Alec Jennings wished for many things. He wished that he hadn’t made so many mistakes over the course of his career, he wished that he was better suited to the cold that he had no choice but to live in, and he wished that he had paid attention to the man who visited him a month ago.
Sheriff Jennings’ snowmobile roared as it climbed the steep incline that was fading into the darkness of the evening. As the sun turned into nothing more than a golden iceberg in the blindingly white distance, his field of vision narrowed, almost to a point, as narrow as his choice to go up to the home on the hill. Alec turned his head to check behind him. Officer Harding was still there, his companion on this mountainous range.
Her voice crackled over the radio, barely audible in the battering snow. She asked him why they had to do this now and not in the morning. He told her that the storm that was coming would last a week, unlike the couple that lived on the hill.
But it was more than that. Back on the mainland the crimes committed were reported nuisances. Out here, in the isolated wilderness with a town of less than a hundred, it was the absence of things that caused concern, and Ivor Drosky and his wife had been absent for two weeks. No one had seen them in the town. People had started voicing their concerns a week ago, but Alec had ignored it. Now, however, the people were rallying, wanting to know why something hadn’t been done to look into it.
A crowd had gathered outside his office, riled up and ready to cause trouble. He had reluctantly agreed to head up to the hill. Alec had tried the Drosky’s on the radio but had received no response. That didn’t necessarily mean something bad had happened. It seemed like just his luck that the people who went missing were the ones who lived in the most difficult place to get to. Not just far away but high up as well.
Alec’s snowmobile growled at him again and he revved the engine. He could feel the struggle as they approached the rise before the flat. When he got there it would be fine, but he just had to get there first…
He could hear Officer Harding’s engine moan too, but more quietly. She had been out here longer, living on the barren landscape her whole life. She was better adapted to survive out here. With a manoeuvre that came from years of practice, she moved in front of him. The two rear, red lights of her snowmobile were penetrating, like the hollow eyes of a monster in the evening light.
After a little more struggle they reached the top. The landscape flattened significantly and became easier to navigate, even if the weather had not. Snow still pushed down fiercely. But not as fiercely as it would come with the storm, thought Alec.
Fortunately for Alec he was familiar with where the Drosky’s lived. He had been up there a few times to sample some of the vodka that Ivor Drosky brought back from the mainland. They had first met in the small congregation of bottles that amounted to the town’s bar. Even though such a friendly invitation should have been reason enough for them to get along, Alec knew that the man would be trouble because he was too regular a customer. His nature was soon transparent to the whole town, some took it well and some did not.
But out in isolation you learn to make friends with people that are unfriendly because you have no choice. And underneath that there is something else. In such a harsh wilderness everyone helps each other to stay alive. Harding had told Alec, when he arrived, that kind nature was something grown in the womb, instilled in every human being. He felt differently.
The reason it was fortunate that Alec knew where the Drosky’s lived was because there were no lights on in their home. The building pulled into view as it was covered by the lights of the snowmobiles. It was a large cabin, cold and grey, and buried in the snow. They pulled up next to the Drosky’s vehicles which were covered in black protective material.
Alec pulled the keys from his snowmobile and the engine gave a splutter and died. Harding did the same and there was a temporary darkness on the hill before the two officers turned on their torches. Cylindrical light flicked back and forth across the front of the house; there were no signs of life.
“You hear that, Heidi?” Alec asked Officer Harding. The wind was starting to pick up and carried some of the volume away from him.
“The motor isn’t running,” she commented. Her light followed the power cables from the house to a nearby shed that held the electrical motor for the house. No sound came from it. “That’s not a good sign.”
“It’s got to be well below minus ten out here,” said the sheriff, shivering at the thought alone. He didn’t think that he’d ever get used to it. “They’ve got to be in if their snowmobiles are still here.”
Alec approached the door and banged on it loudly three times, calling out for the couple as he did so. There was no reply. He thudded again and the metal clang echoed along the side of the cabin. Alec wondered how long they could survive out here without any heat. No one had seen them for two weeks. Two weeks without heat, they’d be dead within a day let alone that amount of time, thought the sheriff. But he didn’t see why they hadn’t just driven down either. The vehicles were fine and there was no sign that anyone had even tried to use them.
He tried to forget the things that Ivor Drosky had said to him a month ago. The man had rambled on feverishly in the bar about sounds in the night and voices in the wind. He had seemed so sure. But the man was a known drunk, and so Alec had ignored it
Alec announced their entry and then promptly kicked the door down with a force that seemed to shake the entire cabin.
A gust of wind blasted through behind him, followed by Heidi. Their torches disturbed the room from its darkness. To Alec it seemed like the scene of some calamity, but the nature of which was at first not apparent. The Drosky’s cabin was homely; filled with warm features of a life two people had built together. That, Alec thought, is why the scene was all the more ghastly. The room was multipurpose, like so many out in the icy wilderness. It was meant to be a kitchen, dining room and living room rolled into one, but it looked as though it had been smashed into one instead. There was an olive green coloured sofa up against one of the walls with its cushions pulled off and scattered apart. They lay with many other things all along the floor of the room. Cushions were ripped, chairs broken into firewood, pictures of a smiling couple with their frames smashed; it was a scene of carnage. Along the side of the kitchen cabinet there was food that had started to mould before the frost had leeched all the heat from the building. Even though the food was frozen there was still a stench in the air, the smell of something decayed. Alec put his glove to his face to ease the odour. There were two doors that would presumably lead to the bedroom and bathroom of the cabin.
But the hurricane of mess was nothing to the eye of the storm, for the undisturbed peace at the room’s centre only compounded its horror. In the middle of the room was the dining area. A light coloured wooden table rested with three of its four chairs smashed to nothing but kindling. On the surface was a knife and hammer, both covered in blood. The table had strange markings and symbols carved into it; neither of the two officers recognised them. Some of these were smeared with frozen blood.
Heidi instinctively rushed forward to investigate but Alec blocked her path with his arm. She may beat him on the ski slopes but he was more accustomed to this sort of thing. He knew about murder.
Alec patiently examined the rest of the room, checking the corners and behind the surfaces where he didn’t have to move too much from where he entered the room. He motioned to Heidi and she closed the door. The torrential assault on his ears faded and became a dull whistle against the sheet metal outside. The quiet built a feeling in his gut that he didn’t like. He could feel the apprehension of moving forward to the bloody spectacle and he didn’t want to approach it. However, without thinking about it, the table seemed to come to him. Before he was aware of it he was studying the wooden surface with Heidi close behind him.
“What do you think happened?” she asked, her voice trembling. He had never heard her speak with such a tremor, and it made the feeling in his gut worse.
“I’m not sure. Don’t touch anything, this is a crime scene,” he told Heidi. She didn’t say anything. “Something terrible has happened here, that’s for sure. It looks like murder, do you know how well Ivor and his wife got on? I never heard him speak about her. Would there be motive there? Harding? Heidi?” He turned around with annoyance to look at her but found her paralysed. Her eyes quivered in their sockets and her arm stayed fixed, letting the light from the torch pass through the icy doorframe to the bedroom.
His eyes followed the light. It revealed the sharp icicles that clung to the frozen doorframe and brushed the next room with an ethereal glow. Through the open door he could see the back of a wooden chair and the singular bottle of vodka with a bloody rim which rested on the desk. But the light was distorted, bending the curved outline of the glass in strange and unnatural shapes.
Alec’s light joined hers and the next room became more visible. The distortion had a clear shape to it; the shape of a person.
“Ivor?” called out Heidi in an uncertain voice. But the figure didn’t reply or even move. She started to approach but Alec, once again, placed his arm on her. He would handle this.
He took a step towards the indefinable figure, his foot carrying the same uncertainty that Heidi’s voice had been laced with. Alec noticed his feet creaking on the floor below. He tried to make his footsteps lighter, but the cabin would not keep his approach a secret. Alec paused at the door and rested his hand on the frame, even through his thick, thermal gloves he could sense the frost. It started to spread through to his skin like a disease. The whole time he didn’t remove his eyes from the shape in the chair.
His brain told him he should go back, but he felt guilty. Alec had ignored the man’s words and now this had happened, whatever this was. If he had listened to Ivor then maybe he could have stopped it.
The thing changed as his perspective moved, becoming more clear. It had the build of Ivor. On the desk, next to the empty bottle of red-necked vodka, were notes and scrawlings, things similar to the bloody etchings on the table. There was also a heavy looking set of pliers that Alec imagined was for the motor outside. But it had been put to work for a different use, painted in blood and circled by teeth. Not as many as would fit into a man’s mouth, but enough to have disfigured him horribly.
“Ivor?” Alec whispered as he crept into the room. There was the stench of iron in the air. The figure gave a mumble that was so quiet Alec could hardly hear it. Heidi was by the door now, close enough behind Alec that the vapour of her breath carried into the room.
Alec moved next to the distortion in the chair, the effect not quite so apparent with his proximity. He had his snow covered boot by the back of the wooden leg when he reached forward and turned whatever was in the chair around.
Heidi’s screaming deafened Alec as he turned the figure towards him. Whatever concealment had kept its form a secret melted away. Alec could see the Ivor that he knew, or at least what hollow thing that remained of him.
The man in the chair was completely naked, his skin whiter than the newly fallen snow. Ivor’s nose was sliced off. It was fresh where it had been frozen and the colour bore the intensity of a thorny, red rose. Eyes that were covered in frosty white looked up at the sheriff, cutting through him like the razor sharp wind of the dune. Alec’s blood flooded around his body, trying to warm him against the chill his heart was suffering. The man was still alive.
“Go,” came the warning from gnarled, yellow teeth. “Leave here before it finds you.”
“Ivor,” Alec yelled his name in shock as he dropped to his knee. His words flooded in quick succession. “What the hell happened here, man? We need to get you help right away. Heidi, see if you can find anything in the other room.” Heidi obeyed without question and ran back into the body of the cabin. Alec could hear her searching.
“We need to get you back to the town. Doctor Newton is in, he can fix you. I’ll radio in and let them know. It’ll be all right, my friend. It’ll be all right,” said Alec as he reached for the radio. He pushed the button down with his thumb and there was a crackle as it readied itself to broadcast. But before Alec could say anything, Ivor’s pearl-white hand exploded from his side and crushed the little black device with an inhuman strength.
Alec fell back onto his behind in shock, leaving the crumpled remains of the radio in Ivor’s frozen hand.
“Damn it, man! We’re trying to help you, can’t you see that?”
It was as he berated Ivor that he realised that the man’s nose hadn’t been sliced off. The markings around the wound weren’t clean cut enough for that. His nose had been gnawed right off his face. Such an effort would take a ferocious, near animalistic, intent. Alec realised that the teeth that had been ripped out with the pliers weren’t Ivor’s, but that they must be his wife’s.
“Leave,” shrieked Ivor as Heidi returned to the room and dropped some feeble looking medical supplies on the floor. They wouldn’t even come close to fixing the man.
“The only way we’re leaving is with you, you idiot,” spat Heidi. “Come on, let’s go.”
“You need to leave, leave now. Right now before she finds you,” he wailed, and then let out a long deafening yell. Heidi and Alec covered their ears against the unwholesome din, wincing with pain. No man should be able to make that sound.
But then it suddenly stopped and a look of shock hit his face. “You opened the door, the other door, the door I locked. Listen…”
The silence between the three of them was framed by the wind, but for a moment it seemed to cut out and in its absence a creak could be heard. Soon afterwards another followed, and then another. They were slow and methodical. Footsteps.
“She’s coming, she’s coming, she’s coming,” he repeated feverishly, quieter and quieter. Ivor reached for the blood-smeared bottle in front of him and started smashing it against his skull. Alec and Heidi watched the brutal torrent of blows to the man’s head. Despite feeling paralysed by what he was witnessing, Alec went to stop the man. He reached out for Ivor’s hand to stop his masochistic behaviour but felt a pang of unexpected pain against his head as the bottle was cracked quickly against it. Alec fell back again, his head throbbing and vision dizzy. Looking at Heidi he could see her unable to move, she just watched. And the onslaught began again. Alec tried to sit up but everything got brighter and his muscles weakened. He couldn’t move. The deathly pale hand continued to slam the bottle with full force against Ivor’s skeletal head. There was a crunch as Ivor’s skull cracked and he slumped heavily onto the desk. The bottle clattered onto the floor and rolled away. It was just the two of them, and whatever was in the other room.
In the aftermath of the violent episode Alec struggled to regain his mind and body, but he did so just in time to see Heidi muttering over and over again. Her voice rose becoming more hectic. Alec raced over and pinned her against the wall, smothering her mouth as he did so. Her eyes were wild and met his. She struggled harder than Alec expected. However, he kept her in place, all the time knowing that something was in the room next to them. After a couple of minutes the madness in her eyes became sane and he released her.
He carefully drew the rifle that he carried from his back. It was meant for wild animals; bears and wolves. A single shot would usually scare them away. But now he had to use it on something else, and he didn’t know if that would kill it. A gust of wind caught the side of the cabin and he could swear that it called his name.
The footsteps got closer.
Alec wished that he hadn’t come up to the home on the hill.
The sheriff pointed his gun. It dug into his shoulder, the coat not softening the stock at all. Heidi took in a deep breath and then swept around to bathe the middle of the room in light. Both officers were taken back in horror.
Something moved in the light. Its lines were undefined and constantly shifting. The twisting light seemed to consider them from the other side of the table. It was the shape of Ivor’s wife. He had warned them of her. The dead man in the room had told them to run, to go and escape, and the fear of her return had been enough to drive him to savagely take his own life.
Alec aimed and fired. In the confined space of the cabin it was a thousand times worse than when he had fired it outside. Ringing seemed to barge through his ears and into his brain unchecked. But despite the immense pain he held, and through squinted eyes saw the monstrosity before them. He glimpsed her only for a second as the bullet turned her. Her demonic visage was snatched away as she became just a distortion again. The bullet had cut through her and puncture a hole in the door. Through the hole the wind came and it told him to stay. It wanted him to stay.
The contorting air began to creep around the table, still moving slowly. Its footsteps were now mute against the chattering wind. She moved in silence towards them.
“Let’s go Heidi,” he yelled at the woman next to him. “We need to go!” He broke her from her terrible waking nightmare. She had seen it too. With a pull on her arm he led her around the other side of the table.
They sprinted towards the door. Alec reached it first, and flung it open without hesitation. A flurry of snow burst into the room, almost turning Alec numb with its force. The sheriff heard a clatter and turned around to see that Heidi had tripped over the debris on the floor. Her foot had caught awkwardly on a chair leg. She gave a painful cry that told him that her ankle was either sprained or broken.
The thing had finished navigating around the table. Twisted and unnatural light swept towards Heidi. She pushed herself up onto her leg but it collapsed again under her weight.
Alec’s mind was caught between saving her and running. He wanted to help her, she wasn’t that far away. But the thing might get to her first, and even if he did pick her up they might both get caught by it. And he had seen it, the thing that was worse than the compounding of every nightmare he had ever suffered through.
Heidi looked up at him with her pained face, begging him to come back and save her. She didn’t want to die at the hands of it. Her mouth whispered please. And he whispered back that he was sorry.
He slammed the door behind himself and escaped into the near lethal cold of outside. As his legs pumped through the snow towards his snowmobile he heard her. Heidi let out a unbearable scream, and then something else that wasn’t her screamed. Alec’s hairs stood on end beneath his thermal layering.
He didn’t want to leave her behind. But she wouldn’t have died for nothing. He would get back to the others and warn them. Alec would save the town; Heidi’s death would be worth something.
It took Alec two attempts to start his snowmobile. It roared in the whipping wind of the storm. The lights erupted from the front, putting the cabin into full view. It was then that Alec saw that the door that he had closed was now open. He pushed the accelerator to begin turning the vehicle. As he got closer to the cabin he saw it. In the snow were footsteps. Indents raced towards him with ferocious speed. He could see the relentless volley of snow bend and twist. The thing was coming for him.
The angle of his turn was tight and he didn’t think he would make it, but he did. The footsteps were by his snowmobile when he pointed it in the direction that he needed. As he accelerated as hard as he could he felt the snowmobile begin to rattle and his balance shifted. It felt like it was going to tip. Alec turned around to see part of his vehicle swallowed by the contorting light and snow. The sheriff shut his eyes and leant to one side to regain balance. The engine gave a sound like it wanted to give up, but it didn’t, and Alec felt the impact of where the vehicle became level again. He turned around to see that he was free of the unholy distortion.
But the wind started to speak to him again. It called his name and begged him to come back.
Alec started back down the incline that he had come up earlier with Heidi, poor Heidi. The wind bit at his face as though it had teeth. He hunkered down and willed himself on faster, further away from the thing on the hill.
“Alec,” the wind called to him. “Alec, come back.”
He ignored it, trying to keep it from his mind. The wind couldn’t speak, it just couldn’t. Alec wasn’t sure where he was, where he was going. He needed to get back to the town, but he didn’t know which direction that was now.
“We miss you, Alec, come back to us,” the voice was faint.
“Go away, leave me alone,” he yelled back, filling his mouth with snow.
“Don’t leave us, don’t leave me,” called the wind again. Closer this time.
“Please, just leave me alone. Let me go, please,” he whimpered this time, his snowmobile getting faster on the descent.
“We’ll find you, Alec. We’ll find you.” It was almost behind him, biting at his heels.
“No, no, no,” muttered Alec over and over.
“We’ll find you and we’ll get you. You can’t escape. We won’t let you go.”
“Oh god, please forgive me. Forgive me,” bargained Alec, his tears freezing.
“WE WON’T LET YOU GO!” the voice screeched into his skull.
The ground levelled out and the shrieking wind died away, leaving him. The voices faded and he was alone with the snow and darkness of the night. He carried on, not knowing if it was the way to town, but knowing that any direction further away from the cabin on the hill was the right way. Alec could still feel the hideous being in his mind and was haunted by the idea of it following him.
He rode for an hour before the lights of the town came into view in the distance. Alec felt relief.
Alec burst into his office. He needed to get the word out and warn people to stay away from the town. Then he could go about evacuating people. But when he entered the room there was a small group of the townsfolk standing there. They all rose when they saw him.
“Ah, good you’re here. You need to leave, we need to get everybody out of the town now,” said the sheriff with an erratic tone. He went to go to the radio at the side of the room but was blocked by one of the townsfolk. The large and weathered hand of Olaf kept him in place.
“Where’s Heidi?” One of the men asked.
“She’s…she’s dead,” stuttered Alec.
“Dead. How?” asked Olaf. There was a set amount of suspicion in the giant’s voice. Alec knew the tone well, it had coloured his tongue often when he interrogated guilty men.
“There’s something living out on the hill. When we got up there Ivor was dead, and his wife, well, she was something else. I only saw her for a second, but her very face made me question god!” Alec’s face grew morbid. “Whatever she was killed Heidi. I only just managed to escape. We need to warn people.” Alec went for the radio again but was shoved back.
Doctor Newton had been standing at the back but at this point came forward. His face looked concerned. “I think the only person that we need to warn people about is you, Alec. Olaf, please restrain him. It would be better if we placed him in one of the holding cells until the sheriff across the valley comes to a decision with what to do with him.”
“What? You can’t do this, I came back to warn you, to warn everybody. We’ve got to evacuate the town. That thing will be coming for us, all of us. Don’t you understand? When it gets here it will kill us all,” screamed Alec, his mouth beginning to foam with fury. He kicked and screamed but Olaf was too strong. He struggled until he was cast into the cell and the door was locked. He called through the bars, continuing his words of warning, but they ignored him.
It was several hours before Doctor Newton visited him.
The older man pulled up a wooden stool and sat outside the metal bars, making sure that he was far enough away to avoid a lunge by Alec. From the uncomfortable bed, Alec sat up and fixed his incarcerator with a sideways glance. The man’s lungs were tired, exhausted from hours of trying to warn people. Outside the wind still battered and howled against the building. The storm raged on.
“I have spoken to Sheriff Olsen. He says that we are to keep you in your cell until this abysmal weather passes. When it does he’ll head out first thing to come and see you. What did you do to her, Alec? At least tell me that.”
“I tried to save her,” wheezed Alec. Even that seemed to wear him out.
“But that’s not what happened, is it? You took her out there and killed her. You killed the Droskys too, didn’t you?” The man’s words were cold steel that cut into Alec. These weren’t questions really. The old doctor had made up his mind, Alec could tell.
“Why do you think that I did this?”
“Disgraced man from the mainland. You were sent here in exile, most of us know that, even if you think we didn’t. Maybe the pressure was too much. You should just confess, it would be easier. And you would save yourself the embarrassment of speaking about monsters in the night. Have some self-respect,” said Doctor Newton in a disgusted tone. “It’ll be a week before the storm is gone, so make yourself comfortable.”
Alec mumbled quietly as he went back to lying on the bed.
“What was that?” the doctor inquired.
“I said that we’re all dead.”
“Not if we keep you in there,” replied the man. There was a dragging sound as he pulled the stool over to where it had been before.
So Alec waited in his cell, pacing it. He told those who would listen, warning them against the monster that he had seen. He knew that it was still coming. Even though his words fell on deaf ears he tried. When Sheriff Olsen arrived a week later he was certain that everyone would be dead, including himself.
But he was trapped in his steel cage, unable to rest. Times that he started to drift into the peaceful folds of sleep were jarred awake by the sound of the frozen vodka bottle on Ivor’s skull. It sounded like it was in the room, but there was always nothing there. He was alone. In the dead of night all he could do was listen, listen to that wind which whispered his name and wait for the slow and methodical crunching of footsteps in the snow.
Samuel J. Baxter discovered a love for fiction – mostly stuff in space – towards the end of University. Currently living in Brighton, UK, he fights IT problems by day and deals with blank pages at night. “Home on the Hill” is his first publication.