Darkness that can be felt. The first time Charlie had read that, he remembered thinking that it was as if the book were describing Alaska. The darkness in the woods at night, or on a lonely road, when a storm was concealing the moon and stars, could be as thick and palpable as a beaver pelt. He had known men to die, frozen to death, on their own land, unable to see or find their way to their houses. And soon, as winter continued to descend, the night would fasten its grip even more tightly, extinguishing the sun altogether.
In his headlights, the only signs of human activity he could see, for mile after mile after mile, were the junk heaps abandoned on the sides of the road. Broken-down old trucks half-buried in the snow, motorcycle frames riddled with bullet holes, a decrepit Winnebago resting on its axles. In Alaska, it was easy to abandon things, but nothing went unscavenged. All of these wrecks had been carefully stripped of any useful parts, like an animal stripped of its fur, its meat, its antlers.
As he approached the wide turn that he knew led to the Heron River Bridge, the road began to washboard, huge ripples in the asphalt making the van buck and swerve. Miraculously, Rebekah only moved her head away from the door and let her chin slump in the other direction, while Bathsheba slept on in the backseat. Behind her, in the rear of the van, he could hear the gas sloshing in the cans.
The ground gradually rose through snow-covered hills, with battered and dented signs along the road warning of oncoming traffic, avalanche dangers, animal crossings, possible strong wind conditions, icy road hazards, you name it. Using the hand levers, Charlie slowed down. Fortunately, he had no one behind him, and nothing, so far, approaching from the other direction. The bridge — a two-lane, steel span — was one of the biggest in the region, even though the Heron River itself didn’t amount to much. It lay far below, at the bottom of a granite canyon, and half the time it was frozen solid. At other times, however, when the snowpack melted in the spring, or the rains came, it could become a raging torrent overnight.
Charlie shifted in his seat, and as he switched gears, the silver cross nudged him again in the ribs. It was kind of uncomfortable keeping it there. With Bathsheba asleep anyway, he saw no harm in taking it out and laying it flat, still concealed in the rag, on the console beside the thermos. The road had turned to compacted gravel here to offer better traction, and as he steered past a pair of icy boulders, each one slick with ice and the size of a house, he slowed down again.
“And when the tenth and final plague came, the Lord said, ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill …’ ”
There was the sound of something stirring in the back of the van, and then he heard the leather of the backseat creaking. Damn, why couldn’t Bathsheba have stayed asleep for just another couple of hours? He did not need to deal with her blather.
“ ‘… and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt — worse than ever has been or ever will be again.’ ”
Rebekah was still snoring, but her sister must be awake.
“Exodus, 11, 4–6.”
As the tires rumbled onto the corrugated lanes of the steel bridge, Charlie caught, out of the corner of one eye, a hand reaching over and into the front seat. At first, he figured she was reaching for the thermos, but then he thought, Bathsheba hates peppermint tea.
“Even so, the Lord had provided for his chosen people,” Abercrombie commented, “instructing them to mark their doorposts with the blood of the lamb.”
Maybe she thought it was root beer, her favorite.
“It’s peppermint tea,” he said. “You won’t like it.”
Taking his eye off the slippery road for an instant, he saw that her wrist was surprisingly bony and white, even for Bathsheba, and something wet and stringy touched his cheek. Christ, why hadn’t she dried her hair before she got back in the car?
And then she really pissed him off. She went right past the thermos and reached for the rag holding the cross.
“Leave that alone,” he barked, reluctant to take a hand off the wheel on the icy bridge.
But she went ahead anyway and picked it up.
Shit. He took one hand off the wheel and grabbed her wrist — it was cold and slick as an icicle — but when he glanced up at the rearview mirror, he saw not Bathsheba’s sullen features, but two hollow eye sockets, sunken in the long face of a dead man in a black sealskin coat.
When he turned his head, a thatch of matted dark hair, knotted and rank as seaweed, swept his face. He’d have screamed, but he was struck dumb. The car swerved, scraping the guardrail so hard a shower of blue sparks erupted.
“What?” Rebekah said, startled awake. “What’s happening?”
Charlie dropped hold of the bony wrist and wrestled with the wheel. The tires skidded on a thin coat of ice.
Bathsheba was sitting bolt upright, muttering “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want …”
The car banged the rails again, the hatchback springing open and the alarm bell dinging.
An oncoming truck pumped its horn, switching its headlight beams to bright and sweeping the interior of the van.
“What’s going on?” Bathsheba said. Icy cold air was flooding the car from the open hatch.
“And the Lord said to the Israelites, ‘I will not suffer the destroyer to come into your houses …’ ”
“Watch it!” Rebekah shouted, as he barely managed to get control before they veered into the other lane.
In the rearview mirror, the dead man was gone, as if extinguished by the gush of light and air. All Charlie saw was Bathsheba, and through the gaping hatch the empty roadway disappearing behind him.
The truck rattled by, its driver thrusting his middle finger out the window at Charlie.
“Did you fall asleep?” Rebekah accused him. The cross, free of its rag, was lying on the floor of the van.
“Ew,” Bathsheba said, squirming in her seat.
“And the angel of death spared them, as the Lord had promised.”
“Double ew,” Bathsheba said again. “It stinks back here.”
“What are you talking about?” Rebekah snapped, turning around. “And close that hatch before we lose half the gear!”
The van eased off the other end of the Heron River Bridge, and Charlie, steering it onto the shoulder, took his first full breath in what felt like forever. His hands were shaking, and he was still too scared even to turn in his seat.
“And it’s all wet back here,” Bathsheba complained, settling back into her own seat after securing the hatch.
Rebekah took a look around the rear, and said, “You should have stomped the snow off your boots before you got back in the van.”
“I did,” Bathsheba insisted.
“Then what did you step in?” she said, rolling down her window. “It does smell like something died back there.”
“Forget about the smell,” Charlie muttered to Rebekah. Gesturing at the cross on the floor, he said, “Pick that up.”
She did, wrapping it back in the rag.
“Put it in the glove compartment.”
She stuck it in the compartment and slammed the little door shut. “And you,” she said, glaring at him, “watch your damn driving from now on.”
“ ‘And it came to pass that the Lord did bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt …’ ”
Charlie flicked off the CD and punched the radio dial to a country-western station.
“I was listening to that,” Rebekah complained.
“You were sleeping,” he said, as Garth Brooks came on, mournfully wailing about lightning strikes and rolling thunder. “Listen to this instead.”