Dead of Winter Collection

by Benjamin Knox

  *

  Brigid told me about her job at the Pine Lodge gift shop, selling t-shirts, curios and basic ski and hiking equipment. It was that same store that my new clothes had come from. It was one of two things the survivors here had in abundance. Warm clothing and aquavit. Both sold in the gift shop to guests and tourists.

  The Lodge had received fresh stock in the autumn in preparation. Brigid and several of her colleagues had arrived a few days before the Lodge opened for the season.

  Lars, I discovered, stayed at the Lodge year-round as custodian. His task to maintain the structure and the grounds, repair it during the summer months, and clear the snow from the roads in the winter. He'd also stock the cabins along the trail with canned and dried food. He was an all-in-one handyman. If it needed doing, Lars would take care of it. The rest of the Lodge employees were seasonal.

  She told me how she liked the job because it was seasonal – she got part-time work during the summer while finishing her studies – and she could snowboard during her free time. Apparently several of her co-workers enjoyed the same in spite of the ski lodge being aimed for cross-country skiing, but the lodge did have a training slope for kids and a with the being up in the mountains they didn't need to trek far to find some fresh powder on an incline.

  We talked until I started to prune, then dried off and got dressed in the clothes Brigid had brought for me. They fit well and after all the madness of the last few weeks it felt like a warm comforting embrace. All this was so damned normal; bathing, relaxing, chatting with a new friend. For a moment it was easy to forget that the dead were rising, and that they'd torn my husband away from me just as things were getting better between us.

  I couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt.

  How could I forget Mark?

  But I hadn't forgotten him. I didn't need to think about him every moment to mourn him. I just needed to carry my memory of him in my heart. Recall the good times and not the hideous end.

  Dressed now Brigid leads me back into the main building. Time to meet the rest of the gang.

  – II –

  THE LIGHTS

  Papa is doing it to Mama again, but she's not screaming this time. Still, she doesn't like it. Ever since Papa went outside he's been acting strange. He's been mean. Really mean.

  Silje could see it happening through the gap between the bathroom wall and the door hinge. A rhythmic violent motion; Mama face down on the filthy bed; Papa grunting with savage need.

  Silje wept silently where she crouched in the bathroom, terrified her father would hear her and lash out again. Tore sat beside her, in the empty tub, oblivious. Her little brother seemed unfazed by the malicious change that had descended upon their family.

  This was supposed to be a fun trip, some family time, Silje had been looking forward to it for weeks. The end of school and the beginning of a winter holiday. But before they left her parents had gotten very serious. They told her not to worry but they wouldn't let her watch the TV. Silje was old enough to know they were trying to hide something from her. Something bad had happened. Mama had stayed home calling the rest of the family while Papa went out. When he returned he had canned food and bottled water. Then they all piled into the car and left the city.

  Usually on such trips they'd play games like I Spy or sing songs together during the long drive. This time was different. Every time she opened her mouth her parents told her to please be quiet. They were worried and that made her worry even more.

  Why wouldn't they just tell her what was happening?

  Was it terrorists?

  The entire trip had been done in silence and eventually Silje had fallen asleep, her head resting against the snow streaked window.

  When she awoke they were arriving at the lodge.

  That had been a long time ago.

  Weeks maybe, she'd lost count.

  At first her parents seemed relieved to be at the ski resort and there were a few other people there too. No other kids though. They'd all stood around and talked, some shouted.

  “You haven't seen it, it's chaos out there,” Silje had heard her father yell, “you can't go back there!”.

  In the end her mother took her and Tore to their cabin.

  She smiled at her and Tore but it didn't touch the fear in her eyes. Her mother was terrified.

  “Mama, what's wrong? What's happening?” she'd asked. But her mother had shrugged it off as grown-up stuff and that it'd all be fine and that they should all enjoy their holiday, because it was going to be longer than usual.

  Tore had been ecstatic at that, he loved the snow, but Silje wasn't fooled.

  First came the lights.

  Silje had learned about them at school; the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis. She'd learned how the Sun's rays got caught up in Earth's magnetic field near the poles and made dancing lights in the sky. She wasn't that interested in the details but they were really pretty.

  Her father had told her that they were much brighter and bigger than usual, when they had all come outside that first night to see the cosmic spectacle. Even the others from the main lodge and other cabins. Most came to see.

  It was fun at first with everyone out there looking up. Silje and her family standing in their warm clothes, parkas, hats and mittens while holding hands. It felt like a proper holiday. Like everything was okay again.

  But then it got creepy. Everyone just kept staring up at it. For ages. When Silje looked around at the assembled group of people she didn't like the way the green glow reflected off their eyes and made them shiny.

  She'd tugged at her mother's hand enough to break her gaze and begged to go inside. After shaking off a malaise her mother looked concerned and took Silje inside away from the lights telling her “There's nothing to be frightened of my love. It's just lights in the sky. It's part of nature.”

  Silje didn't think the itchy feeling she got in her head when she looked at the weaving lines of light felt very natural to her. Mama tucked her in to bed with Rin her favourite stuffed animal and went back outside to fetch her brother. Silje had tried to stay up until Mama and Tore came back. She had really tried, but fell asleep.

  The following day a snowstorm came from the north and shrouded everything in blinding icy whiteness. It cleared close to nightfall.

  The next night was the same; the lights danced, more dazzling and brilliant than before.

  Once again many of the people staying at the resort went outside to see the lights. Silje decided to stay inside with Rin. She had tried to convince Mama and Tore to stay too. Tore wanted to do whatever Papa did, so he wouldn't listen. Mama stayed with her for a little, then went outside with the rest promising to come back with some hot chocolate for her.

  Once again Silje fell asleep alone. Mama never returned with hot chocolate. Instead she awoke to screaming.

  *

  Now there is blood and excrement on the walls, woven in loops and signs. Some look like words but none that poor Silje recognises: Jabme-Akka, Bieggagallis, Stello. Her father has done this, babbling and muttering and scratching at himself, while Mama lays still, face down, on the bed.

  The room is dark, there is no power any more, but Silje can make out the wet glisten of her Papa's eyes. There are tiny fires their, pale and eerie. She doesn't like the way it makes his face look. He looks scary.

  Some part of her knows this is not her father any more. This is not her Papa. He went out to look at the lights; something else came back with him. Ever since he's been mean, violent and unpredictable. Won't let anyone leave the room. Keeps Silje or Tore close by. He’s always checking on them, to make sure they’re still there. Peeking around the door or through the tiny gap near the hinge. He doesn't say anything, he just stares with those wide green eyes.

  Sometimes he wants them to play with him, a game. Often it is to watch the lights. He'll open a window so they can see the stars and weaving aurora and just sit and stare. He is most calm then. Tore so admires their father that he'll do anything. It's
all a game to him. So he sits by Papa's side and baths in the eerie glow.

  Silje doesn't want to. It frightens her, but Papa'll get angry, violent, and will take it out on Mama again...or maybe her. She has a good idea of what he does to Mama when he puts them in the bathroom, and Silje is terrified that he might do that to her. All it will take is one of his rages, she can tell. So she sits nearby and pretends to look. But she doesn't. The light makes her ill, and there are voices in the wind and faces yawning at her in the flurries of snow. Papa likes the voices. Silje thinks they are speaking to him. He can hear them all the time even when there is nothing but the storms outside during the day. All that howling and wailing wind...it is talking, and her father understands...and obeys.

  Silje can't tell if her brother is pretending to be strange to be like Papa, or if he's looked too long at those lights; either way her brother has joined her father now with the wall painting. Tore doesn't wear much, he's smeared in filth all over his skin. He looks like a wild boy, a feral child, like she once read about – raised by wolves and living among them.

  Mama isn't moving, and in the gloom Silje can't tell if she's breathing or not, but her injuries have stopped bleeding. Silje spends her time in the bathroom, huddled in the dry tub, too frightened to move, clutching Rin tight to her chest and weeping into his fur. His stuffing muffling her sobs so her father and brother don't hear.

  If they do, they'll get angry.

  *

  Mama is moving again. Silje can see her slump and writhe on the bed through the gap in the door. Papa is excited. He and Tore stand by the bed fascinated. The top part of a window is open and the silver moonlight, corrupted by the a aurora, shines through. It bathes Mama in sickly light, making the open wounds on her back look black, hanging open like drooling mouths. Paler hints of bone catch the glow and wink in the gloom.

  There is a long low drone and it takes Silje a moment to realise that it is coming from Mama. A long slow exhale rasping between broken lips.

  Papa is calling her, calling Silje to come see. Silje doesn't want to go into that room, doesn't want to be near her father or Tore. Mama will make it all right, but that vain hope is extinguished by the broken marionette movements Mama is making and that long wheeze. It's strange, it's not the worst or most violent thing she has witnessed since her father locked them in the cabin, yet seeing the thing that is now her Mama is the most disturbing.

  Papa is shouting for Silje to come welcome their mother. He is rambling and weeping with joy. He keeps muttering the same strange words again and again.

  Jabme-Akka

  Tore keeps looking to Papa for guidance, he is evidently as unsettled as Silje by the sight but is bolstered by being at his father's side. Her brother takes a step behind Papa as Mama lurches to her knees atop the bed, head cocked at an odd angle, flesh pale, thin lips pulled back over a manic rictus grin. It is Mama's eyes that make Tore release a stream of hot urine down his leg. Those eyes burning, glowing in the dark room, twin points of ethereal flame.

  Papa doesn't notice his son's paralysing fear but Silje does. She has a perfect view through the narrow gap by the door of her brother's young mind breaking at the sight of his monstrous mother rising like a ghoul from the filthy coiled sheets.

  Papa, eyes locked on the creature before him, urges Tore forward with an insistent hand to “Go to Mama. Don't you see she misses you? Go give Mama a big hug.”

  Tore stands still, mentally checked out. There is still enough survival instinct for him to know that what is in front of him is no longer his mama. He resists. He will not step towards it.

  Silje wants to go out there and help her brother, to snatch him up in her arms and drag him back to the relative safety of the bathroom. But she is too frightened. There is a mesmerism about the way her mama moves. An urge that seizes the hindbrain, demanding caution.

  The hairs on Silje's neck and arms stands on end, gooseflesh ripples in a tide of revulsion as mama reaches for her son. Tore is now trapped between insane and deathly parents.

  A shout rises in Silje's throat unbidden, “Tore, run!” at the same time Silje pulls the door wider beckoning her brother. Her shout snaps him back, the vacant fear shatters replaced by pure panic. Tore darts past father around the bed towards his sister. Papa is quick but not quick enough, he lunges to catch his son by the shoulder; his fingers tracing red lines across young flesh instead.

  Mama's hands are quicker; grasping Tore's arm and hauling him off his feet and onto the bed. He was mere feet from Silje, from safety. Mama has him now. A tight embrace as she gurgles and coos at him as though he were an infant. Tore is shrieking, wild with panic. This gaunt, burning eyed thing is not his mother, she is a parody, a mockery. Silje watches impotent to help her little brother as Mama drags him to the centre of the bed, clutching him to her cold bosom.

  She hears her brother scream her name, Silje!, the only sane point in a sea of insanity.

  But it is too late: With one arm holding the thrashing child tight, the other digs deep into her own naval like a dull blade. Silje gasps with revulsion – the lurch and burn of stomach acid at the back of her throat – as mama pushes her hand through the bruised and damaged flesh into her body-cavity.

  Silje wants to look away yet cannot. The scene before her so grotesque yet intimate she is paralysed. She nursed a vain hope that Tore will somehow break free and rush to her so that they can shut the door and bar out this wickedness.

  With a wet, sickening schlock – mama's innards slough onto the bedsheets in a torrent of guts, blood and bile. Poor Tore bathed in the putrescence.

  There is no doubting it now, no chance that mama was merely ill, mama is dead. Something controls her body, some grim unseen puppeteer.

  Silje knows it is the aurora, the sweeping serpents of light that so mesmerized everyone. Those lights have driven her papa mad, and control her mother's corpse.

  Fresh horror, mama is not finished, she forces Tore toward the gaping opening in her body, binding his limbs in coils of rent intestines, wrapping him tight in gory coddling.

  Silje weeps opens as her screaming brother is bound inside their mother’s living corpse. Mama grinning and cooing all-the-while.

  Silje can't watch any more – just wants it all to go away – she pulls the door to close of the obscene performance before her. Her papa's hand grips the door-frame blocking it from shutting. Silje slams it hard on papa's hand, she can make out the firecracker popping of the bones breaking. He growls and roars but keeps his grip firm, using his strength to force the door farther, but Silje braces herself against the toilet and slams again, harder than before. More bones shatter and this time the door crashes shut leaving a bloody smear on the wall where papa's hand had been. She wastes no time in latching the door. Her father pounds it from the other side cursing and swearing at her. Wailing obscenities as he batters the wood.

  Silje pulls Rin to her chest, nestled right up under her chin, as she backs away from the door. It might hold against her papa's onslaught, it might. She scans the bathroom once more for anything to defend herself, for a way out, anything. A narrow window sits high on the wall – too narrow to slip through – however it does show Silje that the sky is ablaze outside with sickly green, with little hints of orange mixed through. The lights, the aurora, are right overhead.

  There is more banging and breaking from the main room but it is not papa at the bathroom door, it is farther inside than that. There are shouts now as well, multiple voices. Papa stops banging on the bathroom door and roars. Silje can hear his heavy footfalls dash towards the front of the cabin.

  Are more of those creatures breaking in?

  Silje curls up in the curve of the tub, Rin clutched tight, tears fleeing her eyes to race glossy rills down her cheeks. She knows this is it. This is the end. It is only a matter of time before papa breaks down the door and gives her to mama like he did Tore. If not then she'll starve in here.

  More violent sounds from the other room. Someone or something c
rashes into the furniture. It sounds to Silje like the entire bed was forcibly flipped. Those strange words slip from her papa's lips again, the same words he smeared across the walls, followed by a blood-curdling shout of rage. Another person, a stranger shouts back, followed by a loud popping sound, then what Silje imagines is a large sack being dropped. More talking in quick sharp bursts.

  This is it. This is it.

  A gentle knock on the bathroom door.

  “Hello?”

  A woman's voice.

  It's a trick – but it's not mama's voice. This lady sounds normal.

  “Hello? Is anyone in there?”

  Silje just squeezes Rin tighter and closes her eyes, wishing them away.

  More muttering.

  “Stand away from the door,” the woman says. A moment later the door shakes in its frame from impact. Another and finally the frame breaks apart releasing the latch from its housing and the door swings wide.

  A dark haired woman holding a rifle and wearing a pale parka with a fur-lined hood stands in the opening. Beside her a very large man with a beard.

  “Careful she could be one of them,” the big man says in a low gravelly voice. Silje realises that the man is talking about her. He lifts an axe in readiness.

  “No,” says the woman softly, “she all right. Look.”

  The woman slides the rifle on its strap around onto her back and pulls back her furry hood.

  “Hi,” she says. “My name is Kerry. This is Lars. We're here to help. Okay? We're here to help you.”

  The woman is crouching with her arms out as though to give Silje a big hug. Silje doesn't move.