Keeley scrunched her brows. Much of her makeup had worn off during the night, rendering her remarkably more plain-faced than usual. “Like what? Like abdominal snowmen and stuff?”
Dixon clicked his teeth. “Yep. Like abdominal snowmen.”
“We should probably pack up,” Snowden suggested to her friends. “We’ve got a ways to go before we’re clear of the mountains.”
“We’re not going anywhere.” Zach folded his arms across his chest.
“Zach…?”
“No, Snowden. This guy’s a cheat. We paid for a modest getaway and drove all the way out here and what does he do? He pockets the coin and tells us to get the hell out. Nope. I’m hittin’ the slopes. Who’s with me?”
Keeley looked uncertainly to Minhas, who seemed to agree with Zach. “I’ll grab my gear,” he said, and then to Dixon: “Hey Rambo, you gonna turn on the lifts?”
Dixon finished his coffee. “Of course.” He slammed the mug down on the bar. “Your funeral.”
*
To Snowden, the snowy landscape was saturated in an amber filter. It looked as though she were looking through a glass of beer by peering through her expensive ski goggles. Ice crystals pelted against her cheeks and melted in her hair as she soared down the slope, leaving her friends in her wake. She felt free, out here, unhindered by the demons that haunted her back home. There was nothing here to remind her of her parents, nothing to remind her that she should be dead. As invigorated as she felt, however, Snowden could not shake the feeling that something ominous haunted the resort.
Though she had not wanted to defy Dixon’s wishes, she had felt compelled to support Zach. He had driven her all this way and chose to spend his spring break with her—a depressed college dropout.
At last, Snowden skied to a stop at the bottom of the mountain. She tore off her goggles and whipped her head from shoulder to shoulder, letting her hair fly wild and free. Within seconds, Zach skied past her, close enough to plant a kiss on her frozen cheek. Minhas was hot on his heels and Keeley was just behind him. She wrapped her arms around Snowden as she skied by and both girls tumbled to the ground, laughing and throwing snowballs at each other. Minhas stared with awe.
At last, with snowflakes falling from her hair, Snowden sat up. She let out a deep breath, feeling all the tension alleviate from her shoulders. They had been skiing all morning and she could really go for a mug of hot chocolate. She said as much, and the group followed her to the welcome lodge as, over the mountains, thunder rumbled.
“What do you suppose he’s doin’ here?” Zach pointed toward the hill where a large, navy Ford roared down the drive. Conservation Services was stenciled in white on the door and there was a row of emergency lights atop the cab.
The group stopped as the truck parked, blocking their path. The window was rolled down, revealing a middle-aged, mustached man. He wore mirrored aviators and a uniform marking him as a ranger. From where she stood, Snowden could see that a rifle identical to Dixon’s was propped up against the front seat. “It ain’t often we get a group of young people out here to Moonfish,” the ranger remarked.
“What can we do ya for?” Zach asked.
“Name’s Raymond Royce,” the ranger said with a curt nod. “Saw a bit of distress back yonder on the highway. You kids wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Zach shook his head. Next to him, Snowden sucked in a breath.
Royce eyed them all suspiciously. “Haven’t witnessed anything… unusual?”
“That Dixon guy’s a little off his rocker,” Minhas said.
Royce laughed. “He doesn’t get much for human contact up here anymore, I’m afraid. He’s a little nutty, but he’ll watch your backs—even if he threatens otherwise.”
Snowden felt slightly relieved.
“Wait.” Zach stepped up. “What do you mean, anymore? Like, this place used to be a bustling, happy-go-lucky ski resort, just like it shows on the Internet?”
Royce nodded. “I don’t know what’s on the Internet these days, but basically, yeah, this was once a destination place. Up until about three years ago.”
“What happened three years ago?” Keeley asked.
Royce was tight-lipped. “Ain’t right for me to say. Dixon might tell you himself, or he might not. Either way, I wouldn’t be goin’ nowhere tonight if I was you. Gonna be a bad one.” He craned his neck to look up at the sky. The rest of them looked skyward, too. The clouds had darkened significantly since Snowden had last noticed them. Up here in the mountains, everything seemed to be a monochromatic blend.
“We’re leaving within the hour,” Zach said. “Come on, guys.” The group shoved off with their skis in tow, but Royce called after them.
“You won’t get but fifty miles from here, boy. And believe me, when you and your friends are prey to the elements and the wilderness, Dixon’ll be the least of your worries.”
“What a nut,” Zach muttered.
“What do you suppose that was all about?” Keeley asked Snowden.
Snowden shrugged. “I don’t know, but he looked like the guy from Reno.”
The girls both giggled.
“Hell of a gun, though,” said Minhas.
“Dixon’s got a rifle like that,” Snowden offered. “Said he uses it for hunting bears…or something.” She remembered the way Dixon had grinned sardonically when she asked him what he hunted. She suspected that he had wanted to make her uncomfortable. But it didn’t, not really. It only made her more curious.
Just then, they heard a yell of anguish echo from behind the cabin. Royce threw his truck into gear, spewing a cloud of exhaust as he raced toward whatever chaos lay beyond the road. Snowden bolted after the ranger and the rest followed. They halted abruptly at the kennels, where Dixon knelt over blood-drenched snow. His hands were dyed crimson. He’d discarded his rifle to hold the carcass of a grey-white husky. The other dog circled, sifting through the snow with its snout.
Royce slammed his truck door shut and ran over to Dixon. “Dixon, what happened?”
“Dammit, Royce, you know what happened! Look at this mess! Look at my goddamn fence!”
The metal fence had been ripped completely out of the frozen ground, a feat that could only have been accomplished through means of impossible strength. One of the doghouses was completely crushed, the other turned on its head. Deep ditches punctured the snow.
“Bastard,” Dixon growled. “He knows there’s a storm comin’ and that I won’t be able to track him.”
“Who?” Zach asked. “You mean someone came over here and murdered your dog?”
“What in the hell are you still doin’ here?” Dixon snapped. “I thought I told you to—” A roll of thunder cut him short and a streak of white lightning split the sky. Wet flakes fell. In the lull that followed, they all listened as tires crunched on packed snow.
“Looks like we’ve got company,” Minhas pointed out as a black Jeep Liberty pulled in the parking lot.
Slowly, Dixon stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Guess it’s true what they say about misery,” he said and slung his gun over his shoulder.
Chapter 3
Gone Rogue
Two couples from Wisconsin had driven in. Their names were Lana and Parker, and Sarah and Nick. They were headed to a friend’s wedding, they explained, in Glacier National Park. “Skies were startin’ to look pretty ominous,” Nick said. “We saw your sign off the highway and figured you might have lodging.”
“I gotta take down that fuckin’ sign,” Dixon grumbled, but he’d stalked inside the welcome lodge and left the door open behind him. They’d followed like a pack of lost dogs, all except for Royce who collected the carcass and took it back to the ranger station as evidence. “We’ll get him after the storm, Dixon,” he’d said. “We’re close. Just try and relax tonight and come tomorrow, this’ll all be over.”
Snowden made hot cocoa for everyone. She’d found a box of mix pouches in a cupboard bene
ath the bar. There weren’t enough coffee mugs so they drank it from beer glasses. The cocoa clumped and coated the sides. She winced as she crunched a petrified mini marshmallow in half.
“You need help, man?” Parker called to Dixon who had seamlessly slipped into survival mode. He was boarding up windows and dead-bolting the doors. Dixon boldly ignored him.
The new girls looked around anxiously. They stood with their hands clamped like vices around their cocoa glasses, finding faraway spots to focus on every few seconds. Lana was dark-haired and shamelessly curvy in a tight knit sweaterdress and thermal leggings. Eventually, she moved to link arms with Parker. Sarah was mousy-haired and small; she looked like a pixie, Snowden thought.
The wind howled outside and beat against the building. Dixon’s other dog, Stony, barked relentlessly at the door.
“Hey, Deliverance!” Minhas shouted over the rising cacophony. “What’d’ya got to drink in this place?”
Keeley punched him in the arm. “Don’t piss him off,” she whispered.
“Top shelf on the right,” Dixon answered gruffly, much to everyone’s surprise. “Jack Daniels is behind the black powder and Johnnie Walker’s behind the buckshot. Don’t touch my Jim Beam.”
After smirking at Keeley, Minhas vaulted over the bar. “At long last,” he said as he poured himself a shot of whiskey, then one for each of the guys, “let’s get this party started!” They tipped their heads back and thunder rattled the walls of the cabin.
*
The walls and the floor pulsated with nineties boy-band beats blaring from an old boombox Nick had found beneath a moth-eaten sheet. Keeley and Sarah danced on the bar in their stockings and the boys all played drinking games with a deck of faded cards. Lana sat with her long legs crossed over the arm of an over-stuffed, dilapidated chair reading a book that had lost its cover and sipping on a glass of whiskey. Snowden sat on Zach’s lap for a while and briefly mingled with the girls on the bar, but she found that she just couldn’t enjoy herself when Dixon sat on the far side of the room, alone, and bathed in firelight.
A log collapsed and spit sparks as she lowered herself onto the couch beside him. He tamed the flames with a steel poker and continued to stare intensely into the fire as though he did not even notice her.
Snowden cleared her throat and flipped her hair over her shoulder. When Dixon’s gaze did not waver, she leaned forward with her elbows resting on her knees, hoping to catch his peripherals. His jaw muscles tensed. “What do you want?” he said.
“You’re in pain.” Snowden knew what pain did to a face. It put creases in your skin where there had never been before and dragged your features down. She saw it every time she looked in the mirror.
“I don’t feel pain,” Dixon acknowledged.
The statement resonated with Snowden, soaked into her very bones. It had been months since she had felt any sort of physical pain. Her injuries were all internal, a black tar that coated her insides. “You know, I’ve lost people, too,” she confided. “My parents died in a car accident this winter, just before Christmas. Somehow I survived… without a scratch.”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty just because you lived,” Dixon stated.
Snowden regarded him curiously. He swallowed hard and every muscle in his body tensed. A vein in his temple pulsed. “Maybe you should learn to practice what you preach, then,” she said.
Finally, Dixon’s eyes settled upon her. They blazed with more energy than the fire, glowing like coals in the shade of his brows. “You have no idea.” He took a swill from the bottle of bourbon and kept his fist clamped tightly around the neck. With his left hand, he popped the buttons on his flannel, revealing a crude necklace.
Snowden squinted at it. “Is that a—?”
“You kids are so naïve,” he accused. “You strut around here, thinking there ain’t no such things as ghouls and squatches and things that go bump in the night. You think you’ve already seen the nightmares this world is capable of. Think again, Blondie.” He took a drink. “Three years ago, I came home and yanked this molar out of my son’s skull. He was eight. The rest of him was fragmented, scattered upon the floor. It was like looking at a goddamn broken mirror.” He shook his head. “His skin was under my fingernails for a week.”
Snowden cringed. “But what—”
“If I knew what, I’d have killed it before it set foot in my house. No one knows what they are.”
“They?”
Dixon nodded. “They’re scavengers, most of ‘em. They hibernate most of the year, coming alive only during the bitter cold season. They hide up in the nooks and caverns of the mountains, protecting themselves from the winds and the eyes of humans. They eat deer and wounded things, and they don’t discriminate between us and animals.”
“Why would that one kill…?” she trailed off. She did not want to remind him of the gruesome death of his son more than need be.
“There is a hunter among them,” Dixon explained. “A rogue. My best guess is that he got a taste for human meat and now he seeks it out. He is more active than the others, and manipulative. He studies his prey, stalks it like a wolf stalking a deer. He watches for reactions and weaknesses.” He looked down at his husky, Stony, who lay on a rug in front of the fire. Dixon sighed. “I should have shot my dogs myself, instead of letting him pick them off, one by one by one.”
“What about your wife?” Snowden asked. “Where is she?”
He took a long drink from the bottle this time. “She died that day, too. The rogue threw her up against the wall and shook her like a rabbit to break her neck. She was already dead, at least, before he wrapped his jaws around her head. My son wasn’t so lucky.”
Her voice quavering, Snowden asked: “Why didn’t he kill you?”
A dark smile twisted Dixon’s features. He suddenly looked aged beyond his years. The shadows accentuated the wrinkles in his forehead and silver whiskers were made visible in the firelight. “I wasn’t home,” he said finally. “I was here, as always—making people feel welcome.” He paused, and then, “Guess I’ve lost my flair for that, eh?”
Snowden did not acknowledge his dark humor. Instead, she scanned the room. Minhas and Keeley now sat on the couch opposite of her and Dixon. They stared blankly at him, their mouth agape. She could feel the others behind her, leaning on the back of the couch. Even Lana had abandoned her book and came to listen. Zach, on the other hand, rolled his eyes. “Bullshit,” he said. He slouched on the arm of the couch.
“Zach!”
“Come off it, Snow! This dickhead’s been tryin’ to get into your pants since the moment we got here.”
“Not true!” Snowden turned to Dixon for reassurance He sat back and casually raised one brow, almost politely as though he were genuinely interested in what Zach had to say.
“You’re the only reason he let us stay, Snow. If it weren’t for you, he’d have sent us packing.”
Dixon laughed and leaned against the cushion with his arms behind his head. “I tried to send you packing,” he said. “You wouldn’t leave.”
“Listen to him,” Zach said to everyone. “He sounds like a lunatic. Bet he and his buddy, Reno, are so goddamn bored chillin’ up here with their thumbs up their asses that they gotta fabricate an entire hoax just to amuse themselves.”
Dixon pouted his lips and bobbed his head from side to side, thinking. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“What about the thing in the road, Zach?” Snowden stood up. “You said it was big—”
“I repeat: hoax.”
“What about the dog?” Lana said. Stony’s ears perked up at the word dog.
“Sick fuck probably killed it himself,” Zach reasoned. “Anything for a good show, right?”
Dixon sighed. “If only that were all this was.”
A hush fell over the lodge, then. The only sounds were of the fire crackling and Zach grinding his teeth. Suddenly, a drunken Sarah belted out: “Snowball fight!” She ran toward the
door, wearing only stockings and a puffy vest to keep her warm.
“Sarah, no!” Lana reached for her, but Sarah had already unbolted the door. She threw it open, revealing a midnight sky from which snow fell in fat flakes. A full moon shone blue on the snow. Several feet had accumulated since they’d last seen outside. Everything looked calm.
Sarah skipped out the door, and fell into a snow bank. She waved her arms and her legs to create a snow angel. “Come on, boys!” she beckoned.
Minhas stood from the couch, but Keeley fixed him back down with a glare.
“Nicholas!” Sarah shouted. Her voice was shrill and sing-song. Coyotes howled in answer. Stony barked.
Shrugging his shoulders and sporting a goofy grin, Nick sprinted out the door. He launched himself into the same snow bank as Sarah, but as soon as he reached for her, she had already somersaulted away. She threw a snowball that broke into powder on his sweater.
Dixon casually walked over to stand in front of the open door. He crossed his arms over his chest. Snowden moved to stand behind him, then. They all watched as Nick and Sarah played childlike games in the snow, gradually falling farther and farther away from the lodge.
From the corner of her vision, Snowden saw Zach smile smugly. “See, there’s nothing out there. No boogeyman or abominable—”
Sarah screamed. The sound of it pierced the night. A long, low growl resonated in the darkness.
“Sarah!” Nick was a blur as he ran to her, and almost immediately he was thrown into the air like a ragdoll. His back arched in midair. He landed on his neck with his head bent backwards.
“Son of a bitch!” Parker pushed his way out the door, and from the Beretta he kept at his side, fired six 9mm shots into the night.
“Parker, no!” Lana leapt into action, tackling Parker to the ground. Minhas dragged him back inside the lodge, just as—in the distance—Sarah was dragged down the hill. Her screaming interrupted by the sickening sounds of her bones crunching.
All was quiet again.
Minhas, bent over Parker, stared into the deadly night. “What the fuck!” he yelled.
Dixon put the deadbolt back on the door.