Dance with the Devil

full-length in the snow.
        For a moment, all sound ceased.
        Everything was deadly silent.
        She lay still, wondering what had happened, whether she was conscious and even, for a second, if she might be dead. But she could hear her heart thumping rapidly; she could hear that much, and that much was enough. She realized that she could not hear the wind because her head was cushioned in deep snow that filtered the keening wail above her.
        She lay there for a moment, sucking in wet, cold breaths, recovering the strength to get up again.
        This was only the second time she had faced a major battle with the elements, and her mind was suddenly drawn back to that other time, when she was seven years old… the water rising slowly across the farmyard and moving relentlessly in on the house… her father wading through it toward the barn, carrying the buckets with which he hoped to bail out the machinery pit where the tractor lay. At all costs, the machinery must remain dry, all thirty thousand dollars worth of it… everything in the house already moved to the second floor… her mother going after her father to help… Katherine alone at the second floor bedroom window, watching them… then the water… not just rising slowly any longer… a sudden wall of it, as if something had burst farther up the valley… her father looking up in horror… throwing the buckets down… yelling at her mother… her mother frozen there, watching it as her father ran toward her… then the water, everywhere the water, sweeping over the both of them… Windows shattering downstairs as it blasted into the house and gushed almost to the top of the stairs in one sudden explosion of terrifying noise…
        In the snow outside Owlsden, Katherine got to her feet. It had occurred to her that she might find lying in the snow much too pleasant and, when the critical moment came, be as unwilling or as unable to move out of the path of death as her mother had been.
        She started out again, colder than before, cold clear through to her bones. She was shivering so badly that her teeth chattered together, and there was nothing she could do to stop them.
        Suddenly, ahead, a flashlight flickered in the darkness.
        She stopped, squinted, lost sight of it.
        “Hey!” she shouted.
        She thought, for a moment, she might have circled back to Owlsden without being aware of it and might now be calling to those who were out searching for her from that end.
        It didn't matter; she had to find help.
        “Hey!”
        She stumbled forward, went down to her knees again, struggled up and went on. “Michael!”
        The light flicked again, closer.
        “Hey!”
        This tune, it stayed on.
        A moment later, she nearly crashed into them and knocked them down as they loomed out of the snowstorm directly in front of her: Michael Harrison and the tall, blond friend of his whose name was Kerry Markwood. She went forward, into his arms, and leaned against him as she recovered her breath.
        “It's worse up here than in the valley,” he said, talking loudly so she could hear him above the storm. “When we got here and saw how awful it was, I began to worry.”
        Her mouth was dry. She wanted to scoop up a handful of snow and eat it, but she knew that was the wrong thing to do. She needed something hot, coffee or tea. She hoped it wouldn't take them long to get into town.
        “Are you all right?” Kerry Markwood asked.
        “Fine,” she said.
        Michael smiled. “I was afraid they might not let you go.”
        “I was followed,” she said.
        The two men looked at each other, obviously concerned by that.
        “If s all right,” she explained. “I lost him.” She described, rapidly, how the stalker had followed her through the house and how she had foiled him at the kitchen door.
        “Great girl!” Michael said. “You really are something!”
        “Now,” she said, “where's the Rover? I'm freezing to death out here.” She shuddered to make her point.
        Even with most of his face hidden by the red toboggan hat he had drawn firmly down around his ears, and even with the neck scarf that hid his entire chin, he managed to look embarrassed. “I'm afraid I am less of a driver than I thought,” he said.
        “You couldn't make it?”
        “Only a third of the way.”
        “But how did you get here,