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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Mystery
- Subject: Ghost Stories / Paranormal
- Published: 06/28/2016
Frozen Angels
Born 1989, M, from Sydney, Australia1
The conversion of mere thoughts into destiny had taken time; the truth of it was, he had daydreamed for so long and dismissed the notion that these dark fantasies held any genuine intent.
But as the onslaught of verbal icicles continued to pierce and prod at his resolve, clarity came. He gave them all the benefit of the doubt for so long – too long.
It would end here.
He steps outside the decayed hut, over the broken plank and onto the meticulously well-raked ramp. The bull-wheel kicks another chair out, down the lonely lift-line; a flurry blows against the birch. Joel whistles, joining the chorus singing from the trees that circumscribe the pathetic old relic. Why didn’t they decommission this hunk of junk, Joel wonders.
The scream is heard by no-one, except Joel.
***
It was a terrible idea; Mark knows this. To grab onto a chair as it spun into the bull-wheel and be propelled to safety was some kind of MacGyver 101 bullshit. Before the blood from the flesh of his calf hits the snow, he is sprawled on the icy ramp, barely breathing, the white of his Burton snow jacket now crimson, the thumping in his head bittersweet as he feels the darkness coming.
Good shots, Mark admits: Joel’s Browning Buck Mk.22 LR really hit the spot. With each convulsion, he drifts further away… He’s not afraid – only cold and lonely. The fog that comes is unusual but not unpleasant. There’s Eloise in here, and her upturned nose. Mark can taste the crisp air; it has never felt so good to breathe. He smiles that all-cheek smile you can’t help sometimes, and laughs, seeing the past and present, all at once. The melted plastic of Eloise’s dolly vacationing in the microwave, then sitting at her bedside, deformed, but her best friend. The bin, put it in the bin, dear. No daddy!
Her teardrops echo against the stygian surface. Those hazel eyes, beautiful … curious. They come and go. The purple cloud fading and reforming, the buzz-saw of the present growing loud and dull. Another droplet falls against the pink of her cheek, seeming to take an eternity to reach her upper lip – or no time at all – hard to tell. As does Mark’s own rogue tear. Their hands touch and there’s warmth and then no warmth. For there is no touch. Eloise has to be far away – not here, for here is not real. He laughs: the courts can be damned, but perhaps that damned custody battle saved Eloise’s life.
The touch of frosty powdered snow at his sides awakens him. And with a hand around his ankle, he is moved from the ramp.
‘Wow, you packed on a pound or two,’ Joel says light-heartedly. ‘I’m sorry about this.’
The crisp clean air in the fog is gone, but the buzzing is growing louder. Mark’s scarf has turned to rock, blocking any air from his lungs; he rips it down, wincing, trying to take breath.
‘Why, Joel?’ he groans, coughing a river of red and tasting the copper.
‘Because we are friends – but first come, first serve, you know,’ Joel chuckles.
The dark and leafless birch trees watch curiously.
Joel feels something and sees something else. But of course, she, hidden amongst those ugly trees is just a figment of peripheral trickery and over-excitement. That’s it, nothing more. He speaks softly, his voice barely carrying over the wind.
‘I tried man, I really did … but it gnaws, you know? No career, no respect. I thought It’d work out – the whole funny-guy act, being super nice to everybody, giving money to charities, giving blood, giving every asshole who skis here a lift to town and back. Give, give, give, and for what? To be treated like shit, year after year.’ He sighs, rubbing his hands together. ‘I should thank them, though… They showed me my destiny.’
Joel again is taken by the trees; he talks to them – to her. The gun sits ripe for the taking but Mark has little time to make a move. Just a few more feet and…
‘No trying to be a hero, boy,’ Joel says, kicking Mark’s hand out from under him.
The bloody smile takes Joel by surprise, reminding him of childhood nightmares.
‘You… are… a… loser!’ Mark says. A shrill, pained screech accompanies a spray of crimson fluid in Joel’s face.
Eloise, forgive me. Spitting is a disgusting habit… I love you.
And with that Mark prepares to die.
Joel chuckles bitterly. ‘Loser, huh?’ He wipes the blood from his face with a handkerchief. ‘That’s what they say.’
He unloads a third and fourth bullet into Mark’s face and howls into the night. The explosions arrive again – the red-ones just like his handy-work. He collapses into a mound of powdery snow, breathes to collect himself and lets it sink in. Behind his eyelids, he wonders why the hazel eyes appear so vengeful.
2
The children marvel at the array of colour, exploding before the dots of Perseus in the Ontarian Winter sky. Each firework illuminates the blue of Kiersten’s eyes.
Under the twinkling stars, with magic in the air, the courage for Noah to tell her his feelings is coming; he knows it, so he grins. The lift jolts, but Kiersten doesn’t see him jump. It’s going to be a memorable night.
Much higher up the lift-line, Ashlee grasps the safety bar, embarrassed by her growing anxiety and its ability to make her swoon at twenty-one. There’s a chill in the winter breeze that creeps into her knees and elbows. And everywhere on her body. But the trembling comes from elsewhere. It’s the voice – that darn malevolent voice. Fireworks, not gunshots, she tells it. The croaking chairlift gets closer to the end. She fidgets; the voice gets louder, screaming: ‘You will die!’
Then, they come again – louder. Definitely gunshots.
Ashlee unstraps her binding and lets the board drop. The fall could kill her, but what would staying put do? Another round of fireworks blasts into the night.
After a deep breath, Ashlee plummets towards the hard-packed snow.
3
It’s strange at first – being dead, but floating…
Mark adapts and even laughs at the strange holes in his corpse’s face. His sides would split, if they could, as he recalls his escape idea. A bull-wheel to save the day, hey? In death, it’s all funny.
He floats above Joel, gives him the finger, though he doesn’t truly mean it with bare resentment. Everything seems to be silly and laughable. People are afraid of this?
Still a pragmatist, he floats, wondering what assistance, in death, he might offer the living.
4
Her legs hit heavily, slamming her forward onto her knees and forearms.
Shit, it hurts! But less than expected. Alive and unbroken, Ashlee thanks the thighs for which she is often ridiculed for their lack of model-like gap. But they sure can take a fall. Her Lib Tech snowboard, on the other hand, could not and now sits in two pieces against a large rock. Trivial? Yes; but a faster ride down the mountain it was, so she curses colourfully, though quietly.
As the chairs move above her, a strange disassociating feeling comes to Ashlee. A predator, up there, shooting people on New Year’s Eve? It sounds like a bad horror story. These things may happen in big cities or schools in the States, but they didn’t happen here.
With each footstep, Ashlee takes unusual solace in a wondrous notion that she may be insane. Wouldn’t that be grand? Padded cells, around the clock care. Free meds! The chairlift grinds to a halt. The speakers convey that the backup motor will start shortly, aiding passengers off the malfunctioning lift. What passengers? It’s empty, isn’t it?
The voice laughs. Behind the flurries of white she catches the recognisable yellow jacket. Ashlee pivots straight away, and dashes, cursing the new-found horror that just amplified, ten-fold, the existing horror as she strides through the dense undergrowth. Heart thumping, the voice snickers ‘You’re galloping to your death!’ There’s a second voice, though… a man’s voice, telling her to keep going. Although she can’t place him, he’s familiar – so familiar.
She reaches the top, guided by this voice. With her head hidden behind the decrepit lift shack, the grumble of the auxiliary motor starts. There’s little time left.
Joel’s crazed shaggy brown hair covers his eyes. He might be asleep.
Crafty… The voice tells her – go now! Ashlee bolts out from behind the shack, dives and immediately attacks, and with a ferocity unknown to her until this very moment, she presses all of herself into him.
The gun slips a little from his grip. Joel’s reactions are slow, perhaps dazed from the gutsy assault, but instinctively he bucks his hips upwards. Ashlee loses balance and her grip on the gun. She plants herself down, flattening out, trying to stall his attacks, and more, to get her hands on it again. It’s close, but he thrashes too much. Stay still god damn it! She punches, punches, punches at his face and ears. Moaning, he thrusts a forearm up, right into her sternum. The air departs her lungs. Ashlee is thrown sideways into the groomer tracks.
‘Ashlee?’ he says, bewildered by who is lying before him. ‘You shouldn’t have come here!’
‘Confuse him, then attack…’
‘Joel, please – stop!’ she cries, doing the only thing she believes will stall him. ‘I… I love you.’
He doesn’t stop.
‘I’m pregnant!’
‘What?’ he says, perplexed. ‘But we never—’
She thrusts her leg upwards, and with a surge of adrenaline her foot connects with his boy-parts and she is up, spear-tackling him. His grip loosens and the gun drops; he’s barely fighting for it! Or at all – just moaning again. All she needs is to get her hands on it.
She crawls, her frosted-fingers burning immense pain at their tips. Mere inches from the gun and salvation, the knife comes, going deep into the meat of her thigh. Ashlee screams, gasping an unfair shriek.
Joel enjoys it, for a moment – but the caterwauling soon becomes ugly. He picks up the gun, dusting off bits of snow.
‘You’re one tough cookie,’ he says calmly, crouching, nudging the barrel under her broken nose. ‘You know I always liked you. And playing the pregnancy card, well, that was genius… although totally illogical as girls can’t get pregnant from… what we did.’ Joel shrugs. ‘That said, it almost worked. Good for you; in a way it makes me like you more. But… well, things eventually come to end, don’t they?’ His face turns to stone. ‘Goodbye, Ashlee,’ he says.
But the sound comes. A most joyous and innocent sound. A present and he wanted her to see him unwrap it. ‘You can wait!’ he shouts and with sickening force drives his foot into Ashlee’s abdomen.
A kid in a candy-store, he smiles, broadly, and greets his two guests.
Ashlee collapses, struggling across the ice. But they depend on her! Agony or not, she has to get up.
The ski, a terrible crutch, has Ashlee on her feet and almost at the ramp. A few more feet and she will slit this bastard’s throat. He’s distracted, like the voice said.
Just a few… more… feet…
His cheek twitches and he pivots, unblinking, but grinning a big-toothed grin.
He squeezes the trigger.
Ashlee gasps. The bullet punctures her clean through the abdomen; she drops… and the world becomes distant… To hang onto it in the darkness of dead winter is beyond her reach. She feels death coming.
He doesn’t howl this time but instead lets it flow through him. In the light of infamy, his actions are a legacy – not just for him but for the town. A gift for all. A story in the blacker pages of history.
The gun circles, the trigger is held firm. Don’t be scared, for we have the hands of greatness upon us.
Joel swears he feels them already.
Three children, four skis and one oddly deformed doll are on the lift. He is entranced by the hazel eyes and mischievous, yet vengeful, smile.
They stare, watching him stagger and trying fruitlessly to grasp a chair and in turn being propelled viciously out of the bull-wheel. He manages to fire the gun, wishing it towards them, towards her. But it misses and hits only a birch tree. Those eyes… He sees them and then they disappear!
And then so does Joel. The hard-packed snow takes him away.
Ashlee breathes deeply, still holding her arms rigid from the pushing motion. She is amazed she didn’t plummet herself. Great work, and all in one night, she says – perhaps out loud, perhaps not. With the liberal flow of blood escaping her abdomen it is hard to tell.
She finds her way back to the snow, but doesn’t mind so much now. The hazel eyes above watch her, and then don’t.
‘Ashlee!’ Noah screams, jumping to her side. ‘You’re hurt.’
‘I’m okay,’ she replies softly, the last coherent words she manages to say to her adorable little brother. The numbness is swift, coming quickly and like her blood, the ability to concentrate flows out of her, not painfully, but going nevertheless. Time moves in frosted frames: the sky exploding and then again shy dots. Ashlee thinks Noah is there holding her; but of course that’s impossible – he and Kiersten are way off in the distance, probably getting help at her request. But that frame is lost; the pain is dull; and then it’s gone.
‘Cute couple those kids are,’ a nice, manly voice says from inside the oncoming darkness. But Ashlee forgets that to, and then forgets more. It’s a gentle buzz that takes her.
5
A wind chill below minus forty-five degrees Celsius is common in Thunder Bay.
Ashlee is warm.
Her corpse and its red-framed outline is pretty, like an artsy snow-angel. She giggles and adapts. A shadow by the bull-wheel flickers. Of course now it is quite obvious who it is; he had taught her much about boarding, many times. He claps and they laugh together at the contraption. Even Joel (nervous at first) joins them; holding his hands apologetically but laughing whole-heartedly at the notion: a bull-wheel saved the day.
Mark’s hand pats through Joel’s slumped shoulder. There’s no resentment here. Hate, vengeance, evil – all problems for the living.
Three newborn spirits leave the three funny looking corpses on a mountain to travel onwards, light-hearted and free. The trees pass them… No tracks or footsteps are made, no sounds are heard, but the three spirits are laughing, joyously – not dwelling on the past, but seeing the humour in it … and everything.
But no one sees, except her.
The hazel eyes head home, well after the ghosts are too far away. A sad, special girl goes to bed, missing her daddy. Eloise loved her daddy, and he her. In her dreams, she sees him. She wants to laugh with them – all of them – and knows that someday she will. In death, our lost families, they’re all happy. But for the living it’s different. Thunder Bay is a curious place, with secrets. Amongst the birch trees, minds often sway, persuaded to do bad things. They pray, patiently… waiting for their next Joel.
Frozen Angels(Michael Dartnell)
1
The conversion of mere thoughts into destiny had taken time; the truth of it was, he had daydreamed for so long and dismissed the notion that these dark fantasies held any genuine intent.
But as the onslaught of verbal icicles continued to pierce and prod at his resolve, clarity came. He gave them all the benefit of the doubt for so long – too long.
It would end here.
He steps outside the decayed hut, over the broken plank and onto the meticulously well-raked ramp. The bull-wheel kicks another chair out, down the lonely lift-line; a flurry blows against the birch. Joel whistles, joining the chorus singing from the trees that circumscribe the pathetic old relic. Why didn’t they decommission this hunk of junk, Joel wonders.
The scream is heard by no-one, except Joel.
***
It was a terrible idea; Mark knows this. To grab onto a chair as it spun into the bull-wheel and be propelled to safety was some kind of MacGyver 101 bullshit. Before the blood from the flesh of his calf hits the snow, he is sprawled on the icy ramp, barely breathing, the white of his Burton snow jacket now crimson, the thumping in his head bittersweet as he feels the darkness coming.
Good shots, Mark admits: Joel’s Browning Buck Mk.22 LR really hit the spot. With each convulsion, he drifts further away… He’s not afraid – only cold and lonely. The fog that comes is unusual but not unpleasant. There’s Eloise in here, and her upturned nose. Mark can taste the crisp air; it has never felt so good to breathe. He smiles that all-cheek smile you can’t help sometimes, and laughs, seeing the past and present, all at once. The melted plastic of Eloise’s dolly vacationing in the microwave, then sitting at her bedside, deformed, but her best friend. The bin, put it in the bin, dear. No daddy!
Her teardrops echo against the stygian surface. Those hazel eyes, beautiful … curious. They come and go. The purple cloud fading and reforming, the buzz-saw of the present growing loud and dull. Another droplet falls against the pink of her cheek, seeming to take an eternity to reach her upper lip – or no time at all – hard to tell. As does Mark’s own rogue tear. Their hands touch and there’s warmth and then no warmth. For there is no touch. Eloise has to be far away – not here, for here is not real. He laughs: the courts can be damned, but perhaps that damned custody battle saved Eloise’s life.
The touch of frosty powdered snow at his sides awakens him. And with a hand around his ankle, he is moved from the ramp.
‘Wow, you packed on a pound or two,’ Joel says light-heartedly. ‘I’m sorry about this.’
The crisp clean air in the fog is gone, but the buzzing is growing louder. Mark’s scarf has turned to rock, blocking any air from his lungs; he rips it down, wincing, trying to take breath.
‘Why, Joel?’ he groans, coughing a river of red and tasting the copper.
‘Because we are friends – but first come, first serve, you know,’ Joel chuckles.
The dark and leafless birch trees watch curiously.
Joel feels something and sees something else. But of course, she, hidden amongst those ugly trees is just a figment of peripheral trickery and over-excitement. That’s it, nothing more. He speaks softly, his voice barely carrying over the wind.
‘I tried man, I really did … but it gnaws, you know? No career, no respect. I thought It’d work out – the whole funny-guy act, being super nice to everybody, giving money to charities, giving blood, giving every asshole who skis here a lift to town and back. Give, give, give, and for what? To be treated like shit, year after year.’ He sighs, rubbing his hands together. ‘I should thank them, though… They showed me my destiny.’
Joel again is taken by the trees; he talks to them – to her. The gun sits ripe for the taking but Mark has little time to make a move. Just a few more feet and…
‘No trying to be a hero, boy,’ Joel says, kicking Mark’s hand out from under him.
The bloody smile takes Joel by surprise, reminding him of childhood nightmares.
‘You… are… a… loser!’ Mark says. A shrill, pained screech accompanies a spray of crimson fluid in Joel’s face.
Eloise, forgive me. Spitting is a disgusting habit… I love you.
And with that Mark prepares to die.
Joel chuckles bitterly. ‘Loser, huh?’ He wipes the blood from his face with a handkerchief. ‘That’s what they say.’
He unloads a third and fourth bullet into Mark’s face and howls into the night. The explosions arrive again – the red-ones just like his handy-work. He collapses into a mound of powdery snow, breathes to collect himself and lets it sink in. Behind his eyelids, he wonders why the hazel eyes appear so vengeful.
2
The children marvel at the array of colour, exploding before the dots of Perseus in the Ontarian Winter sky. Each firework illuminates the blue of Kiersten’s eyes.
Under the twinkling stars, with magic in the air, the courage for Noah to tell her his feelings is coming; he knows it, so he grins. The lift jolts, but Kiersten doesn’t see him jump. It’s going to be a memorable night.
Much higher up the lift-line, Ashlee grasps the safety bar, embarrassed by her growing anxiety and its ability to make her swoon at twenty-one. There’s a chill in the winter breeze that creeps into her knees and elbows. And everywhere on her body. But the trembling comes from elsewhere. It’s the voice – that darn malevolent voice. Fireworks, not gunshots, she tells it. The croaking chairlift gets closer to the end. She fidgets; the voice gets louder, screaming: ‘You will die!’
Then, they come again – louder. Definitely gunshots.
Ashlee unstraps her binding and lets the board drop. The fall could kill her, but what would staying put do? Another round of fireworks blasts into the night.
After a deep breath, Ashlee plummets towards the hard-packed snow.
3
It’s strange at first – being dead, but floating…
Mark adapts and even laughs at the strange holes in his corpse’s face. His sides would split, if they could, as he recalls his escape idea. A bull-wheel to save the day, hey? In death, it’s all funny.
He floats above Joel, gives him the finger, though he doesn’t truly mean it with bare resentment. Everything seems to be silly and laughable. People are afraid of this?
Still a pragmatist, he floats, wondering what assistance, in death, he might offer the living.
4
Her legs hit heavily, slamming her forward onto her knees and forearms.
Shit, it hurts! But less than expected. Alive and unbroken, Ashlee thanks the thighs for which she is often ridiculed for their lack of model-like gap. But they sure can take a fall. Her Lib Tech snowboard, on the other hand, could not and now sits in two pieces against a large rock. Trivial? Yes; but a faster ride down the mountain it was, so she curses colourfully, though quietly.
As the chairs move above her, a strange disassociating feeling comes to Ashlee. A predator, up there, shooting people on New Year’s Eve? It sounds like a bad horror story. These things may happen in big cities or schools in the States, but they didn’t happen here.
With each footstep, Ashlee takes unusual solace in a wondrous notion that she may be insane. Wouldn’t that be grand? Padded cells, around the clock care. Free meds! The chairlift grinds to a halt. The speakers convey that the backup motor will start shortly, aiding passengers off the malfunctioning lift. What passengers? It’s empty, isn’t it?
The voice laughs. Behind the flurries of white she catches the recognisable yellow jacket. Ashlee pivots straight away, and dashes, cursing the new-found horror that just amplified, ten-fold, the existing horror as she strides through the dense undergrowth. Heart thumping, the voice snickers ‘You’re galloping to your death!’ There’s a second voice, though… a man’s voice, telling her to keep going. Although she can’t place him, he’s familiar – so familiar.
She reaches the top, guided by this voice. With her head hidden behind the decrepit lift shack, the grumble of the auxiliary motor starts. There’s little time left.
Joel’s crazed shaggy brown hair covers his eyes. He might be asleep.
Crafty… The voice tells her – go now! Ashlee bolts out from behind the shack, dives and immediately attacks, and with a ferocity unknown to her until this very moment, she presses all of herself into him.
The gun slips a little from his grip. Joel’s reactions are slow, perhaps dazed from the gutsy assault, but instinctively he bucks his hips upwards. Ashlee loses balance and her grip on the gun. She plants herself down, flattening out, trying to stall his attacks, and more, to get her hands on it again. It’s close, but he thrashes too much. Stay still god damn it! She punches, punches, punches at his face and ears. Moaning, he thrusts a forearm up, right into her sternum. The air departs her lungs. Ashlee is thrown sideways into the groomer tracks.
‘Ashlee?’ he says, bewildered by who is lying before him. ‘You shouldn’t have come here!’
‘Confuse him, then attack…’
‘Joel, please – stop!’ she cries, doing the only thing she believes will stall him. ‘I… I love you.’
He doesn’t stop.
‘I’m pregnant!’
‘What?’ he says, perplexed. ‘But we never—’
She thrusts her leg upwards, and with a surge of adrenaline her foot connects with his boy-parts and she is up, spear-tackling him. His grip loosens and the gun drops; he’s barely fighting for it! Or at all – just moaning again. All she needs is to get her hands on it.
She crawls, her frosted-fingers burning immense pain at their tips. Mere inches from the gun and salvation, the knife comes, going deep into the meat of her thigh. Ashlee screams, gasping an unfair shriek.
Joel enjoys it, for a moment – but the caterwauling soon becomes ugly. He picks up the gun, dusting off bits of snow.
‘You’re one tough cookie,’ he says calmly, crouching, nudging the barrel under her broken nose. ‘You know I always liked you. And playing the pregnancy card, well, that was genius… although totally illogical as girls can’t get pregnant from… what we did.’ Joel shrugs. ‘That said, it almost worked. Good for you; in a way it makes me like you more. But… well, things eventually come to end, don’t they?’ His face turns to stone. ‘Goodbye, Ashlee,’ he says.
But the sound comes. A most joyous and innocent sound. A present and he wanted her to see him unwrap it. ‘You can wait!’ he shouts and with sickening force drives his foot into Ashlee’s abdomen.
A kid in a candy-store, he smiles, broadly, and greets his two guests.
Ashlee collapses, struggling across the ice. But they depend on her! Agony or not, she has to get up.
The ski, a terrible crutch, has Ashlee on her feet and almost at the ramp. A few more feet and she will slit this bastard’s throat. He’s distracted, like the voice said.
Just a few… more… feet…
His cheek twitches and he pivots, unblinking, but grinning a big-toothed grin.
He squeezes the trigger.
Ashlee gasps. The bullet punctures her clean through the abdomen; she drops… and the world becomes distant… To hang onto it in the darkness of dead winter is beyond her reach. She feels death coming.
He doesn’t howl this time but instead lets it flow through him. In the light of infamy, his actions are a legacy – not just for him but for the town. A gift for all. A story in the blacker pages of history.
The gun circles, the trigger is held firm. Don’t be scared, for we have the hands of greatness upon us.
Joel swears he feels them already.
Three children, four skis and one oddly deformed doll are on the lift. He is entranced by the hazel eyes and mischievous, yet vengeful, smile.
They stare, watching him stagger and trying fruitlessly to grasp a chair and in turn being propelled viciously out of the bull-wheel. He manages to fire the gun, wishing it towards them, towards her. But it misses and hits only a birch tree. Those eyes… He sees them and then they disappear!
And then so does Joel. The hard-packed snow takes him away.
Ashlee breathes deeply, still holding her arms rigid from the pushing motion. She is amazed she didn’t plummet herself. Great work, and all in one night, she says – perhaps out loud, perhaps not. With the liberal flow of blood escaping her abdomen it is hard to tell.
She finds her way back to the snow, but doesn’t mind so much now. The hazel eyes above watch her, and then don’t.
‘Ashlee!’ Noah screams, jumping to her side. ‘You’re hurt.’
‘I’m okay,’ she replies softly, the last coherent words she manages to say to her adorable little brother. The numbness is swift, coming quickly and like her blood, the ability to concentrate flows out of her, not painfully, but going nevertheless. Time moves in frosted frames: the sky exploding and then again shy dots. Ashlee thinks Noah is there holding her; but of course that’s impossible – he and Kiersten are way off in the distance, probably getting help at her request. But that frame is lost; the pain is dull; and then it’s gone.
‘Cute couple those kids are,’ a nice, manly voice says from inside the oncoming darkness. But Ashlee forgets that to, and then forgets more. It’s a gentle buzz that takes her.
5
A wind chill below minus forty-five degrees Celsius is common in Thunder Bay.
Ashlee is warm.
Her corpse and its red-framed outline is pretty, like an artsy snow-angel. She giggles and adapts. A shadow by the bull-wheel flickers. Of course now it is quite obvious who it is; he had taught her much about boarding, many times. He claps and they laugh together at the contraption. Even Joel (nervous at first) joins them; holding his hands apologetically but laughing whole-heartedly at the notion: a bull-wheel saved the day.
Mark’s hand pats through Joel’s slumped shoulder. There’s no resentment here. Hate, vengeance, evil – all problems for the living.
Three newborn spirits leave the three funny looking corpses on a mountain to travel onwards, light-hearted and free. The trees pass them… No tracks or footsteps are made, no sounds are heard, but the three spirits are laughing, joyously – not dwelling on the past, but seeing the humour in it … and everything.
But no one sees, except her.
The hazel eyes head home, well after the ghosts are too far away. A sad, special girl goes to bed, missing her daddy. Eloise loved her daddy, and he her. In her dreams, she sees him. She wants to laugh with them – all of them – and knows that someday she will. In death, our lost families, they’re all happy. But for the living it’s different. Thunder Bay is a curious place, with secrets. Amongst the birch trees, minds often sway, persuaded to do bad things. They pray, patiently… waiting for their next Joel.
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