They Stalk the Night, page 26
“I’m afraid we’ll endanger our village more if we interfere too much. Since I made the pact with the demon, I’ve been bound to it.” Silas gasped and snapped his head toward the area outside the garage.
“What’s wrong?” LeRoy asked his uncle.
Silas said, “It’s coming this way.”
The frightened men unshouldered their rifles.
Sam and LeRoy stood side by side as they looked out the bay door toward the moonlit lot. All appeared calm. The brunt of the storm had moved farther west. Large steel pipes, waiting to be assembled along the pipeline, were stacked on either side of the garage. Fifty yards across a snowfield were several storage sheds and more stacked pipes. Tall pines and spruce trees surrounded the area behind Thornhill’s office building.
Sam and the dozen armed men around him watched and waited.
A screeching howl echoed from the distant forest.
The night fell silent.
Wind shook the evergreen conifers. Snow flew sideways over the treetops. Within seconds, the forest’s border faded as fog sifted between the trees. Like a wave, the white mist engulfed the sheds and pipes and rolled across the field toward the garage.
Sam felt pounding vibrations along the ground beneath his boots. On a wall pegboard inside the garage, mechanic’s tools were shaking. Something rolled off a workbench. The heavy footfalls increased as the fog drew closer. Within it, Sam saw a galloping shadow with horns jutting from the mist. Eyes burned like hot coals.
Sam shouted at his men, “Take cover!”
Everyone retreated into the garage, hiding behind three parked construction trucks, stacked oil drums, and steel columns. Gripping his crossbow, Sam crouched behind a giant tire of a dump truck parked near the open bay door.
The fog drifted into the garage. A subarctic chill blasted against Sam’s face, seeped into his clothes. The bone-cold air made him shiver. As the smoke-thick haze filled the space around the truck, he lost sight of most of the men. He could barely make out the two Skagens, who had taken positions by oil barrels off to his right.
The concrete floor tremored.
Within the mist, Sam glimpsed quick-flash movements as a giant, long-boned body charged on hands and feet through the open bay door. The beast slammed into the dump truck’s front grill. The impact knocked Sam onto his backside. Pain shot from his tailbone up his spine.
Gunshots erupted all around. Men shouted. Within the chaos, the two men to his right fired their rifles up at a looming shadow in the fog.
A long arm swooped down and batted a young Skagen man. His body flew through the air and smacked a wall. Another man kept firing his rifle even as he was lifted off the ground.
Then blood rained down, spattering the floor ten feet from where Sam lay bruised and shaken.
The beast within the fog wreaked havoc, knocking over metal barrels and workbenches. As tools were flung across the floor, Sam rolled beneath the dump truck. Flat on his belly, he covered his head with his hands as wrenches and screwdrivers skidded past him. When the tools finally stopped flying, he remained still beneath the truck. His heart thumped out of control. This was it. He would die of a heart attack under this truck.
Sam sucked in deep breaths to calm his nerves. As the cold concrete floor vibrated with pounding steps, he looked toward his right. Along the dump truck’s passenger side, he spotted large, bony white feet. Each walked on the ball and clawed toes, the arch and heel extended off the ground.
Sam aimed his crossbow and shot an arrow toward the nearest foot’s Achille’s tendon. But the legs moved rapid-fast. Sam cursed when the arrow missed. He lost sight of the predator behind one of the giant tires. Still lying flat on his stomach, he felt the heavy footfalls pounding through the floor. Then the creature stopped somewhere.
Sam looked every which way. Where were the other men? He couldn’t hear them. And his visibility was reduced to almost nothing in the thick white mist that drifted around and under the truck. His shaky hands fumbled to load another arrow into his crossbow. Before he could properly set the bolt, a massive hand swiped beneath the truck.
Sam dropped the arrow and scooted farther beneath the undercarriage until his back pressed against the opposite front tire. The creature’s hand extended toward him, ten-inch claws slashing the air inches from his boots.
Sam yanked the hatchet off his belt and swung it desperately. The blade sliced off fingers.
The beast roared and withdrew its arm. Then it ran toward the back of the garage.
Reports of gunfire erupted. A stray bullet struck one of the dump truck’s back tires and the truck sank slowly, air hissing out into the fog, pressing down on Sam. Breathing heavily, he placed the hatchet back on his belt. He pulled the crossbow’s string back until it was engaged, then loaded another bolt. His sixty-year-old joints complained as he crawled out from under the construction vehicle and got to his feet.
Another flying bullet dinged metal above his head. Keeping low, he crept along the side of the truck, praying one of the wild shots didn’t hit him.
Where the fog was thinner at the back of the garage, Silas stood with his staff. The towering beast stooped over the old man.
Sam became paralyzed with shock. For the first time in ten years, he saw the full monstrosity of the demon in its physical form. Its ten-foot-tall body was emaciated, the skeletal arms, legs, and fingers grotesquely long. Fur had grown over its shoulders and pelvis. Every spine knob and rib bone protruded from cadaver-pale skin so thin that blue veins showed through. Too many horns twisted from the skull and back. Long bone-white hair hung from the giant’s horn-crowned head and down its back. Faded tattoos on the arms were the only traces that this demon-possessed body had once belonged to a man. Not just any man, but Sam’s son.
Ben.
Sam had known since the day his son went missing on Buckhead Hill that the demon had filled Ben with its evil, just as it had Tommy Skagen. Except that back then Sam had failed to destroy Ben’s body in time. Now, it bore no resemblance to Sam’s son.
The creature half circled Silas, snorting at his head. The old man raised a hand holding a stone as he spoke a prayer.
While Silas seemed to hold the giant back with his rune magic, Sam aimed his crossbow with shaky arms, summoning the courage to finally kill his son. The enraged creature turned its head sideways. Sam saw no eyes in the broad skull, only hollow sockets that radiated with white fire.
That’s not Ben anymore.
Even so, the part of Sam that for so many years had hung on to hope that Ben could be saved stubbornly kept him from pulling the trigger. He shouted to Silas, “Send the damned thing back to its hill!” As he watched Silas fight Ben’s demon with prayers, Sam prayed to Odin to finally end the ancient enemy’s reign of terror.
Silas became more animated as he chanted and waved the sacred stone in his fist. He slammed his staff against the floor. The beast roared in his face, then clamped its massive jaws over Silas’s head and shoulders. The giant lifted him off the ground. Devoured his upper body.
A gunshot punched a hole between the thing’s ribs. Its head turned sideways toward LeRoy Skagen, who hid behind a steel pillar. The bear rifle boomed again, punctured the beast’s chest with another silver bullet. The creature stumbled back, grabbing at its wounds.
While LeRoy chambered another round, Sam shot an arrow into the rib cage. The beast released a guttural croak. Its massive jaws dropped what was left of Silas’s body. The beast turned around and growled at Sam, exposing a wide red mouth filled with bear teeth. Its hollow eye sockets blazed with evil so malevolent Sam felt its force push him back.
For a brief moment the wounded creature cocked its head, observing Sam. Its eyes lit up with bright, fiery luminance, as if recognizing who he was.
As he stood mere yards away from the winter creature he’d held countless ceremonies for, Sam’s heart filled with sadness. He loaded another arrow and aimed. “You should have stayed on your mountain.” He fired the silver bolt. As it shot through the air, the beast turned around and the bolt stuck in its back. The beast’s thrashing arms knocked more tools off the back walls.
To Sam’s left, LeRoy raised his rifle and shot again. Another hole opened in the beast’s shoulder. Smoke billowed from the arrow wounds and bullet holes that riddled its upper body. The silver ate through its skin. Its horns swung wildly as the creature shook its head in pain. Then it jumped down on all fours, leaped over Sam, and loped out of the garage.
Sam, LeRoy, and a few men who came out of hiding ran outside, shooting their guns.
The wounded beast disappeared into the fog. As if pulled by a vacuum, the ground cloud rolled backward across the snowfield, past the sheds and stacked pipes, into the forest.
After catching his breath, Sam turned to LeRoy. “Tend to the wounded and collect the bodies of anyone who didn’t make it. You know what to do if someone was turned.”
LeRoy nodded and drew his buck knife. “I’ll take care of it. Where are you going?”
Sam shouldered his crossbow. “To help to save Shelby.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In the woods beyond Shelby’s house, Kujak lay naked on his back in the snow.
The pain of his severed hand barely registered compared to the never-ending hunger that consumed every muscle in his body. He needed to fill the chasm-deep hollow inside him. But he was too weak to hunt.
He shivered violently in the cold darkness, pointed teeth clacking uncontrollably. The ground beneath his back began to tremor. He felt each footfall as the giant approached. Its massive horns snapped off tree limbs. Kujak became aware of the great beast crouched over him. It, too, had been weakened by hunger and injuries. Flesh burned and smoked where arrows and unhealed bullet holes penetrated its rib cage and back.
Since becoming the demon’s servant, Kujak understood its strange ability to endure mortal wounds and suffering. He had welcomed its supernatural powers as a devoted acolyte to this ancient evil. But with its immortality came a burden that was far worse than any human hunger. He wished he could stop his endless desire for meat, but his master’s drive to kill and feed overwhelmed every part of Kujak that had once been human.
The horned beast released a guttural groan and leaned its skeletal face directly over Kujak’s. Eyes of white fire glowed within the bony holes of its skull. Its great jaws opened, and, with a high-pitched scream, its evil spirit poured into Kujak’s mouth.
An arctic chill filled his entire body as the malevolent spirit merged fully with his. The icy heart in his chest swelled, as did the bones of his chest.
Kujak gasped, his senses surging with a magnificent and terrible intensity.
When the creature’s old body was completely abandoned, the giant skeleton broke apart and collapsed into the snow.
Kujak could see much more clearly now, with nocturnal vision that caught every detail of the night woods. He felt the evil with him inside his mind and body. Kujak was still too weak to stand. Every muscle, tendon, and nerve throbbed as his body went through the change again. Skin tore away where his bones stretched to the limits of his frozen flesh. His lower jaw lengthened, as did his tongue. His severed hand began to regenerate, new finger bones growing out of the stump. A hide of dark fur sprouted across his shoulders and back, and a pelt grew over his pelvis.
The demon within Kujak screamed out and arched his back as several twisted bones grew out of his skull. He felt the sharp ends. Not bones, horns.
* * *
Shelby made it inside the radio room with her kids. She locked the attic’s side door, then dead-bolted the main door to make sure Kujak didn’t come in through the hidden staircase. Just to be sure, she checked the dormer window locks. When she felt her radio room was secure, she hugged Justin, thankful he was alive. He kept crying like he sometimes did after waking from a nightmare. Only this time the bogeyman who chased him was real.
Shelby opened a hidden compartment in the wall and pulled out a small gun safe. Her trembling fingers punched in the code to unlock it, then retrieved her semiautomatic handgun, an LC9 Ruger 9mm. She snapped in the loaded magazine, chambered a bullet. She had eight rounds total.
Justin was shivering so bad his teeth were chattering.
She turned on a heater she kept near her desk and welcomed the orange glow of warmth. She rubbed her son’s cold hands. Then she warmed Olivia’s hands.
Lights shined on the dormer windows. Shelby rushed to the center window. Headlights came down the driveway, approaching the house. The sheriff was here. Thank god. Using her binoculars, she made out Hoyt and Sawasky in the front seat. Her relief dwindled when she realized theirs was the only police car in sight. Where were the rest of the sheriff’s deputies, the state police? She had told the 911 dispatcher to send a force.
Shelby was afraid for Hoyt and Sawasky, terrified that the two men wouldn’t be enough to save her family. She was tempted to make a run for their car and get her and the kids the hell out of here, but knew they’d never make it. She imagined Kujak hiding somewhere in the darkness, a predator waiting for its prey.
The radio room was the best place to hide. The narrow stairway leading from the second floor to the finished-out attic room was concealed behind a retractable wall. Yet, even locked inside her safe room, she felt vulnerable. Olivia was squirming and making noise, and Justin was constantly clinging to Shelby. If Kujak somehow got into this room, she needed to be ready to fight.
Embedded in one wall was a soundproof booth she used for recording voiceovers for radio spots. She put Justin and Olivia inside the foam-padded closet and gave her son a small flashlight.
Shelby placed her hands on Justin’s face. “I need you and Olivia to hide in here.”
“Don’t go!” he pleaded. “The bogeyman will get us!”
“Mommy’s going to protect you. Stay inside this closet and don’t make a sound. Not a peep. Can you be my little man and watch over your sister?”
Justin nodded and pulled Olivia’s baby carrier closer to him. Shelby left her daughter strapped in. She closed the booth’s door. It scared her to death to leave her babies in there, but it was the safest place for now. The padded walls would absorb Olivia’s crying.
Their semi-deafness and need to stay quiet put them at a disadvantage. The attic’s floor creaked badly and she remembered that every footstep could be heard downstairs.
Then Shelby got an idea.
She went to her computer and pulled up her next shift’s song playlist – all holiday-themed instrumentals. She hit play, starting with Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s ‘Carol of the Bells.’ She turned up the symphony music loud so that it blared through every downstairs speaker in the house. If she couldn’t hear Kujak, then she didn’t want him to hear her either.
* * *
The bass rhythm of music coming from the house brought Kujak back to awareness. When the pain finally subsided, he lay in the snow, breathing heavily. His regenerated hand was fully formed now. At the tips of both hands, the claws extended to twelve-inch curved blades. Slowly, his strength was coming back. Not fully, but enough to lift his head. With a heightened sense of smell, he sniffed the crisp, pine air, detected the musk and meat of prey. A few yards away, a curious snow fox cautiously approached.
Kujak’s hunger intensified. The beast within him released a shriek that echoed through the forest. The fox tried to run, but Kujak’s claws slashed its ribs. Kujak had to eat while his prey remained viable.
He crawled on his belly toward the wounded animal. The fox stared helplessly, its fearful eyes turning white. It yipped. Its head shook violently. A ripple of bones moved beneath its white fur. Before the fox fully turned, Kujak pounced.
* * *
After parking a short distance from Shelby’s snow-buried SUV, Sheriff Hoyt and Sawasky approached the Painter house on foot through the whipping snowstorm. The lodge house was mostly dark, save for a string of Christmas lights that bordered the roof and a few lights downstairs. Falling snow covered the roof. Smoke puffed out of the chimney. Inside the house, music was thumping with a heavy bass. It sounded like a holiday party, only there were no people visible. Hoyt could tell by several large footprints in the snow and shattered front windows that Kujak had already broken in.
Hoyt braced himself for the bodies they’d find inside. Shelby and her two small children had probably been easy kills. Deep down he was hoping Kujak already got to Josh Painter’s family. It would save him and Sawasky the trouble of having to get rid of Shelby themselves. Last thing Hoyt wanted to do was murder a young mother. But Josh’s wife was the last loose end.
The sheriff struggled with what to do about her son, Justin, and the baby. The idea of killing children was abhorrent. Perhaps the baby girl could be spared, but the boy was old enough to talk about what his daddy did for work. If it came down to having to silence the boy, Hoyt wouldn’t need to do the dark deed himself. He’d take the kid out into the woods shirtless and barefoot and let the freezing weather end the problem.
Please, let them be dead.
That hope sank when a blinking light flashed three times in the third story’s dormer window. It briefly illuminated Shelby’s face. She waved frantically. Hoyt tapped Sawasky’s arm and pointed toward the signals before the window went dark again. Josh’s wife was still alive, but where the hell was Kujak?
From the front yard, the two lawmen studied the snowy landscape. The drifting fog made seeing beyond twenty yards difficult. The back portion of the Painters’ multi-acre lot contained their rock-and-wood lodge house and three other buildings: a pair of metal sheds and the red barn, all piled high with snow.
Sawasky aimed his rifle and peered through the scope.
Hoyt looked in the same direction, toward the dense woods behind the barn. The pine branches shook wildly in the constant gusts. The conifers’ treetops swayed.
“What’s wrong?” LeRoy asked his uncle.
Silas said, “It’s coming this way.”
The frightened men unshouldered their rifles.
Sam and LeRoy stood side by side as they looked out the bay door toward the moonlit lot. All appeared calm. The brunt of the storm had moved farther west. Large steel pipes, waiting to be assembled along the pipeline, were stacked on either side of the garage. Fifty yards across a snowfield were several storage sheds and more stacked pipes. Tall pines and spruce trees surrounded the area behind Thornhill’s office building.
Sam and the dozen armed men around him watched and waited.
A screeching howl echoed from the distant forest.
The night fell silent.
Wind shook the evergreen conifers. Snow flew sideways over the treetops. Within seconds, the forest’s border faded as fog sifted between the trees. Like a wave, the white mist engulfed the sheds and pipes and rolled across the field toward the garage.
Sam felt pounding vibrations along the ground beneath his boots. On a wall pegboard inside the garage, mechanic’s tools were shaking. Something rolled off a workbench. The heavy footfalls increased as the fog drew closer. Within it, Sam saw a galloping shadow with horns jutting from the mist. Eyes burned like hot coals.
Sam shouted at his men, “Take cover!”
Everyone retreated into the garage, hiding behind three parked construction trucks, stacked oil drums, and steel columns. Gripping his crossbow, Sam crouched behind a giant tire of a dump truck parked near the open bay door.
The fog drifted into the garage. A subarctic chill blasted against Sam’s face, seeped into his clothes. The bone-cold air made him shiver. As the smoke-thick haze filled the space around the truck, he lost sight of most of the men. He could barely make out the two Skagens, who had taken positions by oil barrels off to his right.
The concrete floor tremored.
Within the mist, Sam glimpsed quick-flash movements as a giant, long-boned body charged on hands and feet through the open bay door. The beast slammed into the dump truck’s front grill. The impact knocked Sam onto his backside. Pain shot from his tailbone up his spine.
Gunshots erupted all around. Men shouted. Within the chaos, the two men to his right fired their rifles up at a looming shadow in the fog.
A long arm swooped down and batted a young Skagen man. His body flew through the air and smacked a wall. Another man kept firing his rifle even as he was lifted off the ground.
Then blood rained down, spattering the floor ten feet from where Sam lay bruised and shaken.
The beast within the fog wreaked havoc, knocking over metal barrels and workbenches. As tools were flung across the floor, Sam rolled beneath the dump truck. Flat on his belly, he covered his head with his hands as wrenches and screwdrivers skidded past him. When the tools finally stopped flying, he remained still beneath the truck. His heart thumped out of control. This was it. He would die of a heart attack under this truck.
Sam sucked in deep breaths to calm his nerves. As the cold concrete floor vibrated with pounding steps, he looked toward his right. Along the dump truck’s passenger side, he spotted large, bony white feet. Each walked on the ball and clawed toes, the arch and heel extended off the ground.
Sam aimed his crossbow and shot an arrow toward the nearest foot’s Achille’s tendon. But the legs moved rapid-fast. Sam cursed when the arrow missed. He lost sight of the predator behind one of the giant tires. Still lying flat on his stomach, he felt the heavy footfalls pounding through the floor. Then the creature stopped somewhere.
Sam looked every which way. Where were the other men? He couldn’t hear them. And his visibility was reduced to almost nothing in the thick white mist that drifted around and under the truck. His shaky hands fumbled to load another arrow into his crossbow. Before he could properly set the bolt, a massive hand swiped beneath the truck.
Sam dropped the arrow and scooted farther beneath the undercarriage until his back pressed against the opposite front tire. The creature’s hand extended toward him, ten-inch claws slashing the air inches from his boots.
Sam yanked the hatchet off his belt and swung it desperately. The blade sliced off fingers.
The beast roared and withdrew its arm. Then it ran toward the back of the garage.
Reports of gunfire erupted. A stray bullet struck one of the dump truck’s back tires and the truck sank slowly, air hissing out into the fog, pressing down on Sam. Breathing heavily, he placed the hatchet back on his belt. He pulled the crossbow’s string back until it was engaged, then loaded another bolt. His sixty-year-old joints complained as he crawled out from under the construction vehicle and got to his feet.
Another flying bullet dinged metal above his head. Keeping low, he crept along the side of the truck, praying one of the wild shots didn’t hit him.
Where the fog was thinner at the back of the garage, Silas stood with his staff. The towering beast stooped over the old man.
Sam became paralyzed with shock. For the first time in ten years, he saw the full monstrosity of the demon in its physical form. Its ten-foot-tall body was emaciated, the skeletal arms, legs, and fingers grotesquely long. Fur had grown over its shoulders and pelvis. Every spine knob and rib bone protruded from cadaver-pale skin so thin that blue veins showed through. Too many horns twisted from the skull and back. Long bone-white hair hung from the giant’s horn-crowned head and down its back. Faded tattoos on the arms were the only traces that this demon-possessed body had once belonged to a man. Not just any man, but Sam’s son.
Ben.
Sam had known since the day his son went missing on Buckhead Hill that the demon had filled Ben with its evil, just as it had Tommy Skagen. Except that back then Sam had failed to destroy Ben’s body in time. Now, it bore no resemblance to Sam’s son.
The creature half circled Silas, snorting at his head. The old man raised a hand holding a stone as he spoke a prayer.
While Silas seemed to hold the giant back with his rune magic, Sam aimed his crossbow with shaky arms, summoning the courage to finally kill his son. The enraged creature turned its head sideways. Sam saw no eyes in the broad skull, only hollow sockets that radiated with white fire.
That’s not Ben anymore.
Even so, the part of Sam that for so many years had hung on to hope that Ben could be saved stubbornly kept him from pulling the trigger. He shouted to Silas, “Send the damned thing back to its hill!” As he watched Silas fight Ben’s demon with prayers, Sam prayed to Odin to finally end the ancient enemy’s reign of terror.
Silas became more animated as he chanted and waved the sacred stone in his fist. He slammed his staff against the floor. The beast roared in his face, then clamped its massive jaws over Silas’s head and shoulders. The giant lifted him off the ground. Devoured his upper body.
A gunshot punched a hole between the thing’s ribs. Its head turned sideways toward LeRoy Skagen, who hid behind a steel pillar. The bear rifle boomed again, punctured the beast’s chest with another silver bullet. The creature stumbled back, grabbing at its wounds.
While LeRoy chambered another round, Sam shot an arrow into the rib cage. The beast released a guttural croak. Its massive jaws dropped what was left of Silas’s body. The beast turned around and growled at Sam, exposing a wide red mouth filled with bear teeth. Its hollow eye sockets blazed with evil so malevolent Sam felt its force push him back.
For a brief moment the wounded creature cocked its head, observing Sam. Its eyes lit up with bright, fiery luminance, as if recognizing who he was.
As he stood mere yards away from the winter creature he’d held countless ceremonies for, Sam’s heart filled with sadness. He loaded another arrow and aimed. “You should have stayed on your mountain.” He fired the silver bolt. As it shot through the air, the beast turned around and the bolt stuck in its back. The beast’s thrashing arms knocked more tools off the back walls.
To Sam’s left, LeRoy raised his rifle and shot again. Another hole opened in the beast’s shoulder. Smoke billowed from the arrow wounds and bullet holes that riddled its upper body. The silver ate through its skin. Its horns swung wildly as the creature shook its head in pain. Then it jumped down on all fours, leaped over Sam, and loped out of the garage.
Sam, LeRoy, and a few men who came out of hiding ran outside, shooting their guns.
The wounded beast disappeared into the fog. As if pulled by a vacuum, the ground cloud rolled backward across the snowfield, past the sheds and stacked pipes, into the forest.
After catching his breath, Sam turned to LeRoy. “Tend to the wounded and collect the bodies of anyone who didn’t make it. You know what to do if someone was turned.”
LeRoy nodded and drew his buck knife. “I’ll take care of it. Where are you going?”
Sam shouldered his crossbow. “To help to save Shelby.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In the woods beyond Shelby’s house, Kujak lay naked on his back in the snow.
The pain of his severed hand barely registered compared to the never-ending hunger that consumed every muscle in his body. He needed to fill the chasm-deep hollow inside him. But he was too weak to hunt.
He shivered violently in the cold darkness, pointed teeth clacking uncontrollably. The ground beneath his back began to tremor. He felt each footfall as the giant approached. Its massive horns snapped off tree limbs. Kujak became aware of the great beast crouched over him. It, too, had been weakened by hunger and injuries. Flesh burned and smoked where arrows and unhealed bullet holes penetrated its rib cage and back.
Since becoming the demon’s servant, Kujak understood its strange ability to endure mortal wounds and suffering. He had welcomed its supernatural powers as a devoted acolyte to this ancient evil. But with its immortality came a burden that was far worse than any human hunger. He wished he could stop his endless desire for meat, but his master’s drive to kill and feed overwhelmed every part of Kujak that had once been human.
The horned beast released a guttural groan and leaned its skeletal face directly over Kujak’s. Eyes of white fire glowed within the bony holes of its skull. Its great jaws opened, and, with a high-pitched scream, its evil spirit poured into Kujak’s mouth.
An arctic chill filled his entire body as the malevolent spirit merged fully with his. The icy heart in his chest swelled, as did the bones of his chest.
Kujak gasped, his senses surging with a magnificent and terrible intensity.
When the creature’s old body was completely abandoned, the giant skeleton broke apart and collapsed into the snow.
Kujak could see much more clearly now, with nocturnal vision that caught every detail of the night woods. He felt the evil with him inside his mind and body. Kujak was still too weak to stand. Every muscle, tendon, and nerve throbbed as his body went through the change again. Skin tore away where his bones stretched to the limits of his frozen flesh. His lower jaw lengthened, as did his tongue. His severed hand began to regenerate, new finger bones growing out of the stump. A hide of dark fur sprouted across his shoulders and back, and a pelt grew over his pelvis.
The demon within Kujak screamed out and arched his back as several twisted bones grew out of his skull. He felt the sharp ends. Not bones, horns.
* * *
Shelby made it inside the radio room with her kids. She locked the attic’s side door, then dead-bolted the main door to make sure Kujak didn’t come in through the hidden staircase. Just to be sure, she checked the dormer window locks. When she felt her radio room was secure, she hugged Justin, thankful he was alive. He kept crying like he sometimes did after waking from a nightmare. Only this time the bogeyman who chased him was real.
Shelby opened a hidden compartment in the wall and pulled out a small gun safe. Her trembling fingers punched in the code to unlock it, then retrieved her semiautomatic handgun, an LC9 Ruger 9mm. She snapped in the loaded magazine, chambered a bullet. She had eight rounds total.
Justin was shivering so bad his teeth were chattering.
She turned on a heater she kept near her desk and welcomed the orange glow of warmth. She rubbed her son’s cold hands. Then she warmed Olivia’s hands.
Lights shined on the dormer windows. Shelby rushed to the center window. Headlights came down the driveway, approaching the house. The sheriff was here. Thank god. Using her binoculars, she made out Hoyt and Sawasky in the front seat. Her relief dwindled when she realized theirs was the only police car in sight. Where were the rest of the sheriff’s deputies, the state police? She had told the 911 dispatcher to send a force.
Shelby was afraid for Hoyt and Sawasky, terrified that the two men wouldn’t be enough to save her family. She was tempted to make a run for their car and get her and the kids the hell out of here, but knew they’d never make it. She imagined Kujak hiding somewhere in the darkness, a predator waiting for its prey.
The radio room was the best place to hide. The narrow stairway leading from the second floor to the finished-out attic room was concealed behind a retractable wall. Yet, even locked inside her safe room, she felt vulnerable. Olivia was squirming and making noise, and Justin was constantly clinging to Shelby. If Kujak somehow got into this room, she needed to be ready to fight.
Embedded in one wall was a soundproof booth she used for recording voiceovers for radio spots. She put Justin and Olivia inside the foam-padded closet and gave her son a small flashlight.
Shelby placed her hands on Justin’s face. “I need you and Olivia to hide in here.”
“Don’t go!” he pleaded. “The bogeyman will get us!”
“Mommy’s going to protect you. Stay inside this closet and don’t make a sound. Not a peep. Can you be my little man and watch over your sister?”
Justin nodded and pulled Olivia’s baby carrier closer to him. Shelby left her daughter strapped in. She closed the booth’s door. It scared her to death to leave her babies in there, but it was the safest place for now. The padded walls would absorb Olivia’s crying.
Their semi-deafness and need to stay quiet put them at a disadvantage. The attic’s floor creaked badly and she remembered that every footstep could be heard downstairs.
Then Shelby got an idea.
She went to her computer and pulled up her next shift’s song playlist – all holiday-themed instrumentals. She hit play, starting with Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s ‘Carol of the Bells.’ She turned up the symphony music loud so that it blared through every downstairs speaker in the house. If she couldn’t hear Kujak, then she didn’t want him to hear her either.
* * *
The bass rhythm of music coming from the house brought Kujak back to awareness. When the pain finally subsided, he lay in the snow, breathing heavily. His regenerated hand was fully formed now. At the tips of both hands, the claws extended to twelve-inch curved blades. Slowly, his strength was coming back. Not fully, but enough to lift his head. With a heightened sense of smell, he sniffed the crisp, pine air, detected the musk and meat of prey. A few yards away, a curious snow fox cautiously approached.
Kujak’s hunger intensified. The beast within him released a shriek that echoed through the forest. The fox tried to run, but Kujak’s claws slashed its ribs. Kujak had to eat while his prey remained viable.
He crawled on his belly toward the wounded animal. The fox stared helplessly, its fearful eyes turning white. It yipped. Its head shook violently. A ripple of bones moved beneath its white fur. Before the fox fully turned, Kujak pounced.
* * *
After parking a short distance from Shelby’s snow-buried SUV, Sheriff Hoyt and Sawasky approached the Painter house on foot through the whipping snowstorm. The lodge house was mostly dark, save for a string of Christmas lights that bordered the roof and a few lights downstairs. Falling snow covered the roof. Smoke puffed out of the chimney. Inside the house, music was thumping with a heavy bass. It sounded like a holiday party, only there were no people visible. Hoyt could tell by several large footprints in the snow and shattered front windows that Kujak had already broken in.
Hoyt braced himself for the bodies they’d find inside. Shelby and her two small children had probably been easy kills. Deep down he was hoping Kujak already got to Josh Painter’s family. It would save him and Sawasky the trouble of having to get rid of Shelby themselves. Last thing Hoyt wanted to do was murder a young mother. But Josh’s wife was the last loose end.
The sheriff struggled with what to do about her son, Justin, and the baby. The idea of killing children was abhorrent. Perhaps the baby girl could be spared, but the boy was old enough to talk about what his daddy did for work. If it came down to having to silence the boy, Hoyt wouldn’t need to do the dark deed himself. He’d take the kid out into the woods shirtless and barefoot and let the freezing weather end the problem.
Please, let them be dead.
That hope sank when a blinking light flashed three times in the third story’s dormer window. It briefly illuminated Shelby’s face. She waved frantically. Hoyt tapped Sawasky’s arm and pointed toward the signals before the window went dark again. Josh’s wife was still alive, but where the hell was Kujak?
From the front yard, the two lawmen studied the snowy landscape. The drifting fog made seeing beyond twenty yards difficult. The back portion of the Painters’ multi-acre lot contained their rock-and-wood lodge house and three other buildings: a pair of metal sheds and the red barn, all piled high with snow.
Sawasky aimed his rifle and peered through the scope.
Hoyt looked in the same direction, toward the dense woods behind the barn. The pine branches shook wildly in the constant gusts. The conifers’ treetops swayed.
