….” She added in a singsong voice.

And before long, the notion of sleep was forgotten as the four of them sat in a circle around the fireplace, taking turns at, among other things, humiliating each other, reminiscing about past times, and eventually just sitting silently, looking at the fire, basking quietly in each other’s company.

Just like old times.

-

The sun rose all too early the next day, and so they stayed asleep for as long as they could before Steve got up and made breakfast. The sound of eggs crackling on the frying pan coupled with the scent of baked beans wafting from the stove was enough to wake the rest of them up. The sun was well up by the time Brad trudged outside alone to the shed while the others ate. Retrieving the hunting rifle and the box of shells he’d dropped last night. There was a queue to get into the single bathroom, which stayed unmoving for the most part of half an hour when Cassie got in first.

The gun got the boys excited enough. Steve and Lance took turns holding and admiring the thing, sometimes hefting the weapon as though they were aiming at something more exciting than the cabin walls. Brad was teaching them how to reload the thing when Cassie came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a yellow towel and shivering as she made her way to one of the bedrooms, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind her.

“So when do we get to fire it?” Lance asked impatiently, later when they were all standing outside the cabin. Brad paid no attention to him, peering intently at a map he had retrieved from his grandfather’s bedroom. Behind them, Cassie was tossing snowballs at Steve while chasing him, demanding her turn to hold it.

Brad had more than his share of doubts now, actually. The place where his grandfather used to take him was a river far North of the cabin, closer to the mountains. And while he acted like he knew what he was doing most of the time since he’d arrived here, he still felt like a child sometimes when he picked up that rifle. It felt like he was never meant to hold it without his grandfather holding it with him. But since this place and everything in it now belonged to him, that meant that the rifle was his too. Which meant that he’d have to get used to firing it sooner or later anyway, because he had no intention of selling it.

“Follow me,” Brad said finally as he shouldered his backpack- the only one they were bringing with them. Inside was a machete, a bunch of knives, a compass and a flare, along with the other tools they would need to carve up the kill. If they made any, at least. He looked to the sky, and, satisfied that it was clear enough, he led them on without hesitation. His grandfather had taught him to always watch the skies, because to be trapped outside in a snowstorm would mean almost certain death.

“So you’ve done this before?” Cassie asked him about an hour or so later. They were walking ahead of Lance and Steve, who were busy discussing something about the laptops that they had left in their cabin.

“A few times, back when the old geezer was still alive,” Brad admitted, though ‘a few’ roughly translated to ‘three’. “I’m no expert though. I can only teach you guys how to point and pull the trigger. I’ve never really hit anything before without my grandfather holding the rifle with me.”

“If you don’t hit anything, I’m quite sure Lance and Steve won’t fare any better,” Cassie grinned. “And it’s not like we desperately need the meat or anything. Lance would probably be grateful for an opportunity to drive down to the town and eat ‘proper’ food.”

“I guess,” Brad muttered, his eyes still focused ahead on the snow-covered trail ahead. The trek had started to flatten out earlier, much to their relief. The weather seemed relatively clear the whole way. The sun wasn’t exactly shining, but the cold wasn’t as bad today as it was yesterday when they’d first arrived.

“I always thought winter was beautiful,” Cassie had said, a trail of vapor rising from her mouth. “But out here there’s just so much white that it feels rather depressing.” And it was true. Apart from the brown hue of the tree trunks, everything else was just smothered in white. The sky itself seemed gray at most, mourning the sleeping forest beneath it. There was only the clear scent of fresh snow, hovering in the air around them.

“Autumn’s more of your season, huh?” Brad replied with a smile. “Rolling in the leaves, Halloween, scaring the crap out of Lance by dressing up as a Japanese ghost…”

“We bully him too much,” Cassie sighed.

“We don’t bully him enough,” Brad argued back. “Looks like he’s still as full of himself as ever. How much did you have to babysit him while I was gone?”

Cassie rolled her eyes, sneering the plain old, “Ha!” that Brad had missed terribly while he was gone. It was a sound that she made when she was going to speak highly of herself, although granted that did not happen as much with as her as it did with Lance. It was also a reassuring sound, sometimes, as good as her squeezing them in a tight hug when she wanted to tell them that things would be just fine as long as she was around. And he believed it, most of the time. They all did.

“Do I even have to dignify that with an answer?” she asked. “I had to babysit both of them this year. Steve wanted to ask this girl out to the Halloween Dance, and Lance offered to help by writing poetry on a card to slip into her locker.”

Brad cringed. “He must be put out of his misery. If we have any spare bullets at the end of this trip, we’ll tie him up and use him for target practice. So what did you do?”

“I tore up Lance’s Prince Charming note and wrote Steve one that sounded a lot more this century,” Cassie beamed proudly.

“This century? Does that mean it had fun to say words like ‘lol’ and ‘rofl’ in it?” Brad asked.

“Oh come on, you know I don’t speak computer geek. That’s one thing I don’t mind not sharing with the two of them over there,” she said, gesturing towards the two boys behind them with her left thumb.

The path ahead of them was now sloping downwards. Ahead lay a valley covered with pine trees- shades of green barely peeking out of the coats of white. The wind seemed to start blowing slightly harder from over the mountains, bringing more cold with it. It didn’t matter anyhow- Brad could see the river from where they were standing then. For the life of him he couldn’t remember its name, nor could he understand the scribbling on his grandfather’s map that probably was the answer. It was enough that he remembered the sight of the river from this vantage point. They could see it a good distance off through more forest, a long body of water that stretched towards the southwest, coming from two smaller rivers that curved around a nearby mountain. The waters, they found as they arrived there much later, were still flowing steady and true, carrying with them the soothing sounds of water lapping on rocks and dead trees lying in its path. It looked shallow enough, but Brad warned them not to cross until he said so. The waters were clear but still deceptively deep enough to drown in if they weren’t careful. They would cross at a ford upriver where Brad remembered shooting his first moose a long time ago.

As luck would have it, there was a small doe drinking placidly there by the time the ford came into view. Motioning for the others to remain silent, Brad raised his rifle.

“Looks like we’ll be eating Bambi tonight,” Brad muttered.

Luck however, was on ‘Bambi’s side. The bullet only grazed its tail slightly before it lodged itself in a nearby decaying tree trunk. The animal was gone before Lance could even open his mouth to mock Brad’s shooting. Not that Lance needed the animal around to mock Brad’s shooting anyway, so he just went ahead.

“You killed a dead tree, Brad! Now it’s twice as dead!” Lance laughed. Then, in a mock impression of Brad’s voice, he added, “Looks like we’ll be eating Grandmother Willow tonight!”

The last sentence only bought him blank stares from his friends.

“Uh…Pocahontas. The talking tree,” Lance said, not that anyone was paying him much attention anymore.

The wind was steadily getting stronger as they crossed the river, the chill now creeping into their feet as well as water made its way past their boots and into their socks. If they wanted to kill anything now, they’d have to venture on ahead. No animal would come near the river for a long while, not after hearing the loud gunshot from Brad’s rifle.

“I think we should head back,” Brad said at one point. “We might have a snowstorm headed this way.”

“Hey,” Lance protested. “We haven’t even shot anything! It’s only a little windy, anyway. Let’s continue on for a bit. If it gets worse we’ll double back immediately. What are we going to do there anyway? Play Monopoly?”

“Um…yeah,” Steve agreed. “I’m not really in a hurry to get back to the cabin anyway.”

“Neither am I,” Cassie confessed.

Brad sighed heavily. All of them were putting on their best pleading faces, which actually scared him somewhat. And as much as he wanted to tell them ‘no’, he realized that it was his fault that they were too bored to want to return to the cabin in the first place. He owed them at least a few more minutes out here.

And so they continued on, trekking through the snow-covered woods despite the wind whispering for them to turn back. They were just whispers, anyway, unnoticeable in comparison to the prospect of exploring and shooting.

By the time the wind was ready to make loud demands, snow was starting to fall, and they were about an hour away from the cabin.

“We should turn back now,” Brad announced, unable the slight quiver of fear in his voice.

“I feel like playing a bit of Monopoly now myself,” Lance put in.

Brad reached into his pockets and drew out the compass. “All we have to do is head South and we should be-

He stopped mid-sentence as he looked at the compass. His face suddenly seemed to grow deathly pale as he blinked, rubbing the snow out of his eyes a few times before he looked back at them and said, “We’re in trouble.”

Lance impatiently snatched the compass out of Brad’s hands, looked at it himself, and his face started to echo what Brad had just said. Though he seemed more angry than horrified. “What the hell is going on here?” he shouted, pointing an accusing finger at Brad. “You didn’t bother checking the thing before we left?”

As Lance dropped the compass, Steve and Cassie got their first good look at it.

The compass wasn’t pointing in a general direction. It was spinning around wildly as though it had been possessed by some spirit that wanted them dead.

“It was fine just now!” Brad shouted back.

Before Lance could shout back, Cassie stepped in between them. “Hey! You guys can beat each other senseless later! Right now we’ve gotta figure out what we’re going to do!”

The three of them turned to Brad now, who suddenly found himself wishing that they had stuck to playing Monopoly, or even better that they’d went to somewhere warmer for their vacation. Hawaii sounded nice. His eyes looked around wildly, as though the answer to their survival was somewhere in the storm around them that was quickly gaining force.

“The mountains!” Brad shouted finally. “First things first, we have to find a place to take shelter, like a cave or…or a den!”

They didn’t need to be told twice. They followed behind him, running as fast as their feet and the thickening snow would allow, towards the place that Brad had before this been dead set on avoiding.

-

The cave mouth yawned in the face of the storm invitingly, looking almost too good to be true. The entrance itself was about as large as a house, making it all the more noticeable from a distance. The ground beneath their feet grew rocky and all the more treacherous with the snow almost blinding them. Still they pressed on towards it, with little other choice if they wanted to survive the snowstorm. Brad had been through a good number of blizzards before, every time his family stayed out here for Christmas, but he’d never exactly been out in the forest when it happened before. He wondered if this might have been how his Grandfather had died, lost out in a world where Mother Nature wanted nothing more than for you to lie still and be covered with snow, never to move again. Or could he have taken shelter, just like they were doing now, only to find that the shelter was no unoccupied?

The cave stretched further than they could see into the darkness, seeming to go on forever like the throat of some monstrous beast that swallowed its prey whole. Frozen icicles sprouted like plants on the rocky floors and ceiling a good distance in from the entrance. The four of them went in as far as the ice stopped reaching, and settled down there, not really wanting to find out what the rest of the cave had in store for them. Having worn themselves out from the effort of getting here in the first place, Brad and Lance didn’t continue their squabble which began outside. It was the last thing on their minds now that their lives to worry about.

“We should be alright here,” Brad said, being the first one to break the silence that had befallen the rest of them on the way here. “We’ll just wait until the storm breaks, then we’ll head on back.”

“How long will that take?” Steve asked, looking more than a little uncomfortable sitting on a nearby rock, facing Brad, the only one who was still standing now. Cassie was seated on the ground beside Steve, leaning on the very same rock he was sitting on, hugging her feet to herself for warmth. Lance on the other hand was lying on his back on the ground not too far from the rest of them, still panting slightly.

“I’m not sure. It could be a few hours. I doubt it’ll go for more than a day though,” Brad replied. He was really more honest about the ‘I’m not sure part’ than he was regarding the rest of the sentence. Blizzards could go on for days at a time sometimes.

“We should probably light a fire then,” Steve said. “I saw some dead branches underneath the trees outside on our way in. We could use that.”

“You should probably wait for it to die down a little bit before you go out there,” Cassie said with a worried look on her face. “The way things look now, you go out there and that wind might just sweep you away like you were a fly.”

“Even when the storm does end, how are we going to find our way back to the cabin with Brad’s magic compass that doesn’t point North?” Lance asked gravely.

“It could have been an iron deposit,” Brad said hopefully. “The old geezer mentioned there was an iron mine somewhere out here. Maybe the compass reacted that way because we were standing above a deposit. When the storm clears, we’ll have to use the sun to find our way back.”

“Can’t we just call for help?” Lance suggested, reaching into his pockets.

“Don’t bother,” Steve sighed. “No signal.”

Brad was surprised Lance hadn’t noticed that earlier. It was the first thing he’d noticed when they’d arrived at the cabin yesterday, judging by the utter lack of phone calls he’d received from his aunt.

The four of them sat in silence for the longest while, their eyes never tearing away from the mouth of the cave, as though waiting for the storm to recede at any given second. In the end, Brad spoke up, “I’m sorry I got you guys into this.”

“We were kind of asking for it,” Cassie replied as she stared out into nothingness, seemingly lost in though.

Lance chuckled suddenly. Drawing everyone’s eyes back towards him.

“If I were you just now, I would’ve shot the three of us for being a pain in the ass, then went home myself,” he said, looking straight at Brad. Brad smiled back and raised the rifle. “I don’t know about the getting home part, but I can still shoot you guys if I get hungry.”

The four of them laughed. Brad thought he’d never ever hear anything more pretentious than the sound they were making then. It was the kind of laugh people made when they didn’t want to cry or scream. They were too tired and too riddled with worry for real laughter anyway.

“Look, you guys get some sleep first. I’ll keep watch and wake you guys if the storm clears,” Brad offered. It was the least he could do anyway.

“What do you need to keep watch for anyway?” Cassie asked curiously.

“Inhabitants of this cave, if there are any,” Brad said.

They made no attempt to hide the look of alarm on their faces when Brad said that. And for a while, Brad thought he’d just made sure that no one would be getting any sleep after all. And yet, fall asleep they did in the end, leaving the seventeen year-old boy alone with a rifle and his thoughts.

-

Brad hated the feel of the cave ever since he’d seen it in the distance. It was like there had been a growing sense of dread, gaining weight in the pit of his stomach with every step he took towards it. Now that it was sitting in the beasts’ maw, even surrounded by his friends, he couldn’t help but feel like something deep inside him had been telling him not to come here. With no one to talk to, it felt like he had a sudden heightened sense of things happening around him. The drops of water trickling from some far distance inside the cave seemed to echo loudly in his ears, muffling out the sounds of the roaring wind outside. The cold was starting to feel like needles lodged into his skin, making him feel like he was enclosed in a wet blanket. In contrast, the roof of his mouth felt disturbingly dry, no matter how many times he took the bottle from his backpack and put it to his lips.

The wind whispered in his ears, telling him that he wouldn’t make it. That all of them were going to die and it was going to be his fault. It repeated his name in a thousand different voices, as though calling him to come out and die.

Which was why it took him a while to notice the single voice that stood out over them all.

“Brad Wolfe.”

He looked to his friends first, thinking maybe one of them had woken up and was calling him.

“Brad Wolfe.”

He looked away from the mouth of the cave, from where the lone voice was calling him. He stared deep, deep into the darkness, finding it odd that the while the whiteness outside was calling him to die, the pitch black shroud of this place was calling him to live. Was it telling him to live? He didn’t know for certain. All he knew was that his name had been called, and he couldn’t see the Caller.

He stumbled to his feet, suddenly feeling lightheaded, like he was teetering at the edge of sleep. Not knowing exactly why, he started walking, awkwardly into the darkness, his eyes ever searching for the person who kept calling his name. His movements felt as though he were moving underwater, and yet he could breathe freely. Or at least he could hear something breathing. He wasn’t sure if it was him.

He kept on walking, not even turning back to look at his friends. Pulled on by the invisible cord, he kept on walking for what seemed like forever.

There was no light here, and yet he saw the person standing far ahead in front of him as though there were a light shining from the person himself. It didn’t take long for him to recognize the face-

“Grandpa?” he called out, suddenly finding the strength to break into a run towards that person, that face. Maybe if he could just reach him, he could save him, and all of this wouldn’t be happening.

The voices stopped whispering.

The cave took them away, along with the ground beneath his feet.

Without so much as a shout, Brad Wolfe allowed himself to fall.

Oddly he wasn’t afraid. Because beneath him wasn’t darkness, you see, but a glorious white light…

-

Steve was the first to wake, and thus the first to notice that Brad wasn’t there anymore. The storm outside was still determined to keep them in, and there was only one direction in which he could have gone. Steve tried calling out Brad’s name, hoping to hear an answer. Maybe he’d just gone deeper in to take a piss where no one could see.

The only answers he got were echoes of his own voice.

He roused both Cassie and Lance, who both added their voices to his in calling out for their friend. Still no answer came. And so they decided to look for him, despite the possibility that he could have been taken by a wild animal. How could they go back to sleep now? If something had taken Brad, what would stop it from coming for them next?

Lance’s lighter was the only source of light they had, but it was enough to stir a false sense of bravado amongst them. They carried no weapons- the rifle and the backpack were with Brad as far as they remembered. Yet still they pressed forth into the darkness, keeping close to each other for that was the only warmth they could get, the deeper they went.

“Hey, guys, do you see that?” Lance asked at one point, looking ahead at a small speck of light in the distance.

The others didn’t answer him. The light was growing bigger. Almost as though it were a freight train heading towards them in a dark tunnel. But it made no sound. Nothing made sound suddenly, as they opened their mouths as though they were screaming, but all that prevailed was the deafening quiet.

In the face of this thing that was coming for them, Lance found himself reaching for Cassie’s hand.

It was the last thing he remembered doing before everything around them was drowned in white. Everything else seemed to fade away but that unnatural light. What lay beyond that, was anyone’s guess.