“You know who I am.”
Kevin shook his head even though he knew, on an instinctive level, that what stood before him couldn’t really exist.
“I have to get back inside,” Kevin said.
“May I come in?” the stranger asked and for one terrifying moment Kevin imagined himself allowing the stranger inside the building. Something his grandmother had told him when he was younger suddenly blossomed in his mind. She was nearing ninety when he was a boy of ten, a small woman, yet far from frail, who had buried most of her small family already. Two sons and a daughter, along with her husband, had passed before her and it left her bitter to the point many people no longer came to visit, adding to her bitterness.
“If they gotta ask to come in,” she’d said, “don’t let them. They’re only there to cause trouble.”
Kevin shook his head as he backed across the dock. When his shoulders came against the door he said, “I’m sorry, but this is a restricted area.”
“Of course it is,” the stranger said, tilting his head to the side much like a dog cocked its head when its owner spoke to it. “But it’s so cold out here.” The comment was so out of character with the stranger’s actions.
“I’m sorry,” Kevin said as he continued to shake his head, “company policy, and all that.” He finished with a helpless shrug.
“Of course, I understand.”
But he didn’t really, did he? Kevin didn’t understand any of it. The storm that had come up out of nowhere on a sunny day, even surprising the national weather service, whose last report had been spring-like weather with temperatures in the mid-forties.
The stranger reached out and dropped his hand on Kevin’s shoulder. His grip was strong, his fingers like ice, and Kevin felt a numbing cold burrowing into his chest. He yanked open the door, ripped his shoulder from beneath the stranger’s hand, and stumbled into the short hallway as his eyesight started to dim.
The cold spread across his chest like a raging fire feeding on a ready supply of fuel. Kevin coughed, the frozen flesh of half of his lung tearing away under the sudden movement, sending daggers of pain racing across his chest ahead of the icy line that slowly marched across his body.
He fell to his knees as the door slammed shut behind him, drawing the attention of the others who were huddled around Teddy’s prone figure.
“What’s wrong?” Leslie said as she left Teddy’s side and ran down the short hall to drop to her knees in front of Kevin.
The line of cold enveloped his heart, stopping it in mid-beat, and his eyesight slowly dimmed as the blood pressure in his body, no longer driven by a beating heart, dropped. As the darkness claimed him he saw them, the children, standing around him, watching him die.
He saw a stocky young boy with blonde hair, holding his own shoulder as he nodded at Kevin with a knowing look. There was a pair of twin girls no more than seven with matching pigtails. An older black-haired girl and a redheaded boy with a spray of freckles dotted across his nose. Behind them stood a young woman, no more than a child herself, charged with the care of these children. Her face set in a mask of determination. She wasn’t watching him, though; her eyes were fixed on the back door and for some reason he understood that she was hiding from the stranger who had done this to him. Then he saw no more as his lifeless body fell forward.
Leslie caught him and eased him to the floor. Kevin’s skin had taken on a gray color, his lips turning purple.
“He’s not breathing,” Leslie shouted.
“Does anybody know CPR?” Andrea said.
“I think Jasmine does,” Judy said, still on her knees next to Teddy’s prone figure.
“Where is she?” Leslie said.
“I don’t know, she was at the meeting earlier, but I haven’t seen her since,” Liz said.
Chapter 12
When it was obvious the phones were down and the others had gone off in search of Teddy, Jasmine and David slipped away from the main room and made their way to the training room. They had just started seeing one another again, so when the phones went down, David had pulled her away from the main floor for a little one on one. She always wore those tight, short dresses that made him horny as hell and this morning he was feeling especially needy.
“Are you sure it’s going to be all right?” she said.
“No problem, babe, everything will be fine.”
“But what if they miss us.”
“I doubt it, they’re too busy looking for Teddy.”
David led her to the training desk and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her up so he could give her a deep kiss. She moaned as his hands made their way down her back, pulling down the zipper of her dress in the process.
“They might come looking for us,” she said as she struggled to get her breathing under control while David undid the clasp of her bra.
“Nobody’s gonna be worried about us,” he said as he brought his hands forward and slid her dress off her shoulders. She pulled her arms through the sleeves of her dress and wrapped them around David’s neck.
“Do you love me?” she said.
“Of course I do,” he said as he slipped off his shirt and stood bare-chested before her. She ran her fingers through the sparse hair on his chest as he fondled her breast, rolling an erect nipple between his fingers.
She didn’t like the flippant way he answered. She knew his emotions were only focused on one thing, and it was not love. They rolled over her in a wave of excited anticipation, of passion, and a yearning need to be fulfilled.
All of her life she had been overwhelmed by the emotions of others around her, feeling their passion for life, or lack thereof, on a level she didn’t quite understand. Her parents had divorced when she was seven and she had lived with her mother’s sorrow for over a year before her grandmother had taken her in. During that time she had come close, on several occasions, to taking her own life to put an end to that relentless grief.
It was her grandmother who had discovered her special talent. After the funeral of her grandmother’s sister, they had been sitting on the back porch listening to the sorrowful cry of the loons in the lake below them.
“I don’t know how Harry’s going to make it now,” her grandmother had said. Harry being the husband of her sister.
“He was happy,” Jasmine had told her.
“How do you know that, child?”
“I could feel it,” she’d said. “When he stood next to me I could feel his happiness. He was only faking being sad. He was glad she was gone.”
Her grandmother had regarded her with a critical eye. “You felt his emotion?”
Jasmine nodded as the loons cried in their sorrowful voice, and the stars twinkled into existence in the darkening sky above them. “When someone gets close to me I can feel what they’re feeling.”
“Can you feel what I feel right now?”
Jasmine nodded. “You’re sad, surprised, and just a little afraid.”
“Afraid of what, child?”
“Me,” Jasmine answered as her grandmother pushed herself to her feet and vanished inside. For the remainder of her visit, her grandmother made it a point to keep her distance. After six months her mother came for her and she returned home, where she was introduced to her mother’s new boyfriend. Jasmine kept her distance from Carl, sensing on their first meeting his lust not only for Jasmine’s mother, but for Jasmine herself, who had blossomed into a beautiful young girl.
It wasn’t until she was in high school that she discovered she exhibited the traits of an empath. No longer restricted to the kiddies’ section of the library, she had searched for an explanation for her ability, finding it in an old hardback book with blank covers wrapped in clear cellophane plastic. Hidden within the barren landscape of scientific speak, she had discovered a small section at the end of the chapter on telekinesis, detailing the traits of an empath. Armed with this knowledge, she searched the Internet in her quest to uncover the secrets to a gift that was more a curse.
&n
bsp; The air around her carried a chill that raised goose bumps across her exposed flesh. But David’s hand on her breast felt good, igniting a fire deep inside her, an itch that needed scratching.
Before she knew it he had stripped her down to just a pair of panties, her dress lying crumpled on the floor. It was gonna be a bitch ironing out those wrinkles, but what did it matter. He was unbuckling his belt when the faint sound of a child crying came from the back of the training room. Hidden in the deep shadows where the light of the desk lamp could not reach.
“What’s that?” she said.
“What’s what?” David said, pushing down his jeans and stepping out of them, the bulge at the front of his briefs confirming his horniness.
From the shadows at the back of the training room came the unmistakable sound of a child crying.
“There it is again,” Jasmine said, wrapping her arms around her body to keep warm. Covering her exposed breasts and effectively killing the moment. The chill of the room invaded her body, burrowing to her bones.
David moved towards the back of the room. “Who’s back there?” he said, vanishing for a moment into the shadows, leaving Jasmine alone.
From the outer wall came the shrieking cry of the wind as it battered itself against the building. It was a distant sound that brought to mind the image of a windswept plain across which a solitary figure staggered against the wind.
The image filled her with such a sense of loneliness, of loss that weighed down her heart, a forlorn emptiness without end. From the freezing depths of the endless Siberian winter, this lonely wanderer had come to this place in its never-ending search for the warmth of the living. Over the centuries he had gone by many names that had been celebrated and feared. He was the essence of the winter wind, the driving snow, and the relentless cold. Feeding on the souls of all who became lost in his raging storms. He had been known as the White Walker, the White One, Jack Frost, and Old Man Winter, as well as a long list of names lost in the faded memories of the distant past.
“Jasmine, come here.” David’s voice pulled her from her thoughts and she knelt down to retrieve her dress. She slipped it on, glancing at her bra still lying on the desk; she shrugged and pulled her dress on the rest of the way. In the back of the room she found David peering into the dense shadows that crouched in the corners. From their inky depths came the unmistakable sound of a child sobbing.
“Where is she?” Jasmine said.
“Right there in the corner.” David pointed, his arm a darker shadow against the velvety emptiness. “Come here, little girl, we won’t hurt you.”
“How did a little girl get in here?” Jasmine said as she tried to make out the child but saw only shadows. Then she felt it, on a deeply emotional level, a terror that washed over her with a blind panic.
He was coming. The thought whispered in her mind and she knew, on a deep, instinctive level, the child was afraid of that which inhabited the storm raging beyond the walls of the building.
“It’s okay, we won’t hurt you,” Jasmine said.
There was movement in the deeper shadows as a black shape stirred in the darkness. It came towards them and Jasmine was suddenly filled with a desire to flee, to run away from what was unfolding in front of her, but she stood her ground, quashing her own fear as a little girl, no more that five, emerged from the deeper shadows.
“You’ll be safe now,” David said as he extended his hand to her. She reached for him, one small hand held out in the gloom and Jasmine had a moment to reflect that something was terribly wrong here. There were forces at play beyond her comprehension. A confrontation was brewing and they were stuck in the middle.
As the girl reached for him a wicked smile spread across her face. Jasmine was nearly floored by the raw power of the rage that emanated from the child’s silhouette. She reached out to stop David, one last attempt to save him from the fate that awaited, but that all-consuming rage kept her arm in check.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” David said as the little girl’s hand was folded into his own.
He started to stand, that self-assured expression on his face dissolving into a grimace of pain as small wisps of smoke rose from his arm. The sickening smell of roasting flesh filled the room. The little girl vanished from sight, dissolving into the shadows as David dropped to his knees and clamped his hands to either side of his head. He cried out as a thick ribbon of smoke rose from his back. He shrieked as flames flashed across his shoulders, enveloping his head, racing down his body, flashing across his flesh as they greedily fed on the ready supply of fuel. He reached out for Jasmine, who stood transfixed by the spectacle playing out before her. His pain and terror washed over her in waves, nearly driving her to the ground as his flesh bubbled and popped beneath the churning flames that covered his body.
He cried out one last time, a final shriek of agony before he fell face-first to the carpet. The flames consumed his body, merely singing the carpet beneath him, leaving the rest of the room untouched.
Jasmine staggered back as the last of his agony was washed away. She dropped to her knees, panting in fear, her hands covering her face. She understood without really knowing why that a line had been drawn in the snow and the first casualty of the coming battle had been taken.
This one by fire.
Chapter 13
As he drifted just beneath the surface of consciousness, the first thing Teddy became aware of was the smell. A faint mustiness that reminded him of the basement in the house he grew up in. A stale scent that whispered of things long abandoned. The next thing he noticed was the peculiar stillness that filled him with the sensation of not belonging. That he was the one out of place. Gone were the normal sounds of everyday life in the call center, the faint hum of the overhead lights, the soft hiss of moving air from the vents that provided warmth in the winter and a cool breeze in the summer’s heat. Those everyday sounds that were never noticed until they were no longer there.
There were other sounds, faint voices that came to him as if from a great distance away, but upon opening his eyes he realized he was alone. Yet those distant whispers remained, faint, almost inaudible, too soft for him to distinguish what was being said. They came from all around him, whispering from the shadows that were crowded along the walls and pooled in the corners.
Where is everyone?
He sat up, his head throbbing in response to the sudden change of position. The floor beneath his hand felt insubstantial. It was there, yet it wasn’t. He felt the tiles beneath his fingers, but the sensation was weak. There was a dream-like quality to everything around him, as if the hallway was but a memory shrouded in shadows.
Getting to his feet, he steadied himself against the bulletin board. The sound of the paper crinkling beneath his hand was dull, as if it, too, did not belong. A chill washed over him and he remembered what had brought him to this place.
The stranger in the storm. A thing of legend carried in the hearts and minds of those who had come from the frozen Russian steppes of Siberia. If his Nanny was to be believed. A being that carried the harsh winter wind in its pocket. Leading the unwary to their doom so it could feast upon their souls.
From the shadows of the main room behind him came the soft sob of a child. As he turned around to locate the source, he saw Kevin lying face down on the other side of the hallway.
“Kevin?” Teddy said as he knelt down beside him. He placed his hand on Kevin’s back, shivering at the icy chill that emanated in waves from his prone body. “Are you all right?” He slipped his hand along the side of his Kevin’s searching for a pulse. There wasn’t one.
Kevin stirred, moaning as he rolled over onto his back. Suddenly he pushed himself up off the floor, his face a mask of anger. He grabbed Teddy by the throat and drove him across the hall to the opposite wall. Teddy slapped at Kevin’s arms as he was driven back. The back of his head rebounded from the wall, stars exploded behind his eyelids, and he struggled to breathe as Kevin’s hands tightened around his neck.
; “Kevin, it’s Teddy,” he tried to reason with his older, more muscular opponent. His pleas were ignored. He was pinned against the wall, his feet inches above the floor. Kevin’s eyes were wide, his nostrils flaring with the exertion, his mouth set in a grim line. It was Kevin, but it wasn’t Kevin. Something else lurked in the black depths of his pupils.
Teddy tried to hit him in the face, his fist bouncing uselessly off Kevin’s shoulder. Black spots danced before Teddy’s eyes as his brain slowly starved for oxygen. He didn’t have much longer. If he didn’t do something soon he would die. The truth of his predicament startled him into action and he brought his knee up savagely.
The tight band around his throat loosened as Kevin dropped his hands to cover his injury. He staggered back as he retched onto the floor, his vomit splattering hot and steaming onto the cold tile.
Teddy slid down to a sitting position as he gulped down a fresh lungful of air. The black dots that had been swimming before his eyes faded. Kevin dropped to the floor, curled up on his side, moaning in pain as he rolled back and forth with his hands clasped between his legs.
As his breathing came under control, Kevin started moving with more purpose.
“Kevin,” Teddy shouted at his co-worker, who was slowly drawing himself up onto his knees. When he looked up, Teddy realized it was not Kevin kneeling before him. It may have looked like Kevin, but Kevin was gone, replaced by that which crouched before him like a savage beast coiling itself up for another attack. Something had come in with Kevin’s body.
May I come in? that sinister voice whispered in his mind.
Teddy glanced to his right. At the doorway to the break room. Beyond lay the rear door that led to the open dock and the winter storm raging outside. Neither was a good choice, and he looked left into the dense gloom that filled the main floor of the call center. In that direction his chances of survival were much better. He could become lost in the maze of temporary walls that created the cubicles for those who manned the phones.
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