The Shuddering

if they didn’t get out of here? What if they did get swallowed by a snowdrift as soon as they set foot in those trees? There were signs posted along the mountain to stay on designated trails—there had to be a reason for those. What if people died doing this? “Hey,” she said, wincing against the pain in her chest. “Hey, maybe we should go back the way we came.”
    “What?” He shook his head at her. “I thought you wanted to get out of here.” He hovered just beyond the trees, extending an arm outward to push a snow-laden branch to the side.
    “I do,” she insisted. “I just…I don’t know. I have a bad feeling.”
    “It’s called first-degree frostbite,” he told her, ducking his head to peer into the wooded area.
    “Great,” she said as she continued forward. “That makes me feel so much better.”
    “It looks fine,” he assured her. “Totally cool. We’ll be back on the trail in a few minutes.”
    She looked up just in time to see him duck into the trees. And then he quite literally disappeared. Her eyes went wide as his snowboard stuck in the snow. “Jake?!” Her heart launched itself into her throat. She tried to run forward, terrified that her worst fears were being realized. It looked like he had fallenstraight down, like the snow had swallowed him whole as soon as he breached the perimeter of those pines.
    “Oh my god, Jake? Can you hear me?” No reply. Tears sprang into her eyes, hot against the bitter cold. Her board slid out of her grasp, sliding down the slope of the hill as she ambled forward, panic choking her every breath. But when she reached his snowboard, that panic bloomed into terrified confusion. His tracks ended abruptly. He was nowhere to be found.
    She stumbled headlong into the woods, turning around in an attempt to face every direction at once. “Jake?!” His name was little more than a hysterical shriek. “If this is a joke, it isn’t funny!” But something about the situation assured her that this wasn’t a prank. It was too cold. She was too freaked out for him to pull a stunt like this. Catching the toe of her boot on something beneath the snow, she pitched forward and crumbled to her knees, her tears coming freely now. “I just want to go home,” she wept. “Jake, I’m cold and I want to go home.”
    Nothing.
    “I hate snowboarding!” she screamed into the pale blue silence. “I’ve never liked it! I’ve only been coming along because you expected me to.” Her words faded into a whisper. She blinked, swiping a gloved hand across her cheek. “Jake?”
    Still nothing.
    She swallowed against the lump in her throat, getting back to her feet. “I’m going down the mountain now,” she told the forest. “I…” Hesitating, she looked around herself again. “I can’t stay here. I’ll send somebody, okay?”
    Silence.
    Then a phlegmy, guttural groan.
    Fear speared her heart as she spun around, looking for the source. It sounded more like a wounded animal than a human, but it had to be Jake.
    The moaning continued, now sounding as if it came from above her, as though daring her to turn her gaze skyward. When she did, her breath caught in her throat.
    A creature loomed overhead, one long, angular arm clinging to a tree a good dozen feet up, while the other wrapped around a body wearing a familiar jacket and pants, the garments spattered with blood. She stumbled backward as its groan shifted from what almost sounded like pain to a full-on growl. The sound vibrated deep within the thing’s throat, its canine teeth glistening with red. And then it looked like its gaping maw almost leered when the creature dropped what it was holding, Jake’s body landing at her feet in a gruesome offering.
    She opened her mouth to scream, her eyes wide as he turned his head to look at her. His face was virtually gone, eaten away, leaving little more than a skull wrapped in tattered, bleeding flesh. She reeled back, her cries stifled by air that simply wouldn’t come. She was suffocating, stumbling backward. Blood bubbled from where his lips used to be, and that was when she caught enough of a breath to scream. He was still alive ; his gaze silently pleading for her to save him. But she couldn’t; she couldn’t . That creature was perched in the branches above him, voyeuristic, waiting to see what Tara would do.
    Her hands flew to her mouth as she backed up, the world spinning the wrong way around, vertigo threatening to lay her out. She turned, trying her