Winter Prey

would be clear and cold in Ojibway County, and here they were, snowing to beat the band.
    “Think about letting it go.” She was pleading now. “Just think about it.”
    “I’ll think about it,” he said, and he turned and went back down to the basement.
    He might think about it, but he wouldn’t change his mind. Claudia, turning the picture in her mind, put on a sweatshirt and walked out to the mudroom. Frank had gotten his driving gloves wet and had draped them over the furnace vent; the room smelled of heat-dried wool. She pulled on her parka and a stocking cap, picked up her gloves, turned on the porch lights from the switch inside the mudroom and stepped out into the storm.
    The picture. The people might have been anybody, from Los Angeles or Miami, where they did these things. They weren’t.
    They were from Lincoln County. The printing was bad and the paper was so cheap it almost crumbled in your fingers. But it was the Harper boy, all right. If you looked close, you could see the stub of the finger on the left hand, the one he’d caught in a log splitter; and you could see the loop earring. He was naked on a couch, his hips toward the camera, a dulled, wondering look on his face. He had the thickening face of an adolescent, but she could still see the shadow of a little boy she’d known, working at his father’s gas station.
    In the foreground of the picture was the torso of an adult man, hairy-chested, gross. The image came too quickly to Claudia’s mind; she was familiar enough with men and their physical mechanisms, but there was something about this, something so bad . . . the boy’s eyes, caught in a flash, were black points. When she’d looked closely, it seemed that somebody at the magazine had put the pupils in with a felt-tipped pen.

    She shivered, not from the cold, and hurried down the snow-blown trench that led out to the garage and woodshed. There were four inches of new snow in the trench: she’d have to blow it out again in the morning.
    The trench ended at the garage door. She shoved the door open, stepped inside, snapped on the lights and stomped her feet without thinking. The garage was insulated and heated with a woodstove. Four good chunks of oak would burnslowly enough, and throw off enough heat, to keep the inside temperature above the freezing point on even the coldest nights. Warm enough to start the cars, anyway. Out here, in the Chequamegon, getting the cars to start could be a matter of life and death.
    The stove was still hot. Down to coals, but Frank had cleaned it out the night before—she wouldn’t have to do that, anyway. She looked back toward the door, at the woodpile. Enough for the night, but no more. She tossed a few wrist-thin splits of sap-heavy pine onto the fire, to get some flame going, then four solid chunks of oak. That would do it.
    She looked at the space where the woodpile should have been, sighed, and decided she might as well bring in a few chunks now—give it a chance to thaw before morning. She went back outside, pulling the door shut, but not latched, walked along the side of the garage to the lean-to that covered the woodpile. She picked up four more chunks of oak, staggered back to the garage door, pushed the door open with her foot and dropped the oak next to the stove. One more trip, she thought; Frank could do his share tomorrow.
    She went back out to the side of the garage, into the dark of the woodshed, picked up two more pieces of oak.
    And felt the short hairs rise on the back of her neck.
    Somebody was here with her  . . .
    Claudia dropped the oak splits, one gloved hand going to her throat. The woodlot was dark beyond the back of the garage. She could feel it, but not see it, could hear her heart pounding in her ears, and the snow hitting her hood with a delicate pit-put-pit. Nothing else: but still . . .
    She backed away. Nothing but the snow and the blue circle of the yard-light. At the snow-blown trench, she paused, straining into the dark . . . and ran.
    Up to the house, still with the sense of someone behind her, his hand almost there, reaching for her. She pawed at the door handle, smashed it down, hit the door with the heel of her hand, followed it into the heat and light of the mudroom.
    “Claudia?”
    She screamed.

    Frank stood there, with a paint rag, eyes wide, startled. “What?”
    “My God,” she said. She pulled down the zip on the snowmobile suit, struggled with the hood snaps, her mouth working,