Freeze

16

“Is someone there?”

Tess had gotten out of her chair and turned toward Bub. The fire blazed, warming the side of her body, almost burning it. She took a step away and called out again. Bub looked over his shoulder at her for a second before turning back toward the hallway.

The intruder didn’t respond. Of course not. Tess trembled. Her heart rattled. She felt lightheaded, like she might faint.

Don’t you dare. Pull it together.

She should run. That seemed like the only option. Get Bub and run away.

Except where was she supposed to go? The truck wasn’t drivable, and they had no other means of transportation. They could try to run, but without warmer clothes, without a coat and gloves and (most importantly) some shoes, she’d freeze to death before she could get half a mile from the house. She wasn’t even wearing a bra for crying out loud. If someone had come into the house, she was going to have to face him. That’s all there was to it. Fight or flight got a whole lot simpler when flight was no longer an option.

You really think you should be fighting? Or even moving? What if whatever’s lodged down there in your chest breaks loose and slices up your insides even worse than it already has?

She’d just have to hope that didn’t happen. It was either that or sit here like a helpless idiot and wait for the intruder to find her. Hurt her. Kill her. She looked around for something she could use as a weapon.

The fireplace poker. It was a heavy-duty thing made from a single piece of wrought iron. It was no 12-gauge shotgun, but it was better than nothing. She picked it up, swung it once experimentally, and then wrapped both hands around the handle and took a deep breath.

She thought of the hand smacking the window, trying to scare her, playing with her before sending a shower of glass into her face. It had been a hand—that seemed obvious now—the hand of some lunatic who’d been sneaking around their property in the middle of a blizzard since at least last night. And now he was in the house, doing who knew what in the bedroom, maybe waiting for her to make the next move.

“Whoever’s back there,” she said, proud of herself for sounding somewhat threatening, “I have a gun.”

And I know how to use it.

It sounded like a stupid movie line, but she said it anyway, “And I know how to use it.” She doubted the fictitious gun would send the intruder running even if he believed she had it, but it might at least scare him a bit, give her some sort of momentary advantage.

Still no response from the bedroom. Bub looked at her again, turned back to the hallway, growled, barked. Tess hefted the poker and moved beside him.

Wait. If there is someone back there to fight, you’re going to need to see to do it.

Yes, true, but Warren had taken the flashlight, and she wasn’t going to be able to hold on to a candle during any kind of altercation.

She hadn’t heard any more footsteps, although she could hear gusts of whistling wind and the hissing crackle of falling snow and ice outside, a sound that, for just a second, sounded almost identical to the crackling fire.

It’s got to be a candle. What other choice do you have? Even if you end up dropping it, some light at first is better than none at all.

The candles were on the other side of the living room, on an end table beside the sofa. She got one, but she didn’t have anything to put it in, so she looked for something to wrap around the bottom. There was a pile of magazines on the arm of the sofa; she picked one up, ripped out a page, and wadded it up around the base of the candle. It was a makeshift holder if ever there had been one, but it would keep most of the wax from dripping on her hand. She lit the candle. The flickering flame rose, died down, settled, and Tess padded back to Bub.

“Follow me,” she whispered and stepped past him.

He didn’t follow but limped at her side instead, brushing against her leg. They entered the hallway and crept toward the bedroom. Tess had eased the door most of the way shut after she took the mattress to the living room, hoping to contain the heat in the part of the house they were using. Now she wished she’d left it open. An intruder in the room at the end of the hall was scary enough, but an intruder in a room behind a closed door was scarier. Almost unbearably frightening. Her heart fluttered. Her hands shook. Not that it was easy to tell. This far away from the fire, most of her was shaking.

She stopped at the threshold and held up the poker to her chest. Bub stopped beside her, stiff looking, growling, his teeth bared. Wax dripped down the candle and onto the crumpled wad of magazine paper. A few drips rolled from there to Tess’s wrist, but she hardly noticed.

She imagined the intruder in there sifting through her underwear drawer, looking for valuables, a hairy, wild-eyed, homeless-looking man with snow in his beard. Or maybe not looking for valuables, maybe just looking for the undies, wanting to sniff them. Then she imagined the psycho standing just inside the door, imagined running in and stabbing the poker into his gut, imagined him looking up at her with confused, accusatory eyes.

Quit it. You’re going to drive yourself crazy.

She looked down at Bub once more, took a long, shaky breath, and slid her foot toward the door. Her next movement was actually a series of movements all carried out almost simultaneously: she kicked open the door, angled the poker in front of herself like a lance, and rushed into the room, trying to keep low in case the loonie had a gun and started firing. Bub stayed right at her side, hurrying despite his limp. She watched him from the corner of her eye, careful not to step on him or trip over him. He growled, and saliva dripped from his exposed gums and teeth.

Tess got two steps into the room and stopped dead. She screamed and tried to stop her forward momentum. What she found by the window was so utterly different from anything she’d imagined that her mind couldn’t quite register it. It was like a blur, or an empty space in reality.

Except it wasn’t a blur. And it wasn’t empty space. She had no idea what in the world it was.

She fell back on her ass and dropped the poker on the floor. Although it probably should have been the first thing she let go of, she managed to hold on to the candle.

The bedroom was as cold as a walk-in freezer. Colder maybe. The floor felt like steel instead of wood. Tess’s teeth chattered, and her nipples hardened.

Bub stopped just beside her. He didn’t seem as surprised as she felt. Maybe he’d been able to smell this…this thing. Or maybe his instincts had taken over. Or maybe he was just a hell of a lot gutsier than she was. He scurried in front of Tess, crouched there, and barked at the monstrosity standing just inside the broken window.

Monstrosity. That was the word. Tess had never seen anything like it, not in real life, not on TV, not even in her nightmares.

The creature looked like a mound of frozen snakes, some of which crawled around the body, seemingly unattached, while others whipped around the bedroom like octopi tentacles. Most of the limbs had clumps of finger-like protrusions sticking out of the ends, which clicked together as it moved. It had a stubby head with a jagged fissure of a mouth, which it opened, revealing a whole mess of icy, wickedly sharp-looking teeth. It stood in a puddle. Ice and snow blew in through the window and beat against its back, but it didn’t seem to notice or care. Candle light reflected off its frozen, faceted body, making it look like the ugliest piece-of-shit jewel that had ever been pulled from the ground. It leaned forward and roared at her.

Except it wasn’t a roar. Not like a lion’s roar or a bear’s. It was more like a long crack and crunch, like someone breaking through a thick sheet of ice. And although she never would have guessed such a sound might scare her, it did. Goosebumps broke out on her already-cold arms, and her lungs burned. She realized she’d been holding her breath but couldn’t seem to do anything about it. Trying to breathe in felt like trying to inhale a bowling ball.

This isn’t real. Not even a little bit. Remember the icicle you thought you saw earlier? This is the same thing. Only times a billion. You have brain damage and you’re hallucinating this whole thing. Close your eyes. Close them, and when you open them again, this will all be gone.

She closed her eyes and counted to five. But when she looked toward the window again, nothing had changed. The creature was still there. One of its appendages detached from its body and joined a smaller tendril to form a single, enormous tentacle. It opened its jagged maw and roared at her again.

Bub widened his stance, lowering himself, and let out a series of deep, reverberating barks. The creature unfurled one of its upper tentacles and swung it at the dog. It did this slowly, almost lazily, the way you might shoo a fly, but the tentacle was as thick as a baseball bat and hit Bub with a solid thunk. Bub lost his footing and slid across the cold floor with a single, short yelp. He hit the wall beside the dresser and lay there motionless.

“Bub!” The word came out with a puff of white breath.

She started to get up, to hurry across the room after her dog, but before she could get to her feet, the creature swung another tentacle at her. This time, the swing had more umph to it. Tess just barely ducked beneath the attack; the glistening appendage sailed over her head with a whooshing sound and dripped freezing water across her head and shoulders.

Go. Run. Get out of here!

No. She wouldn’t go without Bub.

He’s dead. And you have to get out of this room before you are, too.

The creature attacked again, this time whipping its tentacle instead of swinging it. Tess twisted to the side, and the writhing icicle of a limb glanced off her hip, leaving a freezing wet streak down the side of her pajama bottoms and smacking into the floor by her foot.

She heard a sputtering sound and realized she’d somehow managed to hold on to the candle. It had gotten wet but hadn’t gone out. Her hand shook, and the flame flickered. She turned away before her ragged breath could blow it out. Fresh white exhalations drifted away from her face.

Against the wall, Bub moved. He turned his head and looked at her through watery, dazed eyes.

He was alive! Surely hurt, at least a little, but alive. He got to his feet and shook. Water flew off his fur and onto the wall and dresser.

Tess didn’t know what to do, doubted there was any kind of self-defense playbook for this sort of fucked-up situation, so she did the only thing she could think of: she turned to the monster, pulled back her arm, and hurled the candle at the thing’s head.

The creature moved, but not quickly enough. The candle hit it on the side of the face (if you could call that cracked slab of ice a face) and slid down to its torso and the mess of writhing tentacles. The beast shrieked a high-pitched, broken-glass shriek and pulled all of its limbs in on itself, wrapping itself up like a mummy. The candle hit the floor, smoking but no longer on fire, and the room darkened.

“Bub! Run!”

She turned toward the door and heard him right behind her. As they hurried into the hall, she grabbed the knob and pulled the bedroom door shut. She had no idea if the creature would be able to open the door, if it would be able to follow them, but a closed door would at least slow it down for a second.

Just as the door hit the jamb, something pounded against it from the other side. The knob shook in Tess’s hand. The whole wall seemed to shake.

The whole wall? More like the whole damn house.

She backed away, and Bub backed up right beside her, limping worse than ever, never looking away from the door, never losing contact with her leg. Tess put a hand on his head, trying to reassure him as best she could. Or maybe trying to reassure herself. Her teeth continued to chatter. The cold seeped into every last one of her muscles and bones.

The thing struck the door again.

BAM.

Tess realized it wouldn’t need to know how to work the doorknob. Before long, it would break right through the door. Their doors weren’t cheap, contractor-grade things, but they weren’t exactly stone solid either.

She turned around and led Bub into the living room.

What are you going to do? What can you do?

She ran to the fire and huddled in front of it, shivering. The logs burned and sent waves of heat out across her chest, arms, legs, and face. Bub sat down beside her, shaking, whining. She put her arm around his neck and tried to think.

You have to go on the offensive. If you wait for it to come to you, it will. It will come, and it will tear you to bits.

She stared into the fire. The creature had seemed terrified of her little candle. What if she brought something bigger this time?

The thing smacked the bedroom door again. The sound boomed through the hallway and into the living room. Tess jumped, and the muscles in Bub’s neck tightened.

She started to tell him it would be okay, but before she could so much as open her mouth, something thudded in the kitchen. Tess looked up, and the piece of cardboard Warren had taped over the window slid across the linoleum. It had a thick sheet of ice and snow on it and a crater in the middle where it looked like something had kicked it in.

Another series of thuds echoed through the kitchen and into the living room. Like footsteps. Except she didn’t guess you called them footsteps if the creature making them had no feet.

The thing in the kitchen let out a long, hissy shriek.

Tess looked down at Bub.

They were surrounded.