The Shuddering

by Ania Ahlborn

  One of the deer that had fled into the forest circled back, bursting into the clearing, terrified as it stumbled onto one of its own being attacked. And while the four creatures were busy fighting, a fifth bolted across the snow, catching the larger deer’s neck in its jaws only to tear out its throat, blood fanning out across the ground as the deer bucked beneath its attacker, desperate to get free.

  Jane muffled her cry with the palm of her hand as she twisted away, refusing to watch any more. Those things were impossible—impossible—grotesque abominations of skin and bone, exactly as Ryan had described them. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing away the knowledge that Lauren had tried to run, she had scrambled and screamed, she had stared into those gaping jaws during the last second of her life. Terrified and trembling, Jane slowly looked to Ryan, and she could see it on his face—he knew they couldn’t go out there. They’d be dead within minutes.

  A gun wasn’t going to do a damn thing.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The sun, which had been absent all day, was now setting over an invisible horizon, and the endless gray that blanketed the sky grew heavy with impending night. But the oncoming darkness made no difference; visibility was nearly zero. She could see the deck’s railing just outside the window, but beyond that, all that existed was a deluge of white. Of all the years they had lived in Denver as kids, Jane couldn’t remember ever seeing it snow this hard in the city.

  She could only imagine how deep Sawyer’s Jeep was buried now, the tracks it had made that morning probably gone. The wind howled outside, blowing snow off the railing in waves. It was one of those storms people never forgot, the kind that refused to let up until the food and firewood were gone. They were going to die here. If they didn’t starve, they’d freeze. And if those two fates didn’t get them first, the beasts that lingered in the trees would.

  Jane turned to face the living room. Ryan was sitting next to the fireplace, occasionally poking the last of a burning log. Sawyer sat on the couch, his gaze fixed on the gun she had found. It rested on top of the coffee table, loaded and ready next to the knives, though that gun didn’t make her feel much better after the display she’d witnessed a few hours before. They were speaking in low tones, trying to come up with a plan, their conversation dwindling every time she got too close. And while a part of her wanted to be involved in every aspect of their escape, her maternal instinct pushed her into the kitchen, focused on what it would take to keep them alive while they were inside the cabin rather than what they would do once they left.

  She moved past the pantry, knowing there was nothing of use in there. After an hour of sitting in that room, she could recite the contents of each shelf by heart, and none of it would take them out further than a few days. She entered the laundry room, pulling open the cabinets that had always served as a catchall, and Jane found everything from extra paper towels to a sealed five-pack of Colgate, but no food. She sat down on the floor. It was ironic. The last time she had swung by Costco, she had stopped in front of an end cap stocked full of emergency freeze-dried food. She had rolled her eyes at it, thinking about how ridiculous some people were with all of that end-of-the-world crap. And yet here she was, cursing herself for not buying that stupid box when she had the chance. It would have kept them sufficiently fed for weeks, long enough for help to come, or at least for some of the snow to melt from the road. All they had now was a few days’ worth of groceries, all refrigerated—stuff she had bought to make dinner for everyone—and half of that stuff would be too far gone to eat in a few days, let alone in a week.

  She pulled herself to her feet, then froze.

  The light overhead flickered once, then twice.

  Outside, the wind wailed.

  Every muscle in Ryan’s body tensed when the house went dim before blazing bright again. He slowly got to his feet, as if tiptoeing would keep the cabin from throwing up its arms and declaring a blackout. Swiping the gun from the coffee table, he slid it into the waistband of his jeans as a particularly violent gust of wind rattled the windows, sending the snow upward in ghostlike tendrils before releasing it back to the ground.

  He hadn’t seen a storm like this in years, and this certainly trumped the worst. He’d gone up to Whistler a few years before, hung around the Olympic Village, had a great time at the bars; then the weather took an ugly turn. A three-day snowboarding trip had turned into a six-day hotel stay, then another day trying to get things squared away at the airport. It had been a disaster, but at least it had been within the limits of civilization. That blizzard had nothing on the one that raged outside now. With it being as cold as it was, one good gust could snap frozen branches and take down trees.

  Ryan wondered whether they were the only people left alive in the area, whether the town twenty-five miles away had seen the likes of these monsters or if these things stuck to the mountains, where they knew they could outnumber their prey. What if they were truly stuck here, everyone else for miles having been devoured, the highway closed, the roads snowed in?

  There was another flicker, the electricity’s lull humming in the silence. Where the hell had he left that goddamn flashlight? He ran down the hall and toward the game room, then stopped in the doorway, his eyes darting across the pool table they had left midplay. It had been Lauren’s shot. Jane had gone to get something to drink…and April had caught something lurking in the dark.

  It became clear in a flash—the animal they had seen out the window that night hadn’t been an animal at all. It had been one of those things.

  And it had been staking them out since they’d arrived.

  The lights flickered again, then went out.

  Jane scrambled to her feet and bolted down the hall, her heart thudding against her ribs, her fear of the dark suddenly stronger than her fear of taking a corner straight into the jaws of the enemy. But when she reached the living room, it was empty. Both boys were gone.

  Panic seized her chest. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something move. Someone was out on the deck. She blinked, staring wide-eyed toward the figure. Was that Sawyer? Could he have possibly been stupid enough to go outside to smoke? She ran across the room, her hands pressing to the window. She balled up her fist and knocked on the glass. What are you doing? she wanted to scream. Have you lost your goddamn mind?

  She fumbled with the lock when something rustled behind her. Veering around, she was ready to yell at Ryan about how Sawyer was about to get himself killed, but her words fell soundless when she found herself staring into the eyes of the man she was convinced was standing out in the cold.

  Jane’s stomach flipped.

  “Where’s Ryan?” she asked, because if Sawyer was inside, who was standing out in the snow?

  Sawyer shook his head.

  “Where’s Ryan?!” she yelled, the world suddenly wavy with frantic tears. She turned away, unlocking the dead bolt, fear overwhelming logic.

  “Whoa!” Sawyer exclaimed. “What are you doing?” He ran at her, catching her a split second before she pulled open the door. Jane thrashed against him, trying to fight her way free.

  “Where’s Ryan?” she wailed.

  “I’m right here.” Ryan caught his sister by her arm, trying to calm her down.

  Looking back to the porch, she stared at the dark figure that was still lurking outside the window. Her heart crawled into her throat, threatening to choke her if the fear didn’t asphyxiate her first.

  “Oh my god,” she whispered, suddenly afraid to move. Her eyes were locked on that shadow, unable to look away. She heard Ryan say something beneath his breath, felt Sawyer’s arms tighten around her and pull her back. The shadow spun around, jaws pulled open impossibly wide. Its eyes were as black as tar, staring at them through the window as it slapped its claws against the glass.

  Jane screamed, waiting for the demon to burst through the window. The thing stepped in front of the kitchen door, stood to its full height, its gray skin nearly blending in with the white background behind it. And just as she wa
s sure it was going to come through the glass, it twisted in the wind and leaped over the railing.

  “This is it,” Ryan said, setting three white emergency candles onto the ledge of the fireplace, the glass glinting beneath the flashlight’s beam. Sawyer had thrown a few extra logs onto the metal grate and was blindly tearing out pages of a magazine, frantic to keep the fire that had nearly extinguished itself from going out. Ryan lit the candles he’d found in the laundry room, but those tiny flames were swallowed by the vastness of the cabin.

  Taking a seat next to a trembling Jane, he watched Sawyer twist glossy paper into ropes before shoving them beneath the wood. This was, in Ryan’s opinion, the worst-case scenario. Without power the heater wouldn’t kick on when it got cold, and the cold would come on fast. That, and they couldn’t see a damn thing, but he doubted the darkness inhibited those creatures’ ability to hunt.

  Sawyer held a twisted piece of paper over one of the candles, waiting for it to ignite. The end caught fire, glowing in weird shades of blue and green. He leaned away from the flame, the quiet sizzle of firewood filling the silence.

  “We can’t be the only ones,” Ryan finally announced. “There have to be other victims, right?”

  “What difference does it make?” Jane asked quietly. With her arms wrapped around her legs, she stared into the fire, her mouth and nose hidden behind her knees. “We’re stuck out here,” she whispered.

  Ryan couldn’t argue her logic. “That thing had the perfect opportunity to attack, but it took off instead. Make sense of it.”

  Sawyer shook his head as the flames in the fireplace grew. Shadows danced across the walls.

  “You know that has to be what April saw through the window,” Ryan said. “It could have gotten us then too. We were outside, standing in our T-shirts on the back patio, but it didn’t make a move.” He swallowed, seemed to hesitate, then asked, “You think they’re smart enough to stake a place out before they come in for the kill?”

  Sawyer pulled the fire poker from its holder and nudged one of the logs. “Maybe they’re afraid of big groups.” The log shifted, spitting sparks up the chimney.

  They all went silent.

  “Maybe they’re like wolves,” Ryan said after a long while. “When wolves sense there’s a threat within their perimeter, they get aggressive. Especially if something gets close to their den. Maybe someone was close to a cave or something, the storm came in, these things didn’t have anything to eat so they just kept coming closer and closer to civilization. But what I don’t get is, why haven’t there been reports of dead people all over the place? I mean, that would make sense, right? If they’re taking everyone in their perimeter out?”

  They were pack animals, that was for sure; the way they had swarmed around Lauren had made that clear. Maybe the one on the deck had been scoping them out. Ryan shuddered beneath his sweatshirt.

  They went quiet again, the fire licking at the sides of the fireplace. One of the logs popped and they all jumped. A spark flew onto the carpet. It glowed for a few seconds, then faded out.

  “What if they haven’t found any bodies because there haven’t been any?” Jane asked after a long while.

  “What about the skiers?” Sawyer asked.

  “Maybe they got spooked and ran away.” She went quiet for a moment, then lifted her head again as if in revelation. “That’s why they’re here,” she whispered, her eyes going glassy. “When there’s a storm like this, animals go into hiding. They’re harder to find. And if that’s what these things eat…deer and elk…” Her words faded.

  “They’re searching for food,” Sawyer finished her train of thought.

  A chill crawled up Ryan’s spine. It made sense, and at this point it was the only thing that did.

  “They’re hungry,” she said. “And we’re the only prey they can find.”

  They tried to stay awake, tried to formulate a plan, but exhaustion gave way to hours of quiet. Trying to keep herself from falling asleep during her watch, Jane left the boys dozing in the living room and dared to venture into the kitchen. With the flame of an emergency candle guiding her way, she went through the motions of making coffee—filling the pot, stuffing a filter into the maker’s basket, adding five scoops of Folgers before hitting the power button. She blinked at the machine when the power light didn’t come on, convinced for a good five seconds that the stupid thing had died before rolling her eyes at herself. The routine was so ingrained in her blood that even an emergency candle did little to remind her that this darkness was involuntary. Exhaling a sigh, she settled on three glasses of water instead, returning to the living room a minute later, the candle precariously tucked into the crook of her elbow. Her father’s Ginsu knives glittered in the firelight, all lying next to the revolver she had brought from upstairs. Ryan had shoved the pool cues under the coffee table, a few of them sharpened to deadly points, the rest awaiting honing just as soon as Ryan’s watch began.

  She set the glasses on the coffee table and moved back into the kitchen, pulling open the fridge’s door. It was cold inside the house, but not cold enough to keep the food from spoiling. The unit harbored the dank scent of a refrigerator getting warmer by the minute. Grabbing the cake stand by its footed bottom, she pulled plates out of a cabinet and forks out of a drawer. Ryan still had half an hour to sleep before his shift, but he’d be hungry. None of them had eaten since that morning, and they had to keep their energy up. It was what Jane had put herself in charge of—making sure they were fed, rested, and ready when the guys decided it was time to go.

  Sawyer stirred next to the fire when he heard her return. Oona’s ears perked but she remained motionless, her head resting on Ryan’s leg. Ryan was fast asleep under a blanket that had been draped across the back of one of the sofas, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head, his back to the room.

  Sawyer sat up and stretched with a wince.

  Jane selected one of the knives on the coffee table, cutting into leftover cake. She offered Sawyer a plate with a halfhearted shrug.

  “Thanks,” he said, taking it from her.

  “Kind of inappropriate,” she said. “But we have to eat.”

  “Hey, I’ll eat chocolate cake in any situation,” Sawyer told her. He made an attempt to smile, but it vanished before it fully formed. Optimism was what would keep them afloat. She was trying to convince herself that if they made it through the night they’d be home free, but even if they made it through to morning, she could only imagine how much snow had fallen in the past twelve hours. It had been nonstop, and the wind was aggressive. If the weather didn’t let up, there was no way they were going anywhere. She’d rather take her chances waiting for those creatures to break in than walk out into the wilderness with a guarantee of freezing.

  “You know, two years ago, when we planned on coming up here, before that ski accident?” he said, cutting into his slice of cake. “Alex had something going at work and you told Ryan to come up here anyway, just me and him?”

  She nodded toward her plate.

  “I was the one who decided to postpone.”

  Jane glanced up at him, chewing the inside of her lip, not sure whether she was supposed to respond—whether she was supposed to ask why, or if silence was an acceptable response.

  “I didn’t want to come up here if you weren’t here too. Despite everything.”

  She smiled faintly and looked back down.

  “I’m still glad I came,” he said quietly, frowning at his plate. “I know that’s fucked up. It makes me feel shitty for even admitting it, because…” He paused, shaking his head at a thought. April. The baby. “I guess if this is the end…if this is what it took to wind up here with you guys…”

  “Don’t say that. If you hadn’t come, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Janey…” He lifted his eyes to meet her gaze. “If I hadn’t come, I just wouldn’t be here when it happened. It would have still happened. But I’d be in Denver calling Ryan’s cell for weeks, and I’d
eventually get into my Jeep and drive out to Phoenix, only he wouldn’t be there.”

  Jane slid her plate onto the coffee table and stared down at her hands. Her chest constricted against Sawyer’s words: if this is the end. She wanted to cry, wanted to apologize because suddenly it all felt like her fault. But her thoughts were derailed when Sawyer slid up onto the couch, cutting the distance between them.

  “Janey, listen…” She could smell the chocolate on his breath. “Everything is going to work out. We’re going to be fine.”

  She nodded without looking at him, but he caught her chin in his hand, gently tipped it up so they looked into each other’s eyes.

  “We’re going to be fine,” he repeated. “I promise.”

  But she could see it in his eyes: he didn’t believe it. He was trying to convince her, to keep her calm, to keep her sane, but for Sawyer it would never be okay again.

  His world was already gone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ryan stirred from sleep, and for a moment everything was fine. They were at the cabin, the snow was great, Lauren was fantastic, and he felt good about the future. But every muscle in his body tensed when he heard Oona’s growl beside him. He rolled onto his back, then sat up, only to be presented with Jane and Sawyer sleeping in front of the fire, tangled in each other’s arms, knives strewn across the room, the cold starting to creep in through the windows, eating away the last of the cabin’s heat. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he then let his hand fall from his face, his palm slapping the slick fabric of his snowboarding pants, and crawled toward the coffee table. The scent of baked chocolate roused a hungry rumble from his stomach, and he grabbed the spare fork that lay there, digging into the cake that was left on the covered stand. With a mouth full of chocolate and frosting, he rubbed behind Oona’s ears, his gaze returning to his sister and best friend, unable to help the pang of sadness that flared in his gut. He should have tried harder, should have thrown himself in front of that creature to buy Lauren some more time. She had been incredible, the girl he had been waiting for, for so long, the girl he was convinced didn’t exist at all, and he had let her die—no, he had let her be torn apart.