When Winter Comes | Book 3 | Black Ice Kills

by Willcocks, Daniel

  A shape in the distance. Dark and lean, no more than a silhouette. He aimed the rifle into the storm and was about to pull the trigger when the wind abated, and he discovered that it was nothing more than a mailbox. A solitary mailbox. Not a wendigo. Not a corrupt townsperson on their way to hunt him down. Such an ordinary thing. How could he ever have believed it to be a threat?

  Alex looked around, hating to stop the momentum he had built. Damien poked out his head from the papoose, his eyes squinting against the brunt of the blizzard. “Why have we stopped?”

  Because we’re lost, Alex wanted to say, but couldn’t find the courage to tell the boy. For him, he was a beacon of hope, someone the boy could count on. He wasn’t going to let him down now.

  “I just needed a breather. Hunker on down, we’re almost there.”

  Damien obeyed. Alex put one foot in front of the other, the snow piling up around his knees, and trudged onwards.

  12

  Kyle Samson

  Kyle’s stomach rumbled. His ankle throbbed in pain. He gritted his teeth and strode into the dark.

  As the shadows claimed him, they made him their own. At first, when he had drawn free of the group, it had merely been an act of boyish bravado. An act of play. Ever since their arrival at the school that night, he had been snubbed by Sophie and Cody, made a mockery of as he attempted to prove who the big dog was in the group. It was him, of course. Who else would have had the courage to unite the group and bring them to the school? Who else had the balls to break in and play a game in the middle of the night? Who else had the wherewithal to attract the hottest girl in the upper grades and claim her as his own?

  Kyle Samson, that’s who.

  Over the last few years, Kyle had worked tirelessly to make the school his bitch. Sure, he was blessed with good looks and an athletic constitution to be envied, but it was backed up with his charm and his bad-boy attitude. He knew every inch of what made him popular, and he flaunted it in the best way he could.

  Take Amy, for example. He could see from a mile away that she was an insecure bitch. His father had beaten that lesson into him from an early age, informed Kyle that the women who were the prettiest were often the loneliest. Everyone was scared to ask the Amy Lawsons of the world to prom, or to speak to them in the halls, which is why they latched onto any attention they could get.

  And boy, did he shower her with attention.

  Matthew Malone had been his primary competition, but even that kid couldn’t hold a candle to Kyle. Matthew was good looking, but he was also a fucking nerd. He’d stare at Amy in class, but he’d never act upon his urges. He could have had his grubby mitts on Amy any time he liked, but did he take advantage of that? No. He left the door wide open for Kyle to walk in and make Amy his own.

  Kyle rained compliments, and bought his way to her heart. It was easy, too. All Kyle had to do was occasionally say something nice, show up when he told her he would, and she’d be putty in his hands. Her own father was out of the picture, so it was only natural she’d take to another male figure in her life.

  If only she’d let him fuck her.

  That had been a sticking point, and part of the reason he had invited her out tonight. His pocket was lined with condoms, his mind fixed on the magic moment finally happening. As much of a so-called rebel Amy was, she would never come out without her safety blanket, without Sophie tagging along. She was often hesitant to hang out with Kyle one-on-one, knowing how quickly rumours fly around Denridge. And so it had been tonight that he planned to have her. Something more than a kiss. Anything more than a fucking kiss.

  So why the fuck was he here?

  It was Cody’s fault. Cody and that spoiled little whore, Sophie. They had helped to show his true colours, so what then was the point in hiding? Tempers flare under stress, and Kyle had never been one to be conservative when shit hit the fan. The slap he had given Sophie felt great, made his heart race in his chest. The sensation of Cody’s nose buckling under his forehead was incredible. The blood was the perfect sizzle to the steak. Even if those fuckers tried to gang up on him, what did it matter now to him? Kyle was unleashed, unbound. The one true link holding him back had been in the protection of his best friend, but even that had been stolen now. Whipped away by the kindness of those two lovebirds, prized from his hands before he had a chance to sneak up on them and startle them. To jump out and cry ‘goose.’

  He had hung around in edges of the darkness, able to see them a mile away in their sphere of light. Their whispers travelled down the tunnel, hitting his ears without reservation as Sophie and Cody voiced their true feelings for Kyle. Kyle had been ready to jump out at them, scare them out of their skin and delight in their fear when Travis confirmed the one true fear that Kyle had.

  “Kyle is a prick.”

  Kyle’s face fell. His demonic grin faded as the words penetrated his cold exterior. Along the way, Travis had been the only companion he genuinely cared about. The one who had stuck by him through thick and thin. He knew that Travis would okay in those hands, would afford him time to plot his prank…

  But now those bastards had manipulated him, too.

  It was then that Cody looked up and met Kyle’s eyes. Kyle slunk back into the darkness, unsure if he had been spotted, then turned on his heels and faded, travelling back down to the other tunnel where he would creep ahead and find his way out alone, if that’s what it took. Anything to get out of there and away from those assholes. Anything to find freedom and barricade their escape. Maybe they would die that night, he didn’t care. All he wanted was to find a way out.

  He stumbled in the darkness, reaching with tentative fingers to find his way. He tripped on more than one occasion, his vivid imagination turning innocent rocks into the desecrated corpses of victims trapped in the tunnel, victims of years long past. He could swear he heard rats. Water dripped. The pads of his fingers grew numb and bled as they scratched across the rock walls while he hunted for his escape.

  He was too preoccupied when the scream came. It was too far in the distance, its ferocity lost in the reaches of where Kyle resided. His breath muted all else but the immediacy of his vicinity. He wondered what this tunnel was for, when it would end. He walked, then ran, then walked, then ran, his feet growing cold and sodden as he splashed in puddles. Another trip. A blow to his head and knees. He pushed himself back up, uncertain if he was even going forward anymore, feeling sick and confused and alone and…

  A light, up ahead.

  Kyle paused, unable to believe what he was seeing. Coming from the ceiling was a muted shaft of light. Not artificial. Not made by electricity, but in the darkness of that underground tunnel, anything that wasn’t black glowed like a campfire.

  Kyle turned back into the darkness, hearing commotion from far away. He gritted his teeth, furrowed his brow, and moved towards the light.

  13

  Tori Asplin

  In starlit skies and stormy seas

  Your grace and love will shelter me

  A love for you that burns so true

  In light and dark, my love shines through

  The ghost of a smile crept on Tori’s lips. The melody soft, the voice one that she recognised from the womb.

  Her mother had always been an amazing singer. It was lost on her, as much as Tori tried to convince her that it was true. As much as she implored her mother to start a social media profile and share her gift with the world, months before Tori found her own fame. Days on end, Tori would listen in the other room, captivated by the haunting melodies her mother sang. As a child, her singing had been all she had known.

  In starlit skies and stormy seas…

  Tori listened to her now, her favourite song, the gentle rocking motion fixing her into her trance.

  She lay on a bed of fresh linens, a steady stream of sunlight filtering through the embroidered mesh curtains. Her mother’s face craned over her, larger than it should have been, her smile stretching from one side of the world to the next. Her father potter
ed around somewhere, his tools clanging as he sought to repair some piece of furniture he could later sell to the town. In another room, Naomi bashed her toys into one another, mimicking the sound of an airplane between her lips.

  … your grace and love will shelter me…

  When had life last been like this? So blissful. So innocent and carefree? The sun was warm, but not scalding. Her mother’s rocking soothed every part of her, easing the aches she had once felt, erasing the troubles from the world. As a kid, her mother had been her everything, as an adult, life had stolen her away. Her mother absorbed pain. Her absence allowed the mileage she had collected from years of parental protection to seep back out into the world, like water saturated in a sponge. There was only so much anyone could protect the ones they loved. Bills, taxes, internet trolls, unfriendly giants, they were all a part of Tori’s reality, now.

  But not in this moment.

  … a love for you that burns so true…

  Tori laughed, a juvenile chuckle. It surprised her. Her mature womanly tone replaced with the innocence of the babe she had become. Her vision blurred, her tiny hands unable to hold anything with sufficient grip. Her mother rubbed a thumb around her lips and she sucked it, her aching stomach longing for food, but pacified by the tip of the thumb.

  Tori closed her eyes. Yawned. In the moment she opened her eyes she became aware of a dampness around her crotch. A cloying moistness as she relieved herself and the nappy absorbed its contents. Her mother laughed between phrases, the act of Tori pissing herself not enough to slow her down.

  …in light and dark, my love shines through.

  I love you too, Mum. More than you can ever know.

  Her mother placed a warm kiss on her forehead. Tori closed her eyes, a giggle rising within her. Warmed and comforted by this simple act of love. An oasis of relief among a landscape of—

  She opened her eyes to a world of white. Something yanked the hair on her head, dragging Tori along through the snow as the storm swirled overhead. Her body was numb, even beneath the layers of clothing. She couldn’t feel her lips. It hurt to blink. Her vision was tinged with red.

  They stopped. Her head flopped unkindly to the ground where it sunk into a bed of snow. It bunched around her, a good portion of it caving onto her face. She shook her head and cleared it away, trying to press herself to a sitting position, but struggling with a dizzying head.

  Mum? Where did you go?

  “I have one for you.” The voice was gruff, tired. For a fleeting moment she felt sorry for Karl, as her recollection of her last few hours hit her like an avalanche. “A gift to give you in her stead.”

  Tori managed to sit upright, using her arms to prop her up. Her breath caught as the figures came into sight, gathered around them both in a tight circle, each one more terrifying than the last. Tall figures, not unlike the ones she had witnessed in her window, but unlike them all the same. Their arms were thin and long, their bodies malnourished. They were all naked except for the rough tufts of coarse dark hair now flecked with snow. Only, where the creatures she had encountered before held some kind of semblance of humanity, these had none remaining.

  The difference came in the masks. Each of them wore a cleanly picked mask of bone to cover their faces. Some were of great stags, others of bears and moose. She couldn’t see beyond the mask, but she knew that none of them were human. Not anymore, at least. And they all stared reverently at Karl.

  “I can’t…” Karl exclaimed, answering a question that Tori couldn’t hear. One particular devil stood before him, closer than the others, unflinching in the chill of the snow.

  Karl fell to his knees. Blood stained his hip. His bicep was shredded to pieces, barely clinging onto the bone. Tori wondered what the hell had happened to him. What were these creatures doing?”

  “Take her,” Karl begged. “In place of the other. Please. I need—”

  Karl’s hands clamped his ears as his scream rent the night. She couldn’t believe a sound like that could come out of his mouth. She had heard him laugh, she had heard him cry, she had heard him reach climax, but never could she imagine this.

  After a heart-wrenching moment, Karl collapsed forward, hands pressed against the floor. The creature—the wendigo, she reminded herself—remained still, no indication that anything had happened at all.

  Karl nodded, returning to his kneeling position. He glanced over his shoulder at Tori, eye’s darker than the pits of hell, and nodded. Resignation laced his tone. “As you wish.”

  Karl climbed to his feet, his intention etched in unfaltering clarity on his face. Tori tried to move, but found herself weak and frozen, her pounding head unable to process the mass of man coming for her. The most she could do was pat her side and hunt for a gun that was no longer there.

  Tori shook her head, mouth dropping open as she begged Karl for mercy, cried for him to stay away. In the back of her mind she gently rocked in the sunshine, basked in the warmth of her mother’s bosom, her unconscious taking control and wresting her away to any place but here.

  And so, her mother sang.

  Author Notes

  The end of this episodes concludes one of the most ambitious projects I’ve ever set out to complete.

  Three episodes released just four weeks apart… That was my Everest.

  I always like hitting deadlines, especially when your nose is close to the wire. As I write this note, it is 7:30pm and I am sitting at my living room table. Summer is upon us, and my five-year-old is tucked up asleep in bed. For the next six weeks I’ll have to navigate writing around caring for one of the most adorable, polite, and interesting humans I’ve ever had the fortune to create. The minute this note is finished, I can hit ‘publish’ to the Amazon pre-order dashboard, and my work is done. Some six hours before the deadline.

  Talk about cutting it fine.

  I guess the main takeaway from working on the first three episodes of When Winter Comes is that it doesn’t matter what constraints or timelines yourself under, the story will come out, and the story will guide the way.

  I have an outline for the entire serial, so I know the direction the story is heading. But one thing that always surprises me is the way that the characters let go of your hand and fend for themselves when you write. The true power of the writer comes from allowing the characters room to explore as you write. Only in letting them truly live within the story can you find the heart and the emotion that brings it all together.

  Tori and Karl were always destined to have a rocky ride, but with Alex… Well, who knows where that’s going to end up, particularly if the Masked Ones have her in their sights. Damien was never scripted into any outline. He appeared from nowhere, an innocent kid dragged along for the ride, able to help out, despite his fragile state and juvenile years. Cody and his gang… that was the story I was excited to write, threading such different personalities together and seeing what happened as the tensions rise. Conflict only grows when the layers of normalcy are stripped away and survival is all that remains.

  I think that’s why I love this kind of story. People often ask me why I write dark and bleak stories, and the truth is because I like to explore the true nature of humanity. When you’ve got your back against a wall and a rapid werewolf is closing in on you, no one cares if you forgot to change the litter tray or you’re wearing the wrong shade of eye shadow. What does it matter if you were overcharged at Denny’s or a homeless guy spit on your shoes? If your throat is about to be torn out, all you truly care about is not telling your friends you love them, or that you should have spent more time with your grandmother.

  Horror breeds truth. Think about it.

  There are many more episodes to come in this story. We’re only just diving into the meat of the truth behind the Aurora and the strange goings on in town. There are some big twists coming your way, some new (and old) favourites, and a hell of a lot of horror to fill those pages and keep you wanting more.

  For now, I shall return to my office, where I shall b
egin to put fingers to keyboard on episode four. Each episode from here on out will release at the beginning of each month, so if you want to make sure you don’t miss out on anything, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter at www.danielwillcocks.com/winter or you can join my amazing patrons and get each chapter to read the moment that they’re written (way before publication) at www.patreon.com/danielwillcocks.

  Daniel Willcocks

  July 23rd 2020

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  About the Author

  Daniel Willcocks is an international bestselling author and podcaster of dark fiction. He is one fifth of digital story studio, Hawk & Cleaver, co-producer of iTunes-busting fiction podcast, 'The Other Stories,’ as well as the host of the 'Great Writers Share' podcast, in which he breaks down the strategies, tricks, and productivity habits of some of the best writers in the game today.

  Residing in the UK, Dan's work explores the catastrophic and the strange. His stories span the genres of horror, post-apocalyptic, and sci-fi, and his work has seen him collaborating with some of the biggest names in the independent publishing community.