Jared held a finger up to his still covered mouth and Oxford hushed.
After a brief moment, he lowered it.
“I don’t hear a generator,” Jared said matter-of-factly.
Neither did Oxford, and given the fact that the door had been left open when they had arrived, the residual heat inside the house was more than disconcerting—and that said nothing of the humidity. Oxford reached up and pulled off his hood and then removed his hat. He had been standing in the doorway, the cool air at his back, for less than three minutes, and already sweat had begun to form on his forehead. He watched as Jared started to remove his scarf, but one whiff of the sweet air and he quickly pulled it back up again.
Oxford took one glove off cautiously, hesitantly, as if not truly believing the warmth that enveloped his hand. Satisfied that the heat was indeed real, he quickly removed the other glove and then clenched his fist, trying to squeeze the frosty tightness away. After a few contractions in the warm air, he managed to regain enough dexterity to undo the first few buttons of his outer coat.
Jared disrobed similarly, then nodded at the duffel bag that hung on Oxford’s shoulder. Oxford obliged, laying it on the floor. They tossed their hats and gloves inside and Oxford pulled out a bottle of water. Holding his breath, he lowered his turtleneck and took a large gulp. The liquid felt good, cold and clean, as it made its way down to his stomach. He pulled the turtleneck back over his mouth and offered the bottle to Jared. His brother declined.
“Mrs. Wharfburn?” Jared shouted. Then he turned toward the interior of the house and yelled again. “Mrs. Wharfburn?”
Oxford, so shocked by the sudden change in volume, dropped the plastic water bottle, and its contents spilled across the hardwood floor.
“What the fuck, Jared?”
He bent and picked up the bottle, trying to save however much of the liquid he could. Again, his brother ignored him.
“Mrs. Wharfburn? Sheriff? Deputy?”
No answer.
As Oxford screwed the cap back on the water bottle, he slowly raised his head and looked around. From his squatting vantage point he noticed something—a shape, a form—not ten paces from where he stood, lying on the floor by the base of a staircase off to the right.
Putting the bottle back into his open bag, he slowly strode over to the object, subconsciously aware that the further he moved into the house, the warmer it got.
“Mrs. Wharfburn!” Jared shouted again, this time from behind him.
When Oxford came up to the wrinkled form on the hardwood, he immediately recognized what it was: an animal pelt. But that didn’t make sense. Not only was it strange that Mrs. Wharfburn, who every year would head down to the water and scold any and all of the duck hunters for what she called “sport murder”, would have such an item in her home, but the type of animal was odd, too. It looked like—Oxford squatted again and used one hand to flatten some of the folded grey fur—it looked like a wolf, and a big one at that. He leaned down even lower to get a better look in the dimly lit house; whatever was heating the home, generator or not, didn’t seem to be powering the lights.
It was indeed a wolf pelt, a large grey wolf that, judging by the size, had likely been over a hundred pounds before it had been killed. He cautiously flipped what looked like the hind legs back to examine the full length of the animal. The furry legs flopped on the hardwood with a smack, and Oxford hesitated. Slowly, he extended a finger and prodded the pelt. The fur gave slightly, and when he withdrew his finger, it rebounded. His brow furrowed. It felt wet somehow—the fur itself was bone dry, but the underside felt moist; it felt fresh.
“Sheriff? We need help! Sheriff!” Jared yelled.
Oxford grabbed the wolf’s flank and in one motion flipped it over. When his eyes flashed on the glistening underside, he bolted upright. It wasn’t a wolf fur or pelt, he realized in horror, but a wolf skin—all of the layers, at least a full inch thick. And the blood was still wet.
“Jared,” he whispered.
“Sheriff? Wharfburn?”
“Jared,” Oxford whispered again.
When his brother still didn’t respond, he raised his voice.
“Jared, we have to get out of here.”
His brother finally turned and looked at him.
“What?”
Oxford scratched furiously at his left arm, trying unsuccessfully to reach his skin through all his layers of clothing. Jared looked down at the grey form at his feet.
“Wolf pelt?”
The immediacy of his response caught Oxford by surprise, and he shook his head. An image of the animals he had seen crossing his mother’s lawn flashed in his mind.
“Well? What is it? A dog?”
When Oxford didn’t answer, Jared, clearly annoyed, took two large steps toward him. Then the man’s foot hit something, what Oxford had initially thought was a tablecloth or blanket, and he nearly fell.
“What the fuck!” Jared shouted, clearly frustrated as he regained his balance. “Oxford, what the fuck is it?”
Oxford looked over at his brother, and when his gaze lowered and focused on what Jared had stumbled on, his face, white to begin with, went nearly translucent. Warmth slowly spread from his crotch and down both legs, before being eagerly lapped up by his first layer of pants and then by the second.
Skin.
Although folded, Oxford guessed that the shape was at least four feet long. It was covered in thin white fabric—a dress of some sort—that was torn up one side and soaked with a viscous substance on the other.
Skin.
Peeking out from the top of what he had thought was a blanket was a flat, leathery oval.
Skin.
The oval was rumpled and had a fibrous texture reminiscent of beef jerky.
Skin.
Oxford picked out two small holes—not much more than button holes—punched in the shape, with two larger holes a couple inches above. As his gaze continued upward, he recognized a tangled mess of rust-colored hair.
Skin.
Even though the features were flattened and stretched out, the resemblance was unmistakable, and the rust-colored hair sealed it: Oxford was staring into the eye sockets of Mrs. Wharfburn’s hollow skin.
Chapter Six
Three’s Company
1.
“Umm, Marley? I—I think you should come look at this.”
Cody blew on the window and then wiped the moisture away with his jacket sleeve.
“Marley?” he asked again, not taking his eyes away from the scene unfolding outside. “Marley?”
Marley surprised him by actually answering this time.
“What? I am not going to get up and go to the window to see another goddamn wolf or bear or fish or whatever other animal is crossing the lawn,” she snapped.
Cody turned and looked at his wife, who was still on the couch, Corina’s injured leg propped on a pillow in her lap. She stared daggers at him, her mouth a thin, tight line.
“It’s not an animal,” Cody replied flatly. “It’s a man.”
Something flashed across Marley’s face and Cody nodded as if she had asked a question.
“And he looks—” He paused. “He looks hurt.”
Cody turned back to the window and stared at the man, clad only in a thin jacket without a hat or gloves, who was hunched over trying to limp his way through the heavy snow.
Cody suddenly felt someone beside him, and was surprised that Marley had somehow disengaged from Corina so quickly. But when he turned, his heart sank: it wasn’t Marley, but Seth. Jared’s boyfriend’s dark eyes were wide, and he smelled of sweat.
The two men stood there for a moment, neither saying a word, their eyes transfixed on the wounded man lurching his way through thigh-high snowdrifts.
Where the hell is he going?
It was Seth who spoke first.
“We should help him,” he said, but his voice lacked conviction.
Cody glanced at his wife, who remained seated, her face now t
rained on their sleeping daughter. When he turned back to Seth, the man had tears in his eyes.
“I’ll go,” he said, his voice trembling. It was an odd response, given that a question hadn’t been asked. In fact, now that Cody thought about it, Seth had been acting odd pretty much since the power had gone out—twice, he had caught the man talking to himself while playing with Henrietta.
Cody turned to Henrietta next, who was sound asleep curled up on the sofa chair across from his wife, thankfully offering them a reprieve from her crying. Only the toddler’s nose and closed eyes were visible, a thin line of pale flesh peeking out from between a cap and a thick scarf.
Hurry, Jared.
He turned back to Seth and nodded. Without another word, Seth whisked up an extra pair of gloves from the coffee table, then grabbed one of the two remaining bottles of water off the counter.
Cody heard a rustling noise from the mudroom, then the door opened and he watched as his brother’s boyfriend waded his way down the driveway, following the path that they had dug out while playing in the snow what seemed like months ago.
How long can we stay here?
It had been more than three hours since he had looked beneath Corina’s bandages. He had convinced himself that he was waiting so long to look because seeing the wound would make no difference, because there wasn’t anything they could do anyway. But the truth was, he was just scared—just plain scared. Terrified, even.
One more day? Two?
Lost in thought, Cody barely noticed Seth make his way to the bottom of the driveway, but when he reached the road and turned right—the exact opposite direction of the wounded man—Cody’s mind snapped into focus.
What the—?
He knocked on the glass, three hard raps that were muted by his thick gloves.
When Seth failed to turn, he knocked again and this time he shouted.
“Hey!”
Cody realized he had been holding his breath, and when he finally let it out, the window in front of his face fogged.
What the fuck is going on? Where the fuck is he going?
When the fog cleared, Seth was gone.
Cody could only stare at the disturbed snow that the two men, heading in opposite directions, had made. Eyes wide, he turned back to his wife and eldest daughter, who remained in the same position they had been five minutes ago when Seth had still been with them. He looked at Henrietta again, who whined but thankfully remained asleep, and then he briefly wondered where his mother had gone—he couldn’t remember seeing her since she had given him the pills for Corina and made the fucked-up comment about Dad. Sleeping, maybe? How could she sleep at a time like this?
“Fuck,” he said out loud. It was too much—too many fucking layers to this onion, too much shit going wrong.
Seth, where the fuck did you go? And who the fuck was the other man?
He blinked hard several times, trying to get the men to reappear on the lawn, but it was no use. They, like Jared and Oxford, were gone.
One day, he thought again, turning his attention back to Corina, his mouth twisting in anguish at the sight of her slack jaw and swollen eyes. We can maybe make it one more day.
Cody breathed deeply.
Come Come Come
Instinctively, he glanced up at the cardboard window covering to watch it rattle with the voice on the wind, but it didn’t move. It took him a moment to realize that the wind hadn’t blown just then—the voice had been in his head.
Cody looked to his right, pressing his face against the cold glass, but the limping, injured man was nowhere to be found. All that was left to convince Cody that he hadn’t imagined the entire thing was the shadow of the tracks he had made in the snow. And even those wouldn’t be visible for much longer.
One day. We only have one day.
2.
A dog. Jesus H. Christ, it was only a dog.
Deputy Coggins stood over the dead animal, watching in horror as its warm blood first stained then melted small pockmarks in the white snow. It was a boxer, long and lean, its long red tongue hanging almost goofily out of the corner of its mouth. Coggins tore his gaze away from the creepy, frozen grin and focused on a hole in the dog’s neck just above a green collar with a heart-shaped tag, and another one about eight inches below that, squarely between its ribs. Vapor rose from the red holes like steam rising from warm soup in a thimble.
Coggins shook his head.
Why was there a dog out here?
Aside from the forest—the source of the falling branches—he could see nothing; just a sea of white. Even the tracks his snowshoes and the impression his body had made in the snow when he had fallen were already fading. Something else was nagging him, though, and it wasn’t just the snow or the cold or the dead dog at his feet. It was that he had fired; that he had shot his gun at a noise—a wet, moist breathing sound.
Why the hell did I just turn and fire?
He pushed away thoughts about what might have happened had it been a man or woman, or worse, a child that had snuck up on him. He looked around again, his eyes wide.
No, they wouldn’t be out in weather like this. Only me and—and this stupid fucking dog.
Coggins looked down at the animal’s frozen grin and frowned.
Why the hell did I shoot?
Frustrated, he kicked snow onto the dog’s still warm body, then immediately regretted the cowardly act.
Fuck. Sorry, pooch.
Coggins wondered how he would explain this to the dog’s owner.
‘Sorry, ma’am; sorry about your pooch. But—but I heard a wet, slobbery noise and, thinking that it might be an attacking vagina, I turned and fired. I am sorry, but it just wasn’t my fault.’
The ridiculous imaginary conversation did nothing to lighten his mood.
What’s wrong with me?
Ever since he had left his car, he had been on edge, his body primed for action, as if he were expecting to encounter something out here in the snow. It was so unlike him—normally he was calm and calculating.
As he bent down to inspect the details on the dog tag, he saw more blood, a few droplets accompanied by a thin red line ahead of the dog. Deputy Coggins’ brow furrowed beneath his wool cap.
It didn’t make sense. He turned back to the dog, and then looked in the direction that it had come. Behind the animal, he saw two individual sprays of blood about ten inches long extending from its back legs and toward the forest; one from each shot fired.
How is there blood in front of the dog?
Coggins took two steps forward and crouched. This blood was older, darker, some spots only recognizable by the indentations that they had made in the snow, their color having since been washed away.
Coggins’ head shot up. This was not the dog’s blood.
His gaze followed the direction that the animal had been headed, the same direction he was headed, and he noticed that if he stared long enough, he could just barely make out what looked like a track through the snow. The snow itself was mostly flat, but the path seemed lighter in color, as if the area had been disturbed and then the grooves filled by blowing instead of falling flakes.
Still on his haunches, Coggins shuffled forward, investigating what he now realized was a trail of blood and a path cut through the snow. The sheer height of the drifts made it impossible to determine if it had been made by a dog or something larger.
A deer, maybe?
But somehow—Come—he didn’t think so. Somehow, he just knew that a man had made this path.
Sorry, pooch, he thought again, his eyes following the path into the distance. I’ll come back for you later.
Deputy Bradley Coggins picked himself up, kicking snow from the tops of his snowshoes. After stretching his back and legs, he began to walk, the awkward, stiff-ankle gait imposed by the snowshoes, following as best he could the track before him. It wasn’t until much later that he realized he had forgotten his bag with the dog.
* * *
Coggins had been tracking the
man for nearly a mile now. He had first seen the hunched figure at the edge of the clearing near where he had shot the dog, struggling to make his way through a line of bare trees.
He must be drunk, Coggins thought initially, watching the man stumble forward, nearly falling with each and every step. A few times the man did actually fall, but he picked himself up with barely a hesitation and continued on his determined path.
Drunk. Or maybe high.
As he watched, the man stumbled again, but he bore onward without even bothering to brush the snow from his—bare!—hands.
Really, really fucking high.
He thought of Alice then, and a wave of disappointment washed over him. He wasn’t really sure why he had told her to come meet him and the sheriff at Mrs. Wharfburn’s—maybe it was to make sure that she didn’t fall even deeper into the rabbit hole, or maybe it was for the same ridiculous reason he was out in the snow; a strange nagging or tugging that just wouldn’t let go. Alice would have been much better off at home, of course, in bed recovering, than out here—driving, of all things—in this weather. But that pull—
The man tripped again, and Deputy Coggins was brought back to reality. Even though he had first seen him more than ten minutes ago, Coggins hadn’t been able to catch him despite the fact that he was wearing his police issue snowshoes and the man was wearing what looked like small boots or maybe even dress shoes. The thing was, the man he followed paid no attention to his surroundings or even his wellbeing, trudging through small shrubs and the thin forested areas without any consideration. Coggins knew that something just wasn’t right about the man—high or drunk or not. This entire situation—the dead dog, the man walking less than two hundred meters in front of him, the strange wind that blew and sounded like a man’s voice—everything was somehow related. He could just feel it.
But it didn’t matter, not now—Coggins wasn’t in much of a hurry. Instead, he was content with just following after the numb man ahead of him, convinced that he would lead him to the source, or in the very least, to some clues, to unlock this mystery.
He scolded himself.
Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3) Page 15
