Empty Smiles, page 16
Coco interrupted. “You both can push us out. Are there any snacks?”
That distracted all three of them. It was dinnertime, and there were snacks. Mr. Adler was a specialist in snacks. He’d made them each a large peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich on homemade bread.
After they’d finished their sandwiches, they each ate an apple and shared a big bag of potato chips. Mr. Adler had made the chips too.
“Is it hard to make potato chips?” Coco asked disbelievingly, licking salt off her fingers.
“No,” said Ollie, in a superior tone. She’d helped make them. Also, Coco suspected, eaten a lot of them before the drive even started. “But the oil splashes.”
“I know what we’re making next time we’re at your house,” said Brian, crunching. “These are amazing.”
They were scuffling over the last of the potato chips when the Subaru finally turned off the main highway. MOUNTAIN ACCESS ROAD, said a sign. The road tilted steeply up. On one side were trees. On the other side was a gully and a frozen creek. Ollie’s dad was driving on through the storm like he didn’t have a care in the world, telling bad jokes from the front seat.
“What did the buffalo say to his kid when he dropped him off at school?” he asked.
Ollie sighed. Her dad loved bad jokes.
“Bison!” yelped Coco triumphantly, and everyone groaned but also laughed.
“Motorists are warned to exercise caution, avoid unplowed roads, and, if at all possible, refrain from driving altogether,” remarked the radio.
“Great,” said Mr. Adler, unbothered. “Less people on the road tonight means more snow for us tomorrow!”
“If you say so,” said Coco’s mom. She gave the smothering storm a cautious look. Coco recognized the look. Coco and her mom were both careful about things. Unlike Ollie and her dad, who were kind of leap-before-you-look.
“Want to hear another joke?” Mr. Adler asked.
“Dad, can’t we have a jokes-per-trip limit?” Ollie said.
“Not when I’m driving!” said her dad. “One more. Why did the scarecrow get a promotion?”
A small, awkward silence fell. Ollie, Brian, and Coco looked at each other. They really didn’t like scarecrows.
“Anyone?” asked Ollie’s dad. “Anyone? Come on, I feel like I’m talking to myself here! Because he was outstanding in his field! Get it? Out standing in his field?” Ollie’s dad laughed, but no one laughed with him. “Geez, tough crowd.”
The three in the back said nothing. Ollie’s dad didn’t know it, but there was a reason they didn’t like scarecrows.
That October, they, along with the rest of their sixth-grade class, had disappeared for two days. Only Ollie, Brian, and Coco remembered everything that had happened during those days. They’d never told anyone. They told their families and the police that they’d gotten lost.
They hadn’t just gotten lost. But who would believe them if they told the truth?
They’d been kidnapped into another world. A world behind the mist. They’d met living scarecrows who tried to drag them off and turn them into scarecrows too. They’d gone into a haunted house, taken food from a ghost, run a corn maze, and at last met someone called the smiling man.
The smiling man looked ordinary, but he wasn’t. The smiling man would grant your heart’s desire if you asked him. But he’d demand a price. A terrible price.
Ollie, Brian, and Coco had outwitted the smiling man. They’d survived the world behind the mist and come home. They’d gone into that world as near strangers and come out as best friends. It was December now, and they were together, and on vacation. All was well.
But two months later, they still had nightmares. And they still didn’t like scarecrows.
The silence in the car stretched out as the road got even steeper. The radio suddenly fizzed with static and went silent.
They all waited for it to crackle back to life. Nothing. Coco’s mom reached out and tapped it, pressed the tuning button, but it didn’t help. “That’s weird,” she said. “Maybe it’s the storm.”
Coco didn’t miss the radio. She was full of peanut butter and getting sleepy. She leaned her head on Ollie’s shoulder to doze. Brian was reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Brian liked sea stories. He and Ollie had both read one called Captain Blood and spent a few weeks arguing about the ending. Coco had read the book too, to know what her friends were arguing about, but it was about pirates. She hadn’t liked it and felt a little left out of the whole argument. Coco didn’t like novels, really. She liked books about real things. Bugs and dinosaurs and the history of space flight.
Brian began to read by the light of his phone. Ollie put her cheek against her window and stared into the wild night. Coco, half asleep on Ollie’s shoulder, began recalling the last chess game she’d played. It was on the internet, with someone named @begemot.
Coco loved chess. Her favorite books were histories of famous players and famous matches. One of her favorite things to do was to play online. On the internet, no one could be smug and assume she was easy to beat just because she was small and pink-haired. Sleepily, Coco went back over the opening moves of her last game. She’d played white, which always goes first, and had opened with Queen’s Gambit . . .
Up and up they climbed.
Coco fell asleep, still thinking about chess.
Coco dreamed. Not about chess.
In her dream, she was walking down a dark hallway, so long that she couldn’t see the end of it. Bars of moonlight fell across the carpet, striping it with shadows. But there weren’t any windows. Just the moonlight. It was bitterly cold. On each side were rows of plain white doors, the paint rotten and peeling. Behind one of the doors, Coco heard someone crying.
But behind which door? There seemed to be hundreds. “Where are you?” Coco called.
“I can’t find them,” whimpered a girl’s voice. “I’ve looked everywhere, but I can’t find them. Mother says I can’t go home until I find them.”
Coco thought she heard footsteps plodding along behind her. Heavy, uneven footsteps. Her skin started to crawl. But she had to find the crying girl. She was sure of it. She had to find her before the footsteps caught up. She ran along faster. “What are you looking for?” she called. “I can help you find it. Where are you?”
Then she lurched to a halt. A skinny girl, about her own height, dressed in a white nightgown, had appeared in the hallway. Her face was in shadow. “Here,” the girl said.
For some reason, Coco did not want to see the girl’s face. “Hello?” she said, hearing her voice crack.
“I’m looking for my bones,” whispered the girl. “Can you help me?”
She moved into the light. Coco flinched. The other girl was gray-faced and skinny. Her eyes were two blank pits. Her lips and nose were black, like she had terrible frostbite. She tried, horribly, to smile. “Hello,” she said. “It’s cold here, isn’t it? Won’t you help me?” She reached out a single hand. Her fingernails were long and black in the moonlight.
Coco, stumbling backward, ran into something solid. A huge hand fell on her shoulder. Coco whirled and looked up into the face of a scarecrow. Its sewn-on mouth was smiling wide. Its hand wasn’t a hand at all, just a sharp garden trowel. It had found her at last, Coco thought. It had found her, and now it was going to drag her off. She’d never get home again . . .
Coco opened her mouth to scream, and woke up with a gasp.
She was in the car, in the snowstorm, driving to Mount Hemlock, and her mother was talking to Mr. Adler in the front seat. It was cold in the back seat; her toes in their winter boots were numb. Coco sat still for a second, breathing fast with fright. Just a dream, she told herself. She’d had a lot of scarecrow dreams in the last few months. So had Ollie and Brian. Just a dream.
“How much farther, Roger?” Coco’s mom asked.
“Should be pretty close now,” said Mr. Adler.
Coco, a little dazed from her nightmare, stared out the front windshield. It was snowing even harder. The road was a thin yellowish-white strip, piled thick with snow. More snow bowed the trees on either side.
The Subaru was moving slowly. The thick snow groaned under the wheels, and Mr. Adler seemed to be struggling to keep the car going straight on the slippery road. “What a night, huh?” he said.
“Want me to drive?” asked Coco’s mom.
This time the usual cheer was gone from Mr. Adler’s reply. “It’s okay. I know the car better.” Lower, he added, “Just pray we don’t get stuck.”
Now the car was coming down into a gully, the road turning slightly.
But the road wasn’t empty. For a stomach-clenching second, Coco thought she was still dreaming. Right in front of them, in the middle of the road, stood a tall figure in a ragged blue ski jacket. It looked like a scarecrow. The figure was perfectly still. One palm was raised and turned out as though to beg. As though to say, STOP. The face was hidden by a ski mask.
Coco felt a jolt of terror. But then she realized that the person had real hands. Not garden tools. She wasn’t dreaming; this wasn’t a scarecrow.
Mr. Adler wasn’t slowing down. “Stop!” yelled Coco, yanking herself upright. “Look! Look!”
Mr. Adler slammed on the brakes. The car skidded, turning sideways, swinging them toward the thick black ranks of trees. Coco braced, waiting to hear the thump of someone slamming into the side of the car. The person had been so close . . .
Nothing.
The car shuddered to a stop, only a couple feet from the nearest tree trunk.
All of them sat stunned for a second.
“I didn’t feel us hit anything.” Mr. Adler sounded like he was taking deep breaths, trying to be calm. “What did you see, Coco?”
Coco was startled. “You didn’t see it? There was a person in the road! We must have hit him!” Her voice sounded squeaky. She hated when her voice sounded squeaky. Had they hurt someone? Had they killed . . .
Ollie’s dad put on the emergency brake and turned on the car’s hazard lights. “Kids, I need you to stay—” he began, but Ollie had already unlocked her door and scrambled out into the snow. It came up to her knees. Brian was right behind her on his side, and Coco, although her hands were shaking, hurried after them.
“Coco!” cried her mom as she and Mr. Adler followed. “Coco, don’t look, get back, be careful—”
Coco pretended not to hear. She grabbed her phone, went around the car, and shined the light at the snow. Brian was doing the same. Ollie had pulled a headlamp from the pocket on her car door. The three of them stood shoulder to shoulder, shining their flashlights all around the car. The snow was falling so thickly that they couldn’t see anything outside the circle of their lights. Faintly, Coco heard the whisper of wind in the pine needles overhead.
Mr. Adler had a flashlight from the glove compartment. Coco’s mom stood next to him, squinting into the snowstorm. Four beams of light shone on the snow. The road was utterly empty. Coco saw the tracks where the car had come down, saw the huge sideways mark of the car’s skid. But nothing else.
“I don’t see anyone. Any tracks, even,” said her mom. “Thank god.”
“But I saw someone,” protested Coco. “In the road. A person. They had their hand out.” She raised her own arm, palm out, to demonstrate. “They were wearing a blue ski jacket, but no gloves. Ollie, did you see?”
“I thought I might have seen something,” said Ollie. She sounded doubtful. “Like a shadow. But I wasn’t sure. There’s so much snow. Brian?”
Brian shook his head. “But,” he said loyally, “Ollie and I couldn’t see out the windshield as well as Coco, since she was in the middle.”
Coco’s mom gestured at the snow, which was unmarked except for the car’s tracks and their own footprints. “I don’t think there was anyone here.” She started to shiver. They’d all taken off their heavy coats for driving, and now the snow was piling up on their shoulders.
“I saw someone,” Coco insisted, but the others, eager to get back into the warm car, weren’t listening anymore. She hurried after them. “I definitely saw someone.”
“It might have just been a shadow, Tiny,” said Brian reasonably. “Or a deer. Or maybe you were just dreaming and you mixed up being asleep and being awake.”
“I wasn’t imagining things!” cried Coco, wishing so hard that her voice wouldn’t squeak. “And don’t call me Tiny!”
“But there’s obviously no one—” Brian began.
“Hey,” said Ollie’s dad, cutting them off. “Easy now, both of you. Just be glad we didn’t hit anyone. Let’s get back in the car. It’s not safe here.”
Coco climbed unhappily back into the car. She felt like everyone was just a little bit mad at her for yelling stop so that Mr. Adler had to slam on his brakes and send them skidding dangerously across the road. She was sure she’d seen someone.
But she had been half asleep. Maybe she did dream it.
As they drove away, Coco turned around and looked out the back window.
Just for a second, she thought she saw a dark figure lit red by the car’s rear lights. It stood facing them in the middle of the road. One bare hand was still upraised.
Like a plea.
Like a warning.
“Guys,” she whispered. “It’s there. It’s right back there.”
Ollie and Brian turned around.
There was a small silence.
“I don’t see anything,” said Ollie.
Coco looked again.
The figure was gone.
Coco shivered. She opened her mouth to say something else. But before she could, the car was grumbling up the mountain once more and they had left the gully behind them.
A minute later, two yellow lights shone through the trees. Maybe it was just because Coco was shaken up, but she thought that the lights looked sinister. Like eyes peeping. Waiting for them. She wanted to tell Mr. Adler to turn the car around.
Don’t be silly, she told herself.
“Look!” said Brian, pointing. “What’s that?”
“Must be the lodge,” said Mr. Adler. He sounded relieved. “We’re almost there.”
They drove under a new, hand-carved sign lit by two old-fashioned gas lamps.
Eyes? Right, Coco thought. Just lamps.
MOUNT HEMLOCK RESORT, said the sign. A MOUNTAIN OF AWESOME WHERE WINTER NEVER ENDS.
“That’s some weird grammar,” commented Ollie.
No one said anything else. The resort drive was the narrowest road they’d driven on, and the most thickly piled with snow. The Subaru’s motor whined horribly as Ollie’s dad pushed down the accelerator. The driveway turned, and the car skidded slowly sideways, almost going into a spin. The wheels couldn’t bite.
“Dad—” Ollie began.
“Not now!” snapped her father in a tone Coco had never heard from Mr. Adler. He changed gears, managed to keep the car from skidding, and then they burst out from the driveway into a snow-covered parking lot. Everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief.
After the long, cold drive, the sight of Hemlock Lodge was like Christmas morning. Warm golden light blazed out of the windows. Well, some of the windows.
“We made it,” said Brian happily.
They could barely see the building in the snowy darkness, but Coco thought it was big. It had a—presence. It loomed over them.
“Shouldn’t there be more lights?” asked Ollie.
“Power must be out,” said Coco’s mom. She tugged the end of her blond braid, considering. “They’re running on generators. Can’t light everything.”
“I can hear the generators,” said Brian.
Mr. Adler drove across the parking lot and parked under an awning. Coco could hear the generators too: a slow, roaring noise, like the building was breathing.
“Well,” said Mr. Adler, “parking lot’s empty. Looks like we were the only ones to make the drive.”
“There might be others stuck on the road somewhere,” said Coco’s mom. “Hopefully they get to shelter. Another hour, and we’d have gotten stuck ourselves. Next time let’s listen to what the radio has to say about snowstorms, hm?”
“Deal,” said Ollie’s dad, and he sounded like he really meant it. “Come on!” he added to all of them. “We made it, all present and accounted for. Grab a bag. The sooner we get out, the sooner we get to bed.”
Ollie and Brian fumbled for the door handles and stumbled into the freezing night. All of them padded sleepily into Hemlock Lodge.
Coco stopped dead right in the entrance, staring. Ollie plowed into Coco and had to catch her so they both didn’t fall. “Coco, what—” she began, and then she saw what Coco had. “No way.”
“Holy cow,” muttered Brian. “Where are we?”
The only light in the lobby was from a big, roaring fire. Shadows leaped and swung across the walls; you couldn’t even see the ceiling. But the walls were completely covered with heads. Dead animal heads. Coco spotted a moose head with Christmas lights wound through its antlers. A deer head—a lot of deer heads—hung in a cluster. There was a trio of raccoons in a small canoe with paddles. A stuffed fawn in a glass box. Four coyotes looked like they were howling at a fake moon. A black bear stood on its hind legs, its paw upraised.
In the flickering firelight, they seemed to move; their glass eyes shone like they were alive. The bear had sharp white teeth.
“Nice decorations,” said Brian uneasily. “Great spot your dad found.” There was a giant bearskin rug on the floor. Its claws were shiny in the firelight.
Ollie stepped around Coco and marched into the lobby. “It’s great,” she said pointedly. Ollie always defended her dad. Coco would have too, if she’d had a dad as cool as Ollie’s. Coco had never met her dad. He’d left before Coco was born.
Ollie waved at the heads. “Some people like this kind of thing. And we’re not here to hang out in the lobby, we’re here to ski.”
