Damp Playing Cards

The community hall smelled like wet dust and old coffee. It always smelled like that, but today the dampness was aggressive. Spring was finally breaking through the ice. Technically, it had been spring for three weeks, but the weather only just got the memo. Outside the massive, poorly insulated windows, the snow was giving up. It melted in thick, wet sheets, sliding off the aluminum roof with a heavy, wet slap against the mud below. Drip. Drip. Drip. The sound was relentless.

I sat in a rusted metal folding chair, staring at the blank space on the painted cinderblock wall. A rectangle of slightly cleaner beige paint marked the spot where the town charter used to hang. They took it down five years ago to get it reframed and just never brought it back. That was how things worked around here. Things left and did not return. The room was full of empty spaces like that. The corner where the vending machine used to hum. The dark scuff marks on the linoleum where the heavy oak desk used to sit. The place was hollowed out, stripped down to the bare minimum required to still call it a room.

Steve sat across from me, shuffling a deck of cards. The cards were swollen with humidity. They had been sitting in the drawer of the community kitchen for god knows how long. They were thick, soft, and completely devoid of any snap. When he shuffled them, they sounded like pieces of wet cardboard dragging against each other.

"These are garbage," Steve said. He pushed his thumb into the deck, trying to force a bridge. The cards just clumped together and fell onto the cheap plastic of the folding table in a sad, messy pile.

"Just deal," Jenna said. She was slumped in the chair to my left, staring at her phone. The screen was heavily cracked, a spiderweb of shattered glass originating from the bottom left corner. The backlight illuminated her face in harsh, blue tones. She looked tired. We all looked tired.

Old Man Barrett sat on my right. He was drinking black coffee from a styrofoam cup. His hands shook slightly, sending tiny ripples across the dark surface of the liquid. He did not say anything. He rarely did these days. He just watched the cards fall.

Steve sighed, abandoning the shuffle. He started dealing. The cards stuck to his fingers. He had to peel them apart one by one, tossing them across the table. They landed with dull, heavy thuds.

"What are we even playing?" I asked. My voice sounded flat in the large, empty room.

"Spades," Steve said. "Or whatever. Doesn't matter. Just something to look at besides the wall."

I picked up my hand. The cards felt gross. They were damp, the edges frayed and separating into layers of dirty paper. The printed faces were faded, the red suits looking more like dried rust than actual color. I sorted my hand by suit out of habit, not really paying attention to the numbers.

Outside, the slush slid off the roof again. A huge chunk of wet ice hit the ground, followed by a rush of muddy water. The ground was saturated. The topsoil was washing away, running down the hill in thick, brown streams. The bright spring sunlight hit the windowpane, cutting a harsh, dusty angle across the table. It was a beautiful day outside. Blue skies. Green buds pushing through the dead grass. It felt like a sick joke compared to the inside of the hall.

"Vibes are hella morbid tonight," Jenna said. She did not look up from her phone.

"It is just the weather," Steve said. "The thaw always makes people weird."

"No," Jenna said. She finally put her phone down, sliding it across the table. "It is not just the weather. It is the date."

Nobody said anything. We all knew what the date was. It was the ten-year anniversary. 2016. The blizzard. The one that took down the grid for two weeks. The one that buried the town under eight feet of snow. The one that took Toby. And Margaret. And David. And Chloe.

"Play your cards," Barrett said quietly. His voice was gravelly, thick with disuse.

Jenna rolled her eyes. She picked up her hand. She stared at it for a long time. Her expression did not change at first, but her posture did. The bored, slumped curve of her spine suddenly went rigid. Her shoulders tightened. The blue light from her phone screen reflected in her eyes, but her pupils were blown wide.

"What is this?" she asked. Her voice was thin. The ironic detachment was gone.

"What is what?" Steve asked.

Jenna threw a card onto the center of the table. It landed face up.

It was not a spade. It was not a club, or a diamond, or a heart. It was a blank white card. The surface was slightly textured, like heavy watercolor paper. Written across the center, in messy, rushed black sharpie, was a single word.

A name.

Toby.

My stomach turned over. I felt a sudden, sharp cold at the base of my neck. The handwriting was unmistakable. It was Toby's exact scrawl. The way he always forgot to cross the 'T' until the very end, dragging the line back across the letter.

"Is this a joke?" Jenna asked. She looked at Steve. Her hands were shaking violently now. "Did you do this?"

"No," Steve said. He dropped his remaining cards on the table. He leaned back, putting distance between himself and the table. "I swear to god, Jenna, no. I just pulled the deck from the drawer."

"Then why does it have my brother's name on it?" she demanded. Her voice cracked. "Why does it have his handwriting?"

"I do not know," Steve said. He was breathing fast.

I looked at the card. The ink looked fresh. It caught the harsh spring sunlight, gleaming slightly wet. I felt sick. My chest felt tight, the air in my lungs suddenly heavy and stale.

Barrett reached out slowly. His trembling hand hovered over his own dealt cards. He flipped the top one over.

Blank white. Black sharpie.

Margaret.

Barrett let out a sound that was half-gasp, half-sob. He pulled his hand back as if the paper had burned him.

"Stop," I said. My voice sounded very far away. "Do not turn any more over."

Steve ignored me. He reached for his hand, his fingers clumsy and thick. He flipped a card.

David.

I looked down at my own hand. The damp, frayed edges of the playing cards had changed. They were smooth now. Stiff. I did not want to look, but my hands moved on their own. I turned the top card over.

Chloe.

The second my eyes registered the letters, the room vanished.

It did not fade out. It did not blur. It was just gone.

The temperature dropped instantly. The smell of wet dust and coffee was replaced by the sharp, metallic sting of ozone and freezing wind. My vision went entirely white. Cognitive static filled my brain, a loud, rushing roar that drowned out everything else.

I was not in the community hall. I was standing on the porch of Chloe's house. It was 2016. The wind was screaming. It was not a howl; it was a mechanical, industrial drone. Like a jet engine stuck on the runway. The snow was falling so fast and so hard it looked like a solid wall of static.

My face was freezing. I could feel the ice forming on my eyelashes. My lungs burned with every breath. I was wearing my heavy winter coat, but it did absolutely nothing. The cold bypassed the fabric entirely, sinking directly into my bones.

"Chloe!" I screamed. My throat tore with the effort, but the sound was instantly swallowed by the wind.

I remembered this moment. I remembered it in my muscles, in my nervous system. This was the moment she walked out to check the generator in the shed. The moment the rope guideline snapped.

I stepped off the porch. The snow was up to my waist. It was heavy, packed tight by the wind. I tried to push through it, but it was like wading through wet concrete. My boots slipped on the ice beneath the surface. I fell forward, plunging my hands into the freezing drift. The cold bit into my skin, numbing my fingers in seconds.

"Chloe!"

I was completely blind in the whiteout. I could not see the shed. I could not see the house behind me. I was completely unmoored, floating in a violent, freezing void. Panic seized my chest. It was a physical weight, pressing down on my ribs. I could not breathe. I was drowning in the air.

I crawled forward. My knees hit something hard. Wood. The side of the shed. I dragged myself up, my frozen fingers scraping against the rough grain of the door. I pulled it open.

The shed was dark. The smell of gasoline and cold metal hit my nose. The generator was dead.

Chloe was not there.

The realization hit me like a physical blow. My stomach bottomed out. The nausea was overwhelming. She was gone. She missed the shed. She was out there in the white.

I turned back to the storm. The wind hit me in the face, knocking me backward. I tried to scream her name again, but my jaw was locked with the cold. I was freezing to death. I could feel my blood slowing down. The panic started to fade, replaced by a terrifying, heavy lethargy. I just wanted to lie down in the snow. Just for a minute.

Then, I slammed back into my body.

I hit the floor of the community hall hard. My chair clattered away, bouncing off the linoleum. I was gasping for air, my lungs expanding violently. I was sweating. My clothes stuck to my skin. The room was bright, the spring sun blinding me for a second.

I scrambled backward, pushing myself away from the table. My heart was hammering against my ribs, beating so fast it felt like a continuous vibration.

I looked at the table.

Jenna was on the floor too. She was curled into a tight ball, her hands pressed over her ears, breathing in short, ragged bursts. Her cracked phone lay abandoned near her foot.

Steve was still in his chair, but he was gripping the edge of the table so hard his knuckles were entirely white. He was staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched, tears streaming silently down his face.

Barrett had not moved, but his eyes were vacant. He was muttering under his breath, repeating the same phrase over and over. "The ice on the road. The ice on the road. The ice on the road."

We had all gone back.

The cards were still on the table. The blank white faces staring up at us. Toby. Margaret. David. Chloe.

"What was that?" Jenna whispered. She did not uncurl. She just peeked out from between her arms. "What did you do to us?"

"I did not do anything," Steve choked out. He let go of the table. His hands were shaking worse than Barrett's now. He wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. "I swear. I just dealt the cards."

"I felt it," I said. I pushed myself up into a sitting position against the cinderblock wall. My legs refused to hold my weight. "I was there. I was in the storm. I felt the cold."

"I saw Toby," Jenna sobbed. "He was arguing with me. About the keys. I told him not to drive. I told him. He took them anyway. I watched him walk out the door. I had to watch it again."

"The deck," Steve said. He stared at the pile of damp cards still sitting in the center of the table. The undealt portion. "It is the deck."

He stood up. His chair scraped loudly against the floor. He leaned over the table and grabbed the stack of undealt cards. He did not look at the faces. He just grabbed the whole damp, clumped mass of them.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I am burning them," Steve said. His voice was dead. Flat. All the emotion had drained out of it, leaving nothing but absolute exhaustion.

He walked across the hall toward the old cast-iron stove in the corner. We called it the chili pot stove. It was ancient, hooked up to a gas line that probably violated a dozen safety codes. It was the only source of heat in the building, and it was currently running, kicking out a faint, metallic warmth.

I forced myself to stand. My legs were numb. I leaned against the wall and watched him. Jenna stayed on the floor. Barrett kept muttering.

Steve grabbed the iron handle of the stove door. He pulled it open. The smell of hot gas and soot spilled into the room. Inside, the blue and orange flames licked against the rusty interior.

He threw the entire deck inside.

He slammed the iron door shut.

We waited.

I listened to the drip, drip, drip of the melting snow outside. The sun was starting to shift, the bright light moving across the floor, creeping toward the stove.

Five minutes passed. Then ten.

Steve stood in front of the stove the whole time, his hands on his hips, watching the metal casing.

"Are they gone?" Jenna asked. She finally sat up, leaning against the leg of the folding table.

Steve did not answer. He reached out and grabbed the handle. He pulled the door open again.

I walked over to him, my boots heavy on the linoleum. I looked inside the stove.

The flames were roaring. The heat was intense, drying out my eyes instantly.

But the cards were not burning.

They sat right in the middle of the fire. The flames wrapped completely around them, washing over the cardboard, but they did not catch. They did not blacken. They did not curl at the edges. They just sat there, bright white in the center of the fire, completely untouched.

I could see the sharpie ink on the top card through the flames.

Sarah.

Another name. Another missing person.

Steve stared at the fire. He let out a short, hollow laugh. It was a terrible sound. It was the sound of someone whose brain had simply refused to process any more impossible information.

"Right," Steve said. He closed the door. He turned the latch.

He walked back to the table and sat down.

I looked at the stove for a long moment, then walked back to my spot. I picked up my chair, righted it, and sat down.

We sat in silence.

The light in the room began to fade. The bright, harsh spring sun dipped behind the tree line, leaving the hall in deep, melancholy shadows. The corners of the room grew dark. The empty spaces where things used to be felt heavier now. The missing charter. The missing desk. The missing people.

Outside, the thaw continued. The water rushed down the hill, cutting deep channels into the earth. The topsoil was giving way entirely. The mud slid down the embankment near the window, a slow, heavy collapse of earth and dead roots.

I watched the mud slide. I did not want to look at the table. I did not want to look at the cards we had already flipped over.

I knew what this was. We all did. We were just too burnt out to scream about it anymore. You spend ten years carrying around a ghost, you do not get surprised when it finally pulls up a chair.

The cards were not magic. They were just heavy. They were saturated with everything we had refused to say out loud for a decade. The town never found the bodies. The snow melted that spring, but the earth had swallowed them up. We held funerals with empty caskets. We put up plaques. We moved on, but we never really moved away. We just sat in this damp hall, playing terrible games with terrible cards, waiting for something to happen.

Now it was happening.

I looked at Barrett. He had stopped muttering. He was looking at the card with Margaret's name on it. He reached out and touched it gently, the way you would touch a face.

Jenna was staring at Toby's card. She wasn't crying anymore. She just looked incredibly tired.

"Are we supposed to keep playing?" she asked quietly.

"I don't think we have a choice," Steve said. He looked at the stove, then back at the table. "They want to finish the game."

I looked out the window again. The mud was really moving now. A large chunk of the embankment gave way, sliding down toward the parking lot in a wet, heavy slump. The earth tore open, exposing the dark, wet soil underneath.

As the mud slid away in thick wet sheets, it revealed the rusted buckles of ten-year-old snow boots.