The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (44 page)

Naw, hell naw, Ant, you
are on your own!

The words haunted him. As
the days passed and the weather grew ever colder, everyone else in
the world continued on, as if nothing was amiss.
I mean, sure, what’s out of the ordinary when I
nearly died at the jaws of a five-hundred pound wolf-beast?
Nothing? Kiss my fucken ass!

He could still see her in
that outlandishly giant doghouse, glaring at him as if he were
nothing to her, below her notice, not fit to be anywhere other than
under one of her patent leather shoes. She’d made him feel
insignificant with the white frozenness of her eyes.

What did she mean by “in
the game” anyway? Why did he have to be in any game? Why did he
have to be included when all he’d done was help a friend? A friend
he hadn’t seen nor spoken to in seven years, mind you. Couldn’t she
just forget I was there at all, especially when she looked at me
like a piece of walking crap.

The more he thought about
it, the more confused he became. It was a tangle of conspiring
events well beyond his comprehension. He could feel something was
about to happen, something different than anyone could imagine or
quite possibly believe. Yet, he had no clue, not an inkling of what
it might be exactly. Still, the feeling didn’t shake free,
something
was
going to happen. Call it was a sense of dread that began to
grow, put pressure on his shoulders, and tighten the muscles on his
neck the moment he’d seen Jätung. It had worsened with every hour
since. He wished he had never seen what he had at top of the hill
on Milbur Drive.

Thank god his brothers and
his sisters were away, visiting his aunt.

He folded the potato chip
bag in half, sealing the broken morsels inside. Next, he set it
atop the pile of newspapers and he began to gather them into a more
manageable pile. One capable of fitting into the trashcan in the
kitchen. When he returned from that, he had brought with him a damp
paper towel and began to wipe the coffee table, cleaning the
various spills and smudges it had accumulated. He placed six or so
magazines neatly on top of it, spread them out, fan-like from the
middle.

He turned his head when he
heard the jiggling of keys outside, his gaze coming to settle on
the front door, fairly sure it was his father, returning from the
market. He smiled at himself, thinking it was a good thing he’d
finally got up off his ass and did what he’d been told to do,
especially now his father had returned from the market with their
dinner. He didn’t stop what he was doing as his father unlocked the
dead bolt and door handle locks, and entered the house.

“
Hey, Dad,” he began as he
finished straightening and tucking in the last couch cover, and
stood. “What’s for dinner?”

“
Huh?” the older man
stammered obviously in deep thought. “Oh, I got us one of those
pinche rotisserie chickens they have sitting under those hot lamps
down at Super-A.”

“
I like those, they’re
good,” responded the boy, picking up the remote from the armrest of
one of the couches, turning off the TV. He no longer had any
intention of watching it. He looked over his father for a
moment.

He wore a dark flannel
shirt and jeans with a thin waterproof jacket over both. He was
much shorter than Andrew, closer to five foot six than five foot
seven as he claimed. He was slightly overweight with an ample beer
belly, his legs slightly bowing from his knees, the joints slowly
giving way under his excessive weight over the years.

His father merely grunted
and half turned to close the door behind him. Andrew heard the
click of the door knob latch as it engaged with the door frame.
Simultaneously, his father began, “You did clean like I - ,” and
that was all.

It registered in his
brain, from the edge of his vision, the front door was splitting
down the middle. For some ungodly reason, it was cleaving in half.
Scores of tiny pieces of wood were already raining down on his
father. Then, the older man was violently thrown backward from the
force of the impact.

Andrew watched his father
hit the carpeted floor with a loud thump, his head smacking
horribly into the bookcase leaning up against the wall by the
entryway. When Andrew saw his eyes roll up into his head and his
tongue loll grotesquely from his mouth, he knew the blow had
knocked his father out cold. He only hoped he wasn’t badly
hurt.

The door, now broken in
two, hung upon its hinges and the clasp of the lock. The “lock”
side swayed back and forth for a few moments, then it came free and
fell across the legs of his father, cracking against the back of
his father’s knees like a hammer upon a wedge –
Knack!

Andrew was wild with fear
and was about to go to him when he heard a familiar growl and froze
in his tracks. Every hair on his body stood on end as he glanced
back toward the ruined portal and saw Jätung standing there,
glowering. The beasts’ crimson orbs burned dully in the light of
the room. Massive, it blocked the entire entryway.

From behind the hulking
wolf-creature stepped Nixy, an icy smirk dancing across her pale
lips as she wedged herself between the bulk of her beastly Petling,
entering the front room.

“
The game is afoot, Andrew
Ibarra. I apologize, if I misplaced your formal invitation, but
nevertheless, it is time for you to accompany us to the Throne… at
the behest of the Lord of the Storm, of course. The Rending is upon
us, the Melding is about to be declared.”

“
I-I… I d-do not know what
you are t-talking a-about, little girl, but –.”

A fiercer growl from
Jätung silenced him. He stood there unsure if he should see to his
father or leave with the ghastly pair standing before
him.

“
Does it matter?” she
asked, tilting her small head to the side. “Either you come now,
without complaint, or my lovely pet here will carry you there, in
his jaws the entire way.

“
The place where the very
first battles will be waged is quite a distance from here, even by
way of… what you humans call motor transportation, yes? Let alone
horseback. I assume the journey would be most uncomfortable for
you, while gripped within the maw of my Isighünd. He might get the
urge to nibble. He does that sometimes. You know, he forgets what
he’s been told.”

“
B-But, wha-what about my
dad, he’s hurt. Can I at least check him to see if he’s
-?”

“
It matters not! Come
now!” Nixy gestured in anger. Her face contorted into a mask of
evil.

It completely shocked the
boy, knowing he was powerless against her. Andrew hung his head in
defeat and stepped toward them, having noticed, again, the change
in her teeth, her mouth – one becoming needle-point sharp, while
the other stretched impossibly wide. As he passed the terrible
wolf-beast, he swore he saw Jätung’s quivering jowls pull back,
grinning at his despondency.

Nixy’s cold, dry hand
clasped him just above the elbow with surprising strength.
This little bitch is much, much more than she
appears to be
, he thought as they stepped
out into the cold night air.

From everywhere at once,
came a forlorn gong. In the air, through the ground, vibrating the
trees, the houses – the entire city was resonating with
it.

It was then, Andrew saw
every source of light around him – streetlights, porch lights,
headlights, and starlight’s – every type, suddenly pop and expand
with an ugly pea-green afterglow. A breath later, the ground began
to shake as a low frequency toll grew in strength. It rattled his
inner ears, seemed to turn his bones into a tuning fork. It
nauseated him. He almost threw up right there on the front steps of
his house. Stumbling forward, Nixy jerked him back into an upright
position, dragging him behind her.

“
You see, Andrew Ibarra? I
told you the Rending was upon us.” She giggled, mockingly girlish
as she opened the gate of the chain link fence circumventing the
front yard. The demented child yanked him into the
night.

Astonished, Andrew watched
as structures, streets, and many, many other manufactured objects
seemed to shimmer for an instant and then dissipate, blown away by
some horrid wind.

From nowhere and
everywhere at the same time, the lights about him popped with a
putrid green color once more. Again, the indescribable drumming
sounded, and like a few others that night, Andrew’s stomach twisted
and he threw up.

In the back of his mind,
he hoped he had splashed Nixy beautiful white dress with every drop
of it, but then unconsciousness took him and there was only
darkness.

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

Louis Willigan

Wednesday, November
24
^th
,
the Day Before Thanksgiving,

At the Same
Time…

He slung the tall, white
kitchen trash bag over his shoulder as he walked out of the house.
He’d come from the side door, shuffling down the wooden steps and
into the driveway muttering under his breath. He felt the cold air
about him the moment he stepped from the warmth of his mother’s
kitchen, because he hadn’t bothered to zip up his bulky parka. He
wore a pair of ancient cloth mittens, instead of the ones he wore
when he and his parents went to the mountains. He’d been distracted
and hadn’t realized how much the temperature had dropped over the
last few hours.

It wasn’t that he was
angry or hurt. Rather he was irritated. Well that, with a sprinkle
of sadness for good measure. Because this sort of thing happened
every time his father went out of town, not that it bothered him
all that much. He merely got stuck with all the manly type of
chores around the house. If that was the role his mother needed him
to fill, then so be it.

No, what bugged him was
taking out the ugly, smelly trash. Just the thought of the mass of
decaying food and other discarded refuse, only a thin layer of
plastic away from his body made him cringe in disgust, gage in
revulsion.

Sure, it was a pet peeve,
but it didn’t suppress the fact trash grossed him out for some
reason.
Not even barf is as nasty as
trash!

Well, maybe that was going
too far…

He sauntered across the
driveway, the high-top sneakers he was wearing crunched atop the
snow-covered concrete. He angled toward the trashcans along the
opposite side of the driveway, grimacing and grunting, holding one
hand over his nose. There wasn’t much of anything to smell, because
the wind was blowing steadily from the front of the house to the
back, its icy chill whiffing away all scent before it time to
coalesce. He approached the black can - the one for trash - and
placed the white bag of refuse on the ground, flipping up the lid.
He retching when the noxious smells of within seemed to explode
into his face. He grabbed the trash bag as quickly as he could and
heaved it into the can with all of his strength. The weight of
garbage thudded onto the bottom of the can, making the whole thing
shutter.
Oh, thank god!
He flipped the lid back in place and was about to
step away, when…

BLOOOOOOONG!!!

He felt it and heard it,
at the same time, against the drums of his ears, within the marrow
of his bones, through the soles of his shoes. He froze mid-step,
looking around as a puke-green shimmering seemed to perspire from
every solid object around him. He would’ve been amazed and shouted
for his mother, exclaiming in excitement as he was wont to do in
such times.

He didn’t. He
couldn’t.

A wave of nausea hit him
like a ton of bricks. He almost bent in two as his guts tangled and
tightened within his body. He gagged and heaved before he could
stop himself, feeling his throat thicken, as saliva filled his
mouth. He tried with every bit of his will to stop himself from
being sick, grabbing at his mid-section with both hands, trying to
call out, but he couldn’t. His esophagus betrayed him.

He made himself stand as
erect as he could manage, trying to see through the tears filling
his eyes with his efforts. He hoped he could catch a glimpse of his
mother through one of the windows of the house, but only the
kitchen light was on at the moment. He knew there was no way his
mother could see him from where he stood. He took a tentative step
forward, praying the movement wouldn’t make him feel any more sick
than he was already -.