When Winter Comes | Book 4 | Masks of Bone Read online

  Masks of Bone

  When Winter Comes, Ep. 4

  Daniel Willcocks

  Other titles by Daniel Willcocks

  The Rot Series (with Luke Kondor)

  They Rot (Book 1)

  They Remain (Book 2)

  They Ruin (coming soon)

  Keep My Bones

  The Caitlin Chronicles (with Michael Anderle)

  (1) Dawn of Chaos

  (2) Into the Fire

  (3) Hunting the Broken

  (4) The City Revolts

  (5) Chasing the Cure

  Other Works

  Twisted: A Collection of Dark Tales

  Lazarus: Enter the Deadspace

  The Mark of the Damned

  Sins of Smoke

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  www.danielwillcocks.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Devil’s Rock Publishing Ltd.

  First published in Great Britain in 2020

  All rights reserved.

  https://www.devilsrockpublishing.com/

  All work remains the property of the author and may be used by themselves or with their express permissions in any way that they deem appropriate with no limitations.

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  A special thanks to my patrons

  To each and every one of my patrons, I truly appreciate your ongoing support.

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  You asked for a polar bear.

  Spot it in the book.

  Contents

  1. Cody Trebeck

  2. Karl Bowman

  3. Tori Asplin

  4. Alex Goins

  5. Cody Trebeck

  6. Naomi Oslow

  7. Tori Asplin

  8. Alex Goins

  9. Cody Trebeck

  10. Kyle Samson

  11. Alex Goins

  12. Sophie Pearce

  Author Notes

  Become a darksider

  About the Author

  Devil’s Rock Publishing

  Other titles by Daniel Willcocks

  1

  Cody Trebeck

  The scream lasted for an impossible stretch of time, the urgency and horror communicated through the sound waves reverberating towards them.

  Cody swallowed dryly, Travis hanging around his neck for support. “What was…”

  “Amy!” Sophie took a step in that direction. “Cody, that was Amy.”

  “How do you—”

  “I know it was her. She’s my best friend. I’ve heard her laugh, I’ve heard her cry, I’ve…” Her hands shot to her mouth. “Oh God. Does that mean…?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m not about to wait around and find out.”

  Cody helped Travis onwards several stops, but Sophie wasn’t following. “Soph?”

  “We have to go back.” Her face held a mask of determination as she took another step towards the fading scream. “What if it’s Kyle? Or Brandon? What if they’re doing something unspeakable to them?”

  Cody took Sophie’s hand and eased her away. The scream was fading, but the memory of it echoed in their minds. “Brandon wouldn’t do that to her.”

  “Kyle?”

  “Now, he probably could. Not to Amy, though.” Though he said the words, he wasn’t convinced. Cody tugged again.

  Sophie resisted.

  “Sophie, come on.” Cody grew desperate. Something heavy clanged, followed by crashing metal on concrete. The sounds were so clear. It was as though it was all happening just outside the reaches of the light. Did the tunnel magnify sound, or had he, Sophie, and Travis barely travelled through the tunnel at all? How futile had been their efforts at escape, if the world seemed to be pushing them back at every turn? “Let’s go.”

  “Why isn’t Brandon screaming?” Sophie asked. “If Amy is hurt, why isn’t Brandon?” Her eyes widened. “What if he did hurt her?”

  “Brandon wouldn’t.” Cody pulled, harder this time. Sophie yielded, moving a few feet his way. She gave him a reproachful look that stood in stark contrast to her affections given just a few moments ago. “Sophie, please. I’m scared.”

  The words echoed in the tunnel until they were swallowed up by another sound. Footsteps. Loud, thumping feet tearing up the tunnel. Sweat beaded Cody’s forehead as they stood rooted to the spot. They couldn’t turn away if they tried. The sound had them paralysed, a mixture of curiosity and terror as the tunnel filled with the cacophonous clang, magnified by the echoes until it sounded more like an army of a thousand than an individual pair of shoes.

  And then he sprang from the darkness. There was no coalescing of his rotund body, no melting from the shadows. One minute he wasn’t, and then he was. The darkness spat him out in one disgusted spurt and Brandon skidded across the floor, finding Cody and Travis and clutching onto them for support. His face was red, eyes streaming with tears. Sweat dripped off every available surface. He grimaced, every breath a struggle.

  “Brandon?” Cody held Brandon in his arms. “Talk to me, buddy. What’s going on down there? Where’s Amy?”

  Sophie stood on the edge of the darkness, peering ahead to where no one could see. Her fingers threaded in her hair as she waited for someone… Waited for Amy to join them.

  Brandon wheezed and hand pinned to his chest, every breath painful. He pulled away from Cody and pointed at the way he had come. “Dark… They… Amy… Oh, god… Cody… Run… Please…”

  There was no noise behind them, no continuation of the scream. Sophie continued staring, silently crying at something that had yet to be confirmed or denied.

  “Brandon, breathe. What happened back there? What was that scream?”

  Brandon looked into Cody’s eyes, his own shimmering with tears. He uttered a single word that told Sophie, Cody, and Travis all that they needed to know.

  “Wendigo.”

  Cody turned over his shoulder, only now realising that Travis had broken free and was using the wall for support. He leaned haphazardly against the stone, on shoulders slumped, his eyes half closed. In the faint light cast from Cody’s dying torch, he almost looked like one of them. The shadows played games with his features, adding darkness where there should be none. His eyes glinted like inky pools, his cheeks were gaunt. Travis wobbled unsteadily, his own breath coming in sparing hitches.

  Cody left Brandon to recover his breath as he walked to Sophie’s side. He took her hand in his, but there was no return. Sophie’s attention was drilled o
n the darkness, her lip wobbling, eyes unblinking.

  Cody gave a gentle tug of encouragement, wanting nothing more than to just sprint and get the hell away from there. But he couldn’t, not without Sophie. They had come this far. She had held him when he needed it. This was his chance to save her, to return the favour.

  Sophie resisted.

  “Sophie… She’s gone,” Cody said, hating the way the words tasted on his tongue. “We have to go, too—”

  Sophie tore her hand from Cody’s and took a step towards the darkness. “No! I can’t. She’s… What if she’s…”

  “What if she’s what?” Travis barked, appearing so suddenly beside them that they both jumped. “What if fatso managed to outrun her and she’s still back there?” For the first time since the scream, Sophie ripped her eyes away from the darkness, finding Travis’ surprisingly lucid. “We’ve already seen what those things are, how fast they can move. Amy is dead, Soph. Pull your shit together and let’s get the fuck out of here. What the hell are you waiting for?”

  Cody couldn’t comprehend the clarity in Travis’ words and demeanour. He was thankful for the help, but Sophie still resisted.

  “But… Amy…”

  Travis strode towards her, his leg buckling on every other step. He placed his hands on her shoulders, half to support himself, half to try and get through to her. “I know what it’s like to lose a best friend to this shit. Don’t get yourself killed because you can’t accept the truth.”

  Sophie shook her head. “Kyle’s not dead.”

  “Where is he, then?” Travis returned. “He sure as hell ain’t here.”

  Sophie protested. “She’s not dead. She’s not…” She finally turned to Brandon for help. “Is she?”

  Brandon was doubled over, his face beetroot red. He gave a resigned nod. “Yes… She’s gone…”

  Then came the second scream, this one more painful than Cody could have imagined. Sophie fell to her knees, losing her head in her hands as she let it all out, the piercing shriek carried along the tunnel like a Japanese bullet train.

  Cody was only dimly aware of Brandon’s babbling as he crouched beside her. He held Sophie, pulled her close to his chest, allowing themselves a single moment of respite as Sophie tackled with accepting the truth. Amy was gone.

  Amy was gone…

  Which meant that those things were really what Brandon said they were…

  Which meant…

  They didn’t hear them approaching. The wendigos didn’t sprint or scrabble along the tunnels as they had when they chased them through the hallways.

  The first sign that Cody had of the wendigos was as he glanced up from Sophie’s shoulder and saw a single face hovering in the darkness. The same face he had witnessed through the meagre crack in the gymnasium doorway.

  A mask of bone, its white turned grey in the shadows, head cocked with the fascinated curiosity of a bird eyeing up its prey, antlers sprouting from the top of the dome.

  Cody’s breath caught. He tapped Sophie’s shoulder. She faced the monster.

  Sophie screamed.

  Brandon sobbed.

  Travis roared.

  The torchlight died.

  2

  Karl Bowman

  She looked so small. So frail. A baby bird dropped from her nest and left to fend for herself.

  It was all so clear in that moment. The Masked Ones—for they were many, and they were beyond number—directed the call, plunged Karl’s mind into an oasis of its own, far removed from the blizzard, far detached from the taste of his wife’s pulsating life force on his lips, a thousand years gone from the sex-crazed nights of passion that he and Tori had once shared.

  For she wasn’t Tori anymore.

  Karl blinked in the dazzling sunshine, his dustbin lid hand not enough to dampen its shine. The air was crisp, the sky a brilliant azure, the likes of which he hadn’t seen in years. Somewhere nearby, the ocean played its melody, a gentle hushing against the glacier as the moon and the sun wrestled for its control.

  Something wet smacked. His colleagues, Stanley and Turner, straddled the lifeless body of the walrus as their blades dived into the blubber and separated the skin. The blades were keen, honed in preparation of their daily duties, and so the skin yielded readily, as if the knife held a magic that could simply unzip the coat that nature had given the creature.

  Their hands were stained red. The ice was painted in blood. Across a small break in the ice, out of reach across the waters, an island of walruses watched on with indifference, just glad that it hadn’t been them this time. One of their own had died, but nature was cruel, and so the circle of life continued on its axis.

  “You gonna give us a hand, or no?” Stanley called over, a smile on his lips. “We’ve saved your favourite—the head.”

  The incisions were crude, but tactical. While Stanley worked the lower third, Turner worked the rotund stomach. Nearby, more workers were busy assembling the sacks and equipment to transport the individual sections of the beast. The kill would be divided among the teams, the dogs given solace in not having to haul the bulk of the 1.5 tonne monster of the sea. They had tried in the past, and it had almost killed their dogs. More could be bred, in Karl’s opinion, but apparently the township didn’t want to go for that method.

  The world was changing.

  Karl turned back to the ocean, unsure as to what it was that he was feeling. An incorrectness in the world that tugged at his very fibres. In the distance, he thought he could hear something calling him. A faint whisper on the breeze. Stanley and Turner continued their attack, a strange hunger on their faces as the longest slice was dished and the guts spilled out in one foul eruption, intestines and kidney and liver bursting from the seams like an overstuffed teddy, the walrus deflating as though, beyond the blood and guts, it were made of nothing more than air, squeezed between the hands of an eager child.

  And still that call persisted on the wind.

  Turner called to Karl this time. Karl waved a hand. His voice wasn’t with him. He couldn’t access it, and he didn’t need it. He strode away, following the coastline and leaving his tracks in the snow. Somewhere far off, a polar bear growled, and the scars that decorated Karl’s chest puckered and throbbed in response. Karl gripped his knife as the trees came into view. A copse of pines, a dozen or so in a strange cluster, emancipated from the reaches of the forest a half kilometre in the other direction. The sound grew louder as he approached. He wondered how the roots of the trees could grip into the ice, for he was sure that the coastline could be nothing more than frozen water, far from the nutrient-rich soil that they usually demanded.

  The dogs barked, the sound far away. The strange siren grew louder. An urgent plea. Help. Desperation. Weakness.

  He passed beneath the trees and found it. A small brown dollop of blubber, clapping its flippers against the ground as it span in circles. Its milky, bloodshot eyes searched frantically, its nose lifting to the air to smell the stranger to its nest.

  Karl stood for a moment and watched its pitiful form. At just 3-months-old, the walrus calf was near useless in the wild. It could swim, but without the protection of its mother and pack, it was open to all kinds of predators. Its tusks hadn’t grown in and still it relied on its mother’s milk for sustenance.

  The calf detected Karl and paused, their eyes meeting, though he was unsure if the baby could truly see him. It shuddered, then padded closer, its curiosity drawing it towards the hulking man. Karl bent to one knee and extended a hand. The skin, while glossy and appearing as though it should be damp or wet, was dry to the bone. It felt… wrong, somehow. Like the flesh should have belonged to a human. The tough rubber exterior of its mother hadn’t yet formed, and so, instead, here was this pathetic excuse for a creature.

  The calf nestled into the cup of his hand. He stroked its head, feeling coarse strands of hair that shouldn’t exist. He raised his hands and invisible strands knotted in his fingers. He pulled and the pup squealed, the poor baby blink
ing in pain and betrayal.

  Karl lowered to his other knee. Stanley and turner were lost to Karl, who only existed in the shade of the woods. The trees grew closer. They shouldn’t have been able to, but they did, nonetheless. Every time Karl looked up, they closed in on him. The calf cooed beneath his palm.

  And then it bit him.

  Karl’s body surged with red hot anger, his emotions twisting on the dime. His hand found the hilt of his knife. He gripped it with both hands, a white-hot pain throbbing in his right shoulder, not that he could understand why. Perhaps he’d pulled a muscle on the hunt? Letting his right arm hang limply, he raised the knife above his head, ready to drive down and puncture the poor fucker’s skull. No infant would best him, cause him more pain than he had a right to feel. There wasn’t a creature alive that could best Karl Bowman, the greatest hunter that Denridge Hills had to—

  The report exploded around the copse of trees. Bark erupted from the trees, splinters of wood spraying in all directions. One of the pines toppled, creaking with a voice that had to be human as it fell back and crashed to the ground.

  Another report. Another tree down.

  Karl span in disarray, hunting for the source of the chaos. A third shot, and Karl was knocked to the ground, pain searing in the place where his shoulder had given him grief. This time, when he looked down, his arm was gone. In its place was a neat stump, healed over and clean. Nothing more than a nub where it had once been.