It started with the snow.
In the dream, Teagan was standing in the center of a familiar pub in Cork. He was looking up at the raftered ceiling, watching with vague interest as snowflakes materialized and fell on him from above. He was aware that the well-worn, wooden bar, well-loved by its patrons, had a row of full shot glasses along its length, but the stools in front of each were empty. Likewise, the booths that lined the other walls of the pub were unoccupied as well. The door blowing open drew his attention to it. The dark opening let in cold air, but no one stood in the doorway. When the door closed, the howl of the wind sounded as if it were trapped inside with him.
As dream-knowledge goes, Teagan knew something had come through the door, but he couldn't see it. It was the throat that voiced the banshee wail of the wind; its fingers drew almost painfully cold lines across the backs of his shoulders and his neck, setting his hairs on end and making him shiver. He looked to the bar and noticed with horror that the shot glasses, in which he had presumed the dark liquid was whiskey, now contained a much darker, thicker substance.
The light from the electric wall sconces dimmed and the temperature dropped noticeably. The light above the bar, though, grew brighter.
Suddenly, a shot glass flew off the bar and shattered against the wall above the booth behind him. He flinched, turning to see the dark thick liquid splattered in a deep crimson starburst over an old-fashioned map of the county. There were little hard-looking white bits sprinkled in with the red, but Teagan had no desire to get close enough to identify them.
Immediately another shot glass flew off the bar, smashing into the divider between two booths. A spray of glass and liquid (
blood, oh Lord in Heaven, it's blood
) pelted his shirt. That close, a reek reminiscent of something gone bad in the frozen foods aisle at the grocer's flooded his nose and throat and turned his stomach.
Three more glasses sailed off the bar in quick succession. He flinched again as one grazed his ear and another crashed near his foot. The splashes of blood were everywhere.
He chanced looking up at the bar to see the silvery flicker of an inhuman outline. It was making its way down the bar, kicking at the remaining shot glasses. One broke against the bar itself and the back splash of blood painted a more definitive form.
Teagan couldn't move. He looked down and saw that a sheet of ice on the pub floor had formed jagged twists up his legs that held him in place. He struggled to free himself, but the ice was too thick. The cold of it seeped unpleasantly through his pants and onto his skin.
The thing on the counter flickered and materialized. Teagan could only stare at it, an appalled, sick feeling feeding into the limbs of his body along with the cold. The thing had many faces melded together, frozen in their expressions of shock and horror, or in the distorted shrieking of some last few terrified moments. In each of these faces, the eyes moved independently, seeking him out, following his limited movements.
Beneath the bulk of varied countenances was a stumpy trunk, but the two pairs of legs beneath rippled with muscle beneath colorless, scaly skin. The legs ended in wide, flat feet whose shiny black claws arced out and up. Above the hip sockets of those legs were two human-looking arms and hands, though the skin held the pallor of a corpse. These arms were raised so that the palms were facing up and forward, and embedded in the center of each was a thin-lipped mouth. The mouths opened, and a strong winter wind howled around him.
Teagan crouched slowly, as well as he was able, to try to chip at the ice, but dream-gravity prevented him. The thing hopped off the bar and began creeping toward him. He began to struggle in earnest, but the cold from the ice bands around his legs had reached his thighs. Below his waist, everything felt fragile, pins-and-needles sensitive. He thought he probably wouldn't have been able to run even if his legs were free.
Still, he kept struggling, and when the thing lunged at his face, he screamed.
Teagan jerked awake on Kathy's couch. It took a few seconds to bring the waking world into focus, but as he became more aware of his surroundings, a bad feeling knocked painfully around his head.
There was frost on the coffee table in front of him. He ran a finger along it, collecting the tiny ice crystals. He looked around, his breath puffing ahead of him in little white clouds. The couch had a layer of frost as well, and his blanket had grown stiff with infused ice. He shoved it aside and sat up. All around Kathy's apartment, the winter outside had found its way in. Icicles hung from the shades of her lamps and the blades of the ceiling fan above him. The windows were opaque with cataracts of ice. The laptop on the desk lay encased in ice. The hardwood floors were glittering sheets of black ice.
Teagan slipped on his shoes, ran a hand through his hair, and stood up. The hallway was slippery, but he managed to get to Kathy's door without falling on his ass. When he tried turning the knob, though, it wouldn't budge. He leaned down and peered through the keyhole, but could see nothing. From the tinkling of ice when he jiggled the handle, he figured the ice had frozen it shut.
Not wanting to alarm Kathy before he needed to, he slipped and slid back down the hallway to the kitchen. He was pretty sure Kathy had a stove pilot lighter in one of the drawers, and he thought he might be able to use it to melt some of the ice. In the kitchen, the ice covered most of the counters and hung stiffly from the cabinets in long-toothed icicles. Most of the drawers were frozen shut, but he managed, between pours of vodka and some chipping away with a pocket knife, to unstick the drawer he thought contained the lighter. He forced it open and rifled through the kitchen utensils until he found what he needed, then went back to Kathy's door. The ice in the lock had formed a tiny cascade down the front of the door. Teagan clicked on the lighter and held it cautiously to the lock for a few seconds, then tried picking away at the ice with his pocket knife. He repeated the process, lighter then knife, a few times before trying the knob again. On the third attempt, the doorknob moved in his hand, and with a small victory sound, he opened the door.
Inside her bedroom, it was snowing.
He was relieved to find Kathy in her bed, sleeping peacefully; as he'd worked the lock, he'd been gnawed at by the idea, possibly left over from his nightmare, that she would somehow be gone, or that, if present, she'd be hurt or worse. She appeared to be okay, although her bed had grown a sizable crust of ice around it that reached up with icy tendrils to grip her blanket. She stirred, seemingly aware someone else was in the room and, in the next moment, was awake and aware and trying to sit up. The blanket held her down.
“Reece?” She looked confused. “What the hell is going on?”
“It's like this all over your flat, love. Come, let me get you out of there.” He skated to the side of her bed and the two of them worked at pulling the fibers of the blanket free of the ice. Teagan used the knife to cut away strips of cloth, and they had nearly gotten her free when they heard a growl from the den.
Both paused and held their breaths a moment.
“What the hell was that?” Kathy whispered.
“I don't know,” he whispered back. He helped her out of bed and, glancing down at her underwear, handed her the pocket knife. She nodded her thanks and took little leaps over the accumulated snow on the floor to get to her closet. Her feet were bare, and she hopped painfully from one foot to the other as she chipped away at the ice that sealed her closet door shut. He followed her over there, picking at the chunks of ice with his fingers. They were cold enough to stick to his skin, but with some effort, the two of them finally managed to pry the door open.
As she slipped on a pair of jeans and winter boots from the closet, Teagan drew his gun and went to stand guard by the bedroom door. He peered out into the hallway, listening. In the room beyond, he heard something bang into the coffee table, grunt, and move across the floorboards toward the hall kitchen.
She joined him by the door, her own gun drawn, and together, they crept to the end of the hall and peered around the corner.
In the den, a thing that looked like a cross between an albino monkey and an anglerfish was limping around the coffee table. It flickered like an old 8mm bit of film, sometimes there and sometimes only partially there. Teagan was no expert, but from the way the thing was moving and the spiky, rough-looking blue patches along the left side of its head and body, he assumed the thing was injured. How it had gotten into Kathy's apartment, Teagan hadn't a clue. But there it was, a caged and injured animal, in pain and probably very pissed off.
Which made it very dangerous.
Without a sound, he aimed at the thing's head, but felt Kathy's hand on his arm. She shook her head and motioned at the kitchen lighter he'd shoved in his back pocket, the one he'd used to melt the ice in the lock on her bedroom door. Then she mouthed out,
Paint thinner under the sink in the kitchen. Accelerant.
He nodded that he understood. Getting to the kitchen without the thing seeing them, however, would be tricky. From the right angle, the thing would have a clear view of the kitchen entrance. He watched the thing in the den as it swung its massive head, bellowed in irritation, and turned to limp back toward Kathy's desk. Teagan signaled to Kathy and crouched down, sneaking as quickly and quietly as he could toward the kitchen. Kathy followed behind him.
In the room beyond, the thing bellowed again. Teagan kept moving, hoping the thing hadn't spotted them.
When they reached the kitchen sink, Kathy eased open the door of the cabinet beneath. Bottles of cleaning supplies and a small toolbox crowded beneath the sink pipes. Her hand closed around a flat, metallic, rectangular container and she eased it away from the others. It knocked against the lip of the cabinet with a small thump and the two froze, listening.
For several seconds, the silence reigned, and it was terrifying.
Then they heard the irregular thump and grumble of the thing still wobbling around in the den, and they let out twin breaths of relief. Kathy handed Teagan the paint thinner and quietly closed the cabinet door. The two turned to the door and jumped, Kathy making a tiny noise of surprise in her throat.
The damaged monster stood in the doorway, glaring up at them from its one good eye. It winked out for a second or two before reappearing in the doorway and growled low, but it made no move to advance on them. Teagan carefully unscrewed the cap on the paint thinner, his gaze all the while on the thing in the doorway. He was pretty sure that if he made any sudden moves, the creature would attack him, injured or not, and he wasn't all that sure a bullet would stop it.
Behind him, he felt Kathy take the lighter out of his back pocket.
He considered saying somethingâanythingâto Kathy in case something went wrong, but couldn't really think of what to say. Instead, she whispered, “Do it,” and she gave his arm an encouraging squeeze.
Before he could overthink it and back out, he splashed the creature with the paint thinner once, twice, and Kathy lit the lighter beside him. The thing shook the paint thinner out of its eyes, growling in what Teagan thought to be surprise and rage.
Teagan backed away around the kitchen table to give Kathy space to light the creature up. There wasn't much room; if the thing charged them, its body engulfed in flames, there would be nowhere to run and no way to stop it.
The creature staggered forward toward Kathy, and she sidestepped it, inching around toward the door. It limped around to face her, and she gestured for Teagan to go. He said a quick prayer to the God of his youth and leaped onto and over the kitchen table while Kathy torched the creature. Its roar shook the little kitchen as Teagan skidded toward the door. Kathy yanked her hand back quickly as the fire spilled in rivers down its body, then swung out of the kitchen doorway behind him.
From the kitchen, they could hear the crackle of flame and the crashing of the burning creature into walls as it ostensibly tried to put out the fire all over it. Then it came charging into the den. The frost covering everything seemed to keep the place from going up in its peripheral flames, and for that, Teagan was glad. But if that thing decided to pounce on them . . .
It roared at Kathy and leaped at her. As she attempted to dive out of the way, Teagan emptied his gun into the creature's head and dropped it mid-air. It landed on the coffee table with a wood-splintering thud and lay there, smoldering and motionless.
“Nice shooting,” Kathy said breathlessly, joining him by the remains of the creature.
“Thanks,” Teagan replied. “Now, might we get on with that door-closing spell?”
* * *
Jack arrived at the coroner's office a little after dark. The snow had piled up against the front door, and all the lights were off. Neither were good signsâthe former, because Jack was convinced the snow was doing what it could to keep him from Cordwell, and the latter because there should have been people still there. Cordwell, Morrisâthey both should have still been there. Their cars were in the lot, he noticed. He got out of the car with his gun, his keys, and the snow brush he used to clear his windshield. Brandishing the brush like a weapon, he strode purposefully up to the front door and began knocking away the snow. It was not a great tool for the job, but it was better than nothing. He worked himself into a sweat beneath his coat and gloves trying to clear the snow away, but it seemed like every time he made progress, a gust of wind blew more snow onto the spot he'd just cleared. Eventually, he collapsed to his knees and started throwing fistfuls of snow out of his way. That seemed to help. He'd cleared just enough to begin wedging the door open when he heard a shout. He doubled his efforts, and soon had dug enough snow away from the door to slide it open about ten inches. He sucked in his gut and squeezed through.