the ball cap twisted it up behind Jason’s back, almost to the point of breaking. The pain that surged through his upper arm and shoulder was excruciating.
Frank fell to his knees in front of the driver’s door, then fell forward and hit his head on the running panel. A loud crack accentuated his fall. He rolled to the side and lay there in the snow, not moving.
Jason heard screaming. At first he thought it was his own screaming, but slowly turned his head and saw that it was Valerie. Lucy, too, from the look of it, but Valerie was the one he could hear. She was not looking at him and Frank; she had turned her back on them and was staring at something near the Acura. Jason couldn’t see whatever it was she saw because she and Lucy were in his line of sight. But she was screaming, he knew that.
“What is that? What is that?” Frantic. Then more screaming, shrill and ear-splitting. “What the fuck is it?”
And then, coming from the other side of the road, Jason saw what he had feared: the bearded man in the parka. Cliff.
It was a strange sensation for Jason, seeing Cliff walking nonchalantly across the road, his hood up, and feeling a surge of fear that had nothing to do with the man currently twisting his arm behind his back enough to make his shoulder sing. All this had happened in the course of only a few seconds and there hadn’t been time for the gravity of the situation to really sink in. Jason was held prisoner, Frank was clearly knocked out cold, and Valerie and Lucy were shrieking at some unknown horror that Jason hadn’t even seen yet, but the sight of Cliff was what really pumped the fear through Jason’s veins.
He wriggled in the grasp of the burly man holding his arm, but he achieved nothing for his efforts but more pain in his shoulder.
And Cliff approached.
Lucy was trying to drag Valerie away; not away from Cliff, but away from whatever it was Jason couldn’t see. Valerie’s screams had stopped, only to be replaced with a whimpering very similar to Lucy’s. And she seemed stuck to the spot. Too shocked to move.
“Run!” Jason yelled at the top of his lungs. “Run!”
But Valerie didn’t move.
And Cliff approached.
He moved up until he was about even with the front of the Acura.
“Hey Rodney,” he said.
The man holding Jason’s arm replied. “Hey Cliff.”
And then the terror really sunk in. These men knew each other. Whatever kind of psycho bullshit Cliff was on, he had a partner. Jason could feel the sweat pop out of his pores, all over his body, and instantly freeze. His shoulder was throbbing and his head was pounding. Frank still hadn’t moved. Valerie still hadn’t moved. Lucy had stopped trying to pull her away.
Valerie didn’t seem to even notice Cliff was there. She was still staring towards the Acura. Jason wished she would just turn around and run, get out of there on foot. She could outrun these guys, he was sure of it, but she just stood there making that whimpering sound.
“Didja find ‘em all, buddy?” Cliff said.
At first Jason thought Cliff was talking to him. Find all what? Or was he talking to the man holding Jason captive—Rodney? It seemed pretty obvious Rodney had found all of them.
But then he saw movement by the Acura. Something on the other side of Valerie moved towards Cliff, coming into Jason’s sightline. His eyes didn’t want to see it at first; it was almost camouflaged in the snow. If not for the Acura acting as a backdrop, Jason didn’t know if he would have seen it.
The thing moving toward Cliff was about three and a half feet tall. It was a milky white color, blending in almost perfectly with the stark white of the snow, and it had rivulets of darker white throughout that looked like veins. Its lower half was bulbous, like a pot-bellied stove. It was dramatically thinner in the middle, where four strange limbs reached out like the points of the compass. These limbs scraped along the ground as the thing moved. They were knotty and crooked, ending in hand-like appendages that were all claw.
But what was above the thing’s arms was what really drew Jason’s gaze and elicited the shock and horror that he’d just seen Valerie experience. An involuntary grunt came out of his mouth.
The creature had a stubby neck of sorts, but no real shoulders. A few inches above its freakish arms, it bloated out again into what could only be its head. It was knobby and looked hard, with two deep black orbs, about the size of racquetballs, perched on top. They reflected the headlights from the truck. They were obviously the thing’s eyes, and they were fully aware. Jason thought he could see a world of evil and malicious intent in the depths of those dark orbs.
Its eyes were on top of its head, as if it could see in all directions at once, but it clearly had a face. Two small holes adorned one side of its head, and they dripped with a clear viscous goop that ran down either side of the snout jutting out underneath. The snout resembled a pig’s nose, slightly wider at the end, but it was no nose. On the flat end of the snout, where a pig would have nostrils, the creature had a circular maw of pointed teeth.
As Jason watched, the teeth began to spin.
A faint whirring noise reached Jason’s ears. The teeth became a blur, spinning faster and faster. It was like looking into a circular saw. It defied all logic, but it was happening.
The thing moved one of its knotty arms, clenched its claws, and pulled something up out of the snow beside the Acura. With a quickness Jason would not have expected, it drew its arm up, bent at one of the bulging knots that must’ve been a joint, and pushed whatever it had grabbed into the center of those spinning teeth. The whirring noise intensified for just a second, then died down again as the teeth came to a stop.
Jason shuddered. It was not from the cold.
“Ah, that’s a good boy,” Cliff said.
And then, to Jason’s utter shock, the creature spoke. Its voice was a gurgly, deep sound, almost like a cat’s purr.
“Kiff.”
“That’s right,” Cliff said, “and I got some more for ya, too.” He tossed something in the air in the direction of the creature.
Again with more speed than seemed possible, the creature swung an arm up and caught what Cliff had thrown. The teeth whirred, the treat was inserted.
“Mmm,” the creature purred.
From behind Jason, Rodney said, “Goddammit, Cliff, why you always gotta play these games? Showin’ off and shit.”
“Just havin’ some fun,” Cliff replied. Then, to the creature: “We like games, don’t we, boy?”
“Kiff,” the creature said.
“Fuck yer games,” Rodney growled. “Let’s just load up these folks before someone else comes along.”
Cliff tossed another treat into the air and the creature caught it, shoving it into that churning maw.
Valerie turned and ran. Finally. It had taken her too long to regain her senses, though. Cliff took off after her. He was considerably slower than she was, but after only a few steps he called out a few words Jason couldn’t understand. Whatever they were, they were obviously commands. And the creature obeyed.
It was uncannily fast. Jason couldn’t even see how it moved. It had no visible feet, just that bulbous lower half that seemed to glide along the top of the snow. But it overtook Cliff in only a second and reached Valerie in just a couple more. It passed her, moved in front of her, and stopped. It mewled, that sound again like a cat’s purr, but infinitely more vicious.
Valerie stopped in her tracks, eyes wide.
“Kiff,” the creature said.
Cliff sidled up behind her and pulled both wrists behind her back, holding them with one of his large hands. “That’s right, sweetie,” he said. “Ya don’t wanna miss the fun.”
He pulled her back to the truck. She didn’t resist, just moved with him docilely, eyes fixed on the veiny white thing that followed them.
“Cliff,” Rodney said, “the other one’s took off now.”
Jason turned his head and saw it was true. He’d been too busy watching Valerie, praying she would escape, that he hadn’t seen Lucy quietly slip away.
“And ya just fuckin’ stood there?” Cliff said. “Ya didn’t do nothin’?”
“Yer games, yer responsibility,” Rodney replied. “I ain’t runnin’ through the snow just ‘cause you can’t act like normal folks. ‘Sides,” he added, “this is nuff food for a week or so.”
Jason recoiled at the word food. He didn’t want to think about what that meant.
“Fine,” Cliff said, “let her go. She won’t last long out hee-ah no ways.”
Cliff reached inside the open door of the pickup truck. He was so close Jason could once again smell the stale sweat and tobacco that emanated from him. He pulled some thick nylon cord from the truck and bound Valerie’s hands behind her back. Then he turned and did the same to Jason. It was actually a bit of a relief after having his arm twisted like it had been for the last few minutes.
Then Jason was shoved to the ground, face first. He hadn’t been expecting it, and there was no way to keep his feet under him. He was able to twist to the side a bit, enough so that his shoulder partially broke his fall, and when he looked up he found himself only a few inches from the demonic creature. Now he was eye level with its bulbous belly. He could see the darker veins under the white skin. They seemed to move, coursing with some kind of evil life essence. It couldn’t be blood; no, that would be too human. This thing’s heart probably pumped battery acid.
Jason could hear it purring and growling. Every few seconds its teeth would whir, ever so slightly. It leaned over him, those
The Snow and The Darkness Page 7