Chapter Thirteen

1

Whatever James and Pricilla were murdered by, Ned still didn’t understand how it was possible. How did the spirits break through the afterlife and inhabit other objects? They were obviously dangerous, and now traveling to Anderson Mills, he wondered what could be waiting for him in town. The memories of the mismatched victims at The Comedy Tavern flashed in his mind. If they could displace another person’s head on someone else’s shoulders, among other places, what else were these spirits capable of perpetrating?

He was driving in the middle the road without realizing it. 

Oh damn.

“Keep your head together,” he scolded himself, veering back into a lane. “You’re minutes from arriving, you can’t turn back now, and Andy’s in trouble. Don’t lose it, Ned. Not now.”

He’d burn the house down and be done with it. That simple. It won’t be too hard, just torch it and run. I’ll actually enjoy it.

He touched the axe’s handle in the seat next to him to remind himself he was armed. The woods surrounding him cleared, and he was now driving downhill. A quarter of a mile later, the road narrowed and he approached Apache Road. The block was occupied with residential housing and many structures surrounded him. Beyond the houses, the beginning of Silver Lake formed, and then deeper in the woods, James’s house awaited. 

He slowed to five miles an hour, put the car in park, and got out, cutting through Mr. Runyen’s yard to avoid the Jeep Wrangler tipped over on its side in the street. Mr. Runyen’s front windows were shattered and the front door was removed from the hinges and missing. 

The headlights from the Jeep revealed a corpse lying in street. A robed body. Charlie Roseman, he could tell by the shock of tall gray hair and ponytail at the back, the rest of his neck plagued by jagged gouges. The head barely stayed connected to the rest of him, the neck was so ravaged. 

I don’t hear sirens of any kind. Don’t tell me nobody knows about this.

He considered driving back, but the disconcerting scene urged him to investigate. Eva Nelson was tangled up in her garden hose, the water still spraying. Her body was seventy percent fleshless. Her face was the only part of her completely intact. Wilma Chunning was caught up in her rose bushes, scattered about in six pieces. Ned winced at Wilma’s head pinned between a set of large lava rocks. Fred McCain’s legs jutted out from underneath his rust bucket truck. The entire garage was spattered with his blood. The Christianson family of four was disembodied in their living room, the furniture—including the ceiling fan—was soiled in the aftermath of a cruel attack. There was much more violence to be accounted for, but he refused to search any longer. 

Ned couldn’t stay silent, so he called out, “Is anyone alive out there? ANYBODY!”

He didn’t want to leave anyone behind before he turned back to Green County, but he also considered his own safety. He wasn’t sure what had terrorized the neighborhood was gone yet.

He studied the streets and didn’t locate shell casings or signs of weapons being discharged. The houses weren’t burned down. Considering the twelve houses on the short block, there were few bodies that had made it outside. Whatever caused their deaths, they’d broken through windows and doors to reach them. 

Ned was half-way down the block, surveying and searching, when he heard a wispy voice call out to him. “Stop…don’t leave me.”

Running back to his truck, he collected his axe and pursued the words. The voice came from the house of Nick Gruder, a tractor salesman. Nick’s three-hundred pound body was impaled on the broken glass of his front bay window, the glass catching him through the middle. He dangled limp and very dead, but when Ned stepped next to him, the head popped out of alignment to peer up at him. Nick’s bushy brown beard was colored with blood, and only one of his eyes was intact, the other pink gristle and minced by puncture wounds the size of needle points. The white tongue spoke with a slow drawl. “It’s James again. Everyone is dead. You have to hurry. Andy’s at the Jennings’ farm. They’re trapped in the basement. You might not be able to save them. Focus on the house first. Burn it down. Destroy the film projector. The power is out in certain regions of the county, so don’t waste your time trying to phone the police. There are swarms of locusts among other things out there, and I don’t want any more people to die on my account. That means don’t call the police. You can fix this alone. Simply burn the house down.”

Ned broke in to speak just as Nick’s skin molded and sprouted over with fungus instantaneously. In seconds, the flesh slipped down the face in a greenish brown muck pile. It kicked up a wretched stench, like the innards of a rotten pumpkin, and the globs spattered the porch. He recoiled in disgust.

Then he heard: “Ned look over here!”

He sprinted to another body hanging out from a nearby house, but this one was Crystal Lowell. Her top half jutted out of a window well. He could only see the skeletal face and a pair of hands reach out to him. The face was completely bare, but he knew it was Crystal because of the Harley Davidson hog parked in front and the tangles of long black hair left on her scalp. 

The face clicked and clacked as the jaws, mandible, and teeth worked to pronounce words with half a tongue to annunciate them. “Locusts tore these people apart, Ned. They flew in a swarm. Nobody’s alive, so don’t look for survivors. The reels of film are causing this to happen, the horror movies. They spirits are manipulating images. Making things real that aren’t.”

“Is that your explanation? Fucking movies?”

“I told you Priest Hutchinson communicated by contagious magic from beyond.” The skull cranked upward to make eye contact. “He taught me how to displace dead spirits into objects. It’s all metaphysical. That’s how I made people disappear. It’s how I created illusions. There are spirits in the film projector, and they’re using tricks of light and illusion to make these horror movies come to life. Andy’s been watching them at the house, and the images are being displaced all over Anderson Mills.”

Crystal’s head disassembled and clunked into the window well, the body’s second life burned out. Her rotund midsection sank inward with gasps and pops of air as the rest of her turned to liquid. The bones slipped back into the house and the window clapped shut. 

Ned rose up from his haunches and waited for another dead body to come to life. 

The call was muffled and from within Crystal’s house. He tramped up the short set of steps, crunched on glass underfoot, and crossed the open threshold. Words boomed, “In here—in here!”

He stumbled through the kitchen and the voice beckoned louder, but the source was nowhere in sight. 

“Under the fucking table, Ned.”

He lowered onto his hands and knees and gasped at what he found. The shock compelled him to crab-walk backward until he struck the wall. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!”

“Calm down, brother, calm down!”

It was the head of Eric Lowell between the legs of a captain’s chair. 

“Yes, it’s me,” the head reassured him, each motion of the mouth issuing jelly-like blood out of the neck’s opening. “The movies are coming to life. In fact, they’re coming down the hill after you, Ned. There are three dozen of them. These people, they’re from a movie about an old folk’s home and how the residents massacre the doctors and nurses.”

The statement was not only ludicrous but laughable. “It’s not possible. You’re making this up. I can’t believe any of this shit. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

And I’m talking to a head on the floor! 

“Look all around you.” The head rocked in place from the treble in its throat, distorted and muted without lungs. “The dead are using images from these horror movies to recreate reality, and they’re projecting them in Anderson Mills. It starts here, Ned, but where does it go from here if we don’t stop it?”

A distant shriek in the air rang out, “Shraaaaaaaaaaaah!” It sounded like a condor about to swoop down on a field mouse.

He looked out the window and two red specks glowed and disappeared, coming and going blink fast. “What the hell was that?”

“A vampire. They’ll seduce you, and then they’ll tear your damn throat out. They fly in the sky scavenging blood from dead victims, but now they’re lusting for fresh blood. They’re on their way here now to feed on you, Ned. This is your chance to dash for Silver Lake, and you’ll have to travel by foot from there to the house. Your car will give you away. Andy’s trapped at the Jennings’ farm, but like I said, he can’t help you. You’ll have to finish this yourself. Burn the house down. Destroy the film projector. This is the last warning I can give you. I’m sorry. Please make good on my horrendous mistakes. I…love…you…Ned.”

Eric’s head vibrated as James’s voice faded and flitted until there was silence. The head rocked back and forth, and he thought the extremity would levitate, but instead it erupted, exploding like a grenade of blood and gray matter. He closed his eyes and opened them back up in time to catch a mandible strike the wall and shatter. 

Ned retreated from the house and back into the street, seeking out the truck. 

He stopped moving, stopped breathing, when they came up over the street. James’s warning came true. A mass of old people ambled down the hill in a mob-sized group. It was a strange sight—humorous in a different setting. They were armed with guns, knives, flaming torches, and some were carrying severed arms, legs and heads and shaking them up in the air, roaring and threatening like a pack of savages. They wore sweaters, knitted Afghans, one-piece silk robes, and hospital gowns. Their faces were bent in wicked smiles. Their eyes were large, scanning the horizon for victims. The group materialized out of nowhere as James had explained, as if projected. 

He piled into his truck against his brother’s wishes. The truck roared to life as he pumped the gas, but as he made his escape, a string of gunshots were issued in his direction. The shots burst through the air with the loudness of cheap fireworks. Some of them were aiming .22 rifles, and as he observed it happening through the side rearview mirror, they shot it off, as they did the back windshield. 

“Goddamn it! SHIT!”

He feared they’d shoot out a tire and he’d have a blow out, but he evaded the attackers as he cruised faster, reaching fifty, and capping out at sixty miles an hour, out-speeding them against their snail’s pace. He caught them again through the rear view mirror as they broke into the houses. They were dragging out bodies into the street and unloading bullets into them or using cleavers and sharp edges to hack up their corpses into pieces. Their childish, giddy laughter knotted up his midsection with an ulcerous pang. 

Those people are out of their minds.

He steered through town and sped by Wayne’s deli and passed Walter Smalls’ mechanic and gas station. The lights were on and two bodies were lying dead inside. 

Is everyone dead in this town?

The walls inside the gas station were frozen over and so were the gas pumps. The layer of ice was inches thick, solid and crystalline. He was beginning to believe what James told him was the truth. Somehow, images were turned into real life and those images were murdering the people in Anderson Mills. The old folks weren’t anybody who lived here locally. The closest hospice was in Green County, perhaps fifty or more miles from Anderson Mills. It wasn’t humanly possible for the group to clear that much distance on foot, and there was also the problem of where they collected those weapons. 

He clutched the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. What bothered him now the most was Andy’s safety. James confessed that he was in danger, and yet he demanded he reach the house first and destroy the images. He could never forgive himself if Andy died because of him. 

But what about everyone else that’s in danger? Is anyone else alive? 

A worse thought popped into his head. What if I can’t reach the house in time? 

The sight of the talking corpses and the group of armed old folks were just the beginning. James mentioned flying vampires, a man that could freeze things—the ice at Walter’s station explained that, plus the added chill to the air— and the locusts. The more he thought on it, the more he grew afraid. He was one man against them. The best he could do was avoid them and reach the house alive. 

He steered the vehicle into the mouth of the woods. The darkness became so deep, the headlights barely made a difference. He did his best to stick to the road and slowed down to thirty miles an hour. 

“You’re doing fine,” he encouraged himself. “Find Andy at the Jennings’ house and then go to James’s house, and it’ll be over. Burn the fucking thing down. Easy. Piece of cake.”

The back tires spun, losing their traction, and he shot to the left, speeding in an arc, and careened head on into a set of maple trees. The front was flattened, the crunch so loud and powerful the car shut down. He suffered whiplash and a good jolt after the wreckage settled. The hiss of the radiator and the odor of gas urged him to act quickly. Ned grabbed the axe and the drum of gasoline in the seat and hobbled out. His feet connected with the road, and he slipped after the third step. He landed on his shoulder, the part of him that took the impact. “Goddamn it.”

The road was slick in ice inches deep; it was like staring into a lake of glass. The surrounding trees were frostbitten, the leaves brittle and the bark solid as concrete. His breath was visible as he breathed in panicky successions. 

“Shraaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!”

The infernal cry echoed closer, his body going rigid at the sound. The trees clotted the sky, obscuring his lookout abilities, but he knew the source was near. He ducked through two oak trees and retreated to the lake, moving in a streak. The Jennings’ house was easy to find. He’d follow the perimeter of the lake until he came upon the open space of land that led up a hill and eventually to Jimmy’s property; it was cleared out by burning many trees down two years ago. The blackened stumps would serve as the guideposts to his brother’s house. He’d save Andy and have the boy help him burn his house down. It was the best plan he could muster in his position.

Periodically, he glanced up to check for the two red specks. He wasn’t sure what they were—vampires was a vague term, especially when they were flying so high in the air. The downhill grade changed his creep into a forced sprint. He tripped over a slick patch of ground and faltered onto the lake. He didn’t make a splash and instead struck a layer of solid ice. Ned viewed the magnificent sight. It was like Anderson Mills in mid-December, the trees ravaged by frost. The landscape shimmered with an icy coating, everything shrink-wrapped. 

The thunderous splitting of a tree resounded. The trunk was at least four stories tall, and he watched it fork down the middle and snap. The trunk timbered into the water and broke through the frozen surface. Ice fragments shot up and rained on the surface with the ringing of chimes. Ned stayed anchored in place, awaiting anything else to happen. The air was growing colder. The chill drew goose bumps, and he was shivering with alarming intensity. How much longer he’d be able to withstand the cold, he wasn’t sure. 

The crunch of ice reverberated around the lake. Trees creaked and protested as more ice enclosed the bark. Fog swirled to obscure the area, the lake’s border impossible to locate. 

How the hell am I supposed to make it now?

He clutched the axe and gas can tighter, thinking he was living in a strange dream. This didn’t happen anywhere, not even in the Arctic. The cold didn’t have the ability to cause trees to break from the inside out. 

The surface of the lake was too slick to run, so he ambled on at a crawl’s pace. 

“He’s close,” a meek voice called out to him. “The air, can’t you feel him? It’s so cold.”

He scrutinized the area and located nothing. The voice had no face. No position. “Where are you?”

The end of his shoe touched something soft. He reached down and felt bare skin. Naked flesh. “My God, you don’t have any clothes on?”

“The man who makes everything cold,” the woman’s said, “took them from me. I escaped him. He…he…he tried to ka-ka-kill me.”

Ned made out two eyes, the wet orbs gazing up at him. It reminded him of a dog’s eyes reflecting the night. He wasn’t sure where he’d touched her, perhaps her leg or shoulder, but she was frigid cold. She had to be suffering from hypothermia.

“You have to pick me up,” she whispered. “I know the way out of here. It’s too cold for me to move. Don’t leave me, please. I’ll, I’ll freeze to death.”

He placed the axe and gasoline jug on the ice. She was helpless. He couldn’t leave an innocent person to freeze to death. He nervously traced with his hands to find her legs and back. “Of course I won’t leave you. What’s your name?”

A short pause, then, “Julie.”

He hadn’t touched a naked woman since his wife, Angie. They had a habit of bathing together after sex, and they’d caress each other in the tub for an hour. Once the water grew cold, they’d drain it and fill it back with warm water. The idea of a warm bath drew new aches in his flesh. He couldn’t imagine what Julie was going through and kept the memory to himself. 

He unbuttoned his long-sleeved shirt and wrapped it over her shoulders. He still couldn’t see any definition of her body. 

“I’m going to carry you, okay? Forgive me if I touch you anywhere—you know what I mean. I can’t see, honest.”

He jumped with a start at the soft purr in her voice. “I don’t care where you touch me.”

A lance of heat crawled up his spine and burst into pin-pricks at his neck. He blushed and was grateful it was dark. The shirt covered her back and carried down across the small of her back. He was able to clutch under her rear and both shoulders to pick her up. The extra weight anchored him down, and he didn’t slip along the icy surface. His stride was short and labored. 

“Who is this person you’re talking about who makes everything cold?” he asked through gritted teeth. “Did they hurt you?”

“He tried to touch me,” she said, her fingers clutching hard onto his shoulders, the nails drawing blood. He kept wincing, and she wouldn’t take the hint. “The brute ripped my clothes off and tried to make love to me. His kisses were ice, and you could only imagine what it felt like when he put his hands on me.”

He didn’t want to hear the graphic details, but allowed her to speak her mind anyway. 

“It’s so dark and foggy down here.” She nuzzled her head against his face. “I’m glad you found me. Keep going straight, you’re almost there.”

“Where are we going? I can’t see a damn thing.”

“There’s a dock yards out from us.” 

The sight of a fishing dock relieved him, knowing he was making progress toward his destination. The wooden planks were frosted over and the undersides dripping. The chill in the air tapered off enough that the relief was instant. The moon cut through the thinned out fog, and he finally distinguished the details of the woman. The stranger couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. She reminded him of Angie when she graduated from high school: fair, milky skin without freckles, a hundred pound body frame, with blue eye shadow and black mascara. The woman was beautiful, and he did his best—and failed—not to focus on her pear-shaped breasts. And then he looked down at her lap and the orange bush that trailed up to her navel. The toes were clean, the nails painted ruby. Her legs were shaved and reflecting the glassy surface of the ice. 

He forced himself to make eye contact, trying to be casual. “Are you from here?”

Julie shook her head. “I’m on vacation. I was separated from my friends. We drove from Iowa to party here. The beer stays cold in the lake during the summer, we heard.”

“A little too cold now, wouldn’t you think?”

They were closing in on the dock, and she didn’t respond to his dumb comment. It didn’t matter once he distinguished the strange shapes along the planks. He moved faster, the fear of his life compelling him on. The woman gasped in shock at the sights. Bodies were strewn along the wood. Every corpse was the same, each wounded by jagged punctures at their necks and chests. The corpses were familiar townsfolk. Gary Steinman’s pot belly had been cut open and his sternum eaten through. Gertrude Adams’ chest had deflated and was replaced by upturned skin; her heart had been removed. He counted seven bodies each undressed and bared to view. 

“What in hell has taken over this place?”

The woman shifted out of his hold, and Ned let her stand up even though he wasn’t sure how she could tolerate walking on the ice with bare feet. She stood erect in her nakedness, proud. She gazed at the dock in admiration. 

“Is there something wrong with what you see?” 

“Excuse me?”

His eyes shifted from the dock back to her. She extended her hand and urged him to her with her pointer finger. “Come here now.”

He completed two steps, knowing something wasn’t right. “What’s wrong with you? You’re freezing cold, aren’t you? And these people, they’ve been brutally murdered. Isn’t it obvious what’s wrong?”

She wasn’t shivering or bothered by the extreme cold. And making that connection, he was about to call her out on it when her body changed. The white flesh hardened into plated black scales and wings sprouted from her back seven feet long from each end. Cartilage and bone were defined along the leathery wings, the purple veins thick as snakes and slithering the same. Bone audibly tore through her fingertips and toes and claws glinted with the refraction of steel. 

The two eyes lit up a blazing red.

He shouldn’t have left the axe behind. 

Ned wasn’t sure where to turn; nowhere was safe. Even if he fled, he was in full view of the woman. He could run back into the lake and hide in the fog and have a chance at locating the axe, and whether it would do harm to the creature or not, it was the better option next to becoming one of the corpses on the dock. 

He raced into the fog, making his decision. 

“Shraaaaaaaaahhh!”

The scream pierced his ears, and he cupped them, it was so painful. He raced blindly and every muscle was jolted by the cold once again, running right back into the freezing intensity. Black in every direction, he sensed movement from above. The eyes zipped over him in red electric streaks. A lance carved a line across his shoulder, and he folded to the ground in horrible pain. He touched the wound; it was deep enough to require stitches. Blood bubbled forth, and he grew weary as the fluid turned cold against his back. 

Keeping mobile, he scrambled and weaved in every direction, though stepping as quietly as possible even though the creature had the clear advantage floating above him. Eventually, he slipped back to his knees and had to catch his breath. So cold, it was sucking the energy from him. He hacked up phlegm to clear his throat and nasal passages. Tears froze in their ducts and his eyelids kept sticking shut. He couldn’t conceive of making another move, becoming so weak. He hugged his body and waited for the creature to execute its next attack. 

 

2

Sheriff O’Malley sped faster down the road and studied the woods at each side of him. The blue, red and white lights flashed across the darkened corners and animated the surroundings. Ice caked the road along with the miles of woods glimmering in every direction. This time, he wanted to face the blue eyed man or the flying creatures and take them on. Guns at each hip and more stacked in the passenger seat, he was ready to put those long hours at the target range to use. He could hit anything at one hundred feet with the naked eye. 

He tried to contact someone else on a different line on the CB radio, but all he got was static. Every means of communication was either put out of commission or failed to work. The CB didn’t crackle with static; the line was dead. He was a man of logic, and whatever the reasons for the interference, there wasn’t time to investigate. His job—now his sworn duty since Tabitha and his deputies were murdered—had been changed. 

Kill what threatened Anderson Mills. 

He sucked in a nervous breath and scanned the trees. Again, darkness met his inspections. 

“Shraaaaaaaahhhh!”

He slammed the brakes, skidding ten yards before performing a twisted stop. He gathered the 12 gauge and the 9 millimeter and stormed out of the vehicle, ready for action. 

“Where are you?” he whispered. “Come on out. I’m not afraid of you.”

He studied the sky and caught the flicker of red, a bulb on the brink of burning out. The sheriff lunged into the woods, but before he stepped off the road, the shape of the blue eyed monster materialized from the other side of him. He aimed the 12 gauge and paused. The man limped toward him drunken like one of the locals from Barleycorn’s Pub after last call. His head was mashed in from the time he hit it with the mallet. The blue eyes continued to stare him down, a threat. 

He reached his hands outward. 

The last time, icicles shot from the skin. 

“Stop that or I’ll shoot!—no more warnings!”

The man didn’t heed the words. 

The barrel blasted, and the man’s leg snapped from the knees and the tower crumbled. He landed back-first against the road, and the icicles blasted from his hands and disappeared in the air only to come back down and pierce its body. A bass-throb rumbled through the ground as it bellowed in agony. The sheriff didn’t waste a precious second and emptied round after round into the felled figure. 

The body convulsed with each hit. He dismantled the man piece by piece with the bullets until each arm and leg had been removed from the torso. Instead of blood, red slush oozed from the wounds. He was about to shoot the head off too when the man expelled a breath and a blast of snow blinded him. The wind wrenched the gun from his grip and he was blown feet into the air. Leaving the ground, he landed against the hood of his car with the flop of sheet metal. 

“Argggh!”

He was paralyzed for a moment, and maybe he’d broken a rib, and what else, he didn’t know. He slipped from the hood and landed on his side, in agony. The torso didn’t move on the street. He wasn’t in immediate danger now that the creature was immobile. He thought for moments on how to dispatch the man. The blast of snow came from his mouth; the orifice had to be closed, he decided. 

How about burning it?

He didn’t have gas, but there were road flares in his trunk. The sheriff fumbled with the lock and lifted it up. He opened a box and approached the figure with a flare in each hand. The sheriff struck one, the sizzle and flash of green illuminated the fallen man in strange hues. He shoved both of them into its mouth and ducked in case it tried to attack again. The monster’s head glowed a fluorescent green. The sheriff made out the shape of the skull underneath the skin, and he couldn’t help but watch as the head imploded. It melted, its nose becoming a sinkhole, as the stink of false flesh carried thick. 

The rest of the man went up similarly, the body melting until it curled into a blackened stump of a human form. It happened so fast—under a minute—that he realized it didn’t have insides and the bones were so hollow they went up into smoke. He thought back to the man they dissected in Green County named Jorg. The butcher didn’t own working organs and the bones were cartilage. The connection was more than strange; it was downright harrowing. Logically, the two of them couldn’t exist. 

A better truth: they weren’t human. 

Agony caterwauled from the woods, and another shriek of the flying vampires followed. The touch of the last woman, the way she stroked him, it delivered a shutter of remembrance. He’d let the black demon pleasure him. He was foolish—and yet strangely human in his mistake. The women were too dangerous to arrest. They were better inspected when dead. 

He raced into the woods and awaited another one of the women’s callings. The red eyes flashed for a split second in blink-speed fashion. The trees were melting and drops sounded from every direction. The blue-eyed man was dead, he reasoned, and now the damage he’d done to the land was being reversed.

“Shraaaaaaaah!” 

Ba-BAM!

The 12 gauge blast lit up the night. He didn’t know if it hit its target. He neared the lake’s edge. The ice was thinning out and parts of it forked and separated. The shape of a fleeing body drove him to call out, “Hey you, get off the ice!”

The figure didn’t hear him. 

You’re going to have to go after him.

“Damn it.”

He unloaded three more shots at the sky and then the 12 gauge went dry. He tossed it aside frustrated. The red eyes didn’t re-appear, and he assumed it was safe to tread cautiously. The first step against the ice, he rocked forward. It held strong for a moment until the gradual break increased. He chose his foothold carefully and hopped from one place to the other. 

“This is Sheriff O’Malley, stop where you are! The ice is breaking. I’ll take you to safety.”

Wherever the hell that may be.

Nobody responded. 

The kerplunk of ice in the near distance sent him into a fleeing panic. The vibration carried to his position. And the red eyes brightened nearer. 

He removed the 9 millimeter from his holster; it almost slipped from his sweaty grasp. He kept it positioned to unload into the air, but he kept his focus on what surrounded him. “Where are you, man? Hurry before we both find ourselves in the freezing cold water.”

The two sets of eyes hovered in place enjoying his vulnerability. The two were in power, and he couldn’t do anything but pray they didn’t pounce on him before he was on dry land again where he could aim with accuracy. 

“Over here!”

The sheriff couldn’t make out anything. The fog had dissipated but the night was still blind. “Follow my voice.”

Cracks simultaneously issued, and the sheriff was knocked to his knees. The ice turned into an island around him. The sheriff traced the nearest step to take and literally had to jump when the circle of ice he was standing on sunk into the water. He slipped underfoot on his lifeline and sprawled with his back against the sturdier chunk of ice. 

Shit! 

The layer cracked under his weight with a crystalline ring. He couldn’t shift or else he’d further set off the damage. The deformed shadow was stationed above him and threatened to swoop down arms first. 

He didn’t hesitate to fire. 

The creature tilted to the side and out of his line of vision, damaged but not dead.

He bobbed up and down. The water level hadn’t raised high enough to sink him yet. The cold bore through his clothing, wet and ice-cold. The sky tilted as he was rocked back and forth. The ends of the island were slowly melting. 

He did his best to keep still, but soon, that wouldn’t be enough to stay alive. 

 

3

“The CB connection is cut,” Kyle Redding explained to Frank Garrison in the Green County PD vehicle. He guided the vehicle to the outskirts of Anderson Mills. Two more miles, they’d come upon the bridge over Potter’s Creek that would direct them straight into town. “I’m not getting anything but fuzz. I’ve tried calling the department, and the line’s dead. Even the sheriff’s wife isn’t answering her phone. Usually Tabitha’s home at this time of night, and so is he. Either he’s putting in some overtime, or there’s something weird going on in that hick place.”

Garrison slurped the remains of his coffee in a Thermos canister. “The way things have been going in Anderson Mills, you think the whole law enforcement is on a break. Their job is easy. Set speed traps. Catch children stealing candy bars. Pull over the teenagers who’ve tanked on booze. I don’t see why they’re not answering.”

“It’s more than that,” Redding said. “I’ve known the sheriff for years. He’s thorough. If anything chaps his ass, he’s on top of it. He’s called me four times today about the butcher’s corpse. Even that visit to the lab, he wasn’t satisfied, and neither was I. This is paranormal shit. Area 51.”

“Except we’re in Kansas. There’s got to be an explanation about the corpse—what’s his name, Jorg?”

“This is something out of our league,” Redding agreed. “We’re crime scene investigators, not rogue FBI or CIA. This was a serial killer. Somebody did something to that man to make him want to cannibalize and mutilate people in a perverted fashion. Why in Anderson Mills, I’m not sure. I guess if someone’s going to perpetrate a crime of that magnitude, Anderson Mills would be a safe bet, at least easier than in a city.”

“Bodies were hanging from walls,” Garrison said. “Even at Wayne Brooks’ sandwich place, the sicko had a stack of breasts in a plastic bin. What the fuck was that about?”

Redding rolled down the window and caught a stiff breeze roll by. “Damn, it’s cold.” He checked the digital temperature gauge on the dashboard. “Thirty-four degrees, that’s fucking strange. It usually doesn’t get any cooler than seventy during the summer. It’s supposed to be sticky and humid. Ice cream couldn’t melt in this weather.”

Redding lit a cigarette, and Garrison extended his hand to take the next drag. “You’re still smokin’ menthols?”

“Cancer sucks,” Redding retorted. “Plus Cindy said when I smoke regulars it’s like kissing a turd.”

The acidic quality to the air warned Redding it was about to storm. The sky was exempt of tell-tale sounds: no lightening bolts or thunder. He recalled the forecast on the local weather station promise a dry week, not even sprinkles. 

“What’s up with this weather, seriously?”

“Global warming,” Garrison joked. “Our glaciers are melting, polar bears are drowning, and next thing you know there won’t be a North Pole—and that means Santa Claus and his elves will sink to the bottom of the ocean.”

Redding rolled his eyes. “Shut up. I like Santa Claus.”

“It can’t be any weirder than finding Cal Unger’s body mutilated at the cemetery,” Garrison quipped. “He was torn from the inside out. It screams necrophilia. Ed Gein’s cousin is horny.”

Redding was about to explode with laughter when something at the end of the road struck him odd. “You see a bridge?”

“No.”

“Exactly. We passed the sign half a mile ago. We should be seeing it any moment.” Redding squinted harder. He turned on the cruiser’s brights. “I can’t see anything, the fog’s too thick.”

Then Redding braked hard after almost crashing into one of the steel pillars at the edge of the bridge. Stopping at a safe enough distance, he put the vehicle into park and stepped out. He immediately noticed he could see his breath. “Why’s it so cold?”

Garrison rushed to the bridge. “This thing is iced over. It’s at least a foot thick in ice. Impossible.”

“We can’t drive on this.” Redding stared at the bridge encapsulated in ice. They couldn’t view the entire bridge that was a quarter of a mile long; the fog was too thick. “I can’t even see five feet in front of me.”

He studied the trees; they were shrouded in the same fog. Wisps of white blinded every landmark. Anderson Mills was invisible underneath the veil. It swirled and coagulated to create thicker sheets. The covering shifted and moved, almost breathed. 

“How do you explain this? Should we try and drive across the bridge.”

Redding spoke his mind. “I have a bad feeling about this. Nobody answers their phone, there’s silence on the CB line. And now this frozen over bridge. I don’t know what to think about it.”

“Ice cream’s definitely not melting tonight,” Garrison scoffed. He pointed at the jagged icicles columnar-like and hanging from top to the bottom like iron bars across the bridge. “We couldn’t even cross the thing if we wanted to. It’s completely blocked us out.”

Garrison wrapped his arms around it and couldn’t connect his hands when he hugged the ice column. “It’s frozen solid.”

Redding moved through the grass and tried to walk down the hill, but he kept losing his footing. Everything was clouded, the ground slippery with frost. “I can’t maneuver. I’m calling for help. Maybe we can go to sky view. One of Green County’s choppers can check it out.”

They returned to the vehicle to make the call.

An hour later, still stationed at the bridge, Redding slammed the CB radio back in place. “They say the chopper can’t fly above Anderson Mills. Low visibility—more like no visibility—makes it too dangerous to fly. They may tangle up in trees or power lines, and if they can’t see to land, they’re screwed.”

“S-so what do we do? Are we just going to wait it out?”

“Headquarters wants us to stay up here until more help shows up. They say they’ve sent other patrols into Anderson Mills, but every access is frozen over like this bridge. How do you explain it?”

“How do you explain a serial killer with a quarter-sized brain and no internal organs. This really is way out of our league—anybody’s league.”

“Then I guess we wait, huh?” Redding growled. “I hate this.”

“Maybe it’s a freak ice storm. Global warming, like I said.”

“The temperature change was so sudden, though. It was seventy-one degrees, and then it was thirty something degrees. No, this is fucked up. No one can explain this, and that’s why I want to see the other side of that bridge.”

“You can’t cross it. You said so yourself.”

“I know, I know. We’re trapped outside of Anderson Mills. Whatever the hell’s going on over there, we won’t know anything for awhile.”