Winter Wake

by Rick Hautala

  Suddenly, she jerked to an abrupt stop. Bri, who had been mindlessly chugging along beside her, knocked into her shoulder.

  “What is it?” Bri asked. Her words were whisked away by the wind as soon as they left her mouth.

  Unable to speak, Julia pointed down the length of the bridge.

  At first, Bri couldn’t see anything through the snow, but then, beneath one of the lights, she saw a slumped black shape.

  It looked like a person, hunched over and back to them, peering out over the bay, but that was impossible … ridiculous! No one would be out sightseeing on a night like this.

  Julia started moving forward again, taking short, cautious steps closer to the figure. She was wishing …praying it was nothing more than an unpainted spot on one of the bridge’s trusses … or a windblown piece of trash that had gotten hung up in the railing.

  It couldn’t possibly be …

  “No!” Julia said, gasping when the figure —

  Yes! It’s a person!

  — slowly turned and looked in their direction.

  Was this some local nutcase who liked to come out onto the bridge during a storm and watch the snow blow across the frozen bay? she wondered. Or was this precisely the person —

  The thing

  — she and Bri were fleeing?

  Julia didn’t stop walking. With Bri beside her, clutching her hand, she kept moving forward. They both screamed in unison when the figure raised its arm over its head and shrieked at them, its voice piercing the night like a bullet.

  “You can’t get away! … Not that easily!”

  Both Julia and Bri saw the figure clearly now as it started toward them.

  It was Abby!

  The wind caught her heavy snow-caked sweater and made it snap viciously at her hips. The long strands of black hair seemed to rise and twist, framing her pale face like an explosion of writhing black snakes.

  “You can’t get away!” Abby wailed, her voice rising and falling like a siren in the wind. Burning red sparks flashed from the cores of her eyes as she came closer … closer.

  Frozen with fear, Julia started to back up as the horrible skull-faced figure closed the distance between them. Her heart pounded like a jackhammer in her ears, drowning out everything except the shrill wail of the hideous creature.

  And then an idea struck her.

  It was desperate, but right now she was past the point of rationally analyzing anything.

  Turning to Bri, she shouted, “Jump!”

  “What?”

  “I said jump!”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Do it! Now!”

  She pushed her daughter toward the railing.

  “Can’t you see? She doesn’t have as much power this close to the water! It’s our only chance.”

  “The fall will kill us!” Bri yelled. “What if we fall through the ice?”

  “It’s frozen solid,” Julia gasped. “And the snow ... it’s deep enough. It’ll cushion the impact. Jump! … Now!”

  After casting one last, frightened glance at the thing approaching them, Bri — against her better judgment — clambered up onto the iron railing. Needle-sharp blasts of wind tried to knock her back, but she gripped the railing, crouched, and then — trying to empty her mind — leaped out into the night and then plummeted into the darkness.

  Julia watched as the blackness below the bridge swallowed her daughter. Her slowly diminishing scream trailed back to her out of the storm like an unspooling ribbon …

  And then it was gone.

  As she turned to face the creature, Julia couldn’t shake the terrifying thought that she would never see Bri again … alive, anyway.

  Closer and closer Abby came, her arms upraised, her face glowing with a bone-chilling light. Her mouth was opened wide as if she intended to eat her.

  Trembling with fear and the cold, Julia backed up, giving ground. The overhead light cast a cold wash across Abby’s face, which loomed ever closer, revealing with hallucinatory sharpness cold, staring eyes … flaps of shredded, rotting skin … coils of black hair …and glistening bone.

  “She’ll be next,” the horrifying visage said. “After I’m through with you!”

  Her lips barely moved, and she looked more like a talking skull than any semblance of human being.

  “First, though, you … and the bastard child you’re carrying!”

  Abby darted forward like a cobra, but Julia ducked to one side and grabbed the bridge railing. With a nimbleness and strength that surprised her, she vaulted over the railing and then was falling down … down into the darkness beneath the bridge.

  The landing came sooner than she expected, and was surprisingly hard. As the cushion of snow swallowed her, she let out one violent grunt. Then she scrambled to her feet, trying to get her bearings. Using the black slash of the bridge above her as a guide, she started plowing through the heavily drifted snow over the frozen bay toward the mainland.

  “Bri! … Where are you, Bri?” Julia shouted as she staggered forward, tripping in the deep snow. She could see only a few feet in front of her, and there was no trace of Bri anywhere. The wind tore underneath the bridge, making a low-throated howl.

  “Bri!’ she wailed. “If you can hear me, head for the mainland! … Head for the mainland!”

  II

  For the second or two that she was falling, Bri had the sensation that the storm winds has scooped her up into the dark, roiling storm clouds, and she was flying. She expected to look down and see the bridge and the entire island below her as she sailed away, tossing and turning like a dandelion puff in the wind. The jarring shock of impact hit her like a hammer, and for a while — she had no idea how long — she lay crumpled with her face in the snow. She lay there, the wind knocked out of her as brilliant zigzags of light traced across her inner eye. Every time she took a breath, her lungs felt as though they had frozen solid and wouldn’t absorb any oxygen. She had landed on her left side, but after struggling to her feet, a quick check proved that she hadn’t broken any bones.

  Snuggling deep into her collar, she looked up at the bridge.

  Even the nearest light was now almost entirely masked by falling snow. She waited, expecting to see — or at least hear — her mother when she jumped, but all she could see or hear was the storm as it swept across land and ocean. Thick pellets of snow rattled like marbles on the hard crust of snow.

  “Mom!” she cried, cupping her hands to her face and looking up. “Where are you?”

  The storm pressed her voice back in on her, making her feel like she was locked in a tiny room. The raging night was like a cold, stinging cloak wrapped around her. She laughed when she thought how strange it was to experience claustrophobia out in the middle of the frozen bay, and she realized that laughing in a situation like this probably meant she was losing her grip on reality.

  But then again — after everything she had seen and been through — what other choice was there other than to slip a few gears!

  “Mom!” she wailed, listening to how feeble her voice sounded against the heavy thrumming of the storm.

  Finally, convinced that her mother had already jumped — unheard and unseen — and must be heading toward the mainland, she started out across the snow-covered ice.

  The only alternative was too terrible to contemplate. Audrey had gotten her mother … and was now coming after her.

  As she plowed through the snow, hip-deep in places, Bri’s body was tensed as she expected, any second now, to plunge through the ice and into the frigid bay. As much as she tried not to think it, she couldn’t get what had happened to her father back at her Granddad’s house.

  Is he really dead?… How can he be dead just like that? … like Granddad … And now maybe Mom’s dead?

  She remembered what her father had said about the time he and his friend Randy had crossed the frozen bay.

  “You fall in, and you’ll be dead in a minute!”

  With that came the memory of when she had followed
Audrey along the rocks at Indian Point and had fallen into the ocean. For the first time, she realized something with a stomach-churning jolt.

  “She wanted me to drown!” she whispered into the wind. “She wanted me to fall in and drown! She was out to kill us even then!”

  As if in answer, a gust of wind echoed on the underside of the bridge and seemed to say … “You’ll … die … now! …”

  All along, Audrey has been trying to hurt me … to play on how lonely I was … and use it to get to my father … to get to my whole family!

  With that came the bitter realization that it might have worked.

  If she and her mother didn’t get out of this blizzard — and soon — they would both die of exposure, and Audrey would have her revenge.

  “Mom! …” she wailed, pushing blindly forward through the snow, her face numb from exposure. Sweat dripped down her back inside her coat. Her face was flushed, and she knew she was going to die soon if she didn’t find her mother and some shelter soon.

  Then, below the high-pitched hiss of the snow as it sliced across the frozen bay and the deep-throated moaning sounds coming from beneath the bridge, Bri heard something else — a low, vibrating rumble.

  Is that thunder during a snowstorm? she wondered, looking frantically up at the sky. Tatters of clouds and shifting snow created an oddly disorienting view.

  Bri tensed, waiting for the rumbling sound to be repeated. Everywhere around her, the snow spun madly, and everywhere she looked, she could imagine seeing someone —

  My mother ... or Audrey?

  — lurching across the frozen bay toward her.

  For several drawn-out seconds, the sound wasn’t repeated, but then it came again, and it almost knocked Bri off her feet. Beneath her, the ice vibrated as a long, steady rumbling sound built in intensity. Within seconds, it was as deafening as a roaring cannon shot.

  The ice is breaking up!

  She crouched low, holding her arms out wide for balance. It could have been her nerves or maybe her leg muscles going into spasm, but she thought she could feel the ice subtly heaving.

  The tides … That’s what’s doing it … The tides are shifting the ice! … It’s breaking up!

  She imagined the ice suddenly heaving upward — hugh blocks and spears of it rearing skyward like mountains — and she saw herself scrambling, trying to find solid footing and then being yanked down into the numbing black water.

  You’ll be dead in a minute!

  The words of her stepfather rang in her memory like a hammer striking iron.

  From some hidden reservoir of strength, she found what she needed to start running. Kicking her legs up high to clear the snow, she took awkward, leaping giant steps toward the mainland.

  The bridge is still above me, she told herself. I’ll be safe as long as I stay under it!

  The wind tore into her lungs as she ran. The headway she was making didn’t seem worth the effort, though, and she would have quit if the wind had been in her face instead of at her back.

  But on she went, struggling to push back her fear, thinking …

  If I don’t make it out of here soon, I’m gonna scream and scream and scream until my lungs burst!

  She ran blindly now, her breath coming in painful stitches that lanced her side like hot knife blades. When the ice suddenly opened up underneath her feet, she didn’t have enough air left in her lungs to scream … and with the storm raging all around her, her mother, no matter where she was, wouldn’t hear her scream, anyway.

  III

  Although neither of them knew it, Julia was less than a hundred feet behind Bri. She was also several paces further out into the bay, so she didn’t see the tracks Bri left behind in the snow. Besides, the wind quickly smoothed over any signs of her passing, so the two of them might as well have been a hundred miles apart.

  Julia’s overriding concern — besides Bri’s safety — was worrying about the baby she was carrying.

  “You’ll be next! ... You and that bastard child you’re carrying!”

  “Is it a boy? … Am I going to have a son?” Julia whispered.

  She found no pleasure in the thought. The reality of where she was — even if there wasn’t a supernatural creature pursuing her — made her realize she would die of exposure soon — probably within minutes. Her face was already completely numb. If she didn’t make it to the mainland, if she didn’t find warmth and shelter soon, she would die.

  And even if she did get out of this alive, would it matter?

  Not with John dead!

  Not if Bri died!

  The storm raged like a wolf pack, howling, hunting her down, and pulling at her as she struggled through the snow alongside the bridge. Her body ached, every muscle cramping, every nerve tingling. She expected any second now to see a darker-than-night shape swoop down at her off the bridge. Her mind was filled with a vibrating, white buzz as she forged ahead, barely conscious of the cold fingers tugging at every inch of her clothes.

  The walk stretched out, and Julia began to wonder if there would ever be an end to the frozen bay.

  Maybe, she thought with a sudden dash of panic, I’m already dead! … Maybe this will go on forever!

  But before the panic raging inside her crested, she looked down at her legs mechanically churning through the snow, her alms pumping to keep her moving, and she knew she wasn’t dead …

  Not goddamned yet!

  She stumbled several times, pitching face first into the snow, but each cold dash of snow on her face revived her and made her grit her teeth to keep from screaming out as she struggled to stand and keep going. The overhanging black slash of the bridge couldn’t go on forever — it couldn’t. There had to be an end to it, and that end would bring her to the mainland … and safety!

  And she would find Bri, she told herself.

  She would save herself and her daughter and her unborn baby.

  “You’ll be next … You and that bastard child you’re carrying!”

  “No way in hell, bitch!” she cried out, even though she could barely hear her own voice above the howling wind.

  That bridge can be twenty miles long … two hundred miles long, but as long as I follow it, I’ll be safe … We’ll all be safe …

  “We’ll all be safe! ... We’ll all be safe! ...”

  The words became a mantra in her mind, but she was barely aware she was chanting them as she walked. In the blindness of her effort, she even crossed Bri’s fresh tracks, less than a minute old, but she never noticed the churned-up snow. When she finally walked past the second of the two bridge tower bases, she knew she was close, and hope — like a faint spark — began to kindle inside her.

  “Bri!” she shouted, her voice weak with exhaustion.

  She was looking around frantically, lost in the blackout of the snow, when suddenly a loud, roaring explosion knocked her onto her back. She lost any sense of direction as the night around her was filled with a violent surging. Tremendous cracking sounds boomed like cannons in the night, and Julia was vaguely surprised that the darkness wasn’t filled with flashes of light as well.

  But she had little time to think. Completely disoriented, she was thrown first to one side, then the other. The earth and sky started rocking wildly back and forth, pitching her around. And then an intense cold grabbed her legs like a shark bite. Only a small part of her rational mind registered her legs were incredibly cold … and wet. And then she was slipping downward, her gloved hands clawing at the tilting ice, trying to find some handhold.

  Her legs were useless as she tried to climb up the ever-increasing incline. She couldn’t hold on forever. She realized that the ice was breaking up, and she was going to be in over her head within seconds. Coiling her legs under herself, she waited a split second before pushing off. For a horrifyingly long moment she was sailing through the air — long enough to have the panicked thought that maybe all of this had been a hallucination, and she was still falling from her jump off the bridge — but then she hit t
he ice hard … and it was level… solid …

  Behind her, she watched as a chunk of ice thrust into the air. Snow curled like frozen mist around it, and choppy seawater splashed beneath across the thick ice. Black terror gripped her heart when she considered — only for a moment — how close she had been to drowning.

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it?” she shouted, shaking her hands over her head. “You want me dead! But you’re not going to get it! Goddamn you! You’re not!”

  She pitched forward into the night, confident now that the mainland was only a few dozen feet away. When she peered into the storm, she was positive she could see the dark slope of a road embankment.

  The road … a house … safety …

  The hazy yellow glow of a streetlight loomed up out of the darkness, and Julia realized that this one was different — it wasn’t the blue kind they used on the bridge. It was a real streetlight.

  She had made it.

  With a final burst of energy, she crossed the last stretch of the frozen bay. Tears blurred her vision, and she was cackling with laughter as she scrambled up the hillside and onto solid ground.

  It’s all behind me ... everything! … My husband is dead, and ... Bri!

  “Bri! … Bri! … Answer me!”

  She hurled her words into the throat of the storm. Turning to look back toward the island across the bay, the full force of the snow blasted into her face, choking her, smothering her.

  Bri can’t be lost! she thought, wild with fear. She can’t be!

  But what if Bri hadn’t been as lucky as she had been?

  What if Bri had fallen into the ocean when the ice split open?

  With a violent grunt, Julia doubled over as hot pain shot through her abdomen. Her instant thought was, This feels like a birth contraction! But there was also a warm, gushing sensation, as though …

  I’m bleeding! ….I’m losing the baby! …

  She fell to her knees, convinced that, even though she had made it across the bay, she hadn’t made it far enough. She wasn’t out of the storm, and with her husband dead and maybe Bri dead back there on the ice —