The Shuddering Part 2

"Driving," he replied, turning his attention back to the road, leaving the tract of b.l.o.o.d.y snow behind them. "The hapless trio, driving back to the cabin..."

Jane leaned forward, shooting Lauren a look.

"You never mentioned you have an evil twin," Lauren told her.

"But I did tell you he's an idiot." She smirked, then twisted the volume k.n.o.b on the stereo, a saxophone solo drowning out her brother's laughter.

CHAPTER TWO.

It wasn't like Don to stay out so long. It was well past lunchtime, and he had left the house hours before. It never took him this long to collect the wood. The little sled he used to pull it behind him could only hold so much. Jenny stood at the window, her fingers dancing against her mouth. Maybe he had gotten winded, injured... She turned away from the gla.s.s, shaking her head. Of course he was fine. They'd lived out here for three decades. Don knew know to handle himself. He was just running late.

It was only after she pulled her cinnamon raisin bread out of the oven that she realized just how long it had been. Crossing her arms over a waist that had expanded over the years, she stared at the ham sandwich she'd prepared for him nearly two hours before and frowned. Don hadn't eaten since breakfast. No doubt he was starving. Reaching behind her, she grabbed hold of her ap.r.o.n strings and pulled, tossing the plaid pinafore onto the counter before marching out of the kitchen.

She stopped in the door of their bedroom and stared at the photograph on the dresser-the two of them smiling in front of that very cabin thirty years before, she in a pretty summer dress, he with his fluffy beard and ridiculous Bermuda shorts. Grabbing her coat and scarf, she pulled a hat tightly over her ears, wrapped his ham sandwich in a square of wax paper, tucked it into her coat pocket, and stuffed her hands into a pair of gloves. If he was going to insist on staying out and catching his death, he may as well eat first.

She grabbed Don's gun from beside the front door. They'd noticed the wolves early this year, the beasts stalking through the trees in search of prey; yet another reason why Don should have known better. He had his ax, but he wasn't young anymore. If a pack fell on him...Jenny put it out of her mind as she stepped outside, the snow crunching beneath her boots.

She looked to the west, squinting against the sun. The snowcapped summit of the nearest peak was clear, but clouds loomed in the not-so-far-off distance. He had complained about his knee the night before, so they knew a storm was closing in. She had been the one to remind him about the wood. The nights had been unseasonably cold, and they had burned through their supply in half the expected time. Had she not mentioned it, there was the possibility that they would have been snowed in without a fire, but at least she would have known where he was; home in his recliner, chuckling beneath his breath at disillusioned antique collectors. She turned away from the mountain, putting the clouds to her back, and began to follow his tracks-footprints flanked by two straight lines left by the rails of his firewood sled.

It was his usual route. Don hardly ever trekked more than a mile before sinking the blade of his ax into the trunk of a tree. He had learned his lesson the hard way. Thirty years before, when the newlyweds had settled into their mountain home, he had stepped into the first snowfall of the season and chopped down a pine not three yards from their front door. Jenny had screamed at him for weeks after and brought up his indiscretion for years, unable to help herself whenever that ugly stump came into view. Ten acres of land and a thousand miles of timber to either side of them, and he had to chop down trees in their front yard. She had made her demand: if he insisted on chopping down trees rather than buying wood in town, he'd have to walk himself out far enough so she'd never see another stump again. She smiled at the memory. That man, just like her father had been, lacking foresight but quick to learn.

A half mile into her search, she stumbled across the first splintered trunk. But the cuts were old, and his tracks trailed past it farther east. She continued forward, one hand squeezing the cold barrel of the gun while the other stole half of Don's sandwich. It was his own fault. He knew she never ate without him.

Idly chewing and humming beneath her breath, she slowed her footsteps when she caught a blip of fire-engine red. It was his sled, half-obscured by the trees. And while that meant he had to be close, there wasn't a sound to be heard in that forest; nothing but the quiet whisper of wind and the shiver of pine needles.

"Donnie?" she called out, but the snow deadened her yell. Holding her breath, she listened for a response, but none came. She stopped next to his sled, her eyebrows knitted together. It didn't make sense. He'd never leave his sled behind, half-piled with wood. Jenny veered around, trying to look in every direction at once. "Don?!" Panic slithered into her tone. What if he'd thrown out his back, collapsed in the snow? She'd warned him not overexert himself, but he was a stubborn old fool, convinced he was in his thirties instead of sixty-five.

She left the sled behind, jogging along the footprints Don had left in the snow. Her breath hitched in her throat when his path shifted from straight to erratic, and dread coiled itself around her belly, threatening to cut off her air. She could see it in the way his footprints were deeper toward the toe, the way snow had been kicked out behind each footfall: he had been running, weaving through the trees. And he hadn't been alone. There were prints all around his, but she couldn't make out exactly what type of animal they could have belonged to. They were too big to be wolves', too lean and long to be bears'. They looked almost human, despite their wide, lurking gait. An animal with that wide a step must have been huge.

She fell into a run as well, following her husband's footprints no matter how scared she was of the tracks that surrounded them. His name fell from her lips in a gasp. And then she stopped, her eyes wide as she was a.s.saulted by a fetid stink. There was something lying in the snow. An animal. Don's ax handle jutted out from its skull like a crooked flagpole.

Jenny crept toward the carca.s.s, her grip tightening around the barrel of the gun as she pressed it against her chest, her heart thudding in her ears. It wasn't an animal as much as it was a monster, a thin and hairless monster so bony its arms looked like twigs in proportion to its wide, skeletal chest. She couldn't make out its face, Don's ax having cut it in two. But she was glad she couldn't tell exactly what it looked like. Wide at the temples, its head looked almost alien, like a creature that had fallen out of the sky or had crawled out of h.e.l.l itself. Its stomach was deflated, little more than a hollow cavity covered by thin gray skin. Her breath puffed out from her lungs in short, staggered bursts as she slowly approached, terrified but unable to help herself. It was like nothing she'd ever seen, its long, angular body spread out on the snow. It was its teeth that snapped her out of her daze, reminding her that Don was missing, that there were far too many tracks to belong to this one creature alone. Its teeth were thick and jagged, like the fangs of a ma.s.sive dog.

She twisted away, breaking into as fast a run as her sixty-year-old legs would allow.

That thing was dead, which meant Don was out there somewhere, alive. Alive. He had to be alive.

But those long, thin, alien tracks followed Don's footsteps away from the kill. He had fought one of them off, but there had been far more than one. She readied the gun as she ran, determined to blast every last one of those freaks off the face of G.o.d's green earth.

Skidding to a stop, she sucked in a breath and yelled as loud as she could. "Don, where are you?!"

This time there was a response.

This time a communal moan rose in the distance.

A jolt of terror shot through her torso, radiating out to her arms and legs, because it didn't sound like any animal she'd ever heard. It sounded almost human, like a battlefield of dying soldiers wailing as they waited for death. Her breath hitched in her throat as she staggered backward. That haunting cry surrounded her on all sides, at first distant, but slowly growing louder until it transformed completely. The last thing she heard was a rattling growl. The last thing she saw was a shadow sprint across the snow.

Ryan stood on the deck overlooking the pines, his coffee cup on the railing, steam wafting out of it like a witch's brew. The silence of the outdoors was staggering-not a sound save for the whisper of wind through the conifers, those green giants swaying gently in the mounting wind, ebbing and flowing like a waterless tide. The occasional gust made it colder than it already was, carrying the distant groan of what must have been a gang of elk upon the wind. The chill bit at his cheeks and fingertips, at the back of his neck where the air slithered beneath his coat. Jane and Lauren were inside. He could hear them laughing over w.a.n.g Chung's "Dance Hall Days."

Ryan didn't need music out here. He liked the silence, the soft creak of tree trunks bending in the wind. He s...o...b..arded without headphones, loving the sound of his board carving into the snow as he zigzagged down a steep grade. But if Jane needed Duran Duran to be one with nature, he wasn't about to deny her. With the possibility of this being their final visit, it was all the more important to make this trip count.

Plucking his coffee mug off the deck's railing, he lifted it to his lips and let the steam drift across his face. The fur lining of his trooper hat shivered in the breeze, the pelage snagging on the bristles of his day-old beard. Fresh laughter spilled from inside the house. He smiled against the edge of his mug, watching his sister through the window as she twirled in the kitchen, a spatula covered in frosting held above her head. She looked just like their mother: fair skin, dark easy curls cut short-the kind of girl who didn't try too hard. The kind of girl Summer had been.

Jane lowered the spatula, singing into it before slapping it against the top of a chocolate cake while Lauren stood next to the kitchen island, trying not to choke on her coffee. Ryan had offered to pay for retail s.p.a.ce for Janey to open a bakery, knowing that she hated taking cash from their dad; offered to buy all the equipment and even a neon sign in girly pink font-Janey Cakes-but she refused every time. Her students at Powell Elementary were more important to her. She insisted that she was happier supplying sprinkle-covered cupcakes to her kids than to stuffy housewives who couldn't be bothered to bake for themselves. She loved watching second graders smear sweet frosting across their faces, giggling in sugar-induced ecstasy.

Lauren spotted Ryan watching them and gave him a ghost of a smile. A second later the music swelled when the kitchen door swung open and his sister's friend stepped onto the deck with a chuckle, closing the door behind her. She tossed her blonde hair over a shoulder before shrugging against the cold.

"Jesus," she said, jerking up on the zipper of her hooded sweatshirt. "It's freezing out here."

Ryan cracked a sideways smile and extended his free hand, swooping it outward as if presenting the snow-covered trees to Miss Lauren Harvey for the taking.

"Yeah, yeah." She ducked beneath the thin veil of her cotton hood.

"You realize it's, like, twenty degrees out here?" he asked. "Think that hood is going to help?"

"I'm just waiting for chocolate cake," she admitted, blowing into her hands before fishing a pack of cigarettes out of her front pocket. "I wouldn't be catching pneumonia if Jane would let me smoke inside."

Had it been Ryan's call, he would have let her smoke in every single room, if not just to stink up his father's place, then to oblige his twin sister's quite attractive best friend.

Lauren tapped the hard pack against an open palm, her teeth clacking as she shivered. She noticed him looking and offered up a sheepish grin. "Bad habit, I know."

"You should quit. Three days."

"What's three days?" she asked, lighting up a smoke and offering the pack to Ryan. He waved it away.

"It's how long it takes your body to get used to something. You know how diet soda tastes funny if you've never drunk it before?"

"Tastes like a chemical dump," Lauren brooded.

"Drink it for three days and you won't remember the difference. Same goes for quitting smoking."

"No s.h.i.t?"

"That's what they say."

Lauren took a long drag. She gave him a wry grin, raising a shoulder in a shrug. "This is my last one," she said. "I swear."

Ryan breathed a quiet laugh and looked away from her, surveying the endless wave of trees before them to keep himself from staring. He liked her. She was witty, charming, not afraid to crack a joke.

The report of a gunshot echoed through the hills.

"What the h.e.l.l was that?" Lauren asked, startled.

"Someone shooting their neighbor," Ryan said. "Land dispute."

She gave him a look and he bit back a grin.

"Probably just hunters," he told her. "I think it's turkey season or something."

Satisfied with his answer, Lauren sucked in a lungful of smoke. "So, we're waiting for Sawyer?"

"Sawyer and April."

Exhaling, she squinted at the burning tip of her cigarette, smoke and steam rising upward like a soul escaping a body. "You don't think that's going to be a little awkward?" she asked, plucking a bit of tobacco off the tip of her tongue, canting her head toward the kitchen. "Janey and him and some chick in the same house?"

He drained his mug, coffee warming him from the inside out. "I asked her," he said. "Like a million times."

"And she said she's cool with it," Lauren cut in, ashing her cigarette onto a patch of snow next to her feet. "But you know as well as I do that she's lying."

"Yeah," he said, looking Lauren over thoughtfully. "She is."

"But you still decided to roll with it."

"Last chance," Ryan said. "It was either roll with it or never see this place again."

"Couldn't come out here alone, just you and her?"

"What is this," he asked, "the Spanish Inquisition?"

Lauren gave him an apologetic smile. "Sorry," she murmured.

Ryan frowned at the mountaintop in the distance, coiling his arms around himself for warmth as Lauren smoked next to him. "It wasn't the original plan," he offered after a long pause. "Sawyer bringing this girl."

Lauren quirked an eyebrow. "No?"

Ryan shook his head. "I've never even met her."

"So, this was supposed to be some kind of, I don't know, reunion or something?" Lauren pressed.

"Is that stupid?"

He watched Lauren's face soften as he waited for her response. "Yes," she said after a beat, "stupidly sentimental."

"I guess I just don't want her to be alone, you know?" He shifted his weight from one boot to the other, his gaze fixed on the porch's banister.

Lauren leaned against the railing. "Ooh," she said, a spark of realization crossing her face. "This is all because of Switzerland, isn't it?"

Ryan shrugged almost helplessly. It was an amazing opportunity, but leaving his sister behind wasn't exactly easy.

Sawyer had grown up with them. Sawyer and Jane had been together for more than three years in high school. It had been weird at first-his best friend dating his twin sister-but he'd learned to like it. Now, with Zurich in his not-so-distant future, it would make him feel better to know that his two closest friends were together again, taking care of each other. Without that a.s.surance, Ryan would be stuck picturing Jane alone in her apartment grading badly colored drawings and fighting with her louse of a future ex-husband.

"You know she'll be fine," Lauren told him. "Jane is always the brave one. Besides, what about me?"

"What about you?"

Lauren scoffed teasingly. "Well, am I good for nothing?"

"I don't know. I don't know you that well."

"Lucky for you, you have four uninterrupted days."

"I only need three," he joked, and she blushed and turned away.

A snap of branches pulled both Ryan and Lauren's attention to the trees. Lauren opened her mouth to speak, her expression startled, when a family of deer stepped out of the trees and dashed across the steep driveway. She laughed as she pressed a hand to her chest, shaking her head at herself, only to jump at the scratching behind her a second later. Oona was standing behind the kitchen door, her nose smearing the gla.s.s as she waited to be let out.

"Jumpy?" Ryan asked as he stepped away from the railing and cracked the door open to let the husky onto the porch. Oona bounded through the door, nearly skidded on the slick planks of wood beneath her paws, and launched herself off the steps like a furry missile.

"I wouldn't be if you hadn't purposefully freaked me out earlier," she complained.

"Me?" Ryan looked flabbergasted at the accusation as Oona's bark echoed off the trees. She did wild doughnuts in front of the house, her feet punching holes in the hard crust of snow, before looking up at her owner, wagging her flag-like tail, ready to play. Ryan didn't hesitate. He excused himself with a smile, fishing his gloves out of the pockets of his coat as he descended the stairs. Oona bolted away from the cabin before Ryan's boots. .h.i.t the ground, barking up a storm as she sprinted through the trees. She leaped like a gazelle, then threw herself down to roll in the powder before storming back toward her owner. Scooping up a gloveful of snow, Ryan packed it into a loose s...o...b..ll and launched it at Oona's feet. She barked, burying her nose in the ground where it exploded, searching for the ball that must have been hiding there. Lauren laughed from atop the deck as Ryan packed another, letting it zip by the dog's nose. Oona snapped at it with her teeth, baffled yet again when it vanished into thin air as soon as it hit the ground.

Just as he leaned down to make a third, a low rumble cut through Jane's m.u.f.fled music. Oona perked, standing at attention, her big ears pointing straight up, her tail stark still. Ryan narrowed his eyes as he listened, realizing that it was the sound of an engine the closer it approached. But rather than facing the driveway, Oona was still facing the woods, a repressed growl roiling in her throat. Ryan clucked his tongue at her.

"It's just a car, genius," he told her, but Oona refused to let up. "Oona, come," he commanded, and eventually the husky turned and padded toward him, distracted by the black Jeep that rambled up the steep drive. Ryan crouched down, hooking a pair of fingers beneath her collar. Despite her unfailing obedience, he never risked it when it came to cars.

The dog slipped away from Ryan's hold as soon as the metallic zip of a parking brake accompanied Siouxsie Sioux's melancholy vocals from inside Sawyer's Jeep. Oona dashed across the snow, stopping a foot from the driver's-side door. Plopping her b.u.t.t down on the frozen ground, she waited to greet the occupants of the vehicle while they gathered their belongings. A second later she was excitedly jumping against a pair of black jeans, miring them with white powder.

Sawyer bent down, gathering Oona in his arms as she decorated him with kisses, her tail whipping back and forth, little squeals of canine joy rumbling deep from her throat. Ryan's gaze drifted to the girl still inside the car as she b.u.t.toned her coat and gathered her things. She was a beautiful waif, her short black hair bobbed in a style that reminded him of 1920s starlets-a striking contrast against her fair skin and eyes as blue as the winter sky. She was just the kind of girl Ryan pictured Sawyer ending up with. Dark. Mysterious. Also a fan of funeral attire. She looked glamorous in her military-inspired coat, a black scarf that matched Sawyer's hat wrapped around her neck. But she was also the girl who was about to completely derail Sawyer's life.

Sawyer eventually straightened when Ryan closed the distance between them as he extended his right hand. Ryan caught it in a firm grip, pulling Sawyer forward into an embrace, both men patting each other on the back with their free hands.

"You're late," Ryan complained with a grin, squeezing Sawyer by the shoulder before taking a backward step, Oona excitedly sniffing at Sawyer's shoes. "Still forever attending funerals, I see." Ryan raised an eyebrow at Sawyer's all-black ensemble-a style Sawyer hadn't been able to shake since high school.

"They don't start with 'fun' for nothing," Sawyer said. "And we took a wrong turn." He rolled his eyes at his own admission. "Ended up fifteen miles in the wrong direction before I realized I'm an idiot."

"At the lake?" Ryan asked as Sawyer ruffled the fur on top of Oona's head.

"That entire thing is frozen through. Have you seen it?"

Ryan peered at Oona as she snorted. She was picking up a scent, exhaling a loud blast of air against Sawyer's shoe.

"Elvis," Sawyer concluded. "April's ferret."

Ryan wrinkled his nose at the news. "Please tell me you didn't bring rodents."

"G.o.d no," Sawyer muttered beneath his breath. "I'm not a fan either."

"They're creepy as h.e.l.l."

"Hey," Sawyer lifted his hands up in front of his chest. "You don't have to tell me. Try waking up next to one of those long-bodied f.u.c.kers at three in the morning; one wrong move and you get a face full of tiny fangs." He moved a hand in front of his mouth, wiggling his fingers to imply teeth. Ryan shuddered.

"You sleep with it? Sweet Christ."