Episode 10: In the Snow

*Click*

Voncid: Luca, wake up.  We have to go.

Luca: *groggily* what?  Where are we?

Voncid: not where we need to be.  They who watch the door have contacted me.

Luca:  they did?

Voncid: the usual way, with a carefully sculpted and very upsetting dream. There’s been a breach.

Luca: *chilled* there has?

Voncid: don’t be alarmed, it's small. East coast.  We have to go now and I’m afraid it has to be via the special transportation.

Luca: *unhappily* Seriously?

Voncid:  yes, conventional transportation is delayed, there’s a blizzard.  A bad one.  

*Audio cuts and returns. When it does we hear wind and snow.  It is blustery enough that Voncid and Luca have to talk over the wind a bit.*

Voncid: The area is clear?

Luca: Silver’s have given us the go ahead, whatever it was, it’s gone.

Voncid: well let’s take a look then shall we. *he coughs painfully*  

Luca: are you ok?  

Voncid: apologies, the cold doesn’t agree with me.

*We hear them approaching the car.  Crunching of footfalls in the snow.*

Luca: door looks frozen shut.

Voncid:  It is.  With blood it appears. Crowbar.

Luca: Yeah, I’ll get it.

*We hear crunching of ice and the prying of metal as the door pops open.  The wind dies down as they take shelter in the cover of the now open door.*

Voncid: My word.

Luca: ohhhh no…

Voncid: what a mess… appears to be three victims.

Luca: Oof… can you get testimony from… what’s here?

Voncid: Not much to work with…  Hmm… I have been wondering… considering what the wax of these cylinders is made of…  I’m going to try something, see if I can draw the story right onto the wax, considering the blustery conditions and the… state of the victim, I imagine it will provide a much cleaner recording.

*Chime, whispering, then something like static*

Voncid: *his voice is very low fi, projected onto the recording.*  Working better than expected… Now, Your name is Andrew Darnell, is that correct?  Good.  Tell me, how you came to be as you are now?

*more static and strange sounds as the story is extracted*

Andrew Darnell: I drew the short straw and so was designated as sober cab.  But you know how it is at holiday office parties.  The combination is too much.  People you are sick of seeing, a place you are sick of being and a big, blood red punch bowl singing her siren’s song.  The punch packed a wallop.  Made me suspicious three or four of my coworkers might just be spiking it with the shiny silver flasks they thought they were so clever being so sneaky hiding.  

Is there a word for that?  A term?  A bunch of people all contributing to something thinking they are the only one, but actually a bunch of other people are already doing the same thing, and it ruins it?  Seems like something the French or Japanese would have some succinct term for.

I drank just enough to make the whole affair tolerable.  The shitty decorations made the office look like a corpse gussied up for its viewing.  A few years before I had gone to my aunt's funeral.  The woman was the biggest feminist hippie I ever knew.  Au natural, that’s a French saying.  My aunt didn’t wear deodorant let alone makeup.  But they had her painted like a french clown at the viewing.  

So, this iswhat the office looked like.  Cold, grey, ugly, but with some cheap ill fitting presentation shining dully as the worst possible music played.

Apparently the fact that I wasn’t having a good time was writ large on my face, because *adopting an overly annoying, feminine voice* Margie the “office mom” (That’s how she introduced herself to me, ‘I’m Margie and i’ll be your mom now) sidled up to me.

“You look like the cat that ate the canary!” She said ribbing me with her elbow.

“You think I look like I have a secret?” I asked trying not to roll my eyes.

“Oh, whoops, that’s not what I meant.  I meant…” 

At this point she sort of glazed over.  Margie wasn’t too sharp sober and from the pink saturation of her upper lip she’d been swimming in the punch bowl.  She couldn’t for the life of her come up with the phrase she actually wanted.

“I’m fine Margie,” I said, sparing her further loss of neurons.  “I’m just worried about the weather, I have to drive Krystal, Rod, and Beverly home later.”  I motioned to the three of them, drinking too much and laughing hysterically at something on the other side of the room.

*In a lower, gruff voice* “Krystal, Rod and Beverly, the three musketeers!” the voice was over my shoulder but there was no mistaking it as Mr. Penderly.  The very crusty old bastard who was the only reason I’d come to this thing.  He loved kitchy shit, you know, puns, wordplay, and passing me over for promotions.

I tried to think of something funny to say, something to make him laugh, and start a conversation…

But, instead, Beverly …puked.

A thin red cascade burst out of her mouth mid laugh, giving it a lot of things to spray off of.

Mr. Penderly and I just stared, then turned towards each other and made eye contact.  I couldn’t think of anything to say in that moment and then he frowned awkwardly.  The silence was only a moment but it was ghastly.

“Guess it’s time to take them home,” he said and turned away.

I just shuffled over to them to help as Beverly apologized to no one in particular.

So, one incredibly specific French phrase I DO know is “the spirit of the staircase.”  “l'esprit d'escalier”.  It describes that moment, when you are leaving and you think of the perfect thing to say, but it’s just ugh too late.  Suddenly the absolute silver bullet phrase, retort, comeback that will leave everyone talking about what a champion you are for months leaps up from the soup of your brain, but you are already on the stairs outside, probably walking away in shame.  I like the idea that this feeling, this phrase, this thing is a ghost because, you know, it feels like one.

The perfect thing, though, hit me as I packed the three drunks covered in spit up punch into my silver sedan.  

Mr. Penderly calls them the three musketeers.

Beverly barfs.

I look at him and go, “I guess that makes me Darn-tagnan.”

Ok, yeah, it’s, it’s fucking stupid but if you knew Mr. Penderly…if you knew Mr. Penderly… I would have been his new favorite person.

Anyways, I thought about how unjust and disgusting it was that I was trying to impress my boss with puns and jokes rather than, you know, being actually good at my job, barely paying attention got the road.

My headlights catching on the rapidly accumulating flurries already starting to fall.  Krystal said something about the storm being really early, breaking the silence.  And then, once it was broken, God damn, it was really broken.

*Andrew adopts exaggerated voices to mimic his friends*

“Jesus CHRIST Bev,” Rod said, exasperated.

Beverly had been sulking, preparing a defense which she sprang immediately.  “I have acid reflux!”

“Fucking reflux?  Bev, get help.”

“That isn’t funny my grandpa was an alcoholic”

“Everyone’s grandpa was an alcoholic.  YOU are an alcoholic.”

“You aren’t supposed to just throw that word around!”

“You aren’t supposed to throw PUNCH n’PUKE around!”

The three of them were suddenly a wall of sound from my side and back arguing and  I thought about jerking the wheel and sending the car down an embankment.  I let myself enjoy that thought, but just only for a moment because a few moments later the flakes turned from flurries to heavy, full snow.

I can’t even remember seeing snow pick up so quickly like that before.

“Shit, you guys, this is really coming down,” I said loudly to, you know, shut them up.  

Krystal was on her phone.  “The weather service still says the storm isn’t supposed to be here until after midnight, like 1:00 even.”

Rod was a surly drunk.  “Well what the hell are we looking at Krystal light?”

“It’s all the coke you snorted at the party.”  Beverly was looking queasy again.

“My house is closest,” Krystal offered, “We can stop there and you then guys can stay over if you have to.”

I hated that idea but we didn’t have much choice, I had slowed down to less than thirty and still didn’t feel totally safe. 

We took the exit really slowly.  The snow was sticky, which actually is the prettiest snow.  It was highlighting every tree branch and laying a thick white frosting over the hills as my headlights hit them they glowed.  The density of the snow let up a bit, but I was still nervous.

Visibility sucked, but not so much that when the headlights caught on the red it didn’t make us all jump.

I slammed on my brakes, maybe stop is just the baked-in reaction to the color red, maybe it was all I could think to do.

Through the falling snow we could see the road in front of us, illuminated by a row of street rights, was absolutely saturated in red.

Some sort of red liquid had been sprayed all over the snow in a huge area.  It covered the entire road, into the snow banks, space between the two nearest streetlights was filled, and to the next one.  It was unreal.

My god.  Someone muttered, I think

It was so jso arring that it might have been a full minute before surly Rod made a joke.

“Looks like Beverly was here drinking punch earlier,” he said.

“Oh fuuuuck off,” she muttered.

Krystal was cleaning her glasses, like some series of smudges on them could explain it.

“Is it a spill?  Like, could it be a tanker truck spill?” I said.

“But where is the tanker?” Krystal asked.  

She was right, there wasn’t a single other car in sight anywhere.  I took stock of where we were, the street was residential, woody, but there were houses a ways further up.

There wasn’t a single car parked on the street further up, even outside of the houses.

“It's blood,” Beverly said.  I couldn’t tell if she was joking.  I didn’t have time to ask.

“I’m gonna be sick” she said.  She opened the door and stepped out, lurching over to release more punch and hors’d'oeuvres.

Everything that happened next seemed broken into separate, single moments.  First there was a blast of cold through the car.  Then something in the snow moved, sending an explosion of glittering white crystals up all around Beverly.  She screamed, but the scream was cut off by a sickening rip.

Blood and punch and snow splattered the side of my car, a good amount spraying in through the open door all over Rod, who screamed and slammed the door shut just before a big chunk of Beverly smashed into the window, cracking it.

We all screamed and yelled and I slammed on the gas, but nothing happened.  I heard a screech from the tires, my tire pressure warning light went red, the car squealed but didn’t move an inch.

Smoke curled up around the sides of the car until something snapped and the wheels wouldn’t turn anymore and pressing on the gas just made a horrible whirring sound in the engine.

Rod was screaming that there was something in the snow, Krystal was screaming at me to drive, and I was screaming back that I was trying but we were stuck on something.

When we finally quit hollering, I let my foot up on the pedal and everything went quiet.  The only sounds had been us.  In fact the snow slowly falling outside was insulating any sounds that might have been bouncing around.  The only noise was the rumble of the engine and the squeak of the windshield wipers.

I tried to keep it together.  I was in the driver's seat and I was supposed to be sober, so I was in charge.  It was a dumb thought, but it’s what I had to work with.

I asked Rod what he meant when he said something was in the snow?  

“What do you mean Rod?” I pressed further when he didn’t answer.  “Do you mean an animal?  A person? A fucking chainsaw?  Because judging from what happened to Beverly there’s a big ass fucking chainsaw in the snow!”

“Don’t yell at me,” He whimpered, “I don’t know, it, something just burst up under her and… and…”

“And what Rod!?”

“And her fucking arms flew off!  I don’t fucking know!”

I tried to calm down and explained that we had gotten hung up in the snow.  I didn’t tell them that I imagined whatever was hiding in there had wrecked our car on purpose.

“Whatever it is,” I told them, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about, “It is leaving us alone while we’re in the car.  So we need to just stay calm, call for help and between a police officer to shoot whatever fucking rabid animal was lurking out there and a tow truck to get us out of there, we should be ok.

We called the police, said that our friend had been attacked and told them our location.  Krystal did a good job of staying calm, not sounding drunk and insane.  She only told them what we needed to get them to us, that a …a …something had killed our friend, we didn’t know if it was an animal or a person, but something had us pinned down in our car.  They said officers were on the way, hold tight, that the snow would slow them down, but that they would be there.  She said she would stay on the line with us.

A half hour later the woman on the phone said something that upset Krystal.

“What do you mean?  We are right there, yes, that is exactly where we are!  It’s a silver sedan… it’s the only car on the street!  No this is not a prank… yes that is the address.  Can’t you find us with a GPS?”

*Eerie music begins softly*

My stomach dropped out.  I looked all around and all I could see was street lights, distant houses and blood covered snow slowly turning over white as fresh fluffy crystals fell over it.

No swirling red and blue lights.

“Hello?” Krystal’s voice was frantic.  “Hello!? Hello, hello? Did she hang up on me?”

Maybe they were having trouble finding us, thought we were lying, thought it was a trick, maybe it was a disconnection, could have had something to do with the bad weather… I was scrambling to come up with any sort of explanation to explain our abandonment.

We never connected to anyone on the phone again.  It would just ring and ring…and ring and ring and ring and ring.

An hour went by.  We were constantly wiping the fog off the inside of the windows now, something was wrong with the car and  I realized that I was getting…uh…uh…getting  light headed.

*gasping slightly* “Ok… I think the car is backup up with CO2 or something,” I said.  “I am going to turn the car off, for a little bit.  If we just huddle up we can stay warm, cause it’s gonna get cold without the heat.”

Neither of them said anything.

An hour later and it was so cold.

An hour later than that and we started making guesses and an hour after that the guesses *laughing in spite of himself* got pretty wild.  The last one was an alien attack before Rod just broke the whole thing off.

“I have to pee.”

Krystal pushed her fingers into her eyes.  “We all have to pee, Rod.”

“Well?”

We took turns doing our best to piss in my nalgene bottle with, uh, *laughing*  mixed results.

It had been a long time now, we were getting cold,very cold, but Beverly’s blood was frozen all over the passenger side of the car and that kept us from thinking too hard about venturing out.

It was almost four in the morning when Krystal complained about being thirsty.  We dug around for some liquid and found an energy drink, which seemed like it would be counter productive to that.  Quite a bit of snow had piled up on the car and I saw Krystal notice that fact.

She shrugged and picked up the thermos.

“Oh god, you aren’t that thirsty yet are you?” Rod said in horror.

“Get it together,” she snapped back.  “I’m going to just open the door a little ways, and pour it out, then i’m going to rinse it out with snow, and themI’m going to fill it up with more snow and bring it in here to melt so we can drink fresh water.”

Rod grimaced. “Still, there’s like, trace piss in there.”

Krystal rolled her eyes and readied herself.

I didn’t know if this was a good idea, but I was really thirsty by then myself and, I don’t know,  I didn’t want to let out what heat we had left, but honestly there wasn’t much.  We needed water and whatever was down in the snow, it couldn’t just be waiting there at just the right moment… Krystal would be quick, right?

She opened the door, just a crack, poured out thepiss and took a big scoop of snow, she reached out with as little of herself as possible.  She swished it around a bit in the thermos to clean it. She seemed to lose her nerve as the moments went by, the cold slowly creeping in, her eyes flicking around desperately trying to find unobscured angles to look out for the killer in the snow.

Krystal poured it out, took another scoop of snow and quickly shut the door with a sigh of relief.

We all sighed in relief.

“I don’t think it’s still out there,” Rod said hopefully.

“Let's wait a bit longer and then we can think about how to find that out for sure,” I said.

Krystal cradled the bottle in her hands and inside her jacket to warm it up.  It didn’t take long.

She took a big drink of the snow-water and handed it to me.

I drank it down thankfully, struggling to leave any for Rod.

The water…it tasted funny.

I lifted the bottle up to look at the water through the partially opaque plastic.

Rod grimaced but grabbed the bottle to drink.

If the spirit of the staircase is realizing what you should have said only as you are leaving, you know a party, or whatever, there should be something, a saying,  for realizing something crucial, only a moment after it’s too late.

The moment when you jump and realize you’ve forgotten your parachute. 

That moment when you realize that you should have laid flat on your stomach to cross the ice as it is breaking under your feet.

The moment when you realize that there isn’t something deadly and murderous in the snow, but that it is the snow.

Krystal was already convulsing and clawing at her neck.  The sharp, wiggly little shapes I’d seen in the water were carving their way through her insides.

A few moments later I felt the needles start to move inside of me too.

Rod was screaming like a banshee in the backseat.

I swallowed again and again, trying to fight the hot, biting pain down, telling myself what I knew was happening wasn’t happening.

Krystal *gulps* sliced open from inside.

I tried to get out to flee the car.  To let the snow tear me apart all at once like stupid Beverly.  To die fast rather than the agonizing grotesquery that I had just seen.

I grabbed at the door handle.

I clicked it open.

I pushed the door.

And found that *gulping and gasping* it was frozen shut.

That moment when you realize that you are absolutely *laughing desperately* and totally fucked.

Is there a phrase for that?

Voncid: I release you.  Go to the rest you can find.

*The audio cuts and returns.  The blustery snow is back, Voncid and Luca both speak in slightly raised voices.*

Voncid: What a mess indeed.

Luca: What? What did he say, I couldn’t hear any of that?

Voncid:  that is because rather than animating the body to speak, I drew his story directly to the wax.  This device is proving very helpful… As to the matter at hand… The danger has passed, but tell the silvers that we will need cleanup of this whole area.  There is a huge saturation of human blood down in this snow, likely they will find the skeletal remains of more than a few people beneath us, at least a few cars.

Luca: Holy shit.  It took apart cars?  *realizing* wait, what about this car?  Why didn’t it destroy this one to get to them?

Voncid:  I believe the entity in question was weakening rapidly upon its arrival in our sphere, at first it was strong enough to take apart cars to get at the… what the blood?  Hmm… maybe their heat?   At any rate, by the time poor Andrew arrived on the scene with his…associates, or friends here.. it was only strong enough to destroy their tires, kill the woman who left the car's metal shell and then… wait for an opportunity, which unfortunately it got.

Luca: How?

Voncid: they drank it.

Luca: what?

Voncid: I’ll explain, but let’s do it somewhere warm.  

*Click*