The Shuddering

biggest problem was the wrath of an angry girl. But now, the fabric of the world had changed, reality had shifted, the impossible had become possible.
    The blink of an eye.
    A snap of the fingers.
    Just like that, and everything was different.
    Ryan had lost track of time. He knew where he was, knew what he had seen, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember how he had gotten back inside the house, whose idea it had been to pile into the pantry, or what they were waiting for. Because they were waiting; otherwise, they would have moved.
    Jane had crumpled into a corner. Sawyer was on the opposite side of the room, more than likely contemplating April’s fate—a fate that Ryan hadn’t been very delicate about. He felt guilty about putting those images in Sawyer’s head, but his lapse in sympathy was far outweighed by the way Lauren had stared at him, almost bewildered by the fact that her life was over, that Ryan just stood there not doing a damn thing, because there was nothing left to do. But he could have done something . He could have run at that fucking thing, pummeled it with his fists. Maybe he would have scared it off, bought them a few extra seconds, been able to drag Lauren up the road. Maybe if he wouldn’t have been so goddamn scared he could have helped her. But he hadn’t. And now the three of them were sitting in a pantry because of him, rather than fighting.
    “Remember why it took us so long to get up here?” he finally asked. Both Jane and Sawyer looked up with matchingexpressions—they were surprised to hear him speak. After such a long silence, his own voice made his skin tingle. “The last time we were supposed to come up here was two winters ago, but Jane refused to come up. Remember why?”
    “That guy,” she said. “The cross-country skier. It was in the news.”
    “It wasn’t just one guy,” Ryan said. “They focused on the one guy because he was a pro, an Olympian, not some amateur on his day off. He did that shit for a living. There were four other people with him.”
    “I don’t remember that,” Jane confessed quietly.
    Ryan shook his head, tapping a finger against the floor, punctuating his point. “We nearly called this one off too.”
    “Wait.” Sawyer sat up from his slouch, squinting at Ryan from across the room. “What are you saying?”
    “I’m saying that we’re not supposed to be here.”
    Jane and Sawyer looked at each other. He could see it on their faces—they weren’t getting his point.
    “The cross-country team,” he continued. “They were missing for nearly a week. They found the guy dead, found all of them dead. They went off the designated trail, which was no big deal because the guy was a pro. And then they found the entire team dead in a snowed-over pass.”
    Jane’s eyes went wide. She shot a look at Sawyer, then looked back to her brother. “What happened to them?” she asked.
    Ryan shook his head.
    “What?” she insisted.
    But Ryan remained silent.
    “No,” she said, her tone stern. “You can’t just bring something like this up and not finish. What happened to them, Ryan?”
    “They thought it was an animal…” he said, sounding almost desperate.
    “They were eaten ?” Jane’s tone rang with alarm.
    “Holy shit,” Sawyer whispered.
    “And you still brought us here?” She was on the verge of hysteria. “You still brought us here, Ryan? You knew there was something out there and you dragged us up here anyway?” A sob wrenched its way out of her chest. “How could you? Lauren’s gone ,” she cried. “She’s gone.”
    “Animal attacks happen all the time,” Sawyer said softly, trying to calm her down. “There’s no way we could have known, Janey. They’re so rare…” But his nerves were buzzing. Those skiers hadn’t been eaten by wolves or bears or anything of the sort. The hellions lived out in those woods. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.
    “It was a one-in-a-million chance,” Ryan told them, searching for a sign of understanding, of forgiveness. “One in a billion, Janey.”
    “Well, congratulations.” Jane’s words hitched in her throat. “You won…the fucking…lottery.”
    “These things…” Ryan hesitated. “They’re like out of a nightmare. They’re impossible. They can’t exist. They’re huge, like seven or eight feet tall. Skinny but strong. They can jump like cats, climb trees…”
    Jane’s eyes grew wider with each detail, her expression a mask