Howl of a Thousand Winds

by Howl of a Thousand Winds (retail) (epub)

  “Brad, I can’t help you with what’s coming. But I want you to know that I really am your friend. The love energy that I told you about earlier doesn’t end with this life or the next. It’s almost unheard of, but sometimes it extends through the veil, between the two worlds. That has happened here. I’m not sure I can categorize what you see of me as real, but I am. So is this friendship.”

  The wind blew again. The next storm was rolling in.

  “It’s time for me to go.”

  Without another word, Denny stood and looked at his friend one last time, then turned and walked back into the silent blackness toward the bedroom at the end of the hall.

  Brad contemplated Denny’s final words, and reflected on everything he had heard and seen in the last 24 hours. He thought about the unnerving notion that he had not only seen, but had experienced long and deep conversations with a ghost, for lack of a better word. He had seen glimpses into a history that was not his own, and had experienced perspectives on death his mind had never even dared to consider. His brain, that most wondrous and most overactive organ, was exhausted from processing so many previously unimaginable concepts. Some psychologists would label this level of shock almost traumatic. And like most trauma patients, the non-stop over-revving of his brain had once again sapped Brad’s energy.

  He was completely used up. And while he fought to remain awake, to continue trying to unravel everything he had seen this day, or thought he had seen, his battered mind lost the battle and began shutting down.

  If time wasn’t the great healer, then sleep most assuredly was.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  An hour before dawn, Brad awoke to the dying embers leaving their pulsing signatures within the confines of the fireplace.

  Beyond the reach of their weak glow, the room held only darkness.

  The wind was tuning up for the next symphony, offering a cantata beneath the eaves and around the window seams while a loose shutter somewhere upstairs served as a metronome. Snow that had stopped overnight began falling again, at first tentatively, then with more purpose.

  Brad transferred an armful of wood from the rack next to the fireplace, breathing life into the dying fire.

  The resurrected light began filling the room, the dancing flames casting shadows beyond the furniture, a flickering between darkness and light that mimicked motion.

  The room borrowed the motion and its illusion of life.

  Movements in forty-year-old timbers, like the awakening of an old man after an awkward slumber, gave voice to creaks and moans as the house waltzed with the storm outside.

  Without the sun’s assistance, the hearth waged a losing battle against the seeping cold.

  Brad sat back down on the sofa and wrapped himself in the afghan, trying to decide if the stories of blizzards and dead friends coming back to life were the residue of an active rem cycle, or if the unbelievable had actually played out in this room just hours ago.

  He didn’t want to believe, tried to coax denial into a psychotic shield that would protect his fractured sense of reality.

  There was loneliness on either side of that shield. If it was only a dream, then he had no friend in the other room. If it was real, then there was something on the other side of the picture window that was too frightening to acknowledge.

  Without warning, the sound of breaking glass interrupted his thoughts. Brad instinctively looked up at the ceiling, the source of that noise. Without the barrier of the now-broken upstairs pane, the sound of the storm rattled around the second floor like an overdriven amplifier with a ripped cone.

  Brad’s rational mind calculated the losing battle being waged by the fireplace, and understood that it wouldn’t take long for the freezing temperatures from above to overwhelm the downstairs.

  A part of him also knew that, if the window had fallen victim to something other than the wind, he would need to face it.

  Grabbing a blackened iron poker from the fireplace set, Brad headed for the dining room to retrieve the remaining candle, then returned to the fireplace to light it.

  Armed with light and the artificial courage supplied by the makeshift weapon, he headed for the stairs.

  The creaking of the old and unused steps was masked by the mournful cooing of the wind through broken glass.

  As he broached the second floor, the feeble candle light showed a set of curtains at the far gable in the throes of a tortured dance around an intruding tree limb. The dark branch looked obscene, violating the previously virginal entrance of the double-hung pane, thrusting slightly in and out with each attacking and retreating gust of wind.

  Brad slowly made his way past a dust-covered dresser with a mirror hazed by neglect, setting the candlestick and poker on a discolored doily.

  Just beyond the dresser was a pair of twin beds, each with a single naked mattress stretched on a web of springs. One of these would be the perfect patch to cover the window.

  After maneuvering past the beds, Brad reached out to grab the rigid tree branch, which was the discarded offspring of a nearby pine. About the length of his body, he started to push the offending branch back through the lower half of the window.

  The branch offered resistance, as if offshoots had snagged in the window jamb. Brad jiggled the branch back and forth, trying to clear the obstruction.

  On his fourth attempt at forcing the branch back into nature, Brad looked at the upper pane of the window.

  Pressed against the glass was a featureless face. In place of eyes, two frozen globes of crystal blue stared at him with a soulless malevolence. The plane where a nose should have been was smooth and unvented, with a gaping, toothless slash in the pale viscera that served as skin.

  Brad momentarily lost his grip on the branch, horrified by the creature staring at him through the glass. In that moment, the branch was shoved violently inward, as if strapped to the front end of a truck.

  Brad was knocked to the ground, sliding past the beds and winding up parallel to the dresser.

  The upper half of the window frame exploded, and the body of the intruder poured into the room.

  With a larger portal, the wind trespassed into the room, blowing out the jittery candle parked on the dresser.

  With darkness came a disparity in time. Brad scrambled to his feet in an instant, although his mind seemed to count the motion in hours. He turned and raced to the dim light in the floor that marked the staircase, weakly illuminated by the downstairs fireplace.

  Behind him, the tree branch became a jagged-ended javelin, hurtling across the room toward his retreating flank.

  The missile glanced off his left hip, spinning him into an uncontrolled dervish that ricocheted against the walls as he tumbled down the stairs.

  Coming to a face-down halt at the bottom of the staircase, Brad’s mind quickly cataloged his limbs, inventorying for anything out of place while his ears strained to track the location of his attacker. There were no footsteps to be heard.

  He slowly lifted his head, which had knots swelling on the left and right hemispheres, and raised his eyes to the upstairs landing.

  The lifeless eyes glared down at him, silently warning of the creature’s impending rush down the steps.

  Brad crabbed backwards toward the fireplace, following ten thousand years of instinct that led him to the illusion of safety to be found in the warmth and illumination of fire. Reaching the hearth, he grabbed a long-handled shovel from the fireplace set to replace his lost poker.

  The creature took two steps down the staircase, his footfalls weightless and silent on the wooden planks that had squeaked loudly when Brad had trod on them just minutes earlier. On its third step, the glacial eyes looked past Brad to the flames popping in the fireplace across the room and stopped. A shudder rippled through the creature’s gelatinous body, like the small curved waves of a still pond bombarded by a pebble.

  Without a sound, the creature retreated into the darkness of the second floor.

  For a moment, only the sound of the
wind through the ruptured upstairs window reached Brad’s ears.

  Again, trying to pinpoint the being’s location, he strained to hear movement or the telltale footfalls of a body in motion. Again, there were no footsteps to be discerned.

  On the opposite end of the house, a second upstairs window erupted, the sound of glass shattering on the hardwood floors announcing the failure of another casement.

  With openings on each end of the house, the upstairs became a wind tunnel.

  Furniture scraped across the floor, crashing into walls before spilling over onto the bare hardwood as if thrown the length of the upstairs chamber. Wood splintered and nails screamed in defiance as the storm’s fury destroyed dressers and bed frames.

  The rampage wore on for nearly ten minutes, as the blizzard and the creature combined to ravage the upstairs sleeping areas.

  Then, with the wind sighing a final breath of retreat, silence settled in.

  Brad waited by the fireplace clutching the small shovel, his eyes scanning the dark ceiling.

  “Denny!” he shouted, invoking the name of what he hoped would be a cavalrous friend. The irony of his plea to one supernatural being for help against another supernatural being was lost to him.

  Silence was the only response from the room at the end of the hall.

  Brad would have to face this demon alone.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Brad turned in a circle near the hearth, looking for evidence of the impending onslaught. As his eyes scanned the front windows, he could see the outline of some of the trees against a lightening sky. Morning was coming.

  The list maker in his head rattled back to life, chattering out a list of germane facts like Edison’s ancient ticker tape machine churning out strips of paper imprinted with stock prices.

  Physical. Strong. Fast. Afraid of light.

  Wait. Not light.

  Brad remembered first seeing the creature on the other side of the lake in daylight during yesterday’s snowstorm. It wasn’t light.

  Maybe it was heat.

  One thing’s for sure, he reflected, it isn’t afraid of me.

  He began revisiting the idea of escape that had filled his blood vessels the previous evening, weighing his chances of survival in the freezing cold against the angry entity rearranging furniture upstairs.

  The odds hadn’t improved with the deepening snow, compounded by the very real possibility of getting lost in the woods, although the graying sky was gaining a beachhead on the receding night.

  The only door was blocked by snow, but he might be able to open or break a window to get out of the cabin.

  During the course of his list-making, the upstairs had gone quiet, with even the sound of the jagged-glass woodwind instrument going silent.

  Brad cocked his ear toward the ceiling like a curious golden retriever, straining to hear the location of his other-worldly tormenter.

  Nothing.

  He cautiously stepped toward the stairs, the iron fireplace shovel wound behind his head like a Louisville slugger waiting for a change-up, watching the place at the head of the stairs where he expected his adversary to appear.

  The upstairs area wasn’t quite as dark, with pre-dawn grayness backlighting the walls through the destroyed windows.

  Emboldened by the emptiness from above, Brad put his foot on the first step with enough weight to entice a loud squeak from the wood.

  His breathing stopped with the cessation of the stair’s cry, listening for the sound of movement while his eyes continued to scan the opening in the ceiling.

  If it’s still there, Brad surmised, it must be hiding. Waiting.

  Just as he placed his foot on the second step, a scraping sound from the other side of the front door caught his attention.

  Brad spun toward the sound, his eyes searching for a hint of what lay beyond.

  The scraping continued, a rhythmic sound that neither approached nor retreated.

  His head swiveling between the silence of the staircase and this new noise from outside, Brad carefully stepped toward the door, the steel shovel still at the ready in case the creature managed to force the door through the jamb.

  Two steps from the door, the sound stopped.

  Brad stopped as well, holding his ground a mere six feet from the portal, listening for where the sound may have moved.

  Suddenly the door exploded in sound, the resonance of bare metal banging against the outer shell.

  “This is the caretaker manager. Who’s in theyah?”

  Brad spun the heavy Maine accent through his cerebral Rolodex, stopping at one of the newest additions.

  “Mr. Berube?” Brad yelled through the door. “Is that you?”

  “Ayuh, ‘tis. Who are you?”

  “My name is Connerman. We met Thanksgiving Day. I was a guest of Mrs. Enderrin.”

  The scraping sound began again.

  “Well, let me finish moving the snow and you can open the door.”

  The time that had once slowed to a crawl now barely qualified as passing, with each slide of the metal snow shovel meting out a pace that was agonizing in its tempo, like the slow speed of a cruise ship approaching the long-shipwrecked inhabitants of a palm-fronded island. Brad knew that his continued existence on this planet depended on the race between Mr. Berube’s snow clearing efforts and the final appearance of the deadly creature ruling the second floor.

  Within minutes, the scraping stopped.

  “You’re gonna hafta push from your side,” Mr. Berube shouted.

  Brad took a last look at the vacant stairs, then leaned the fireplace shovel against the wall before bracing his shoulder against the door and turned the knob.

  The door moved slightly, accompanied by the crack of ice that had formed between the bottom of the door and the threshold, before it began rolling back on its external hinges.

  Finally, the door swung open enough to admit muted light from the overcast dawn that outlined the red-checkered wool cap resting on Mr. Berube’s brow.

  “I sawr the smoke from the chimney this mawnin’ and thought it might be them townie kids messin’ up the place,” Mr. Berube said as he grabbed the edge of the door, using it as a vertical plow to displace the last of the snow heap blocking the path.

  “When I got here and sawr the busted window upstairs, I figgered I’d be usin’ the shovel to bang ‘em in the head.”

  “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you,” Brad said, helping push the door back, but not yet far enough for him to squeeze out. “I came out yesterday because Mrs. Enderrin told me her son and husband were stuck out here, so I volunteered to come and fetch them.”

  The caretaker stopped pulling on the door.

  “Mister, Jimbo and Denny been dead these 25 years. Helped the coroner pull Jimbo out of the ice myself. You don’t expect me to believe Mrs. E would send you out to rescue ghosts do you?”

  Brad stopped pushing the stubborn door.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he answered. “You’ve never seen anyone here, carrying firewood? Never joined Vi for Thanksgiving dinner? Never wondered about her holiday forays out here in the woods? And how about the ice creature that has been breaking into houses and tearing things up around here? You’ve never seen that either?”

  Mr. Berube took a step away from the still-stuck door and retrieved his snow shovel, but instead of using it to slice away the last of the frozen matter blocking the path, he brought it to quarter arms like a soldier in preparation for bayonet drills.

  “Mr. Connerman, I know about the Bigfoot. But just cuz I've seen 'im don't make me crazy. Certainly not crazy enough to see ghosts. Maybe you should just stay right heah until I can get the Sheriff out to lend a hand.”

  Brad watched through the 18-inch crack as a white blur dropped behind the shovel-bearing caretaker.

  “Mr. Berube!-“

  Before he could finish his warning, the creature grabbed the older man by the shoulders and spun him around so quick that both collar bones sn
apped like twigs twisted from a tree trunk.

  As the caretaker opened his mouth to emit the scream of pain that reached the finish line of his larynx a split second before the scream of surprise, the creature yanked the now-broken carcass against the filmy white gelatin of its body and covered Mr. Berube’s mouth with its own gaping maw.

  Brad watched as frozen air was forced into the caretaker’s throat, freezing tissue on its way to the still-pumping lungs like an asthma inhaler that had been filled with Freon.

  Mr. Berube was unable to bring his terror to voice as his lungs were flash-frozen, along with the terrified expression on his face.

  Death came to him within 10 seconds of the creature’s drop from the second story window.

  As the creature released Mr. Berube’s body, frozen from the inside out, Brad scrambled for the edge of the door, trying to pull it closed before the creature could gain entrance.

  Tugging on the door with both hands, Brad was only able to close the gap a few inches before two frozen appendages grabbed the door and pulled in the opposite direction.

  The hinges screamed as the screws ripped out of the wooden doorframe. Brad let go just before the door exploded out of its swing path, flying across the yard before crashing into the window of the four-wheel drive truck disabled in the driveway.

  Brad began frantically backpedaling into the house, the memory of the shovel leaning against the wall forgotten in the terror now coming through the empty doorframe.

  “Denny, where are you?” Brad shouted, grasping at even the most illogical of straws in the face of an illogical demise.

  The creature momentarily stopped its pursuit, its lifeless eyes turning toward the darkened hallway.

  While silence was the only reply, Brad used the distraction to turn and run toward the bedroom at the end of the hall.

  Bursting into the room, it was obvious that Brad’s plea for help had been a waste of precious breath.

  Daisied curtains lined both sides of the intact window frame, a light and carefree pattern that matched the flowered quilt that covered the empty bed. Beyond it, a breaking dawn was waking the darkened forest.