The beast. Still standing!
But as the mist shifts, I let out a shuddering breath, half shiver, half laugh. There’s nothing left above the knee.
He did it! Pike killed the unkillable.
Ash sits up, spitting out the blood running from her nose.
“Ash, it’s dead.”
She groans. “The guys?”
“Don’t know. But we gotta get out. The roof is caving in.”
I struggle to my feet. Ash pulls herself up, leaning on me. I squint through the smoke. No sign of Howie and Pike. But I see the tunnel entrance across the cave.
The hail of stones is getting worse.
Holding each other up, we stagger through the fog, tripping over fallen rocks.
I let out a yelp as a ghost rises from the mist.
“Danny!” it says.
A hand grabs my arm. I jump back, my heart seizing. Then a face leans in close.
“How-Howie?” I pant.
“Help. Help me with Pike.”
Another ghost kneels beside him.
“I’m okay,” Pike mumbles, dazed. “Just give me a sec. Man, what a ride!”
The thunder in the rocks overhead deepens.
“This whole place is coming down,” I say. “Move. Now!”
Howie drags his brother to his feet. Pike stands drunkenly.
“Right behind you, Danny,” he says.
I lead the way, Ash at my side.
Reaching the shadow of the cave mouth, I’m in such a rush I take the first step through before stopping dead. I put my hand out to stop Ash.
My eyes strain to see through the mist. Did the beast trigger both mines, or just one? Is the other twin still waiting down there?
Howie bumps into me, giving me a heart attack.
“Go slow,” I say. “Watch for the other mine.”
Inching along, I find a small crater in the floor from the first explosion. Then I see a shadow squatting by the wall. The surviving twin, still intact.
A crash and thud rumbles from the cave as part of the roof starts to give way.
Small rocks tumble from the roof of the tunnel. A couple bounce off my head. A stone the size of a golf ball clips the edge of the sleeping mine.
I freeze, waiting to be blown into a thousand bloody pieces.
But half a second ticks by, then a full one.
“Watch your step!” I point out the mine.
Howie nods, eyes wide.
My back to the wall, I shuffle past with Ash. I don’t breathe easy again until I take the sharp turn leading away from the cave. Howie follows close, arms wrapped around Pike to keep him vertical.
Good thing me and Howie can see in the dark, because the blue glow dies off and we make our way up the tunnel in total blackness. Ash grips my wrist tight.
The way up seems longer than the way down.
“Still with me, Howie?” I call back.
Before he can answer, a violent concussion rips through the dark, whipping up the tunnel and hitting us with a blast of hot air and smoke. I’m thrown against the wall with Ash.
The second mine!
As I’m coughing out the smoke, I hear a roar from down below, rushing toward us.
I flash back to that crowd of voices trapped inside the beast’s mind—the panic of countless victims. And now all those souls are making a jailbreak after an eternity of torture.
But it’s not souls or ghosts I see gushing up from below. A wall of water fills the corridor, floor to ceiling, pressed onward by the weight of the lake above.
It swallows up the brothers, and I just have time to suck in a breath of smoky air before it hits.
The wave shoves me ahead of it. I hang on to Ash as the water knocks me against the rocks, spinning and pushing me upward.
Even immune to the cold, I can feel the bite of the icy water.
The wave presses me on. My breath is about to give out when I surface near the roof of the tunnel and gulp in a lungful of air. Ash pops up, gasping.
We sputter and spit up lake water. Lost in the dark.
Something below grabs onto my leg, making me yelp. I try to kick it loose.
Pike and Howie bob up, hacking and spewing.
We dog-paddle frantically, keeping our heads above water.
How far to the surface?
Then I feel the sweetest breath of winter air on my face. We’re close.
I swim ahead till my feet touch the tunnel floor. Ash follows, and we slog out onto dry rock.
A breeze brushes over me, smelling like snow and cedar. I want to lie on the floor and just breathe. But I need to get out.
Like two drunks, me and Ash stumble up the last stretch of tunnel, leaning together. Howie and Pike stagger after us.
The night sky stretches wide and bright with stars. We lean against the rock face and just breathe. A surge of relief makes me want to laugh like a madman.
But Ash is shivering real bad. I’m immune to the cold, but she’s not.
“Gotta get you warmed up.”
She’s hugging herself, shaking too much to speak.
Across the clearing, I catch something moving in the dark. Silent phantom shapes come toward us. It’s a breathless second before I make out Mason and his huskies.
“It’s done,” I call out.
Mason shakes his head. I know how he feels. I was there and I can barely believe it.
Near him, I notice the snowmobile flipped on its side but still in one piece. I can hear the purr of the engine idling.
“Howie, we gotta get her and Pike heated up quick. Can you drive the car?”
“Yeah. Where?”
His eyes are clear now, the trance broken.
“The marina. Closest place.”
“Right. Lean on me, Pike.”
The brothers start moving.
Ash hugs onto me as I walk us to the snowmobile. The headlight is busted and one of the skids is cracked, but it’s still breathing.
Howie glances back.
“I’m going to take Ash on the snowmobile. Be quicker across the lake.”
I grab the handlebars and heave it over onto its skids.
“See you back at the house,” I say.
“H-hot c-coffee,” Pike stutters.
“You got it.”
I straddle the seat, and Ash gets on behind me.
“Hold on tight,” I say, looking over my shoulder.
Past Ash, I see Mason and his dogs in front of the tunnel. He’s staring into the darkness. Seeing ghosts.
Ash locks her arms around me. “Go, Danny! Fast.”
I pull the snowmobile around and head for the gap onto the lake. I take us smoothly down the incline I jumped earlier. Reaching the ice, I hit the accelerator. And we’re flying.
With Ash pressed close, I wish I had some body heat to share with her. But I’m only a few degrees warmer than the frigid air whipping by us.
Just as we clear the shadow of the bluffs, I feel the ice shake under us. We start swerving. I grab Ash’s arms, keeping them locked on my chest.
Then, with a cracking boom, the surface of the lake explodes about fifty feet from shore. Chunks of ice are thrown up, as if some giant sea creature is breaking through, making a hole big enough to swallow a tank.
My brain runs wild. All those stolen souls, suddenly freed. A hoard of escaping ghosts bursting up through the lake floor, then shattering the ice.
I fight down panic, regaining control of the snowmobile. We race on, putting distance between us and the break.
I risk a glance back. The black water froths and bubbles in the new opening. Then I realize what’s going on.
After the cave collapsed and the lake floor came crashing down, all that trapped air must have been forced to the surface. Cracking the ice. The water seems to boil in the break, with huge air bubbles.
The headlight’s dead, so we speed blind through the dark. Only the dock lights on the far end of the cove keep us on track. Time stretches out, and it seems like we’re n
ever getting any closer. But finally, we’re climbing the snowy slope and pulling up to the side of the house.
I unlock my stiff fingers from the bars, grunting as I get off the seat and pull Ash up. She leans on me as we stagger to the door.
It swings inward and Dad appears. He must have heard the snowmobile racing up.
In the spill of warm yellow light, he sees us.
“What the hell?”
All I can do is hold Ash out to him, like this is a relay race and I’m ready to drop. “Get her warmed up,” I pant.
Dad lifts her easily. “She’s soaked through. And frozen. Upstairs. Now!”
I follow slowly, one step at a time. My boots are cement blocks. I only had enough strength to get me this far. I’m done. When I get to the top of the stairs, Dad’s laying Ash down on the floor in front of the fireplace.
Leaning against the wall, I’ve only got a minute before I’ve got to come up with answers.
The truth is impossible. I was there and I barely believe it. There’s nothing to show for it all either. Any proof we had is buried under the lake and tons of rock.
There’s only one way I can think of to play this.
Dad breaks a seal of ice to get Ash’s jacket zipper down.
“Danny?” Dad says. Just my name, but he’s telling me I better have answers, and quick.
I take a breath. “We fell through the ice.”
“What?” He gets Ash’s arms out of the stiffened sleeves. “Where?”
“By the ice factory.”
That sounds real. This can work.
Dad starts to say something, but right then a car skids to a halt outside.
“That’s the rest of the guys,” I say.
I’m going to need to think fast to keep up with Dad’s questions. But right now my ears are still ringing, everything’s too bright, and the floor feels like it’s tilting just a little. The wall is the only thing keeping me up.
“What guys?” Dad asks. “What the hell—”
But he cuts himself off. “Later. Right now, get out of those clothes. And grab something for Ashley to put on. I’m going to drive you up to the hospital.”
I nod, pushing off from the wall, and head for my room. Dad’s taken charge. This is when he’s best, when there’s something that needs fixing. And we really need fixing right now.
“Bring blankets,” he calls.
I do a quick change and dig out some clothes for Ash and the guys. Down below, the side door opens, followed by the thud of boots climbing the stairs. Dragging the blankets off my bed, I stop for a second and just breathe.
My heart slows. I stand still, feeling its steady beat.
For some reason, Howie’s graph pops into my head. The one he made of the missing kids over the years, with a zigzag line spiking with each cluster of lost kids. Those spikes that looked like heartbeats on a monitor. Signs of life, and death.
With the beast gone, we’ve seen the last spike. Now Howie’s graph can end in a flat line.
And maybe all those lost souls can finally rest.
THIRTY-FOUR
The place is so quiet. Almost peaceful, like a graveyard. Which it is. There are no markers, but somewhere beneath my feet the bodies are buried. The bones.
I walked out here all the way from the marina, through the new snow. Don’t know why. There’s nothing left to see.
The sun glares painfully white off the fresh powder in the clearing. The landscape has changed a little since that night a month back when we nearly drowned, got blown up and eaten. After the explosions underground, the bluff has settled a bit lower. Rock slides and tremors have collapsed the tunnel.
Nothing to show for what happened down below.
And nobody knows except me, Ash and the guys. And Mason.
I’m still kind of shocked at how the story I came up with in a few dazed seconds at the marina held up. While Dad was racing us up to the hospital, I figured out the rest of the story. It went like this:
When we heard Howie was missing from the hospital, we went looking for him. He’d been real sick with some weird infection, confused and hallucinating. Pike thought he might be trying to get back home to the Cove. So we drove around awhile, then decided to split up to cover more ground. I took the snowmobile to scout the lakeshore while Pike and Ash searched the backroads. When I found Howie out on the ice, I called them on my cell and tried to get Howie to come back to the house with me. But he was all freaked out, seeing things. When Pike got there, he tried to talk his brother down from his hallucination. And while we were out there on the lake, trying to bring Howie in, the ice gave.
I’m sure that if you leaned on my story too heavy it would fall over. But there we were, soaked and frozen. Howie in his hospital pajamas with his feet raw and bloody from his long run. There was the break in the ice out by the bluffs. And really, what other explanation was there?
None that would fit into Dad’s real world.
I look at the pale winter sky. In the distance now I hear the familiar rumble of Ash’s motorbike, rising and falling as she makes her way over the hills.
I told her where to find me. We’re supposed to meet up with Pike and Howie at their place. Pike’s got something planned. Why does that make me nervous?
Pike’s still limping from the stitches he got on his foot where he was slashed. It took some quick thinking to explain those wounds. Best I could come up with was that Pike stepped on some rusty nails out by the ice factory when he showed up to bring Howie in. Kind of weak, but they bought it.
Something catches my eye, just inside the mouth of the collapsed tunnel. I step closer. There on the rocks lies a beaten-up hockey puck.
Takes a second before it clicks—Mason. Leaving something behind for his old friend. Remembering an unfinished hockey game played on the lake a long time ago.
Makes me think of the families of the missing. I wish I could tell them, and give them some peace. But with nothing real to show, it would just be cruel. When that bully Ray Dyson ran off, I said that’s one missing person nobody’s going to miss. But now I don’t know. Even Ray had a mother.
I turn and look around the clearing one more time before Ash arrives. The ground is blanketed in fresh powder. Snow has that magic touch, covering up all the plain and ugly things. Making everything new. Hard to believe anything bad ever happened here.
The bike’s growl is getting close. Time to go.
So, what’s the final score in all this mess?
Answers: Zero. Questions: Endless.
Like, what was that thing, really? Windigo? Demon? Or just some mutant freak? And why us—me and Howie and all the others through the years? Why did it choose us?
Maybe, like Howie says, it just had good taste.
Zero answers! That’s hard to take. But at least I’m still around to ask the questions.
I stand here, untouched by the bite of the icy wind off the lake, in this unmarked graveyard. Nothing to show for the horror.
Nothing but the ice in my veins.
Ash kills the motor as we pull up to Pike and Howie’s place. I get off the bike and stretch my back.
Ash removes her sunglasses. The bruises on her face have faded to yellows and browns. Her head took a wicked bounce off the cave floor when she tackled me as the bomb blew.
“Don’t stare,” she says. “Unless you’re gonna do something about it.”
“Like what?”
“Like you and me back at my place later. Mom’s going to be out till late, and Dad’s up north wrestling polar bears. Use your imagination.”
“I am,” I tell her, deep and seductive.
She gives me a playful punch in the chest, then we go around back to the tool shed, where Pike said to meet him.
As we approach the half-open door, I hear a gasp from inside.
“Quit flinching,” Pike says. “Or you’ll ruin it.”
“How much more?” Howie’s voice is tight.
“Almost done.”
Ash glances
at me with raised eyebrows, then throws the door open. It cracks against the wall of the shed.
Girl likes to make an entrance.
“Break it up,” she says. “What’re you doing to this poor boy?”
I squeeze into the shed beside her. The place is cluttered with lawn chairs, barbecues and bicycle parts.
Howie’s sitting on a stool by a workbench with the sleeve of his T-shirt rolled up. His shoulder is smeared with blood and what looks like ink.
Pike’s leaning over him, holding a small face towel stained red and black. He glares at Ash. “You almost wrecked my masterpiece.”
“What the hell?” I ask.
“Let me finish,” Pike says. “Hold on a second.”
He sets the towel down on the bench and grips Howie’s arm. Me and Ash look on as he uses a sewing needle to jab three holes in a row in the skin of Howie’s shoulder. Howie winces as drops of blood well up. Then Pike grabs the towel, which is soaked with black ink, and rubs it into the needle pricks. Howie whimpers but stays steady till it’s over.
Pike looks at his bloody work. “Done!”
Howie lets out his breath.
“What is this?” Ash asks.
Pike grins his deranged grin. “Homemade tattoo.”
I shake my head, stunned. “But why?”
“It was Howie’s idea.” Pike pulls out some antibiotic hand wipes and starts cleaning Howie’s shoulder.
“Yeah, I got to thinking,” Howie says, cringing at the sting. “After what we went through, we should do something to remember it. What we did together. Because what we did was big. It was impossible.”
This isn’t the same Howie who was jumping at his own shadow a couple months ago. He got sprung from the hospital after the doctors decided his condition had stabilized. Howie’s brain activity was okay, and there were no more neurological episodes. His body temperature even rose into the lower range of normal. So they said it was all probably a delayed reaction to the hypothermic shock he suffered going through the ice that first time. You’d think he’d be ready for the nuthouse after what happened to him. But there’s this calm to him now, even some confidence. Like somewhere along the way he grew some balls.
“And I thought,” he goes on, “maybe years from now we might start having doubts. That maybe it wasn’t real, just something we dreamed up. Or a story we told ourselves so many times we started to believe it. But if we have something physical to remember it by, then we can just look down at the tattoo and know it was real. It happened.”
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