Chapter 64

They’d all walked, softly, quietly, to the ballroom, to look at the mountain behind the chalet. Very quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping children or the seniors that were snoring in the relative silence in jigs and jags in one half of the huge room. Keara too, had joined them. Now only eight pages to go. But she’d had to come out, something deep in her spurring her on.

To see if, together, in the dark, they could see a lone figure, with a light strapped to his helmet, skiing. Heading home, to them.

They held each other up. Arms around each other’s waists and shoulders. They stood as a united throng, waiting for the man they all loved to come home. To come through this madness that Mother nature and the mountain, had tossed at them. A white, icy conflagration. A snow apocalypse.

And tired and exhausted as they were, they all knew they were going to stay there, together, until they saw that light.

“We should get another foam pad. We could at least sit.” Summer broke from the group, started back toward the great lobby.

But a voice pierced the silence, in awe, stopped her. “Look.”

There, in the far-off distance, it was. Like a star had fallen from the heavens, it was painting a tiny, golden streak on Terrence Point. Moving slowly, but steadily, toward them.

“Oh my gosh. It’s him!”

Excitement coursed through the group. It had to be him! Sven, and Buddy. They’d been through the horror and made it. He was coming back to them. Would be there within a half-hour. Less.

But in the next moment, the reverent sounds of awe turned to terror.

A great ridge of snow broke free, high above the little light. It cracked, and a huge fissure appeared, almost as if in slow motion. Then the fissure lengthened as it suddenly traveled rapidly, marking a great expanding line down the pristine snow-face. A great cosmic knife cutting. Separating the snowpack from the base with cruel precision.

Then it broke from Terrence Point, as mountains of snow just fell. Inundated everything, with heavy slams. Puffs of white cloud erupted, flew upward, distorted the view. Slid.

Slid menacingly toward the light.

All that beauty. All that strength. All that pure white, a traditional symbol of innocence, and everything that was right, the light from the moon delineating its harsh edges.

Suddenly…the tiny light was gone.

Just…gone. Engulfed, swallowed up, snuffed out. The snow careened, slithered its bulk, snapping off trees and tossing them like a great hungry white Sasquatch gone flat, yet far more terrifying for the breadth it covered and consumed.

And when it stopped, they searched and searched, but it was in vain. There was nothing but the icy, frigid night. And silence.

Terrence Point’s most recent avalanche, moments old, had eaten up everything—and everyone, human, beast, or light—in its greedy path.