The Winter People Read Online Free PDF Page A

stripped bare of leaves and shrouded in snow, looked unfamiliar. For an hour ormore, he moved on through thickets of dense growth, last year’s raspberry canes lashing out at him, home farther and farther away. The woods grew darker. He began to wonder if he had made the right choice, coming out here in the storm.
    “Too late to turn back now,” he told himself, foot aching as he pushed himself forward.
    He didn’t allow himself to think of the accident very often. When he did, it was at times like this—when he felt as if the world he inhabited was against him in some profound way.
    H e’d been up on the hill cutting firewood. It was a pleasant late-summer morning a year after he and Sara were married. He’d found a clearing full of deadfalls, already dried out, and was cutting them into stove-sized pieces and loading them onto the cart. He worked all morning, went home for lunch, then returned to the woods, pleased with how much he’d accomplished. He’d told Sara to keep supper warm—he’d work until either the wagon was full or it grew too dark. She’d frowned, never liking it when he was in the woods after nightfall.
    “Don’t be too late,” she’d said.
    But the work was going so well, with the wagon almost full, that dusk came and went, and Martin kept sawing. His shoulders and back ached, but it was a good kind of ache. At last, he could get no more wood on the wagon. He gathered his saws and ax, hitched the horse back up to the cart, and began the slow and careful descent of the hill. It was quite dark by then, and he walked beside the horse, guiding her around rocks, over roots and gullies. When they were just past the Devil’s Hand, the horse froze.
    “Come on, girl,” he urged, pulling the reins and giving her a gentle swat. But she refused to budge, her eyes focused straight ahead, ears pricked up at attention. She took a step backward, whinnied nervously. Martin heard a twig snap in the darkness ahead of them. He gave the horse a reassuring pat on the neck.
    “Steady, girl,” he said, then stepped forward into the shadows to investigate.
    He never could say what had been out in the woods that night. When Lucius asked him about it later, Martin claimed that he hadn’t seen anything, that the horse had been spooked by a sound.
    “That old mare you’ve got is as steady as they come,” Lucius had said. “Must have been a bear. Or a catamount. There had to be something that frightened her like that.”
    Martin nodded, and didn’t tell his brother, or even Sara, what he’d really seen: a flash of pale white, like an owl, only much, much larger. It had been in a low branch and swooped down onto the forest floor, making a strange sort of hiss in flight. It had looked … almost human. But no person could move that way—it was too quick, too fluid. And there had been a smell, a terrible burning-fat sort of reek.
    This was too much for the horse, who instantly bolted straight ahead, right for Martin. He saw her coming, knew what he had to do, but his brain was spinning in circles from fear, and he couldn’t seem to make his body move. His eyes were locked on the horse’s eyes, which bulged with panic. At last, Martin dove to get out of her way, but not in time, not far enough. The horse knocked him down and trampled his legs, breaking his left femur with an audible snap. His temple caught the edge of a large rock on the way down, and the world got darker and his vision blurred. The cart ran over his left foot, crushing it from the ankle down. He could feel the bones grinding under the wheel. The pain, though excruciating, felt far away, almost as if it were happening to someone else. Behind him, a twig snapped. He turned, and saw the pale figure move off into the shadows just before he lost consciousness.
    The cart broke apart halfway down the hill, and the horse arrived back at the barn, dragging what remained of the shaft and front axle, the wheels smashed to pieces. Afterward, he learned