Freeze

18

Tess realized she’d left the poker on the bedroom floor. There was still a pair of tongs and a broom and shovel set dangling from the tool holder beside the fire, but none of those things would make good weapons.

Those aren’t the kinds of weapons you need anyway. Remember the candle? You’ve got everything you need burning right there in the fireplace.

In the kitchen, something thumped. She looked that way. A frosty tentacle curled around the doorway, and the wood seemed to freeze where the limb touched it. A layer of ice spread down to the floor and halfway up the frame, but the creature didn’t advance any farther.

Bub whined and barked and then whined again.

She grabbed the tongs, poked them into the fire, pulled out a flaming log.

“You ready for this?” she asked Bub.

He looked up at her and whined again.

“Yeah, me either.”

She twisted the tongs, turning the log sideways so it would be less likely to slip out. The wood was flaming, but it wasn’t exactly a fireball and wouldn’t stay lit forever.

Go!

She carried the log toward the kitchen. Bub limped beside her. On the other side of the house, the creature in the bedroom smacked the door again, and the cracking sound of splitting wood got Tess moving a bit faster.

She still couldn’t see much of the thing in the kitchen other than that bit of tentacle curled around the doorframe. She aimed the tongs at the ice and inched closer. When she’d gotten within a foot, the tentacle began to glisten and drip; it curled up on itself like the witch’s legs in The Wizard of Oz and pulled back into the kitchen. The creature squealed. It sounded like a car crash, like breaking glass and crumpling metal and screeching tires. Tess hurried after the retreating limb, not wanting to give up any kind of advantage she might have gained. Bub followed.

The thing in the kitchen was actually two things. The first was refrigerator sized; its head almost touched the ceiling, and its squirming limbs stretched from one side of the room to the other. The other monster was much smaller, not a lot bigger than Bub, really. It scampered across the counter, knocking over the block of knives and the roll of paper towels. When the larger creature saw Tess (or seemed to see her; like the thing in the bedroom, as far as she could tell, it had no eyes), it opened its mouth and screamed. It held out the melted tentacle, as if saying, Look what you did, you bitch!

The smaller monster screamed, too. It had fewer teeth in its mouth but still looked plenty deadly.

Wind and snow blew through the broken window. Strips of broken wood hung from the frame, and some of the tiles on the wall around the window had cracked and fallen to the counter below. She couldn’t see from this angle, couldn’t see around the monster, but Tess guessed the sink was probably full of debris from where the big creature had forced its way in.

Although she was less than a room away from the fire (and only a couple of feet away from the burning log in the tongs), she felt no warmth. Her hands shook, and she forced them to still. The last thing she wanted was to drop the wood. Without the fire, she’d be totally defenseless.

Bub hunkered and barked. The sound echoed through the kitchen, sounding to Tess at least as ferocious as the creatures’ screams, although the monsters barely seemed to register the sound.

The smaller creature slid toward the edge of the counter, and the big one knocked it back with a quick flick of one of its tentacles. The little monster flipped over, its tendrils flapping through the air, and then regained its balance. It screeched at the bigger creature, which gurgled something back. A warning? An admonition? A meaningless noise?

When the small monstrosity moved to the edge of the counter again, Tess turned and thrust the fire at the thing. It skittered back, its small tentacles wriggling beneath it. For just a moment, she had a sense of victorious accomplishment, and then the larger creature whipped a limb at her arms and knocked the tongs out of her grasp.

The tongs hit the floor, and the log popped out and rolled across the linoleum. It hit the utility room door on the other side of the room and stopped. Tess stared after it for a second, wondering if the fire would spread to the door and set the entire house on fire, but then she turned her attention back to the creatures.

The big one had raised another tentacle. It swung at her, moving the limb low along the ground, maybe trying to sweep her feet out from under her. She jumped. She hadn’t been especially athletic even in her younger days and couldn’t remember the last time she’d jumped (which was strange if you thought about it, but true), but she managed to get clear of the sweeping tentacle.

Unfortunately, jumping was the easy part. It was the landing that did her in. The kitchen floor was more than just a bit slick. It wasn’t flooded exactly, but damp, like a condensed window. When her bare feet hit the linoleum, they slid out from under her and she tumbled back onto her rear end. The jolt knocked the breath out of her, and she bit her tongue. She tasted blood and saw a bright flash of light.

Although her vision was blurry, she sensed something moving through the air and rolled out of the way just as another tentacle slammed into the floor where she’d been sitting. The soreness in her butt worsened as she moved. She didn’t think she’d broken her tailbone, but the pain was incredible. She’d bruised herself at least. No doubt about that.

She shook her head, tried to clear her vision. Bub scurried around the large creature’s gyrating legs, and then the smaller beast leapt off the counter and onto Bub’s back.

Bub yelped and rolled on his side. The creature wrapped its tendrils around his neck and held on like a cowboy on a bull. Bub got back to his feet and turned in a circle, biting at the monster but unable to reach. The creature opened its jag of a mouth and chomped into Bub’s neck.

Bub howled.

The creature jerked its head left, right, and back, taking a hunk of flesh and fur. Bub howled again and limped toward the doorway into the back hall, probably not sure where he was going, only trying to move, to buck the creature, to do something. Before he turned the corner and Tess lost sight of him, she saw a wash of glistening blood run down his fur and onto his leg. So much blood. She thought of the scene in the bathroom, of the hot gunk streaming out of her mouth and splashing into the toilet. How could there be so much blood loss in a single day? How was it any kind of fair?

Before she could decide whether to go after Bub or stay there and face the larger creature, the big monster swung another limb at her, hit her in the chest, and knocked her to the floor. She landed beside the tongs, saw them from the corner of her eye. Behind her, the crackling log continued to burn.

Get up. Get the fire. Attack!

The creature still hadn’t moved farther into the room. Maybe it couldn’t. Maybe it had to stay close to the snow, to the cold.

But the little one didn’t seem to have a problem. How do you explain that?

She couldn’t, of course. She couldn’t explain a damn thing about any of this. Maybe the monster couldn’t come any deeper into the house, or maybe it just didn’t want to, didn’t think it needed to. It had already proved its tentacles reached plenty far enough.

Before it hit her again, she reached over, grabbed the tongs, got to her knees, and crawled across the room to the firewood. Her chest throbbed where the thing had hit her, and she was having trouble breathing, but she supposed it could have been a lot worse. At least the thing hadn’t given her a heart attack, and it didn’t seem to have jarred lose the shards of glass in her lungs (or throat or stomach or wherever else they might have lodged).

Something hit the floor behind her. Cold water splashed her ankles and lower legs, and she looked back to see the tip of the thing’s tentacle wiggling across the floor between her feet, its stiff fingers clacking together. She jerked her legs away before the creature could grab hold of her and scurried the rest of the way to the utility room door.

In the hallway, Bub squealed again, and a series of thumping sounds followed. She tried not to think about it, not to let her heart break. She’d help him when she could, if she could.

On the other side of the house, the first creature smacked the door again. She guessed it had probably been doing it all along, but she’d stopped noticing, had tuned out the sound, had focused her attention on the problem at hand. She noticed it now, however. The sound of cracking wood this time lasted much longer. She imagined the thing squeezing through the splintered doorway, dragging its tentacles along behind and leaving a wet, sluggish streak on the floor as it came after her. She might still have some time before any of that happened. Or she might not.

You have to do this now. Right now. Get the fire. Fight back.

She opened the tongs, gripped the burning wood, and squeezed the handles to pinch the log in place. When she was sure she wouldn’t drop it, she spun around and lunged toward the creature.

She had expected it to swing at her, to try to knock the wood loose again. Instead, it flipped a pair of tentacles behind her back and drew her closer to itself. Her thin shirt did little to insulate her from the freezing limbs. Where they touched her, her skin tightened and her muscles flexed. She thought she would surely drop the fire, and, in fact, the tongs did start to slip out of her grasp, but she managed to hold on to them and lifted the log to the creature’s head. Doing it took every last bit of her strength, although she doubted the firewood weighed more than a few pounds. Her arm muscles had loosened, turned to worthless jelly around her bones. But she did it in the end, raised the tongs up over her head and forced the wood into the creature’s growling mouth.

The monster reacted in two ways: first, it squeezed her against itself, cutting off her oxygen and forcing her face to within inches of the burning log. She tried to turn her head away, but the fire burned the skin on the side of her face. The smell of smoldering hair filled the room, and she screamed. The other thing the monster did was bite down. It hissed and squealed all the while, but it chewed into the flaming log and broke it in half. One half of the wood slid down the thing’s body, leaving a wet streak in its frosty hide, but the other half lodged between the creature’s teeth. It opened its mouth wider, probably meaning to spit out the wood before it melted off its face, but Tess saw a chance and took it: she balled up her fist, swung it, and knocked the chunk of wood into the creature’s gullet.

She felt heat on her knuckles and guessed she’d burned the skin there, too, but that was nothing compared to what happened to the monster: the wood burned its way down the thing’s throat. The creature’s body distorted the light, refracted it in a way that made its head look like some kind of misshapen disco ball. Tess watched the flame slide down into the monster’s innards, sure the melting water would put it out soon enough but hoping it would do plenty of damage to the creature first.

The tentacles around her squeezed harder for a second, and Tess was sure they were going to crack her ribs. Or worse. Maybe snap her right in half. But when it seemed like the pressure couldn’t get any worse without killing her, it finally let up. Just barely at first, but then some more.

The creature chomped its teeth together, made a series of wheezing sounds that might have been gags. As if it were trying to hack the piece of wood back out.

When the tentacles loosened enough, Tess pulled free and backed across the kitchen, still holding the tongs.

The chunk of firewood had stopped halfway down the thing’s body. If it had any kind of anatomy, maybe that was its stomach. Regardless, you could see the wood in there, a dark spec within the semi-opaque layers. Wood, but no flames. The fire had gone out.

Parts of the creature had caved in, cratered and cracked. It ran its tentacles and its icicle fingers across these depressions the way a person might finger fresh wounds. It hissed, and although it looked wounded, it was far from dead. She expected it to lunge at her, to wrap its limbs around her body and squeeze her to a pulp. Instead, it turned, stuck its head through the window, used its tentacles to push off the floor and the counters (snapping one cabinet door right off its hinges in the process) and wiggled its way back out into the blizzard.

Tess gaped, not sure what had happened, why the thing hadn’t retaliated.

Maybe it’s hurt worse than you thought. Or maybe it went out for reinforcements.

Didn’t matter. Whatever the thing was doing, and for whatever reason, she needed to take the opportunity to regroup.

In the hallway, Bub continued struggling with the other creature. She heard the two of them in there, hissing and barking and bumping into the walls. And she heard the first creature in the bedroom, still battering the door. She couldn’t believe it hadn’t gotten into the rest of the house yet. Maybe their doors were tougher than she thought.

Forget about that. Save Bub. It’s not too late.

The half of the log the creature hadn’t swallowed lay on the kitchen floor in a pool of water. It wasn’t going to do her any good, but there was still another log crackling in the fireplace.

She hurried into the living room, swinging the tongs at her side. The chunk of wood on the fireplace grate wasn’t much of a log anymore. It had burned down to the size of a softball and was really more of a coal. But it was bright red, and the little creature in the back hall wasn’t the behemoth its partner had been. This would be enough. It had to be enough.

She poked the tongs into the fireplace and gripped the piece of wood, careful not to squeeze it too hard, afraid she might break it into a dozen worthless pieces if she did. The wood smoked, but it was already losing some of its color.

Hurry!

She ran through the living room, through the kitchen, into the hall.

She found Bub on the floor in a puddle of gore. The creature stood over him, blood running out of its mouth and pinkening as it ran down the beast’s wet body. Tufts of yellow fur poked out from between its teeth. It had a pair of tendrils wrapped around Bub’s neck, and the dog’s tongue lolled.

“No!” She jumped at the monster, aiming the tongs and fiery coal at its head. It started to move, to dodge, but it was too late. Tess pressed the wood into the side of its head and held it there until the thing let go of Bub and backed down the hall.

Not that there was anywhere for it to go. It backed up to the door and crouched there, flailing its limbs, trying to knock the tongs out of Tess’s hands as she advanced on it again. Most of the side of its head had melted away. Even with its mouth closed, you could see into its maw, see those pointed rows of blood-stained teeth.

The wood seemed to have lost most of its heat, but she jammed it against the thing again anyway. The creature screamed and wrapped its tentacles around the tongs and as far up Tess’s arms as it could reach, but although the snaking tendrils were freezing cold, there didn’t seem to be much strength in them. Tess grabbed one, broke it off, and flung it at the monster.

When the coal stopped smoking, she pulled back the tongs, let the chunk of cooled wood drop to the floor, and swung the empty tongs. They thunked into the creature’s head, and a long fissure opened up in the ice, running from the impact point to the middle of its mouth, breaking its head almost in two.

The thing reached up for the tongs again but couldn’t seem to find them. Its limbs curled, whipped, and waved from one side to the other, searching, reaching, finding nothing.

Tess lifted the tongs over her shoulder and swung them into the monster again. The tongs hit the creature right in the split running down its face. If she’d been chopping wood, it would have been the perfect swing. And really, she guessed this was basically the same concept. The tool thunked into the thing’s wound, widening the gap, pushing the two halves of its head farther apart. Before the monster could pull free or try to tug the tongs out of her hands, Tess gripped the handles and jerked them apart. The end of the tongs spread, the creature shrieked and shuddered. A long, wet cracking sound came from somewhere in the vicinity of the thing’s neck (or where’s its neck would have been if it’d had one), and then one half of its head broke clean off. The chunk of ice slapped against the wall, broke in half again, and fell. The creature let out a wet, guttural sound, something almost like a burp, and toppled to the floor.

Tess didn’t wait to see if it was still alive; she grabbed the other half of its head with the tongs, squeezed the handles, twisted, and decapitated the little son of a bitch. Then she smashed the remaining torso and tentacles into slush.

From the other end of the house came the loudest cracking sound yet. A thump followed, then a series of scrapes and a triumphant-sounding roar.

Tess dropped to her knees beside Bub.

His eyes were closed, his fur covered in blood. She slid her hand under his head and cupped the side of his neck, feeling for a pulse, not sure if that even worked for a dog. She felt nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” And then she was crying. Tears ran down her cheeks and into her mouth, hot and salty. Snot dripped over her upper lip and from there to the floor. She wiped her face with her arm and cried harder still.

Quit it! Get out of here now and mourn later, or stay here and die beside him.

She wiped her face again and took a few long, gasping breaths.

Where was she supposed to go?

She heard the monster sliding through the house, heard the taps and bangs she guessed were its tentacles hitting the floor and the hallway walls. She thought the fire might keep it at bay, at least for a while, but then remembered there was no fire. Not anymore.

You’ve got to go. Go, go, GO!

She pulled her hand out from under Bub, still crying. She guessed she had two options left: stay here and fight the thing with nothing but the tongs and her bare hands (which wasn’t an option at all if she wanted to live past the next five minutes; she’d been lucky so far, but she was no kind of monster slayer) or go out into the storm. Out with no warm clothes. Out to where the larger kitchen monster had fled, to where there might be dozens more of the things. Out to almost certain death.

It’s certain either way, and you know it. That bedroom monster has cut you off from the rest of the house. You can’t go around it, and you can’t stay here and fight it. Going out into the storm is a sucky option, but it’s the only option.

She stood up and reached for the door.

And Bub moved.

No, you imagined that.

She wiped more tears from her eyes and looked again.

Bub’s back leg flinched, and he opened his eye.

Tess huffed out a sound: half laugh and half disbelieving sob. She dropped back to her knees and ran her hand down Bub’s side, trying to avoid his wounds. He lifted his head an inch or two off the floor, whined, and then lowered his face back into the pool of blood beneath him. Tess thought he’d died for real that time, that those few movements had been his last, his death throes, but then she noticed his side. It moved up and down. Shallowly but surely.

Help him. You have to try to help him.

The sounds coming from the other end of the house had gotten louder, and Tess thought the creature had made it out of the hallway and into the living room. It didn’t seem to be moving very quickly, definitely wasn’t rushing the way you expected nightmares to do, but the house wasn’t huge, and it would get here soon enough.

She slid both hands under Bub’s side, trying not to think about the blood oozing between her fingers.

“Come on,” she said. “You’ve got to get up. We have to go.”

Bub turned his head toward her, but he didn’t try to get to his feet. Or at least it didn’t seem like he was trying. Tess guessed it was a miracle he was alive at all. She could hardly expect him to jump to his feet and run circles around her. She tried lifting him, but he was a big dog and she’d already used up most of her energy.

“Please! Help me out here.” She lifted again and let out an exasperated groan.

Something crashed in the living room; it might have been the sound of a chair falling over.

Try again. You can do it. You have to do it. It’s either that or leave him here and let that thing tear him apart.

She wondered if maybe that would be more merciful. Attempting to move him might cause him agonizing pain. The monster would kill him, no doubt about that, but it would probably be quick about it.

You’re not seriously considering that. Leaving him here to die? You really think you could live with yourself?

No, she knew she couldn’t.

She tried to lift him one more time, strained until she was afraid she’d pop a blood vessel or throw out her back. She got him partway up, but he was practically deadweight

(don’t think that)

and didn’t do a thing to help. She lowered him back to the ground, changed position, wrapping her arms around his torso from above, and tried dragging him.

This worked better. She was able to move him anyway. And the blood on the floor lubricated the process, which simultaneously disturbed and relieved her.

From the sound of it, the monster had made it to the kitchen doorway. More wood cracked, and ice tinkled; she imagined the thing pushing its way through the threshold, grinning its wet, toothy grin.

She’d pulled Bub to the door. She let go of him just long enough to reach around and twist the doorknob. As soon as she’d opened the door, the wind blew it in. The knob hit her on the hip hard enough to spin her halfway around, and for a second she’d was afraid she’d slip in the blood and fall over Bub, but she kept her balance. The door pushed the half-melted pile of slush that had been the small creature against the wall, and freezing wind and clouds of icy snow blew in through the doorway. Tess gasped. On some level, she had realized it would be colder outside than in, but she hadn’t been expecting the sudden blast, the unbelievable coldness.

She leaned down, wrapped her arms back around Bub, and pulled him into the blizzard.