Firelight glinted from the pane. Bulging eyes glared at her from the outer darkness.
The curtain cord whipped from her fingers, and she stumbled back. The room reeled.
…something deep…soft…
She lay on the carpet.
The fire had grown dimmer, plunging the parlor into gloom, the shadow beneath the coffee table as black as the sea.
I saw it.
A brittle soreness sputtered through one side of her body, and her right hand groped for the chair.
And it looked right at me.
With a moan, she caught at the spokes of a wheel, pulled herself to her knees.
How did it get so dark? Was I unconscious? How long…?
She shivered.
Is the thing still there?
Her vision twisted to the windowpane. A leafless china apple tree danced and skittered in the wind, and beyond the dead garden, whitecaps flickered around the rocks: silent, numinous explosions.
Above her head, wood creaked.
Her heart hammered painfully, and dying flames whispered. All around the room, windows shivered in their frames. At last, she sat heavily.
The board creaked again.
“So you’re here.” Faintly, her words rasped. “In the house.” Her head sank forward as though in prayer. “Finally.” The axles squeaked shrilly as she wheeled herself toward the doorway. “You’ve come back to me.”
Firelight barely shimmered into the hall, but it danced the shadow of the banister high across the wall.
Her own shadow loomed, slumped and brittle. To her left, another doorway opened into a smaller sitting room, long since converted into the bedroom she’d despised for years. “I’ve waited such a long time.” Her voice rose with tremulous indignity. “At first, I was afraid. You know how foolish I can be. I didn’t understand. But I know what you are now.” Her voice cracked. “Forgive me, that’s not right. I know who you are.”
Phantom movement flurried at the top of the stairs, like veils in the wind, and she stared upward, straining until she could just make out the window on the landing. Sheer curtains danced frantically. At first, she heard only the creak of a stair, so soft she could almost have believed she imagined it, but there followed the distinct thump of a footfall.
“Yes,” she chanted. “Yes, dead thing, I’m here. Dear dead thing.” She stared into nothingness. “Come down to me.”
Another footstep creaked on the staircase, and Charlotte groped blindly for the light switch too far above her on the wall. She edged closer. Darkness spiraled up the steps. She reached out, her fingers waving like an anemone. Was there a form? Some shape motionless on the stairs? A tingling sensation crawled across her face. “What’s that?”
A squeaking burble seemed to tumble down the steps, barely audible.
“What, dear? Are you speaking?”
She saw the hand first, the way it dug into the banister, sliding into the faint gloom. Then the stench poured over her. “I’ve gone mad. I always knew…knew this would happen. Alone in the dark and I’ve gone mad in the end, howling by myself in an empty house, imagining something has come to me.”
It growled.
Why is it making that sound? Like an animal. It should be calm. Stately. Sad.
Like heat from a furnace, stench came at her in waves now.
It stepped down into the dim spill of light.
“No! No! Henry, help me!” The pain in her chest struck like a sickle, and a pool sprang up around her.
The parlor surfaced through swirling colors.
Such a nightmare I’ve had.
Somehow she must have fallen asleep by the fireplace.
But I was in the hall. I’m sure I was. How did I get here?
Then she saw it.
It stood quite close, turned away from her, and she watched the way its naked shoulders bunched. She saw it lift one of the photographs from its place on the mantel, and her fingers closed instinctively over the poker. “No! That’s mine! Get away from there! Monster! Put it down!”
The creature turned to her as though in astonishment, and she lashed out with the poker.
One hand struck like the paw of a great cat, ripped through her, sent her hurdling from the chair. She struck the wall. She felt things crack and snap within her, but still her voice stuttered. “…mine…leave them alone…you can’t…”
A clawing hand lifted her by the hair, and taloned fingers buried themselves deep in her soft, old face.
“The world gets more and more like science fiction every year.” Tully tilted his chair back. “It’s weird. Some nights I lie there in a sweat just thinking about it.”
Ignoring him, Steve strained to discern the newscaster’s words above the electronic buzz of the television set. Around the bar, a dozen patrons squinted up at the weather report.
“Three inches, they said,” Stacey reported, setting down the plates.
“What?”
“Snow. Didn’t ya hear?”
“You’re kidding?” Steve flinched. Around him, the patrons buzzed in outrage.
“Did you hear what he said about the hurricane?” asked the younger man.
“What?”
“And snow tonight maybe,” Tully continued while gazing into his empty glass. “Doubt it though. Too cold. My father used to say that. Too cold for snow. But there’s a bad storm heading up the coast, not a hurricane exactly but…”
“Unusual time of year for something like that, isn’t it?” Steve coughed. “I thought…I thought…”
“Never,” a man at the bar called over. “Never happen.” The tavern had suddenly grown raucous. “Never after the first snow.”
“It’s like the seasons are so weird anymore.” Tully shook his head. “Like somebody shuffled the calendar pages or something. I never took a science course I didn’t get an ‘Incomplete’ in, but storms have something to do with a mass of cold air meeting a warm front and…”
“Warm front where?” demanded a guy at the next table. “What warm front? It’s frigging freezing.”
“He must mean Stacey. Hey, did you hear me? He said warm front and…”
“Oh you,” the old lady with the eye patch giggled. “You’re terrible.” She turned to someone else. “Did you hear what John said?”
The woman with the operatic makeup still sat rigidly at the bar, her hairdo—the color of a wasp carapace—unveiled for the evening. “Ever since they put a man on the moon,” she enunciated carefully. “The weather ain’t been right.” She pursed her lips and nodded with an air of profundity, her necklace glittering. “I’m telling you.”
Steve looked around the bar. He’d never imagined these people so animated.
“It’ll miss us probably,” Tully continued. “Usually does. Though we had to evacuate a couple times when I was a kid.”
Above their heads, a view of the Edgeharbor bay flashed on the screen, followed by a glimpse of the newscaster. Milling policemen flickered, succeeded in turn by an aerial view of Atlantic City. Although no one in the bar appeared to be watching, conversation drifted to the killing, and Steve sat up straighter. For whatever reason—news of the approaching storm or simply because he’d sat here so long this evening—the patrons had finally begun to relax and forget his presence.
“And this body in the damn bay. What do you think that’s gonna do to us?”
“People won’t remember that come summertime.”
“The hell they won’t. You wait and see how many cancellations we get by Memorial Day, every damn one of us.”
It quickly passed, and soon they appeared to talk slower and to say less, until only a companionable silence remained, broken by occasional, fragmentary comments, emphasized by aimless nods or vague gestures. Only Tully kept talking, and as the flurry of his words drifted around him, Steve shook his head wearily, his thoughts growing muddled. “…been outside of everything…so long…” He tried to phrase an appropriate response to whatever Tully was saying but stumbled on his own strange words. “…just looking in I…” He tried again, then gave up and only savored the warmth of the room. Beyond the door, he knew, icy winds savaged the streets. He blinked at the glass bricks: they flickered with pink neon, and for a moment, it appeared that a swarm of insects had been drawn to the light. “Snowing,” he announced. He couldn’t remember their leaving the table or going to stand in the doorway, but the snowflakes swirled in glorious profusion, filling the night while they gawked and laughed like children.
“What are youse, crazy?”
“Would you close that goddamn door already? Freezing in here.”
The younger man wrapped a red mohair scarf several times around his head, and Steve turned back to the doorway through which patrons glowered in unanimous umbrage. “Come on now, guys,” the barmaid called. “Close the door already.” Disgusted patience crackled through the cigarette husk of her voice.
He took a few steps, and it made him sadder to realize that, no matter how carefully he struggled to maintain his balance, he still wobbled. So he was back to this—he could feel the alcohol beading through his flesh, simmering in his brain, dissolving the jagged edges of his thoughts. The door hissed shut on the television drone, snuffing the throb, and snow swirled. Through the flurry, he glimpsed Tully’s raw face, cigarette smoke unwreathing in the air with his words. Then he swayed alone, realizing that Tully must have said “good night,” and he minded suddenly, because it seemed he’d meant to say something important (though he couldn’t recall precisely what) and there might not be time later.
Snow fell with a sudden hush.
The door fought him, and he staggered back into the damp-smelling tavern. As he groped to the table, the tobacco stench closed on his throat. Looking at no one, he struggled into his coat—gave up on the zipper—and threw down some money, having no idea how much, before stumbling back out to the welcoming snow.
Naked trees glistened with ice, and white patches already gathered in the crooks of twisted limbs. Where was the car? He’d scarcely gone a block before the cold settled on him and the pleasant dizziness jelled into a damp blockage in his head. He’d thought it was right here. What was he doing on this street? His neck ached from keeping his shoulders hunched, and he realized he’d walked in the wrong direction. “Great,” he muttered. As he started back, the sweat that slicked his chest made the wind feel even more cutting.
It flurried thickly now, and he could barely see to the end of the block. The sidewalk turned velvety, and the chill razored his forehead. Frozen branches rattled like wind chimes, and he drew his breath carefully, nurturing the ache in his chest.
A monster shuffled in the night. He blinked. A black hedge writhed in syncopation with his inebriated pulse, and skeletal branches crosshatched a sky through which demons hurtled. Just ahead in the blur, something made a chopping movement. His shoulders clenched, squeezing pain through his back, but he forced himself to walk steadily. An elderly man alternately swept and shoveled in front of one of the cottages, sculpting a narrow slice on the walkway despite the swirling flakes that filled in another faint layer while he worked. Steve nodded curtly as he passed, and the shovel rang out, grating against the sidewalk. Near the corner, he glanced back, already scarcely able to see the man. It seemed so earnestly futile an endeavor. Was the old guy so desperate for something to do? Did nothing wait for him within that cottage? He hurried on, suddenly feeling a wave of sympathy. Were they so different? After all, what waited for him? Another stakeout in a freezing car? Around him, snow already banked softly on doorsteps and windowsills.
Turning up his collar, he walked faster, nearly lost his footing, unable to tell whether it was ice or rock salt that crunched underfoot. Silence drifted down, and the swift, simple patterns of the snow began to tangle.
A wail reverberated. The wind battered at the noise, swirling it into ripples of sound along the boardwalk. Sometimes it gusted out over the sea. Sometimes it seemed to contract itself into a dense mass that rolled along the boards. Rapid dots of white glittered through the headlights, steadily increasing as she guided the jeep up the ramp. The screaming alarm faded erratically. At the end of a cluster of shops, she pulled over next to a novelty store. Leaving the headlights on, the keys in the ignition, she got out, and snowflakes stung her cheeks.
The boards felt slick underfoot as she strode to the side door of the stall. Snow settled on her collar while she examined the padlock by the headlight’s glare.
Probably nothing.
The lock seemed intact. Flakes whipped across her face.
These old alarms are always going on the fritz.
She headed around the front of the shop, straight into the wind.
Snow flooded around her, streaming almost horizontally, and sand rippled across the boards at her feet, advancing on low currents of air.
Great. All of a sudden, it’s a blizzard.
Melting flakes struck her hands and clung sharply to her face. Bracing herself, she swung around the corner.
Shadows surged. Already, the snowfall had transformed the tawdry stalls, conveying a sudden glamour. Carried by the sea wind, snow winged past her face, circling and rising, to flow steadily up and over the shedlike structure. She slid the nightstick out of her belt as wind hollowed through the front of the shop. A window grate lay in splinters, shards of glass littering the display platform.
Beneath the broken glass lay a severed arm. And a leg. She made out another limb and several naked torsos in violent confusion. Hovering flakes reversed themselves, spinning upward to float, settling on stumps. The alarm kept screaming.
She blinked. Dismembered mannequins sprawled along the front of the T-shirt shop. Two of the mannequins boasted smooth doll breasts, while a third had been muscled like an action figure. In places, the flesh-colored surface had been gouged away to chalky whiteness, and a plaster hand pointed up, white stubs where the fingers should have been. On the boards at her feet, a blank head bled chalk.
She played her flashlight deep into the store. “All right, come out of there.” Where the light swung, darkness melted. “I said, come out.” She put her foot up on the window ledge. Something glinted, and a triangle of glass flashed past her face to bell at her feet. She tilted the light up to where a larger curving section wobbled. “Don’t make me come in there.” She took her foot down, angling the light. It reflected from gusting snowflakes.
Thick blackness filled the back of the shop.
No reason to get spooked.
Already, whiteness dusted the mannequins.
Whoever did this is gone.
Everywhere, it spiraled and glided in graceful chaos.
Probably.
She stepped back, heart still pounding.
I suppose I’d better get that alarm turned off.
She barely saw it. At the edge of the boardwalk, something solid moved. She turned toward it.
A hellish vision coagulated: one clawed hand, reaching up from below to grip the crossbar.
What…?
She blinked.
It can’t…
Horned fingers dug into the wood, and the arm muscles bunched.
Fat as bees, flakes hovered in front of her face, then swooped on countless varied courses. Through them, the malevolent face leered. A rope of saliva glistened from the mouth.
Demon.
Melting darts struck her eyelids, clung to her lashes.
Monster.
Steve’s words skittered through her mind.
Whatever you want to call them.
A wet shiver rippled up her spine and throbbed behind her face.
I don’t see this. Not really.
With a practiced motion, she slid the nightstick back into her belt and drew the gun.
Blood hammered at the base of her spine.
Nothing there.
Snow swirled where the face had been, but the afterimage blazed in her mind: eyes bulging with rage, lips snarled back from dripping teeth.
A mask?
Did they sell masks in that shop?
It must have been a mask.
And those rubber hands kids bought at Halloween.
Of course.
They sold all kinds of crazy things in boardwalk novelty shops.
Whoever broke in took a mask and…
Her fingers clenched hard around the butt of the pistol, and she shivered, the blue jacket suddenly binding around her shoulders.
I saw…thought I saw…a monster.
A slow minute passed while snow settled.
I really must be losing my mind.
Forcing one foot ahead of the other, she crossed to the railing, and the revolver trembled in her grip.
She peered down. The roar of the surf smothered the shriek of the alarm. Snow lumped over whitening hillocks, caking on gravel. It frosted the tufts of beach grass, but even in the diffused light, she could see the footprints below. They had been made by bare feet. And what was wrong with them? She leaned over the rail. Did they look too broad? Did the toes hook crookedly?
She leaned there until a cramp trembled her leg. With one hand on the rail, she pulled herself to the stairs. All around her, gusts whirled one into the other, maddening, dizzying.
As she descended into the hush of the surf, sand and ice gritted on the wooden stairs beneath her boots. Whoever it was, he had to be hiding down here. She played the light through the gaps between the slats of the stairs. But what if he scuttled under the boards and came up on the other side? He could come down at her from above and…
The thought flickered too late.
Stench coiled around her like a draft from an open sewer. Behind her, a growl rumbled. A fist like a knob of bone struck her between the shoulder blades, and her head snapped back. She tumbled over the rail, arms flailing.
For an instant, she became part of the blizzard.
Thudding in the sand, she tasted red, and pain buzzed in her skull.
With a moan, she raised her face from the sand and fumbled for the gun.
Where is it?
Crystals glinted, and she felt a shudder as something heavy landed near her.
Flinging a handful of grit and snow, she rolled. The growl ripped closer, and she lashed out with her foot. Her boot connected, and she heard a grunting snarl as she slid over the edge of the dune.
Scrambling to her feet, she stumbled, agony flaring in her hip and shoulder. The ground seemed wildly uneven, vanishing beneath her and suddenly reappearing as a soft ridge that left her boots scuffing at empty air. Icy sand mushed underfoot. She fled blindly, hoping to lose herself in twisting flurries. Splinters of pain sliced into the moist tissues of her lungs, and her chest crackled as she whirled around.
Run! Get off the beach!
Banners of white snapped.
Where’s the boardwalk?
Chaos sifted down steadily, striping the air.
What direction?