My mouth and hands were sticky, covered in wet sugar. Thelma just squatted down to dab at my mouth with the hem of her apron and shook her head at me.

  “That’s enough Tom, I probably should have stopped ya long afore now. You git on home now.” She shooed me with a sweep of her hands.

  Mrs. Thelma always had a cookie for a hungry kid who came around back of the tavern her husband owned.

  That's who I stood over now. Mrs. Thelma lay dead, hair frozen to the rock in her own blood. We all stood around her shivering. If I’d had any food in my stomach surely I would have wretched it up. Instead I stood looking down at her and tasting bile.

  From where we were at the bottom of the slide we could all see the snow blowing sideways. Every once in a while a gust would carry snowflakes and bitter cold in here and we’d all gasp.

  “We have to get inside by a fire. We can’t make it up to our ridge in this.” John said softly and bowed his head.

  I looked back at him and Mother Deborah. She stood shivering, only Silas’s coat between her and the frigid winds. Barefoot.

  “We can go to the church, room enough for everybody.” Ruth nodded to everyone solemnly and she and Ike headed out.

  It wrenched me to leave Mrs. Thelma behind, but I knew she’d understand.

  Several of the poorer folk crossed to their nearby homes just as, if not closer than the A.M.E church. They left without preamble. The blizzard left no space for quiet farewells between people who had endured the unspeakable together.

  We had just crossed the threshold of the mine and were plowing our way through deep snow when I stumbled on something heavy beneath a drift. It felt like stone, and I remember grinding my teeth at the fool who’d left it right in the path. I swept snow off the top and a human hand emerged.

  I leapt back and screamed.

  There was another body buried under there. The wind kept uncovering more of it after that, little by little. A man, by the size, a blue coat. I looked away, still stunned in the snow.

  Then I saw them.

  Out beyond the mouth of the mine, several other mounds of the same shape. People dead and left to the snow. Tears stung my eyes and then froze as they hit my dirty beard. We had to move on. No one spoke, but I saw the hollow looks in everyone’s eyes.

  John picked up Mother Deborah after a few more steps. Her feet were turning blue in the snow. My right arm was usable again, but it was weak and numb. Silas came along behind still limping a bit. The rest ahead of us as we trudged.

  Ruth was right, the church wasn’t far. Not long after we passed by the mine office, which was dark with no chimney smoke, the church came into view. I knew roughly where it was. The wooden steeple was visible on my way to my labors in the mine. In this blizzard I fear I would have wandered and froze without a guide.

  The church’s sign out front was encased in snow like cake frosting, and so I couldn’t read it. I was sharply aware then that I’d never before even learned the name of this chapel that was to be our rescue.

  In a matter of moments we were inside and shivering. It was no warmer in the little log chapel, but it blocked the wind. Ike immediately crossed to the combination stove behind the pulpit and began loading it. By the time Pastor Ruth returned with blankets from the adjoining parsonage the rest of us were huddled about the stove warming our hands.

  “This is a mid-winter blizzard. What’s it doing here in October?” Esther asked the air as she rubbed her hands together.

  Pastor Ruth put a stiff quilt around my shoulders. I looked up and took in our small circle. Just shy of a dozen: myself, Ike, Ruth, Silas, John, Deborah, Esther, Seamus, Martha, Mato, and Jack. We were crammed around the stove. We barely all fit.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “How many made it? Including those as split off to go to their own homes?” Jack asked without taking his eyes from the stove door.

  “I think ‘bout 16 or so.” Ike said.

  “There’s more outside.” I said quietly.

  Ruth looked up sharply.

  “I mean more dead.”

  “We all saw that Tom.” Silas acknowledged.

  “It’s not sense. The whole town worked through the night on that slide, then we go in and they just kill each other instead of clearing it?” Pastor Ruth pulled her own quilt tighter about her shoulders.

  My whole body felt like pins and needles pricking at me. That was better than my fingers and toes turning black. I felt a wet drip.

  “Damn it!”

  Everyone startled at my raised voice.

  “Sorry. Its just my arms bleeding all over your quilt Pastor Ruth.”

  “Don’t worry about that now Tom. Best I can do is find you a bandage, I’m too worn out to heal you with that… power…” Ruth rose stiffly.

  Esther rose with her. “I know where everything is. Seamus? Come help me with the heavy pots so Uncle Ike can focus on that fire. We need to get some grits going before we all starve. I’ll see if theres some coffee in the pantry too.”

  Seamus rose with them.

  Silence clung. Popping sounds came from within the stove and without as the fire ate through the fuel and the chapel shifted as heat slowly seeped into it. Deborah sat nearly fully swaddled. John had his arm about her keeping her upright. I felt my eyes widen in surprise. Those long black teeth had retracted at least enough to be fully hidden behind her closed lips.

  Ruth returned and passed out strips of an old sheet for bandages. Silas helped me bandage my arm with several strips. The cuts from the ice weren’t especially deep, but they were jagged and the whitish cloths soon turned red.

  “I’m just going to say it. You said you can’t use that power, or some such like that Ruth. What exactly do you mean by that? We’ve all seen a thing or two, but I for one would have it plain.” Jack surveyed the circle about the stove.

  No one spoke for several moments. The ring of heavy wooden spoon on cast iron came rhythmically from the kitchen.

  “Well, its that stuff, that healing I can do. To tell the truth part of me don’t like it. I can tell it hurts. Hurts the people even as it heals’em. I don’t understand it.” Ruth shook her head.

  “Ruth ain’t the only one that’s got it, and we all know that.” Martha stated flatly.

  The scents of coffee, grits, and melting butter floated in from the kitchen. They wove together and sent my stomach rumbling audibly.

  Jack looked over at the sound and cocked an eyebrow as he fixed me with a stare. “You didn’t just shoot those things… those Charmers, Tom, I saw the way you froze that one.”

  “Charmer. Its one thing, that eye and whatever mind is behind it controlling those things like arms.” I corrected.

  Silas nodded. “Well, you fixed it Tom. Fixed that whole thing with the eye and all, and saved me. That much weight falling would kill anything."

  “Maybe.” I huddled up in my blanket.

  Ike fixed me with a gaze.

  “Ya’ll come in here and get something warm.” Esther called from the kitchen.

  In the end, most of us hobbled in and loaded up on grits and coffee. We had to bring some back in for Deborah and Mato. We all worried Mato had caught a cold out in the blizzard. He was under strict orders to stay by the stove and wrapped in a blanket. He protested grumpily, but went to sleep in moments.

  My mind drifted then to someone who wasn’t there. Edna. William had peeled off toward home through the snow carrying his wife in his arms. I couldn’t say she woke all the way up when we left them, but I remembered her eyes fluttering open sometimes and that she was able to chew a little. I wondered if she would ever be whole again even if Ruth could heal her.

  In spite of everything, the food did lift my spirits. Then I reproved myself for being cheered while those townsfolk lay out there dead. We had all quieted to eat, though the earlier talk of powers hung unresolved.

  I took a big swig of hot coffee and worked a ball of grits down my throat.

  “Someone killed Mrs. Thelma on purpose. I’d imagine you gotta get close and have someone hold still to put a bullet right between the eyes like that. Unless whoever did its a much better shot than me.”

  I clenched my jaw and set the bowl in front of me. Suddenly I was no longer hungry.

  “And those others. Something like a dozen dead.” Ike called over his shoulder while adding more wood to the stove.

  “We may have power inside us now. Some of us, but it don’t change that evil can happen right behind us. I never thought folks in Arno would come to killing each other. It was getting a little rough in the mouth of the mine as we went in, but never that…” Pastor Ruth slowly shook her head back and forth. She too had set her food down.

  “There’s not much a white man with a gun won’t do when he’s afraid. We learned this lesson long ago.” Deborah broke her silence for the first time. Her eyes were still all white and she gazed unfocused in the direction of the stove.

  Belatedly I realized everyone had turned from her to me. My gaze traveled down to my Colt at my side. I felt my cheeks warm.

  “I can’t say I disagree.” I mumbled.

  “What I want to know is,” Jack surveyed the room holding each set of eyes for a moment, “why some of ya’ll got power and the rest of us didn’t?”

  His question landed heavy. We all looked at each other. Some eyes narrowed in a way they hadn’t since before we discovered Jack’s still.

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