by Stone, Kyla
Who else would stop in the middle of nowhere? Waiting for something. Searching for something—for someone.
A muffled squeak above her. A sound she couldn’t place for a moment. The window rolling down. Then a terrible click, click, click. The scratch of the strike wheel. The drifting scent of cigarette smoke stinging her nostrils.
Not just any cigarette smoke. The distinctive, sweetly sickening smell of clove.
The familiar smell on his clothes. His thick fingers closing over her mouth.
The click, click, click of his Zippo lighter, snapping the lid open and closed, open and closed, a repetitive, habitual gesture like other people cracked their knuckles.
It was him.
An electric shock of fear shot through her. A wild bird’s wings beat frantically against the cage of her ribs.
Her vision went dim. If he opened the door and got out of the car, she was dead. He’ll catch you, he’ll kill you. It’s over, it’s over, it’s over. You got so close, but now it’s all over...
The blank terror came, the blackness closing over her mind and she was fading, fading, fading. She went away inside her head.
She came back. Didn’t know how much time had passed, seconds or minutes. She was freezing cold. Face wet with snow and tears and snot, her heart still a trembling thing inside her chest.
Lying on her side, her left arm stuck beneath her ribs, knees pushed up to her belly. The smell of ice and pine needles and dirt strong in her raw, irritated nostrils.
And something else. The stink of car exhaust.
The truck.
She blinked. Everything was black. The blindfold had slipped down beneath her sunglasses. With trembling fingers, she raised her right hand and scrunched up the fabric.
The white world returned. Hardpacked snow inches from her face, the rise of the snowbank, her hunched knees and the skis folded one over the over. Gray sky above her, the naked branches spreading like claws.
It came back to her in bits and starts. The sound of the engine. The panic. The click, click, click that twisted her stomach in revulsion and horror.
He was still there. Still right above her.
She waited, trembling and shaking, her mind screaming inside her skull. Not breathing. Blood a roar in her ears.
Her right hand reached for the kitchen knife tied to her paracord belt. I won’t go back. I’d rather die than go back…
The truck shifted into drive. The wheels spat snow and gravel and dirt as the vehicle rolled slowly down the road. The growl of the engine slowly faded into silence.
Hannah didn’t move for a long, long time. She didn’t know how long. She drifted in swells of fear and pain and grief and terror. Her thoughts frenzied and incoherent, her body rigid and freezing and far, far away.
Only one clear thought churned in her brain.
This is only the beginning.
13
Hannah
Day One
Dusk blanketed everything in dim light, the shadows lengthening and deepening, taking on strange unfamiliar shapes that shifted and prowled and skulked like demons, like monsters.
The snow fell heavier and heavier. The harsh and bitter wind battered her, stinging her cheeks, driving the snow down her scarf and the back of her neck.
Hannah constantly strained her ears for any sound over the swishing of her skis but heard nothing. Not a single car or sign of human life. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or even more terrified.
It had taken every ounce of courage within her to pry herself out of that snowy ditch, brush herself off, and clamber back onto the road. She’d just kept going, pushing one ski in front of the other, for as long as she could. It was the only thing she could think to do.
Except now night was coming. She couldn’t follow the road in the dark. And the temperature was dropping rapidly. Snow began to fall, thick and heavy.
She could barely feel her fingers inside her gloves. Her teeth were chattering. She couldn’t stop shivering, which was only using up her precious energy stores.
She should have found shelter over an hour ago. Everything would be that much more difficult in the dark and the snow. But her terror had driven her onward.
Hannah glided off the road into the woods, making sure wherever she built her shelter, it couldn’t be seen from the road. She scanned the trees on either side of her, searching for a good spot.
After a few minutes, she spotted a huge felled pine lying parallel to the road about twenty-five yards into the tree line. She paused for a moment, staring at it, considering.
Hardly any snow had fallen beneath it. The log itself was wider than her arms could stretch around, and would provide a break from the wind and snow.
It’d been years since she’d gone winter camping with her father and brothers. Another lifetime ago. Another Hannah had done those things with such confidence and expertise, her laughter ringing in the cold air.
Not her. Not this Hannah—whatever broken, scared, cowering thing she’d become.
But it was this Hannah who’d have to act now. Who’d have to remember if she wanted to stay alive in this beautiful but inhospitable wilderness.
And she did. It was the one thing she clung to without doubt or hesitation. She wanted to live. Needed to live.
She blinked and forced herself to focus on the log again. This was it. She wouldn’t find anything better. It would have to work. She’d make it work.
She unsnapped her ski boots, stepped out of the skis, and gathered them into her arms along with the pole. She trudged awkwardly deeper into the woods.
It was hard going at first, her boots sinking into shin-deep snow drifts. She almost fell twice. Once she’d reached the fallen pine tree, she leaned her ski equipment against the log and searched for a good place to set up.
Several yards down, a cluster of towering pines growing near the fallen log offered some shelter from the wind and falling snow. The log lay a few feet off the ground here. Very little snow lay beneath it.
She used the axe to chop off thin branches covered in brown pine needles and placed them beneath the log. The branches and needles were mostly dry, protected by the pine canopy above.
She was lucky. The pine branches would soften the ground and keep some of the cold from leaching through. It was important not to lose body warmth to the freezing ground.
Using the tarp, she set up a makeshift tent over the log to protect her from falling snow. She slipped the lower half of the tarp beneath the log over the pine needles. She secured it with paracord tied to a couple of branches.
She pulled off her pack, removed the sleeping bag, and stretched it out over the bottom layer of the tarp. For better insulation, she found several long, thick pine boughs and layered and packed them across the back of the tarp and along the sides of the front.
On second thought, she went back for more and covered the sides of the tarp as best she could to camouflage it. The tarp itself was brown and should blend into the forest. At least, she hoped it would.
By the time it was fully dark, she’d made a decent shelter for herself.
Now for a fire. The knowledge came back to her in fits and starts. Things she hadn’t thought of in years but had done a hundred times. It came slow and halting, but it came.
She’d known once how to take care of herself. She could figure it out again.
She lowered the tarp ‘door’ of her shelter and shuffled along the fallen tree to the crown. Dozens of twigs and dead boughs littered the ground. After gathering a large armful of different sizes—pencil and finger-width, she headed back to the shelter.
She cleared a small area of snow and dug a shallow pit with her axe, shaping snow walls in a C-shape to block the wind. She set up her kindling.
Her thoughts were slow, her hands stiff. The cold stung her cheeks and forehead, tunneled its way between her gloves and her coat sleeves, snuck chilled fingers between the folds of her scarf.
She dug one of the lighters out of a side pocket, but
with a sinking stomach, she realized that she didn’t have anything for tinder. Panic rising, she searched the backpack for anything useful.
She needed a fire. It wasn’t optional.
Her gaze snagged on the bright red bag of Doritos. Her father had used them once in a pinch. The chemicals, powdered flavors, and oil in the chips would burn for several minutes. They were perfect for combustion.
Using a handful of Doritos as a fire starter, she finally coaxed tiny flames to life. Once the small fire was steady, she thought about her other needs.
She placed a few fist-sized rocks near the fire to warm them. She could place them inside her shelter with her as a makeshift heat source once they were hot.
The water in her canteen was nearly gone. She was surrounded by frozen water, but she couldn’t use it.
She knew snow should never be eaten for hydration. The energy required by the body to heat and liquify the snow caused further dehydration and increased the chance of hypothermia.
She needed to melt the snow first, both for drinking water tonight and for tomorrow. She couldn’t go another day drinking so little. She dug inside her pack, pulled out the small camping pan and set it over the fire.
She poured in the last of her water and heated it, slowly scooping new snow into the pan. The water helped it melt faster and kept the snow from burning the pan. She refilled the canteen plus a few of the extra Ziplock sandwich bags she’d raided from the cabin’s kitchen.
Too tired to cook an actual meal, she ate two granola bars and several handfuls of nuts. She chewed a few pieces of beef jerky and tossed another one into the snow, hoping Ghost would find it.
Something moved inside her belly. What was once the faint flutter of butterfly wings was now hard knobby elbows and knees poking her ribs, her stomach, her bladder.
She closed her eyes and tried to ignore it, but it was a constant worry at the back of her mind.
How far along was she? Eight months? Further? How long did she have? How long until this…thing…was out of her?
She hated herself for even thinking it, but she couldn’t change her feelings. A monster had put this thing inside her. She loathed it as much as she loathed him.
The sooner she was rid of it, the better.
Exhaustion pulled at her. She wanted to do nothing but sleep, but she forced herself to unlatch her ski boots, strip off her damp socks, and replace them with dry ones from her pack.
The damp, worn ones she stuffed into an unused sandwich bag. She needed to be careful. Trench foot was a real threat.
Once she entered her shelter, she laid awake for a long time. She stared up at the log only inches above her face, felt the rough pine needles against her back and legs beneath the sleeping bag. It was still cold, but she was shielded from the wind and the snow.
The night closed in, freezing and dark and as wide as the universe. She wished she could see the stars. She wished the fear thumping in her chest would go away.
Her ears strained for every sound. She flinched at every thud and bump as tiny creatures scurried through the night, went stiff every time a clump of snow toppled onto the tarp and slid off, nearly wept when the wind started a low mournful howl through the trees.
She hoped the noises were Ghost patrolling between the trees, keeping watch. She prayed it was him out there and not something else.
She slipped the kitchen knife out of the knotted slip at her hips and held it in her right hand at her side. Not that a knife would do much against the monster after her. Not that she had the first clue how to defend herself.
The last five years had proven that, hadn’t they? The fact that she’d been naïve and stupid enough to let herself be taken in the first place. She hadn’t even tried to fight. Hadn’t seen the trap. Hadn’t known she was doomed until it was far too late.
The evil she feared wasn’t a demon, a ghost, or the imaginary monsters of books and movie screens and childhood closets. Her monster was very real, very alive.
She knew it in the deepest marrow of her bones. She’d known it the second she smelled the familiar clove cigarettes, heard that terrible click, click, click.
He would come for her.
What would she do when he found her?
14
Pike
Day One
Fury burned through Pike’s veins.
He roared into the driveway, plunging through a foot of fresh powder. The old Tahoe grumbled in complaint, but Pike didn’t care. He just pushed it harder.
With a curse, Pike parked and kicked open the driver’s side door. He jumped out and slammed the door behind him.
The cold hit him like a shock. The frigid air stung his exposed face around his eyes and mouth. He wore his heavy insulated coat, balaclava covering his neck and most of his head and face, and thick gloves, but it was still freezing.
Temperature and wind chill records had been broken almost daily this winter. Minus twenty or colder every night. Wind chill in the negative thirties. He didn’t know the temperature today. The radio hadn’t worked since everything went to hell.
He usually listened to classical music on his trips to the cabin. Today, he left the static cranked high. The harsh noise grated his nerves, drove his fury.
He plowed through the unbroken snow to the cabin. He jammed his key into the lock, flung open the front door, and stomped inside. The wind seized the door and almost dragged it from his grasp. Snow billowed inside and drifted across the hardwood floor.
The cabin was chilly and dark. No heat. No power.
He blinked to adjust to the dim interior and grabbed his flashlight off his belt. An initial scan of the living room seemed like nothing was out of place.
Maybe she was still here, after all. Maybe everything was fine—
The books on the end table beside the leather sofa. A stack of six books he’d never read, precisely spaced so that every side lined up exactly. Not anymore. Three of the books were staggered, the top one balanced precariously, about to fall.
Pike went completely still, every sense heightened.
He pulled his gun and held it in the low ready position. A round was already chambered. He always kept a round chambered.
He moved cautiously from the living room into the kitchen. Drawers were yanked open haphazardly. Silverware and cups and pans lay scattered across the linoleum floor. The pantry doors hung open. A box of bran flakes was tipped on its side on the top shelf.
Outrage spiked through him. She’d done this. Ruined the sanctity of his home. She’d done it on purpose to aggravate him.
He would make the little slut pay. He’d break every bone in every finger of both hands. And he’d keep her conscious while he did it. Make her feel every agonizing snap.
He left the kitchen a mess, though he hated to do it, and moved to the hallway. He cleared the bedroom and the bathroom. She’d raided his closet, his drawers, and the bathroom cabinets.
He saw red. She’d touched his clothes. Rifled through his belongings. STOLEN from him.
Furious, he stomped back through the hall into the kitchen and threw open the basement door. He already knew what he would find but he went anyway, his anger mounting with each passing minute.
The basement was pitch black. And empty.
Back upstairs, he turned a slow circle in the kitchen. The mud room door was open. Inside, he saw that she’d stolen the winter gear he stored for his hunting trips. And his skis.
He jerked open the back door. The silence was unnerving.
The dog. The damned guard dog. It was gone, too.
His eyes tracked the footprints snaking around the yard, took in the chain laying useless and empty, the trampled snow and mud.
She’d let it go. She’d taken his damn dog.
Useless animal. If he saw it again, he’d shoot it in the gut and let it cower away to suffer and die alone.
He strode into the yard, studying the story outlined in the snow. She’d released the dog, then returned to the porch, put on the skis, a
nd headed around the cabin toward the road.
It wasn’t much of a road. An old, overgrown logging road hardly used anymore. She wouldn’t find any passing cars to rescue her—not at Christmastime, not in this weather, and certainly not with ninety percent of the local transportation grounded until further notice.
She was miles from the closest town, locked deep inside thousands of acres of wilderness within the Manistee National Forest. There were hiking trails, snowmobile trails, the occasional campsite and road.
But this location was remote. Intentionally remote.
What was she doing? Where was she going? Did she even know?
He paused to withdraw the Zippo and cigarette pack from his pocket. He chose one and returned the pack to his pocket. He clicked the Zippo lid. Once, twice, three times. The receptiveness of the ritual was soothing. One of the few vices he allowed himself.
He hooded the end of the cigarette with his hand as he lit it. He breathed out a puff of smoke and watched it swirl in the frigid air.
He glanced at the sky again. It was late afternoon now. The clouds were dark and swollen. Snowflakes swirled in the gathering wind.
It would storm soon. Within the hour.
He wasn’t worried. He was a skilled tracker. A stalker who’d honed his craft over months and years and dozens of victims.
The elements didn’t bother him. He had the winter camping gear he’d salvaged from the back of his truck. His pistol. And the Winchester rifle.
The rage slowly settled into a low humming anger, into a familiar dark energy sizzling through his veins. The thrill of the chase. The electrifying elation as he drew closer and closer to his prey.
He dropped the cigarette only half-smoked and ground it into the dirty snow with his boot heel.
Gavin Pike was a hunter. It was time to hunt.
15
Hannah
Day Two
