Chapter Thirty Four
"Andrea?"
"Kevin?"
"Wow, am I glad to see you! I kept trying to call either Jane, Daria, or you, but I couldn't get through!"
" I couldn't either," Andrea said, frowning. "I'm here at the hospital because our heat kept going off, not that it was keeping those apartments too warm, anyway. My mom's a nurse, and she was on duty. Why are you here?"
"Dad sprained his back trying to shovel some of the snow away from our big living room window. He was afraid it was going to crack from the weight. Mom and I got him inside, and I covered the window with a big piece of plywood, and then I drove both of them here. I can't believe this snow. It just won't stop!"
"Kevin, I know this is going to sound, well, weird, but do you feel anything about this storm?"
"Well, yeah," Kevin said very reluctantly. "If you just stand still, you can see things out of the corners of your eyes, almost like people. It creeps me out, because they always look so, you know, hungry. Man, do you think this is what you were talking about? The thing with Sandi?"
"Maybe, but I don't know. It's not like I'm some sort of practicing witch. I just hang out with people who are into that kind of stuff! But I do know something is really wrong."
Kevin wavered for a minute, then set his jaw, decisively.
"Let me tell my folks that I'm going to check out Jane and Daria, and we can go see them. Maybe you can figure something out. I'm not really that smart, but at least I can help you do something!"
"You, you really care about Jane, don't you?"
"Yeah, Jane is funny, and she's really sharp about a lot of things. She's not my babe or anything, but I, I think she's all right."
Minutes later, they were in Kevin's Jeep as it slowly crawled along the snow packed streets. Kevin hunched over the steering wheel, squinting through the windshield. The wipers and defroster were fighting a losing battle to keep the windshield clear of the snow being whipped around by the howling wind. The limited visibility and deep snow had already caused Kevin to have several small accidents, as the Jeep would make contact with a car so deeply buried that they didn't even know it was there until the fenders scraped.
Next to him, Andrea huddled in her thick clothing, with the addition of a thick blanket Kevin had dug out of the back of the Jeep. It was stained and smelled musty, but she was grateful for the additional warmth. Even though they weren't going all that fast, Kevin had insisted on both of them wearing their seatbelts. They both were shivering from the wind and snow that blew in every crack and crevice in the jeeps frame. Like Kevin, she kept her eyes forward. She had found that looking out the sides you were too likely to meet the gaze of something that disappeared when you looked directly at it.
Andrea shuddered, but not from the cold this time. Though she had dabbled in the Wiccan religion, she was by no means an expert in it. Magic wasn't anything like people saw on Charmed or Sabrina. She did know enough to realize that a seance was a very scary business. If anything did answer, it wouldn't just knock on wood, or move the pointer around on an Ouija board. Especially with all this strangeness in the air.
The closer they got to Daria's house, the colder it got, though the wind let up a bit. The snow slowly became crystals of ice, which crunched under the jeeps tires. Kevin constantly had to scrape the frost off the inside of the windshield to see. The jeep suddenly crawled out of the storm, and Kevin stopped, as he and Andrea stared straight ahead. The sky and ground ahead were clear, though the storm still raged all around them. The blazing colors of the Aurora Borealis lit the night sky, while the stars, not twinkling, shone steadily down on the scene.
The Morgendorffer house glistened in the light, its red brick exterior covered with thick frost. The second story windows over the garage glowed with a light quite different from that of the stars and snow. That light was a deep blue, filled with shifting shadows that played across the frosted glass. Oddly, it reminded Andrea of the ocean, and she could almost hear the roar of waves on a beach. Then she gasped, as, for a brief second, a massive figure blocked the light, and she saw a fierce male face, with thick black beard and wild hair. Its eyes glowed also with the oceans shifting gleam, and it bore a red sword. The figure stared directly at her, and she felt the raw masculine power thrust roughly at her, warning her away. She jerked back in her seat, and when she dared look back up again, it was gone.
Andrea was so shaken by the strange being, which she didn't hear Kevin's increasingly frantic whispering at first. She shook off his hand when he touched her.
"Kevin, leave me alone! What do you want!"
"Andrea, we're surrounded."
Andrea raised her eyes slowly. The air around the jeep thronged with pale figures, their ragged clothing fluttering in the wind. Their luminous eyes glowed with an intense weariness, and an awful, unending hunger. Twisting around in the seat, Andrea saw they were behind them, too.
"Andrea?"
"Yes, Kevin?"
"Um, what do we do now?"
The glowing figures closed in on the jeep.
"I ... think we're going to die."
"Oh, MAN!"
"Yeah."
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Stacy stared upward. Watching was all she could do anymore. Quinn's hideously transformed form had left the area. Sandi's mindless body writhed and moaned in its torment, the swirling blackness inside of her womb congealing, forming itself into a massive, deformed shape. Tiffany's gnawed bones littered the cabin, and her skull placed mocking on Sandi's swollen breasts. The black hair framed the empty gaze of her eye sockets. She tried to reach out to her, comfort her, but nothing answered her.
Stacy screamed again, the darkness growing inside of her, her own bones black, if only she could have seen it. She lashed out impotently at the soil of her grave with her only weapon, her mind. She fell back into herself again, exhausted.
How can I be tired when I'm not doing anything? All I'm doing is looking at things! A lot of good that's doing anybody! I know I replaced the Snow Lady in her grave! .But she could still get out at times! Why can't I? What is I doing wrong?
Stacy laid there in defeat, staring around her at the imprisoning soil, not through it, as she had before. Slowly, so slowly, she started to see things. As she sharpened her senses, she saw minute things moving, living, crawling through the soil, worms, insets, smaller creatures yet, all gleaming dimly with life. Dimly, she remembered half listened to science classes, and words like biosphere.
Stacy stared, utterly entranced despite the horror of her position. The tiniest things were alive, being born, living, dying, and reproducing at an enormous rate. Stacy slowly understood. The very world was alive! All around her, the air, earth and water all glowed with life, pulsing with it, the heart of the world itself beating far beneath her.
Everything is alive! It's not just empty air, dirt and rocks! Everything is filled with life, all around me!
Stacy shuddered, drew back inside of herself.
But I'm not, am I? I'm not alive anymore! I gave it away, to help my friends. I asked for a favor from the one who had trapped us! I was so stupid! But I felt so special, that the Snow Lady had chosen ME! Now look at us! We're all worse than dead! I'm just a ghost that can't haunt a house! I'm a, a . . . !
Stacy's mind shocked itself, ground to a halt.
I... I am a vampire. How, I don't drink blood!
A vision came to Stacy then, of the Yuki-onna bending over a man, her own breath a frosty cloud, stealing his life.
I don't have to drink blood! I can steal their life out of their breath! I can freeze somebody from the inside out! I can be powerful! All I have to do is kill somebody!
A whisper came to her ears.
Who, Stacy Rowe? Who will you kill for this power, trapped as you are deep in the living Earth? Your friend, Sandi? You cannot, for she belongs to me! Your friend Tiffany is already dead, and Quinn belongs to one even I dare not lightly challenge, in this foreign land. Your own life is already forfeit, bartered to the Cold One. So, who will you kill?
Stacy's leaping thoughts slammed to a halt.
Kill, I never thought I'd have to kill anybody!
No? Do you not live off death, yourself? Do you not eat the flesh of animals? The very plants you eat were once alive. They grew, had their own young, then died, by the hands of your own race!
That's, that's different!
Is it? Do you not think that a field of plants echoes with screams as they are harvested? You could hear them, if you only wanted to.
No! Why are you saying this? Who are you? Why are you torturing us like this!
This did not have to be. Susa-no-o's lust betrayed him, long ago. He forced one whose beauty attracted him. The young lord who took a bride his brother and people despised didn't have to do that. The young suitor who removed the Yuki-onna to this land didn't have to do that. He should never have brought her here, to this place, ripe with old death, but he did. Your friend shouldn't have collapsed on that mans grave, in such despair that she summoned the sleeping dead! Didn't she know that such deep aching feelings stir up both the living and the dead, spirit and flesh!
How could she have known that! She's just a girl! Like me! Like I was! How could we have known this!
Just a GIRL! Women command life itself! Who are you to deny that!
Stacy reeled, but struck back, her fear and frustration lending her strength.
I'm just a girl! A dead girl! I'm not alive anymore! I'll never have children, now! My parents will die, not knowing whatever happened to me!
You are dead, yes, but not helpless. You are spirit, now, a Kami, like myself. You dwell in two worlds, but move through them differently than before. You share her curse, freely taken, though taken in ignorance.
Stacy's own words came back to her.
Everything is alive! It's not just empty air, dirt and rocks! Everything is filled with life, all around me!
She spoke timidly.
But, if the world is alive, doesn't it hurt when it gets, um, killed, even a little bit?
Does the mother hurt during the birth of her child?
But this isn't childbirth!
Isn't it?
The voice started to fade away.
Wait, come back! Don't leave me alone here!
All she heard was the trailing whisper.
Isn't it?
Who, Stacy Rowe? Who will you kill for this power, trapped as you are deep in the living Earth?
The unknown others words echoed in her mind.
The Living Earth.
Kill.
Me? Kill? The Earth?
Stacy focused on the life teaming in the soil around her, at the spores and microbes, the seeds and deep thrusting tree roots. It all glowed with life. Life that she could just reach out and take.
Like Quinn and Sandi had taken Tiffany's life.
I've got to do something! I can't just rot here, if spirits rot! People are already going crazy in Lawndale. When Quinn gets there, and starts hunting those kids, there is going to be pure hell! Her spirit, or the windigo's spirit, will infect everybody! If I just take a little bit, it won't hurt that much, will it?
The other's words echoed in her mind.
Does the mother hurt during the birth of her child?
Yes, yes she does. But everybody is always so glad during the birth. But the mother is kicking and screaming, and she has contractions and everything else.
Stacy sighed, looking around her.
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but I have to do this.
Stacy stared at the soil in front of her eyes, at the tiny plants and animals living in it. Trembling she fought to open her lips just the smallest crack. It was like trying to move a mountain by blinking. After what seemed like forever, just a wisp of her breath escaped in a frigid cloud. The dirt froze, then crumbled into powder.
Power roared into her motionless form. Stacy gasped and then screamed!
Her still flesh trembled. Her dead white skin thrashed inside its form fitting prison. More soil crumbled around her, not much, but enough to move, just ever so slightly. She was still so desperately weak, though. She gazed widely all around her, staring for something to help her. Even with the power she could take from the soil, she was still trapped.
Then her eyes again rested on the rotting bones in the caves under the cabin. Grimly, she started forcing her way through the now dead soil toward the caves, a possible way out of her deep prison. To escape, by killing the mother of all life, even if ever so slightly. And by crawling out through the rotting remains of the long dead. Stacy's eyes glowed with a dark light as she struggled forward.
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Roger Morrison cautiously approached the pounding on his door, a claw hammer held in his trembling hand. The brown haired, middle-aged male nurse had been unable to get to the Cedars of Lawndale hospital for days. He was almost out of food. Banging on his neighbors doors had only resulted in screamed threats, or an ominous silence. He peeked out the peephole, but saw nothing, until he looked at an extreme angle, and saw somebody lying on the snow in front of his door.
He hesitated a single moment, then opened his door, and dragged the person inside. His practiced eyes saw a woman suffering from hypothermia, shivering convulsively. She had bad frostbite on her face and hands. Her body was shrunken as if by long starvation, her hands almost claws, her thick brown hair streaked with white. Oddly, her belly seemed to bulge, as if she had eaten some unknown meal after a long starvation.
Roger didn't hesitate, shutting the door and locking it, and putting the hammer down on the end table, he picked up the woman's shivering body and put it on the couch. The front of her coat was soaked with dark stains, and long experience in the ER told Roger it was dried blood. She muttered indistinctly, and he saw her teeth were stained red. Were her gums bleeding, or . . . ?
Her muttering became louder, and even used to smells as he had become, he gagged at the smell of rotting meat coming from her mouth.
"Sandi, . . . promised . . . gift, eat, learn, . . . need gift to learn, . . . mother, my little girl, I hurt her so bad, she's just like me, my little baby, I sent her to hell, my grandchild, I need gift, he promised me gift, . . . Tom, Sam, Chris, not enough, not right, need more to learn, to live, I need more, the right gift, promised . . . "
He shook his head in dawning horror, and turned to try the so far useless phone again. The howling wind outside masked Linda's rising to her feet, the fright mask her withered, bloodstained face had becoming twisting horrifically, as she quietly picked up the hammer and crept after him. Only a glimpse of her face in a wall mirror warned him, but too late, as he felt the impact of a crushing blow on the back of his head, his body limply collapsing to the carpet of his living room. He struggled vainly to scream, to move, to do something, anything!
His eyes fluttered open, seeing the woman he had tried to help kneeling above him. Her empty and vacant gaze shifted, became vaguely troubled for a second as she stared into his eyes. A gleam of intelligence came back into her face.
"I am sorry about this, but he did promise me!"
The hammer rose and fell again, with a hollow thud, and the sound of breaking bone. Then, the only sound in the apartment was the snarling of a starving animal.
As it fed.