Bonechiller

by Graham McNamee

  Pike kicks it again. “That’s no shell. More like armor. I don’t know if buckshot would even make a dent.”

  I don’t care what it is. I’m having a heart attack just being this close to it. The eye sockets are empty but the shadows filling them are still watching.

  “Let’s get out!” Ash says.

  “Right.” Pike puts his hand on Howie’s shoulder and leads the way back to the cave entrance.

  My foot snags on something in the mist, and I freak when I can’t see what it is. Lifting my foot, I find it’s just a piece of cloth. I hold it up in the blue light. It’s a shredded leg from a pair of pants, stiff with dried mud. The material is thin, with a drawstring inside what’s left of the waistband.

  “Hospital,” Howie says.

  “What?”

  “You know, those pajamas they give you to wear.”

  Then it hits me—this is what Ray Dyson had on when he ran off.

  “Ray,” Howie whispers.

  That’s not mud crusted on the material.

  Howie says it: “That’s blood.”

  I drop the pajamas into the mist. What else is hidden down there?

  “Go!” I shout.

  We break into a run.

  The way up seems longer than the way down, the tunnel stretching on endlessly. Did we make a wrong turn? What if we get lost down here? This was a bad bad idea.

  Ash’s light scatters confusing flashes off the wall ice. Nothing looks familiar. The only sound is the rush of our feet, the echoes chasing us to the surface.

  Finally, I smell fresh air. I have to hold back from shoving Howie aside to escape. I stumble out into the night, so relieved I forget the beast isn’t down in that cave. It’s out here somewhere.

  “Get moving! We’re easy targets here.” Pike starts us across the clearing.

  We run to the cleft in the rocks that leads us out of the hideaway. My heart surges when I catch sight of the car. Never thought I’d be so happy to see the crapmobile again.

  We pile in. Pike guns the engine, the tires spinning in the snow. We’re speeding and motionless at the same time. Like in the nightmares, where I’m running and running and getting nowhere. No escape.

  Because that thing isn’t just out there in the dark. It’s inside my head. There’s no way I can shake it.

  Then the tires catch and we shoot off. Nobody says anything. We just watch the patch of road ahead lit by the one working headlight.

  We came here tonight looking for answers. For some way out of this nightmare. But there is no way out. All those missing kids. All those bones.

  And me and Howie are next.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Let me get this straight,” the cop says. “There’s some monster out here, hunting down kids and killing them? That about it?”

  It’s the morning after our trip underground, and we’re all standing out by the ice factory, on the snowy shoreline. Officer Baker of the Ontario Provincial Police frowns at us with his bushy black eyebrows. He thinks we’re nuts. Can’t blame him.

  “Not a monster,” I say. “But some kind of … wild animal. We can show you where it’s holed up. Seriously.”

  I called the number on Ray Dyson’s “missing” flyer, asking for the cop who visited the school last week. It was my idea, a desperate one, so I’m spokesman for us. I was kind of vague on the phone, thinking there was no way I’d get him out here if I spilled the whole story up front. So I just said I found something connected to Ray Dyson’s disappearance, and could he come meet me out by the factory. He wanted to know more, of course. But I told him it was something he had to see in person.

  “You found a piece of bloody clothing?” Baker says now. “Belonging to Ray Dyson. But you left it behind?”

  This is like the third time we’ve gone over that part.

  “Right,” I tell him. “I dropped it. Down in the cave.”

  I’ve told him that much but left out the heap of bones and skulls. Gotta ease him into it.

  Baker scowls at me, then at each of us. He grabs a small flashlight that’s hooked to his belt and turns it on.

  “Let me see your pupils,” he says, stepping up close.

  “Huh?”

  “Eyes forward.”

  “I’m not high. This is for real.”

  He shines his light in my eyes. With my photophobia, the beam feels like tiny hot needles stabbing through to the backs of my eyes. I flinch, taking a step back. But I guess he doesn’t see anything strange because he moves on to Pike.

  “Next!”

  One by one he goes through all of us. Ash just grits her teeth and looks pissed. Howie squints and cringes like me.

  “What now?” Pike speaks up. “A Breathalyzer?”

  “Shut it,” Baker tells him. “So, you got something to show?” He turns to me. “Show it!”

  “Over this way,” I say.

  I start leading us over the hill to the bluffs looming against the shoreline. The new snow has filled our tracks from last night, making it slow going. The whole landscape is painfully white to my tender eyes.

  The wind cutting in off the lake must be brutal, but not to me. Can’t tell if my fever-freeze is getting worse. I keep checking my body temp and it’s scary low. Like I should be laid out in a steel drawer down at the morgue.

  I don’t need our old tracks to find the way. It’s imprinted on my brain, like everything about our trip underground last night.

  “How far?” Baker grumbles behind me.

  “Just past this ridge.”

  We make the short climb and cross through the cleft in the rocks into the clearing.

  “Over here.”

  I rush ahead. Approaching the rock face, I stop and search the bluff. I take a few steps farther along it, sweeping my eyes over the wall in front of me. The tunnel is …

  Where is it?

  I back up from the wall, trying to orient myself.

  No. No. This can’t be right.

  The tunnel opening is gone.

  “Howie?”

  He comes over and searches with me.

  Where is it? I want to ask him. But I can’t say that with the cop staring at me, arms folded.

  Things look different in the dark. Maybe I got turned around the wrong way somewhere.

  “This is the place,” I mumble. “Right?”

  “Yeah.” Howie walks along the wall. “It … it should be here. Right under this overhang. I remember the formation. We’re, like, standing directly in front of it. There must be some kind of door or something.”

  Stepping up close, I look for any signs of cracks. Nothing. I try leaning my weight against the rock face in a couple places. But it’s solid.

  “It’s here,” I tell Baker. “I swear. There’s a tunnel. We went inside. And down … to the cave …”

  I trail off, turning back to the wall and giving it a few more shoves.

  Come on! This is not happening.

  “Game’s over, kids,” the cop says. “I don’t know what you’re playing at here, but I’m not amused.”

  I give the wall an experimental kick. “It’s not a game. This is for real.”

  Pike and Ash are standing back. They’re looking for the opening too. But from a distance. They see where this whole thing is heading.

  Officer Baker rubs his forehead under the brim of his hat, like we’re giving him a migraine.

  “Listen,” he tells us. “I know everybody’s shaken up by Raymond’s disappearance. But whatever you think is going on here, I’m not getting it. I’ll let it slide this one time. But don’t pull this crap again, guys. Hear me?”

  He starts to walk away. I want to tell him to wait, the tunnel’s got to be here somewhere. If only I’d kept that torn leg from Ray’s pajamas, with the blood, then I’d have proof Baker couldn’t walk away from. But I’ve got nothing.

  I look around at the guys for some help. Ash gives me a sympathetic shrug. Pike shakes his head, like he knew this was a bad idea. Howie paces back and forth in
front of the blank wall.

  The tunnel was here. Now it’s not.

  I guess when you’ve been hiding out for a thousand years, you get good at it. If you can make all those kids disappear, and do it so nobody even realizes they’ve been taken, you must know a few tricks.

  And this one is the perfect vanishing act.

  TWENTY-SIX

  When I get back to the marina, I sneak past Dad. He’s in the garage, using the table saw to cut new boards for the dock. I go in the side door and head upstairs.

  It’s been getting harder to hide what’s happening to me. I mean, I’ve got the skin tone of a corpse, ghost-pale bordering on blue.

  After a late dinner last night, I was drying dishes when Dad went to put his hand on my shoulder, leaning over to grab a sponge. I flinched away from him like he was holding a blow torch. Didn’t want him touching me, because then he’d feel the freeze and know something’s seriously wrong. He gave me this look.

  “I, uh … strained my shoulder working out,” I told him. “It’s just real sore.”

  “You should ice it down,” he said.

  “Right.” Just what I need.

  So I’m keeping my distance from Dad. There’s no way I can explain. And I don’t want to end up as some lab rat in the hospital.

  Upstairs, I take a quick subzero shower to clear my head. This cold fever is getting worse.

  In my room, I stand in front of the open window. It’s just a little after four in the afternoon and the sun is dying. I watch the twilight take over the cove, coloring the snow and ice a steely blue.

  After our spectacular crash and burn with the cop and the disappearing tunnel, we drove around awhile, going nowhere.

  Pike was pissed. “That’s it. We tried it your way. Now we do it my way.”

  “What’s your way?” I asked.

  “Nuke that mutant freak. What we need is one of those bunker-buster bombs. There’s one that weighs ten tons. They call it a Grand Slam. It can plow through reinforced concrete like it was butter. Or a thermobaric bomb. They’re real smart, they detonate twice. When the bomb hits, first it blows out this incendiary mist that fills the bunker—or cave. Then the second detonation ignites the mist. If we had one of those, we could barbecue this freak.”

  “Let’s talk real.” Ash broke in before he started frothing. “We need a new strategy.”

  The talk went around and around, like our driving, getting us nowhere.

  The cops were our best shot. We could’ve handed the whole crazy thing over to them. They’ve got the manpower, and the firepower, to deal with it.

  Now we’re on our own.

  Outside my window the darkness deepens, the blue landscape shading toward black. Another day gone. How many left before me and Howie go running off into the night? Two, maybe three?

  There’s got to be another way. I’m coming up empty. So I call someone with an IQ.

  “Hey, Howie. What’re you up to?”

  “Danny. You know, research.”

  “Time’s running out for research.”

  “Yeah,” he says, sounding small and sad.

  “Sorry. I’m jumpy. What kind of research?”

  “Spiders.”

  “Okay. What about them?”

  “You know they can only eat food in liquid form?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I ask.

  “Well, when they catch their prey—flies or other insects—they inject them with digestive fluids, to break them down inside, liquefying their organs. Then they puncture the skin and suck it all up.”

  “That’s … disgusting. So?”

  “So, maybe something like that’s happening to you and me. When that thing stung us, it injected us with something that’s been changing our bodies. Maybe it’s transforming us into a digestible form. Making us edible. Might explain why it doesn’t kill its prey right off. It can’t eat them until they’re compatible with its metabolism.”

  I shake my head. He’s talking about us being digested, like it’s some science project. He should be freaking out. Like I am. But I guess you can only stay scared so long before your mind flatlines, exhausted. Whatever change is happening in us, it’s not just our organs. If that thing owns our dreams, who knows what else it’s messing with inside our skulls?

  “It’s a theory,” Howie says. “Maybe it needs us iced.”

  If Howie hadn’t been right about so much already, I could just shrug off his theory. But it seems like the deeper the beast gets into our minds, the more Howie sees inside its head.

  “But how does that help us?”

  “Guess it doesn’t, really,” he mutters.

  I can hear it in his voice, like I saw it in his eyes earlier after our plan fell apart, that feeling of doom. Looking in the mirror after my cold shower, I could see the same thing in my own eyes. Something I saw in Mom’s too, near the end.

  “Why us?” I ask. “I mean, was it all just about us being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or were we, you know, chosen?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself. How does any predator select its prey? Sometimes it’s convenience. Something tasty wanders by, they snap it up. But the higher you go up the food chain, the predators become more selective. This thing is at the top of the chain, above Man even. It’s got a very particular taste in victims—humans, thirteen to eighteen. But why us? Who knows, maybe we’ve got a special pheromone scent, maybe we have elevated levels of some hormones or other chemicals in our brains.”

  I know he’s thinking what I’m thinking. All those skulls in that bed of bones with their tops cracked open.

  I groan. “So we’re special.”

  “Maybe it’s just got good taste, eh?”

  “Yeah, right. Hey, make sure Pike keeps an eye on you.”

  I don’t like the way he’s sounding. Too calm. Very un-Howie-like.

  “You think I’m gonna go AWOL and disappear in the night?”

  “Kind of, yeah.”

  “Don’t worry. Pike’s got me on lockdown. Can’t even go take a leak without an escort.”

  “Good.”

  “But who’s keeping an eye on you?”

  Looking out my window at the deepening shadows, I know exactly what’s keeping an eye on me.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Howie told me where to look. I follow First Line past the overgrown railroad tracks that lead to where the Fraser Mill stood, before it burned down twenty years ago.

  I keep going, walking under the power lines that run north from the big transformers in Barrie.

  About a half mile past the mill, I find what Howie said to look for. Hanging from the junction at the top of a utility pole, a black cable snakes down from the power lines above. When the cable reaches the ground, it runs away from the road toward the lake, disappearing under the snow.

  I start backtracking it, having to kick through the snow every few steps to make sure I’m not going off course. I keep an eye out for any movement, even though it’s bright daylight and I should be safe. All I see are a few crows, inky shadows against the pale sky. The landscape stretches white and untouched.

  Mom loved being the first to break new snow. She’d rush me out to the park in the morning after an overnight snowfall. She’d say we were like those guys who walked on the moon, because we were stepping where no one had set foot before.

  “Their shoe prints are still up there,” she told me. “There’s no wind on the moon, nothing to move the moon dust. So those footsteps are just like they left them. Forever.”

  She would have loved all this new powder, fresh and waiting. Too bad there’s no such thing as forever on Earth.

  The cable crosses a low hill. From the top I see where it ends.

  The trailer rests on cement blocks, the last shreds of paint peeling off its siding. Miles from anything.

  Just how Mangy Mason likes it.

  This morning I told Howie and Ash about my semi-deranged conversation with the guy.

  “Mason�
�s a nut,” Howie said. “But he’s been living in the Cove for longer than anybody. Maybe he knows something. What else do we got?”

  “Worth a shot,” Ash agreed. “I’ll come with you and watch your back.”

  I said I didn’t want to spook the old guy. From what I hear, Mason never talks to anybody if he can help it.

  “I think we bonded,” I told them. “I should go alone.”

  Starting down the hill, I see where the cable runs right under the trailer. Howie told me how Mason keeps getting busted for bootlegging electricity off the power lines.

  A few years back, the Feds tried to kick him and his trailer off of what they said were public lands. Then Mason turned out to be not so nutty. He claimed “squatter’s rights.” He’s been living there for fifty years. So the Feds decided to wait him out. The guy is ancient, and walks around in the middle of winter in a T-shirt. He isn’t knocking on death’s door, he’s pounding on it.

  I don’t see any sign of him as I approach the maze of garbage surrounding his trailer. Dozens of car tires are stacked in piles, like he’s building a fort. Deceased fridges and stoves huddle under coats of snow, with a weather-eaten couch and recliner nearby to sit and enjoy the view. He’s even got a satellite dish (for decoration?) on the roof. And flapping high above it all is an upside-down Canadian flag on a tilted steel pole. Flying the flag the wrong way up like that is supposed to be a sign of distress. He’s got that right.

  I have to watch where I’m stepping to avoid all the yellow stains in the snow from the dogs. The door to the trailer is wide open.

  “Hello?” I call in.

  The lights are on, and I think I hear the low mumble of a TV.

  “Anybody home?”

  Three furry white faces appear in the doorway, with three sets of ice-blue eyes studying me. I see the dogs asking themselves—is this food?

  “You still breathing?”

  I spin around.

  Mason has snuck up on me, silent in his ragged sneakers. He’s wearing cracked sunglasses held together with tape, and his half-shredded Budweiser T-shirt. Two more huskies stand with him.