Snowhook by Jo Storm

After they left the lake, the wilderness clasped them again, offering tree branches like old friends, and Hannah reached out as they slid past, giving them a high five. The branches creaked and shuddered, dumping the enormous amount of snow that had held them down so low, then springing up and rousing the whole tree until a mini avalanche of snow cascaded to the ground.

The trail was so obscured with snow now that only its bevelled edges and the absence of trees indicated that it was a trail at all. Sometimes Peter walked, and sometimes he rode in the sled while Hannah walked. They were letting the dogs rest a bit as they now had to break trail as well as pull.

By the time she glimpsed the dark blob of Jonny Swede’s house, Hannah was plenty warm from alternately snowshoeing and poling. As they rounded the last corner, she felt sweat trickling down her back, and she grabbed her water bottle from the inside of her jacket. Peter drank, too. He caught her eye and lifted his water bottle. His mood had lightened as they had gotten nearer. He said, “Pancakes!” again and started toward the cabin at a half jog on his snowshoes.

Jonny Swede’s place was nothing like what Hannah had thought it would be. She had expected a shack, something even more dilapidated than Jeb’s cabin, with rough, streaky, unpainted boarding on the outside, a warped tin roof, an ill-fitting door. The guy had an old bus for an outhouse, right?

But it wasn’t like that. It was small and neat and, even from the back, organized. The aluminum chimney top looked so clean against the sky that she wondered if Jonny polished it. As they approached, she stared at the paraphernalia hanging on the back of the cabin. Secured by long iron nails hammered on the back wall under the wide overhang of the roof was every piece of junk she could think of: long-handled hoes and seeders; shovels of all types; tires in pairs and alone, all in neat rows according to size. There were three old handsaws, one as long as her gangline, all bundled together and perched on thick pitted nails, at arm’s reach. There were big pliers, too, and tracks for snowmobiles, their black rubber links held together with metal grommets and bearings.

The snowmobile! Hannah’s heartbeat sped up, and her breath steamed out in short puffs, matching the dogs’ panting breaths. In the winter, a snowmobile could travel as fast as a regular vehicle, if not faster. Regular vehicles had to make their way on old logging roads to get to the secondary roads. From there, they had to wind onto the highway, which was itself an old logging road. Even though it was paved now and had two lanes, it wasn’t an easy road; it meandered and dipped and cornered its way back to town. But the snowmobile trails had been made for one reason: getting to Timmins.

“Hey, Jonny Swede!” called Peter as he broke through the ring of trees around the tiny backyard behind the cabin. On the far left-hand side, incredibly, there really was an old bus, now half-buried in snow. The front part, with the driver’s seat, had been kept almost exactly as it was, including the long bus doors that hinged in the centre as well as on the side. She could see through the door that the steering wheel had been removed, but the seat remained, now facing the doors. Hannah imagined looking out the glass doors as she sat on the privy, with a view onto the back of the house and the forest. The other half of the bus had been made over into a big yellow lean-to with bus windows still intact, letting in light. One metal side had been cut and peeled outward and propped on thick posts made of tree trunks. On the bench at the back of the lean-to sat a neat row of engines and parts.

She stopped the sled and tied the snub line, looping it around a tree, then followed Peter.

She was right behind him as they rounded the corner of the house, slogging through the unbroken snow. Peter was still calling. The front yard, larger than the back, had a

wide driveway leading off to the road, which she could see from the porch. She stood on the deck, stamping the snow off her snowshoes. The driveway was not cleared.

“He’s half-deaf,” said Peter, and he began to pound on the door. It was peculiar-looking, wide and low and made from thick wood. It had two metal bars across it, like on metal emergency exit doors. The bars reached only halfway across the door, but they were fastened together in the middle by a large padlock.

The shiny chimney. The half-buried outhouse. Hannah touched Peter’s shoulder and he stopped pounding on the door. She pointed up. “No smoke. No tracks.” She lifted the padlock and let it fall. It clanged metallically against the bars, then stilled.

“Shit. Shit!” he said.

Jonny wasn’t there.

Not only was Jonny Swede’s place not what Hannah had expected, it was also downright frustrating. In addition to the padlocked door, every window was fastened tightly with thick wooden storm shutters nailed shut over top of it. The tool shed in the front was locked. The woodshed also had a locked door on it.

“Who locks their woodshed?” she said after they’d trooped out to it, hoping to find a key to the cabin.

“Paranoid asshole,” muttered Peter. “Jesus, he doesn’t even have anything worth stealing.” He was swearing more and more as they found each entrance impassable and felt each hope crushed.

The only window that wasn’t shuttered was up in the crawlspace at the top of the cabin, and they had no way to reach it.

It was while they were looking up at the small window that Hannah tripped over something buried in the snow. They dug frantically for five minutes, shoving the tips of their snowshoes down like shovels and dragging up huge clumps of the heavy, white snow. Finding a tarp, they used their hands and feet to free it from the layers of snow and ice that had accumulated during the storm. The snowmobile!

“If there’s enough gas, we’ll go right to Jeb’s after we go to Timmins,” said Hannah as they dug. “Or maybe he has extra gas here. My mom will pay for it.”

She didn’t think long about what to do with the dogs. It would be faster if Peter stayed behind with them. They could break one of the shutters, maybe, and they could all stay inside. It would be warm there until she came back with help and the police.

Peter was wrestling with a trapped corner, and he pulled upward viciously. “I’m not going to Timmins. I’m taking the sled and going back to Jeb’s. You can use the satellite phone there. They’ll send someone out. Your mom is probably fine, anyway.” He pulled again and the tarp ripped free, tearing on one side and leaving long, fluttering pieces of plastic.

“We’re not going back!” said Hannah.

“Whatever. You don’t even know how to use a snowmobile.”

“I do so! And it’s not like you know how to drive a sled!”

“Move.” Peter pushed her aside and straddled the machine, placing his feet on the long runners on either side. He pulled the gas tank up and looked inside, pulled the throttle to make sure it worked. Then he leaned over, looking on either side of the engine, and turned the gas line to ON. He reached for the ignition switch. “Oh, come on. Come on!” His gloved hand formed into a fist and he pounded at the centre of the snowmobile, between the gas tank and the steering post.

“No no no no NO!” he shouted. He was hitting something in particular, and beneath his striking fist, Hannah saw it: the keyhole where the ignition key went.

It was empty.

The snowmobile was useless. The boarded-up house was useless, and the locked sheds, the empty lean-to, the stupid yellow bus. All of it was useless to them.

Hannah tried to stay positive, swivelling around to find something, anything they could use. But there was nothing. Just the naked forest, the white snow smothering everything, the grey sky pushing down.