As her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, muted from an overcast sky, her senses sharpened. Her thoughts began to race. Though the two men chasing her had murder on their minds, suddenly she sensed danger from some other source.
The snowy hillsides on her flanks looked familiar. With each step, at every turn, she felt more and more an enduring sense of Déjà vu. She’d been there before.
Then she saw something in the clearing ahead and stopped in her tracks. The dark played tricks with her eyes, yet there was no mistaking the dull shine of the chrome handlebars, the moonglow bouncing off the silvery mag rims. Dexter’s Kawasaki.
Her blood turned icier than the air. Without turning her head, she looked left, then right, scanning for movement in the shadows, feeling like the black snow somehow knew she was there, and it was watching.
A popping sound startled her, shook her from the paralyzing fear. Next to her, a bit of frost exploded into a dust cloud. It took a second to realize what happened. She’d been shot at.
She put her hands in the air, still studying the darkness, looking for something that might have been impossible to find. Unless it wanted to be seen. Then it might have been too late.
“You’re going to shoot me?” she yelled. “What happens when the police find my body full of bullets? Huh? What then? How are you gonna make that look like an accident?”
McCullah hurried to the bottom of the steep incline, Armstrong lagging behind. “Stupid, stupid girl. And I thought reporters were supposed to be intelligent.”
He seemed to be the only one with a gun. The full moon peeked through the cloud cover and reflected on the shiny metal. Aside from what her grandfather had taught her about his old Winchester, she didn’t know much about guns, so she didn’t have a clue what kind McCullah had pointed at her face. What difference did it make? It looked big and, most important, deadly.
“Hurry up and do it!” Armstrong’s harsh voice was an icy needle in the night. “Let’s get out of here!”
She searched McCullah’s dead stare. “You’ll never get away with this. Somebody’ll see my car and come down here.”
“I guess we’d better hurry this up, then, huh?”
“You don’t have to do this,” finally, she pleaded, compromising her own ethic. “Listen. I won’t write the story. My editor’ll be pissed, but I’ll tell him the story has no legs. He thought it was bullshit, anyway. I’ll tell him he was right. I’ll kill the story”
McCullah tilted his head.
“I’ll tell you what,” he aimed with one hand. “I’ll kill the story, myself,” he took one last moment to look her up and down. Shaking his head, he issued an audible tisk-tisk. “A damn shame, too. Nice piece of ass. Oh well...”
She fell to the ground, covered her face, and pulled her knees close to her chest, shielding her head and mid-section. Maybe the rounds would only penetrate through her arms or legs and not hit her head or any vital organs. That’s all she could hope for.
Or could she hope for something else?
Instead of a gunshot ringing out in the frigid night, she heard McCullah shriek louder and higher than she’d thought possible from such a burly man. She looked up, and her heart jumped into her throat at what she saw. From behind a large rock, the shadowy creature crept in thin protrusions, becoming an inky pool and circling McCullah’s feet. Its pungent smell burned her nostrils as it swirled and bubbled.
McCullah’s wry smile turned flat. Still staring at her, his eyes became enormous, lids opening beyond what should have been humanly possible. He looked down, and at the same time, tried to lift his left foot. The dark ooze held tight, refusing him any movement. Not even an inch. He looked up at her again, perplexed, like he thought for a second maybe she had something to do with it. Then he convulsed. She guessed from pain, though he seemed to be the type of guy who would never admit to such weakness. Guys like McCullah, she’d met a million of them. They’d go into surgery and refuse anesthesia, just to prove their masculinity. But this time was different. An acrid, steaming, scalding, smoldering pool of blackness had him in its clutches, a living bear trap clamping down on his ankles, forcing him into involuntary spasms.
“What the hell is this!” he pointed his pistol straight down. “What the—AHHHHH!”
He shot twice. His gun had a silencer, so it made only tiny concussion noises. Then he unleashed a rapid fire, changing his aim, circling his body with bullets. Each time he pulled the trigger, misty bits of black ricocheted onto his chest and arms. The dark scatter hit his jacket and hissed and popped, eating into the heavy polyester outer lining, exposing the cotton insulation. He swiped at his chest and sleeves, trying to rub away the corrosive stuff. Some of it did come off, but it stuck to his hand instead of falling to the ground. Trembling, staring at his palm, he inhaled deep then shrieked a second time, shedding all of his former arrogance.
Yelling for his partner, Armstrong came bounding with large, unnatural steps, nearly falling forward a few times. Then his eyes got wide. Swinging his arms, he slid to a stop, staring blankly.
“McCullah? What’s going on?”
Uttering a weakened, throaty moan, McCullah turned to his associate, holding his palm for the man to see. April didn’t have to see it. She saw the reaction on Armstrong’s face. She smelled it, though. Charred human flesh. Her stomach folded in on itself. She swallowed down a sudden surge of bile. Armstrong stood still, a statue, frozen in horrified silence.
McCullah faced April again. A crunching noise turned her stomach. She almost felt it in her own bones, the crackling, the grinding. McCullah’s face went ghostly pale in the diffused moonlight, snowflakes still showering down as he trembled. With one great swishing sound, the man shrank in height by a foot, sliding to his knees. His chest heaved forward and his eyes rolled back.
“Uhhh!” he reached for the blackness with his partially decomposed hand, flesh sliding off bone, more of the scorched-meat stench invading April’s senses.
McCullah snapped to attention, standing still, staring into space. The man looked thousands of miles away, maybe in some hot, humid place where the palm trees and the naked breasts swayed in the gentle breeze. She could see it in his gaze. He’d gone to his safe place. He tilted his head and almost smiled. Then the embryo of a grin faded as he gritted his clenched teeth.
The voracious creature in the snow quivered almost as if happy. It seemed to delight in the taste of McCullah’s flesh, seemed to grow more animated, more energized. April made another observation. As she watched the monster eat the man alive, she noticed it get bigger. It digested his feet and ankles, and grew a few inches in circumference.
Another hollow crunch. McCullah sank again, this time to his hips. The force brought his momentum forward. He fell flat on his face into the dark pool.
Bubbling, popping, steaming, sizzling. His skin cooked like bacon thrown on a scorching skillet. He screamed again, his cries muffled by the blackness. It crept wherever the snowflakes fell, crisscrossing his thick winter jacket, his heavy denim jeans, his exposed skin. Everything it touched, it ate. It devastated his clothes, melting them into a grayish liquid. Wincing and whimpering, he plowed his hands into the ravenous creature and did a pushup. The thing reeled him in, pulling him closer and sucking him down with a greedy Glug! He slumped to his chest, then disappeared, becoming nothing more than a lump in the dark snow.
“McCullah!” Armstrong pushed forward. As he drew near, his face wrinkled, his eyes narrowed. He stopped twenty feet from his slain coworker and let his jaw fall open. His stare flashed to April. She shook her head. Still looking at her, he called once more for McCullah. Nothing but churning, bubbling, steaming. The creature was digesting its meal.
Armstrong stepped back. His foot dragged and he fell to the wintry forest floor.
The creature seemed to stop chewing and churning. Several slender offshoots from its shapeless mass moved toward Armstrong as he sat on his ass. He squinted, noticing the shadowy appendages.
“What is that
!” he kicked backward, attempting to keep ahead of the things probing in his direction. “What the hell is it!”
At the sound of his voice, the monster decided to commit its whole bulk to chasing Armstrong. The creature moved swiftly, rolling over small, snowy humps and rocky protrusions, gliding like a spectral pool of water rolling downhill. Only it rolled up, pursuing the man as he climbed, hand over hand, in the deep powder.
“NO!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. A shriek from hell. “Get it away from me! Get it away!”
He kicked and scratched up toward the Neon, the blackness trailing close. April didn’t wait to find out if it caught him. She couldn’t stand the thought of watching yet another gruesome death.
THIRTEEN
JEFF RAPPED ON THE HEAVY redwood door, The Mitchells carved in fancy calligraphy, along with a forest setting complete with mountains, rows of evergreens, and the obligatory bull elk bugling to the wilderness.
“They’re not home,” Logan rolled his eyes. “Now can we go?”
“Stop it,” he snapped. “I’m getting the word out, no matter what.”
“It’s freaking cold!”
“Shhh!” Jeff put his head to the door. “I thought I heard something.”
He listened. Faint creaking. Floorboards shifting. He narrowed his eyes and focused all his senses on finding the source of the sound, but it died away.
He knocked again, so hard the door shook, not a small feat given its size and solid construction. For good measure, he pressed the lighted button, though he didn’t hear a doorbell.
Logan yawned. “I told you. Nobody’s home.”
“Yes they are,” Jeff grew more annoyed. “Smoke’s coming from the chimney, look,” he pointed to the roof. “That means they’re here. Doug Mitchell never has a fire burning unless he’s here.”
“Their car’s gone,” Logan gestured to the driveway. A fresh set of tracks cut up and out to the road.
“That doesn’t mean anything. Somebody’s home. I know it. But I don’t know why the hell nobody’s answering. It’s making me nervous.”
“Why, Dad? What are you so freaked out for?”
He peered through the narrow window next to the door. “Logan, I’m not kidding around. I saw something out there. Something scary as hell. April saw it, and you can bet your ass Dexter saw it, too. Damned thing took his foot off. Whether you want to believe it or not, I’m going down this whole damned street and I’m warning everybody to keep their kids the hell away from that place or—”
A quick scream stopped him. His mind flashed with images of darkness and death. The smell of Dexter’s burning flesh lingered in his nostrils, reminding him of the menacing predator in the ice.
“Did you hear that?” he traversed the wraparound deck, peering down the large house’s east side.
“Hear what?”
“Shhh!”
He turned his ear toward the backyard, letting his sight dart about the covered area. Searching the wicker rockers and the empty flower planters, his thoughts went back to the black snow. He couldn’t help it. He just had a feeling. That thing might have gotten out of the canyon. He shivered, thousands of pinpricks streaming down his spine.
Then he heard another shriek. Logan’s eyes widened, his mouth stretching with surprise.
Jeff bolted alongside the house toward the back porch, wondering what scene of carnage he’d come upon.
As he approached the back patio, he saw light penetrating the fog, reflecting off the snowflakes. His feet slipped on the icy wood surface where the winter storm infiltrated below the awning. Logan stayed just behind, his labored breath signaling his presence. Jeff felt energized. His heart wanted to jump out of his chest when he heard more screaming, agonized wails of a woman in distress. It sent him into an even deeper frenzy.
It had to be Carrie Mitchell, Doug’s wife. Hairdresser. Mother of four. Her screams reverberated throughout the small valley, winding along the ten-acre property. Jeff imagined her trapped by the monster, bathed in blackness. He pictured her slipping in the snow and the dark substance surrounding her, eating away at her fur-lined jacket, dissolving her exposed hands and face.
Brightness blinded him momentarily, shrouding the shapes, obscured by a thick layer of fog. The Mitchell’s weren’t millionaires, but like most on the street, they could afford luxuries like a large back deck with a pergola adorned in wine grapes, and a hot tub that could fit just about every adult on the road.
Jeff shielded his eyes. With his other hand, he felt for his son, realizing it might not have been a great idea to lead Logan directly into the creature’s jaws. Yet some other instinct took hold, a reaction he couldn’t resist, similar to the response triggered when one hears a person drowning and calling for help. Jeff would always be the first one into the water.
He took Logan’s hand, dragging the boy in his haste. He justified bringing Logan back there, to where the black maw of death might very well have been attacking someone at that very moment, by reasoning his son could help when the time came.
He stopped dead in his snowy tracks.
“Hey!” Logan ran into him, forcing him a step forward.
“Quiet.”
Splashing water.
He remembered the way the black snow flowed toward Dexter like a stream. He’d heard the same kind of noise then, a watery, sloshing sound.
As his vision adjusted, he recognized a hot tub gazebo. One of those fancy cedar numbers with tinted windows and room for a sitting area. The spa was lit up like the Vegas strip, strings of white Christmas lights wrapped along the sides, then tracing the roof.
The same image kept flashing through his head. He’d arrived too late. If he’d only gotten there to warn them sooner. If he’d only heard Carrie’s cries for help earlier.
He shook the thought away, approaching the spa while still clutching Logan’s wrist. Through the gazebo’s darkened windows, he noticed someone had been in the hot tub, though it didn’t seem anyone was in there at the moment. He got close, pressed his hands, and peered in.
“Nobody’s in there,” Jeff craned his neck, searching the corners to make sure. Nothing. “What happened to them?”
He flashed his son a look and showed him an open palm as if to say, ‘stay put,’ while rounding the gazebo to the entrance. Inside, he found what he’d expected. The hot tub looked like it had just been used—jets running, Etta James on the speakers crooning, ‘At Last.’ Burning candles encircled the rim of the tub, some floating in the turbulent foam, some burnt out or ready to at any moment.
Jeff shivered. The clues spoke volumes. A scene of struggle. No way would the Mitchells leave their precious spa in such shambles.
Another shriek made Jeff’s ears ring. He knew the responsible thing was to deliver his son from harm at all costs, but another human being’s life hung on the line. He couldn’t leave her like that. It sounded like she was going to die.
She screamed again, and this time sounded closer. Jeff saw a naked woman run past and his eyes felt like they’d bulged from their sockets. At first he thought she was fleeing from the creature. It must have caught her and tore her clothes off in the process. Then he saw more movement from the darkness and flinched, pulling Logan with him. Another nude figure came up the stairs, pushing through the mist, hurrying to the spa behind the woman. It took him a second to recognize the Mitchells, out for a kinky run in the snow.
“What the hell!” Carrie slipped and caught herself on the edge of her turquoise hot tub. Her bouncing breasts and exposed buttocks made Jeff’s face flush. He heard Logan let out a gasp followed by a quick snicker. Jeff covered his son’s eyes.
He turned as she hurried into the steaming water. Her husband, Doug, bounded behind her, shriveled penis and balls dangling in the frigid air, a mixture of surprise and annoyance plastered on his face.
“Who the hell?” he squinted. With the light behind him, Doug was mostly a silhouette, though Jeff could make out his angry expression. “Keller? Jeff Keller
? That you?”
Jeff waved and flashed a meek smile.
“What the hell are you doing back here, Jeff?” Carrie sank to her chin. “Haven’t you heard of knocking?”
Jeff let Logan go. “We did knock. Hard. Rang the doorbell, too. You guys must have your music too loud or something.”
Doug wrapped a towel around his waist and picked up a small remote control. He pointed it toward the Bose stereo in the corner, muting Etta James’ sultry voice. “Most people might have taken the music for a hint.”
“I know, I know,” Jeff glanced at his neighbor, then scanned the yard, paying close attention to a particularly shadowy area alongside the garden shed where Doug kept his John Deer. “It’s just that…”
“What?” Carrie tapped her red painted fingernails on the acrylic hot tub shell. “Why are you guys here? What could possibly bring you two out, sneaking and spying on your neighbors in the middle of a snowstorm?”
“Oh, brother,” Logan slapped his forehead. “Thanks, Dad. Now the whole street’s gonna think we’re some kinda peeping toms or something.”
Jeff let out a nervous chuckle. “No, it’s not like that at all. We just came here, I mean we’re just going to all the houses on the street because…” he noticed something moving next to the shed. A dark shape huddled against the wind. It seemed to realize it had been spotted and froze.
Doug turned. “Whatcha looking for down there, Jeff? You see something?”
“Um, I…” he stammered. “I think I…” the object lunged, arched into the air, and landed in the dimly-lit area between the shed and a small grove of evergreens. Rivers of electric pinpricks coursed through his veins. His palms began to sweat. He tried to run to the deck railing and get a better look, but slipped. Regaining his balance, he reached the edge and peered down. His stomach dropped to his bowels when he saw the dark shape slink for cover under the thick, snow-laden bow of a pine tree.
“There it is!” he waved frantically. “We gotta get outta here!”
Bitter Cold Page 7
