Dead of Winter

by Darcy Coates

She’d just started talking to a boy she liked in her class.

Kieren?

You were right. I killed her. Let’s meet.

And I remember her expression as she gazed up at Brian’s head on the tree that first morning. Not shock or fear. Just resignation.

“It would be a mistake to believe too much in anyone’s innocence,”

I still think her bf is the killer. And that we havent found his head or Brian's torso because the bodies were switched

“I think I know who it is.”

I almost run to the door. It’s closed. That surprises me; we were all terrified when we fled. I can’t imagine anyone taking the time to shut it behind them. Unless the butcher was the last to step outside.

Behind the pocket knife is my screwdriver, the carving fork, paring knife, and rusty kitchen blade. But that’s all. The ax is missing.

“The owners,” Denny says, and it’s with a plunging sense of horror that I know he’s right.

“You were right,” he yells, his voice cracking, the wind still driving snow against his back. “You were right, damn it. This was all planned.”

The only reason we’re here is because of the tree across the road and because of the snowstorm. That was out of any normal human’s control. Wasn’t it? My mind races. Someone could have felled the tree deliberately.

“Stay with us. I’m going to get you out of here. I’m going to fix this. Just hold on for a bit longer.” I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but I think I see her eyelashes flutter, just a fraction. I could tell myself it was the flickering candlelight or that I was tired enough to see whatever I wanted to see. But I don’t. Hope cannot be relied on.

“It’s a man,” Blake says, with conviction. “Not that that’s a surprise.” “It could still be a woman,” I counter. “We only have their silhouette. As long as they clipped their hair back…”

They’re familiar, though. I feel it in my bones. My subconscious is picking up on something that my tired eyes are missing; I just wish I knew what.

Yea cuz it's your bf.

Out of all of them… Alexis was the only one who came into this prepared to meet a killer. She’s the only one who was on guard from day one.

We’re all going through the same mental calculations, I’m sure. Ranking one another according to possible threat. Using every casual comment and unnatural expression as points for and against as we adjust the odds in the virtual theatre of our minds.

I try not to think about that. About how easy it would be for one of them to sabotage the whole affair. Our only hope is that, with our jobs so clearly demarcated, any tampering will be obvious. It’s the only hope we have of keeping the murderer in check.

This is more than accidental. More than the phone being mistakenly trodden on. The damage is deliberate and extensive.

“Yeah, and then the killer volunteers to do the walking, and they vanish over the Canadian border and are never seen again.”

“A kid called me when his car went off the road. He said he was in a river. I thought it was a joke. Or he was drunk.”

The truck. I see the lights coming towards me as I enter the bridge. Hear the screaming horn. “You were there.” My words are strangled. The night was so dark and the rain so heavy and the shock so intense that none of my memories are very clear. But I remember the truck driver getting out of his cab, silhouetted by his headlights as he staggered towards the broken railing. Another, more recent memory resurfaces. Miri, on the bus, saying you’ve got the kind of face that feels familiar. She was inside the truck. She saw it all. And she remembered me. Even if she couldn’t place when or how.

Two years ago, I helped haul a car out of a river the morning after it crashed. Didn’t know many details. But there were rumours that the owner had died.”

The driver that blocked the car, the truck coming in the opposite direction, the 911 operator who hung up on the call. All of us judged by a court searching for wrongdoing, all of us ultimately cleared of fault.

This isn’t hell. I lift my head, staring at the survivors around me. “This is revenge.”

The journal is gone.

There’s nothing left of Steve’s head. Nothing but a crumpled circle of paste and bone shards.

This would make a gnarly horror film.

All at once, as though a button has been pressed, Simone goes limp. Her head drops back, her eyes turning up towards the sky, the furious grin vanishing as her mouth goes slack. “Well,” she says. The words come out between gasps. “I guess that’s it.”

“Why?” Hutch asks, staring towards Steve’s body. When he turns back to Simone, his eyes are red. “Why’d you do it?” “Doesn’t matter.” She closes her eyes. I can’t believe how calm she is. After the reckless fury I just witnessed, it’s like every ounce of anger has left her. She’s at ease. Even…happy.

What if she is working with a man and outsider? My bet is on Kiernan

There’s no wind inside the shed. She’ll be cold, but she won’t die from it.” To my surprise, Simone chuckles. “Sure. That’s a good plan. Let’s do that.”

Yea cuz she knowss her partner will let her loose

Denny. Hutch. Blake. And myself. The final four conscious, surviving members of our deadly trip. The word friend has been forbidden until now, but I let myself voice it, silently, inside my own head. My friends.

This is it. We won. We lived. I should be glad. Or if nothing else, relieved. All I feel is sick, thick dread. Somehow, I know. This isn’t over.

But she couldn’t have predicted the storm. Or that Kiernan and I would become lost. Or the difficulty Brian had removing the fallen tree.

Not if Kiernan was getting you lost on purpose

“Tell me what happened with Kiernan.” One corner of her mouth quirks up. Slow, lazy chuckles escape her. We could almost be having a friendly late-night talk if not for the violence still on display across her clothes and skin. “What makes you think I’m going to give you closure, little lamb?”

Going back, why she act so dang sus if she was innocent from the get go. Makes no sense!

Before, every death came at night or when we were separated or confused. The opportunities were picked carefully. Judiciously. This time? It’s almost as though Simone wasn’t even trying to hide it.

Yea cuz she wants y'all to be complacent

“I suppose I can tell you now.” Blake’s voice startles me out of my reveries. She leans back in the couch, the book neglected on her lap, her eyes distant as she stares at the room’s opposite corner. “I broke the phone.” There’s a second’s pause, then Hutch’s incredulous “What?” “It was an accident.” She lifts her shoulders into a half-hearted shrug. “I stepped on it. And then I knew you’d all accuse me of trying to destroy evidence, so I kicked it under the chair. So sue me.”

Why did she use a rock instead of the ax?

And compared to the almost surgical precision with which the other heads were removed, the rock feels almost barbaric.

Surgeon.

Not surgeon but sturgeon like the fish.

She wasn’t trying to warn me about a surgeon. She said sturgeon.

Yep

Simone had the journal. And she read it. I noted that she lay with her back to the room, facing the wall. It hadn’t made sense at the time, but now I realise she was positioned that way so that she could read the book under the jacket she was using as a blanket without any of us noticing. She saw the entry about Steve. She came to the same conclusions I have.

Simone’s head has been carved off.

Alexis was wrong. Simone was wrong. I was wrong. It wasn’t Steve after all. His greatest crime was being in the wrong places at the wrong times and having his absences noted in the journal, nothing more.

A massive, hulking form stands there, wild grey hair tangled about his face. Denny. His hands shift, and the wicked ax glints in the candlelight.

What it's Denny? How the hell he slip past them to kill Simone before Christa got to the shed?

I’m the last of us. And he doesn’t want to let me go. Not when he’s so close to the end.

But it’s been bleeding. Not rapidly, but enough to create a trail of blood. Leading Denny right to me.

And I give her the butcher’s identity: Denny Olstead, the man who killed his wife and his son and a tour bus of strangers, all because a boy named Liam died two years ago.

My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. I can only stare at the decapitated head. Denny’s.

I knew it! He cant be the only killer

Kiernan smiles at me. This can’t be real.

Haha yes i was spot on

And yet… There’s a twinge of discomfort in the back of my mind. I push it aside. Kiernan is here. Kiernan is alive. That’s all that matters.

Girl dont trust him

“That wasn’t mine.” He chuckles. “It was wearing my clothes, sure. But it wasn’t me. Can you guess who it was?” The twinge returns, sharper. I frown into his jacket. “That was Brian Hernandez,” he answers when I don’t. One of his hands rubs at my back, encouraging. “We look a lot alike, don’t we?”

Yep as i guessed. Cuz there was still a missing head and torso

His was the only one where we didn’t find the body elsewhere. And I now understand why.

As I had been saying!