4 Hours of Sunlight

My mother’s features were contorted, as if expressing some eternal confusion. Her body, almost childlike in its frailty, wore only blue and white striped pajamas, with slippers to cover her feet. That’s how they found her, just lying there. It was the coldest day of the year so far.

I took a slug from a thermos of coffee as the paramedics covered her and loaded her into the back of the ambulance, feeling its warmth travel to my stomach. Bran, my staffordshire terrier, sat loyally by my feet, steam coming from his mouth as he panted.

“Even for a woman with Alzheimer’s, this is highly unusual” they told me.

“Given the cold last night it should be medically impossible for a woman of her age to travel so far by foot without freezing to death after about 15 minutes. She’s 5 miles from home, but we found no other tracks than her footprints leading all the way. The only reason we found her is because some of the local tribes come out here to hunt.”

We were in a small grove of trees, and her body had been lying almost perfectly in the centre. It was still early, though I had been up for hours since I got the call. Since my father died, most of the family had moved away with the exception of myself, and even I had moved further south. She loved us all, but she could be a tough woman to be around, and the Alaskan winter could wear down even the strongest. After many failed attempts to convince her to move with me, I had settled for driving up here to check in on her every couple of days.

Given the apparent medical phenomenon of my mother’s ability to survive so long in the cold, the police had asked my permission to perform an autopsy on the body. As they transported her body down to the hospital, I made my way back to my childhood home. 

The layout of the house was exactly the same as I had remembered, down to the spot on the coffee table where my mother had always left her reading glasses. For a house so remote, it had never been insulated properly, and I could feel the cold upon entering. Bran refused to cross the threshold, whimpering as I tried to coax him inside. As a pup, my mother had beaten him for eating scraps from the trash, and he had never since forgiven her. Eventually, having sat in the cold outside for a few minutes, he relented and scratched at the door, begging to come in.

We had always spent the nights huddled around the stove, wearing extra layers. In her later years, my mother had taken to sleeping in an armchair, often falling asleep with a book in her hands. I made my way into the kitchen, opening the fridge to see if she had any food I could eat for breakfast. An old Irishwoman, her meals had always been for fuel, without much concern for how it tasted. It wasn’t until we left that any of us had discovered that food could be eaten for pleasure, not simply as a biological requirement for powering the body. Apart from some old and leathery looking salad tomatoes, all I found were a few eggs and some butter. Firing up the gas hob, I combined the eggs and butter before gently tipping them from pan to plate, laying some aside for Bran. 

Having spent some time away from the place, its interior decoration remained as strange as ever. A superstitious woman, my mother had every charm imaginable hanging by windows or over door frames. This practice appeared to only have worsened with time, giving the small cabin the feeling of a hoarder’s lair. Sitting down in her armchair, my fingers were stiff from the cold as I spooned the scrambled egg into my mouth. Beside her reading glasses, I found a book of Irish fairytales she had always read to us as children on winter nights. Even the happy ones were tinged with sadness, and now looking back on it, it didn’t surprise me that she was the way she was. She came from a tough people, a people of little hope who had come here fleeing tragedy. Some of the few people that could survive out here.

The book was yellowed and hand-bound, with all of the text and illustrations done by hand. The page was open on a story about fairy circles, one that had particularly terrified me as a child. It told of a brother and sister lured away from their house by fairies one night , who joined them in festivities of dance and music only to find out that upon their return, many years had passed in their absence, and that all of their loved ones had died. In the story, it was the beautiful music played by the fairies that had entranced them to leave. I had spent many nights sleeping with a pillow over my ears for fear of the same fate.

I decided at last to do something about the cold, making my way out to the woodshed to find some fuel for the stove. Amongst the woodpiles, I found more spindly wooden charms, with the appearance of being rudimentary stick figures. Growing up in Alaska, I’d seen a few like this before, often made by the indigenous tribes, but had never known my mother to collect them. Loading a bucket with the driest logs I could find, I transported them inside and began the process of lighting the stove. This deep in the winter, about 4 hours of daylight was to be expected, and darkness was already beginning to seep in. It was better to solve the issue of warmth now rather than have to use the generator later. 

With a fire roaring in the woodstove, I delved into my parents’ book collection, something I had always been forbidden to do as a child. In a place as unforgiving as this, keeping the mind occupied was essential to sanity. Even with her condition, my mother continued to attempt to read, perhaps as the habit had become so deeply ingrained after decades of this harsh life. Her carer had drawn her ire almost daily when he would try to get her to put her books down to eat. 

The effects of her Alzheimer's had made reading impossible, but she would grip the books nonetheless, reciting their contents from memory in her thick Irish accent. Almost a combination of her native Irish and English in pronunciation, anyone outside our family had struggled to understand her even in her most lucid days. These dramatic bouts of narration scared away many of the people we had initially brought in to take care of her, until we found a native american boy in his late teens who was undeterred. Having dealt with superstition within his own family, he simply saw a woman in need, and catered for all her bizarre rituals and beliefs. 

Hours passed flicking through the books, with Bran lying by my feet. When the doorbell rang, it was already fully dark outside. Startled, I scrambled to the front door to find Atka, her carer. He looked drained, worn out. He told me he had come over to offer his condolences, that he had heard the bad news a few hours ago from a hunting partner of one of his uncles.

When I invited him in, he shuffled in the door and laid down his gloves on the coffee table, keeping his jacket on. His eyes went immediately to the book, and he told me how my mother had become even more reluctant to put it down in the last few months. He said he had been concerned that her condition was worsening, as she had been more tightly wound than usual, and had taken to nursing that book in her arms, day and night. In some way, he said, he felt responsible for what had happened, that he probably should have finally had her committed to a hospital. 

After a few tumblers of whisky, I brought up the stick figures I had found out in the woodshed. 

“Last I was here, I didn’t see any. Your mother hated them and always asked me to get rid of them whenever she found them. Far as I can tell, it was just some of the local tribes, no harm meant by it.”

“What are they for?” I asked, “What reason would they have for leaving them around?”

“Well, my grandma used to make them as I was growing up, she used to say they kept evil spirits away, protected you from the devil. They probably saw her as a vulnerable old lady living alone and wanted to help her.”

As he was getting up to leave, I asked if he could take the stick figures away with him, feeling as though I was honouring my late mother’s wishes in some way. He obliged, and once again I found myself alone in the armchair with Bran at my feet. My temples were tight and warm after the whiskey, and soon I could feel myself slipping into a doze, stove still crackling in front of me.

I awakened slowly, groggily from my drunken sleep. My mouth was dry and my head pounded slightly. The fire in the stove had burned out and Bran was no longer lying at my feet. A rhythmic hum broke the otherwise perfect silence of the early morning air, almost like throat singing. Rising, I fumbled around in the darkness until my hands found a flashlight, illuminating the small room under a white beam of light. I found Bran sitting at the back door, gazing through the glass intently, not making a sound. The humming continued. Opening my father’s hunting closet, I took out his shotgun, and quickly wrapped myself up in a jacket. As soon as I opened the back door, Bran darted into the trees, barking. 

Following him into the thicket, it soon became too dense to make my way through, particularly in the dark. I could see specks of light faraway through the branches, but couldn’t make out their source. After a few minutes, the barking faded away into the forest, and with it the humming. Only the sound of Bran had been moving, the hum felt as though it was coming from all around, and stopped abruptly, rather than trailing away. After an hour of calling for him, the cold was beginning to seep into my bones. I resigned myself to waiting until sunrise before attempting to find him again and relit the stove, unable to sleep from the adrenaline coursing through my system. 

Hours passed gradually, and dim light began to filter in through the sitting room windows. I refilled my thermos with boiling hot coffee, put on more layers, and set out after Bran, shotgun in hand. The dawn light illuminated a trail of prints, leading from the back doorstep into the thicket. Forcing my way through, I followed the trail for about 2 hours into indigenous hunting territory, the pattern of prints indicating that he had slowed down shortly after reaching a clearing in the trees. As I walked along the trail, the footprints came to a sudden stop in the clearing. No snow had fallen in the hours he had been gone, so his prints couldn’t have been covered. Calling his name some more, the cold became too much and I was forced to return, demoralised. 

When I reached the cabin, stick figures of the same kind Atka had removed the previous night dotted the back garden. Unlocking the door, I found one resting against it, which fell as I entered. Gathering them up, I fed them into the wood stove to keep the embers from burning out. Hands trembling, I fried more eggs and retired to the armchair to eat them, washing them down with more hot coffee. 

By the mid afternoon, It was dark again. After returning from picking up some more food and supplies, my phone rang. I recognised the sheriff’s voice from the day before. 

“The reason for my call today sir, I wanted to let you know that the autopsy results are in.”

I felt my heart thumping in my throat as I got the words out: 

“What did you find?”

“Oddly enough sir, the official cause of death in this case is not cold exposure. The levels of adrenaline in your mother’s system appear to indicate that she died of a heart attack resulting from shock.”

“How can this be explained? Surely you can give me more than that?”

“Given your mother’s medical circumstances, we can only assume that the confusion she experienced out in the snow was too much for her, and that she essentially died due to intense fear. Of course, what we still don’t understand is how she made it so far in the cold. Our specialist pointed to the elevated levels of adrenaline in her system as a potential cause, but quite frankly, we’ve never seen anything like this.”

Allowing the information to sink in, I questioned him about the noises I’d heard in the night.

“That’s just the locals, some of these tribes have old traditions but they don’t cause any harm. Others have asked me about the same thing in the past, but the truth is, I’m reluctant to put a stop to it. This is their land after all.”

After assuring me that he would keep an eye out for Bran, our conversation ended, its answers only leaving me more on edge than I had been. 

Boiling a pot of soup, I managed to get my mother’s ancient television on, painstakingly adjusting its rabbit ear attenae until the picture was somewhat clear. Further year-long lows in temperature were expected, along with snow. Gathering some old blankets, I left the woodshed door open in the hopes that Bran could survive the night if he returned. The darkness wore on as I passed the time watching local television and nursing a bottle of whiskey. As I felt drowsiness coming over me, I put a few more logs on the stove and kept the shotgun by the armchair.

When I awoke, the humming was back and louder than last night, accompanied by rhythmic drumming. I could hear Bran whimpering and scratching at the back door as I shot to my feet. Grabbing the shotgun, I made my way to the back door. As I neared it, the scratching stopped and Bran was silent. He was nowhere to be seen, and the humming persisted, seemingly getting louder every minute. Throwing the back door open, I saw a small figure dart into the trees. Without thinking, I squeezed the trigger and was almost knocked off my feet by the recoil. The humming hadn’t stopped at all, but I could hear moaning coming from the direction the small figure had run. Once again, I could see specks of light through the tree cover, somewhere far away. Snow was falling softly, with flakes floating to the ground on a gentle breeze. 

Running back to the house, the humming and beating of the drums reached an even louder pitch. I retrieved the flashlight, and made my way into the woods to where I had heard the moaning sound. Illuminating the forest floor with the beam of the flashlight, I could make out blood in the snow, trailing away from a larger pool of it. Following it through the forest, the sounds around me were reaching a crescendo, and getting closer to me. The snow began to fall faster now, making it harder to see where I was going. Now I could hear the cries of animals around me, guttural howls and bird calls.

Suddenly, I reached a clearing where the blood trail stopped. Walking further into the centre, I could no longer hear the sounds around me. As I searched the darkness for any sign of blood, I was engulfed in orange light. Squat figures bearing burning torches encircled the small clearing I found myself in. The humming and drum beating resumed, this time at a new intensity. I could see wooden masks on each of the fur-clad figures, depicting horrible creatures with faces contorted and mouths of broken teeth. The drum beat stopped.

Trudging through the snow, he noticed something disturbing its smooth white blanket. Laying down his hunting gear, he moved closer for a better look. Today was the winter solstice, a day with 21 hours of darkness, and to this point, the coldest day in the year. Nearing it, he made out the figure of a man lying motionless in a thick coat, clutching something in his hands. His face bore a look of frozen terror, of horrified confusion. His hands clutched a shotgun and a flashlight lay nearby. The man turned to his nephew:

“I know this man, we left devil catchers outside his cabin yesterday.”

Atka was silent, he also knew the man.