Ashes to Ashes (Experiment in Terror #8) (36 page)

The year is 1851 and pioneers in search of
California gold are still afraid to travel on the same route as the
tragic Donner party did years before. When the last wagon train to
go into the Sierra Nevada Mountains fails to arrive at their
destination, Eve Smith, an 18-year old half-native girl with
immense tracking skills is brought along with the search party,
headed by an enigmatic former Texas Ranger, Jake McGraw.

What they find deep in the dangerous
snow-covered terrain is a terrifying consequence of cannibalism,
giving new meaning to the term “monster.” While the search party is
slowly picked off, one by one, Eve must learn to trust Jake, who
harbors more than a few secrets of his own, in order to survive and
prevent the monstrosities from reaching civilization.

An Excerpt of Chapter One

The dream never starts the same, but it
always ends the same.

In death.

My father’s death.

Sometimes I am six years old again and
playing in the Truckee River, throwing up the cold, mountain runoff
with my tiny hands and shooting shy glances at him as he watches
me, the smile spreading wide on his auburn face. Sometimes we are
walking hand-in-hand down the dusty dirt road toward Mrs. Young’s
homestead where he’ll leave me for a few hours to learn maths while
he enquires at Barker’s General Store whether there are any hunting
requests for him. And sometimes we are just sitting on the rickety
porch back at our old place, watching the insects gather around the
lantern as he tells me the Washoe names for them. They always
sounded so poetic coming from his Native tongue.

No matter how the dream starts though, how
wonderful the memories are, I can never enjoy them. I know they are
about to be ripped from my heart. In a matter of seconds, the
picture changes. In the river, he jumps into the water to join me –
but never surfaces again. On the road, he drops my hand and runs
away into a cloud of dirt. The worst one is what happens to him
while we spend the evening hours on the porch. A low, guttural
growl emerges from the surrounding pines, as if the trees
themselves have unfinished business with him. Pa gets to his feet
slowly, hesitantly, and walks straight into the forest. He doesn’t
even send me a backwards glance. Then the pines shake, their
silhouettes frenzied against the moon, and I hear him for the last
time.

One final scream.

Like always, I woke up covered in a thin
sheen of sweat.

As I poured my bedside water jug onto my rag
and wet my face, the reality sinks back in. I’m alive, in my bed,
but my father is not. He really is dead and the irony is that I
sometimes wish those nightmares were real. At least then I would
know what happened to him. Either he drowned, or ran away from me,
or the trees ate him. I’d take any of those to at least have an
answer of why he left on that tracking expedition and never came
back.

This night though, I had no time to feel the
heaviness in my heart. Far away hollering interrupted my sleep and
brought myself to my feet without thinking. I fumbled to light the
candle in my stall-sized bedroom then quickly slipped on my robe
and opened the door into the main room. It was dark and no one else
in my uncle’s house was stirring.

I paused, feeling slightly foolish at my
impulsiveness and listened for a few beats, trying to catch my
ragged breath.

The hollering again, coming closer to us. My
uncle’s ranch was on the far outskirts of the settlement. Our
closest neighbor was miles away. Whoever was out there was in
serious trouble.

I gathered my robe closer to me and made my
way to the front door, about to open it, when someone on the other
side started pounding on it wildly. I nearly screamed. I waited for
a break before I opened it and saw our neighbor, Ned Kincaid, on
our porch, looking like he’d seen something worse than a ghost.

“
Eve!” he managed to croak
out before collapsing into a coughing fit. I put my arm around him
and began to lead him inside the house. He shook his head and
leaned against the doorframe. “No, it’s still out
there.”

“
What’s still out there?” I
looked past him but only saw darkness cloaking the nearby acres and
the pinpricks of stars in the sky. There was a strange pounding
noise though, faint but wicked, off in the distance. Like Ned had,
it was also coming in our direction.

“
Nero!” he yelled and
glanced behind him, his eyes glowing white from fear.

Nero was Ned’s horse. A magnificent
coal-colored stallion that I’d often see trotting proudly in his
pasture.

“
What?”

“
Evie, what are you doing,
who is that?” my uncle Pat’s voice boomed from behind me. He was
standing at the foot of the stairs, lantern in hand, my frail Aunt
June cowering behind him and holding onto his long
johns.

Ned stepped clumsily into the house and
looked at my uncle imploringly. “It’s Nero. He’s sick, Pat. He
tried to kill us!”

The corner of my uncle’s mouth turned up at
Ned’s outburst.

“
Now, Ned, let’s calm down
a bit here before we –”

“
I’m serious!” he screamed
so sharply that Pat’s mouth was replaced with a hard, thin line. I
sucked in my breath and took another look outside.

“
Perhaps we should close
the door,” I said quietly, reaching over for the handle. Whether
Nero was actually trying to kill Ned or not, the late September
night brought a chill with it.

“
No,” said Ned, turning
around and placing a wet hand on mine. I looked down at it. He was
covered in blood. “I need you to see this, I need you to believe
me. Martha didn’t, she didn’t and now I don’t know where she is, my
God, I don’t know…”

He trailed off. There was a loud, solid
thunk
on the porch, followed by another. The house shook
slightly. I kept my eyes trained on the outside but couldn’t see
anything.

But I could smell it. And knowing my tracker
skills, I should have smelled it before. It was blood and sweat and
hay and horse and something unfathomable. Nero was here, a few feet
away from us, hidden by the black night, half-way onto the
porch.

A severe chill threaded down my back. My
lungs refused to exhale.

I thought about throwing Ned’s hand off mine
and quickly shutting the door but everything happened so fast.

Nero snorted.

Ned gasped.

A flash of red eyes and the horse lunged
forward towards the door, his long muzzle snapping at us like a
wolf, all white, powerful teeth.

Uncle Pat dropped the candle in the
surprise, and joined me at the door, trying to shut it on the horse
who was trying wildly to fit inside the frame, his wide girth only
allowing him to come in halfway.

Ned covered his eyes and shrank to the
floor, while June scooped up the candle before it managed to catch
on the nearby rug. Pat and I kept trying to slam the door in Nero’s
face, something that, naturally, only made him angrier.

The sides of the door frame began to crack
under the horse’s pressure, the wood splintering. Between my
uncle’s grunts, Ned’s child-like wails and June’s quiet repetition
of the Lord’s prayer, I kept focused on Nero’s head. It should have
bothered me to be beating a horse in such a way, but this was no
horse. Its eyes were blood red and surrounded by yellow discharge,
its mouth was a foaming, angry mess, and its only intent was to do
what Ned had said. To kill him. To kill all of us. No, this was no
horse. It barely even smelled like one. My father would have known
what it was.

Finally, Pat and I did one powerful heave in
unison and the result appeared to shatter the bones in Nero’s once
handsome head. He screamed, a mix of anguish and frustration and
then retreated, almost taking the door with him as he went. We
slammed it shut and locked it, as if that would prevent Nero from
coming in again.

“
June!” Pat yelled. “Go
wake up Rose!”

“
I’m already here,” was his
daughter’s reply. I looked to see Rose standing beside June,
staring at us in horror.

He nodded, both of us keeping our bodies
against the door. “Good, now go get the piano and move it over
here. We have to make sure he doesn’t try and get in again.”

June and Rose scampered over to the grand
piano that rested in the corner of the room. Rose loved to practice
on it after dinner in the evenings and you could see the reluctance
on her fair face as she and her mother leaned against the piano and
slowly pushed it toward us until it was in place.

We stepped back and looked watched the door
carefully, our breaths held in our mouths, our fingers twitching
nervously. The piano was barely moveable to June and Rose but they
were both small women and Nero was a thousand pound animal. He
could easily destroy it in a few seconds.

We waited for a good few minutes, all of our
ears tuned carefully, none of us making a sound. Even Ned had
stopped his blubbering and was listening in-between sniffs. Rose
made her way to him and placed her arm gently around his shoulders.
I breathed in deeply through my nose and closed my eyes,
concentrating on the animal. I couldn’t smell him anymore.

He was gone.

“
I don’t think he’s coming
back,” I said quietly, my voice sounding deep in the
stillness.

“
How do you know that?” Pat
asked scornfully. “Don’t tell me it’s your half-breed mumbo
jumbo.”

That
was
precisely why, but of course
I didn’t say that. I learned a long time ago that talking back to
Uncle Pat got you nowhere, and if it did, it was usually a slap
across the face.

Pat looked down at Ned on the floor, who was
now staring mindlessly at his bloody hands, and calmly said, “Now
Ned, let’s start from the beginning.”

“
Yes,” I said. “What on
earth were you feeding that thing?”