Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

In the night, I needed to relieve myself. I used a pail in a corner. In the morning, the smell was so bad that I wanted to carry the pail outside and dump it. But it stormed in the night, and now there was three feet of snow. I was only a foot taller. Besides, I knew it wasn’t safe to go out. There were animal tracks in the snow. Across from the cabin, eyes glared from the shed’s open door. I was forced to relieve myself in the pail again, and the stench got worse. I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear it for a whole winter.

What would papa do? I thought. I got the pickaxe, went to a corner, and chopped the dirt floor. I got the shovel and scooped out the dirt. I kept chopping and scooping. My arms ached worse. But eventually I had a hole deep enough. I dumped the pail of waste into it, covered the waste with dirt, and still had plenty of space to dump more.

I heard scratching on the other side of the wall. They must have heard me digging and burrowed down through the snow to the bottom of the wall. I put my ear against the logs. I heard them out there trying to dig under. But clever papa had built the wall with two logs below ground to guard against flooding. I listened to them working to claw through the frozen ground. But it was too deep. They clawed and clawed, and at last I no longer heard them.

Again it snowed. In the morning, the drifts were close to the window sill. Deformed paws scraped glass. One of the things stared through the window, its dark eyes, scarred ears, and teeth-bared, misshaped snout making me think of the devil. In a rush, I closed the inside shutter. I was frightened and sickened, yes, but I also closed the shutter because the thing was so smart I didn’t want it to see what I was doing. I went to the shelf where papa kept the box of poison he used on prairie dogs. We need to kill them so our animals don’t break a leg in one of their holes, he said. I cut off a slab of horse meat, sliced it open, filled the cavity with poison, and squeezed the meat together. As I went toward the door, I heard wood creaking above me. I saw that the beams were bent from the weight of the snow and dirt.

Need to be quick, I thought. While the thing scratched at the window, I went over to the door. I lifted the latch as quiet as could be. Then I said a prayer, jerked the door open, hurled the meat over the top of the snow, and slammed the door shut. Or tried to. Some of the snow fell, blocking the door. Panicking, I scooped frantically at the snow. I heard one of them straining to run through the drifts toward the open door. My heart beat so fast, I thought I’d be sick as I scooped the rest of the snow away and slammed the door. Something banged against the top and growled.

I trembled. Then I opened the shutter. Sunlight off snow almost blinded me as I saw three of them fighting over the meat. They had burn scars all over them. One didn’t have a tail. Another didn’t have lips on the left side of its jaw. The fourth, the biggest, was the most deformed of them all. Its scars made it seem it had huge warts all over its snout. It glared from the door to the shed. When it snarled, the others stopped fighting and turned to it. With another snarl, it moved forward, its mashed paws finding purchase in the snow. It sniffed the meat and growled for the others to leave the meat alone. Two stepped back. But the one without a tail took its chance, bit into the slab, and ran off. At a distance, it gobbled the meat and sat contentedly. In a while, it squirmed. In a while longer, it writhed, vomited blood, and died. This took a long time.

Gathering clouds brought darkness swiftly. As snowy wind shrieked past the cabin, I cooked horsemeat, but not before I used papa’s soap to wash my hands. Make yourself clean, he often said. It’s the difference between us and animals. I pushed the blanket from the wall at the back of the cabin and went down the sloped floor to the root cellar, from where I brought back potatoes and carrots. I set them on a clean spot next to the fire. I listened to the shriek of the wind and the creak of the roof beams.

After a while, I had an idea. I filled a lantern with coal oil and lit it. Certain that the storm was too fierce for the things to be prowling out there, I went to the door. I had a moment’s doubt. Then I knew that papa would be proud of me for being so clever. Breathing quickly, I put on my coat, opened the door, closed it behind me, and crawled up through the snow to the top of the drift. The wind was so cold, it made my face feel burned. Shielding the lantern, I squirmed through the gusts. When I saw the dark outline of the shed, I hurled the lantern through the front door and raced toward the cabin. Glass broke. Behind me, flames whooshed as I slid down the trough I had made. I fumbled at the latch, shoved the door open, kicked fallen snow away, and slammed the door.

Outside, one of them wailed. So numb I didn’t feel the cabin’s warmth, I ran to the shutter, opened it, and saw the fiery shed. A thing raced from the door, its fur ablaze. Yelping in agony, it fled into the darkness. The flames on it got smaller in the distance as it raced away. The alfalfa in the shed ignited. The fire grew larger, the shed’s walls and roof collapsing, sparks erupting. Soon, the wind and the snow killed the blaze. I closed the shutter and went to the fireplace, where I discovered the potatoes and carrots were getting soft. The horsemeat tasted better as I got used to it. I dozed on a blanket near the hearth. Sometimes, the creak of the roof beams wakened me.

Then silence wakened me. I raised my head and saw cracks of sunlight through the boards of the shutter. It was the first quiet morning in several days. I went to the pit in the corner, relieved myself, shoveled dirt down, and washed my hands with papa’s soap. I nibbled on a piece of leftover potato, the skin crusty, the silence encouraging me that the fire had killed the remaining three. I went to the shutter, swung it open, and one of them charged through the window. The crash of glass, the rage in its eyes made me scream and stumble away, knocking against the table. The force of its attack carried it two-thirds through the window. Spit flying, it dangled, thrusting with its paws to get all the way through, and suddenly yelped, blood spurting, a shard of glass in its stomach holding it in place.

It squirmed, determined to reach me, the hate on its face giving it strength. Its snout had fresh blisters and burns. I grabbed the pitchfork. As the thing broke free from the window, landing on the floor, I charged with the pitchfork. A tine caught its throat. But the thing was as big as I was. Wrenching free, it snarled and lunged. I stabbed with the pitchfork, piercing one of its eyes. Twisting away, leaving a trail of blood, it braced itself, leapt, and caught the pitchfork straight in its chest. The force against the pitchfork’s handle knocked me down. The handle twisted this way and that as the thing snarled and writhed and bled.

A noise brought me to my feet. I staggered and barely reached the shutter in time to slam it shut before something crashed against it, almost breaking the shutter’s hinges. The thing out there growled like the devil’s creature it was. Hearing a scrape behind me, I turned and saw the thing on the floor struggling to stand despite the pitchfork in it. I stepped back as it tried to crawl. Its eyes were red with fury, dimming, going blank. I vomited.

For a time, I didn’t move. Then I went to the water pail, where I rinsed my mouth, spat into the fireplace, and drank. The water soothed my throat which was raw from screaming. Four dead, I thought. But I knew the last one was the smartest, and I decided it didn’t want me only for food now. I’d killed its companions. I’d destroyed its den. It hated me.

Without shelter, it’ll freeze out there, I thought. I seemed to hear papa say, No. It’ll dig a cave in the snow.