Bonechiller (19 page)

“Man, I stink. Should’ve showered at the base. I’m gonna scrub down. Be back in five.”

“Need someone to hold the soap?”

“Right,” she snorts. “I’ve got an ax-wielding father outside.”

As if on cue, I hear the crack of another log splitting.

She disappears, and I force down another gulp of amino-acid mud. Then she pokes her head back in, and I look up in time to catch her T-shirt flying at my head.

“But you can hold that. Just don’t get it all sticky.”

She’s gone before I can think of a comeback. I see a flash of her brown shoulders, and her naked back. Enough to melt some of the ice in my veins.

I sniff the shirt. It
is
pretty funky, but in the best way. Then I shoot a nervous look at the window over the sink, half expecting her ax-swinging dad to be staring in.

Stuffing the shirt in the pack, I pour the rest of my shake down the drain and wash away the evidence.

It’s way too hot in here. I keep trying not to think about it—my
infection
. Hoping it will go away. Stupid, but I don’t know what else to do.

I need air. Cold air. I grab my boots and head out the back door.

Ah! I fill my lungs and clump through the snow over to Nick at the chopping block, clearing my throat so I don’t surprise him. Never sneak up on a guy with an ax.

He turns to look. “Hey, Danny. You look beat.”

“Just back from the gym. Trying to keep up with Ash.”

“You want a workout, give this a try,” he says, weighing the ax in his hand. “Then you’ll feel the burn.”

I can see the steam rising off his head, sweat slicking his face. The sleeves of his flannel shirt are rolled up past his elbows.

“You planning a bonfire?” I ask, surveying the big pile of firewood he’s hacked up.

“Just want to be sure there’s enough for while I’m gone.”

His regiment heads out tomorrow to patrol Canada’s northern reaches on a six-week tour. Gotta keep an eye on those terrorist polar bears, and make sure Santa’s elves aren’t planning a holy war.

“You’re gonna miss Christmas,” I say.

He shrugs that off with a grim smile. “Nothing new. I grew up on the rez, Danny. We missed every Christmas.”

What do I say to that?

I’ve been meaning to ask him about some stuff. But he still scares me sometimes. He’s got this way of looking at you, stony and intense, seeing right through you. Most times, I know he’s just playing with me, the way Ash does. Seeing if I’ve got any fight.

This is my last chance before he leaves. If Howie’s right, and the clock on us is running out as fast as he says, this could be my last chance
ever
.

“That story you told the other night—about the Windigo. It got stuck in my head.”

Ever since Howie dug up the Indian rock painting, that
ancient monster mug shot, I’ve been wondering about Nick’s Windigo.

Not that I’m thinking his bloodthirsty cannibal is what attacked me and Howie. I’m sure that was just a ghost story, mixed with a “kill Whitey” fantasy. But what stuck with me was that stuff about the evil of the white invaders. The shaman creating his Windigo to slaughter the whites—one evil fighting another.

Evil
is just beyond anything I can wrap my mind around. I could never imagine it as a living, breathing
thing
—until that night in the ditch.

“Don’t worry,” Nick says. “A Windigo wouldn’t go for you. You wouldn’t even make an appetizer.”

“Yeah, guess not.” I give him a weak laugh. “But where do you think those stories come from? Are they totally made up, or are they based on something real?”

“Sounds like you want to get deep.”

With a flick of his wrist, Nick throws the ax down, the blade biting into the chopping block with a thump.

“What do you say we get out of this wind?”

He leads the way across the yard toward his sweat lodge. It looks rough with the bark left on the logs. But when you get up close, you see how well built it is, the wood fitted tight to keep the steam inside.

The door opens with a groan.

“The cedar’s stiff with the freeze.” He waves me in. “This cold snap lasts much longer, we’re gonna see some trees splitting. When the sap inside freezes solid, it cracks the trunk right through. They explode. Sounds like a forty-caliber shot.”

I sit by the shallow pit at the end, where some large flat stones are set above a hollow dug out for the fire, breathing in the pine and wood smoke.

Nick leaves the door wedged open so we’re not left completely in the dark. He leans back and stretches his long legs out as far as he can.

“Took a sweat last night. To clear my head before going up north.”

“Did it work?”

Those ink-black eyes fix on me. “No. There’s only so much you can sweat out of you.”

I find myself holding my breath till he breaks his stare.

“What’s on your mind, Danny? Looks like you haven’t slept in a while.”

Is it that obvious?

“What’s said here, stays here. Remember?” he says.

I nod, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees. The intense scent of the pine sharpens my brain.

“You really believe in any of those things—Windigos, evil spirits, stuff like that?”

“I grew up on those stories the way you grew up on sitcoms and MTV. Back at Grassy Narrows, my grandmother is a storyteller. She can make you see things that aren’t there. Make you believe.”

Nick’s quiet for a moment, staring into the shadows.

“But growing up, I never saw anything like the creatures in my grandmother’s stories. Never saw a manitou, a thunderbird or a Windigo. No matter how hard I tried.”

He smiles, remembering. After a moment the smile dies off and his features harden.

“When I hit eighteen, I went into the army. To get off the rez, see the world. I was still green on my first tour with CANBAT 2, a Canadian unit of the UN peacekeepers during the Balkan War. On a raw January morning, we walked into this little hill village in Bosnia. Wasn’t much left of the place when we got there. The houses were burned down and still smoking. But no bodies. Not a soul.”

He speaks in a hushed tone, as if this place really is some kind of confessional where secrets are told and kept.

“Guess the Serb troops saw us coming and didn’t have time to clean up. At the edge of town we found a freshly dug trench. It looked like the Serbs were getting ready to fill it in when we ran them off. That’s where we found the villagers. Men, women, kids. The bodies were covered in morning frost. We secured the site and waited for the UN inspectors to come in and document it all. You know, ethnic cleansing, war crimes. It wasn’t the last mass grave I saw over there. But it cut me the deepest. All those bodies, piled like they were nothing. A couple days before, they were breathing, talking, laughing. And now they were dead, for nothing. For hate. So, do I believe in evil spirits?”

Everything goes quiet now, holding its breath—the wind, the crows, me.

“Evil takes different shapes, Danny. But it’s as real as rain.”

There’s a moment where I almost let out
my
nightmare story. The need to make my own confession is so strong. But something in me holds back. It’s like Nick has his nightmare and I have mine. They belong to us. And I can’t just give him mine so he can make it go away.

Then the moment’s gone. Nick groans and rubs his face.

“I’m starving,” he says. “How about you?”

“I could eat.”

Nick shoves the door open, letting in a flood of light. I step outside after him, blinking in the snow glare.

“Should be half a turkey left in the fridge.” He starts toward the house. “But we might have to wrestle Ash for it.”

Turkey sounds good. Wrestling Ash sounds better.

When I get home from Ash’s place, I promise myself I’ll just rest a minute. I won’t close my eyes. Just need to lie down before I collapse.

My eyes are so dry and scratchy, it feels like there’s sand under the lids.

The window is wide open, letting in a delicious subzero draft.

I’ve got the core temperature of an ice cube and a never-ending headache, and my night vision is getting so good I can practically read in the dark.

What weirdness is going on inside me? I’m turning into some kind of polar vampire.

The ceiling light is bright as a summer sun. Feel like I’m getting a burn just lying here.

I’m squinting under the glare when the light turns blue.

My first thought is—I didn’t know it could do that.

My second is—oh, crap!

Because I’m not in my room anymore. Somewhere between blinks, I fell asleep. And now I’m—where?

This room looks oddly familiar. A counter running along the far wall holds an aquarium and a terrarium. At the back there are glass cabinets with jars of chemical powders and liquids.

It’s the science lab at school.

The fluorescent lights glow blue. I’m lying on the counter that the teacher uses for demonstrations. As I sit up, I see I’m actually laid out here on a large metal tray that takes up most of the countertop.

A giant version of a dissection tray.

I twist around to see behind me, making sure I’m alone in the room. Lined up on the counter beside the tray are surgical tools—scalpels, clamps and a handheld circular saw. Remembering my autopsy dream, I reach up and check my head. My breath shudders out of me when I find it intact.

I drop from the counter to the floor. I’m barefoot, wearing the T-shirt and boxers I fell asleep in. I go over and crack the door open wide enough to peek down the hall.

All clear.

But I feel this shivering dread, the way a mouse must feel when the shadow of a hawk passes over it.

Get out! Quick!

I start toward the back stairs. The blue lighting flickers and sputters, throwing wavy lines along the walls and floor. It’s like the lake has risen up and drowned the town.

I wish Howie was here, like the last dream.

Passing a classroom, I look through the window in the
door and see kids sitting at their desks. They stare ahead, frozen and unblinking. All of them have shaved heads. All are missing the tops of their skulls. The bone has been sawed off clean, exposing the wrinkles and folds of their brains.

The acid burn of bile rises in my throat. I’m about to turn and run when one face stops me.

In the front row there’s a girl with big round eyes wearing only an oversized T-shirt that hangs to her knees, like she’s dressed for bed. I know her face from somewhere.

Have you seen Brianna?
One of the stories Howie found in the papers. A missing girl from years ago. I remember those big eyes staring out of the picture.

She’s here. And the other kids, what are they? More of the missing?

Brianna’s eyes shift. Her stare locks on to me. I gasp, an electric shiver shooting up my spine.

The terror in those wide eyes goes beyond anything I can grasp. They beg me with mute panic:
Help me! Save me!

Then I hear the scrape of a door opening below. I break away from Brianna’s stare. The clatter of something coming up the front stairs echoes off the walls. Claws on concrete!

My bare feet slap on the tile as I speed past the other classrooms, not daring to look in.

Just as I reach the end of the hall, the doors behind me are thrown open. I risk a glance and see the beast at the far end, crouching to fit under the ceiling.

Its mouth stretches wide in a roar that blows the doors to the back stairwell open.

I stumble down the stairs, my bare feet hitting hard on
the concrete. I wince as the pain shoots up my shins. I thought you’re not supposed to feel pain in dreams. That’s like a rule.

I hit the back doors, crashing them open, and take a few steps into the dark before I notice something strange. Where’s the parking lot? And the baseball diamond behind the school? I shoot a glance over my shoulder and see … nothing.

The doors are gone. The school is gone.

Where …?

Turning around, I see bare trees, gray smudges in the winter night. Beyond them, the dark skeleton of the old ice factory looms over the shore of the lake.

Miss Mercer brought us out here on the crappiest field trip ever. In Harvest Cove, this passes as a historical monument.

Why here? Not that dreams are supposed to make sense, but why this place? And where do I run? No way I’ve escaped that thing.

I shuffle my feet in the snow, not feeling the freeze. Think fast! It’s a half-hour walk to the marina house from here. Quicker across the cove on the ice. I can just pick out the pinprick lights on the twin docks.

A roar rips through the night, staggering me. A pale figure emerges from the rotting frame of the factory.

It always finds me.

The beast takes its time. It brought me here, where it’s in control.

My heart pounds adrenaline through my veins, screaming
at me to run. My legs are tensed and shaking, begging to make a break for it. But my body has quit taking orders from my brain.

The beast is ten feet from me. The slits of its nostrils open and close, trailing clouds of vapor.

I see myself in the curved mirrors of its eyes, tiny and helpless. Small moans rise from deep in my throat, but my jaws are locked so tight they can’t get out.