34. Helene #2
A different sort of chill tiptoes up my spine and between my shoulder blades. Even though it’s almost impossible to see anything among the thick flakes of snow, the eerie and familiar sense of foreboding penetrates the inside of the car. The hair on my arm and the back of my neck lift.
“A plan to do what, Helene? We’re trapped in the Toyota. There’s no room for a plan. There's hardly any room for us with all the stuff you have packed.”
I stomp my foot like a child to get the blood flowing again. “I’m the queen of plans, remember, kid? If A and B don’t pan out, then we’ve got C and D. Although you know how I hate to resort to anything beyond D,” I reply, trying my best to calm Audra.
I take her arm to draw her close to me and she shakes her head, lifting her hand away. “Plan D isn’t going to get us out of here when there is nothing there, and—” she breaks off in a scream.
The creature outside is near enough to make out the initial stretches of fingers, all six on each hand. It lifts an arm and the pines drop snow from their boughs like tiny projectiles.
What’s worse? Freezing to death, or being eaten by whatever the hell it is stalking us?
I scramble for the bag, my gut summoning me to crystal and bone. Blood surges through my veins. There’s no plan. We both know it’s true.
“You can’t seriously be pulling a rune now. This thing isn’t going to stop if you throw a shard of bone at it.” Her voice ratchets up a notch.
No, but it might get me thinking. It might give me a respite to see the situation with fresh eyes.
My fingers close around the glyph that’s warmer than the rest. It pulses against my palm. Despite the terror, the feeling of urgency, I draw it out and open my hand.
“It’s Hagalaz,” Audra breathes. “Again. A strike without warning. Talk about having a message shoved down our throats.”
Literally, it means hail. But it's impossible to ignore Audra's earlier comment about this being her rune. The one Mom always drew for her.
And now it’s shown itself to us twice.
“Ah...” she shakes her hands, fingertips already turning blue. “It can also represent a sudden disaster. Uh, forces of nature. A sudden disruption. Events outside of our control.”
She's scrambling for answers in an empty basin where they might have been, once, but have long since dried up.
“Destruction you can’t control,” I add. “Because why would the universe not have a sense of humor?” I pinch the crystal. “This is classic shit hits the fan, in this case, kid. It’s chaos and inevitability. Not agency.”
Will the creature outside even blink if I toss the rune at it? Probably not. It will likely roar like the troll and unhinge its jaw to swallow the entire car in one gulp.
It’s not the rune’s fault we’re screwed.
Can I tear the tailpipe free and use it like a bat? Another eruption of thunder shakes more snow loose.
Where is the air? Where is the heat and life?
I’m freezing in place. And I’m not done pulling.
The runes still have something to say. I dive my hand into the pouch again, brushing over bone. And this time the carved piece practically leaps out of my hand. It clatters against the cup holder and bounces toward Audra.
It’s Isa (?). Ice.
“Stasis.” I’m so cold it’s hard to articulate the word. “Being frozen, no movement possible.”
“When Mom pulled Isa, whenever it came up for her, it meant everything was blocked.”
She fumbles for my hand and linked our fingers together with the rune between us. It’s being trapped in place, powerless to act until the ice melts.
Because when we look up, the ice is the least of our problems.
When we look up, the form in the snow has bent down beside the car, its face carved from hollowed terrors and evil dreams you drag with you into tomorrow.
And it’s smiling at me.
I’ll never get the image of the wickedly grinning face from my memory.
It will replay in my nightmares until I’m old and gray, if I make it. I’ve got doubts as its grin stretches, skin pulling tight over sharp bone.
The temperature drops further, mine and Audra’s chattering teeth an unsteady rhythm. She shakes with it, uncontrolled, freezing to death the closer the figure gets.
It presses a hand to the window and icicles drip from its nails.
This close, the figure is clear, skin jagged and cutting, made from shards of glass. Pure white eyes meet mine, and his incisors match his talons.
The cold steals our words and our breath and leaves only fear behind.
My limbs refuse to move. My fingers latch onto the bag, around my knee.
Audra exhales long and faint, and even the wind can’t disguise our identical awful convulsion.
Frost gnaws at our bones the same way this thing will if it gets inside the car. A tremor shakes through me from head to toe.
“Helene.” My name on her lips is a whisper.
The creature leans closer, and I manage to crack the frost along my knuckles to grab Audra. “Get in the back. Now. Go, go.”
There has to be a way out of the car and past the snow The stupid malfunctioning beater still has roll-up windows, for fuck’s sake. I’ll shove them down and burrow out of the snow myself.
Plan A forms half-finished and flimsy in my head. Audra can’t move quickly. Her legs refuse to bend correctly on a good day.
Now, her body is leaden and heavy, frozen stiff.
What is the creature waiting for? Why hasn’t it broken in and attacked us yet?
I grab the back of Audra’s coat and haul her out of her seat. She winces, flinching against the discomfort in her joints, making an effort to pull herself up.
“Hurry, hurry,” I push.
Her eyes are black, panicked. “I’m trying.”
Strain pulls her skin tight. I’ll berate myself later for the pain I’ve caused by throwing her around this way. I send a silent prayer out into the universe and help fold her legs up to her chest until she drops. The clutter of the backseat cradles her in detritus as I scramble to follow.
The sense of eyes on my spine deepens.
My fingers, tipped in blue, press against the side of the door and the rippled plastic covered in frosted filigree.
“Helene, it’s not going to work. The doors won’t open. We can’t—” Audra tries again.
Breathing hard, I tug on the handle, the mechanism sliding but the door refuses to give. It’s frozen shut. Solid.
“No, no, come on.”
I fumble to roll the windows down but it won’t circle. The door holds tight, on the left and the right. Trapping us.
My lungs shrink.
Shadows collect over the car, the creature on one side and a mountain of snow on the other.
I pound my fist against the glass. Any imprint of warmth around it disappears immediately.
“Why didn't we get one of those window breaking things? Those tools?” I grab the headrest and tug it free.
The metal prongs slide out of their sockets. But when I tap them on the window, nothing happens. They might as well be plastic.
My heart swells into the space left behind by my ribs, too large, too hot.
And the creature still smiles. Its head, his head, angles bizarrely to the side, like it’s hanging from a broken bone.
It knows we’re trapped in this metal beast like the remnants of a ribcage of some long-dead thing.
It knows we’re struggling.
I slam the headrest to the window and when it doesn’t crack, I move to the other side.
There are too many things in the way, Audra included, to pull the seats down and escape out the trunk.
What are the odds the trunk will open? It’s a finicky fuck on a good day, choosing to stay shut when I need it unlocked for groceries or book orders for the store.
“Helene, stop. Just stop.”
There’s no room for air inside my body. No room for anything except horror and fear and a dozen other emotions too powerful to name, only taste.
“We’re stuck,” Audra adds, her voice soft. “It’s okay.”
I swipe a frozen hand across my face and gasp, my tears solid drops of ice. “It’s not okay. I’m not ready.”
I’m not going to let my sister die in this fucking beater with the roll up windows. I’m not going to let her short and already grueling life, the bad hand she was dealt, be met with an end like this. It’s not fair.
A panic attack lands so sharp and potent it’s too late to do my box breathing or work on my five senses.
What would they be, anyway?
No matter where I look, I’m greeted with ice and death. Trees. Hungry, frosted looking monsters.
Audra shivers and hunches in on herself. “I love you. Helene, please, look at me. I love you so big. I'm sorry about what I said earlier.”
I glance over until our eyes hook, and she snags me.
“It was an honor living alongside you. Again, apparently.” Her smile clatters through me, broad and bright and final.
I shake my head. “No. No, I’m not saying goodbye, kid.”
“Sometimes you have to.”
Not this time, or anytime soon. I escaped to get her out of here and try to make the right choice. She deserves a chance to live her life.
Dammit, so do I. I fucking deserve it.
“I’m not accepting death. Never.”
Her eyes lure me in, those liquid pools of emotion.
“Yes, it’s been an honor. It really has. And I love you bigger.” I brush my hand over her cheek and grab the headrest again. “So let’s live the best fucking life we possibly can and kill this thing.”