Free Leave the Living by Joe Hart

before taking another run at the frozen landscape. Where the accumulation tapered off, the wind had picked up its slack, gusting and cutting around the sides of the building while it sung a lonesome tune in the cracks with its single vocal cord. Darkness was almost full, and only the western tree line glowed faintly with the sun’s last clutches at the day. He moved throughout the house, shutting off the various lights and making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. His earlier plans of staying the night here had been banished with the safe’s clicking dial, though now, as he was readying to leave, the memory seemed even more dreamlike, surreal, and utterly impossible. Safes didn’t open themselves. His father had probably left it open by accident, and the clicking may have been a dream hangover, a phantom noise and image following him into the waking world. The thought eased his anxiety, and he flipped the last light off, darkening the house completely.
    Locking the door behind him, he stepped into the storm’s embrace. The wind cut through his jacket and bit his face as he waded through the gathered snow on the porch. The harsh breeze had sculpted the powder into a smooth frosting that covered everything. His earlier tracks were long gone, wiped clean by the insistent weather. He hurried through the drifts and reached the SUV, its wide boxy form reassuring in its promise to take him away from the worries his mind continued to prod at like a tongue seeking out the slot of a missing tooth. He climbed inside and slammed the door shut, cutting off the wind’s icy fingers, and sat for a moment in the dark. The house was sinking into shadow, its definition failing with the falling night. He tried to make out the upstairs window, the one that had looked like it held a face when he’d first arrived, but it was lost to him. Probably better since there was no telling what his mind would do with the assistance of darkness. Mick adjusted himself in the seat and reached to the ignition to start the vehicle.
    The keys were gone.

 
     
     
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    He fumbled for a moment, sure he’d simply missed where they hung, but his fingers slid along the steering column and finally found the key slot, empty and cold. He leaned over, visually confirming what his touch had already told him. Unwilling to wait for the panic rising within him to flood his mind, he opened the door and climbed back out, hunching down close to the driver’s foot space. He ran his hands across the moist carpet, waiting for the jangle of the keys to announce their presence. There was nothing. He searched again, looking everywhere he could think of, in the console, on the opposite seat, on the dash, the entire time ignoring the specific memory of leaving them hanging from the ignition. The wind rocked the Tahoe on its springs, and the light faded further until an amethyst hue coated the sky and bled into black toward the east.
    Mick sat unmoving in the driver’s seat. He’d already searched his coat pockets, but he did it again, just so his hands had something to do. They must be inside the house. He’d brought them in only thinking that he’d left them in the car and set them down somewhere. Or you dropped them in the drifts. The thought of the keys being buried beneath the blowing snow came and went as he pushed it away along with the fresh panic it brought. Or something doesn’t want you to leave.
    “They’re inside,” he said to the interior of the SUV, cutting off the voice in his mind before climbing out again.
    The warmth of the house was a welcome embrace, and a cyclone of snow flurries entered with him, pirouetting once before falling to the rug as he shut the door. The keys weren’t in the entryway, and when he scanned the kitchen counters, the bright yellow tag attached to the ring was nowhere in sight. He made his way through the house, pausing to rifle papers in the office before descending to the basement. The fire