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There were only two patients in the infirmary ward. Jack Tarleton and a man named Merrell who had broken his leg during an unfortunate football tackle. Tarleton moaned and stirred before sitting up. He rubbed his forehead, confused by the strange surroundings. After a while, the smell of disinfectant and medicine told him where he was. During the night, the light in the infirmary was kept dim however at the end of the ward, Tarleton saw a desk lamp over by the nurse's station.
He wanted a drink and wondered where everyone was. He pushed the bed-covers down and swung his legs out of the bed. He called out, weakly, through parched lips. There was no response. Tarleton called out again, a little louder. Merrell rolled over, his arm flopped out of the bed an he muttered thickly.
Not wanting to disturb the other man, Tarleton stood and walked down the centre aisle between the beds. He looked up at the high, arched windows of the infirmary. Through the darkness outside, Tarleton couldn't be sure but was it snowing out? Surely not. Not at the start of November, he thought as he padded down the aisle.
"Hello," he called out when he reached the nurse's station. "Anyone there?" There was no answer. He knocked on the door and entered the small room. A small coal fire burned in the hearth and a kettle stood on the grate. A rota chart marked with coloured pencils was pinned up on one wall. A few old arm chairs were scattered around. Tarleton picked up the day's copy of the Arkham Advertiser before dropping it again.
Where was everyone? Could it be they were dealing with a patient in one of the isolation rooms? Wondering, Tarleton left the room and checked the corridor leading to the isolation rooms. Apart from one, which was locked tight, the rooms were open and a glance inside showed they were empty.
Turning around, Tarleton returned the way he'd come. This time, a sudden chill made him notice that the vestibule leading to the quadrangle outside was standing ajar. Tarleton shuddered. A thin skittering of snow had blown in and blew over the black and white tiled floor. Coldness gripped his heart and squeezed tight. Tarleton paused, unsure what to do. Even as he paused a gust carried in more flakes of pristine white to join the rest on the floor. Should he return to the safety of his warm bed and wait for the orderlies to return? But that was a false safety, suitable only for little boys.
The wind howled outside, the gusts stronger. It almost sounded as if there were human voices out there in the cold darkness. Human voices and worse as the wind blew around the rafters and chimneys. Undecided what to do, Tarleton took a step closer to the door and then another. His bare feet chill on the snow covered cold tiles. Reluctantly, Tarleton stood by the heavy black painted door. The wind picked up outside.
Suddenly Tarleton felt fear. Real fear. Worse than looking at the block of ice outside the Italian restaurant earlier that day. He had to close that door, slam it against whatever was on the outside. Slowly, shuffling over the skein of snow, Tarleton approached the door. Quivering with an unspoken fear, Tarleton put out his hand to close it.
The air coming through the gap between door and jamb was sub-zero, far too cold for the first night of November. A blast from the high Arctic wastes. He touched the old wood before the door was thrust open hard. The door smashed back, ripping against the jamb, the wood by its hinges tearing and splintering.
It was what stood in the open doorway that made Tarleton scream. Scream and scream again. A giant figure, like yet unlike a man. Abnormally tall, towering over the cowering man. Impossibly emaciated, hollowed out. Its skin tone a terrible cyanosed blue as the blizzard emanated from its body, disguising yet emphasising its skeletal look, snowflakes pouring from it.
Its long arms stretched out and plucked the screaming man up and lifted him up to its mouth. Despite its stick-thin arms, the creature possessed immense strength and it raised Tarleton up to his mouth as easily as if he weighed less than a snowflake. Its staring, bulging eyes shimmered with all the colours of the northern lights as its icicle-fanged mouth open wide, wider than the gates of hell. Tarleton struggled one last time before the fangs bit down into his body.
Then he was helpless as his very life force was sucked away to feed the monster. Slowly at first as if the monster was savouring his taste and then faster as its endless greed forced it to drink faster. Tarleton saw the white-out fade to grey and then black. The darkness of the interstellar voids where the temperature never rises above absolute zero. Shortly after, his emptied lifeless, desiccated body was tossed away to fetch up against a snowdrift.
His soul though – his soul joined those toiling for all eternity beneath the ice-dæmon's whips in the ice caves of Hrak far below the cold northern wastes of Dreamland's Kadath.
The Horror From The Blizzard Page 14