Tori’s tongue swelled in her mouth. In her peripheries, something moved, and in that moment, she allowed panic to take her. She swung the rifle towards the wendigo and fired, catching it square in its beady head as it collapsed and disappeared into the snow. A strange black ichor painted the ground where blood should have been. She swept her rifle back and forth, palms slick and sweaty on the handle. When another wendigo twitched and fell, it was Oscar who had taken aim and fired. His aim was impressive, though it fell just short of true. He hit the wendigo a little off-centre to the chest and forced it backwards from its line where it, too, was lost in the white.
The shots were like thunderclaps in the muted quiet and dread overcame Tori. In her mind, she saw the wendigos breaking formation and rushing towards Naomi, gripping their talons into her flesh, breaking her skin, feasting on her sister’s meat as they had with Stanley in her home. Oscar’s report sang again as a third wendigo twitched and became the next victim in their showdown. Naomi clapped her hands to her ears, scanning around her in preparation for an attack that never came.
Oscar readied a third shot when Tori called for him to stop. She could already see what had happened, even if his juvenile brain hadn’t yet processed it. The wendigos that had broken from the trees now stood in the place of their forebears, resuming the holes in the broken line, standing patiently with their eyes locked onto Naomi. The same way she had previously observed from Naomi’s window.
It’s like they know…
Tori called to Naomi. “Get out of there. It’s too dangerous. Come back.”
Beneath the mask, Naomi’s face hardened, her eyes turning dark as she shook her head. “No. This ends tonight.”
“There has to be another way,” Tori argued, already seeing what Naomi was about to do. “We can get reinforcements. Find more people to help. Naomi, going into that forest is suicide.”
Naomi answered by turning her back to Tori and Oscar and strolling towards the edge of the forest. Its shadows absorbed her, welcoming her into its embrace as she drew closer to the trees.
Another surge of panic rose through Tori. She had seen what the wendigos were truly capable of, even if her sister had not. Her sister’s informant was a dead husband who, even though Tori questioned his existence, could hardly be ignored in his plight of guiding Naomi to Tori in the nick of time. Whereas Tori’s knowledge came from a first-hand, near-death experience with the creatures. She was convinced that, if Naomi went in there alone, she would never see her sister again.
Yet, that dogged determination had taken her. Naomi didn’t even bother looking back as she advanced on the forest, the branches of her antlers making her appear larger than Tori knew her to be. Tori gritted her teeth, tightened the grip on her rifle, and ran for her sister. “Naomi! Stop!”
She doubled over and sprinted towards her sister, aiming for the gap between the wendigos. Not noticing that they had stopped watching Naomi, and instead looked straight ahead, as if satisfied that their target had been delivered, and there was nothing more to concern themselves with. That wasn’t necessarily true, and as Tori broke across the threshold, arms shot out from either side and locked her in icy grips, fingers as strong as steel vices preventing her advance towards her sister.
“Naomi!” Tori screamed.
Naomi didn’t look back.
Oscar cried out from behind her. Tori couldn’t decipher his words. They floated on the wind, came to her in a sea of panic, muting their clarity as the wendigos on either side broke their ranks and tussled to try and draw her closer to them. Their wanting mouths salivated and chomped in her direction. Tori tried to wrestle herself free, but it was futile. Ahead of her, two more wendigos appeared from the darkness and started towards her, not with the steady calm that their predecessors carried, but sprinting with their full force, streaming towards a terrified Tori who could only scream and shout to a sister who was already lost in another world, gone and embraced by the cloth of darkness the forest wore.
An explosion of gunfire. A second. The wendigos’ grip on Tori broke and, for a second she had control of her body. Her jaw dropped as the remaining wendigos filed towards her, offended by her brazen act of breaking into their territory, occupying their space. Something tugged on her back and she whirled, swinging the rifle around to end whatever force had caught her. When Oscar’s face span into view, she gasped as he pulled her away from the threshold and back towards the house.
They ran twenty feet towards the house before Oscar spared a glance over his shoulder and slowed. “Auntie Tori… Look…”
Tori did, and she felt sick. The wendigos shuffled around in their group, working themselves back into the formation they had previously held before Tori crossed the threshold. Forming the invisible barrier between worlds.
“They’re blocking us out.” The idea of it sounded absurd coming from her lips. “They let Naomi right through, but they’re blocking us out. Somehow she’s a part of this.”
“What do you mean?” Oscar’s brow creased, the rifle falling limply beside him. “Why would they let Mum through and not us? Auntie Tori, what do we do?”
Tori knew the answer, she just didn’t understand its rationale. It was all linked somehow. The mask that Naomi wore—the gift once left on her doorstep over a decade ago—it sheltered her. Formed some kind of protection. Made her one with the wendigos in a way that she couldn’t grasp. The wendigos allowed her through because that was what they wanted. Not these two human strangers, but one of their own. A family reunion of flesh and bone.
“What’s going to happen to her?” Oscar asked, a slight tremble on his lip.
“I don’t know,” Tori answered truthfully. “Whatever happens, we have to find a way inside before there’s no way out.”
As if listening to her thoughts, the forest called out its response, as a tremendous grumble rippled through the trees.
7
Alex Goins
“Something’s out there…”
Alex squinted into the white, peeking through a thin gap in the front door as the grumbles rang faintly in the distance. To him, they sounded like gunshots, but morphed and translated by the storm, they could have been anything.
“What is it?” Sophie asked, her back to the wall near the window as she reached a hand outside and allowed snow to melt on her fingers. She lapped the melting residue greedily, finding a strange comfort in the cool liquid as it rolled down her throat. Damien sat beside Brandon, guarding him like a faithful Labrador as Brandon’s breathing hitched and faded with each stretch of time that passed between them. Alice wandered around the room, seemingly energised by being around other people in the house.
“I don’t know. But it’s something, and I’m pretty sure it came from that direction.” He pointed into the white, but already the memory of the noise was fading. Not for the first time that night he wondered how much of it was real, and how much of it was his tired imagination hunting for some kind of solution to their problem. Brandon was dying. There was no way to sugar-coat that fact. With each passing second the colour drained from his face and his breath grew shallower. Now, his chest hardly rose, and it appeared as though it never would again— which was a bad situation to have in general yet, coupled with the fact that two of his charges were under the age of ten and had, presumably, never encountered a dead person in their life, that made Alex’s urgency grow in fervour. What guardian would he be if he allowed this to take place under his watch? How could their parents ever forgive him?
If they ever see their parents again…
Alex made a decision. There was no other way around it. Something had to be done. “Get up,” he said. “Everyone. Now. Get up.”
Alice frowned. “I am up.”
“You. Sophie. Damien. Get up. We’ve got to go.”
“Why?” Damien asked, face hopeful. “Is someone coming?”
“No one’s coming. If we’re going to survive this, we’ve got to figure this thing out for ourselves. All of those heroes that
you watch on TV and read in books, they don’t sit on their ass and wait for help to come, do they? They make their own destiny. They find their own solutions. If we want to survive this damn thing, we’ve got to get the hell out of here, whatever it takes.”
Sophie was the only one to remain where she sat. “But… the storm. How are we going to survive out there if we get lost? And what about whatever’s out there. Something stole Cody, and you want to go out there and risk us getting taken, too?”
For a moment, Alex saw red, frustration rising at how close he had been to finding his nephew. “You should never have sent Cody out there by himself! What were you thinking, sending a kid out into a fucking blizzard without any kind of weaponry or navigation? Don’t blame me for what happened to him, it’s because of the stupidity of children like you that my nephew is somewhere out there in the storm, lost and, very possibly, dead. If you had been thinking, maybe you could have come up with a better plan than to dangle a snack out there on a length of rope for those creatures to find.”
Silence followed Alex’s outburst. His ears throbbed with heat. He towered over the teenage girl, chest heaving with each breath. She glanced up at him, wide eyes sparkling with tears, before lowering them to her lap and sobbing. Between hitches she mumbled, “I know… I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. It’s all…”
Alex’s anger dissipated in a heartbeat. He stepped away, placing his head in his hands as he fought to recompose himself. Damien shuffled awkwardly, hands in his pocket. “You should say sorry.”
Alex turned to the boy.
“You should say sorry,” Damien insisted. “You hurt her feelings.”
Alice nodded. “Yep.”
Alex softened. He crouched in front of Sophie. “I didn’t mean it. It’s just… this night has been hard on all of us. No one is to blame, because no one asked for any of this to happen. I… I’m just trying to keep it all together and keep us moving. We have to work together to survive this, okay?” He leaned closer. “And I need you. You’re the second oldest here, and that puts you second in command. I need you, you got that?”
Sophie let out a long exhale and looked up at the ceiling. “I shouldn’t have let him go out there alone, but I couldn’t stop him. Cody is stubborn. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Alex offered a sad smile. “That sounds like my Cody.”
Sophie pawed at her eyes and sighed. “Do we really need to go out there?”
“I believe we do.”
“What about Brandon?”
Alex’s smile faltered. That had been the question he hadn’t wanted to answer, but now there came no other choice than to say it. “He stays here. There’s nothing any of us can do for him, now. The best thing we can offer is to find someone to help and guide them back here as soon as we can.”
Sophie cast her eyes at Brandon’s form. When she spoke, it was barely audible. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Alex lowered his gaze.
Sophie’s hand moved to her mouth. She took a couple of deep breaths, then pushed herself to her feet. She wiped away the tears trailing down her cheeks, clapped her hands together. “Come on, then. Let’s go.”
Damien trotted to Alex’s side and took his hand. Alex once more offered his jacket to Damien, allowing the boy to get lost in its warmth as they readied themselves for the chill outside. “You should stop saying naughty words,” Damien said.
“Hmm?”
“To Sophie. You were bad.”
Alex couldn’t help but laugh. Sophie joined him. “Strap in, kid. It’s probably only going to get worse from here.” He wrapped an arm around Damien’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get going. For all we know, in a few minutes we’ll be safe in the warmth of a log cabin with a fire burning and marshmallows in a bag.”
“Do you really believe that?” Sophie asked.
Alex pointed her gaze in the direction of the two children. Sophie closed her mouth.
At the doorway, Damien fixed his gaze on Brandon. “We’re leaving him to die, aren’t we?”
Alex’s lips thinned as he chewed over the correct response. Sophie saved him. “No. We’re leaving him so we can find someone to help him live.”
Alex could see her battling with the lie, but it was enough to get the kids back out into the storm. They huddled closely, the four of them, as they were blasted by the winds and began their journey into the white. Alex took his best estimation at which direction he had heard the rumbles, and led them onwards, the house soon disappearing as the storm claimed them for its own.
8
Kyle Samson
He could have had them then and there. The four of them, lined up in his sight. It could have been easy. It should have been easy. All he needed was the pistol.
But the pistol had been taken.
Kyle cursed himself for losing focus and allowing the girl the chance to escape. How could a girl of such a young age have so much resolve in her that she could attack a boy more than double her age?
Now, they had found help. A relative of Cody’s, it seemed, if the mumbles from downstairs were anything to go by. Kyle’s eyes hurt, his head pounded, his body groaned, and he was tired of this shit. Tired of being left behind and forgotten. Tired of being a fucking afterthought in this shitstorm.
He scratched his head, finding a sticky residue clotting on his scalp.
Kyle had rooted through the attic in the wake of his attack, hunting for something that could have been of use. In a far-off box he had found a letter-opener. Its blade was not as keen as when it had been brand-new, but it still held some of its bite. He tested its edge by stabbing it into a nearby teddy bear, one button eye dangling on a length of string and an explosion of stuffing spilling from the crook of its arm. The blade punctured the bear easily enough, and that was good enough for Kyle.
For he would make them all suffer. The pricks who thought they were better than him, those who would oust him to his peers and tarnish his credibility when all of this was over—if all of this ended. If he played his cards right, he could be the survivor. He could be the hero. History was written by the victors, after all.
They opened the door and a cool shunt of air found its way upstairs. Kyle gritted his teeth, wanting to just leap down the stairs and take one of them with him. The little girl, perhaps. Maybe even Sophie. Anything to feel like he had some kind of control again. He deserved to be at the top of the food chain. What the fuck was he waiting for?
His attention was pulled to the man’s rifle. Now that was something that could come in handy. Fuck the pistol, that rifle packed the real heat. Imagine the power of a bullet barrelling from that chamber. You could shut a man up before he had a chance to beg for your mercy…
He tracked them in silence as they sidled out the front door and into the storm. They wouldn’t last long out there, he was certain, and in their demise, he could take the weapons and regain the power he had lost. All he had to do was remain out of sight.
And didn’t that sound like the easiest part of it all?
9
Cody Trebeck
On any other day, even just the igloo would have been a marvel to behold.
It was truly a testament to its creator, the solid dome of compacted snow that shielded the storm and granted shelter for Cody. There wasn’t a single exposed crevice or crack, no hiss or whistle of the wind running through the holes cast by age and time. Cody couldn’t understand how Alex’s house—a complicated construction built from the knowledge of so-called ‘smarter’ men—could howl and groan and sing its song beneath the strain of the elements, while this simple shelter could deflect it all, snuggle him in the warmth of its embrace and keep him cosied in the heart of the storm.
The fire crackled, which seemed impossible, too. The great gift of heat having no impact on the walls of ice surrounding it. Smoke ribboned through a thin shaft in the ceiling, but all of that was still nothing compared to the woman hunched against the igloo walls. At first, Cody hadn’t been certain that she was
alive. Indeed, the great bundle of clothing looked like it was waiting for its owner to return, the great mass of animal skin and fur simply dumped in the igloo and left for a later occasion. It wasn’t until the husky nuzzled its nose into the folds of the clothing and a weak cough was emitted that Cody knew better.
The woman was as old as time itself. Her skin was pruned and wrinkled with bountiful craters, her skin thick and leathered. Her eyes peeped out from the depths of her folds, a cobalt blue and dazzling with an intelligent vibrancy. She shuffled until her back was straight and her head rose above her jacket, revealing grey hair tied back into messy pigtails. Her mouth was nothing more than a thin scar beneath her prominent nose.
Cody was hesitant to advance further, holding his place in the entrance of the igloo. If this night had taught him anything, it was that danger could come from every direction, and this woman had yet to prove her innocence to him.
“Come. Sit.”
Cody remained where he was.
“I don’t ask twice.”
Although there was authority in her voice, Cody couldn’t detect malice. He slowly eased himself into the main space of the igloo, eyes fixed on her with every move as he took a seat as far across the fire as he could.
The husky padded up beside him and sniffed at his body. It found the place where its teeth had nipped at Cody’s ankle and offered a few affectionate licks before curling up beside him and shutting its eyes.
“Kazu doesn’t make friends so easy.” The woman peered through narrowed eyes, her face stern. “There must be something about you, boy.”
“Cody.”
The woman nodded. “Cody…”
“Who are you?” Cody asked.
The woman stared hard at Cody, and he wondered if she was going to answer. Her stare was invasive, as though she could see through the layers of Cody’s clothing and straight into his soul. He wondered how old this woman was. His great aunt Hilda had been one of the lucky few in his family to make it to the golden age of 96, but she passed away several years ago. Hilda had looked old in her time, but she was nothing compared to this woman.
When Winter Comes | Book 5 | Into The White Page 4