The Long Dark by Billy Farmer (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📗

myself off, and climbed into the cab of the Shining. My heartbeat was beginning to slow, but my stomach was in knots, not to mention the horrible ache I felt in my shin. I thought I might throw up or pass out or more likely both.

“What the hell happened back there, William?” Tom asked as he shut the driver's door.

“I’m tellin you all, everybody done went crazy,” Sam said, as he entered the Shining.

“I’m not sure. Could have been a polar bear… or nothing. I’m not sure,” I said, still panting. “I think we should get going, though.”

Tom waited for Sam to get situated between Avery and Tish before taking off.

If it weren’t for the sound of the engine, and the clunk of the rubber treads on the snow, you could’ve heard a pin drop in the cab for at least the next thirty or so uneventful minutes. Under different circumstances, I would’ve received serious grief over how I handled myself during the search for Titouan’s ghost. Everyone was so lost in their own contemplation that my faux pas didn’t even register.

I noticed Tom looking at me. “What?”

“You want to talk about what happened back there?”

“Not really.”

“Should we be worried?”

“I don’t know. I hope I was imagining things.”

“Your face was whiter than the snow falling out there. You had to have seen something.”

“More like heard.”

He stared at me for a second before asking, “Well, what did you hear?”

I shook my head. “Snorting.”

“So, it was a polar bear?”

“Yeah.  I bet that’s what it was.”

“You’re being a dick, William.”

“Come on, Tom, give him a break,” Tish said.

“You guys don’t think we should know what the hell is going on?”

“Seriously, I don’t know what it was. I heard something or thought I did. I got scared and ran away pissing and crying. I’m sorry I scared you guys.”

He just gave me a blank stare. I’m not sure he believed me, but then I wasn’t sure I believed what I said. I didn’t really have time to reflect on what exactly happened. I knew I heard something, and that I had some weird primal response to it, but I just didn’t know. Everything was a blur.

Changing the subject, I asked, “How much farther, you think?”

“Maybe twenty minutes,” Tom said.

“Good. I’ll be glad to get off this godforsaken ice.”

“Sorry for being an ass.”

“It’s all good. I’m sorry for being a pussy.”

Tom laughed. “You should’ve seen yourself. You looked like The Michelin Man… if he were a little heavier and high on PCP and running from the cops.”

“Jesus, Tom. Tell me how you really feel.”

It would’ve been twenty minutes had things gone to plan. We spun a track on a steep section of snow bank. An argument ensued between Titouan and Tom. Titouan told him he was being careless. Tom threatened to Kill Titouan if he said one more word. I was exhausted and had no patience for Titouan’s bullshit. If Titouan had said one more word, I was going to let Tom do whatever the hell he wanted. Luckily for Titouan, he decided to shut up for once.

“Looks like we’re hoofin it, boys,” Sam said, trying to cut through the tension.

Tom kicked the side of the Shining and said, “I didn’t say anything when we left the patch, but I worried about the right track. It had seen better days, for sure.”

Titouan began to say something, but I stopped him. “Dammit. Just shut the hell up. You can tell your dad paid your way into Wharton because you’re dumb as shit, aren’t you?”

“Son, you better listen to William. He’s tryin to save ya from a bruisin,” Sam said.

Titouan mumbled gibberish before grabbing his lantern and taking off in a direction he thought we should be going. After he thought he was outside of earshot, he muttered something more loudly than maybe he intended. Tom didn’t take very kind to having his mom being called a bitch. To my surprise, though, Tom just shook his head and laughed before saying, “I want to be in the room when he tells Miley what happened at the Patch.”

I nodded. “We can make that happen.”

There were no geographical references, like mountains or signs, to guide us in the right direction, and honestly, it wouldn't have mattered if there had been. Mother Nature was throwing so much snow at us that with the bright lights of the Shining we could only see just a few feet in front of us. With our battery powered lamps, it was much less, inches maybe. Factor in the wind-swept snow quickly obscuring the already deteriorating remnants of ice road, and what you had was a cluster fuck in the making.

Tom thought the road wasn’t a straight shot to Barrow. He believed it bent significantly to the east. We decided we’d rather miss Barrow to the west than we would to the east because it was so sparsely populated. We sat out on a point roughly west of the front end of the Shining. If we had already left the road, we were screwed plain and simple.

“What do we do about him?” Tish nodded her head towards Titouan. His little tantrum had netted him about twenty steps.

“He’ll get back in line before he loses sight of our lamp light. He’s too big of a pussy to go at it alone,” Tom said, “especially now that he’s seen a boogieman.”

"This way, Titouan," I finally said. There was safety in numbers. He slowly adjusted his course but stayed back just far enough to try to make us believe he was still going his way.

We walked for what seemed like forever but still hadn't reached Barrow. The bit of good news was the gale-force winds had started to abate, if only a little, and so had the snowfall. Avery was the first one to say we should've seen lights from Barrow if we were even remotely close to it. That was the bad news. There were, however, clear signs of a snow bank to our left. Whether it