It’s certain either way, and you know it. That bedroom monster has cut you off from the rest of the house. You can’t go around it, and you can’t stay here and fight it. Going out into the storm is a sucky option, but it’s the only option.
She stood up and reached for the door.
And Bub moved.
No, you imagined that.
She wiped more tears from her eyes and looked again.
Bub’s back leg flinched, and he opened his eye.
Tess huffed out a sound: half laugh and half disbelieving sob. She dropped back to her knees and ran her hand down Bub’s side, trying to avoid his wounds. He lifted his head an inch or two off the floor, whined, and then lowered his face back into the pool of blood beneath him. Tess thought he’d died for real that time, that those few movements had been his last, his death throes, but then she noticed his side. It moved up and down. Shallowly but surely.
Help him. You have to try to help him.
The sounds coming from the other end of the house had gotten louder, and Tess thought the creature had made it out of the hallway and into the living room. It didn’t seem to be moving very quickly, definitely wasn’t rushing the way you expected nightmares to do, but the house wasn’t huge, and it would get here soon enough.
She slid both hands under Bub’s side, trying not to think about the blood oozing between her fingers.
“Come on,” she said. “You’ve got to get up. We have to go.”
Bub turned his head toward her, but he didn’t try to get to his feet. Or at least it didn’t seem like he was trying. Tess guessed it was a miracle he was alive at all. She could hardly expect him to jump to his feet and run circles around her. She tried lifting him, but he was a big dog and she’d already used up most of her energy.
“Please! Help me out here.” She lifted again and let out an exasperated groan.
Something crashed in the living room; it might have been the sound of a chair falling over.
Try again. You can do it. You have to do it. It’s either that or leave him here and let that thing tear him apart.
She wondered if maybe that would be more merciful. Attempting to move him might cause him agonizing pain. The monster would kill him, no doubt about that, but it would probably be quick about it.
You’re not seriously considering that. Leaving him here to die? You really think you could live with yourself?
No, she knew she couldn’t.
She tried to lift him one more time, strained until she was afraid she’d pop a blood vessel or throw out her back. She got him partway up, but he was practically deadweight
(don’t think that)
and didn’t do a thing to help. She lowered him back to the ground, changed position, wrapping her arms around his torso from above, and tried dragging him.
This worked better. She was able to move him anyway. And the blood on the floor lubricated the process, which simultaneously disturbed and relieved her.
From the sound of it, the monster had made it to the kitchen doorway. More wood cracked, and ice tinkled; she imagined the thing pushing its way through the threshold, grinning its wet, toothy grin.
She’d pulled Bub to the door. She let go of him just long enough to reach around and twist the doorknob. As soon as she’d opened the door, the wind blew it in. The knob hit her on the hip hard enough to spin her halfway around, and for a second she’d was afraid she’d slip in the blood and fall over Bub, but she kept her balance. The door pushed the half-melted pile of slush that had been the small creature against the wall, and freezing wind and clouds of icy snow blew in through the doorway. Tess gasped. On some level, she had realized it would be colder outside than in, but she hadn’t been expecting the sudden blast, the unbelievable coldness.
She leaned down, wrapped her arms back around Bub, and pulled him into the blizzard.
19
The first thing Warren thought when he opened his eyes was that someone had found his scarf and wrapped it back around his neck. He lay on his back, his face exposed to the falling snow and ice, freezing. He reached up with his good arm to touch the scarf and found something cold and sticky instead. He held his glove in front of himself, blinking away snow. A mess of red frost stuck to the glove’s fingers.
What the hell?
He reached for the object again and pulled it off his neck. It came unstuck like a huge bandaid, and Warren had to look at it for a long time before he realized what he was seeing. It was the hair that gave it away, the little black curls growing out of the thing from one end to the other. In the center was a bald patch, and in the center of that, a long, white scar.
It was a flap of skin. Ripped right off someone’s leg. Complete with a scarred knee.
Warren screamed and tried to throw the strip of flesh away, but it clung to his glove and swung back into his face. The already-freezing inner tissue hit him across the mouth, stuck there. He pulled it away again, turned his head, spat into the snow, and gagged.
Instead of trying to throw the skin a second time, he lowered it to the snow, held it down with his leg, and pulled his glove free.
He touched his broken arm through the snowsuit but felt almost no pain. He didn’t know whether to enjoy the momentary lack of agony or worry about it. He settled on not thinking about it either way and lifted his head to see where he was.
In the trees ahead, barely visible in the snow, one of the ice creatures had Jan Young wrapped in a tentacle as thick as a fence post, squeezing her arms against her sides. From where Warren lay, it was hard to see what was happening, but it looked like one of her hands was free and that she was trying to pull the blue plumber’s torch out of her pocket.
Between her and Warren, spread across the snow in streaks and piles of cooling meat lay what Warren could only assume had once been Rick Young. Intestines and other, unrecognizable innards littered the ground. Torn bits of clothing blew in the wind. A single boot stood in the center of the mess, a stub of a leg poking out of it and pointing to the sky.
The snowmobile lay on its side to Warren’s right. It looked dented in a few places and plenty scratched but not ruined.
Jan was yelling something at the creature and sobbing. The wind carried her words away, and Warren couldn’t quite make them out, but he supposed he had a good enough idea of what she was saying.
She jerked her arm, and although the creature held on to her, she was able to pull the butane torch out of her snowsuit. The wind died down then, and Warren was able to see the flick of fire coming out of the torch’s nozzle. He also saw another of the creature’s tentacles swinging around toward Jan’s head.
“No!”
Jan turned toward him. The tentacle hit her on the temple and all but decapitated her. Something (maybe her spine) cracked with a sickening crunch, and her head snapped back. Her throat ripped open, spraying blood across the creature and the snow beneath, and her stocking cap came off, freeing her long blonde hair. The hair blew in the wind, collecting flakes of snow for just a second before the creature wrapped another limb around her forehead and jerked her head the rest of the way off. It dropped the body part in a nearby drift.
The creature grabbed each of Jan’s limbs and, with a single movement, pulled her to pieces. The torso dropped, but the creature held on to the limbs, raising them into the air and shaking them like some kinds of trophies. It turned its mouth to the sky and screeched.