Figureless, now, swallowed by night, every movement a trudge—calculated and careful. Silence, kept, was ruinous all the same. Jude ached with it. Muscles long kept tight but feeble against the frigidity of the air. She stopped for an instant but was not loosened, considered for a moment not the unseeable path ahead but something along it—the unstill. The river swelled against the bank—steadily disobedient, enough that she was, at once, overcome with the possibility of unleashing some long stifled reply, some vehemence. A sigh, a curse—scream, even, if only to assume the inevitability of it: the end. Be gorged on, here, rather than what waited for those with the endurance to waste, to dissolve like salt. Snatched, instead, unmissed next to the river that had refused frost and death, finally butchered before the season could take her itself. The winter always took. Starved, violent. It could almost be a kindness to be quick about it.
The final stir was involuntary, near silent yet known, still—the low rumble of an empty stomach. Jude hungered as the dark did for her.
The cabin may not have been undiscovered, not far from where she ever dared go, but it had not been remembered. There were many of them: the looted bones of long-ago homes. Stripped of life and memory, until there was only sustenance, itself soon picked apart or left to decay. To dust. It remained, slumped against moonlight like some beacon. Jude knew better than to hope. It was unlikely that anything stayed; her hunger unsated. It was her body, weary, that could be kept. Wood panels that would offer some refuge from the night. The continued approach was soft, light like the ravenous watch of a predator. Held breath, the wait for an answer. The possible seconds between noise and betrayal. Finally, she eased inside, an entrance with little mercy.
Jude sniffed. Rot, a memory of life, disturbed. The hum of it lingered. Not possible to know when or by whom, but it had become instinct to detect even a stolen speck of dust. Like the cold sting of a shotgun against her back or the fist rarely unclenched—survival remained an art of noticing, of waiting. Cabinets open, bare, nothing or nothing that could be made out in the dark. She continued to nowhere.
The boot on the stairs was treacherous. A body could not be contained to its lightness, to air squeezed under the ribcage. Age came with creek, with groan—demanded that every moment passed be considered. Quiet, still. A release of breath. She remembered many not-quite-homes that sweltered with something just the same. Corroded with the brutality of days, the stickiness of liquor, air that choked and suffocated. Final thoughts of heaviness were abandoned with the grace of the landing underfoot. Some long, resigned creak. She paused at the top of the stairs. Nothing.
The moon hung low. A split through the window that reached out into darkness. Morning was approaching, but would take longer to reveal itself. Where the long shadow ended, almost indistinguishable, a sprawl of hair, raven. The night grew silver—Jude remained in the dark.
snowghoul
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