He had received the pins -- pure titanium, or so the doctors had told him -- courtesy of Murphy General, fifteen years ago, after Harmon had clipped the particularly springy edge of one tree's bough and skidded sidelong into another’s trunk. That had been in his off-trail days, and had been the event that ended them, even though he still liked to careen down the more informal of the paths, back away from the tourist slopes. When he did, he could at least momentarily convince himself that he was still young, blazing trails and nailing tails, as his cruder friends used to say. Well, there hadn't been much opportunity for the latter in a long time, but he could at least pretend to still do the first part. At the moment, however, he was just trying to keep his head from vibrating off his shoulders as he bent to make sure his skis were firmly attached to his boots.
He felt bad about not warning Dale, and knew the regret would grow sharper later on. The big guy had always done right by him, had understood and respected Harmon’s established relationship with the manager. But what, exactly, would Harmon have said by way of explanation? That the pins in his spine told him that something bad – gigantically, unfathomably bad – was coming? And that he had no idea exactly what it was? No, Dale would have followed protocol, because that was what it was valuable to have Dale around for, and the security head could have done nothing until he knew precisely the nature of the threat, what procedure to follow. So Harmon had decided that the only person he could save was himself.
People could call it cowardly and selfish if that suited them, but those two gals he tried to talk to in the restaurant had clinched it. That pale-skinned one, the one that didn't get immediately belligerent with him, reminded him so much of of Sara that he couldn't help it. It wasn't just the shape of her face, it was something in her eyes; he'd noticed it as they sat across the bar from him earlier in the evening. It was like looking at an old picture, but one that was moving, and talking, and laughing. He couldn't help but try to tell her, and yet she had turned him away.
It was the story of his life now. He was too old to be useful, in the eyes of everyone around him. He wasn’t able to trick himself into thinking that anyone he talked to in the bar thought he was more than just an addled old pro trying to hang onto his last scraps of glory and youth.
In his spare time at the lodge, Harmon liked to read vampire novels. It wasn’t because of the nubile virgins succumbing to the ancient man who came to them in the middle of the night, although he knew that’s what everyone who caught him with one would think. No, Harmon consumed the stories compulsively for something else entirely, the singular idea hidden behind the words that made the vampire the saddest monster there was. They were immortal, timeless, just as Harmon secretly felt he was too.
The best vampire novels addressed this; how the true curse of being a vampire is not the forced bloodletting, but the reality of staying eternally alive. Creatures like him had no choice but to stick around, to see all their mortal friends and loved ones wither and die, the world around them evolving into something new, alien and incomprehensible while they stayed the same. That’s what Harmon felt every day, whenever he wandered into the bar – as he inevitably did, despite his best intentions – and started unspooling his tales of daring and adventure to the kids (and even when they were in their forties, Harmon thought of them as kids).
That was how you thought when you were as incredibly ancient as he. Ancient enough to see the world he had grown up in, and everyone in it, fall away like autumn leaves. Only he was left hanging onto the branch, tenaciously clinging in the breeze. Until tonight, that was. Tonight, he was letting himself blow away, and it hurt.
The night wind bit his cheeks as he started down, that familiar continuous slap that he had once lived for. He didn’t know exactly what he was running from, but he felt as if he was deserting everyone left back in the lodge. Just walking out forever, with his dinner still warm on the table. He tried to tell himself that the wetness of his cheeks was because of the wind. It was far from the first time in his life he'd had to convince himself of this.
When his pins started singing to him -- and right now they were fixing to turn into a full-blown choir -- he wondered if colliding with that tree all those years ago had done something more than physical to him. What he mused to himself in his weakest moments was horrifying; that maybe it had knocked his soul right out of his body. Perhaps his ineffable essence had kept right on cruising down the mountain and was lightyears away over the hills now, leaving his aging body behind to stagnate in a fog of easy downhill runs and liquor hazes before the lodge’s stone fireplace. No matter how the snow bunnies oohed and ahhed, he never really felt like those stories were really his anymore. They seemed like someone else's victories.
Right now, though, on this midnight run, he was starting to feel the old thrill, remembering how the mountain had always provided for him. She was alive tonight, just as alive as he felt, for the first time in a long time. Maybe that was why he hadn’t told Dale (or anyone at all) of his premonition. Some part of him, long ossified, knew that it was being shaken into wakefulness, and didn't want to spoil the adventure by calling in the cavalry. This knowledge made the air's bite harder, the crunching of snow under his skis crisper. And always that premonitory feeling behind it all, like a gigantic predatory bird circling high above.
He had started out racing down the auxiliary slope that ran alongside the service road into town, which appeared as a warm blanket of lights spreading out before him as he lowered himself down to its level. But now he veered away from it, heading instead for the tree line. It was time to go back into the woods, if for no other reason that his pins were making his muscles tense, prepping him for the moment when unknown talons would sink into the back of his neck and yank him off the ground.
He skirted the edge, not quite daring to enter yet. Gravity was such a tease; she kept pulling him downhill, ever closer to her deep, hidden heart, only to throw the entire world in his way every time. He came close enough to a bough -- stuck out like a swiping hand -- to remind him of his long-ago injury. He swerved away from the edge of the forest, then swept back just as quickly. She wasn't going to deny him, not on this night. Not when he had some unnamed doom pressing down on his back, and a ringing in his bones that was sounding more and more like an alarm clock, waking up an old, sleeping hero.
He didn’t know it, but he was going downhill faster than he had in more than two dozen years.
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