The Shuddering

slightest gesture to let him know that she knew.
    “I can’t just let it go,” Sawyer croaked. “This isn’t just about me anymore. I was supposed to have a family.” He felt his throat constrict around those words. “I was supposed to be a dad,” he whispered, his face flaring red-hot as his tears threatened to spill over. “I’m so sorry.” He turned his attention to a statue-still Jane. “So sorry it turned out this way.”
    Jane closed the distance and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug just as a sob tore its way out of his throat. Ryan looked away, battling his own inner turmoil a few feet away. And for the first time Sawyer saw that Ryan’s grief matched his own. Sawyer was wrong. He wasn’t the only one who had lost someone on this trip. Lauren was gone too, and from the way Ryan had turned away to hide his pain, she wasn’t just another girl. Ryan had finally found a girl who mattered, and just like that, she had been stolen away.
    Ryan stopped by the pantry on his way to the living room. Save for a bite of chocolate cake, it had been nearly twenty-four hours since he’d eaten, and his stomach was starting to petrify. He grabbed a box of stale graham crackers, tore open the lid, pulled out a square, and stuffed the cracker in his mouth before walking into the kitchen. As he sidestepped the bloody tarp that had been left next to the door, his gaze snagged on the pot of blood in the sink.
    The snow had finally slowed. An occasional flake tumbled from the sky, but the latecomers were rare. The clouds were starting to thin, the deep lavender of morning peeking through the gray. With the storm at a pause, now would be their best shot to run. Staring out the window, Ryan couldn’t help but replay the events of the night before. It was hard to imagine that only a few hours ago, one of those creatures had stepped into the kitchen like it owned the place. The moment he saw that thing slink inside the cabin, he had been struck by an overwhelming assurance that they were all dead.
    He blinked at a swaying tree just beyond the deck, snow falling from its branches as though something were shaking the pine by its base. He couldn’t see the bottom of the tree from inside the house—it was blocked by the lip of the deck—but the movement was impossible to miss in a sea of stillness.
    Ryan shot a look toward the living room. Sawyer was still brooding, but he was keeping himself busy by sharpening the ends of pool cues with a knife. Jane sat next to the fire with Oona, organizing their gear, trying to consolidate to keep their exit swift. It was good that she was keeping herself busy. When she had nothing to do, she’d fall into a haunting, unnerving silence.
    Ryan held his breath when the silhouette of one of those savages came into view, climbing the shuddering pine like a junglecat. The tree shook beneath its weight, powder falling to the ground in a miniature storm. He nearly yelled for the others to come see what he was seeing when the thing leaped from one tree to another. It was trying to get a look at the deck without coming too close—a sign that Jane’s plan was working. It could smell the foul stink of its fallen comrade, and it disappeared as quickly as it had come.
    The fact that the damn thing could leap from tree to tree was alarming, but as long as they stuck to the road, there would be no way for the creatures to corner the group from above. They were going to survive this thing. They just needed to get the hell out of that cabin and down to the highway. It was a good five miles, but he was sure they could make it.
    About to walk back into the living room and announce that it was time to go, he paused, reached out, and rubbed the fabric of his mother’s drapes between his fingers. She had ordered them out of a catalog more than twenty years before, spending an entire Labor Day weekend meticulously measuring each window before placing her order. When her curtains had finally come in, she had admired them for weeks while waiting for their next trip to the cabin. Ryan remembered her stepping back to appreciate her handiwork after she had hung the last one—she had gazed at the very window he was standing at now. Holding that fabric in his hand, he reminded himself of the good times they all had had in that cabin; the delicious meals that they had eaten in that kitchen—Christmases and Thanksgivings, the meals perfect down to the last detail. His mother was somewhere in Phoenix at