by S. J. Coles
“Don’t,” was all he said, then he released me.
I clutched my pounding wrist to my chest and doubled over. I rested my forehead on the dash and did something I hadn’t done since I was a child. I prayed.
The storm worsened as we climbed higher into the hills. He was forced to slow then stop entirely when the wheels skidded in the slush and the wind drove the snow at the screen too forcefully for the wipers to clear it. When I raised my head, he was staring out at a snow-obscured road sign. At that moment, the engine spluttered and died, plunging us into almost total blackness.
“Where are we?” he asked.
I kept myself very still and didn’t answer.
“Tell me where we are.” There was no obvious threat in the voice, but my whole body went stiff. I clutched my sore wrist, breathed in and out through my mouth and continued to pray for it to be over.
The haemophile made an impatient noise and opened his door, letting in snow and the heaving roar of tortured trees. There was a moment of fraught silence, then the passenger door was torn open and he was dragging me out. The wind cut through my dinner suit and drove snow into my face. I staggered in the deep drifts as he pulled me along. I clamped my hands into my armpits but they still pulsed with cold. My face stung. My lungs burned. Every time I stumbled, he hauled me upright again with seemingly unending strength.
I choose not to remember that blind, freezing journey through the storm. I’d grown up in those mountains. I knew what exposure could do and how quickly it could do it. I was never able to decide whether I survived only because we weren’t out in it for as long as it felt or if I was just too stubborn to give him the satisfaction of killing two of us in one night.
Probably a little of both.
My legs were giving out by the time the haemophile halted, propping me against a solid surface. I heard the sound of wood groaning and splintering, then I was being dragged out of the wind.
I tumbled onto a stone floor, shuddering in my soaked clothes, teeth chattering, muscles convulsing. I was vaguely aware of the sound of something heavy being dragged across the stone, then the world was filled with bright light. I cried out, rubbing my eyes until they stopped watering. I raised myself on one elbow and stared. I recognized the stone-flagged passage. Familiar faces smiled down at me from the photos on the wall.
I got shakily to my feet. The haemophile had hauled an ancient armoire in front of the ruined door. He himself was nowhere to be seen. I leaned against the wall until I could trust my legs to hold me. I moved through the dark and drafty house until I felt a warm breeze sweep around my frozen feet. The clank of someone shutting the door of the iron stove in the kitchen echoed in the stillness.
I picked up my pace, grabbing at the furniture to keep upright. The light was on in the kitchen. I reached the door just in time to see the haemophile pull the phone cable out of the wall.
“You…You…”
“Don’t get warm too quickly,” he said, pocketing my mobile and grabbing the radio off the windowsill.
“God help me, I’ll kill you,” I croaked, staggering forward and falling to my knees. He passed me without a glance and I heard him hunting through my bedroom. He emerged holding my emergency radio and left without a word, taking the keys from the inside of the kitchen door. I got to my feet just as he slammed it shut and I heard the key turn in the lock.
I ranted and raved, hammering on the wood. I tried to heave a chair at it but my strength gave out and I slid to the floor, panting—and the world went black. When I woke a bit later, curled in a ball on the hard linoleum, the room was warmer but I was shuddering from my wet clothes. I groaned, easing myself off the floor stiffly, and limped to the stove. I built the fire back up, absorbing the heat through my pores until my shivering eased. My teeth were still chattering as I shed my wet clothes and pulled on warm fleece trousers and shirt, a jumper and thick socks. I sat on the bed, wrapping the duvet around myself, trembling and aching.
My mind ran in circles. I heard Brody scream, smelled his blood and piss, felt the wrench of the haemophile twisting my wrist, the ice of the wind on my face. My arms and neck were scratched, bruised and sticky with dried blood. But still, none of it seemed like it could be real.
I padded around, unable to sit still. The storm continued to rattle window frames and made the very bones of the house creak, but it was nothing compared to my inner tumult. I made some hot chocolate and forced myself to drink it. It warmed me through and the sugar helped calm the trembling, but it did nothing to ease the surging in my brain.
I hunted half-heartedly for my laptop or any other means of communication, but he’d taken everything. I was just trying to find a tool or engine part heavy enough to use on the door when the light fizzed and went out.
My watch told me it was close to dawn, but the raging storm and the snow piled high against the kitchen window kept the place black as night. I shambled back to the bedroom, not knowing what else to do, collapsed on the bed and let exhaustion steal me away.
* * * *
I opened my eyes onto meager gray light. I guessed it must be early morning, but my watch told me it was close to noon. I rose stiffly from the bed. The room had gone cold. I went to the kitchen window and raised the blind. A solid wall of snow greeted me. I stared at it until I started shivering, then hurried to the stove. My strained muscles ached and my head pounded, but my fingers and toes no longer stung and had returned to a normal color. When I’d built the fire up again using nearly all the remaining stock of firewood, I tried the light. It didn’t respond. The fridge was off too.
I tried the door, without much hope. Finding it still locked, I hunted again for something to break it down with but couldn’t find anything that would make a dent in the thick, ancient oak. I contemplated taking the hinges off, but the screwdriver on my penknife wasn’t big enough and my spare tools were missing from their drawer.
“Bastard.”
My voice sounded raspy and strange in the cold, still air. I stood helplessly in the middle of the kitchen, trying not to think about why I was still alive. My eyes slid to the window. I rejected the idea before it fully formed. Even if I could break enough of the glass to avoid slicing myself to ribbons, there was no telling how deep the snow was. Muffled roars and groans also indicated that the storm was still in full force. Even if I made it to the workshop, there was nothing to say it would have power or a working phone line. As for making it as far as the garages, there would be no getting a vehicle out in this weather. The only place that could be reasonably gotten to on foot was Clem’s cottage, over ten miles north. Even in full snow gear, it would be dangerous. And all my heavy-weather gear was in a cupboard in the hall.
I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at nothing. My wrist was still throbbing and had blackened, but I could clench and unclench my fist, so I reassured myself nothing was broken. I fingered the scratches on my neck in a dumb sort of disbelief. The vision of the haemophile clutching Brody hard enough to snap bone and the ecstasy that had slackened his face as Brody died rose before my eyes. I made it to the toilet, just, and threw up what little was left in my belly. I woke again, hours later, to darkness and the sound of someone going through the kitchen cupboards.
I stepped to the bedroom door. The haemophile was opening and closing cupboards, moving things aside, putting them back. His hair and skin glowed amber in the low light from the newly-rekindled fire.
The kitchen door was open. Slowly and silently, I grabbed a pair of boots and padded to the door. He bent to peer under the sink. I ran.
It was pitch black, but I knew my way around the house blindfolded. I grabbed a heavy coat from the hall cupboard and made for the side door, remembering too late that he’d blocked that way. No amount of straining would shift the armoire. I swore bitterly and ran for the front door, my pulse thundering in my throat. I fumbled blindly for the bolts and heaved at the key. I swore still more bitterly when the cold metal didn’t move.
“The lock’s froze
n.”
I spun. The haemophile stood silhouetted in the light from the kitchen door. After a long moment in which I could feel his eyes on me, he turned away.
Something exploded inside me. I stormed through to the drawing room and scrabbled on top of the gun cabinet for the key. I loaded dusty cartridges into the barrels of a shotgun with shaking hands and returned to the kitchen. The haemophile was looking in the fridge. I thumbed the hammer back and raised the gun. The haemophile glanced over his shoulder and shut the fridge door slowly.
“That would be a mistake.”
The gun began to shake. Red waves pulsed through my head. Brody’s screams filled my ears.
I stared at him down the barrel. He gazed impassively back. He’d changed into an old jersey and a battered pair of winter work trousers I recognized from one of the trunks in the cellar. He must have found the garden room, the only other room in the house with running water, because he’d washed the remains of the gore and dirt from his face and hair. His skin was a warm gold color in the light from the fire. His white hair was tucked neatly behind his ears, brushing lightly against the smooth skin of his neck. It curled slightly where it was still damp. He was taller than I’d thought, almost on an eye-level with me. His fingers were long, like a woman’s, tipped with those wickedly-sharp fingernails. His eyes were an impossible shade of gold and silver in the changeable light, fringed with thick, pale lashes that caught the firelight like frost in the sunrise. They were so deep and dark they set my nerves on edge, but I couldn’t look away.
“Why are you still here?” My voice shook.
“I’m stuck here. Like you.” He turned his back on me and opened the larder.
I took a step forward. He selected a bottle of merlot from the wine rack. “Corkscrew?”
“I said I’d kill you.”
“I heard you.” I clenched the gun tighter. The corner of his mouth twitched, but whether it was the beginning of a smile or a grimace I couldn’t tell. “The shot wouldn’t kill me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“If you shoot me, you’ll die.”
Rage and terror somersaulted around the inside of my skull. I clenched my eyes shut. When I opened them again, I’d lowered the gun and my chest hurt. “I can’t just stand here and let you…” My voice petered away.
He found my penknife and opened the wine, his thick eyelashes lowered. “We’re stuck here until either your friends find you or my friends find me. We might at least find a way to be civil.” He poured some wine into one of my father’s whisky tumblers and held it out to me. I didn’t move.
“If my friends get here first—”
“We’d better hope they don’t,” he said in a low voice, placing the wine on the table with deliberate care.
“Or you’ll rip them apart too?”
Something shifted in his eyes. “You should eat.”
“What?”
“Your blood sugar. It’s low. You’ve been in shock.”
“And what are you going to eat?” I said between clenched teeth.
He lifted the bottle with a heavy-lidded look. When I didn’t move, he reached out and pulled the gun out of my hands as easily as someone pulling a toy from a child. “It’s for your own good.”
He vanished into the shadows of the house, taking the gun and wine bottle with him. After a stunned moment, I retrieved a storm lantern and searched the ground floor but couldn’t find any trace of him. He’d emptied the gun cabinet.
I didn’t dare chance the stairs in the dark. I strained my ears above the storm hammering at the boarded windows on the gallery. The whole house seemed to be moaning in pain, but I couldn’t hear footsteps or doors closing or any indication of anyone else in the building.
It was then I spotted an arc in the dust on the floor by the cellar door. I stared at it for a long moment then tried the handle, but it was locked from the inside. I scowled at the warped wood, clenching and unclenching my fist, then a wave of lightheadedness went through me. I clutched the doorframe, hanging my head until it passed.
I retreated to the warmth of the kitchen, slammed the door and collapsed into a chair, burying my face in my hands. I felt nauseous, dizzy and sore, but what was going on in my head was far more unpleasant.
I made myself heat some canned macaroni on the stove and swallow it with some bread, though I could taste nothing. The painful knot of emptiness eased in my belly, but my head continued to throb and whirl. I watched the clock over the stove, the hands approaching midnight. I’d slept most of what had passed for the day but still had to prop myself up in a kitchen chair to stop myself from drifting off. When I wasn’t watching the clock, I was watching the door. The hours stretched on and nothing happened.
The night had a surreal quality, like one of those dreams that leave a person uneasy once they wake, even though the imagery is lost in fog. The silence, the darkness and the storm continued. I shifted in the chair, startled by the realization that I wished he’d come back. Anything was better than sitting and waiting for him to kill me.
I stared at the tumbler of wine for over an hour before I drank it.
Despite my best efforts and the cold threads of tension that were strung through my muscles like wire, I fell asleep. My dreams were fractured and violent. But waking from them to the cold, empty silence of the kitchen was not as much of a relief as it should have been.
I belatedly turned off the dimming lantern to save the batteries and could just make out my surroundings in the wan light of the new day. The clock told me it was a little after nine. I tried the lights again but the switch was still unresponsive. My breath misted in the gray air.
It took me more time than I care to admit, even now, to walk over and try the door. It opened with its customary low creak. I peered out into the shadowed dining room beyond, my breathing loud in the empty air. I met nothing but dust sheets, silence and cobwebs. I swallowed. My hatred, anger and panic had deserted me sometime in the last twenty-four hours, leaving behind nothing but a naked, acute disquiet.
The dusty rooms had taken on a ghostly quality in the muted light from the snow-blocked windows. I made myself check every one of them and both the doors again, but there was still no way out on this level.
I approached the staircase, my pulse throbbing in my ears. The cellar door was firmly shut. I crept up the rotting stairs, skipping the ones I knew creaked the most. A watery, white light spilled onto the landing from an empty window frame, the boards that had blocked it lying in a drift of snow across the moldering carpet. I approached the window and peered out.
I couldn’t see far. The wind had eased but it was still snowing, curtaining the view of the glen in swirls of white and gray. I shivered violently in the skin-biting chill but leaned out to see if there was a way down. The snow was drifted almost ten feet deep against the walls, though I still didn’t trust it to be deep enough to break my fall if I jumped. Even if I found a way to climb down, there was still nowhere to go.
I shivered and hurried back to the clinging shadows of the ground floor. I filled my arms from the scullery wood store and hurried back to the kitchen, not looking at the cellar door as I passed. I was making my second trip when a sound halted me in the hall. I listened. I had just convinced myself it was a trick of the wind when I heard it again…
“Alec? Alec, are you in there?”
I dumped the firewood and hurried to the front door. “Meg?” I called through the thick wood. “Meg, is that you?”
“Alec, thank God!” Her voice was muffled and came from above my head where she must have been perched on the drifted snow. “Matthew Ogdell-Paige found the car. There was blood. I thought it must…that you must…”
“I’m fine,” I called.
“How? How are you fine?”
I glanced behind me at the cellar door and swallowed. “It’s a long story. What about you?”
She made a strained noise. “We’ve been trapped in that fucking horrible house for a day and a night.” Her
voice was high, like she’d been fighting panic for too long. “The storm’s cut us off from everything. We lost power, phones, everything. We’ve been stuck there with…with…oh God.”
“What? What is it?”
Silence for a long time. “It killed Brody, Alec. Somehow it got free and before it grabbed you, it must have…Christ. He… The body’s still in the basement. Everyone’s been fighting over what to do.”
I clenched my eyes shut. “How did you get away?” I called.
“Jon and Matthew went out on snowmobiles as soon as the wind dropped, to find you, they said…but they took guns. I think they were hunting for the thing. They found my car but nothing else. I made them lend me a snowmobile. I had to see if I could find you. This was the only place I could think of to check. They all said you were done for, that it would have taken you off somewhere to…”
“I’m not hurt, Meg,” I insisted, keeping my voice level. “I promise I’m fine.”
“How do I get in? All the doors are blocked.”
A low creaking noise echoed across the hall. My throat closed. I turned. The cellar door was open a crack. White fingers clutched the edge, sharp fingernails digging into the wood. In the shadows beyond was the suggestion of a pale face, a very red mouth wide open, a single eye, impossibly dark, fixed on me.
“Don’t come in.”
“What?” she called.
I swallowed to steady my voice. “There’s no way in. And I can’t get out. But I promise I’m okay.”
“What the hell happened, Alec?” I stood pinned in place, my ragged breath misting in the air. Slowly, painfully slowly, the cellar door closed again. “Alec?”
I shook my head. “He crashed the car. Then he disappeared.”
“‘He?”
“It,” I corrected. “The haemophile. The storm was… We couldn’t see. We went off the road. It ran off. I don’t know where.”