Chills, page 14
He pulled his collar up to his throat, preparing to make his way through the snow to his car. Even in the open, where the wind was sweeping the snow across the parking lot with a loud, tearing hiss, it was already almost up to his knees.
There’s no way you’re gonna make it, he thought.
Even as he thought that, he was sure that, beneath the howling of the wind, he heard a voice not his own say the exact same thing.
“There’s no way you’re gonna make it.”
The chill wound deeper into his being as he paused and looked around to see if anyone else was foolish enough to be out here. The wind-swept parking lot certainly looked empty, but he couldn’t ignore the feeling that somewhere close by, out of sight, someone was watching him.
The wind came in short, hard gusts that hit him like unseen fists and threatened to knock him over. His eyes were narrowed to slits as he turned around and glanced back at the stockroom door. A narrow crack of yellow light spilled out from inside the backroom, broken by the silhouette of Jared’s head and shoulders. Beneath the harsh sound of the wind, he thought heard the soft chuffing sound of laughter and had no doubt that Jared was laughing at him for his foolishness.
I can’t let him see this get the best of me, Tyson thought as he lowered his head and started across the parking lot to his car. As he was struggling through the knee-deep snow, he thought heard something other than his own chuffing breath.
Was that a voice?
Did someone say something to him?
He stopped for a moment and listened, but there was no way he could make out anything over the howling of the storm.
Fuck it, he decided as he leaned forward and shouldered his way into the teeth of the storm. It was like walking through a surging tide that dragged his legs backward at the same time the wind was pushing his upper body forward. Every time the wind gusted, it took his breath away. He took in raw, ragged gulps of air. It wasn’t like he was wading through the tide; he was drowning in it. His eyes hurt from the stinging snowflakes that lashed at him no matter how hard he tried to protect his face.
Jesus, you could die out here, he thought, but he wasn’t going to give up and turn back…not yet.
Keeping his head down, he forged on as the heavy, wet snow pelted him. Before he was halfway to his car, he was panting so heavily he had to stop and, sheltering his face with his gloved hands, tried to take slow, steady breaths. Sweat was running down his back inside his shirt. It felt like icy, tickling fingers. When he looked back at the store, he couldn’t tell if the door was still open or not. All he saw was a solid wall of blackness. Someone, probably Bessie, must have made Jared close it.
“Glad you got my back, you cock sucker,” Tyson said even though his words were stuffed back down his throat by the wind.
Somehow…miraculously…he made it to his car. The streetlight lit the immediate area with a ghastly purple glow. For a panicked instant, he thought he had picked the wrong car. There was no way this could be his car beneath the snow. He looked around and didn’t see any other cars near this one, though, so it had to be the right one. His heart was pounding fast and hard in his neck as he braced himself with one hand on the doorframe and, stretching out his other arm, started scooping snow off the windshield. The wind quickly whisked the snow away and blew more onto the exposed glass, but peering inside, he was reassured when he saw the dashboard covered with maps, receipts, and food wrappers.
At least he had the right car.
No matter how fast he cleared away the snow, though, fresh snow accumulated fast enough to defeat his efforts. Frustrated, he worked hard, clearing enough snow away from the car door so he could unlock it and try to open it. Like the backroom door, the edge of the car door plowed so much snow it was almost impossible to get the door open wide enough so he could squeeze inside. Muttering curses under his breath, he twisted and angled his body this way and that until, finally, he fit through the opening. He plunked down onto the front seat, letting out a yelp when the right side of his rib cage banged against the steering wheel.
“Cock sucker!” he said with a snarl as he pulled the door shut. He fit the key into the ignition and, after settling himself into the seat, sat there for a few seconds, panting as the wind and snow hammered the car. After making sure the rearview mirror was adjusted—for all the good it was going to do him—he gripped the key and turned it.
The engine cranked, slowly. The solenoid clicked like a spinning ratchet, but it didn’t catch. He eased off the key and heaved a heavy sigh that came out as a huge puff of steam that frosted the inside of the windshield. Already, he could barely see out front. He was worried that, instead of sweeping the snow away, he would burn out his wiper motor when he switched them on. After counting slowly to ten, he tried the ignition again.
And, once again, the engine cranked and clicked frantically but failed to catch.
“Come on, you mother-fuckin’ cock sucker! Come on!”
The grinding engine was starting to lose power, and Tyson realized that all he was doing was running down his already weak battery. Losing hope, he stopped turning the key and sat back against the cold seat. His temples were pounding as he clenched his right hand into a fist and punched the dashboard.
“Fuckin’ great,” he said as he slumped back in the car seat. He dropped his head and shook it from side to side. Fuckin’ Jared was right… He wasn’t even going to make it out of the parking lot.
He tried the key a few more times, and on each try, the clicking, grinding sound of the engine got slower and slower until it stopped altogether.
Might as well finish the motherfucker off, he thought grimly, seeing a call to AAA in his future, as soon as this damned storm was over. At this point, he didn’t care if he didn’t see his car again until the spring thaw.
“Worthless piece of shit,” he muttered, his breath fogging in the dark.
After a minute or two to compose himself—and get ready for the direct blast of the blizzard again—he snapped the door open. He pushed against it with his left shoulder, but the door quickly fetched up on the accumulated pile of snow it plowed up. Frustrated, he twisted his body around, leaned back on the front seat, and placed both of his feet on the door panel. With a near-animal howl, he pushed for all he was worth until, slowly, the car door opened enough for him to get out. He didn’t mind the snow and wind that swirled into his car. His teeth were chattering wildly, and all he could think about was that he had to get back to the store and face Jared’s scorn. He sure as hell wasn’t going to spend the rest of the night out here in his car.
Pulling his collar up to his ears and hunching his shoulders, he retraced his steps—already obliterated by the wind—across the parking lot to the back entrance to the store. He was walking directly into the wind, now, so the storm was even worse. The wind shrieked and buffeted him as he walked into it. The snow was blowing nearly horizontally, swirling in little tornado funnels. It was a desperate struggle, and it wasn’t long before he started wondering if, in these whiteout conditions, he was even headed in the right direction. He felt like he was wandering in a cold, howling voice.
It certainly seemed to take longer than he thought it should to get back to the short alleyway leading to the service door. For the longest time, he couldn’t even see it. Everything around him was darkness except for the hazy glow of streetlights, floating above him. For all he knew, he was moving away from the mall and heading out to the highway.
If he fell now, he’d be scooped up by a plow when they cleared the mall parking lot and jammed into a pile of snow. They wouldn’t find his body until the spring thaw came.
But he kept forging his way ahead. He had to. And all he could do was hope he wasn’t walking around in circles. As snow blasted him, the wind made a cacophony of sounds—whistling, creaking, hissing, crackling, and…and talking?
He wasn’t sure when he became aware of it, but at some point between his car and the store, he realized that he could hear people talking. He couldn’t make out anything they were saying or even if they were talking to him or each other. It sounded more like he had picked up a stray radio signal and was cutting in on the middle of a conversation that was already going on.
He stopped in his tracks and listened, trying to convince himself that this was an illusion…an auditory hallucination made by the blowing snow. As he strained to hear the voices, however, they faded away or were masked by the other sounds the wind was making.
Tyson looked around, knowing it was insane to expect to see anyone out here. He was insane to be out here, but as he leaned forward and peered into the maelstrom of snow, he was positive he could discern two…no, three dark figures, hovering just beyond reach of one of the overhead streetlights.
“Hello?” he called out, waving his arm over his head. His voice was curiously flattened by the storm and pushed back at him like he was shouting into fluffy pillow.
He got no reply.
Not even an echo.
Of course there was no answer.
He was the only person stupid enough to be out here on a night like this.
With renewed determination, he struck out again, watching carefully to see if he crossed his own tracks even though the wind was blowing hard enough to erase them as soon as he made them.
At last, after what seemed an eternity, the dark, looming hulk of the mall—at least he thought it was the mall—appeared through the snow. He heaved a sigh of relief when he realized that he had lucked out. Through luck or skill, he was headed straight for the short alleyway that led to the storeroom door.
Finally…something’s worked out in my favor, he thought.
The knee-deep snow tugged at his legs, trying to trip him, but he redoubled his exertions until he saw the dark rectangle of the door straight ahead.
He pushed forward, but looking down, he saw some curious mounds in the snow. His first thought was that they were impossible, that the wind was blowing so strong it couldn’t have made rounded mounds like this unless there was something on the ground.
Could someone else have been out here and fallen down, only to get covered over by snow?
He paused and stared at the rounded lumps on the ground. The shifting snow gave them the illusion of motion. He recalled seeing a film about how Huskies hunkered down in the snow and slept through the coldest Arctic night. As much as he knew it was impossible, he was suddenly convinced there was, indeed, someone—maybe more than one person—buried under the snow.
Was that who he had heard calling just moments before?
He took a few steps closer, but he tripped over something under the snow or his own damned feet, and pitched face-first into the snow. A freezing white wave crashed over him, and for a timeless moment, he felt like he had fallen overboard into a raging ocean.
Down…down…down he went, feeling his weight pull him under even as the snow whisked over him, burying him deeper. His breath burned in his lungs, and he was afraid to inhale, knowing he would draw in nothing but snow that would freeze and drown him even faster.
His arms and legs strained to move like he was swimming, but he felt as though he was encased in rapidly drying cement. He thrashed wildly but, if anything, his movements only served to drive him deeper down into the frigid white emptiness.
I’m gonna die… I’m gonna die, he thought as panic gripped him. A wall of blackness rose in front of him, and he knew that, the closer he got to it—or it got to him—the closer he was to being dead.
With near superhuman effort, he resisted the weight pressing down on him and, with a wild scream, thrust himself forward and up until he broke the surface of the snow. The wind tore at his face, numbing it as he let loose a wild scream.
Somehow, he managed to get back onto his feet again, but he was so exhausted, the night and the storm and his efforts to get back to the store had all taken on a hallucinatory aspect. Although the streetlights were only a short distance behind him, they glowed with a sparkling iridescence that shot out piercing spikes of light bright enough to hurt his eyes. The shadows in front of him and all around him were ink dark, and they appeared to be shifting…swaying around him like wild dancers, circling him and gradually closing in on him.
At first, he didn’t believe that he was looking at people. The dark outline looked like swirls and eddies made by snow and wind, but before long, the shapes took on sharper characteristics, and he clearly saw people—three of them—moving crazily around him with their arms outstretched as if to catch or embrace him.
“No…” Tyson said. His voice was lost inside shrieking storm.
He turned toward the stockroom door and redoubled his efforts to get to it, but suddenly, from out of the storm, hands reached for him, grabbing at him…holding him…tugging at his arms and shoulders…clasping him by the throat…and pulling at his legs, trying to weaken him, to buckle his knees and send him back down into the snowy darkness.
But he wasn’t going to give up.
He was filled with a frantic drive to survive and not let these people claim him, whoever they were and however they had come to be out here in the raging storm, seemingly unaffected by the powerful wind and cold.
The dark rectangle of the door appeared to be sliding incrementally closer, but certainly not fast enough, considering the effort he was expending. His lungs and throat were seared by the cold with every breath he took. His heart was pounding inside his head like a hammer on an anvil. His arms…his legs…every muscle in his body vibrated like tuning forks, but he was determined to make it…
He had to make it.
Tyson was barely conscious when he pitched forward and slammed into the door. His body hit hard enough to make the steel door thump like a drum. The blow stunned him, and when he fell, he landed on his back. The pile of snow outside the door was deep enough to cushion his fall, so he felt no pain, only that he was sinking slowly again. The wind whistled shrilly and sounded like a teakettle on the boil. When he looked up, he noticed a dense array of icicles lining the edge of the store roof. They looked like the top tooth-lined jaw of some gigantic creature that had arisen from the snowy depths and was poised to devour him.
Tyson was fading fast, and he had suddenly lost the will to survive.
It was all over.
It would have been much easier simply to relax and let the cold consume him. He was drifting further and further away, and the further away he got, the more relaxed and at peace he felt. A serene peace suffused him, but then something amazing happened.
A wedge of warm, lemon light burst across his vision. It was frightening in its intensity, and it startled him back to the horror of what was happening to him. The glow pushed back the impenetrable night, and he was barely conscious of what he was doing as he reached up to it with trembling hands.
Go to the light, a voice that might have been his own thoughts whispered softly to him.
All he wanted was rest and freedom from the stress and worry and misery. He wanted the pain and the intense cold to end. If moving into the light would obliterate all of that, then he was willing to let himself go.
“Get the fuck in here!”
The voice split the night like a gunshot.
The glow of light suddenly dimmed, and a figure as sharp and black as the night loomed over him. He felt something hard and cold wrap around his wrist and start tugging him, and he was vaguely aware of other figures gathered behind the one that was leaning over him and pulling his arm so hard it hurt.
“What the…what the fuck are you doing?” he managed to say as the tugging got stronger and became more painful.
“Trying to save your black ass, is what I’m doing,” the voice said. This time, Tyson recognized it.
It was Jared’s voice.
Tyson strained to lift his head, and as his vision cleared, he realized that he had fallen in front of the door. The glowing light was spilling out from the backroom, and the figures blocking it were the other workers, crowding in the doorway to see what was going on and to help if they could.
“You’re fucking insane,” Tyson said weakly.
“No. You,” Jared said as he slid his hands under Tyson’s arms and settled them in his armpits. “You’re the insane one. I knew you wouldn’t make it.”
“Fuck you… I would’ve…if my goddamned car had started.”
Tyson kicked with his feet with an awkward backward crawl as he tried to help Jared drag him on his back across the snow to the opened doorway. He stared blankly at the blowing snow, and just before they entered the door, he looked up.
The row of icicles glistened in the night, and once again, Tyson thought how much they looked like the top row of teeth lining the jaws of some huge beast. Jared was already inside the store, pulling Tyson along behind him when a sudden gust of wind slammed into the side of the building.
Tyson heard the loud crack of the ice. His eyes were wide and staring upward when he saw one of the biggest icicles snap free and begin to fall. A shrill whistle filled the night as it dropped down, point-first, like a spear.
And like a spear, it hit Tyson squarely in the chest, its weight driving it like a wooden stake through his leather jacket and into his heart. He sagged in Jared’s arms, his body feeling like a sack of grain, and then he coughed—once—and was dimly aware of the warm wash of blood that shot out of his mouth and nose.
Then he was falling with a sudden, sickening plunge into darkness much deeper even than the snowstorm that raged all around him.
And then he was gone.
~ 33 ~
Snow whisked into the stockroom as Jared dragged Tyson’s lifeless body all the way through the door. The top of the icicle was sticking straight up, and a wide swatch of blood was seeping from Tyson’s chest, running from his leather jacket onto the floor. When it got on Jared’s hands, it made it difficult for him to keep his grip on the slippery leather. Ashley let out a scream as Meg rushed forward and started pulling the door shut. The wind was blowing hard, and the snow was piling up fast enough that she was having trouble getting it closed.
