Despite the brevity of the situation, everyone started laughing.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” said Jerry, deadly serious despite their mockery, “but I’m telling you that this snow is unnatural. It’s a force being wielded by a force even greater.”
Harry decided to humour him. “Wielded by whom?”
“Who you think? The guy in the hood. The snow is just his tool to trap us or get us lost and confused. Then he comes to take us like he did Ben.”
“Okay,” said Harry, trying his best to remain open-minded. “But, if you believe that, what the hell are you doing out here?”
Jerry smashed a fist against his open palm. “Because me and the guy in the hood have unfinished business. If he turns up, I’ll be the one to face him while the rest of you make a run for it.”
“Why would you want to do that?” Harry asked, seriously considering that Jerry may have lost his mind. He was a teenaged boy, not Rambo.
But Jerry seemed more than sane as he continued. “I need to take some responsibility instead of letting other people do it for me. If this is the end of the world then the least I can do is make it hard for the bastard that started it. I’m going to give him the ass-kicking of his life.”
“Erm….fellas?” The group turned to face Lucas, who was looking unsettled. “That bastard in question,” Lucas pointed over Harry’s shoulder, “is right over there.”
Harry spun around to see a shape in the distance. The dark silhouette of a man taller than a man had right to be. It was coming towards them, slowly and methodically, as if it had all of eternity to get there. In the last year there had been numerous nights where Harry had drifted out of a nightmare and woken up with a stinking hangover, but this was the very first time he had ever felt as though he were drifting in to a nightmare.
And the nightmare was getting closer.
Chapter Twenty-EIGHT
“I better go check on Old Graham,” said Steph, leaving Jess and Nigel to look after Damien and Peter. Jess had started to feel desperately lonely since their numbers had halved. She just hoped the situation was temporary and that the others would return soon. Everyone except for Kath, that is. Jess wouldn’t care if she ever saw that woman again. She turned to Nigel. “Best settle in. It’s already been a long night.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Nigel replied.
The two of them slid down either side of the fire, leaving the middle clear so that its warmth could reach Peter on the sofa. Damien was still tied to a chair nearby, not as close to the fire as the rest of them. They’d dumped an assortment of blankets on him to keep him warm and he now looked how Jess imagined a geriatric, old woman would look knitting in front of the fire. She pulled a nearby duvet up over herself and let out a shiver.
“Not getting any warmer is it?” Nigel commented. “Don’t they say you should all huddle together to share warmth?”
“Yeah,” Jess agreed. “They do say that.”
Nigel patted the floor beside him. “Well? You want to come over?”
Jess tried to work the offer out. What was he suggesting? Nigel seemed like a nice guy – shy, if anything – so she assumed he was just being practical rather than intending anything else. Still, the suggestion made her uncomfortable.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m warm enough for now, but thanks for offering.”
For a half-second, Jess thought she saw anger flush Nigel’s face, but when he spoke, she realised it must have been her imagination. He was harmless.
“Don’t mention it,” he told her. “I just don’t like to see a young girl suffer.”
Jess giggled. “What a gentleman.”
“Unlike some.” Nigel nodded towards Damien.
Jess thought about that for a moment. Something still didn’t sit right about what had happened earlier. “I still can’t believe that he tried to hurt Steph.”
“Well, believe it! The guy’s a sodding animal and he’s lucky I didn’t kill him.”
Jess was taken aback. “Wow! Calm down. I was just saying it was a shock, that’s all.”
Nigel rubbed at his eyes and shook his head. His gold pinkie ring glinted in the fire light, the image of a dolphin shining for a split-second. “Yeah, course…I’m sorry. I’m just so angry that I wasn’t there to stop him sooner.”
“You stopped him soon enough,” Jess told him. “He never got to hurt Steph. Well, not in that way, you know?”
He nodded and smiled, yet something about the gesture made Jess feel uncomfortable. It felt as though she were being looked at through a mask. That perhaps Nigel’s smile was just a way of hiding something else.
But what?
“Do you mind holding down the fort for a couple minutes?” Jess asked. “I just want to see if Steph needs anything.”
Nigel’s smile never faltered. “No problem,” he said, looking her in the eye.
Jess shivered again; she was certain it wasn’t because of the cold. She stood up and hurried away, glancing back over her shoulder to check that she wasn’t being followed. Past the bar, she approached the darkness of the staff corridor. Jess felt even more then that something wasn’t right about Nigel, but her final glance back showed that the man was still seated in front of the fire. He wasn’t following. Jess felt stupid and paranoid. Nigel didn’t seem like he could hurt a fly.
Neither do frogs until they shoot out their slimy tongues and pull you in and swallow you whole.
When Jess stepped into the cellar doorway at the top of the stairs, she immediately felt the warmth from the fire below, flowing up and over her face. She shuddered at the pleasant feeling and started to take the steps downwards.
At the bottom, Steph sat near the barrel-fire with Old Graham. The two of them were chatting away like they didn’t have a care in the world. Steph looked up at Jess as she approached and asked, “Everything good up there?”
Jess shrugged. “I wouldn’t describe anything as good at the moment, but things are…stable.”
“How’s Peter?”
“Bad. I don’t know what to do for him. I’m hoping that the others come back soon with medicine or something to help.”
Steph bit her lip. Her face was swollen on one side where she’d been attacked and her right eye was half-closed. Jess wondered quite how much Steph had been affected by tonight’s earlier incident. It was obvious she was trying not to show her emotions, but the feisty barmaid didn’t seem quite as tough as usual. “Are you okay?” Jess asked her.
Steph seemed to snap out of a trance. “I’m fine. Just a bit worried, I guess, but that’s to be expected, right?”
“Hell yeah. You’d have to be made of stone not to be worried tonight. Speaking of which, how well do you know Nigel?”
Steph looked confused. “Nigel? Pretty well, I guess. Why?”
“He just makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.”
Steph shook her head. “He’s never caused any problems in the eight or nine months I’ve known him. Keeps to himself, more or less.”
“A nice guy…f-from…what I seen…tonight.” Old Graham had fallen into a drunken haze, but still managed to fade in and out of the conversation. “A nice…guy.”
“Maybe, I’m just being silly,” said Jess.
“I’d say so. The guy saved me from being raped tonight!”
Jess nodded. There was a good chance she was just paranoid as she’d suspected earlier. Having Steph confirm it made her feel much better. She would go back upstairs now and look after Peter, thinking no more about it. But first she wanted to check on Steph’s injuries. Someone needed to look after her too, especially after what had happened. “Let me have a quick look at your face, before I go back upstairs. You look pretty beat up.”
Steph waved a hand. “Don’t worry. Just a bruise.”
“I’d feel better all the same.” Jess slid down onto the floor besides her.