Day #10: Midwinter Nights by Amber Averay
I wake up in the night, having fallen asleep on the couch while watching television. The heater doesn’t work, so I’m cocooned in a nest of blankets and lap rugs and at first it’s a struggle to wrestle my way free.
I immediately regret doing so. It’s cold. I want to dive back in, but my neck and back ache something fierce after being squished on the couch, so I figure it’s best to head off to my actual bed, even though it will be so chilly and uninviting… Oh well. Weighing up my options (couch – toasty but uncomfortable, bed – cold but long enough for me to stretch out) I decide bed it is, and gather up the excess blankets to pile on top of my inadequate counterpane.
Glancing across the room I realise the blinds over the glass doors haven’t been shut, and I dart over to close them and, from habit, check the locks.
I hadn’t even locked the doors before falling asleep. Good job, dickhead, I mock myself ruefully, rattling the handle now and appeasing myself that it was secure.
The icy world outside looks so peaceful, tranquil and magical. Almost like a movie set, the frost glittering in the moonlight as snow carpets the ground, drapes over tree branches, smothers cars and sheds and anything left outdoors.
Just as I’m about to turn back I notice something that gives me pause, and my heart begins rocketing around in my chest.
Footprints, right outside the glass doors. The unlocked glass doors. I gape. Someone had walked up to my windows and stood there for who knows how long, staring into my home. Possibly watching me sleep.
I shudder. Lucky that whoever it was didn’t try the doors! A sickly shiver rattles the base of my spine, and for a moment I feel faint. Test the handle again, and it doesn’t budge. I sigh with relief, then freeze and stare out at the ground.
The footprints.
Holy shit, they are footprints. I can see the arch of the foot, each individual toe marked out clearly in the snow as if carved by an expert artisan – whoever was out there wasn’t wearing shoes! And… God, is that what I think it is? I crouch down on the cold tiles, near pressing my nose to the glass and trying not to breathe lest my breath fog it up and blind me.
Shit. Each indentation is rimmed with blood. None clotted or iced over in the prints, just lining the edges as if drawn there with a fine marker.
What the hell…?
I should just go straight to bed. Call the police. Stay warm. But I’m nosy, and in record time I’m dressed in thick clothes and wearing boots over winter socks, pull my hood up around my face and creep out the doors while making sure not to compromise the treads left behind by my peeper.
Flicking on my torch, I curse my insatiable curiosity and flick on my torch, then move parallel to the prints in the snow. They weave and waver like the walker was a drunkard, or his senses lost to the ice, and with every mark the line of blood edging the indentation does not change.
This is strange. I’ve never seen anything like this before, and a weird uncertainty pools low in my belly. I really should just call the cops. Leave this to someone else. Go home, crawl into bed, maybe have a few drinks first. Blot out the peculiarities of this night.
But I know I won’t do any of those things. I’ll keep following the tracks, because I’m nosy and can’t help myself.
The beauty of the landscape becomes invisible, my focus on those red-rimed footprints that wander and wobble up roads and down alleys and across streets. I don’t know how long I walk, these marks have become a fixation and nothing else exists except my need to know what’s caused them and where they lead.
At last I come to a chain-link fence, with a hole near the base. I pause, eyeing the marks which don’t alter or smudge but carry on beyond the fence as evenly-paced as ever, and before I can stop myself I scrabble beneath the broken wire and continue following.
There’s an odd smell in the air, one I can’t place, but I seem to be drawing closer to something. My speed increases, and I turn around the corner of an old dilapidated building that might once have been a shed or a micro-home or some such and there I pause.
Piled up against the rear wall, like logs chopped and stacked in readiness for winter, are bodies. Naked, discoloured, frostbitten. Some have been gnawed by sharp teeth, others seem fairly fresh additions to the pile and are splashed with frosted blood.
All seem to have been stabbed multiple times.
A small sound escapes my throat, and I stumble back one step, two. My heel catches on something hard, and I topple backward. The ground gives way in a puff of fluffy snow, and I fall. Not for long. Just far enough that, when I land, the sharp spikes spearing through my thigh, shoulder, gut, chest have fully impaled me and I can’t move without pain ripping through me.
Weakly I touch the cold prong skewering my chest and back. It’s ice. The stalagmites thrusting up through my body are already frosted over with blood – my blood. I have a feeble hope that the cold might save me – but the sun begins to nudge its way into the sky, and I realise that the icy weapons will melt, my blood will pour out, and I’ll be added to the stacked bodies behind the building.
Darkness gathers at the edges of my vision, and I don’t fight it. I’m grateful for it, for the oblivion it brings and the peace it promises.
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