Chapter 5 - The Glass Wilderness
Delirium arrived around midnight.
The storm transformed the world into a hall of mirrors. Caleb began to see lights that weren't there—warm yellow porch lamps glowing in the middle of snow-choked pine thickets, the sound of his mother calling his name over the howl of the wind. He saw his father standing at the edge of the road, holding out a hand, offering a ride home.
“It’s okay to rest, Caleb,” the hallucination whispered. “Just lie down in the snow. It’s warm down here.”
Caleb stopped. The snow did look warm. It looked like a soft feather bed, inviting and quiet. His knees buckled, bringing him down to the snow once more—fall seventeen. The impact barely registered. The cold had turned his skin completely numb; the pain was gone, replaced by an overwhelming, heavy drowsiness.
He laid his cheek against the snow. It would be so easy. Just five minutes of sleep.
Then, a tiny, shivering gasp sounded right next to his ear. Maisie’s fingers twitched against his chest.
Caleb’s eyes snapped open. The warm lights vanished, leaving only the brutal, frozen dark.
May you like
If he slept, Maisie slept forever.
“No,” Caleb growled, a sound born of pure, stubborn defiance. He plunged his raw hands deep into the snowpack, digging his fingernails into the frozen dirt beneath. He screamed into the storm—a raw, wordless roar of survival—and forced his broken body to stand for the eighteenth time.
