The Shuddering

scarf and plucked it off the ground with a gloved hand. Ryan slowed his steps a few yards shy of where she stood, both of them searching the trees for its owner. Ryan’s breath caught in his throat when he saw that same shadow they had seen earlier shift behind the pines. He froze, realizing just how close it had come to them, but Lauren didn’t hesitate. She stepped to the side of the road, the scarf dragging on the ground.
    “April?” She took another step forward before a rasping growl stopped her dead.
    Ryan’s eyes went wide as the shadow breached the perimeter of the trees—not a man, not an animal, a thing , ashen as though it had frozen to death in the cold. Ryan choked on his breath as the creature leaped forward, landing in the center of the road just shy of where Lauren stood, blocking her way back to him. Its long, angular body hunched over as it crouched like a gargoyle, the knobs of its spine jutting out of its back, crosshatched by amenagerie of scars. Ryan instinctively stumbled backward, his heart stuttering. Whatever the thing was, it was a good foot taller than him, all sinew and bone.
    Lauren let out a scream, but she squelched it fast. She shot Ryan a terrified look, her eyes begging him to tell her what to do. But he couldn’t process what he was seeing. This was impossible, like one of those horror movies that made him throw his hands up and proclaim it was all crazy and improbable and it could never happen; how could something be scary if it could never be true? But there it was—a creature standing in the gray daylight as if to mock his skepticism, as if to say, See? Nightmares do exist.
    And then, as if to mess with his already blown concept of what was real, that skeletal thing darted away, dodging back into the safety of the trees that lined the road.
    Lauren stood frozen, her eyes impossibly wide, her chest heaving beneath her coat.
    “Fucking run ,” he told her, and they both fell into a sprint. His instinct was to save himself, to run ahead and survive, and once his legs started pumping, the impulse to keep running was nearly too strong to fight. He had to get back to the cabin, had to get to safety, had to get to Jane, had to get out of there. But Lauren…he couldn’t leave her. This girl. This wonderful, mind-blowing, beautiful girl. Rejecting the urge to keep running toward safety, he slowed enough to twist around, his arm extending out behind him, reaching for Lauren’s hand as she stumbled toward him, kicking up snow.
    They charged up the driveway, fighting the slope, Ryan pulling Lauren along as she began to lag, her legs sinking deep into the powder. “Hurry up!” he urged. The longer the monster stayed gone, the louder the cacophony of a group moan that rose from the trees. He couldn’t believe it. It sounded like there were dozens of them. A dozen of these fucking nightmares calling oneanother, announcing that they had found their next meal. Ryan’s eyes went wide as the moans grew more insistent, more vicious as they rattled deep within those things’ throats. He gave Lauren a yank, spooling his arm around her back as he tried to rush her along.
    Lauren stumbled, falling forward, sinking into the thick blanket of snow. He tried to grab her by the arms as she struggled to right herself, their breath coming in quick, quaking gasps. Ryan’s jaw dropped when the creature took a flying leap back into the drive, every sinewy muscle in its body pronounced beneath a thin sheath of skin. He skittered backward, nearly losing his balance in the process, groping at the girl before him, his mind screaming get out of here, get yourself off this fucking hill .
    Lauren scrambled to her feet as the thing watched from a safe distance away, and for a moment Ryan was mesmerized by the size of its teeth, each one as wide as two fingers put together, tapering off to a terrifying point. Those teeth were predatory, stained by the blood of its kill; but rather than four canines set between two rows of incisors, there were a good dozen fangs jutting out of an impossibly large mouth. The way its maw hung open reminded him of an anglerfish. It was watching them, as though relishing the horror that wafted off them like a pheromone, as though enjoying the cadence of Lauren’s quiet, weepy gasps as she struggled to right herself.
    Ryan’s heart lurched to a stop when the thing squatted deeper into the snow, its muscles rippling beneath hairless gray flesh, a grotesquely wet rumble