Bonechiller

Don’t look for it on the map. This place is so small it doesn’t even get a dot. Once a year they get a new
WELCOME TO
sign put up, but it doesn’t last a week before it’s so full of buckshot holes you can’t even tell the name of the place, and you sure don’t seem welcome.

Nowhere
—officially known as Harvest Cove. Tucked away in the Big Empty that makes up most of Canada. On the shores of Lake Simcoe, the Cove is summer cottage country, or at least it’s trying to be. Only it’s a little too far from anywhere to be popular. Off-season, the population shrinks by two-thirds and the place turns into a ghost town.

Turn off Highway 11, north of Barrie, then follow the road as it goes from paved to gravel to dirt.

If you’re looking for somewhere to hide, this is it.

“Wild!” Pike shouts, his foot on the gas. “We’re gonna die!”

We’re flying down some unnamed backroad in the deep black of the country night. The world through the windshield is a midnight blur lit only by the shaky beam from our one working headlight. Our speed is infinite, unmeasurable by the cracked speedometer on the dash.

It’s freezing out, and this piece of crap’s got no heating. You can see Pike’s breath steaming as he laughs like a lunatic.

“Hope this thing’s got power brakes,” I yell from the back.

Gravel ricochets off the sides of the car like hail.

“What brakes?” Pike fights the shuddering steering wheel. “We’ll stop when we hit something.”

Meet the guys. Pike’s behind the wheel. His little brother Howie’s riding shotgun, feet braced on the dash like that’s going to keep him from going through the windshield
on impact. I’m in back with Ash—technically not a guy, but she still acts like one.

My heart’s ramming against my ribs.

“Buckle up,” Pike calls out.

“There’s no seat belts,” I tell him.

“So, sue the manufacturer. Oh, wait. That’s me.”

Pike’s the mad mechanic who built this monster from the graveyard of dead and mangled cars out by Sunset Speedway, where they have stock-car races and demolition derbies in the summer.

These roads weren’t meant for speed. I’m banging my head off the roof as we’re tossed around like loose change in a dryer. The only thing distracting me is Ash’s hand on my right knee. She’s trying to hang on as we slide around. I’ve got a shiver running up my thigh that’s got nothing to do with the arctic blast outside.

I look over and see Ash laughing in little swallowed gasps. And I know why she’s laughing. Because I can feel it too, that roller-coaster free fall that rips the laughs right out of you.

The car fishtails and we do a full doughnut before stopping in the intersection of two empty roads.

In the sudden quiet, I get a grip on Ash’s hand. She shakes me off and gives me a little backhand punch in the chest. Like I was making a move, like it wasn’t her with a death grip on me.

Pike looks out through the trees at the lights from a building about a hundred yards away.

In the dim interior of the car, the brightest thing is his
red hair, catching some of the shine of the headlight reflecting off the snow. Pike’s got a regulation army haircut like his father’s, just a wide Mohawk strip of red bristle. When the sun catches his ’hawk, he looks like a lit match.

Pike brushes his hand over it now, thinking.

“Perfect. Wait here.” He pulls a pair of leather gloves out of his pocket.

“Bad idea.” Howie’s voice is soft in the nervous hush of the car. “This is a real bad idea.” He’s staring at those lights shining through the trees. “Let’s just go, Pike. Don’t do this. Let’s go.”

“We’ll go, bro. After I’m done.” Pike gets out, letting in a glacial gust. “Kill the headlight, Howie. But keep the motor running.”

The door slams shut, and we watch in silence as he makes his way through the gray skeletons of the bare trees.

Those lights he’s aiming for shine from the windows above the Stony Creek Convenience Store.

Run by an fat old guy named Bill Clayton, who lives in the apartment above the store, the place is on its last legs. Peeling paint, with spiderweb cracks in the corners of the windows and sun-faded signs.

I can’t make out Pike anymore from the shadows.

“What’s he gonna do?” I ask.

A shrug from Ash, a head shake from Howie.

What am I doing here?

All Pike told me on the phone was the guys were going out for a spin, and I was coming. I tried to get out of it, saying it was, like, twenty below outside and I had stuff to do. He told me to grow some balls, they’d be picking me up in
half an hour. I asked who
they
was, and when I heard Ash’s name I said why not. Me and her, we’ve got a thing going. Only she doesn’t know it yet.

Howie leans forward, breathing hard like he might puke any second. The guy’s a walking panic attack.

While we’re waiting, let me tell you why Fat Bill’s got it coming to him.

When I say
fat
, we’re talking close to three hundred pounds of blubber on a five-and-a-half-foot frame. The guy’s a midget whale, with yellow teeth and stained fingers from chain-smoking. And he’s got a thing for young guys.