Cold and Clear

The following story is from my collection ‘A Rain of Dragonflies.’ It was inspired by Buffy Sainte Marie’s song, The Vampire. As is often the case, stories and characters take control and move things in the direction they want, so in the end, I didn’t write about a vampire.


The story, Cold and Clear, can be read as a fantasy or it can be read as a realistic story, with at least 3 possible explanations hinted at in the story as to why the protagonist sees what she does when she opens the door.


I challenge readers to find the 3 explanations. The first 3 people to correctly guess and e-mail me the answers will receive a free copy of ‘A Rain of Dragonflies.’
 E-mail me with your answers: booksserimuse@gmail.com

Cold and Clear

© Regine Haensel

The howl of wind round the house tonight sounds like a human cry. I long for someone to talk with and keep trying to make out words, but there’s only the sift and scatter of snow against walls, the movement of air nudging against corners and rattling the eaves. My grandmother used to say the wind carries the voices of all those who have vanished in storms. She believed in things like that – ghosts, herbal lore, and strange tales – but after she died I lost the knack or the inclination. I wish that husband of mine had made it home before the storm. Hopefully he’s not caught in it, but has found shelter somewhere.

    I go to each window in turn, scrape away frost, set a lit candle. Just in case. I can’t see any other lights out there, but wouldn’t unless someone carrying a lantern came close. The nearest farm lies at quite a distance. At the moment it feels as if I’m the last human left in the world, but I mustn’t think like that. Earlier, before the storm hid the sky, I noticed the full moon laying a path of light across the snow. Anyone should have found the way home easily thenWhen I decided to marry William, leave that eastern city and come out to his homestead, I had no idea how truly isolated we’d be or how strange this land was. Some neighbours when I first arrived delighted in telling me the most bizarre stories, usually about weather – like the time it rained frogs, or the year spring didn’t come until June and it snowed in August. It’s not that William lied to me, but I was in such a hurry to get away that I didn’t pay close enough attention to what he said. I know that he’s got no living relatives and inherited this property from an uncle who died in a blizzard. Oh, I wish I hadn’t remembered that just now. Still I never regretted my choice to go with William. The openness of the land expanded my heart so that I felt free again the way I did as a child in my grandmother’s house.

Tonight, however, I’m restless and feeling closed in. The baby kicks in my belly. I prowl – kitchen and living room combined, tiny crammed bedroom, and back again. I ate my supper some time ago – the last of the rye bread (somewhat stale) with homemade jam. Cleaned up. There’s nothing left to do but wait and hope that nothing has gone wrong. The doctor told me that I must remain calm, that with a first child a woman often worries excessively, or has odd cravings and fantasies.

William has been so kind. He didn’t laugh when I woke in the middle of one night wanting snow with syrup. If I have a nightmare about the baby having extra fingers or being born without arms, he holds me and rocks me.

Most of the time when we need supplies from town or when we’re going to visit the neighbours, William and I go together. Although he does like to wander off on his own periodically, walking on the prairie at night. Looking at the stars, he explains. I don’t mind; I like time to myself, too, always have. Grandmother encouraged it and sometimes joined me on my walks in the fields and woods. Early on in my life she began to tell me the names of trees, pointed out birds’ nests, and the tracks of animals. Later she showed me how to gather plants to make poultices, syrups and other concoctions for coughs, colds and more serious maladies. People came from miles around for her remedies. My mother tolerated it in those days, though she said they’d be better off going to real doctors.

The nearest doctor here is miles away in the town, so I’ve seen him only a few times. William wanted me to go and stay in town now that I’m well along, but I didn’t want to leave him. One of the neighbour women has six children; she said she’d come when I needed her. Lately William has been insisting that I stay close to home. It has fretted me. Not only because I’d rather be with him, but also because it reminds me of my mother and stepfather. Before she met him, my mother didn’t seem to mind my wanderings, but once she married again she changed, anxious all the time about being respectable and doing things in the proper way. My stepfather is a clergyman and very conscious of his position in the community. He always said a clergyman’s family had to be above reproach. I married William because he wasn’t like them.

If only I could remember more about my real father. Grandmother once told me that he called me ‘Sprout’ and used to carry me on his shoulders. He died when a tree fell and crushed him. I was barely three at the time. He was a lumber jack, supposedly a good one, but I guess things can go wrong for anyone. My mother never talked about him much and the only picture of him she kept was their wedding portrait. Even that one disappeared when she met my stepfather.

It’s a bit chilly in the house, so I go to the wood box. William brought in enough before he left to last several days, though he wasn’t planning to be away for more than one. He’s thoughtful that way. As I pick up a split log a spider dashes away. I wait until it has found a safe hiding place in the box before adding wood to the fire.

It seems to me that my mother wiped my father out of her life the way a teacher erases the chalk on a board. Later, she did the same with my grandmother. People died and they disappeared for her. I wonder whether she’s forgetting me now because she doesn’t write very often.

The warmth of the candles is starting to melt the frost on the windows. I peer out. Is that movement, a dark shape slipping behind a snow bank or just an illusion created by flickering light and moisture? Wild animals live out there. Foxes, coyotes. But my husband might be out there, too.

I go to the door. Press my ear to the wood. Can’t hear anything but the wind. I push the door against the force that holds it closed. Then I have to hang on with both hands to the wooden handle that William carved, so the door won’t be torn away from me by the gale. Snow stings my face. It’s almost impossible to see anything in that whirling storm.

“William?” I shout. “William!”

The growl of wind swallows my voice. My eyes are drawn by the vortex, hypnotized by swirling snow. The wind is singing an accompaniment to a dance of vague shapes.  I can imagine ghosts or spirits of wind and snow playing there, calling and beckoning. But I mustn’t listen, mustn’t let them seduce me with their wild song. My mother didn’t want me to marry William. She said he reminded her of my father. That was the first time in a long while that she spoke of him. She said the forest got into his blood and lured him away. I pull the door shut and latch it securely.

My face is numb and my fingers nearly frozen. I drag the rocking chair close to the stove and wrap a blanket around myself. Start to rock, stroking my belly and crooning to the baby, an old Russian lullaby that my grandmother taught me. I don’t remember all the words and know the meaning only vaguely – bear cubs snuggled up with their mother, wolf pups safe in the den. She would hold me on her lap and sing it to me nights that my mother had to work late serving at a party at one of the big houses – doctors, politicians, lawyers. My mother was housekeeper to a lawyer for a while, before she met my stepfather. She didn’t go out to work after they married and I wondered sometimes whether she missed the parties. My mother wouldn’t like William’s homestead at all, though I think Grandmother would have been in her element here. It seems strange that such a woman could have my mother for a daughter. I wish Grandmother had lived long enough to see me married.

I rouse suddenly from a doze, sure that something is wrong. A sound woke me, but I don’t know what it was. All the candles have gone out, and it’s very quiet; a faint glow comes in through the windows. I get up to look out of the nearest one where frost has started to form again. I breathe on the glass, clear a space.

The full moon hangs in a coal-black sky scattered with stars, and moonlight gleams on snowdrifts, transforming them to silver. It’s a storybook landscape, a scene from one of the Russian fairy tales my grandmother used to tell. I almost expect a troika to come dashing over the fields or the Baba Yaga to cross the sky in her mortar and pestle, screeching and waving her broom, on the trail of Koshchey the Deathless, perhaps. But there’s no movement at all.

Then I hear a thump against the house. I can’t see William or the sleigh and horse through the window, but maybe he got lost in the storm and came from the wrong direction. What else could it be? I hurry across the room and fumble at the latch. Press against the door, but it won’t move. There’s an obstruction on the other side – a snowdrift maybe, but what if it’s William, collapsed there, hurt? I exert force.

Call through the crack. “William?” All I can hear is an odd snuffling noise. “Husband? Are you there?”

“No,” a hoarse voice whispers, “don’t open the door.”

It’s William’s voice, though he sounds as if he’s got a sore throat or a cold. So ignoring his words, I manage to get the door open enough to poke my head out. He’s huddled nearby in a snow bank, arms around his head.

“William, what are you doing?” I push a hand through and reach for him.

Between his elbows I glimpse eyes gleaming, but there’s a shadow over the rest of his face. Or is that hair? William’s beard grows awfully fast if he doesn’t shave regularly. Surely he hasn’t been gone long enough for this much hair, unless I’ve lost track of time. Are those sharp white teeth grinning in a misshapen mouth? This can’t be William. I am rigid, frozen to ice.

“Sorry, Anna,” William’s voice growls. “Tried to stay away, but got lonely for you. I know I should have told you about this before, but I wanted you so much. Shut the door now, leave me out here.”

Then he snarls and snaps at my still extended hand. My paralysis melts. I pull back. 

“Sorry,” he growls again. “These mood swings.”

I peer at my husband through a crack in the door. I’m probably still asleep, dreaming one of those tales of my grandmother’s. Werewolf. The word twists on my tongue, but I shut my lips on it. Then I put a finger into my mouth and press my teeth into it, hard. It hurts and I don’t wake up. Whether this is a dream or not, I can’t keep standing here in the cold.

For better, for worse, that’s what we said in the marriage ceremony. I’m sure, however, my mother and stepfather would say in cases like this I’m under no obligation. If a husband turns out to be radically different than you thought perhaps you should leave him, even with a baby coming. My mother and stepfather are a long way from here, though.

The first time I saw William he was leaning over the neighbour’s fence, wearing that big hat he likes to wear in the sunshine. Later he told me that he’d come east for the funeral of the aunt who raised him after his parents died. I remember that woman, a recluse who seldom ventured out of her yard. I caught a glimpse of her once, her face puffy and reddened. My mother said she had some kind of skin condition. The day I met William, I’d gone into the back yard because my mother was cleaning again, making a lot of noise and commotion. There was a patch of herbs in the corner under the trees that Grandmother had helped me plant, and I liked to crush a few of the aromatic leaves between my fingers or rub them on my skin.

“You’ve got an oak leaf in your hair,” William said. “Does that make you a dryad?”

He’d startled me, so that for a moment I just stared. Looking idiotic, I’m sure, though William said afterwards that to him I just seemed alive with light and life. He smiled at me out of the mysterious shadow of his hat, and I barely noticed the scars on his cheeks. I wanted some of his mystery for myself, a little adventure perhaps. Wanted out of the gloomy house and the gloomy life that my mother was making for herself.

William may be fine if I shut the door and leave him out there. He could sleep in the shed with the horse and wagon; there’s hay in there and I know he had a blanket with him. Though maybe the horse won’t like it. Will it be safe? I’ve been waiting for William all night.

I don’t know what might happen if I let him in. If this were truly one of those stories, he would bite me and I’d turn into a werewolf, too. It’s too crazy to believe. Still, I have to consider our child. I grew up without a father, and though my mother worked hard, and my grandmother loved me, I still miss him. I don’t want that to happen to this baby.

What comes to mind from those tales of my grandmother’s are silver bullets and wolfsbane. But I have no gun or silver bullet and even if I did, I don’t want to kill my husband. I haven’t seen wolfsbane in years; however, if we get through this night, perhaps I’ll look into getting a plant. There’s one other thing I remember suddenly. I push hard at the door again and it springs open.

For a moment I feel as if the world has tilted and I’m standing on the edge of a cliff. A false move and we’ll all go crashing down. He’s lying some distance away in a hollow of snow, face hidden, unaware of me. There is no wind and the night is silent as if holding its breath. The babe in my belly is still.

“Courage,” I hear my grandmother whisper.

William and I chose each other. Maybe we married in haste and there are things we need to talk about, but already our lives are intertwined the way the threads of a spider’s web join to make a whole. My grandmother would tell me to believe in what I know in my heart.

Stepping out into the crisp night, I take a deep breath of cold air. It’s like jumping into an icy lake after a steamy sauna. Invigorates you.

 “William,” I say. Loud and clear.

It’s the third time I’ve addressed him by his Christian name. I’m not sure if this will work, or if I’m supposed to say his name three times in a row, close together, but I can always try again. Will do whatever it takes. My husband raises his head.

“Anna?” he mumbles.

The moon blazes behind him, throwing his face into shadow and dazzling my eyes so that I can’t see his expression. The tension between us is a rope stretched tight. What will happen if it breaks? I take another deep breath. “You’ve been gone a long time,” I say. “Come in and get warm.”

William rubs a hand over his face. Lurches to his feet.