When Winter Comes | Book 5 | Into The White Read online

  But now she knew better, and with each mesmerised step forward, she became aware of the ancient timespan of these trees. She reached out a hand, stroking the rough bark as she passed, realising then that she was touching history. These pines were of an age unknown, likely stretching back hundreds—maybe even thousands—of years. These trees had their secrets, and they whispered them to each other in a language Naomi could never interpret. A language born of the Earth…

  The language of the gods.

  She sloped through the trees, walking in a singular direction that called out to her. Her mind was consumed by the darkness, her skin prickling at the warmth of the shadows that embraced her. All that she knew was that she must go forward, and in going forward she would find the answers. The forest would speak to her, and she would listen. The constant whispers and niggles of reminders of darkness would fade, and she’d find peace at the end.

  Pine needles and fallen twigs crackled underfoot, yet the sound was soft around the edges as the forest warped reality. There was no sign of animal life, and also no sign of the storm. No snow fell, no wind howled, nothing existed except for Naomi and the trees.

  The bone mask irritated her face, the tough contours that had once shaped her husband’s beautiful head rubbed away at her skin. It was warm in the mask, but she feared taking it off. The mask had offered her some kind of protection from the wendigos, and she was lax to remove the enchantment. A pang of guilt gnawed at her for leaving Oscar with Tori, their gunshots and screams rattling around her head, but she knew he would be okay in her hands. Tori loved Oscar, even if Naomi had withdrawn over the last few years and contact with her sister had decreased. Should anything happen to Naomi, Tori would do what was right, and that was enough.

  The strangest part of her trajectory through the forest was that Donavon was nowhere to be seen. The ghost of her late husband had been by her side through most of that night, and now he was gone. While she had mounted her mask and set off into the storm, he had remained at her home, but he was there when she returned with Tori, a constant shadow that filled her with comfort.

  Perhaps Donavon couldn’t leave the house? Wasn’t that what she had heard once? That ghosts were bound to a singular location for eternity, doomed to remain in the confines of their perimeter until their final business was done.

  Or… Naomi thought, noting that Donavon faded every time she put on the mask. Perhaps he is linked to the bones…

  She walked for what felt like a lifetime. Halfway through the forest she stripped off her jacket, the heat growing overwhelming, her clothes cloying her skin. An impulse told her to remove her shoes, which she obeyed. The needles felt good on her bare feet. Soon her trousers came off, then her top, until all that was left was underwear.

  And the mask. She couldn’t forget the mask.

  The trees started to open up as something rumbled the ground below. The space between the trunks grew and in the twilight gloom shapes coalesced from the shadows. They weren’t much taller than herself, but their forms were thin. Although she couldn’t make out what they were, she could guess. There were dozens of them, lining the forest around her, forming an alley through which she was already treading without their encouragement. With each step she took, the alley closed in, until she could just make out the dark glints of their eyes. Something growled in the distance, a sound much louder than it should have been, as though a giant from a kid’s fairy-tale was deep in slumber.

  Naomi reached behind her back and unclasped her bra. The forest’s breath tickled her skin. She slipped out of her panties, and pulled to a stop, unsure why she had until the figure appeared before her.

  She recognised the man, although he was a far cry from what she had once known. She hadn’t had the chance to look at him properly earlier, but with all the time in the world to examine now, she saw him for who he was. A man once witnessed on occasional journeys through the town to collect supplies, and sometimes spoken about when Tori came to her house. Karl Bowman stood before Naomi, as naked as she was.

  He was a mess. His beard was a thicket of tangles, crusted with a substance that she could only presume was blood. His dark eyes winked in her direction, his hip bones protruding, and his once-famous muscular arms now shrunken and without definition. He looked as though he had aged a lifetime in a night, his knees knobby like an animal’s, his feet flat. The most disconcerting sight was the erection that stood to attention like a raised flag and pointed in her direction.

  They stared at each other for a long while, neither party in any need for haste. The crowd of wendigos watched on with endless patience. Naomi swallowed, the bone mask irritating the bridge of her nose, the eye sockets limiting her vision to what lay before her.

  Something moved behind Karl. Four figures appeared through the shadows, each with masks on their own faces. They remained a small distance behind Karl, and in that moment, Naomi thought she could hear the whispers of their thoughts in her head. Karl cocked his head as if listening in, too, and it was then that he stumbled a few steps forward.

  Naomi raised a hand, palm outward. Karl stopped, a crooked grin splitting his face. “Your time has come.”

  Naomi waited for more, but Karl fell silent.

  “I have come to claim back my husband,” Naomi spoke at last. “No matter what the outcome, I will rest in the peace that you stole from us.”

  A sudden, shrill shriek filled the forest, piercing Naomi’s eardrums. She clamped her hands to the side of her head, screaming out in agony, falling to one knee as she fought against the all-encompassing sound, realising then that it wasn’t coming from the forest at all, but from inside her own head. Even with her hands scrambling to mute the shriek, it was everywhere, and there was nothing she could do. She screwed her eyes shut. Somewhere in the mix of it all another screamed. When she peeled an eye open, Karl was on the floor, mouth stretched open in pain as he rolled around and covered his ears.

  The sound stretched on, and a warmth trickled into Naomi’s hand. She was almost certain that she was bleeding, but she couldn’t risk checking. She folded over, visibly shaking as tears spilled to the ground and her brain bordered on exploding into mush inside her skull.

  In a desperate bid to end her distress, she removed the mask, realising that she had been unable to fully cover her ears with the bone over her head. The moment she removed the mask, the world fell silent once more. It was unnerving, how all-encompassing it had been and how absent it was now. For a moment, she wondered if she’d gone deaf, until she found the Masked Ones towering over her, mere feet from where she crouched.

  When had they moved?

  The bed of detritus rustled under their skeletal feet. They hooked a hand beneath the crook of her arms. Their touch was like death, each point of contact a searing white-hot pain on her naked skin. To her dismay, where they touched, her skin turned black, the darkness spreading across her pale flesh.

  She struggled against them, throwing an elbow and catching one of the creatures in the chest. It reared back, grip loosening. Naomi kicked as she was lifted off the ground. Each time her foot connected with their body was like kicking an iceberg. Still, she thrashed and tossed herself around, desperate to free herself.

  Somewhere beyond the creatures, Donavon appeared, his face a mask of neutrality. In the blur of her frantic movements she saw him and, as if commanding her from afar, she stilled. She cried out to him in her mind, eyes wide as the Masked Ones started their journey deeper into the forest. Donavon smiled, that old familiar twinkle in his eye through which, for years, she had drawn her strength.

  She bided her time, waiting until their defences were lowered. Satisfied, she gave one final urgent kick, she threw another elbow. Impossibly, one of them let go of her arm.

  It was enough. Naomi dipped down towards the ground and scooped up Donavon’s skull. She clumsily placed it on her head, and immediately the Masked Ones let go, withdrawing as though she had burst into flame and had scorched their fingers.

  Their s
hriek filled her head again, drawn into her mind as though the skull picked up on a radio frequency no normal man should hear. Naomi looked to Donavon, but he was no longer there. She opened her mouth and screamed in response, shrieking to match their shriek, crying to match their cries. Somehow, she knew it was a battle to the threshold of their pains and, somehow, she already knew she’d lose.

  When their shrieks stopped, Naomi’s throat was scratched and dry. She’d yelled herself hoarse, and there was little remaining if she needed to combat them again. Karl was still on his knees, facing away from Naomi, hands outstretched as if thanking the Earth for its bounty. The Masked ones stood either side. They, too, were looking away.

  And that’s when she saw it. Rising like some titanic piece of fiction, a being that she had never before believed would ever exist across any corner of the earth. A being of flesh, bone, blood—

  —and myth.

  Naomi steeled herself, knowing deep down that this is what she came for.

  Little knowing just what kind of strength it would take to bring down a creature unborn from this world.

  11

  Alex Goins

  They trailed through the snow, in a direction that seemed to constantly shift.

  With no frame of reference to guide them by, they could have been heading anywhere. On several occasions, Alex truly let himself believe that the nightmare would subside, and in its place would be revealed the monuments of familiar life. Through the sheets of white would come the London Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, maybe even the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

  He was their shepherd and they were his flock. The author guarding the lives of three children. Sophie, Damien, and Alice, all huddled close as they trekked into the unknown and scanned for any sign of landmark that could position them on this blank canvas.

  They each were led astray by their desperate minds, taking it in turns to point to shapes that turned out to be nothing more than rises and falls in the terrain. Alex carried Damien, realising quickly after they had set off that he wouldn’t last long without his jacket. It made the trek harder, but at least they were alive. Sophie folded her arms in front of her chest and gritted her teeth against the chill, and Alice…

  Well, Alice wouldn’t stop talking.

  “Is all this snow going to be gone when the sun rises?”

  “Sure.” Alex had stopped elaborating on his answers, choosing instead to conserve his energy and concentration.

  “But where does it go? Mum says it turns into water, but we’re not in the ocean, are we?”

  “No.”

  “Can you breathe underwater in the ocean?”

  “No.”

  “Not even if you’re a super good swimmer?”

  “No.”

  “I bet it’s too cold to swim, anyway.” Her face screwed up in thought. “Why isn’t the ocean frozen?”

  “Some of it is.”

  “Why not all of it?”

  “Because.”

  “Is ice colder than water?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, we’re swimming in snow?” Alice giggled and looked up at Sophie. “Why are you so quiet?”

  Sophie didn’t answer.

  As Alice trailed on, Alex narrowed his focus ahead. Like the others, his mind, so desperate to find something tactile that he could aim towards, kept creating shapes in the white. Just once, he had been right, and in the middle of nowhere they had found a juvenile sapling springing from the ground. It hadn’t been more than five feet in height, a sad, anorexic thing, undergoing its own battle with the elements. Despite his questioning the others, no one could claim they’d seen this tree before, and the more they walked, the stranger it seemed that it was out here alone, in the middle of nowhere, as though it was marking something that was long lost to the pages of time.

  “I hope they don’t hurt my daddy…”

  Alex tuned in to the sadness in Alice’s voice. He exchanged a look with Sophie and paused in their trek. “Whatever happens, you’ll be safe with us. Do you understand that?”

  Alice nodded brightly, though she glanced at the ground. The snow was eating up to her waist and would have been an issue if she wasn’t following in Alex’s tracks. “I just hope he’s okay.”

  “Me too, kid.”

  Alex scrambled for something else to say. He was highly aware that anything he said wouldn’t just be absorbed by one kid but would resonate with all three. He had to be the leader, the one who held it together, the beacon of hope that guided these three bright lights across the black seas of—

  “There.”

  Sophie’s words, while flat and shallow, held conviction. Alice looked over Alex’s shoulder and followed the stretch of her arm. There was something out there, a shape on the cusp of their vision. Alex moved in front of the group and swept them behind his arm. He shuffled Damien to his other arm and secured the butt of the rifle to his shoulder with one hand. Something jabbed his hip then fell into the snow. His pistol, gone without a whisper. He stalked closer, more than prepared for the shape to vanish as all the others did, but it remained where it was.

  It was stick-thin, each step bringing its fuzzy edges into sight. Alex’s breath caught as he waited for the horns to coalesce, the limbs to stretch to either side, and for the wendigo to charge at them all, helpless and lost in the snow. Another few steps and he let out a choking sob, relief flooding his body as the item came into view.

  A wooden sign. A thick beam of timber, with arrows pointing in several directions. On the wooden arrows were carvings of locations and their approximate distances.

  Alex broke into a run, eager to see what each arrow said and to where they pointed. The kids called from behind and he waved them over. Sophie took Alice’s hand as they followed in Alex’s wake.

  Denridge Proper = 2 miles.

  Drumtrie Forest = 0.2 miles.

  Coastal Path = 3 miles.

  Alex grinned up at the sign, so thankful that he could almost kiss the ground. He was so taken by the sign and its promise of direction and distance that he didn’t notice what lay beyond until Alice started clapping her gloved hands. “There! There! There!”

  A large shape loomed before them. Alex’s grin stretched wider as he shifted Damien into a more comfortable position and encouraged the group onwards. They followed without question, each one of them eager to get out of the storm and into the large wooden house that looked oh so inviting.

  12

  Kyle Samson

  The storm was tricksy, the storm was unkind.

  In the beginning, following their tracks was easy. With four of them marking the way ahead, all Kyle had to do was follow the grooves in the snow and hover just far enough behind that they couldn’t see him.

  He could hear them occasionally, as the wind stole snippets from the little girl and threw them towards him, he could hear. After some time, the talking stopped, and the trail started to fade from sight, the eager storm covering their tracks and working against him, too. Everyone working against Kyle, even the fucking weather. He picked up his pace and managed to latch onto the failing ends of the trail…

  …and it was there he found the gun.

  The same pistol he had found in the attic, however long ago it had been. The same object which had stolen his consciousness and left him alone and vulnerable in the confines of the loft space. Somehow it was there, a small black wink of an eye in the snow, and it was there that he grabbed it. His grin spread from ear-to-ear, even as he shivered on the spot. He examined the gun, checked the chamber, ensured that it was loaded and ready. Maybe it had fallen from the girl’s hand. Maybe they had discarded it deliberately. Perhaps something had attacked them and, in their panic, they had left it behind.

  Whatever it was, it was power. And power made Kyle very happy indeed.

  If only the trail hadn’t disappeared from sight.

  Author Notes

  It’s going to be interesting for future Dan to look back at these author notes. Each step of this journey
of writing When Winter Comes has been interspersed with personal and professional anecdotes—some I’d love to remember, some I’m happy to forget.

  Take today, for example. I’m in the final throes of passing the edits through “Into the White,” and I often do my work in my local town centre, the smell of brewed coffee in the air, and the backing track of everyday folk conversing about the pandemic and British politics over hot drinks. I choose to cycle to work, incorporating the 6km bike ride into my attempt at maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and this morning I hit the gym, too—go Dan.

  Here’s the fun part. As I’m readying to leave town and head on home, I unlock my bike to discover that someone else has locked their bike to mine.

  Looped it round.

  A metallic coil with a lock.

  A lock I’m unable to open.

  On a bike whose owner I’m certain I’ll be unable to trace.

  Not the greatest inconvenience, considering I have no booked appointments or places to be this afternoon, but it’s strange having a sudden freedom removed from you by a stranger, someone who has cast an inconvenience into your life (knowingly or unknowingly, I have no way to tell). The key part is that I have no idea when they’re going to remove their lock. All I know is that I have a fully charged laptop and a bunch of work to do.

  So, I’m back in the cafe, writing these author notes and thinking over the journey this story has taken so far. When Winter Comes has fast become one of my favourite stories I’ve told, with a cast of characters that bring the tale to life and who I’ve grown remarkably fond of. As we narrow down onto the home stretch of this tale, it’s difficult to say where these characters will take me, or who will make it to the other side (if there is another side at all…)