Karl rose carefully and crossed to the window, resting his palms on Alexa’s vanity table. An old, carved thing which she had inherited from her grandmother. Another antique. Like everything here, sentimentality was at the top of the pecking order. It was sturdy, he had to give it that, but what he wouldn’t give for something new. Some shiny object that would act as a freckle on the unblemished, unremarkable virgin skin of his life in Denridge.
The snow fell endlessly from a darkened sky, ramping up its ferocity with every passing second. It had almost been enough to deter his return home. If he had left it any later then he could still be out there, struggling to wander through the snowfall, shielding his eyes against the blizzard. By the time he had made it back, spotting the coned, pointed roof of the nearby chapel just down the road to his place, the drift in front of his door was only a few inches high. A swift tug with his muscular arms cleared the snow and he was inside.
Safe.
God, was there anything more boring than safe?
He sincerely thought he could love her at one point. In the early days of Karl and Tori’s affair he had mistaken the excitement for love. The chemical pull that had him sneaking out of the house late at night and crossing the snow-covered town to find succour in the arms of her petite supple body too overwhelming to resist. He’d listen to her rantings and ravings about comments she’d received from strangers on YouTube with eager ears, confused by the lingo, but happy to endure the drone until they fell into each other’s arms again. Her life confused him, the computer plugged into the wall enough to somehow earn her money that could be spent in the real world. Enough to give her cause to not involve herself in the traditions and occupations that Denridge Hills had honoured for hundreds of years. Traditions that Karl and his family had held sacred for years.
Tori was beautiful. Tori was intelligent. But she was also vain and hooked her self-worth into the admirations of others. He soon learned that all he had to do was flutter a compliment into her ear once a while and she would do things to him that Alexa never would. They had twisted into positions that he had never thought possible and found new heights in the fog of their ecstacy.
Now all of that was gone. He had made his choice, and now he was wedged between a rock and a hard place. At some point he would have to tell Alexa, because there was no way in hell that Tori was going to keep their affair secret. If he gleaned anything from the hurt in her eyes that evening, he knew that things were volatile right now. If it hadn’t had been for the blizzard, would she have stormed her way across town after him, ready to rant and rave and dish the truth to a sleep-drunk Alexa?
He knew he’d have to play these next few weeks carefully. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
The wind howled outside and in the whistling calls he imagined he could hear her now, calling out in the wind, the storm carrying her message like an obedient servant. Her screams terrible, her rage a burning pyre, every fresh gust a desperate consonant towards a plea to have Karl back.
Karl straightened, eyes narrowing out the window. He strained his ears, realizing that he wasn’t imagining anything at all. Something was crying out, a shrill call of some kind of animal somewhere in the town. He loomed closer to the glass and could just make out three shapes moving along the edge of his vision, just beyond the cloak of the falling snow.
Wolves.
Karl furrowed his brow and stepped away from the vanity table. Sleep was never going to come now, he may as well find a use for himself. If the wolves came anywhere near his house, he’d find a good enough excuse to put a silver bullet between their eyes. Karl was a sharpshooter, and he knew how valuable wolf skin could be among the traders of the town. Three wolf pelts could be enough to help feed his family for a week.
If Tori doesn’t step in the way and break my family, that is.
Karl shook his head, trying what he could to erase that irritating bubble of anger that broiled in his chest. In the dark recesses of his mind, a thought came to him. Just kill her. As soon as the storm subsides, take her out. No one would have to know. Who does she have to worry about her anyway? It’d be easy.
Karl’s teeth sank into his lip. He blinked away the idea. Sure, Tori often made a point about the fact that she had little in the way of family left in the town, but that didn’t rule them all out. If Karl remembered correctly, Tori’s older sister lived on the outskirts of Denridge, right on the borders of the Drumtrie Forest. A lonely cabin, a kilometre or so from the farthest clusters of houses, stretched out into the tundra and existing beneath the midnight shadows of the great pines.
Make it look like an accident. Karl could do that. If there was one thing he had excelled at in his life, it was ending the lives of other creatures…
“No.”
Karl grunted, suddenly aware that he had tramped through the house to his home armoury without conscious thought. A wall of rifles, pistols, shotguns, and bows were on display, perfectly polished and maintained, most of them discharged and mere display items. However, he knew the handful of weapons which he kept armed and ready to go. He took down the .30-06 Springfield and examined the cartridges, giving an approving nod. From a nearby drawer he took a long black silencer and screwed it to the rifle’s tip. Heart thumping with excitement, he suited up in his jacket and insulated trousers and headed out the back door.
He stuck close to the house, not wanting to risk losing himself in the blizzard. The wind buffeted his body, pushing against him as though the hands of nature were trying to push him back inside his house, warning him that something was coming. Snow whipped against the rosebuds of his cheeks, sending painful pins into his flesh. He skirted the house, finding his way onto the front porch. There he paused and examined the world.
The houses across the street had faded from view, lost in the belly of the blizzard. The world shrunk around him, closing its walls so that he could only see a stone’s throw into the distance at best. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as another cry came from somewhere in the town.
Karl raised the scope to his eye, protected from some of the snow by the porch canopy. He hunted for the place where the shapes had appeared, and found that there was still one there, just on the edges of his vision.
He licked his lips, a grin creeping onto his face. His finger stroked the trigger as he lined up the shot, not quite able to make out what it was that was out there. If only it would come a touch closer, he could confirm the kill and reap the rewards. The last thing he needed was to kill an innocent civilian.
Hypocrite. Weren’t you just thinking about killing Tori?
He let out a small whistle, the wind tearing the sound from his mouth. The figure moved. Twitched. A moment later it started to grow larger, moving towards the call Karl had offered.
“That’s it, baby. Keep coming to daddy. A few steps more…”
The shape grew as it got closer, turning from a fuzzy grey blob and stretching taller, now. It was long, almost as tall as a man, though he could still see no appendages or limbs which would identify what the hell it was.
The figure stopped. Karl’s heartbeat grew rapid. He gave another whistle, hoping to coax out the creature, but instead a second whistle came in response, followed by a searing pain above his left hip.
“Son of a bitch,” he hissed, lowering the rifle and letting it clatter to the floor. He twisted towards the source of the pain and found something long and black sticking out of the material of his jacket. Although his jacket was thick, the dart’s needle was long enough to penetrate the cloth and hit the skin.
“What the fuck?” Karl grimaced as he ripped out the dart. He searched in the storm for some sign of his attacker, but there was nothing there at all. He pocketed the dart to examine in the safety of his home, then picked up the rifle and aimed it in the direction the dart had come. He let off three shots in quick succession, hoping to hit something at least, but if he did, there was no sign.
His hip throbbed. Turning one last time towards the spot where the f
igure had been, he was dismayed to find that there was still no sign of his attacker. He sent one final shot in the direction of whatever had been there, feeling a strange nausea sweep through him and tickle his throat.
He made his way toward the side door.
Leaning his back against the door, Karl fumbled for the lock with one hand, the other holding the epicenter of his pain. Once inside, he worked quickly in removing his jacket and examining the wound. His hands stretched out the bright red prick in his side, only inches above his hip bone. Small rivulets of his own blood trickled down towards the waistband of his trousers, mixed with something dark and sticky. Remembering the dart, he dug through his jacket and held it to his eyes. He examined its tip and found, to his dismay, that the same tar-like residue coated the long, thick needle. The dart itself was unremarkable. Carved wood with black feathers strung to the back. A few markings etched in black ink along the body.
But that residue…
A sudden wave of nausea swept over him. He wobbled on his feet and fought to stay upright. The edges of Karl’s vision began to swim. He tossed the dart onto a nearby unit where it rolled and fell to the floor.
Karl fought his way through his house, grabbing hold of anything he could to steady his passage towards Alexa and Alice. If whatever was out there had gotten him, there was a chance that they could get them, too. He couldn’t let that happen. Wouldn’t let that…
Karl was outside his bedroom. He blinked, not quite remembering the journey up the stairs or how he had gotten there. On his right, Alice’s bedroom door stood ajar, the usual pink glow of her room cast by the nightlight now gone in the wake of the power cut. Karl absently touched his hip, confused by the sudden anger rising through him. His throat, which had felt parched and dry only moments ago was now thick with his own saliva. He was hungry, but wasn’t sure what—
Karl dizzied, moving a hand to his head as he wobbled on the spot. He looked around and found himself standing by his bed, no memory whatsoever of entering the room. The sheets were torn from his bed, shredded until the stuffing snowed its way across the room. The pillows were gone, cast haphazardly against the wall, the wooden headboard cracked, the vanity table turned on its side.
And the blood.
Oh, God, the blood.
Karl’s breath caught as he followed the trail of blood and found the figure lying on the floor before him. He stood over the lifeless body of his wife, her body twisted into unnatural angles, his breath catching in his throat. Her night gown was nothing more than rags failing to hide her naked body. A lump of flesh had been torn from her neck, revealing the fragile wiring of her respiratory system beneath. Blood spurted from the wound like a freshly birthed geyser.
Karl’s let out a strange utterance that might have been a sob.
Movement by the bedroom door. Karl spun, his head creating the image of his innocent daughter standing there in the darkness, discovering the haunting scene before them, but instead there was something else there. A naked man.
No. Not a man at all.
The creature’s flesh was far too pale for a man’s, its limbs bracken-thin. Its rib cage was the widest part of his body, its stomach sinking grotesquely inwards as though someone had stuck the nozzle down its throat and vacuumed out all of the innards. Its fingers, unnaturally long, were blackened and sharp, and each breath was accompanied by the dry rasp as of dead sticks brushed against one another on a stone pavement.
Worse than all of that was the mask that he wore. A juvenile stag’s skull fixed onto the place where the head should be. Antlers as long as Karl’s fingers jutted from the dome of its skull as the creature tilted his head to the side with child-like curiosity.
Karl stood frozen to the spot, the only sounds their breath and the slushing of blood as it escaped Alexa’s throat. His hands trembled, which was unusual for a man such as he who dealt with death and the harsh realities of this world on a daily basis.
“What did you do?” Karl felt the anger surging within him, primal and untamed. He had never felt an anger like this, an overwhelming desire to hurt someone or something, and this creature had put himself in the line of fire. This creature had killed his wife, may have his daughter in his sights. Karl could not allow this, couldn’t allow whatever the fuck this thing was to turn his life upside down any further, this grotesque, haunting visage of a man who…
The creature raised a hand and pointed its long black finger towards Karl. It was silent, head still tilted in that whimsical way of a child examining an ant’s nest for the first time, though if there was a sparkle in its eye Karl couldn’t find it in the dark hollows of that mask.
Karl’s knitted his eyebrows together. He licked his lips and tasted the tang of something warm and metallic on his tongue. He touched a finger to his lip, removed it, and found the tip frosted in dark residue.
Karl glanced down at his wife, at the wound in her neck, then back to the creature in his room, the dawning realization coursing through his veins.
Not just the realization that it was he who had sunk his teeth through the soft tissue of his wife’s flesh. Not the realization that this creature had dispelled some power over him to make him perform these heinous acts.
It was, in fact, the realization that Karl Bowman was still hungry.
Very hungry, indeed.
Author Notes
When Winter Comes has been a long time in the making.
Well, longer than my usual stories. I first started penning horror tales back in 2015, usually focusing on shorter novellas and short stories. Since then, I’ve let my mind write what it wants to write. I come up with an idea, and like a greyhound to the rabbit, I’m out of the cage and sprinting to get my teeth into those sweet bunny gizzards.
But this story was different. I first conceived of the notion of Denridge Hills late in 2016, triggered by a stimulus in a writer’s group I used to attend. The premise simple: what if a small town in the isolated reaches of the earth came under tremendous strain. No emergency services, no way out, nowhere to hide.
I wrote the first iteration of episode one the following year, after letting the characters take some time to percolate in my head. I left it to settle and wrote other stories about The Rot and the desolation that followed with my co-writer, Luke Kondor, and I immersed myself in working with other writers. The story fell by the wayside. There was no time to invest in bringing—what soon became—Denridge Hills to life. Yet the idea has always been with me.
A few months ago, I decided to pick this story up again. It was too interesting to let go. There was a world here to explore, characters with their own profound intricacies, a unique way of life in Alaska, and the magical pull of the Aurora Borealis. I feverishly hunted for my old notes, searching for those 20,000 words I’d lain several years ago, and found nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
My work was gone. Where? I still don’t know to this day. Technology can be a vicious bitch sometimes.
Still, I didn’t let the loss of the work dissuade me. I had been ruminating on this for year’s, if anything, losing the work turned out to be the biggest blessing of all. I dived into further research, changed a few character names, and used what I’d learned in the years in which I wrote with other authors to hone down the idea and find a better way to execute the story.
When Winter Comes is my love letter to the horror genre, inspired by the likes of Richard Laymon and Jonathan Janz. Its episodic format is my way of remaining accountable in my writing and ensuring that you, the reader, have something new to enjoy with every future release. Episode one left us all with a hell of a cliffhanger, and I assure you that all the answers are in the books ahead. Things are about to get real dark in Denridge as each and every civilian of the town is exposed to a nightmare of ages past.
If you want to come along for the ride and can’t wait until the release of the next book, I post new chapters live onto my Patreon page every week. There, a select group of horror fanatics tuck into the delicious stories
ahead of anyone else. I also post short stories, and discuss what’s happening in the stories along the way, just search www.patreon.com/danielwillcocks if you want to get involved.
This book gives you only a glimpse of what lies ahead. Stick close to me, dear reader, and let me guide you along this tale of horror, woe, and disaster.
Daniel Willcocks
June 10th, 2020
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About the Author
Daniel Willcocks is an international bestselling author and podcaster of dark fiction. He is one fifth of digital story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, co-producer of iTunes-busting fiction podcast, 'The Other Stories,’ as well as the host of the 'Great Writers Share' podcast, in which he breaks down the strategies, tricks, and productivity habits of some of the best writers in the game today.
Residing in the UK, Dan's work explores the catastrophic and the strange. His stories span the genres of horror, post-apocalyptic, and sci-fi, and his work has seen him collaborating with some of the biggest names in the independent publishing community.
Find out more at www.danielwillcocks.com
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