The Shuddering

by Ania Ahlborn

  Ryan shot again, grazing its shoulder.

  The thing screamed, enraged. It bounded forward, its jaws wide open.

  Ryan yelled into the cold and pulled the trigger for the third time.

  The creature’s midair leap was cut short. It fell to the ground like a stone, clawing at the side of its face, the hollow point having torn half of it away. The familiar stink of rotten eggs wafted up into the wind. It reeled away, wounded, trying to run across the road and into the trees. But it stumbled, sinking into the snow, and eventually stopped moving entirely.

  Ryan veered around to stare at his best friend. Sawyer’s face was ashen. He trembled in the cold. Ryan bolted for him, sinking to his knees in front of his friend.

  “Sawyer,” he said, breathless. “You’re going to be okay, man. Come on.” Sliding an arm beneath him, his now gloveless right hand felt the warmth of blood pouring from Sawyer’s back. He tried to pull Sawyer to his feet without letting go of his torch, but Sawyer was resisting the help.

  “You’re a lousy shot,” Sawyer whispered, his face twisted in pain. “You used all the bullets.”

  Ryan dug through the snow, anger giving way to panic. He picked up Sawyer’s torch, relighting it with his own. “Here,” he said, grabbing Sawyer’s arm, forcing the torch into his hand.

  Ryan watched him close his eyes, his breaths shallow with anguish. His freshly lit torch fell to the ground for a second time, the faint scent of smoke and gasoline rising from its resting place. He snatched up the torch again, shoving it back into Sawyer’s hand.

  “Fucking hold that. We’re going to walk.”

  Trying to heft him up again, he nearly had Sawyer on his feet when his own foot slipped on the slick surface of the ground. Both of them sank back into the cold, Sawyer’s torch extinguishing yet again.

  There were eyes on them. Ryan could feel them watching. A sickening, communal purr resonated from the pines—a buzz that almost sounded like pleasure, like those goddamn things were getting a kick out of watching them struggle and panic.

  “Goddamnit, why are you doing this?!” Ryan yelled, his right hand burning now, his fingertips numb, exposed to the air. “Get up!”

  Sawyer managed a ghost of a smile.

  “What are you smiling at?” Ryan demanded. “Get up! We have to get ready to go, okay? Sawyer? We have to get ready to go. We’re going to make it.” He swiped at his cheeks, wiping away the cold sting of tears. The arm looped across his shoulders went limp. Ryan’s eyes went wide as Sawyer slid away, and he was left to stare at his friend, the sleeve of his jacket coated in Sawyer’s blood, Ryan’s breath hitching in his throat. He wanted to blame it on his panic, wanted to not understand what he was seeing, wanted to pretend that the scene unfolding before him looked a lot worse than it was because he couldn’t think straight, couldn’t comprehend. But the look on Sawyer’s face confirmed what was occurring; Sawyer was dying, and he was doing it right in front of Ryan’s eyes.

  “Sawyer?” He watched his friend raise his eyes to him, listening.

  Curiosity got the best of another one of those things. It cautiously slunk out of the trees on all fours, its posture apelike as it made a strangely slow approach. Ryan spun around, the flame of his torch cutting through the air.

  “Get away!” he screamed.

  The creature pitched backward at the yell, its hands leaving the snow as it put its weight on its hind legs.

  Ryan was suddenly overwhelmed, not with fear but with utter contempt. He grabbed the sharpened pool cue that Sawyer had dropped in the snow, baring his teeth at the monstrosity that was watching him a little too intently, as though it were learning. And while it teetered there, Ryan lunged, burying the end of the cue deep between its ribs.

  The thing stumbled backward as if in surprise. Its arms flailed around the stick jutting out of its chest, trying to grab at it with its large, cumbersome claws. Ryan took its distraction as an opportunity. He took another step forward, jabbing his torch into the thing’s face, purposefully aiming for one of its eyes. The monster emitted an ear-piercing scream as it stumbled backward, falling into the snow. It blindly groped at the ground, trying to regain its bearings with only one eye, but its depth perception was off. Shuffling through a few uneasy steps, it pitched forward against the slope of the road, and the pool cue that was still stuck between its ribs burst through its back, releasing a geyser of blood that arced across the sky.

  Ryan turned back to Sawyer, grabbing the board attached to Sawyer’s wrist and pulling it forward. “Get on,” he demanded, helping his friend to roll onto the board. As soon as Sawyer was lying on top of it—the bindings jabbing into his chest and hips—Ryan began to pull as hard as he could.

  And as he dragged his bleeding best friend up the driveway while those creatures were distracted by the death of one of their own, he heard Sawyer speak above the deafening thud of his own pulse.

  “You’re a badass,” Sawyer wheezed. “Holy shit, dude. Holy shit.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jane had jumped at the sound of the gunshot, her eyes wide as she ran from window to window, trying to see through the trees that blocked her view. When two more reports echoed through the hills, she bounded up the stairs, a muted scream stuck in her throat. She took a hard right into the master bedroom, dashing to the picture window that offered a bird’s-eye view. Pressing her palms to the glass, she spotted movement behind the trees, but she couldn’t see the road. Even from this vantage point, there was no way to get a clear view.

  She bolted into the hall with Oona at her heels, stopping at the bay window in its center, trying to get a look, but it was no use. Her hands hit the door at the end of the hall as she entered the room Sawyer and April had occupied. Dashing to the window there, she fumbled with the string of the blinds. She gave it a hard pull, and they went up at a skewed angle. Ryan came into view, one snowboard piled full of supplies behind him, a torch throwing black smoke above his head. She felt a stab of panic when she saw that he was alone, only to see Sawyer being pulled along behind him a second later. But the relief she expected failed to come. Watching her brother stumble, frantic as he moved up the driveway directly beneath her, blood trailed behind a wounded Sawyer. Clinging to a second board, he was too still for comfort.

  He looked dead.

  A sob began to bubble upward until it was cut off by utter panic. She was supposed to stay in the kitchen. The door Ryan was heading for was locked.

  She sprinted toward the stairs as fast as she could, leaped down them two at a time. She met Ryan around the side of the house, and before she could freak out about the blood, he was shoving the leash of the supply board into her hand.

  “Take this,” he commanded, leaning down to help Sawyer up. But Jane couldn’t move. She stood motionless, her eyes wide at how pale Sawyer’s face was, how obviously the pain washed across his face when Ryan tried to move him. “Jane.” Ryan snapped, thrusting the leash at her impatiently.

  Jane grabbed the gas can in one hand, shoving it onto one of the steps before hefting the board up and sliding it onto the porch. She nearly lost her footing as she bolted for the open kitchen door, thrusting the board into the house, almost dropping the gas can just inside the door before veering around and dashing back to her brother. She looped an arm beneath Sawyer’s shoulder and helped Ryan pull him up the stairs, slamming the door shut as soon as they were inside.

  Snow sprayed off Sawyer’s clothes and onto the floor and bloodied blue tarp. He was terrifyingly pale.

  “Oh my god,” Jane exclaimed. “What happened?”

  “His back,” Ryan told her, rolling Sawyer onto a clean stretch of floor. Sawyer gave a muffled cry when he was moved, and Jane gasped at the three long gashes in his coat. They needed to get Sawyer’s coat and the one beneath it off him as fast as possible. “Get some towels,” Ryan said, but Jane was on autopilot.

  She bolted across the kitchen to the living room, grabbing the kitchen shears out of a pile of knives before skidding
back in place. She grabbed the bottom of Sawyer’s coat, shoving the scissors into place. Ryan grabbed her wrist.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “We need to get these off.” She began to cut, but he shoved her hand away, grabbing the shears and sliding them across the floor.

  “How do you expect to get out of here?” Ryan demanded. “He’s wearing your coat.”

  Jane blanched at the realization, at the huge mistake she had almost made.

  “Get some towels,” he told her again. “Hurry up.”

  She sprinted down the hall and careened into the guest bathroom. Snatching all the towels she could find—all of them embroidered with an elegant A, she dashed back into the kitchen.

  Sawyer was sitting up as Ryan peeled the coats from his back. He was teetering at the edge of unconsciousness. Jane dropped to her knees in front of him, caught his face in his hands.

  “Tom,” she said. “Hey, come on.” She patted his cheeks, trying to wake him up.

  “Your brother,” Sawyer said weakly.

  “Don’t talk,” she insisted. “It’s going to be okay.” But the look on Ryan’s face wasn’t at all reassuring. She watched his expression go ashen when the second coat hit the floor, and she knew it was bad—worse than Ryan had expected.

  “He, like”—Sawyer wheezed—“he Kill Billed the shit out of…”

  She couldn’t help it. Jane slid around to where Ryan was, only to release an involuntary cry at what faced her. Sawyer’s back was sliced into thirds, his ribs peeking through layers of skin, fat, and flesh.

  Ryan looked at her, trying to keep himself in check, but there was panic in his eyes. Jane didn’t know what to do either, but they had to stop the bleeding. “Lay him down. Put pressure on that. We need sheets,” she said, then scrambled to her feet.

  Running up the stairs, she tore the sheets off the beds in the master bedroom. When she returned to the kitchen a few minutes later, Ryan had stripped Sawyer down to his pants. Sawyer lay on his stomach in the kitchen, and her heart lurched when she realized his eyes were closed. He was dead. He had to be—but she saw his shoulders lift just enough to assure her that he was still breathing.

  Ryan shook his head at her. “That isn’t going to work,” he said, nodding to the bedding piled in her arms. “We need to stop the bleeding now.”

  She said nothing as he slowly stood, leaving Sawyer where he lay. And she felt her legs go weak when Ryan stepped into the living room and thrust the small iron shovel into the flames of the fire.

  With the smell of burning flesh filling his nostrils, Sawyer found enough breath to scream.

  Ryan tore through the bags he’d brought back from Sawyer’s Jeep, seeing what could be used and what could be left behind. In April’s bag he found a can of aerosol hair spray. In Sawyer’s he found a cheap gas station lighter tucked into a half-smoked pack of cigs. He paused, listening to Jane comfort Sawyer in the kitchen, before exhaling a breath. He would never admit it, but he was terrified. If they had a hope of getting out of the cabin alive, Sawyer’s injury had just cut those chances down. But if there was ever a time to leave, it was now. If they didn’t, Sawyer was dead, and Sawyer couldn’t be dead. Ryan wouldn’t allow it.

  Pulling on every last stitch of gear he had, he stepped into the kitchen. He looked like an abominable snowman, wearing twenty pounds of clothing, his torch burning next to him, freshly lit by the fire in the living room. Jane opened her mouth to speak from where she sat on the floor, her arms around Sawyer, Sawyer fading in and out of consciousness, a bedsheet securing the Saran wrap they had wrapped around his torso; but she didn’t get a chance to speak. Ryan stepped through the kitchen to the door, unlocked it without a word of warning, and ducked into the snow. Moving back into view with Jane’s board sliding behind him, he stuck the burning end of the torch into the snow just beyond the door, extinguishing it, and stepped inside.

  She watched him in silence as he crouched in the hallway, removing the board bindings with a multitool he had stashed in his backpack. Then he lashed both boards together with a menagerie of power cords the five of them had brought with them; cords for computers and iPods, cell phones and cameras. Perhaps their love of the digital age would save them in the end.

  “You can start securing that basket to your board,” he told her, tossing her a cable. “Just make sure it’s tight. We can’t lose it.”

  Jane caught the wicker basket by its handle and jabbed the end of the cord between the wicker weaving.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked meekly. Her tone gave her away. She knew their chances were slim to none now, but Ryan wasn’t about to acknowledge her suspicion.

  “What we were always going to do. We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

  Jane felt her face flush as she worked, clumsily tangling the cord around the front binding before triple knotting the end, trying not to cry.

  “He could die,” Ryan said under his breath, hoping that that sobering reminder would snap her out of her fear. This was no longer about should they or shouldn’t they. This was now all down to a simple question of when, and when had to be now.

  Ryan didn’t wait for her reaction. He climbed the stairs to the center landing and plucked a picture off the wall. Their mother had bought it on a whim in an antique shop in Durango when they were kids—an artist’s rendition of the teddy bears’ picnic, except the bears weren’t stuffed animals—they were real bears, some of them looking bizarrely vicious as they danced, hand in hand, around a campfire with their kin. There was something malign about that picture, like a serial killer painting clowns or twisting balloon animals at a kid’s birthday party. Bringing the painting down into the hall, Ryan lashed it on top of both boards.

  He stood, examining their handiwork, and nodded in satisfaction.

  “Let’s gather up the stuff,” he said, motioning for her to follow him into the living room. There, they picked up the two remaining table leg torches that had yet to be lit, the collection of knives, and the pool cues Sawyer had sharpened to a point. The ax was in Ryan’s backpack, ready to go.

  “We’re going to need to walk Sawyer down into the garage,” he explained. “We’ll put him on this.” He motioned to the makeshift gurney he’d fashioned out of two boards and their mother’s weird art. He had no idea whether it would work, if the snow would even hold Sawyer’s weight or if they’d end up getting stuck, but it didn’t matter anymore.

  “What about Oona?” Jane asked.

  “She’ll have to ride with him.”

  Jane looked startled by his answer. It was an insane plan.

  “We’re out of options,” he told her. “I’ll get all this stuff down there. You dress him in everything we’ve got. Grab a spare blanket to wrap him in and then dress yourself.”

  She nodded, trying to look brave, but her bottom lip quaked with emotion.

  “Hey.” He caught her by the shoulders, giving her a steady look. “I need you, okay? I can’t do this alone.”

  She nodded again, then turned to do what he’d asked of her, and Ryan was left staring at the teddy bears’ picnic, wondering whether the artist had been trying to say something through his sinister art, like the fact that there was something in the woods, something that should have been a fantasy but was dangerously real.

  Jane swallowed against the lump in her throat. She had forgotten all about the pot of blood until Ryan grabbed it from the sink and walked it out into the garage.

  “Are you sure this is absolutely necessary?” she asked, her voice echoing against the cold cinderblock walls, but it had been her idea in the first place—an idea that had worked.

  “It’s absolutely necessary,” he told her, blocking Oona from scrambling back up the stairs. Sawyer sat against the wall, bundled up from head to toe, wrapped in the thick quilt Jane had found in the armoire upstairs. He looked terrible, but at least he was awake.

  She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could, steadying her nerves. “Fucking fuck,” she
whispered, anticipating what was to come.

  Peering into the pot at her feet, she reeled back at the smell. Her throat started to tighten—the sensation of inevitable sickness.

  Ryan braced himself as he held on to Oona’s collar. “Just do it.”

  She grabbed the handles of the pot, hefted it up to her waist, and tipped it over Oona’s clean black-and-white fur. As soon as the thick liquid hit her back, Oona let out a loud whine and curved her back downward, trying to get away from the stuff that was slithering down her coat. Ryan gagged, but he held his hand steadfast beneath the stream of blood, ladling it onto her head, rubbing it into her snout. Oona sneezed once, twice, then wriggled out of Ryan’s grip. A second later she was shaking out, spraying the garage with a putrid red mist.

  Jane turned away, sure she was about to puke. The stench was intense, permeating her nostrils, crawling to the back of her throat. She whimpered when Ryan pulled her back by the wrist. She sank to her knees and covered her face, her eyes watering from the stink. When she felt the liquid hit her shoulders, her stomach clenched. She tried to sit there as long as she could, but it only allotted Ryan a few seconds before she was up on her feet, vomiting onto the concrete floor.

  Ryan braced himself when it was his turn. Had they been in any other situation she would have laughed at the intensity in his face. But she was too sick and too disgusted to even smile at his expression. She backed away from him when he shot up to his feet, and Ryan rubbed the foul-smelling stuff into his jacket and pants despite his obvious revulsion. They looked like a pair of serial killers fresh from a sloppy kill, and they smelled as good as they looked. Oona was having a sneezing fit, rubbing her face against the floor, desperately trying to get the stuff off her skin.

  Ryan grabbed the half-empty pot of blood with bright red hands and walked it over to Sawyer. “Your turn, man,” he said.

  “Oh,” Sawyer said weakly. “Fantastic.”

  “Just pretend you’re Dracula.” Ryan tried for humor, but Sawyer only released a weak breath and covered his face with the quilt that was draped around his shoulders. He hardly made a peep when Ryan rubbed gore into his hair.