Later Snippet From 'Confessions'
I've had a nice response from the opening snippet posted earlier. So, here's another, from the middle of Chapter Twenty Six, very late in the novel.
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Chapter Twenty Six
To Hide No More
***
I never finish what I am saying. The lights go out with a loud POP and a flash from outside. We are left with the soft glow of my laptop illuminating the room with dim blueness.
"That didn't sound good." I instinctively look up. The snow could have snapped a tree limb onto the power lines.
Chris rises as I do. I slip into my coat and boots and go to the kitchen, opening what my mother had always called the 'utility' drawer, populated with screwdrivers, pliers, candles, and a flashlight. The latter rests among the other items. I pick it up and turn it on, the bulb glowing weakly for a second before fading to nothingness. The batteries are shot.
"I might have a flashlight in my trunk," Chris says, and reaches for her purse on the counter. Hand almost to it when a window at the back of the house shatters, something crashing through it and landing hard within.
Chris lets out a fast, startled scream. I instinctively step in front of her, leaning to see down the dark hallway toward the bedrooms.
"What was that?"
"Another branch snapping..." I suggest, but without conviction. I ease down the hallway, past photos arranged meticulously on the wood walls, and peer around the corner into what was my parents' room. A chill rush of air washes past me as I can just make out in the weak, storm-filtered moonlight, a jagged rock on the floor, shards of glass scattered about.
Behind I feel Chris grab my sweatshirt as she looks past and sees what I have. "Michael..."
It is just a few seconds that I stand there, fixed on the rock-turned-projectile first, then out the broken window, darkness beyond curtains billowing in the invading gusts. Just enough time for a few breaths, and for my patience to evaporate.
I turn and push past Chris, moving fast for the front door.
"Michael!"
I look fast back to her. "Stay inside. Lock the door."
Before she can protest or agree I am outside and down the steps. My boots settle deep into the freshly fallen snow, wind whipped flakes scraping my face as I race around the house, high stepping through mounting drifts, stumbling once before finally reaching the electric panel. It has been pried open, the metal end of a hoe wedged against the breakers, shorting them, the box and all within charred and still sparking. I look a few feet away to the outside of my parents' bedroom. The shattered window, crusted with ice, hangs like a scar on the house.
I turn and survey the landscape beyond. The woods stretch out toward the road and the lake. On the ground I scan for a sign of whoever did this, a set of deep impressions prominent, but already being erased by the relentless blizzard. They tread off not toward the road, where I expect, but past Chris' car and into the woods stepping down toward the lake.
Whoever left the tracks has a head start on me. Catching anyone in this blinding weather will be next to impossible. But I recall something, from just after our arrival—the headlights. They swept the water from the far side of Arrow Lake. Only now am I asking myself the obvious question—to whom did that car belong? It is inconceivable that Chris and I are even here, braving the storm. Is it likely that another person or family has decided to visit their summer house in the midst of an off season blizzard?
No.
The answer fires me, and I charge off not following the tracks, but down to the lake directly, turning right and skirting the shore, pushing myself, heart thudding as I run a hundred yards, then two, falling and recovering again and again. But I keep going, faster, reaching the far bend in the lake just as a figure emerges from the trees.
I can make out nothing about them. No feature or face, deep hood obscuring all. They pause briefly and turn my way, seeing me, then take off again. Struggling through the piling drifts, wind whipping them into knee-high icy dunes. It could be that the person I chase is tiring after their slog through the woods, or it could be that I am simply driven by a deeper desire, but whatever the cause they begin to slow. I close the distance. Hearing their labored breathing as I near. Finally reach them and shove them from behind.
The figure tumbles to the snowy ground, slipping on a steep patch of shore and sliding a few feet into the lake, skim ice cracking, the water swallowing them briefly before they bob to the surface, gasping and flailing. I kneel fast and reach toward them, snagging a hand first, then the hood of their coat, and haul them from the freezing water. If they are not hypothermic already they soon will be, but I don't care. I drag them away from the shore and leave them on a flat patch of snow beneath a stand of trees. With force I plant myself on their chest and rip the hood away to see who it is that has stalked me. Threatened me, and those I care for. When I finally see their face I do not understand.
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