But all of that had passed. The wendigo were gone.
And that was a much worse reality to comprehend.
It would be fine if they could see where they were going. It would be fine if they knew where the wendigo had gone. Hell, it would be even better if they had Alex with them, the man who had protected her and the children and led them safely away from the isolated house in the far reaches of who-the-fuck-knows-where.
But that wasn’t the reality they were facing, and with each step deeper into the forest, Sophie grew more reluctant to take another, as though the very forest itself was creeping into her stores of courage and sapping all that she had remaining. The only things keeping her going were the woman and the boy beside her.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There was also the third of their company. The ghost that wouldn’t exit her sight.
He clung to the farthest reaches of the darkness, appearing as a white ghost on the horizon. His smile was bright, the grin stretching ear-to-ear. His hair was tousled at the back, and he walked with a gay hop in his step, leaping between the boughs like a mischievous faun, fingers dancing over the pipe as he danced a jig and led them onwards.
Cody was dead. She was certain of that. But there he was, tempting them ahead, guiding the way and causing her eyes to prick with tears. Each fleeting appearance made her heart leap. Every time he faded to darkness, it sank. Cody was an honourable man, and it seemed that the world didn’t respect the honourable, it favoured the unjust and the corrupt. Sophie had hardly known a boy her age with the courage that Cody presented, the grace, the class, the personality. Denridge didn’t breed boys in his stock, and now he was gone.
And all she could do now was claim back his memory and ensure that his fight wouldn’t be in vain. There were others to protect.
Tori walked silently by her side. Sophie wondered if she knew she was crying, her face steeled in grim resolve but for the silvery trails. Oscar made her feel calm, the boy exhibiting the kind of strength she had only seen in a few. He wore the courage of an older man, of someone who understood what was coming, even though none of them truly knew. If this night had shown them anything, it was that life was still a mystery, and that reality was fluid. The boy dancing in front of her proved that to be true.
“How much further?” Sophie asked, when she was certain that the forest had begun to repeat its patterns, throwing them onto an eternal treadmill of damnation, each step very much like the one they’d taken before.
Tori’s muttered response. “I don’t know.”
“We’ve been walking for hours.”
Oscar examined his watch, then looked ahead.
“What time is it?” Sophie asked.
Oscar’s lips thinned. “It’s broken.”
“Of course.”
The sudden disappearance of the wendigos was the biggest worry of all. Cast into the darkness, there was no telling where they were or what they could be up to. Sophie imagined herself in the eye of a hurricane, the world fallen silent, staring up at a cataclysmic roiling of thunderous clouds, a smile on her face, knowing that the moment the eye shifted its gaze to another target, the end would come. What would it be like to die? Would there be relief in the end? She hoped that Amy found hers. That Travis found his. That Cody…
Cody waved her onward.
The ground rumbled again. A flurry of movement and wind, like the colossal beating of bat wings powered through the forest and blasted their faces, cool air fanning their hair behind them. They braced themselves, grimaced in the coming gust, then that, too, passed.
Tori shook her head, palms slipping against the barrel of her rifle.
Sophie adjusted her grip on the shotgun.
Oscar’s eyes narrowed, face souring as the trees, at last, began to thin.
8
Cody Trebeck
Surrounded.
Cody paused, eyes scanning the trees around him. The wendigos watched, the circling stretched so wide that he could only see the onyx glitter in their eyes. Dozens upon dozens of them in rows, and all he could do was manage his breathing, try to calm his beating heart, wonder at the marvel of what was before him.
Creatures of history, of legend, of the Earth. Chikuk had taught him the secrets of their birth. Creatures born of insatiable hunger, cursed with the parasitic force of greed. Yet, they were but mere servants to a larger master. A creature that had once been human, until famine had forced him to do the unthinkable.
These were his children. Minions of the darkness bound by a single cause. Their leashes had been cut, and their reign had been granted in the wake of Akluq’s death. The floodgates opened and the wrath of the wendigos allowed to go unchecked for an entire evening, an entire week, a month, who knew how long it would all last?
Cody’s breath fogged before his eyes. The world was cast in monochrome. He wondered what they were waiting for, for clearly their hunger wasn’t enough to end his life. If they wanted him dead, he would be dead right now, nothing more than chunks of meat sizzling in digestive fluids. Impossibly so, he felt safe in their presence, as if they were there to guard him, not there to attack.
But where was Kazu?
“What do you want?” Cody breathed, wondering if the words would even reach them. A shape shifted towards him in answer, coalescing from the shadows, and as it arrived, Cody wondered how he could ever have not noticed that it was there. The great mask of bone—a stag’s head, antlers stretching from bough to bough—floated in the darkness. An eternal emptiness in the place where innocent eyes once sat. The creature appeared to hover before Cody, its stick-thin arms and scythe-like fingers stretching towards his face. A voice appeared from a place where no mouth sat.
“You.”
There was no more explanation. What explanation would make sense to Cody, anyway? He nodded in response, eyes narrowing, jaw clenching. The masked wendigo cocked its head and stared at Cody for a long time, before finally turning and sweeping into the woods.
Cody remained frozen, uncertain of what would come next until rough, cold fingers gripped his arms and led him onwards. Two more wendigos of mask and bone guiding him ahead, leading the way as their crowd of wendigo followers closed in behind. There was no going back now.
The trees thinned, parting and allowing the sky above to come into focus. There were no clouds above, there was no more fall of snow. The aurora pulsed with feverish excitement, forming the shapes of skeletal animals and dripping with blood that faded before it could touch the ground. Cody tried to pinch himself, to wake him up from this hypnotic dream, yet, when he tried, the wendigos held him firmly in place. His head swam, reminding him of the strange trip inside the old woman’s igloo. Where the hell were they taking him? Why was he okay with this? What lay beyond the veil of trees as they honed in on the heart of the forest?
Grass grew around his feet, the distance between the trees spread wider. The wendigo with the stag’s crown guided him into the clearing, a place where the ragged canvas of what might have once been a tent flapped in the breeze. A stone circle with the dark remnants of ash sat in the centre. Around the clearing was mass of human remains, men and women and children he recognised from the town, some of which were unrecognizable from their state of decay.
“Where am I?”
The stag turned, lips unmoving, the voice appearing in his head. “Home.”
The sound of something wet and meaty met his ears. A sack of liver dropped from a height, left to thwack against a ceramic floor. The hungry smack of lips was followed by the grunts of feast as a large figure crouched over something in the distance, its form shadowed by a large boulder that sat at the edge of the forest on the far side of the clearing.
Its back convulsed. Hands, slick with a slimy substance, pulled at the body on the ground. Trails of tendons and flesh and viscera hung between the darkened form and its meal.
Bile rose in Cody’s throat. The wendigos moved around the clearing, forming a barrier of bodies that encircled him, closed off any an
d all escapes. The masked wendigos cleared the way and allowed a direct path from Cody to this hulking beast, shovelling mouthful after mouthful, barely taking a breath. Cody took a cautious step forward. The ancient voice appeared in his head, “It is okay. It is the way of things.”
Another step and the earthy scent reached his nostrils. He worked his way through the labyrinth of bodies, flinching only slightly when a jagged piece of bone prodded through the sole of his shoes and pricked his heel. He became immersed in the scent of death, his skin prickling, his throat gagging, until all that he knew was this place, the taste of this air, the desperate, feverish hunger of the creature before him.
The boulder loomed over the figure. The figure cackled, groaned with ecstatic delight, picked at the bones of the figure, sucked the blood off its fingers, throbbed and writhed and lost itself in delirium…
Cody trod on a bone. The bone cracked. A whipping snap which shot around the clearing.
The aurora bled on.
The creature froze, globules of blood dripping onto the soil, disappearing into the thirsty earth. Cody’s heart stopped. His blood pulsed in his ears.
The creature slowly turned, a face, thick with dark hair, matted with blood and chunks of gore, eyes as black as night. It fixed its gaze on Cody, a grin forming on its face, teeth red and yellow and black. It stood to its full height, an easy two feet taller than Cody. A naked man, his body showing the shadow of what might once have been muscles, but which had since deflated to a shrunken ribcage, and the coming signs of a famished stomach, its flesh caving towards its hips. A hideous sight to watch the transformation.
The worst of this man’s appearance was the erection, a flag standing proudly from his crotch, a bulbous red head, flecked with the blood which had escaped his hungry lips. His chest heaved, his anvil hands packed with meat and organs and flesh. The monster of a man extended his hands to Cody, offering the meal as a child might offer a piece of birthday cake to their guests.
“It’s good,” the deep, croaking voice said, each syllable laced with ecstasy. “Imagine the greatest meal you’ve had, and times that by infinite.” There was a wonder in his dark eyes, the man fallen under their spell. “They can protect you. They can make you family. Have you ever wanted to live forever? Live forever with the ones who love you? Live forever with us…”
A trail of thick, pink saliva fell from his open mouth. Cody followed the trail until it sank into the mud at his feet. Something flickered with red, and his eyes trailed to the metal barrel of the gun that lay by the corpse’s side—a rifle, if his knowledge of guns was anything to go by. Not too far from the rifle, sitting crookedly where the desiccated corpse’s head should have been, was another stag skull.
Cody put a hand to his mouth, fighting back the urge to vomit. It was all too much. To be in this place. To be seeing what he was seeing. To be promised love and family and life. His juvenile brain had had enough wonder, and in that moment, all that he longed for was the chilly darkness of his bedroom, to listen to the songs that the house sang through the walls, to dance with the orchestra of whispers and whistles and wonder whether his uncle was still up writing, lost in the throes of his fiction until dawn crowed and the moon began its descent. He wished for his parents, for his sleep to be rudely broken by his phone’s alarm, to taste Kellogg’s on his tongue, smell the stench of BO in the school locker room, feel the elastic bounce of a basketball on his fingertips. What was this world that was so cast from his own reality, lost on the far side of knowledge and caught in the clutches of monsters? What was this dizzying redness that swam above him, casting its hypnotic glow and causing his mouth to salivate? How long could he stand here, resisting the temptation to surrender to the delicious scent that consumed his senses and drew him forward, his arms stretching out towards the hairy beast and his offering?
How long?
How long…?
The scent of death had twisted, forming into a sweet cocktail of treats. Sugar seduced his tastebuds. The meat transformed before his eyes into brightly coloured doughnuts and cakes, dripping with melting sugar and honey. His eyes grew wide. His tongue traced his lips. He reached out, hands only centimetres from the meal as the man brooded over him, the dark shape of the Devil, it seemed, yet even the Devil must have an ounce of good inside him, surely? To present him with such a feast…
And then it happened.
Cody looked up into the dark abyssal pits of the hairy man’s face and behind him something moved. The boulder, previously nothing more than a hunk of gigantic rock, started to shift and move. The rock unfurled, cracks fissuring and producing the form of arms, legs tucked underneath now stretching as the boulder shifted before his very eyes, growing, growing, growing, until the figure stood above the hairy man, easily double his height, perhaps triple, a great monster of surreal proportions.
Coarse fur matted its body, a great collar trailing around its neck. Its arms were like tree branches, stretching to the ground in an apish way that curved its back and displayed the ridges of its spine like prehistoric spikes to the crimson glow. Its legs were long, but bent, and Cody wondered how tall this creature would truly become if it stood at its full height. The top of its antlers competed with the height of the pines, and as Cody took a staggering step back, trying to process the full breadth of the enormity before him, he noticed the strangest part of all—while the masked wendigos wore their skulls in the same way that trick-or-treaters donned their artificial masks for Halloween, the skull of this creature was a part of it, as if this was all somehow the result of monstrous cross-breeding between a stag and a human. It made no sense. Thick muscles cording its body where the other wendigo had none, as if it feasted on their misery, and their pain brought it strength. Its lower jaw opened and closed. The creature bent low, bringing its face closer to Cody’s, emitting the colossal roar of an ancient machine, fetid breath wafting over Cody and peeling back his eyelids, spreading his lips and filling his lungs with decrepit air. The wind cast from its bone mouth gushed through the clearing, billowing the tattered remains of the clothes that clung to the corpses before dispersing somewhere in the forest.
Cody swallowed, tasted death. Death stared at him in the face, its empty eyes burrowing into Cody’s soul. And somehow he knew it, somehow he knew that Death had a name.
And that name was Tulimaq.
9
Alex Goins
Wind rattled the windows of the house. Alex doubled over, pulling at the carpet with his one good arm as he fought to hide the monstrosity from sight.
He had begun to stink already, and the children couldn’t help but look over at the ominous lump wrapped in fabric. Alex felt bad for the kid, his golden heart empathising with his attacker, even though the loss of function in his arm was going to be a burden he carried for the rest of his life.
What was this guy thinking? What was his story?
He supposed it didn’t matter. What mattered now was that he protected the two children left in his charge, even if every fibre of his body was telling him to follow Tori and her companions into the woods, to help end this damned thing once and for all.
If it could be ended.
Alice and Damien chatted quietly on the sofa, facing away from the front door. Alex had drawn the curtains the moment the others had left, thinking it would make him feel better. It didn’t. All it made him feel was useless, as though he was cowering from the danger set before him, a danger that had followed him every step of the journey. How could he stay here while the others entered the lion’s den? How could he…
“I’m tired,” Alice said, her tiny mouth opening into a wide yawn. “Are you tired, Damien?”
Damien’s eyelids were heavy, his lips slightly parted. The warm milk Alex had made for him edged closer to the lip of the cup as the boy’s attention strayed and his hand tilted.
Alice screwed a fist into her eye and shook Damien’s leg. “Are you tired?”
Damien nodded. Yawned. Closed his eyes.
Al
ex dragged the body to a cupboard under the stairs in spurts of energy and pain. At least the boy would be out of sight in there. They could deal with the smell later, for now, this would have to do. The throbbing in his shoulder reminded him that he should be careful, but the aspirin did a great job at taking the edge off.
The fit was a squeeze, but eventually Alex rested his back against the door. He was sweating, despite being dressed in only his long-sleeved t-shirt. He wiped his brow, then headed back into the living room to check on the kids.
They were fast asleep.
He sat on the edge of the coffee table and studied their innocent faces. Alice’s cheeks still held the jowly wobble of infancy, pinched and kissed by a thousand fingers and lips. Damien’s skin was pale, but this was the first time Alex had seen him truly at peace since they had run from his parents. Lines appeared on Alex’s face as he thought back to Harvey and Sherri and their kind hospitality, a hospitality that ended in Harvey’s death, and Sherri’s… Well, Alex had no idea what had become of Sherri in the end.
Was there a chance she’d make it through this night?
Something told him that wouldn’t be the case.
When the sun finally rose on this sleepy town and revealed its wounds and losses, he wondered what would become of the kid. He had grown fond of Damien through the night, his constant chatter and his naïve optimism. But Alex never set out to be a caregiver. Perhaps someone in the town could adopt him—if there was anyone left. Damien was an intelligent boy. Curious. Sweet. Loyal. Anyone would be lucky to have him.
Their snoring was soft, the pair of them snoozing in a gentle embrace. Alice snuggled her head into Damien’s collar, a small pool of drool darkening his shirt. Damien breathed heavily, mouth wide open, catching flies.
When Winter Comes | Book 6 | Winter Comes Page 4