Bonechiller (21 page)

I feel an electric prickle along the back of my neck. “Do what he says!”

Pike finds a boulder by the rear of the clearing, big enough to give us some cover. We crouch down and wait.

Pike lowers his night-vision gear into place.

For a minute there’s nothing but the sound of the wind.

“There!” Pike whispers.

Shadows are shifting over by the left rock wall. I strain to see what’s moving. Then a pale figure squeezes itself out of the stone and stretches up to its full height.

My breath freezes in my lungs. Ash stiffens. Howie leans against me, shaking. The beast moves away from the wall and tilts its head to look at the sky.

Howie gasps—only a hush of breath, but loud in the still silence.

The beast’s attention snaps away from the sky.

It turns to scan the clearing, studying the bare trees and brush, the rough walls of the bluffs.

We crouch lower behind the boulder. The only thing saving us is we’re downwind of the beast, with the gusts coming off the lake.

Those eyes, shining in the starlight, slowly pass over our hiding place.

That stare lingers on our boulder too long. A shiver of icicle fingers runs along my scalp. My leg muscles tense up, and the crazy urge hits me to stand up and be seen. My calves cramp with the struggle to keep from rising. Fear twists my gut. The walls feel like they’re closing in on us. This whole place is a trap.

Then the beast’s stare moves on.

I almost collapse with the release of the pressure, clinging onto a crag in the boulder to keep still. Howie sags against me, and I put my free hand on his back to hold him up.

The beast turns away from us and starts moving on all fours. It picks up speed, passing out of the hollow onto the ice and disappearing in the night.

I let go of the breath I’ve been holding, leaning on the boulder. There’s dead silence for a minute.

“That was … extreme,” Ash mumbles.

Pike pushes his goggles up and stands. “That’s one giant, butt-ugly killing machine.”

We all rise. My legs are so shaky. Howie braces himself on the rock to stay vertical. More disturbing than seeing that thing again was the urge I felt to stand and show myself. I’m starting to understand why all those missing kids walked off into the night.

“Where did that thing come out from?” Pike asks.

He starts walking, holding his shotgun with one hand on the barrel and the other cradling the trigger guard, ready if the beast returns.

We follow. My attention is split between the bluff and the gap leading to the lake. Pike stops in front of a deep shadow cut in the rock. A cave. About seven feet high and five wide. Big enough for us, but a tight squeeze for the beast.

“What do you think?” Pike asks, probing the blackness with his goggles. “Let’s take a look.”

Nobody rushes to agree with him.

“Come on,” he says. “We’re armed and dangerous, right?”

“I’ll go in with you,” Howie says, surprising everybody, maybe even himself. “I need to see,” he says. “To know what we’re dealing with.”

“What if it comes back when you’re in there?” Ash asks.

Howie shakes his head. “It won’t be back for a while.”

“How do you know?” she says.

“I just do,” Howie mutters. “It wants to run tonight.”

There’s a long silence, all eyes on Howie. He led us right to the beast’s front door, so maybe he’s getting some kind of insight into its head as it sinks its claws deeper into his. But I don’t like how he’s acting. Like that thing has got a spell on him, making him forget he’s a born coward.

“I’ll take point,” Ash says. “I’ve got the light.”

“Stay real close to me,” Pike tells Howie.

I take up position right behind Ash.

We step into the mouth of the cave. In the history of bad ideas, this has got to make the top ten. But I’m feeling the pull of the place, just like Howie. The need to know.

It’s not a cave but a tunnel, slanting down.

The ceiling’s high enough so we don’t have to crouch. Ash’s light shines on a skin of ice covering the walls. Our footfalls echo loudly in the hush.

Minutes go by and we’re still descending. How deep does this hole go? The floor turns slippery, coated in an inch of ice, and I have to brace myself on the walls. The rocks are smoothed out and the floor is pretty even, as if this tunnel was dug on purpose. Like it’s been here a while.

“Do you see that?” Ash’s voice bounces off the walls.

“See what?” I ask, my heart seizing up on me. I bump into her when she stops.

“There’s a bend in the tunnel,” she says. “And a blue light farther on.”

I see it now, a dim glow leaking from around the corner ahead.

“Let me go first.” Pike squeezes past her. He goes around the corner, looking surreal with the shotgun held ready and the lenses of his goggles flashing blue. Pike thinks he’s in a movie. He’s loving this.

I can’t tell how far down we’ve gone. We could be deep beneath the bluffs, or under the floor of the lake, even.

The rest of us move toward the bend. Before we reach it, Pike calls: “Clear!”

Taking the turn, all I see is the blue glow. It shines off the ice of the tunnel and reflects back.

Then I see the cave.

It’s about the size of a basketball court, with a ceiling that stretches up fifteen feet maybe. The walls glow blue. A thick mist clings to the floor, swallowing my feet.

“What is this place?” I say, then cringe at the echoes:
isthisplace isthisplace
.

The others are wading through the mist, exploring.

Howie reaches out and touches the far wall, then checks his fingers to see if any of the glow rubbed off.

“Why’s it shine like that?” Ash whispers, trying to avoid the echoes.

Howie turns to us, his face dyed pale blue. “Could be
some kind of phosphorescent mineral deposit. Beautiful, don’t you think?”

“Maybe it’s radioactive,” Pike says, wandering away from us. “Don’t be taking any samples for your collection.”

“It’s creepy.” Ash pokes it. “And freezing. This whole place is way below zero.”

“When you go this deep,” Howie says, “this far north it’s always freezing. Summer can’t reach down here.”

His voice is almost dreamy. No shaking. No panic. I don’t like it.

“Hey, guys,” Pike calls. Echoes thunder off the ceiling, multiplying into a whole crowd of voices.

He waves us over, deeper into the cave.

“Keep it down,” Ash hushes him.

Pike’s standing by a low rise in the floor. The mist drifts in lazy swirls above it.

“Find something?” Howie whispers.

Pike nods, his shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm, one foot resting on the rise. He looks alien in the eerie glow, with the goggles resting against his forehead and his Mohawk dyed electric blue.

“Take a look, bro.” Pike bends over the mound and sweeps his hand through the mist, clearing it away.

I see what the mound is made of.

Bones!

I blink, stunned.

So many of them. Heaped four feet deep in places. The rise stretches all the way to the cave wall.

Human bones!

I’m guessing the smaller ones are from fingers and toes,
the bigger ones from arms and legs. Some rib cages, pelvic bones. Skeleton hands reach out here and there. But what tells me these are all human are the skulls.

Some with missing teeth, some missing lower jaws. All with their tops cracked open, like something hammered through the bone. Or chewed through.

Pike climbs up onto the mound.

I watch him, speechless.

“Get off there!” Ash says.

The mass shifts under his feet with a clacking of bone on bone.

Pike looks out over the mound. “There’s a hollowed-out part in the middle. Like a nest or something.”

“Not a nest,” Howie says, gazing at the waves of mist swirling over the bones as if hypnotized. “I think it sleeps there,” he whispers.

A bed of bones.

I finally find my voice. “I’ve seen enough.”

“Yeah,” Ash says. “Let’s go!”

Pike climbs back down, scattering a few bones.

“Okay.” He moves up beside Howie. “Time to retreat.”

Howie gives him a reluctant nod, like he wants to keep poking around down here.

We turn, leaving the mist to cover the dead.

Halfway to the tunnel entrance, Pike shouts. “Look out!”

His voice ricochets off the walls. We spin around.

At the other end of the cave, a huge pale figure crouches in the mist, watching us. Pike lifts his shotgun.

“Wait!” Howie puts his hand on Pike’s arm. “Hold on. Something’s wrong. Look at it.”

Look at what?
I want to scream.
Shoot! Now!

“I’m looking,” Pike snaps. “What the hell?”

“That’s not it,” Howie says.

Pike’s locked on the target with both barrels. “What’re you talking about?” He fights to be heard over the confusion of echoes. “I see it!”

I’m waiting for that thing to leap over and tear into me.

Then something clicks inside my head. There
is
something wrong.

The beast’s mouth is wide open but filled with shadow. No teeth. And the eyes—empty sockets stare back at me. The whole thing looks hollow.

“Wait!” Howie says, digging for something in his pocket.

He comes out with a pen. We watch in disbelief as he winds up and throws it across the cave.

His aim is good. The pen hits the crouching figure and bounces off, falling to the floor. The impact shakes loose a minor avalanche of dust.

Ash lowers the barrel of her rifle. “What is that?”

“I think it’s just a shell,” he says.

“A shell?” Pike asks.

“Trust me. Let’s take a look.”

Pike nods. “But you stay behind me.”

Pike leads us across the cave. The closer we get, the more it does look hollow. Empty.

Pike edges up close enough to give it a kick. His boot makes a dull thud, like kicking an oil barrel. It shakes loose more powdery dust. He shoves the barrels of his shotgun right through one of the eye sockets.

Howie reaches past him to knock on it himself, an amazed look on his face. “Some animals discard their shells when they get old, or when they outgrow them.”

Pike kicks it again. “That’s no shell. More like armor. I don’t know if buckshot would even make a dent.”

I don’t care what it is. I’m having a heart attack just being this close to it. The eye sockets are empty but the shadows filling them are still watching.

“Let’s get out!” Ash says.

“Right.” Pike puts his hand on Howie’s shoulder and leads the way back to the cave entrance.

My foot snags on something in the mist, and I freak when I can’t see what it is. Lifting my foot, I find it’s just a piece of cloth. I hold it up in the blue light. It’s a shredded leg from a pair of pants, stiff with dried mud. The material is thin, with a drawstring inside what’s left of the waistband.

“Hospital,” Howie says.

“What?”

“You know, those pajamas they give you to wear.”

Then it hits me—this is what Ray Dyson had on when he ran off.

“Ray,” Howie whispers.

That’s not mud crusted on the material.

Howie says it: “That’s blood.”

I drop the pajamas into the mist. What else is hidden down there?

“Go!” I shout.

We break into a run.

The way up seems longer than the way down, the
tunnel stretching on endlessly. Did we make a wrong turn? What if we get lost down here? This was a
bad
bad idea.

Ash’s light scatters confusing flashes off the wall ice. Nothing looks familiar. The only sound is the rush of our feet, the echoes chasing us to the surface.

Finally, I smell fresh air. I have to hold back from shoving Howie aside to escape. I stumble out into the night, so relieved I forget the beast isn’t down in that cave. It’s out here somewhere.

“Get moving! We’re easy targets here.” Pike starts us across the clearing.

We run to the cleft in the rocks that leads us out of the hideaway. My heart surges when I catch sight of the car. Never thought I’d be so happy to see the crapmobile again.

We pile in. Pike guns the engine, the tires spinning in the snow. We’re speeding and motionless at the same time. Like in the nightmares, where I’m running and running and getting nowhere. No escape.

Because that thing isn’t just out there in the dark. It’s inside my head. There’s no way I can shake it.

Then the tires catch and we shoot off. Nobody says anything. We just watch the patch of road ahead lit by the one working headlight.

We came here tonight looking for answers. For some way out of this nightmare. But there is no way out. All those missing kids. All those bones.

And me and Howie are next.

“Let me get this straight,” the cop says. “There’s some monster out here, hunting down kids and killing them? That about it?”

It’s the morning after our trip underground, and we’re all standing out by the ice factory, on the snowy shoreline. Officer Baker of the Ontario Provincial Police frowns at us with his bushy black eyebrows. He thinks we’re nuts. Can’t blame him.

“Not a monster,” I say. “But some kind of … wild animal. We can show you where it’s holed up. Seriously.”