“We’re not talking runaways. These guys just vanish—like off the face of the earth. They never come back. Never heard from again.”
“Okay. So where you going with this?” I ask.
“I’ve got a theory. The thing that attacked us got them too. Infected them, or whatever you want to call it. Let them go. And then, for some reason, they gave themselves up to it. Most of these articles talk about the missing kids just walking off in the night, in the middle of winter. Like Ray Dyson did. Not taking anything with them, not putting on shoes or jackets or nothing. And then poof, they’re gone.”
Everybody’s quiet.
I’m not liking Howie’s theory. “What else you got?”
“I think this beast—like you call it—only comes out in the winter. That’s when it hunts, right? I think maybe it needs the cold.”
Pike sits on a corner of the desk, rubbing his Mohawk, listening close.
Howie keeps going. “But the disappearances don’t happen every winter. I think that’s part of why nobody’s made the connection before. They only happen in the coldest winters, years apart sometimes. Look, I made up a graph to prove my theory,” he says, bright-eyed.
I have to hold back a smile. Only Howie could get excited over a graph. “Let’s see.”
It looks like something from a textbook. He must have whipped it up on the computer. It shows a squiggly line with spikes running from left to right, kind of like the readout on a heart monitor.
“Help me out,” I say. “What am I looking at?”
He leans in to point.
“This shows the number of local missing teenagers over the past sixty years, as far back as the records went. See how the numbers spike some years and flatline in others?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“The spikes happen in those years with the coldest winters. The flatlines are when the winters were warmer than average.”
I notice a change in the more recent years near the end of the graph. The gaps between the spikes are bigger, with longer stretches of flatline. Like a slowing heartbeat.
I point this out to him. “You think maybe the beast is slowing down?”
Howie shakes his head. “I think it’s more likely because the last twenty years have been the warmest in centuries. Global warming. Easy winters.”
“Easy?” Pike nods toward the open window with the polar breeze blowing in. “This place could use a little global warming.”
“But compared to how it used to be,” Howie says. “There’s been more early thaws. Thinner ice. A couple years ago the lake didn’t even freeze over completely. A century ago they used to harvest ice blocks till the end of March. Now you can’t even skate out there past February most years.”
“But this winter’s different,” I say.
“It’s a bad one. Just how the beast likes it. And because it’s had to wait so long between cold snaps, it’s built up a hunger. Usually only a couple kids go missing in the bad winters. But this one—first Ray, now you and me. I think maybe it’s starving.”
“Feeding frenzy,” Pike says.
“But if it’s in a frenzy, or whatever,” I say, “why did it let us go?”
Howie shakes his head. “Still working on that.”
I study the graph, the line tracking the missing teenagers looking like heartbeats. When really, it’s not tracking life but death.
“Where does it go, then?” Ash says. “When it’s not winter.”
Howie shrugs. “Could be, it holes up somewhere to sleep through the warmer stretches. Like a reverse hibernation, waiting for the temperature to drop low enough for it to come out. But that’s a guess. This”—he taps the graph—“is no guess. This is proof something’s going on.”
Ash gets up and stretches her back with a groan. “I don’t know, Howie. All I see is a squiggly line on a page. What’s the rest of this stuff?”
She glances at the pile of paper he’s set down beside the keyboard.
“Research. I’ve been looking into something called cryptozoology.”
“That’s not a word,” I say. “You made it up.”
“No way. Cryptozoology. It’s real. It’s the study of mythic or hidden creatures. Like the Yeti, or Sasquatch.”
I give him a look. Howie’s gone off the deep end. “You’re talking about Bigfoot? I thought we were being serious here.”
“I’m dead serious.” He pulls a page out of the pile and hands it to me. “I found this on one of those sites.”
The printout is grainy, showing a crude drawing made on some rock surface. But the image stops me cold.
The beast. I see the thick curves of those enormous legs, the bulk of its body and the long spiked claws. The head is turned to face me. The teeth are long daggers in a ferocious grin. Two little lines for the slit nostrils. And big circles for those bulging eyes.
“That’s it!” I say.
Ash and Pike crowd around to look.
“Where’s this picture from?” I ask.
“It’s a petroglyph,” Howie says. “A native rock painting. From an old Cree settlement on the north shore of Lake Simcoe.”
I can’t take my eyes off it. Even drawn in a basic outline it gives me a shiver.
It’s real. It’s really real.
Strange that it takes this cartoon cave scribble to make it all sink in. But now I’m buying Howie’s crazy theories. My powers of denial can’t stand against the weight of his proof.
“Wait a minute.” Something nags at me. “From when? That Cree place, how old are we talking about?”
Howie takes a deep breath. “That painting’s been dated at about a thousand years old.”
I’m shocked speechless.
“This thing’s been around here forever. I found some Cree legends that talk about an evil spirit haunting the lake in the winter.”
He shuffles through more papers. “Here it is. The Cree have a couple of names for it. Powatamwitekew. I guess that’s how you say it. It means ‘eater of dreams.’ ”
Howie catches my eye. I know we’re thinking the same thing. Our shared nightmare, being chased off the ice cliff.
“And they also call it Oskankaskatin,” he reads. “Means ‘bone chiller.’ ”
There’s a long silence as that sinks in.
“So do the Indians talk about people going missing?” Pike asks.
Howie nods. “There’s some stuff about this spirit stealing the souls of the young. It lures them off into the dark and, uh … swallows them whole.”
“If it’s been around all that time,” I say, looking up from the page, “just think of the body count.”
He nods grimly.
There’s something else that’s been worrying me, ever since the Indian ghost story Ash’s dad told me. The one about the Windigo who liked white meat.
“The missing victims you identified. Were they all white, like you, me and Ray?”
Howie gives me a puzzled frown. “Um, no, actually. In the pictures that went with the articles, there were all kinds of victims. White, black, Asian. And according to the Cree stories, a lot of Indians. Why’re you asking that? You think this thing has a grudge against Whitey?”
I shake my head, a little embarrassed. “No, it’s just … nothing.”
Ash catches my eye, giving me a small grin. “Dad’s story got in your head, didn’t it?”
“Little bit.”
“But you know, there are lots of Windigo stories. They don’t all go for white meat.” Ash takes the printout from me for a closer look. “Maybe this thing got some of those stories started.” She turns to Howie. “Is there anything on those crypto sites that tells you what to do when you’ve been bit by this freak?”
Howie shakes his head. “They just record some of the rare sightings over the last century. These sites are filled with weird creatures.” He swivels around to his computer, clicking through some bookmarks. “Most of this stuff is just ghost stories, popular myths and drunken hallucinations. You have to wade through a l
ot of junk to find anything credible.”
On the screen, images of giant furballs like Sasquatch and the Yeti flicker past. Sea serpents, giant thunderbirds, snakes with wings and other dreamed-up mutants.
“How does any of this help us?” I ask.
Howie shrugs. “It doesn’t. We’re still screwed. But at least we know a little more what we’re up against.”
“What we need,” Pike says, “is a bigass sticky bomb to blow this freak up.”
“Sticky bomb?” I ask.
“They were invented in World War Two.” Pike gets that gleam in his eyes when he’s talking about his favorite subject. “It’s a kind of grenade they used to blow up tanks. You needed the bomb to stick onto the tank to do any real damage, so they coated them with glue. I’ve always wanted to try a sticky bomb.”
I leave Pike to his daydreaming and go look out the window. It’s getting late. “No way I’m walking home in the dark. Can I bum a ride off you, Pike?”
“You can drop me off too,” Ash says.
“What am I, a taxi?” he grumbles. “You’re paying gas money.”
“Put it on my tab,” Ash tells him.
I notice an open library book on Howie’s desk. I lean over for a closer look. “What this?”
“That’s supposed to be a depiction of hell,” he says.
It’s a full-page illustration of the Devil, showing him as a giant, frozen waist-deep in a lake of ice. His big all-white eyes leer down at the damned. He’s holding two people up to his mouth, stuffing them in.
“I thought hell was supposed to be one big human barbecue,” I say.
“Yeah. But in the deepest, darkest pit there’s a lake of ice. And the Devil’s stuck in it.”
I look at the drawing, holding back a shiver.
“What are you thinking now, Howie?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. “First it’s Bigfoot, then a Windigo. Now it’s the Devil?”
“You saw that thing close up like I did. You tell me.”
I can only shake my head.
Windigos and Bigfoots are bad enough. But how do you beat the Devil?
TWENTY-ONE
I stayed up all night with the help of a six-pack of Cokes and late-night TV. I’m dead on my feet. Probably not the best condition for operating heavy machinery.
I’m pushing a snowplow around the marina parking lot. The snow started after midnight and kept up till dawn, piling knee-high drifts against the house.
Why we need to keep the lot clear, I have no idea. Nobody’s around to see it but us.
The subzero temperatures this morning can’t touch me. I’m out here with no hat, no gloves. The wind chill’s just a summer breeze.
You’d think the shudder and shake of the snow-spitting monster under my hands would keep me focused. But my eyelids keep blinking and forgetting to rise again.
It can’t be more than a few seconds that I nod off. I’m snapped awake by the grinding, cracking sound of the blades chewing up a bush at the end of the lot. The funnel shoots out splinters and wood chips, making a racket.
I try to pull the plow back, but it’s stuck. So I kill the power and go around to yank some twisted branches out of the rotor.
I’m bent over struggling with this mess when I hear the breathing behind me. I freeze. The breathing is heavy and quick. Not human.
It’s coming closer. I flinch at the brush of warm air on the back of my neck. Spinning around, I trip and fall back in the snow.
Piercing blue eyes stare at me from the white-furred face of a Siberian husky two feet away. The dog pants steam into the air. And he’s not alone. Four more huskies zero in on me.
“You must be made of hot dogs.”
There’s an old man in a stained Budweiser T-shirt and raggedy jeans standing in the path I’ve just cleared. It’s Mangy Mason himself. Never seen him up close before. It ain’t pretty.
I get up slowly so I don’t set off the dogs.
“We’re all meat,” he says, scratching deep into the bush of his beard, white as the fur of his dogs. He takes his time digging around, like he’s searching for something.
“You aren’t, are you?” he asks as I back up a bit.
“Aren’t what?”
“Made of hot dogs,” he snaps.
Hard to tell if he’s joking. Word is he’s harmlessly demented.
“They smell something on you,” he says, a suspicious edge to his voice.
The huskies are sniffing the air in my direction.
“I don’t know what they smell, but I’m not hiding any hot dogs.”
Mason finds one of the many holes in his T-shirt and sticks a finger through for a good scratch. There’s a worn and fading tattoo on his right biceps, of a Celtic cross. I don’t know how he got to be so old, dressing like that in this cold.
“Why you plowing the field?” he asks, like I’m the crazy one.
“Just a … miscalculation.”
I reach down to untwist the branch that’s wrapped itself around the rotor, hoping he’ll wander off.
“Ah.” He steps closer. “That’s why my dogs got stuck on you. I see you got bit.”
The branch snaps off in my hand. It takes a second for what he said to hit me.
“What did you say?”
“The dogs can scent it.”
“Scent what?”
Mason just stands there staring. The huskies fix their blue eyes on me, like they’re starving and I’m lunch.
“You met much of the local wildlife?” he asks.
“Besides your dog pack? No. Hey, come on. What are you talking about?”
He digs his long-nailed fingers into the coats of two of his dogs, giving them a good scratch. They lean into him.
“It likes them young,” he says, his eyes going distant now, not seeing me, the dogs or the snowy lot. “It took Rod McLean, my best friend in … ninth grade? We traded hockey cards. He was a Leafs fan, but I loved the Habs. I saw “Rocket” Richard play one time at Maple Leaf Gardens.”
“What took your friend?”
His eyes pull into focus. “What bit you?”
He points at the little blue mark on the back of my right hand.
I’m stunned. He knows!
“Tell me!” I say. “What is that thing?”
“A ghost, with teeth. A demon.”
More riddles and nonsense.
“That doesn’t help me at all.”
“You want help?” His lips curve into a cold smile. “There is none.”
The dogs start to stray. Mason moves along with the pack, clomping through the snow in a pair of decomposing sneakers, and no socks.
I try to think of something to say to get him to talk some sense.
Before I can come up with anything, he looks back over his shoulder. “Want some advice?”
“Yes! Anything!”
“Run.”
TWENTY-TWO
Squinting against the sting of blowing snow, I hang on for my life. The motorbike hits a rut, rattling my spine.
I can feel Ash’s body heat through her leather jacket. Her sweat-damp hair clings to the back of her neck. After my workout at the gym on base, my arms are so sore I can barely hold on. I have to lock my fingers together to keep from getting torn away by the wind.
Working out with Ash is lethal. In the gym she’s a drill sergeant and expects me to keep up. She even skips rope like a maniac, the rope whipping around in a near-invisible blur. I don’t spar with her—I learned my lesson the first time. But I held the punch mitts up so she could work on her combinations. They’re like oversized catcher’s mitts, for catching jabs and uppercuts. Then it was on to the speed bag for focus and coordination. My speed bag was stuck in the slow lane while hers was rattling off the wooden railing with a machine-gun rhythm.
I went to the gym not for the exercise but to get my mind off this past week. And off my run-in with Mangy Mason this morning. I’m still trying to make sense out of his rantings. So I escaped the madness for a couple hours.
And now we’re racing through Harvest Cove to her place, the pack stuffed with our gear bouncing off my back. The world is white on white. I focus on Ash’s crow-black hair and the warm tan of her neck to keep from going snow-blind.
Turning off the road, we climb a low hill and her place comes into view. Ash pulls in beside her dad’s pickup truck and kills the motor. In the sudden silence, I hear the sound of wood splitting. There’s a thud and more cracking, carried clear on the frozen air. Nick must be chopping wood.
Getting off the bike, Ash sniffles. “My face is numb.”
“Yeah? Can you feel this?” I steal a quick kiss. Her lips are fever hot on mine.
“Yeah.” She grabs my butt. “Feel this?”
But before I can take things any further, she heads for the front door.
I follow her inside, kicking my boots off on the mat. In the kitchen, she takes a pitcher of protein shake out of the fridge.
“Want some?”
The mud-colored stuff is supposed to taste like chocolate, but really it’s more like chalk.
“Here.” She hands me a glass. “You need your amino acids. Gotta get some meat on those bones.”
She pokes my bony chest. Tossing the backpack on the counter, I choke down a few swallows. She chugs her glass dry. Unzipping her jacket, she throws it over the back of a chair, then stops to sniff herself.
“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.