by Ania Ahlborn
“We got called in,” Pete announced, holding his fist up to his mouth, fighting back a diaphragm-rattling belch. “Side roads off the highway,” he said. “We’ve got an hour.”
“What time is it?” Clyde murmured, trying to sit up.
“Four thirty.”
“Goddamn.” He winced against the taste of his own mouth. “Coffee?”
“I’ll make some,” Pete said. “I need some fucking Tylenol.”
Clyde sighed unsteadily, then pulled his hand down the length of his face before letting it fall to the bed. He was tempted to call in, but the resident road crew was small, and that would leave the others high and dry. Clyde liked to think of himself as loyal—not the kind of guy to screw over the other guys on the team.
Dragging himself into the bathroom, he leaned over the sink and splashed cold water onto his face. He was still dressed from the night before, so all he had to do was grab his coat and hat and charge into the snow. Clyde’s plowless pickup was parked just yards from the house. It was a pain in the ass to detach the plows after every use, so the boys took turns—one truck would be street ready while the other was left with plow and chains. It saved them a hell of a lot of time on mornings just like this, mornings when the wind was so cold it made their bones ache and their eyes sting. Clyde winced against the chill as he marched toward his pickup, his head throbbing, his brain swollen, his stomach sour. He had to pause next to the front fender, anticipating the inevitable as sickness curdled at the back of his throat, but after a few deep breaths, he regained his bearings and climbed inside the cab.
He drove around to the back of the house, headlights cutting across the darkness, illuminating Pete’s old Chevy and the self-built carport next to it where they kept all their gear. Clyde’s plow was parked beneath the lean-to structure, bright yellow paint chipping off ten-gauge steel. He had helped his dad paint it decades before, just before Christmas. His mother had picked out the color—yellow being her favorite. Parking so that his high beams shone against the carport’s shoddy construction, he rolled down his window and stuck his head into the cold, expertly lining up the truck so that the plow would slide into place. Satisfied with his position, he cranked the stereo and reached into the glove compartment for a smoke. Despite his pounding headache, music helped wake him up, and at the moment being awake was more important than being comfortable.
Lighting his cig, he sucked in a lungful of smoke and slid out into the predawn darkness, snowflakes glittering along the sides of the carport that would more than likely collapse in on itself before next winter. He busied himself at the pickup’s front bumper, Slayer coiling through his open door. When the CD paused between tracks, a low-octave moan caught his attention. He raised an eyebrow, jamming his arm into the truck to crank down the music. A shadow cut across the wooded backyard, Clyde catching the movement from the corner of his eye. “Hey, Pete?” Another moan sounded in reply, and Clyde couldn’t help but grin. “You okay, buddy?” he asked, looking back down to what he was doing, his cigarette dangling from the swell of his bottom lip. “You want to hand me the socket wrench from the tool chest?”
The moaning continued, only to be cut short.
Clyde glanced up, blinded by the high beams, unable to see a thing beyond the truck’s front bumper. “Pete?”
Nothing.
He sighed, took another drag off his cigarette, and flicked it into the snow. “You suck at holding your liquor, man,” he said. He stepped out of the headlights and could hardly see a thing. His eyes fought to adjust to the sudden darkness, but all he could make out were the windows of the house—illuminated from the inside out—and the interior of his truck, brightened by the weak glow of the dome light above the dusty dash. He ducked inside the truck, turned up the music to a low roar, and stepped around to the bed of the pickup. Stopping next to the toolbox mounted flush against the back of the truck’s cab, he shoved the heel of his hand against a push-button lock, sending one of the box’s two metal lids bouncing upward on its spring. A tiny light blinked on, Clyde’s menagerie of tools glittering in the anemic yellow glow. He rifled through the mess, haphazardly shoving his precious gear this way and that.
“Socket wrench, socket wrench,” he mumbled, as though chanting the tool’s name like a mantra would make it spring from the pile of chrome-plated metal. “Son of a…” It was nowhere to be found, and Clyde’s mind bounced to the last time he couldn’t find a piece of equipment. Pete had borrowed his Dremel tool, and it had been Clyde who had found it in the tool chest on the back of Pete’s truck. He slammed the lid of his box closed and marched across the yard toward Pete’s Chevy, nearly tripping over a fallen branch on his way. He cursed beneath his breath as he regained his footing, grabbing the branch by its brittle wood and tossing it aside.
The branch came back at him, landing just shy of his boots.
“Pete?” Clyde blinked, squinting into the dark. “Hey, stop fucking around, man. Where’s my ratchet?”
Nothing.
“Whatever,” he muttered, popping Pete’s toolbox open, and there it was, the tool Clyde was looking for. “You know, I don’t care if you use my shit,” he announced, grabbing the wrench and turning back to his own truck. “But it sure as hell would be nice if you’d put stuff back where you found it. It’s called common courtesy.”
Another moan, this one phlegmy, like a death rattle deep within a chest.
“I should pay your mom a visit,” he continued, stepping back around his front bumper. “Complain about how she raised you in a barn before giving her a nice Clydey-boy screw.” Pete hated mom jokes. It was one of his pet peeves. And yet there was nothing beyond the drone of Clyde’s music. Not a “fuck you,” not a witty quip in return. The lack of a comeback suggested that Pete was somewhere out there in the dark puking his guts out. “Pete? You gonna survive?”
He slid the ratchet onto the hood of his truck. Curiosity getting the best of him, he stepped back into the inky early morning, snowflakes drifting across his line of sight. He did a double take when he spotted someone standing in the darkness a dozen yards away, but it sure as hell wasn’t Pete. The guy was tall and toothpick skinny, and while Clyde couldn’t see much of anything it almost looked like the stranger was naked—there were no lines to suggest the fold of jeans or the padding of a winter coat. The silhouette reminded him of the sick pictures Pete had showed him once; naked men and women with their hair shorn standing in long lines, numbers tattooed onto toothpick arms. But there was something about the guy standing a dozen yards away that didn’t sit right; his arms were too long for his body, and that head…it was massive, like one of those old-timey water babies in a circus freak show.
“What the shit?” he whispered, blinking a few times to try to get a better view. As he was about to take a step forward, a crash behind him made him jump out of his skin. He reeled around, his gaze snagging on his freshly crumpled hood, as though something heavy had landed on it—but there was nothing there. The music played on while one of his headlights flickered, then cut out. His heart thumped in his chest beneath the rush of adrenaline, but his reflexes were still dulled by the alcohol that tainted his bloodstream. Impaired judgment had him weighing the fact that his truck hood was wrecked over the shadow figure that loomed in the distance. He’d made a move toward the pickup when he was shoved backward as though something had lunged at his chest, the air rushing from his lungs, the seat of his jeans skidding across the ground.
He froze, stunned, unsure of what had just happened.
Something leaned into his line of sight, but he couldn’t make out what it was. The headlight shone behind it, throwing the figure into silhouette, its gaunt body nothing but bones and sharp angles. The devil, he thought. Lucifer, in the flesh. Panicked, he began to crawl backward, the snow burning the exposed skin of his hands. But before he got more than a few feet away, he bumped into something behind him, something that emitted a deep, rumbling growl. The thing in front of him pulled its arm back, the silhouette o
f a giant four-fingered hand held aloft, the palm shovel-like with thin, rangy digits jutting out. Clyde opened his mouth to scream as the hand swiped through the air, black talons catching the light, but he gurgled instead. His eyes widened as hot blood bubbled from his neck. His hands flew to his throat, trying to keep the blood from spilling, but it poured across his fingers.
He fell onto his back, gasping for breath, staring at the house just a handful of yards away, a house that was safe and warm. Just then, he saw Pete casually step across the kitchen, a fresh pot of coffee held in his hand, oblivious to what was going on just outside. Clyde reached out, praying to God that his friend would sense that something was wrong, that he would stop to look out the window. But he didn’t.
As soon as Pete disappeared from view, the two…things that loomed above Clyde stared down at him, and while he couldn’t see what they looked like, the distinct scent of urine over the hot metallic aroma of his own blood sent him into a panic. He tried to scramble to his feet despite his injuries, but one of them lunged forward, its teeth tearing into Clyde’s shoulder. He choked on his blood as he tried to cry out, his efforts drowned by the wail of guitars, the banging of drums. His entire left side felt like it was on fire. He rolled onto his injured shoulder in a feeble attempt to cool the burn with the snow as he clawed at the ground, trying to skitter away from his attacker. But as soon as he turned away, he felt a viselike grip catch his leg. With a single blink, Clyde stared toward the house, trying to scream but unable to catch his breath, praying for salvation, sure this couldn’t really be happening. And then he felt the ground slide out from under him as he was jerked backward, the cabin suddenly gone as he was pulled into the trees.
Pete couldn’t hear anything above Megadeth’s wail, so when he finally saw the creature standing in the mouth of the kitchen, it was far too late for him to run. The skeletal thing filled the entire doorway, leaning down to duck through the threshold, its spiderlike arms bending at unspeakable angles as it pulled itself into the room. Clyde’s lidless travel mug slipped through Pete’s fingers and crashed to the floor, hot coffee sloshing across his boots. Despite the monster’s size, the thing’s height was far from its most disturbing attribute. Pete choked on the air in his throat as he stared at its black marble-like eyes sunken deep into an overly large head, an impossibly wide mouth full of thick, yellow teeth inside its skull. Impossible, he thought. He tried to breathe and cry out all at once, backing himself into a corner as the thing advanced snorting through a nonexistent nose at the scent of freshly brewed coffee, a scent that mingled with the blood smeared across the monster’s face and arms.
Pete pressed himself against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut, the most arbitrary thought careening through his brain: Jurassic Park. It had been his absolute favorite movie as a kid. He had been so obsessed with it, his parents hadn’t had the heart to return the VHS tape back to the rental place, and after months of late fees, they bought it instead. Now the adult Pete stood glued to the kitchen wall, a warm trickle of urine dribbling down his thighs, convincing himself that if he didn’t move, if he didn’t breathe, if he didn’t make a sound, the hellion in front of him wouldn’t realize he was there, just like the T. rex in the movies. But even with his eyes closed, he could hear the thing coming closer. He could smell the blood, refusing to believe it was the blood of anyone he knew. When he finally opened his eyes, he was standing face-to-face with a grinning demon, the thing’s broad teeth mere inches from the tip of his nose.
When the creature lifted a hand of long, bony fingers to Pete’s face, he couldn’t help the muted whine of terror that escaped his throat. With his cheeks in its grasp, sharp claws digging into his flesh, the savage canted its head to the side, seeming to study the horrified expression that Pete could feel twisting across his face. It was staring at the thud of his pulse just below his jaw that pounded in time with the drumming of his runaway heart. Pete cried out as it lifted him from the floor by his head alone, his legs dangling, his neck feeling like it was about to tear away from his torso, his boots kicking the wall behind him as he struggled to get free.
And then Pete went involuntarily still, a sensation he couldn’t quite place spreading from his stomach out to his limbs—hot and cold all at once. Suddenly he crumpled to the ground as the creature pulled its free hand away, and for a moment hope speared his heart. It was letting him go. He was going to survive. Like a shark, the thing had come to realize that Pete wasn’t its rightful prey. But its fist clung to something long and gray—something that felt like it was tugging on Pete’s insides like a rope or a string.
Before he had enough time to process the scope of what was happening, the monster began to eat, pulling entrails out of Pete’s belly like an unbroken cord of sausage. A scream ripped its way out of his throat. Pete shot out an arm and grabbed at the strand of slick viscera, jerking it backward in a gruesome game of tug-of-war, as he fought for what was rightfully his, fought the horrific feeling of himself literally unraveling from the inside out. The savage ceased its chewing, seeming bewildered by the fact that its gutted game was fighting back.
But Pete was fading. Black spots bloomed in front of his eyes. The burning crawl of blood loss snaked around the inside of his skull and squeezed his brain. He pitched to the right, rolling onto his stomach in an attempt to catch a breath, but he choked instead, inhaling the blood that was splashed across the linoleum. It was his blood. His blood. Everywhere. So much of it he could see his own reflection in the deep burgundy beneath him, his own expression of baffled terror echoed back at him, but twisted as in a funhouse mirror.
His diaphragm gave way to an unnatural rattle and a sob ripped its way out of his chest as he saw a matching pair of alien legs enter the kitchen, the sound muffled by a wet tremor of a growl as the two creatures began to fight. He stared at their sinewy legs as they dodged each other.
His world went black as they snarled at each other, the sound reminding Pete of hog hunting with his pop. The kitchen table turned over next to his head. The refrigerator shook as one of them fell against it. Dishes crashed to the floor above the sound of Clyde’s music droning from across the house, Pete’s wheezing breaths coming in short bursts now. Before he could summon up another cry, something grabbed him by his neck, yanked him upward, and gave him a vicious shake. And despite the wail of the music, the last thing Pete heard was the snapping of his own neck.
Jane squinted against the sun that filtered into the room, rolled onto her back, and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes while Lauren remained motionless beside her. She would have liked nothing more than to stay in bed for an hour longer, still tired from the night before—she and Lauren had stayed up long after crawling into bed, whispering across the sheets about Ryan and Sawyer and the weird way April had looked at Jane during their game of pool, April’s expression teeming with bad vibes. And then there had been the fight. Both Jane and Lauren had lain breathless in the dark, their ears straining as hard as they could. Jane had nearly crawled out of bed to peek into the hall, but Lauren had stopped her, grabbing her arm and giving her a shake of the head.
“Don’t,” she’d whispered. “What if she sees you?”
Jane had nearly rolled her eyes at the suggestion. So what? she thought. Let her see. Jane wasn’t the one making a ton of noise in the middle of the night, waking everyone up. But Lauren was right. If Jane had been caught eavesdropping, it would have caused even more drama. And yet, long after the argument had subsided, nearly an hour after Lauren had fallen asleep, Jane remained wide awake, contemplating tiptoeing down the hall and pressing her ear to the very last door. She imagined sneaking downstairs to find Sawyer sitting in a dark living room, staring out the large picture window that overlooked the mountains and trees. He’d turn to look at her when he heard her approach, they’d stare at each other for a long while—breathless, silent—and then his face would brighten like the moon lighting up the night.
But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t will herself
to feel good about the anger she’d heard from down the hall. Lauren would have reprimanded her for being so “nice,” so “fair,” but Jane couldn’t help it. Nobody liked being in the middle of an argument, especially not when it was on display for everyone to hear. She was sure Sawyer was miserable, embarrassed, uncomfortable, and there was nothing about that that made her happy. Her incessant thoughts had afforded her a little over three hours of sleep, but the host wasn’t allowed to sleep in. She had breakfast to make; she was sure the boys would be itching to go back up the mountain.
Sitting up, she grabbed her discarded socks off the floor and pulled them onto her feet. She shivered against the cold, rubbing her arms as she made her way toward the window for her first look at the world. She paused to pull a sweater over her head, her fingers snagging in the tangles of her slept-in hair, and then she blinked at the view. There wasn’t a speck of green as far as the eye could see. It had snowed overnight, and it had snowed hard.
A childlike thrill speared her heart as she rushed across the carpet to the bedroom door, opening it quietly despite her excitement, not wanting to wake her friend. She took the stairs two by two, skidded to a stop in the hall, and marched into the kitchen without a thought to her appearance. Despite her love for the summer, a fresh coat of snow always left her excited. And she pictured her and Ryan building a giant snowman on the porch just outside the kitchen door.
Her wide smile faltered before it altogether disappeared as she rounded the corner. Sawyer stood at that very door, his back to her, looking out onto fresh powder. He held a steaming mug between his hands, and there were a couple of backpacks at his feet. It looked like he was contemplating an exit despite still being in his pajamas, just out of bed, his hair a mess. He eventually turned to offer her a tired smile. A moment later he looked away.
