atop his rubbing hands. “But let’s look at the facts as we know them. We have never seen anything during the day. Each time we have seen Matt…”
“I can’t do this if we use his name,” Scott interrupted.
“Would you prefer the bloodspawn?”
“Anything but his real name.”
“All right then,” Harry continued. “Every time we have seen the bloodspawn, it has been not only dark, but later in the evening. No one has died during the day…”
“Yet.”
Harry stopped talking and stared over at him. His furrowed brow and projecting lower jaw betrayed his sudden and overwhelming sense of frustration.
“Sorry,” Scott muttered as he turned out of the development and headed towards the cloud- blanketed mountains.
There were no other tracks in the deep snow that covered the road, nothing but the lines of thick trees to either side to even signify where the road was. He just stayed to the center of the channel of trees, the tires knifing through the virgin white surface. His mind raced so fast, and through so many different topics and ideas that none of them lingered long enough for his conscious thought to catch up with them. It was a jumble of concentrated fear and the onset of panic that raced by so fast that it was all he could do to grip that steering wheel as tightly as he possibly could and keep that car on the icy road.
Harry just stared straight out the window at the rows of trunks as they drove past. It reminded him of sitting in his father’s truck as they drove past cornfields when he was a kid. He could remember vividly just leaning his head against the passenger’s side window of the old, beat up truck, watching the rows of golden stumps as they extended back as far as he could see. He had tried to look for the bright red and green heads of pheasants between those rows, making something of a game of it in his own mind. But as he stared between those quickly passing trunks, watching the gaps between them, he was looking for something far different. He was looking for the harbinger of his own death, the monster who he knew that, be it today, or years down the road, would bring him to his ultimate demise.
Silently they rode, each of them lost in their own minds, struggling with their own demons, as the trees peeled back to either side, revealing the lone white house in the middle of the meadow. The towers of the old convent loomed over the tops of the snow- covered trees on the horizon against the mountains.
Scott slowed the Jeep as the wind pummeled them from the side, the snow blowing parallel to the ground. Fighting for traction, Scott coaxed the car across the white sheet towards the house, driving it right up onto the lawn next to one of the barren, dead old deciduous trees to the side of the house.
He stared past Harry through the window at the side of the house for a moment before finally killing the engine.
“Well,” he said, taking a deep breath. “We’re here.”
His heart already racing, his trembling hands tugged on the handle to open the door. The wind raced up to greet him, blowing masses of frozen flakes at him as he climbed down from the car and into the deep snow. Having learned from the slipper episode, he had worn snow boots, the fake fur rising from the tops of the tan gortex covering.
Staring up into the sky, his eyelids batted at the racing flakes, as he sought to see the sun one final time through the thick, dark clouds to no avail. Every muscle, every tendon in his body was taut with anticipation causing his whole body to ache. Each step he took through the deep snow on his way back to the trunk felt like a thousand. Every fiber of his being cried with a voice of its own for him to get back in the car and take Harry up on his idea of a trip to the tropics.
It wasn’t a matter of whether or not he would be able to live with himself if he turned tail and ran like a coward, because he knew, deep down, that he would have no problem living with that decision. He was still there because of one fact alone. It wasn’t just that he had a tendency to take responsibility for everything around him; that was in his nature. It was that he had been unable to take responsibility for Matt. He had failed to be a friend when Matt had needed one the most, and he had failed to save Matt’s life when the time had come to do so. He had been forced to see Matt’s face, his arm reaching out for him, as the car sunk beneath the frozen waters, every night in his dreams, and it was permanently engraved in the backs of his eyes so that it was there every time he closed his eyes. Matt was now his responsibility. It was because of his failures that they were there today. And in his mind, he knew that if he had found the courage to stand up to his friends for Matt so many years ago, that they wouldn’t be here today.
“None of this is your fault,” Harry said softly, placing a hand on Scott’s shoulder. “Don’t even think that for a second. I’d like to think that this would have happened regardless. What we’re dealing with here is something far beyond our limited understanding and comprehension.”
“I know,” Scott said as he opened the trunk, pulling out the Winchester and handing it to Harry. “Deep down, I know that. But I can’t help but feel in some way responsible.”
Harry pulled out his jacket from the trunk, slipping his arms into the navy blue down jacket. He grabbed two boxes of the shells and shoved one into both of the front pockets of the jacket.
“You have to push that out of your mind now. You have to focus solely on the task at hand. Think about nothing but what you are going to do when we come across the bloodspawn. If you can’t do that, then I can assure you that neither of us are ever going to come out of this house again.”
Scott just nodded in silent agreement as he donned his own dark blue jacket and tried to shove one of the boxes of shells into his pocket, but it wouldn’t fit. Opening the box, he dumped the contents into the front left pocket of his coat. Grabbing another box, he filled his right, tossing the empty cartons back into the trunk. Pulling out the Remington, he held it in his hands for a moment. The wood on the stock and the pump were both damp with the pine oil that he could smell all the way in the back of his sinuses. It was slick with the oily coating, and he had no choice but to wipe it off as much as he could on his faded jeans. The sweat from his hands alone would make it as difficult to grasp as he knew he could bear.
Harry didn’t even look up as he grabbed both of the pocketknives from the storage cubby on the side of the trunk, handing one to Scott before shoving the other into the pocket of his pants. Producing the other pair of much larger and far more intimidating blades, he held them out in his open palms, feeling the sheer weight of the deadly instruments. Scott snatched one out of his hands, staring at it only briefly before slipping it into the inside pocket of his jacket as Harry loosened his belt and slipped the end through the slots in the leather sheath.
“You grab the rope, I’ll grab the gas,” Harry said as he pulled the can from the trunk and immediately turned to head towards the front of the house.
Bundling the rope beneath his left arm, Scott closed the trunk and shoved his keys back into his pocket as the little voice in the back of his head questioned why he would take the time to do so knowing that he may never get to use them ever again.
By the time Scott rounded the front corner of the house, Harry was already clambering up the rickety front steps, the wood creaking loudly beneath his footfalls. Glancing to his left, he studied the bowed wood of the panels on the front side of the house, the faded, stained wood appearing from beneath the chipped and peeling white paint. The plywood sheets that covered the windows had enormous water stains on them and they bowed and buckled as they tried to peel back from the rusty nails that held them in place.
Gripping the wobbly black iron railing, Scott ascended the shaky front steps to the rotting wood porch, nearly bumping into Harry who stood motionless outside the front door.
“What…?” Scott started, but the question choked in the back of his throat.
He stared past Harry at the open entryway, the door standing wide open. The hardwood floors in the entryway of the house were damp from the snow that had blown in and melted there. The lock box lay on the floor in the middle of the small puddle. Dust swirled in the dim light that issued into the room from the thin cracks around the seal of the plywood on the boarded windows. The crumbling walls were stained with the fading letters of years of graffiti, enormous holes revealing the decomposing wiring and warping studs.
Harry turned around and looked back at Scott, who feigned a short smile and nodded. With a deep inhalation, Harry stepped across the threshold and into the house, his damp feet squeaking on the floor as the mounds of snow atop his boots fell to the floor to mark his footprints. His knuckles grew bright wide as he gripped the shotgun so tightly that it looked as though they might split open. Reaching into his left pocket, he opened the box of shells, producing three that he loaded into the bottom, shucking one into the chamber. The wooden stock
