Bonechiller (13 page)

We catch the elevator up to the third floor and run into Howie’s mom in the hallway. She looks tired.

“Hi, guys. I’m just on my way out for a cigarette break. Howie woke up a little while ago. He’s getting some color back. Don’t wear him out.”

“We won’t,” Ash says.

Howie’s lights are on, and he’s sitting up in bed with a food tray in his lap.

“Hey, Howie,” Ash says. “Back from the dead?”

“Halfway back.” He gives her a weak smile.

Pike’s slouched in his chair, blinking bloodshot eyes at us.

“Thawed out yet?” Ash grabs another chair and drags it over by the bed. “You look like crap. And so does that meal. What’s the brown stuff?”

Howie pokes at it with a plastic fork, like it might poke him back. “It’s either mud or gravy. I’m guessing mud.”

“Here.” I toss him the Kit Kat bar I picked up for our little sugar junkie.

His eyes show a glimmer of life. “Real food. Pike, can you flush this stuff? The smell’s making me nauseous.”

Pike takes the tray and digs in. “Mmmm. Roadkill.”

“So, how long you in for?” Ash asks.

Howie breaks off a finger of his Kit Kat and runs it under his nose like a fine cigar. He sighs and takes a bite.

“Just till tomorrow. They want to keep me for observation. Make sure I don’t relapse into shock.”

“So what’s the story?” Ash says. “What happened last night? You go for a polar bear swim?”

Howie looks over to me for help.

“You want me to go first?” I ask him.

He nods, carefully breaking off another chocolate finger.

“Go first with what?” Pike glances back and forth between us. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is pretty crazy. Just warning you up front. Ash, I told you part of the story the other day. But I gave you the censored version.” I suck in a deep breath. “Okay. So, here goes. Flashback with me to the night Pike did his pyro act on Fat Bill’s.”

Starting there, I take them through my run home after I parted ways with Ash. I wander around the room, not meeting anybody’s eyes. I describe the beast, knowing how delusional it sounds. But I rush ahead before I can chicken out. And when I end with me reaching the house after the attack in the ditch, I’m near breathless.

“I don’t get it,” Pike says. “What’s the punch line?”

“No punch line. No joke.”

He sets the tray down on the bedside table. “What the hell were you smoking that night? And where can I get some?”

I look over to Ash, but her eyes give nothing away. “What’s this got to do with Howie going through the ice?”

I gesture to Howie, passing it over to him.

“I, uh …” Howie scratches at the mark on his neck. “I saw it too. I mean, the thing that went after Danny. That’s what attacked me on the ice.”

Howie gets a little twitchy with all eyes on him. He ran through it with me briefly before, when we were swapping stories, but now he’s choking up.

“Go from the beginning,” I nudge him. “From when Pike left you in the hut and came up to the house for coffee.”

“Right. Yeah. I stayed to watch the lines. We were doing pretty good. The fish were biting.”

He tells his story slow, like he’s trying to delay the nasty parts. Even safe, and surrounded by the three of us in the light of day, he gets shaky as he relives it.

After Pike left, Howie was sitting on the little wooden bench built into the hut, listening to “Hockey Night in Canada” on his radio.

He was staring at the black hole cut in the ice near his feet when he felt the bump.

“I thought somebody’d skidded their snowmobile into the hut. The whole thing shook with a thud. Then I thought maybe Pike was screwing with me.”

So Howie started for the door to peek out. From the corner of his eye he caught sight of something jumping up out of the fishing hole. For a split second he thought it was a fish.

But then he saw the size of it, and it was no fish. In the light from the lantern hanging from the ceiling, he didn’t know what he was looking at. Until it moved. And he saw the claws digging into the ice. Then he realized the thing was attached to something below the surface. It was some kind of enormous paw.

“Bigger than a polar bear’s. Way bigger.” He holds his hands about three feet apart. “And no fur on it. Just this pale white hide.”

Howie backed out of range of those claws as they raked into the ice, leaving deep grooves. He was frozen watching, scared and fascinated at the same time, knowing whatever was attached to that thing wasn’t going to fit through his fishing hole. He figured out too late what it was trying to do. Make a bigger hole.

Then the ice gave. A chunk the size of the door to the hut fell through, sending out cracks across the frozen floor. Howie jumped up on the bench, watching his fish bucket and rods sink into the water after the hunk of ice and the disappearing paw.

Huddling on the bench, Howie searched for a path to the door on the frozen rim that still held up along the walls of the shack.

But before he could try, there was a spray of water as something emerged from the black water, breaking through more of the ice. Not just a paw this time but a massive head surfaced inside the hut.

Howie’s description of it is
too
good. My legs get shaky.

Howie stutters big-time now, remembering.

That’s when he screamed the first time. Me and Pike heard it in the kitchen at the house.

In the hut, Howie was so fixed on those eyes he barely caught sight of the paw shooting up from the dark water. He jumped out of the way as it landed on the bench beside him, and he kept going along the rim of ice, then hit the door and crashed out.

Howie got about ten feet away when the ice behind him exploded, knocking him to his knees. The cracked surface slanted under him. He slid backward.

He screamed the second time. Just before he went under.

Howie shivers as he tells it, even buried under all his blankets in this overheated room.

As the lake swallowed him, he threw his arms out, splashing in the blackness, searching for solid ice. The cold knocked the wind out of him.

Then something bumped his legs under the surface. Struggling wildly, Howie managed to get his elbows up and heave himself out of the lake, rolling away from the open water.

He crawled, and was pushing himself to his feet when the ice shook under him. Looking back, he saw something huge and pale burst upward, spraying water into the air.

Howie turned and ran for the dock. The ladder was in sight, leading up to the house and safety.

But his legs were knocked out from behind. He rolled onto his back and saw that thing looming over him.

What happened was like with me and the beast down in the ditch. It let out a roar. The tongue stabbed him.

Then it was lights-out for Howie. Nothing more till he came to in the hospital.

He sags back on his pillow, forehead shiny with sweat.

The room is dead quiet. Pike rubs his hand over his Mohawk, frowning at his brother. Ash looks from Howie to me, her face unreadable.

“Sounds like a Windigo story,” she says, finally.

“A what?” Pike grumbles.

“Kind of an Indian ghost story. Windigos are demon spirits that roam the wilderness, eating up lost souls.” She widens her eyes at us. “Spooky stuff. My Dad used to tell me about them.”

“But they’re not real?” Pike asks.

“Well, no. It’s just stories. I mean, come on.”

“What are they supposed to look like?” Howie says.

“Big, ugly things. Bulging eyes. Lots of long, nasty teeth. They have a chunk of ice for a heart. And when they shout, they grow taller than the trees.”

“Right,” Pike grunts.

“You heard it,” I say to him. “Remember that growling in the dark, and the roar.”

“Could have been a wolf—a bear? Hell, I don’t know.”

Howie’s head turns on the pillow, eyes on his brother.

Pike shrugs. “It’s not that I’m not believing you, bro. It’s only … this is some insane stuff.”

If it was just me and my ditch story, Pike could dismiss it. But he trusts his brother. And Howie’s the only one on the planet who believes in Pike, who knows him as more than the nut everybody else sees.

“I don’t know, guys.” Ash gives us a look like the show’s over, now let’s get a grip. “Where’s your proof?”

“Our stories back each other up,” I say.

“Don’t mean squat. Come on. They brought Howie in unconscious, in hypothermic shock. He still looks out of it. And you say you hit your head and blacked out in the ditch. Maybe you got a concussion. Definitely not thinking straight.”

“Yeah, I hit my head and everything. But me and Howie saw the same thing. I mean, two people can’t have the same hallucination, right?”

“If there’s some big, nasty monster hunting out there,” she says. “And it had you guys cornered, then why didn’t it just chow down on you? Why are you still breathing?”

I’ve been wondering the same thing.

“The footprint,” Howie speaks up. “Danny’s cell shot of the print he found in the ditch.”

“But you said that was some kind of fake,” she says.

“I was wrong. Way wrong. And there’s this.” He starts
pushing the blankets down his chest. “When that thing caught me, it bit me. Or stung me—whatever. It left this.”

Howie stretches out his neck to show her. She leans over, and Pike comes in close to take a look.

“Where?” Pike asks.

Howie points out the blue dot.

“That looks like an old zit or something.” Ash squints.

Pike pokes it gently. “A sting? Like a needle jab?”

Howie shrugs. “I guess. Something like that. But that’s proof.” Howie looks to me for backup. “It bit Danny too. Show them.”

Reluctantly, I hold out my hand. Looking at the blue dot under their skeptical stares, I realize how unimpressive it seems.

“I don’t know,” Ash says, sympathetic but still not buying this. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?”

“That’s evidence,” Pike says, standing up for Howie now.

“That’s a dot. A blue dot. Like you poked yourself with a pen. Sorry, but it looks like nothing.”

She’s not trying to be harsh, just real.

“Howie’s not crazy,” Pike says. “And he’s not lying.”

“I’m not saying nothing like that,” Ash says. “But give it a day or two. Let him recover. Then, both you guys, we’ll see where your heads are at. You go telling the doctors your monster stories, they’ll think you’ve lost it.”

She’s reading my mind. Nobody’s going to believe us. Hell, I wouldn’t.

“But that thing,” Howie mumbles. “It’s still out there. If it comes back—”

“It’ll have to get past me,” Pike breaks in. “And that ain’t gonna happen.”

I heave a sigh, sitting on the foot of the bed. I feel like curling up and sleeping for a couple days.

Ash and Pike know us and they still aren’t buying it. Pike’s only backing Howie because he’s his baby bro.

Ash thinks it was a concussion that made me dream up the beast. I wish. Then I could shrug it off. Forget about it.

But I’ve got a real bad feeling, that the beast isn’t going to let me forget.

Dad had to flatline the furnace so he could fix it. Now the windows have frosted over, and the only heat comes from the little fireplace in the living room down the hall. Dad’s sleeping on the couch tonight, huddled by the fire.

“Put some layers on,” he keeps telling me. “You’re making me shiver just looking at you.”

Maybe I’ve got a fever or something, but I’m not feeling the freeze. Dad dug up a sleeping bag for me to stay near the fire with him. But even though the thermometer tells me I should be wearing a parka to bed tonight, I’m fine with my T-shirt and sweatpants.

I can almost see my breath in my room. Crashing on the bed now, I stare up at the water stain on the ceiling that looks like Medusa, the chick with the reptilian hairdo. I’ve got this wicked headache jabbing tiny ice picks into my brain. There’s no way I’m going to be able to fall asleep with that beast running wild out in the night.

The provincial police came out yesterday while I was in Barrie swapping horror stories with Howie in the hospital. He’s back at home now, recovering. Dad showed the cops around the huts and the surrounding ice, trying figure out why it gave. But nothing makes sense. The hut is still anchored there in place. It’s not like the whole thing went crashing through. The surface has frozen over again, erasing any sign of the breaks. The fishing hole Dad made was a standard auger-drilled, basketball-sized hole. Nothing looked suspicious.

The weather conditions have been ideal for a good freeze, with the ice a solid twelve inches, strong enough to hold a small car. He even drilled a test bore to confirm the thickness. There haven’t been any thaws since winter set in, no rains that might weaken the surface. And no signs of pressure ridges where the ice can buckle if the currents underneath are strong enough.

On the day Howie went through the ice, a bunch of kids had been out in full hockey gear, playing a game of shinny just a stone’s throw from the huts.

The cops are calling it a freak accident. The ice can be unpredictable.

Nobody’s blaming Dad, except Dad. Like it’s his fault.