The staircase shifted under him. Sean let out a little squeal and gripped the handrail. “Son of a bitch,” he spat. The staircase settled and he moved on. They fucking better be up here, he thought.
At the top of the staircase he passed through the double doors of an ancient conference room. He swept his light from side to side, illuminating little drifts of snow and bits of garbage. The next room was finally a winner.
He recognized Floyd’s gear, and even if he hadn’t, Floyd had written F. Tinsel on almost everything. A little habit left over from Floyd’s Army days. There was a halogen lamp, an unrolled sleeping bag, a camp stove. Pretty much all of Floyd’s gear he thought. Just no Floyd. And no sign of Randy.
This was starting to get serious. Now he knew at least they had been here and then left in a hurry. And it would have to be some kind of major hurry for Floyd to leave all his gear here. If there was one thing he knew about Floyd Tinsel it was that when it came to his gear he was almost obsessed. Everything had to be clean. Everything had to be put away and stored in a certain way and you certainly never, ever, left your kit like this in a haphazard pile.
Sean swept his light over the rest of the room and found the coat next to a door marked Stairs. He had teased Floyd about the yellow coat every chance he got because he knew that Nancy had picked it out for him. Safest color he could wear, she said.
He picked the coat up. It was shredded, nearly ripped in two up the back. He dropped the coat, spun around and swept the light over the room behind him. Nothing had moved. Everything was right where he had found it.
He turned back to the metal door and eased it open. Dust motes danced in the white beam of his flashlight.
“Floyd?” he yelled into the darkness. “Randy?”
His voice fell through the hundred feet of rock tunnel to the ground floor and died. Are you really going down there? He asked himself. Really?
Nothing added up. No snowmobiles outside, but here was Floyd’s kit and seriously damaged coat. If he was somewhere in the wilderness that nearly surrounded the town, he was doing it without gear or coat. Not bloody likely. Not when the wind chill was dropping the temperature into the minus twenties. No, something had happened, and it happened right here. Whatever it was cut the coat off his back.
Sean made his way down yet another staircase. This one spiraled into a darkness so thick it seemed to choke the air from Sean’s lungs, worse with every step. When he reached the bottom, he listened. The silence was unbelievable. There was no wind, no creaking structure. It felt like being buried alive. Silent. Dark. Suffocating.
A footstep shuffled in the dark. He moved toward the sound, swinging his light up, but found nothing but rock wall.
“Floyd? Randy?”
He kept moving. His light passed from left to right. Not for the first time he asked himself, What am I doing here? He had no answer other than the fact that he knew, if the roles were reversed, Floyd would be down here for him. “Yeah right,” he whispered. “He would’ve waited until morning, got a search party out here, done it the right way, instead of coming down here like some half-cocked one-man army.”
Sean’s light slipped through the doorway of a small room to his right and an eye stared up at him. He jumped. His heart lurched in his chest and sweat popped out all over his body. He took a tentative step back and stared hard at the object on the floor.
The object was actually objects, a pile of them, whatever they were, bits here and there of all shapes and sizes. Some were as small as a couple inches square, others at least a foot long, and all were dirty gray and cracked. They resembled pieces of wax that had been peeled off something. Something big.
Sean played the light over the piece with the eye and the light passed right through it. He reached for it and it disintegrated at his touch, falling through his fingers like sand. He rubbed his fingers together and the ash left an oily residue on his skin. It made his skin feel cold and slightly numb. He quickly swiped his hand on his jeans and stood up.
That’s when he heard it, a low chittering sound, an organized rattle of bones. It sent goose bumps all over his skin. Sean jumped and his heart kicked into overdrive. It was time to leave. He had done all he came to do. He would organize a search party in the morning, like he should have done in the first place, and get the hell out of here double-quick.
The sound was closer the second time. Sean picked up his pace. By the time he hit the spiral staircase heading back up into the office, he was running. He didn’t care about stealth, all he wanted was to be up out of the darkness and into the fresh air outside.
Whatever made the horrible sound was gaining on him, getting closer with every breath he took. His heart hammered in his ears. He put one foot in front of the other and pulled himself up the stairs with his hands. Below him something heavy hit the metal staircase. The structure shook beneath him, groaning as its frame twisted. If he looked over his shoulder he would see the clouds of breath from whatever was after him, but if he stopped to glance over his shoulder, the race would be over.
He reached the top of the stairs, bolted through the office doorway and slammed the metal door closed behind him. Something slammed into it and shook the entire wall. That horrible rattling sound grew louder and made his skin crawl. He scanned the cluttered room for something to wedge the door closed and spotted Floyd’s collapsible metal cot leaning against the wall. Keeping his left hand around the doorknob he reached the cot with his right. He rammed the folded cot under the twisted doorknob and wedged the exposed metal edges into the floor. It wouldn’t last forever, but it would buy him time. He stepped away from the door and the frame shook as it was hammered from the other side. Claws scraped across the metal.
The door was about to come off its hinges.
His head spinning, Sean ran through the door into the next room. Nausea rolled through him. This sweet simple world of his, with its small-town charm, was suddenly foreign and alien and very dangerous. He ran through the chain of rooms, followed by the sound of enraged shrieks and thrashing at the metal door.
What breed of monster had found them?
13
Minnie Wilkes was nearly set. She had the teakettle boiling. She had her favorite little sugar cookies. Only eight, no more, no less. She had to ration, had to watch her sugar, or so Dr. Baron had warned her. But at eighty-two, this retired schoolteacher was, at least in her own mind, beyond rationing. And she had told him so. If she wanted her sugar cookies, she was gonna eat the whole box and that’s that. But to be honest, any more than eight gave her serious stomach cramps.
The kettle sang and she poured boiling water into her oversized mug, dropped in two teabags and she was set.
She took her plate and mug into the front porch and set them down on the side table. All she needed now was some action.
She took a swig of her strong tea and a bite of a delicious sugar cookie and waited. The entire length of her porch was windows that provided her a clear view of Main Street all the way to the corner of Cross Street to the left and all the way to the trench to her right.
She picked up her binoculars and scanned the neighborhood. She was the eyes of the street. Normally, at least during the warmer months, things up her way were a little more lively: people leaving for work and school, delivery trucks coming in from Braden, the next town over. But now with winter rolling in and the population cut to the bare bones, she was lucky if she saw someone get caught in the snow. She tried to pick out the houses that were still occupied. There were only three that she knew for sure, and their windows were dark.
She took another sip of her tea and ate a few cookies and wondered idly if there was anything on the television. Her son had recently bought her a satellite dish for her birthday. Now all her favorite shows were at her fingertips.
Her bulldog, Wrinkles, lifted his head. He had been so quiet she was a little startled. She hadn’t even heard him enter the porch. A low growl began to build in his throat.
“What is it, Wrinkles?�
� she asked.
Wrinkles stepped toward the windows and stared intently into the street. Minnie peered into the street too, following the dog’s gaze, but she couldn’t see a damn thing.
“What are you looking at, you crazy mutt?”
Then she heard it, the low whine of a snowmobile, coming fast. It came from town and whipped noisily past the porch. Wrinkles lost his mind. He ran to the window and, paws up on the glass, barked his balls off.
Goddamn Randy Tinsel. What was he doing up here at this time of night?
Seconds later one of the town’s two snowplows lumbered up the street. But the snowplow wasn’t plowing. Its blade was raised and it wasn’t spreading salt either. The heavy truck cut a path through the six inches of snow as easy as you please up to the trench. When it was about twenty feet into the trench the plow cut hard to the left and then reversed. It ended up parked smack dab in the center of the road, easily blocking off both lanes of traffic.
“Now what the hell is he doing, Wrinkles?”
The dog had no answers.
The driver’s door opened and Floyd Tinsel dropped from the cab.
“And would you look at that. No jacket in that God-awful cold out there. No common sense if you ask me, Wrinkles. Man goes out there without the proper attire he only has himself to blame. He won’t get no sympathy from me, no sir.”
He moved with purpose to the gas tank, unscrewed the cap and let it fall into the snow.
Randy Tinsel waited patiently on his skidoo, parked a good fifteen feet away from the snowplow, engine running.
Minnie grabbed her binocs without taking her eyes off the scene outside and watched as Floyd Tinsel wedged some sort of cloth into the gas tank of the plow.
“Holy sweet mother of God,” Minnie whispered.
With a brass Zippo lighter, Floyd lit the cloth hanging from the snowplow’s gas tank and ran. He hopped on the back of Randy’s snowmobile and Randy gunned the engine, tearing out of there.
The explosion lifted the big truck off the ground. It bucked like a living thing. Fire and snow and steam shot upwards and north and south through the trench.
Minnie thought her windows were going to blow out like in the movies, but they held. The house trembled beneath her feet. She could hear falling rocks but she could see nothing. When the smoke and steam had dissipated somewhat, the mouth of the trench reappeared.
Suddenly the friendly northern town where everyone knew everyone else had become a prison. The one road that ran in and out had been effectively blocked.
They were trapped.
Deputy Jordan Hanson leaned over the pool table and stared down the end of his cue as he lined up his next shot. The shirtsleeves of his tan deputy’s uniform were rolled up high on his arms. His radio and revolver rested on a nearby table among the empty beer bottles and a tin ashtray overflowing with butts.
Andre Taluc, a long and lanky remnant of the eighties, was a permanent fixture at the local arcade and pool hall, dressed as always in some ancient concert t-shirt and ripped jeans.
Jordan whistled through his teeth as he leaned over his next shot. His short, compact body gave him the look of a baby¬faced bull. A cigarette dangled from his lips as he took his shot. Andre sipped his beer as he followed the cue ball through two banks to finally tap the eight ball into a far corner. When the eight ball dropped, he finished his beer, dug out a crumpled ten spot and tossed it on the table. Jordan snatched up the ten and held it tight to his nose, breathing deeply.
“I hope that bill smells like my ass,” Andre said, pulling on his jean jacket.
“Nope,” Jordan replied. “Smells like victory.”
Andre lit another cigarette and smiled weakly.
“Come on, one more game,” Jordan said, racking the balls into the triangle.
“Don’t you work for the police force or something?”
“Why? Does it show?” Jordan said. “Come on, Andy. I’ll give you the break.”
As Andre thought about the offer, Jordan signaled to the waitress, who was Andre’s mother, for two more beers.
“Come on, double or nothing.”
Andre didn’t have to think about it long. After all, where the
hell else did he have to go?
“Give me that fucking thing,” Andre replied, as he pulled the cue from Jordan and lined up the break. “You should arrest yourself for hustling,” he said.
As Jordan paid for the two beers, his radio crackled to life. “Jordan, honey, you there?”
“You better get that, Jo-Jo,” Andre said and smashed the cue ball for the break.
Jordan scooped the radio from the table. “I’m here, Kelly, go ahead,” he replied.
“Mrs. Wilkes called, said there was something funny about the trench up by her.”
Jordan watched as Andre moved around the table eyeing up his next shot.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, she said something about an explosion. You know how she is. She’s called five times already asking when we were coming out. You better go out and check, just to be sure, okay, honey?”
Jordan winced as Andre dropped his third shot in a row; the next two were easy, then the eight ball. Andre could barely stop grinning.
“Jordan? You there?”
“Okay, sweetie. I’ll be out there soon.”
A half hour later and twenty bucks lighter, Jordan passed St. Patrick’s church and made a left on Main Street to head out to the south end of town where Minnie Wilkes lived. Her house was the last on the road before the trench.
She stood in her front window, wrapped to her throat in a green robe, her long white hair spilling over her thin shoulders and down her back. He sped past her place to inspect the trench when his headlights lit up a solid wall of white.
Jordan slammed on the brakes and skidded into the drift that had blocked off the trench. The drift was at least eight feet high, higher in some places. There was no exit. Poking out of the drift were twisted pieces of metal and shards of rock. Jordan shook as he picked up his radio.
The old bat saw something funny, all right. Fucking hilarious, he thought to himself.
“It was them Tinsel men,” a woman’s voice said. Jordan spun around and found Minnie standing near his cruiser, wrapped in a down parka and wearing heavy black boots. “The goddamn Tinsel men blew up a snowplow. On purpose!”
“What?”
“You heard me all right. I watched ‘em do it. I was right there on my porch. Floyd and his son Randy, they drove a snowplow down over there and blew the thing up. It nearly blew in my windas.”
Jordan’s hands shook, but he found the transmit button on the radio and pushed it.
“Kelly. Get Sean on the phone. Right now.”
“But he said no calls,” Kelly replied.
“This is an emergency.”
“Really?” she asked. “What happened?”
“Just get Sean on the phone. Now.”
“Well, all right then, gosh,” Kelly said. “Hold on.”
14
Samantha Tinsel and her mother had decided to watch a movie. It was an old Christmas one that her mother liked, but her mother had only been able to sit still for ten minutes before she began pacing the floor again. When she wasn’t pacing, clutching the phone, she spent her time staring out the big picture window that overlooked the backyard, and beyond that, the forest.
“You’re missin’ it, Mom,” Samantha whined.
Samantha was ten and did not want to watch White Christmas for the twentieth time, but only to get her Mom to stop worrying. But now she was stuck watching Bing Crosby dance and sing across an impossibly white soundstage by herself. Not impressed.
“I know, Honey,” she said. “I just ... as soon as I hear from Sean I’ll feel better.”
“You were just there, Mom. Even if he left right away he’s gonna be gone at least an hour, probably two.”
And then Samantha heard it, the low whine of a snowmobile. She was on her feet in a second, s
tanding beside her mother. Two snowmobiles broke through the tree line and headed toward their house.
“Oh, thank God,” Nancy whispered and crossed herself. “Thank God.”
She ran through the house to the kitchen door, threw it open and wrapped her arms around her husband.
“Oh, thank God,” she whispered furiously. She kissed him hard on the mouth and pulled him close to her.
“I was so worried.”
“Okay, okay, honey. It’s all right now,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”
“And you!” she said to Randy. “Oh, my God. I was so scared.”
Randy smiled nervously and moved into his mother’s waiting arms. She squeezed him very tight.
“Thank God you’re all right.”
Floyd closed the door behind them and locked it. Randy was still holding his mother in a loose hug. She stared up at him, smiling.
Nancy turned to her husband and Floyd brought down a marble rolling pin into the middle of her face with a bone¬crushing crack. Nancy’s face disappeared for a moment in a gush of red. She sagged in Randy’s grip but he squeezed her arms tight to her sides and held her up off the floor. Floyd hit her again, two hands on the rolling pin and he was swinging for the fences. The marble connected squarely across Nancy’s face. Blood sprayed and teeth rattled across the tile floor like dice. Nancy started to seizure. Her eyes rolled up white, and blood and spit fell from her trembling lips. Randy dropped her and she fell to the kitchen floor without ceremony. She lay there, face down, as a growing pool of blood spread around her head.
At the doorway stood Samantha, speechless. Her father stared at her across the gap of twelve feet. His pale, unshaven face was speckled with blood. His brown eyes were hard and cold.
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