Neither option was great, but her bank account was low at the moment, so she was saving up until she could either get the water heater fixed or buy a new one—which was going to cost and arm and a leg, Christine was sure. So for now, it was either the freezing shower or the sponge bath and then she dried off in front of the fireplace.
Speaking of which, she was running low on wood again, though, Christine mused as she kicked her way through an especially high drift. She hoped the snow would melt enough for her to chop some—even though she was getting kind of old for the task. It was one of the chores she’d been happy to delegate to her son Steven when he got old enough to do it. He had come back home every holiday while he was in college and chopped wood for her so she was all stocked up for the winter. But since her son had moved out of state, she hardly ever got to see him and the chore was on her shoulders again.
“My tired, middle-aged shoulders,” Christine muttered to herself, pushing a sheaf of long brown hair out of her eyes and tucking it back into her ski cap. She was starting to go a bit gray in places—not surprising considering her time of life, she thought. She was pretty sure that menopause was just around the corner—if it hadn’t caught up with her already. That was probably why she was feeling so blue and lonely lately. This was her first Winter all alone in the cabin and to be honest, it had been more isolating than she’d thought it would be.
“Just hormones making me blue,” Christine muttered to herself. “Just—crap!”
She suddenly had to throw herself to the side as an enormous jacked-up pickup truck tore up the side of the hill. It had a dually—meaning there were four tires instead of two on its extra wide back end—all of them with chains on for traction. The extra power of the enormous motor as it roared past her propelled the huge vehicle up the side of the mountain with ease—which was something her ancient Camry couldn’t quite manage.
“Get out of the way, you fat old bitch!” a male voice shouted, followed by a burst of raucous laughter.
“Asshole!” Christine shouted back—the damn thing had nearly hit her! But the truck didn’t stop, which was probably a good thing. If it had, Christine knew she wouldn’t have felt safe with the driver, who was one of her new neighbors.
Her kids worried about her being “way out in the back of beyond” alone but they would worry even more if they knew about the people who had moved in up the hill, Christine reflected. It was a set of three brothers—the Fensters—who were now occupying a rusty old trailer that was set even further back in the woods than Christine’s cabin.
Mike was the oldest and the leader—he had a shaved skull and a meth-head’s crazy, snaggle-toothed smile. Also, he was covered in crude tattoos that looked like they might have been done in prison. A black Nazi swastika adorned his right cheek and “Devil Spawn” was inked across his forehead in bleeding red letters.
The next brother, Clancy, was a skinny little rooster of a man, who talked too fast to be understood, his eyes rolling crazily in his gaunt face. He was constantly jumping at shadows—clearly extremely paranoid.
The youngest brother was Dweebo—at least that was Christine had heard his brothers call him. He was both the biggest and the strongest looking of the three, with muscular arms almost always on display in the stained white wife-beater t-shirts he wore, no matter what the weather was like. He was also the stupidest—at least, if the way the other two ordered him around was any indication.
The three of them had taken possession of a plot of land behind her own that Christine hadn’t even known was for sale and the next day an extremely decrepit single wide trailer was moved into the spot on the ridge above her cabin. After that came the Pitbulls—three of them—staked out around the rusty trailer at all hours of the day and night, as though to guard it.
Having worked with animals for years, Christine knew that no creature is mean and bad tempered unless it’s taught to be that way. She wasn’t sure what the Fensters were doing to their Pitties, but it had to be bordering on abuse. She had gone up to check on them one day when she was off of work and the enormous jacked-up truck wasn’t in the rutted dirt driveway. The three dogs had nearly broken their necks trying to get off their chains and come at her.
It was frightening to see animals that had been turned so savage and Christine had reported her new neighbors to Animal Services twice—once for leaving the Pitties out in the punishing heat of the Virginia summer with no water or shelter and once when one of them got off its chain and chased Itchy up a tree and wouldn’t let him down.