The Shuddering (2 page)

His feet flew behind him as he leaned forward, leading with his head, a constant stumble as his legs failed to keep up with his body. Catching a shoulder on a tree, he grunted in pain but kept on, knowing that stopping would seal his fate, knowing that those things—those savages—were waiting for him to give up.

Fuck them
, he thought.
Fuck them, whatever they are.

But after a minute of his running flat out, that sense of invincibility began to fade. His pace slowed. His legs grew heavy. His heart thudded in his ears. He could hardly breathe, the glacial air burning the lining of his lungs.
No
, he thought.
Get back to her. Get back home.
But his legs stopped working. His knees went rubbery. His mind screamed,
Keep going
, but his body was spent. He ducked behind a tree as the snapping of branches echoed all around him. Jamming his shoulder blades against the trunk, he tried to make himself as small as he could, his bottom lip trembling, his vision going wavy with defeat. The longer he stood there, the more silent the woods became. That horrible, unified, groaning growl had faded. The trees failed to shake, and eventually the crack of branches ceased. The forest went ghostly quiet.

Opening his eyes, he dared to peek around the side of the pine at his back.

Nothing.

Could they really be gone?

He blinked, his arm burning with pain. It was impossible. He knew he hadn’t outrun them. The one that had darted toward him was faster than anything he’d ever seen, running so fast it seemed to glide over the snow.
Maybe they found something else
,
he thought. Something else to devour. Something else to kill. Because that was what they were doing out here—hunting. At least that was the story. That was what his father had said.

He was afraid to move, sure it was a trap, but he couldn’t stay there long. His arm felt as if it were on fire. The blood that had overtaken the inside of his sleeve was seeping out from around his cuff, rolling down the inside of his palm, dripping onto the colorless ground cover next to his boot. If he didn’t bleed to death, they’d smell him and come back. He had to move.

So he moved.

And crashed into the chest of a beast.

It had been waiting for him, utterly silent in its stance, its lips pulled back into a sneer, exposing a collection of jagged teeth in a maw that opened impossibly wide. He didn’t have time to take in the horrifying view, hardly had half a second to take a backward step as it flared its nostrils, ready to strike.

It leaped.

Don screamed as he fell backward, the beast’s teeth sinking into the side of his neck. Pain bloomed beneath his jaw, simultaneously hot and cold. He struggled, beating the creature above him with his fists, kicking his legs, bucking to free himself. The thing growled, a foul gurgle rasping from the back of its throat. And then it shook its head like a dog, tearing flesh, snapping tendons. It pulled away, mouth full of soft tissue oozing blood onto the snow.

Don gasped for air, his eyes wide as he watched the demon chew a piece of him, throwing its head back and swallowing the meat that was missing from his neck. Letting his head fall backward, he closed his eyes, squeezed them shut, and imagined himself back in his kitchen, back in front of Jenny as she kissed the tip of his nose. He pictured her hands, soft despite their years. He sucked in a breath of cold air and smelled vanilla. She was always baking
something, her cakes and cookies making their tiny two-bedroom cottage forever smell of a five-star bakery. She loved music, always humming Bob Dylan and the Beatles beneath her breath. Don could hear her singing in the startling quiet that surrounded him now, humming just beneath the weakening rattle of his lungs.

“You think I haven’t seen worse than you?” he croaked, the sound of his own voice sending a shock wave up his spine. He sounded rough, inhuman. “You ugly son of a bitch.” Attempting to stand, he had to pause. Vertigo rocked him back and forth. Something warm filled his throat. He coughed, and blood bubbled from between his lips. When he finally managed to look up, he was alone again, the shadows of those creatures watching him from the safety of the pines. “You fucking cowards,” he hissed. “Come out and fight!” Crashing to his knees, he pressed a cold hand to his neck, then pulled it back as though he’d just scalded himself. Half of his neck was missing, nothing but a void. He coughed again, a thick slew of blood dribbling down his chin into his beard, his gored hands leaving prints in the snow.

“You ugly sons of bitches,” he repeated, choking, feeling himself start to slip. With his final wind, he forced himself to look up at the growling shadows of the hidden demons. “Take me, then,” he hissed, extending his arms to his side like Jesus on the cross. Because if he sacrificed himself, perhaps they’d be satiated enough to move on, to distance themselves from his home, from his wife.

They fell on him, but Don didn’t feel a thing. He was too busy picturing Jenny in her wedding dress, twirling in the sunlight that filtered through the stained-glass windows of a tiny church. He was too busy listening to her hum, her singing blocking out the silence of winter, distracting him from the tearing of his own flesh.

Ryan Adler squinted at the road and exhaled through his nose, his breath silenced by the music that coiled through the Nissan’s interior. He loved the way fresh snowmelt made the road look black, like a stretch of satin ribbon glistening in the sun. The cabin wasn’t near a damn thing, and that was why Ryan loved it. Out here, there was nothing but mountains, trees, and an endless expanse of sky—pale blue with brushstrokes of wispy white.

He’d seen more of the world than he had ever expected to see, jetting off to places like Switzerland and Austria in the name of fresh powder, excusing the expense because business was business. He’d been born lucky; he was smart and handsome, thankful that he’d managed to escape most of his father’s traits save for a few. Ryan was an entrepreneur, just like his dad; his charm and disarming smile had gotten him far. But to his father’s chagrin, Ryan had no interest in “real” business; no passion for stocks and investments—the very things that had built Michael Adler’s empire. Ryan’s passion was tangled in the swaying pines that dotted every black diamond run of every ski resort on earth. But his heart was forever present in the San Juan Mountains; his passion had been born in those hills.

Ryan slowed the Nissan and hung a left onto a rough road. The potholes were treacherous but still visible, most of the snow that had fallen onto the pavement having melted in the afternoon sun. The change of pace pulled Ryan’s blue-eyed husky, Oona, out of her nap; he watched her move around in the rearview mirror, pressing her sleep-dried nose against the back window, her dog breath stinking up the place. The farther they drove, the rougher the road and thicker the snow became. Aspens and ponderosa pines flanked both sides of the drive, tall and swaying despite the air around them seeming calm. Stopping the car completely, Ryan lowered his window with an electrical buzz.

“What is it?” Jane asked her brother, stretching in the passenger seat with a road-tired moan. She peered through a dirty windshield up at the trees that towered ahead of them.

The space between them was filled a moment later when Lauren leaned forward between the driver and passenger seat, hiding a yawn behind the palm of her hand. She hadn’t made a peep for a good few hours, and Ryan had nearly forgotten that his sister’s best friend was back there at all. He reached down and twisted a knob close to the bottom of the dash, engaging four-wheel drive.

“Are we going to make it?” Jane asked, a little worried. She had always hated the road that led up to the cabin, especially in the winter. Its steep pitch made it treacherous, and they had had a close call on their previous visit, the Nissan catching some black ice and nearly careening into the ravine that ran along both sides of the road.

“Of course we’re going to make it,” he told her, slow-rolling into a couple of inches of hard-packed snow.

Jane tried to relax as they progressed forward, but her muscles refused. It was Ryan’s idea to come up here during the winter. He was the one who got snow-crazy at the mere suggestion of winter precipitation. Jane was more of a summer girl—bikinis and floppy-brimmed hats and suntan oil.

Her eyes widened as the Nissan started to slide sideways.

“Oh god.” The exclamation came from their backseat passenger, and Ryan couldn’t help but grin. Jane rolled her eyes at his glee. He loved freaking her out with his driving, and she’d learned that keeping her mouth shut made him less prone to try stupid maneuvers. But this was Lauren’s first time as a passenger, and her little outburst was enough to have him stomping on the gas a little too hard, the Nissan spitting gravel out from beneath the back tires like a rock geyser.

“Almost to the driveway,” he assured them, only to have Jane groan in reply at the reminder.

“What’s with the driveway?” Lauren asked.

“It’s not a driveway,” Jane said. “It’s a nightmare.”

“It’s a driveway.”

“It’s a nightmare, and it’s more of a road than a driveway. It’s like a quarter of a mile long, and it’s all uphill.”

“Well,” Lauren said, casually crossing her legs as she leaned back in the center of the bench seat. “That sounds promising.”

The Nissan spit dirty snow onto the road behind it as Ryan stepped on the gas, pushing it up a precarious incline—a slope that was scary to drive up when it was dry, let alone when it wasn’t. The Adlers had had many a mishap on that hill, the worst of which had happened during their final winter break as a family—her and Ryan, Mom and Dad. The road thick with snow, Michael Adler had insisted that he and his two kids get out and push the car that refused to make it up the slick incline while their mother jammed her foot onto the gas. Mary Adler had nearly burst into tears as her husband yelled for her to get behind the wheel. They never made it up that hill. The car caught traction and lurched forward just enough to have Ryan stumbling onto his knees while Jane fell onto her chest, hitting her chin on the frozen ground, nearly biting her bottom lip clean through.

Jane covered her eyes as the Nissan rambled upward, holding steadfast to her silence, and after a few tense minutes, the car crested the drive and Chateau Adler came into view. Lauren blinked at the house.

“The hostess didn’t mention the size of this place, I gather,” Ryan murmured.

A massive stone-and-log home stood before them, tucked into the trees so thoroughly that it was invisible until, suddenly,
it wasn’t, its grandiose two-story front entrance dominating its facade.

“Holy shit,” Lauren said. “
This
is the cabin?” She made eyes at Jane, then looked back to the house ahead of them. “This is a goddamn mansion.”

It was a trophy home—the kind of houses the rich built for themselves as an occasional getaway. The landscape had been dotted with these estates for the last ten miles, no two less than miles apart, thousands of acres of heavily wooded hills separating one from the next. They were regal, inevitably decorated with the finest furniture, with expensive paintings that were far more status symbols than declarations of the owners’ discriminating taste. The same could be said of the Adlers’ chateau. Michael Adler had decorated the place in the style of a hunting lodge, but the man had hunted all of a handful of times in his life. The walls were decorated with mounted heads of deer and elk, of beasts that Ryan assumed his father considered a “catch,” but they had been bought and paid for. It was all for show—as was everything in Michael Adler’s life.

“Wait until you see it all lit up,” Jane mused. She loved this place as much as Ryan did, though she liked it more when she could lie out on the deck and bask in the high mountain sun. There was something magical about sitting out on the porch, listening to the trees sway in the wind. But she could see why Ryan loved the snow. It gave the place a mystical feel; paradise in the middle of nowhere.

Lauren stood in the doorway—a side entrance that led from the porch into a massive stone-walled kitchen. She watched Jane disappear down a hall directly ahead of her, apparently on some sort of mission—probably headed for the thermostat. It was
cold inside, no more than fifty degrees. Ryan took a seat on the edge of a heavy table to the right of the door, bags at his feet, his phone already glowing as he checked his reception, not seeming the least bit interested in the grandeur laid out before him. But Lauren was stunned.

“This place is incredible,” she confessed, almost afraid to step farther inside. The island at the heart of the kitchen was bigger than her apartment’s bathroom. The cabinet doors were rich cherry gleaming with varnish. There were two ovens, one on top of the other, next to a stove that looked like it had come straight out of one of those fancy Food Network cooking shows. She paused, furrowing her eyebrows at a pair of massive doors, both of them paneled to match the cabinets.

“Is that the fridge?” she asked.

Ryan nodded, still fiddling with his phone. “Probably empty,” he admitted. “Jane’s going to drag you into town for groceries. I guarantee it.”