Wood Smoke

Jagged white flakes tumble to the earth, collect on the wood piled beneath the cabin’s frosted window. Fuel for the only remaining source of heat since the power went out.

Carmen extricates her grip from the back of the puke green couch and faces the spacious living room. A circular rug spans between her, a matching recliner, a stone hearth, and oak shelves displaying antique cookbooks and a tiny wooden train.

Viola returns from one of two other rooms, a sweet fragrance mingling with that of charred timber. Her arms are loaded with two mugs, a hotpad, and a reusable grocery bag. Light blares from the phone tucked under her chin, its only useful function this far from civilization. 

“I found cocoa. It's peppermint, your favorite.”

No, it's yours, treats should never taste like toothpaste. Carmen swallows the retort, dropping to the floor. "Great."

Viola fishes the castiron kettle from the coals, her ruby pendant taunting the flames. As she fills the cups, steam flows over the lip, billows up, catching her hand. She seethes a breath between her teeth.

Carmen takes her cup, clicking her new manicure against the flowery porcelain. "What kind of ninety year old woman lives this far out, has backup cocoa but not a generator?"

"I think it's sweet." Viola shrugs. "Kinda reminds me of my gran, but less racist."

Carmen never met the woman who agreed to pay a complete stranger to housesit. But when she told Viola it was a bad idea to go alone, even to help a sweet old lady, Viola suggested she come along. Carmen should have refused.

"Cheer up, she'll be back to take us down the mountain in the morning, and," Viola rummages in the sack, then with a flurrish present two bags of marshmallows. "Your choice of small colored or large?"

Carmen points to the lump of pastels.

"Great choice, then we can do smores too!"

Carmen's stomach gurgles and she takes a pensive sip of cocoa. Minty lava scalds the tip of her tongue. "Is there anything more substantial?"

Viola peeks the bag open. "There's chocolate pretzels."

Carmen runs a hand over her face. Did the old woman possess any teeth. With a weighted sigh she accepts them. For a time the only sounds are those of sweets being consumed and wind battering the tiny cabin. 

Then a rumble sounds out front, accompanied by a piercing whine. A bit like an angry engine.

Carmen scrambles for the sofa. She stares into the uncanny brightness of a snowy night,  breath clouding the glass. But there's nothing in the driveway. The sound cuts off.

In the space of a blink the shadow from the base of one tree leaps out across the expanse of white and into the next. A breath snags in Carmen's throat, her stomach twisting into painful knots. 

"Did you see that!" Carmen doesn't take her gaze from the tree's base. "That shadow, it moved."

"Maybe it was a raccoon jumping between branches," Viola says, a tremor to her voice.

It's no doubt cold enough to drive any sane creature to its burrow, even if raccoons did jump like that but Carmen nods. 

Viola turns back to the fire, using her mug-free hand to coax another log attop the flames. "Ah crap."

Carmen's gaze snaps to her friend. "What?"

"We're down to two logs." Viola shifts the contents of the tinderbox and her brow slumps. "Make that one and a handful of sticks."

A chill crawls down Carmen's spine, she could have sworn the box was full a minute ago. "We could just go to bed?"

"Come on, it's only," there's a sharp click and light blares from Viola's phone, "like seven and we don't need power to have fun."

Carmen's face scrunches. "Doing what, freezing?"

Viola casts her eyes skyward. "There's more wood right outside the door."

Carmen's chest constricts, she glances back out the window.

Viola's lips twist. "Want to..."

A sharp scraping rents the air, burrows into Carmen’s skull. She smashes her palms against her ears, though the sound is gone. Time stretches out into an amorphous thing, that could be a moment or an eternity. At some point Carmen’s lungs begin to function again.

Viola drags on her coat, fo-fur tufted around its hood and sleeves.

“You aren’t seriously going out there!”

“We need more firewood and I’d like to know what that was. But we’ll never find out cowering in here,” Viola says, a slight tremor behind her harsh words. “If a tree fell on the roof we may need to do something to keep snow from getting in.”

That didn’t sound like a tree falling, but having never heard one, Carmen’s argument flounders and dies on her tongue.

Viola flicks her phone light on. “Be back in a minute.”

There’s a rush of cold, upending every follicle on Carmen’s being, and the door snaps shut behind Viola. Snow crunches, wind howling between the trees, in the hollows of the house. Then nothing, not so much as the whisper of a falling leaf. A reek, like decay steeped in gingerbread, seeps through the cabin’s cracks.

Dark rain blotches the snow, forming great crimson patches. Not rain, blood. Sound returns. With a wet plink a mangled hand lands atop the wood pile. Carmen clutches her mouth, backing from the window.

“Viola,” the word come out a strangled question.

The door rattles. Carmen glances around, pulse thundering in her ears. Her gaze falls on the poker and she snatches it up. The knob turns. She tightens her grip. Smokey claws wrap the door frame. They grow denser, lightening, into wrinkled human fingers.

The door swings wide and in walks a stooped woman with gray wisps of hair. Carmen’s shoulders slump, blood returning to her fingers. The old woman tilts her head at Carmen and grins, revealing jagged teeth dripping scarlet. And resting on her age-spotted chest is Viola’s ruby pendant.

Carmen sucks in a breath. Smoke coils from the old lady, her body becoming less solid. The poker rattles in Carmen’s grasps. Sound blinks out and darkness envelops her.