Episode 2 - in the dead of winter

By Alexander Saxton

Yep, still snowing out there. Looks like you’ll be spending the night here. Even if I let you go, and there’s not much chance I’ll let you go out there and freeze to death, I doubt you’d get the car a mile down the road.

It’s cold out there, damn cold. Heh, still I’ve seen worse. Come on, take a seat, throw your feet up. No need to be polite-like.

Now like I was saying, this cold is nothing. We’re down here in the city. Running water, electricity, indoor heat. Hell, even without all that you’ve still got four walls and a ceiling. No chance of the wind blowing your fire out in here.

Drink? Ahh, there you go. Just let me know when you need a top off. 

Now see, I worked up North damn-near most of my adult life now. I was a sawyer, sawmill man. Not much reason, that’s just the work there was when I was a  young guy. Pa did fish out West, but he comes to settle here at the end of his life near Ma’s family. So there I am, young guy, no connections in the business. Had to work all kinds of jobs up in nowhere and no place. 

Let me tell you about one place. Last place I ever worked, in fact. Shame too, first good job I had and all. Spent all those years being a run-around, average joe mill man, and this was the first time I was running the mill myself.

Out in the middle of nowhere, of course, being my first job as the boss. Far up north on the Peace River, then more than 50 kilometers north of that. Couple good kilometers west of Lake Margaret.

Like I said, I worked lots of jobs. Plenty further north than that and plenty in colder places. But none were ever as nasty as that place. Something about the cold there was different. Got into your bones like nothing else. Felt like you were like to die each night.

Thank goodness I wasn’t ever up there too long in the colder months. No man should be cutting wood in the dead of winter. Course some bosses wouldn’t care and just want to turn a profit. Some mill men, damn idiots, would want to make a bit of extra cash themselves. Some poor guys just fell behind schedule, and the bosses made ‘em keep going into the cold weeks. Unions weren’t so good back then.

This place though, wasn’t just the cold that was nasty. Small town, just a bit south of the mill. Most unkindly folk I’ve ever met. You wouldn’t have thought it was a mill town, and they wouldn’t have wanted you thinking it.

That’s part of the reason I was the boss up there. Not one man or woman in that town wanted any part of that mill. All our guys were contracted from out of town, mostly down here. Still, my boss set up shop there. For whatever reason the land was cheap, even given that it was pretty uncultivated. Lot’s of trees I mean, big ones too.

So I worked as the boss up there for two good seasons. Good seasons too, good pay. It was after that second season that I get a call in the middle of January. It’s the owner, he says that he got a call from the local authorities. Says there’s been light seen coming from the mill. Now, none of our guys, or anyone, should be up there. We cleared out in late November. The police in the area are saying they won’t check, and nobody else from the town is going to do it either. They told the owner it was his problem, and so now he was making it my problem.

So we left that night there we are up there later the next day, me and Tony Stewart and Little Mikey Thompson.

The Reader: Well, I told you we wouldn’t have to be up here too long. Town’s just up ahead there, so I’ll phone in how there was nothing out of the ordinary and we’ll head back in the morning.

Tony: Two days or two weeks, damn waste of time either way. What were these folks thinking, calling us up here like this over nothing.

R: Oh it was probably some drifter just keeping himself warm for the night. Didn’t touch anything important, that’s all that matters.

T: Drifter! Didn’t touch anything sure, but left his pack. Left his filthy coat and his garbage.

M: Why do you figure he would have done that?

T: How am I supposed to know that, Mikey?

M: Well it’s just that he left a fire pit. Food too, half-eaten. Couldn’t be a bear that got him, could it?

T: What do you care for? Bear or no bear, any drifter, any anyone around here is face-down dead in the woods by now. Damn, it’s cold!

R: Yeah, yeah, we hear you Tony. How you holdin’ up there, Mickey?

M: I’m okay.

T: Say Mikey, what have you been haulin’ around in that bag all day?

M: Oh, this? Just this rifle I got over the holiday.

T: Jesus Mikey! Put that thing away before you blow my head off!

R: Will you calm down. But he’s right Mikey, best to put that away. What are you bringing that up here for anyway?

M: Well, I just thought I’d shoot a couple birds while we up here but I never saw any. Didn’t mean to startle you Tony.

T: It’s all right, but god knows where you got that thought. You know what this place is like, almost no animals for miles around. I can understand it though, I wouldn’t want to nest anywhere near this town.

M: I always wondered, is that normal? I figured the little critters just didn’t like the mill, but for two years?

R: Well you’re right, you don’t find too many animals living around a mill. For obvious reasons. But it is a little odd up here. No birds, no squirrels, no anything for miles, all year round. It’s like they all cleared out on account of something awful.

T: Didn’t you hear me? They cleared on account of the queer folk in this town.

R: Now that’s enough of that talk. We’re here. Hello! Hello?! Anyone around?

But there was no answer. We looked around for half an hour, and there wasn’t a single soul left in that town. Eventually we made our way to the local drug store and found a note that just said “closed for the season.” Closest thing we had to any kind of contact that day.

Well, we didn’t think on it too long. Not the strangest thing any of us had ever seen; given the people, given the place. We’d also driven straight there in the dead of night, dead of morning really, so we were all eager to get some shut-eye for the drive back.

Now when we set up shop there about two years before, the company built a couple of employee cabins. Flimsy little things, but good enough to sleep in, and cook your dinner, and put your feet up after the shift.

So we set up in my place, the supervisor’s cabin. I tried to phone the owner, but the damn phone was dead. Only had the phone in one cabin there, and I wasn’t about to go breaking and entering into someone’s house just to phone in about nothing. So we called it a day; Mikey set up an extra cot on the half level up there, Tony insisted that he was gonna go stay on his own. There was never much sense arguing with Tony Stewart, so I gave him his key and he was on his way.

Me, I stayed up a little bit. Grabbed the bottle of rye in my desk and did a little bit of thinking.

Hah, that reminds me. How are we doing over there? Ah, you’re gettin’ there. Let’s just top you off.

I feel like you might need it. I didn’t know it that night, but I needed that drink. I thought about my two years working near that town -- no, it wasn’t the town. It just being in that place.There was something wrong with it. Big trees, plenty of plants, but barely an animal to be seen anywhere. Just the awful feeling you’d get at night, like you shouldn’t be there. 

None of us ever said it, but you could understand why the people were the way they were. Anywhere living there all year round would be like that. But they weren’t there, and I could understand that too. That feeling, that awful feeling, it was worse that night then I’d ever felt it. There was no way I was gonna get any sleep, so I had to distract myself somehow. The last thing I remember is sitting in my chair, and thinking that I was going to die that night.

But I didn’t die that night. 

I woke up to an awful crash and the worst sound I’d ever heard. It was a scream, maybe. It was some kind of human noise, and it was coming from the cabin right next to ours. 

I rushed out, I still had my boots on from the night before, and I went to go see what happened. Whatever it was, it woke Mikey up too and he wasn’t far behind me.

Now, I said those cabins were flimsy. But they were still solid lumber, made by builders and engineers, and something had blown, or ripped, the back of that cabin almost clean off.

I called out to Tony, and he didn’t answer. So I started making my way through the wreckage of that cabin. 

And I found him. Part of him.

Like I told you, I worked a lot of jobs up North in my day. Good and bad, safe and unsafe. I’ve seen folks lose fingers, and more; I watched someone die instantly under the weight of a 15-tonne pine; I’ve seen up close what a grizzly can do a man, what that force of nature can do when it’s hungry and it has nothing left to lose.

But I’d never seen anything like what I did at that moment, and I never have to this day.

There, in the middle of cabin floor, was an awful, glistening red pile of Tony Stewart. It was clear that whatever had ripped open that cabin had ripped him open too, and sent blood, bones, and guts flying across the room. And whatever it was, it’d headed back into the forest, leaving a red trail behind it.

I finally noticed that Mikey was behind me, and it looked like the scene was just too much for him. He was tossing up whatever dinner he’d had the night before, and it was taking everything I had not to do the same. Maybe the one thing that was giving me any comfort was seeing that rifle slung across Mikey’s shoulder.

But not even that felt much good once we got back to the car. There was a tree right on top of it, the whole thing was smoking mess. But it was more than that, you see. The car was beat up all over, bashed apart from every angle, like some huge thing had ripped that tree up from the roots and used it to smash our car like a child breaks a toy.

So you can imagine the kind of situation that left us in. More important at that moment than finding out what happened to to Tony Stewart was making sure it didn’t happen to us. Things didn’t look very good with no car and no chance in hell of making to civilization before freezing to death, let alone before night and what that might bring.

Me and Mikey went about breaking into every place we could, trying every phone. Had to give up on that after a while; it was pretty clear that every phone in that town was dead, and we were wasting time.

Well, with no hope of getting away and no way to contact anybody we figured we’d have to wait. Hopefully whoever called in about the mill in the first place would come by again. That was the plan anyway. So Mikey and me, we holed ourselves up in that drug store, just about the biggest strongest building in that town. No knowing if that’d be good enough, but it had to be better than one of those cabins that got torn apart like a fruit crate.

It felt like some kind of animal instinct, hiding in that little drug store like that. That whole day that feeling I talked about earlier, the feeling I’d had the whole time I’d been working up the, that’d gotten even worse the night before, well it was the worst yet. And I finally knew what it was, you know, what it felt like. It all felt like I was being watched the whole time, there was something waiting in the trees. Waiting for.. who knew what. But it wasn’t like being stalked by some wild animal, it was worse than. It felt malicious, it felt almost human. Almost.

So there we were, it was just getting dark as far as we could tell. We done the best job we could boarding up every door and window. There was a small coal furnace and we had that going. No choice, really, if we didn’t want to freeze to death. We hadn’t said much over the past day. There wasn’t much to say. We were just sitting there, waiting and waiting. 

It wasn’t very long after it got dark. It was snow we heard first, the crunching I mean. It was thick out there, so we could hear it getting closer from a ways off. Big even crunches, which I guessed meant big even steps, which I knew meant something big.

It made its way to the front of the store and it stopped, and stayed there for a for moment, and then we could hear it circling around the building. It must have looking for the best spot to get in from. Mikey just had this look on his face, this sad look of hope. Like maybe that thing didn’t know we were in there. I wanted to believe that too, but I didn’t.

It just kept circling around, and then all of a sudden it stopped. At the front. And it started.

It started smashing on the front door, the windows, everything. We spent hours barring up that entrance, and it didn’t mean anything. Wood and glass were flying everywhere, and now I could see flashes of the thing through the gaps in our barrier. One second it looked like it had thick, dark fur and another it had hard skin. It was too fast to really tell.

In spite of the damage it was doing, it didn’t look like it could get in. The building was too strong and the entrances were too small.

I’ll never forget the sound it made. An animal roars, howls, cries, it does so out of some primal instinct. Fear, pain. This was anger, and it wasn’t a roar or a howl. It was a scream. A scream anyone would have heard for miles around.

And then, after it made that ungodly noise, it walked away. It ran. I would tell you what I thought at that moment, but I didn’t think anything. Good thing too, didn’t have the time.

Barely half a minute after thing ran off, a tree came flying through the front of that store. It blew right through the wall, sent the concrete flying. Took a piece of flying debris right to the head myself. You can still see the scar right here; you see, where there’s no hair? Didn’t think much of right then, there were bigger concerns. Namely, that tree had come down right on Mickey Thompson’s legs. He was screaming, calling out for me to do something, but I couldn’t move that tree an inch. Maybe if I had a minute to make a lever, but I didn't have a minute because that thing was back.

It was dark and the thing was hunched over, so I couldn’t tell much, but it was tall. Maybe 20 feet, maybe more. Fur all over, every colour, with patches of skin here and there. Two long legs and two arms, with big hands and terrible claws; sharp and dirty. And… and I didn’t want see it, but I did… There was something around it’s neck. It was… it was skin. Human skin, there was no denying it. It was wrapped around it’s neck like some kind of scarf.

As for the face… well it was too dark in there to make anything out yet. 

Before I could do anything, it swatted me aside like I was nothing and lifted that tree off of MIkey with one arm. It grabbed him, and bolted off into the woods. I thought of what was wrapped around that thing’s neck, and I thought of Tony Stewart, and I wasn’t about to let it happen that happen to two people on my watch.

In the curfuffle, I’d seen that Mickey had dropped his gun. It didn’t look like it’d gotten damaged, so I grabbed it and I ran after that thing into the trees.

It was easy enough to follow them, Mikey’s screams led the way. They had some ground ahead of me, but I was able to catch up. The forest around that town was dense, it looked like the thing couldn’t move as fast as it did in the open. I could see it about a hundred feet off, swerving through the trees, and I was able to get a good sprint going.

Now I’m not the best shot, not by far, but you spend most of your time up North and you learn how to handle yourself. When I got close enough, about fifty feet between me and that thing, I took that rifle and I made my shot.

*Rifle sound*

It echoed off into the night, with not a soul to hear save for me, Mikey, and that monster. It stopped, and it turned to me. I could just barely see it’s eyes in the moonlight. Blue and shining, burning with a cold fire and looking right at me. The next second it was coming back, rushing right at me. I took aim and fired again.

*Rifle sound*

If my first shot didn’t hit it, that one for sure did. It screamed that awful scream again and threw Mikey to the ground, and I knew I had to run. 

I don’t know what it was in that moment, but all I could think of was getting to the sawmill. I knew it was close, and I knew I had no chance just sticking in the trees or running back to town. 

I remembered where the foliage was thickest on route, getting every second on it I could while it swerved through the trees or knocked them down.

Now, I want to say that I had some clever scheme. Lure into the mill, use the blade to cut it up. But the truth is it just felt safer than anything else, nothing but dumb instinct. I made it to the mill alright, with no plan, out of breath, that thing barreling down on me, only ten seconds behind.

I had fight it, there was no other option, so I turned around to try and get one last shot off. It was already on me, and before I could line up it took hold of my arm and squeezed, squeezed with all the power that could tear open cabins and rip up a pine from the roots. My whole arm went numb, but in that split second I mustered up all my strength and squeezed my hand as hard as I could.

*Rifle*

I saw the shot go right into the thing’s shoulder. It tossed me aside and howled with anger. It started thrashing around in the mill, knocking down walls and support beams. I barely managed to crawl away as that thing brought down the whole building, right on top of itself.

That awful strength… it’d busted up my arm and Mikey’s legs, and ripped Tony right open, but now it’d done itself in.    

After everything settled, I crawled up close to get a good look at it. It was covered in tonnes of wood and metal but it was still poking out of the debris from the chest up. It probably tried to get escape when it’d seen what was happening, but it was too late.

Up close, right up close, what I couldn’t see before in the dark was all too clear in the moonlight. The fur wasn’t it’s own; it was bear and wolf, and deer and elk, and every animal you could think of in those parts. It was wearing them like a coat, crudely stitched together, and underneath was hard grey skin.  I checked where I’d shot it, and the bullets had barely pierced that thing, where I’d shot it in the shoulder the bullet was only lodged an inch in.

All of a sudden it spasmed a bit, and coughed. It was still alive, barely. I went over to it’s head, where I’d been avoiding the whole time. I unwrapped its scarf of human skin, of Tony Stewart, and pulled over its big fur hood. And there it was, staring back at me, a giant face as human as yours or mine. An old wrinkled face, and those terrible burning eyes.

And it coughed out something I’ll never forget, no matter how long I live or how much I drink. It called out something in a low awful voice, in a language that no other man has ever heard but me, but something no one who’d lived the life I’d lived could mistake.

‘Cold,’ it said. ‘So cold.’

Mikey Thompson didn’t make it through the night, too much blood loss. I barely survived myself, just long enough for for the owner of the mill to find me. He’d driven up after he hadn’t heard from us for two days. I told him everything and he saw that… that thing, and we agreed on what had to be done. We torched it all: the mill, and the cabin with Mikey and what was left of Tony inside. We said that we’d found the mill that way, that some crazy must’ve done it and set fire to the cabin the next night. The police up there didn’t give us any trouble. Nobody in the town did. They were very understanding, and more than happy to see us go.

So, what do you think? You don’t believe me, huh? Don’t worry, I can see it in your face. What do I know, old guy with one good arm; can’t work no more, so I stay home all day drinking.

Well, what do you know, storm let up. I guess you’ll be going. Drive safe, and watch yourself. It’s still cold, and you never know what’s out there.