When Winter Comes | Book 2 | Buried

  Buried

  When Winter Comes, Ep. 2

  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/

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  A special thanks to my patrons

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  For my mini demon. Papa may birth the horrors, but mama sure didn’t.

  Contents

  1. Denridge Hills

  2. Tori Asplin

  3. Cody Trebeck

  4. Tori Asplin

  5. Karl Bowman

  6. Cody Trebeck

  7. Alex Goins

  8. Cody Trebeck

  9. Karl Bowman

  10. Tori Asplin

  Author Notes

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  About the Author

  Other titles by Daniel Willcocks

  1

  Denridge Hills

  The blizzard raged on, the snow-laden clouds swollen and puffing to a magnitude that hadn’t been witnessed in this lifetime. Greys turned to white turned to black, blocking the vista of the bleeding Aurora from sight. Clouds roiled and fought, vying for space in the pregnant air as they unleashed their torrents of snow upon the town.

  They couldn’t be called flakes any longer. Flakes suggested delicacy, a whisper from a stranger in a darkened room, and that’s not what plummeted from the heavens. The frozen snowballs barrelled from the sky, stacking up on the ground, raising the height of the paths, blocking doors, and causing the ancient pines to groan. The wind roared, pulling at roof tiles and rattling windows. An old church, long abandoned after a fire raged in the pulpit almost thirty years prior, lost the last piece of the refuge which had held it together. The skeletal structure, with its flimsy, rotting walls and gaping holes, was the first true victim to the storm, long before They came.

  But come They did.

  Under the cloak of the storm They came. As promised. The lost remnants of the old world came to claim what was rightfully theirs. Marching in the midst of the storm they came, undeterred by the raging weather.

  Only a few were awake to witness their descent.

  For Tomlin Ludlow, the first sign that something was wrong came from a scream from the street outside. The haunting cry of a dying man. He had never heard anything so terrifying before. Few could say that they knew with confidence the sounds a human could make when they stood upon the brink of death, but a primal, survival instinct is buried deep within us all, and Tomlin’s instincts told him that danger was nearby.

  He sat up sharply, sweat peppering his brow. It had been a nightmare, of that he was almost certain. A foggy dream in which he had regressed forty years and his father had taken to him with his favourite weapon—a belt. With each bullwhip strike of leather against his ass, the skin throbbed in fits of heat and pain. Nubs of concentrated hurt spiked as the belt whispered through the air and found its target. Tomlin was convinced this was no ordinary belt. Perhaps one of his mother’s decorative pieces from her fleeting phase of listening to 80s glam rock and thinking that she was Joan Jett. Another whip, another stifled yelp, and he was convinced that there was more to the belt than met the eye. A glance back confirmed this, showcasing a strip of metal studs which bit into his cheeks and destroyed the muscle and flesh beneath. Reams of blood sprayed his father’s maniacal face as he pulled back, the belt refusing to let go, clinging to the wet flesh with its hungry teeth as he scolded his son once again for something that was long buried in the past.

  Although knowing that the dream had been ludicrous, Tomlin moved his hand to his rump and cautiously patted the skin. He expected pain to flare and spike at a simple touch but was glad to find that there was nothing wrong.

  Nothing wrong at all.

  Tomlin glanced at Rita, her eyelids fluttering as she lost herself in the throes of her dream. She looked so beautiful at night. So at peace. Her full lips were lit with colour and her breathing was deep and full. The ghost of a smile traced his lips as his swollen heart beat with love for her.

  Another cry from outside.

  Tomlin looked around, out of sorts and still a little lost in the clutches of his dream. He eased himself out of bed and trotted to the bedroom window. His podgy cheeks wobbled as he walked, and as he shifted the curtains, he was surprised at just how dark things had grown outside.

  There hadn’t been any sign of a storm before bed. Usually the town would be warned of a coming storm, heralded to prepare and ensure that everyone had enough supplies to last out the worst of the extreme weather. The entire town depended on it. Ordinarily, Ludlow’s store would have been flooded with business before an approaching storm, customers ladening their cradled arms with more stock than they’d truly need, but today he had seen nothing more than the typical gaggle of “How do ya dos.”

  His breath fogged up the glass. Snow belted from the heavens, limiting his vision to no more than halfway across the street. In the limits of his vision, there was nothing more than storm. It would be easy to imagine that he were adrift, a lonely vessel tossed out to a white, frozen sea. The ghosts of people teasing the edges of his vision, never fully coalescing, but that ever-present danger of being watched plaguing the back of his mind.

  He tore his eyes from the window, seeking comfort in the closed eyes of his wife. He wondered what she was dreaming about, her fair face so at ease while his heart still raced in his ch
est and the ringing echoes of that scream still resonated in his eardrums.

  That scream… It had been so real. But who would be out in that weather at this time of night? He knew most of the town’s residents by face, name, and heritage. No one would be that stupid.

  He narrowed his eyes and searched for any sign of danger or hurt in the street outside, but it was impossible. Perhaps it had been nothing more than the wind, funnelling through the cracks and hollows of the town, creating a symphony that replicated the sound he had heard. Perhaps he had still been dreaming when the scream had come, and that scream had actually been his own, calling his mother for help as his father tenderized his ass and flushed tears from Tomlin’s eyes.

  Tomlin shuddered, shaking away the visual. His father had been an asshole when he was alive. Years had passed since he had last thought of his Christian Ludlow, and he wondered why the dream had come now. Life had moved on. Everything was well. Business was booming and Rita was his everything. They had even had kids, two of them, both grown and out in the town now, making their own way as they contributed to this one-of-a-kind community.

  Tomlin pawed his eyes and debated going back to bed. Instead, after smacking his dry lips together, he found that he was thirsty. He tiptoed across the room, triggering the protesting creaks of the floorboards until he was out of the room. Perhaps, when he was a lighter man, he could have been more silent, but these days he was well-fed and well-loved, and that was alright, Jack.

  The orange juice was cool on his throat, the sugary sharpness running its cool contents through his system. He stood in the solitary light of the fridge and drank straight from the carton, knowing that, if Rita caught him, he would receive one hell of a tongue-lashing. When he was satisfied, he closed the fridge door.

  Something caught his eye.

  A shadow had danced across the window, he was certain of it. A dark shape zooming past the house.

  Tomlin screwed his fists at his tired eyes and looked again.

  There was nothing there.

  “You’re driving yourself cuckoo, Tommy,” he spoke to the darkness. “Late nights, bad dreams, and a blizzard are a formula for paranoia. Stop shitting yourself up.” He chuckled, a vain attempt to shrug off the chills, and made his way towards the stairs.

  He froze when the thud came on the door. A fist on wood. With his eyes fixed on the upstairs landing, he debated turning around and acknowledging the sound. What would happen if he ignored it? If he didn’t look, he didn’t have to accept it, right?

  Thump.

  Tomlin gritted his eyes, his knuckles turning white on the bannister. He had never considered himself a fearful man, but nor did he ever think of himself as brave. There was a reason he remained in the town while the stronger folk took to hunting. Tomlin was more at home handling change than handling a knife, and that showed in the quivering response of his body to the unseen visitor.

  He muttered beneath his breath, annoyed that he was shaking so much. So, what if there was a thud at the door? There’s a storm raging outside. Any matter of objects could be caught in the winds and hurled against the door. It happens all the time, doesn’t it?

  Not like that, it doesn’t.

  Thump.

  Tomlin took a steadying breath just as the upstairs light turned on. A buttery glow melted from the bedroom to the landing and Tomlin found himself wanting to shout for his wife to go back to their room. To bar herself inside a cupboard or under the bed and act as though she wasn’t home. That instinctive tremble of caution shot down his spine like a shock of static. Another thump only fuelled his urge to call out and stop his wife from searching for him, but instead of anything useful spilling from his mouth, he let out a whimper, warm urine flowing down his leg.

  There was no more thumping after that. No more knocks on the door.

  In place of the thumps, the door exploded off its hinges with ferocious gusto and the storm broke in. Torrents of frigid air pushed Tomlin onto the stairs, his flabby stomach the only cushioning protecting his body from its hard, wooden edges. Something growled and cried out in ecstatic rage, but he wouldn’t give the invader the justice of acknowledging its existence. Even as his wife stood at the top of the stairs, screaming and scratching her nails down her face, leaving neat lines of red marks, he closed his eyes and blamed the invasion on the storm. The heavy storm that pinned him to the stairs with strong, thin arms. The powerful storm that threw its weight onto his back and tore off his clothing. The Almighty storm that bit into his flesh and painted the stairs in his blood.

  The wind was his killer. That’s all that Tomlin would accept. The wind and its dozens of minions that scattered about his house and leaped over his dying body. To accept anything different would be ludicrous. The images his sleeping brain conjured were absurd, the dark shadows of twisted beings clambering over his body to race towards his wife.

  A groan from the wind, laced with orgasmic pleasure as its chilly teeth chomped into his back, its icicle tongue tasting his flesh as it sent him deep into the throes of the final abyss.

  Not half a mile away, Sheila Lawson lay face-down on the couch. Strings of saliva clung to the cavern of her mouth as she snored deeply. The wine glass was still in her hand, the final untasted dregs of the viscous red liquid teetering dangerously close to spilling onto the hand-stitched rug on the floor.

  She was dreaming of nothing, as she so often did when she was inebriated—which lately had been increasingly. After the not-so-distant death of her husband, Sheila had fallen into a rapid decline. She struggled with a lot of things in life that Benjamin had once taken care of—the upkeep and maintenance of the house, bill payments, keeping an eye on her ever-blossoming teenage daughter who seemed determined to tailspin into a hectic whirlwind of chaos and throw her life away before it had already begun. Life was tough, but escape was easy. As much as she struggled to afford a repairman to fix the hole in the roof, she always found bucket loads of cash to replenish the stock cupboards when she ran out of vino.

  After wine, sleep was her secondary escape, and in escape Sheila was at peace. Occasionally her mind would start to coalesce something that might resemble a dream, but then it would blow away like smoke in a breeze, already safe in the knowledge that even if she did dream of something profound that may have the potential to change her life, she’d forget it the moment she opened her eyes and the internal drums of her hangover kicked in.

  Sheila rolled to her side, the wine glass finally slipping from her fingers, staining the rug with the blood red of her chianti.

  The ghost of a smile lined her face. A faint trace of happiness that was not reflective of the fact that in the last thirteen months she had become a widow and a single parent, nor from the fact that Amy was out in the town somewhere lost in the storm, gone without her knowledge. It would be difficult to say what that smile was for…

  But what it was definitely not for, was the broken windows and the shattered doors. Nor was that smile for the dark figure that towered over her and licked its lips while she slept on.

  They gathered around her in the darkness, studying the middle-aged woman with the patience of a herd of hyenas closing in for their meal. Only one creature climbed onto her body, straddling her with the delicate poise of a lover ready to engage in the dance that lovers do. Had she been awake, she would have smelt the acrid scent of death on its breath. Would have marvelled at its teeth, filed to needle-like points. The quivering excitement of its decrepit heart as it fluttered in its chest.

  Sheila let out a soft laugh and weakly pushed at the creature’s arms. Her iPad lay on the coffee table, the screen still dimly lit with an array of Scrabble tiles waiting to be placed into order.

  She let out a gentle sigh.

  The creature took that as its cue and began its feast.

  In the farthest reaches of town, under the shadow of the Drumtrie woods, Naomi Oslow stared at the skull framed above her fireplace.

  The thing was hideous, the rotten white skeletal structure of
a human man. The eyes were dark voids from which Naomi spent most days in fear that beetles or some kind of scourge would scramble out from its depths and crawl into her living room. The remains of the human flesh that had once clung to the skull had been immaculately cleaned, but little could be done to humanize what it had once been. The antlers had seen to that. Crude things imperfectly jabbed through the top of the skull to portray some kind of devilish creature. Antlers which could have been taken from a buck in its prime, their length stretching across the entire width of the chimney column, as though the skull of her late husband had sprouted demonic wings and was attempting to fly back to its fireborn overlord.

  A stark reminder of what had come before. A time when her darkest fears had been realized, and all that she had loved had been taken away from her. She had once believed that his alcohol dependency would be the undoing of their marriage, of their lives together. It turned out that the reality was far from that.

  Naomi had been sitting downstairs in the isolated cabin ever since the Aurora had shed its colours and completed its metamorphosis. Her stomach broiled with discomfort, her gut lined with a potent acid that acted as though it had been activated by the Northern Lights. She sat on the couch, staring at the growing storm, cradling the rifle in one arm, a tumbler of Abramah’s Nectar cupped in the steady hand of the other. Whisky she hadn’t removed from their liquor cabinet since the day that Donavon had died, its glass casing thick with a layer of dust that had gathered through the years. The scent of the drink kissed her nostrils like a gentle lover and in the darkness she saw him there, an inebriated ghost swaying unsteadily on his feet.