The Shuddering

brother. She looped an arm beneath Sawyer’s shoulder and helped Ryan pull him up the stairs, slamming the door shut as soon as they were inside.
    Snow sprayed off Sawyer’s clothes and onto the floor and bloodied blue tarp. He was terrifyingly pale.
    “Oh my god,” Jane exclaimed. “What happened?”
    “His back,” Ryan told her, rolling Sawyer onto a clean stretch of floor. Sawyer gave a muffled cry when he was moved, and Jane gasped at the three long gashes in his coat. They needed to get Sawyer’s coat and the one beneath it off him as fast as possible. “Get some towels,” Ryan said, but Jane was on autopilot.
    She bolted across the kitchen to the living room, grabbing the kitchen shears out of a pile of knives before skidding back in place. She grabbed the bottom of Sawyer’s coat, shoving the scissors into place. Ryan grabbed her wrist.
    “What the hell are you doing?”
    “We need to get these off.” She began to cut, but he shoved her hand away, grabbing the shears and sliding them across the floor.
    “How do you expect to get out of here?” Ryan demanded. “He’s wearing your coat.”
    Jane blanched at the realization, at the huge mistake she had almost made.
    “Get some towels,” he told her again. “Hurry up.”
    She sprinted down the hall and careened into the guest bathroom. Snatching all the towels she could find—all of them embroidered with an elegant A , she dashed back into the kitchen.
    Sawyer was sitting up as Ryan peeled the coats from his back. He was teetering at the edge of unconsciousness. Jane dropped to her knees in front of him, caught his face in his hands.
    “Tom,” she said. “Hey, come on.” She patted his cheeks, trying to wake him up.
    “Your brother,” Sawyer said weakly.
    “Don’t talk,” she insisted. “It’s going to be okay.” But the look on Ryan’s face wasn’t at all reassuring. She watched his expression go ashen when the second coat hit the floor, and she knew it was bad—worse than Ryan had expected.
    “He, like”—Sawyer wheezed—“he Kill Bill ed the shit out of…”
    She couldn’t help it. Jane slid around to where Ryan was, only to release an involuntary cry at what faced her. Sawyer’s back was sliced into thirds, his ribs peeking through layers of skin, fat, and flesh.
    Ryan looked at her, trying to keep himself in check, but there was panic in his eyes. Jane didn’t know what to do either, but they had to stop the bleeding. “Lay him down. Put pressure on that. We need sheets,” she said, then scrambled to her feet.
    Running up the stairs, she tore the sheets off the beds in the master bedroom. When she returned to the kitchen a few minutes later, Ryan had stripped Sawyer down to his pants. Sawyer lay on his stomach in the kitchen, and her heart lurched when she realized his eyes were closed. He was dead. He had to be—but she saw his shoulders lift just enough to assure her that he was still breathing.
    Ryan shook his head at her. “That isn’t going to work,” he said, nodding to the bedding piled in her arms. “We need to stop the bleeding now .”
    She said nothing as he slowly stood, leaving Sawyer where he lay. And she felt her legs go weak when Ryan stepped into the living room and thrust the small iron shovel into the flames of the fire.
    With the smell of burning flesh filling his nostrils, Sawyer found enough breath to scream.
    Ryan tore through the bags he’d brought back from Sawyer’s Jeep, seeing what could be used and what could be left behind. In April’s bag he found a can of aerosol hair spray. In Sawyer’s he found a cheap gas station lighter tucked into a half-smoked pack of cigs. He paused, listening to Jane comfort Sawyer in the kitchen, before exhaling a breath. He would never admit it, but he was terrified. If they had a hope of getting out of the cabin alive, Sawyer’s injury had just cut those chances down. But if there was ever a time to leave, it was now. If they didn’t, Sawyer was dead, and Sawyer couldn’t be dead. Ryan wouldn’t allow it.
    Pulling on every last stitch of gear he had, he stepped into the kitchen. He looked like an abominable snowman, wearingtwenty pounds of clothing, his torch burning next to him, freshly lit by the fire in the living room. Jane opened her mouth to speak from where she sat on the floor, her arms around Sawyer, Sawyer fading in and out of consciousness, a bedsheet securing the Saran wrap they had wrapped around his torso; but she didn’t get