WENDIGO | KINKTOBER ✶

The engine dies with a wet, wheezing shudder. After it there is only silence, snow hissing against the glass, and the tick of metal going cold.

No signal. No GPS. Somewhere in these mountains there is a road, and you are on it, and nobody on earth knows which one.

So you lock the doors and pull the blanket to your chin. Your breath freezes on the inside of the windscreen, shrinking the world to one small circle of clear glass. Your phone gives you the same two words every time you wake it: No Service.

You are still telling yourself someone will come when the first shape passes your window. It moves wrong. It goes on all fours, hips too high, knees jutting sideways like a spider's, grey skin stretched so tight over the ribs that each one throws its own shadow.

Then a second. A third. They circle the car without a sound, and no breath fogs the glass when they come close. Everything alive breathes steam in this cold, and these don't.

Tick. A nail against the door. Tick, tick, along the wing, under the floor, beneath your feet. The handle beside you lifts as far as the lock allows, and is gently let go.

The roof dips. Fingers fold over the edge of the sunroof, one at a time, each with a joint too many. A face lowers into view above yours, upside down and lipless, its eyes filmed white and rolling until they stop on you.

Then the scratching begins. One nail, dragged slowly down the glass, and back, and again. It could break through whenever it liked, and it watches your face instead.

You throw the door open and run. Branches whip your face and snow drags at your knees. On both sides of you a dry clicking keeps pace in the dark, without effort, and you understand that they are herding you.

Then the clicking stops. You look back, and the nearest one has frozen mid-stride, blind eyes fixed past your shoulder. A thin whine leaks out of it, the sound of a beaten dog, and it backs away with its belly pressed to the snow.

They are afraid. You turn around, and at first you think a dead tree is standing in the clearing, black branches spread against the snow-light. Then the branches turn.

He is far too tall. Antlers rise from his skull in a great black crown, and long hair hangs past his shoulders in wet ropes. His skin is the blue-black of deep ice, split across the chest by pale branching cracks like frozen lightning, and far down in some of them a dull red glows like the last coal in a dead fire.

Snow lies on the dark fur of his shoulders, and it doesn't melt. His face is beautiful. It shouldn't be.

One of the creatures goes for him, and he catches it by the throat without looking. He holds it there, kicking, a metre off the ground. Then his fingers close, and you hear it: wet and brief, like someone stepping on fruit.

The rest are already gone. For one stupid second, you think you are safe. Then you take a step back, the snow creaks, and his head turns.

You watch his chest fill, slowly, and you understand that he is smelling you. You run.

Uphill, lungs raw. Behind you there are no footsteps, only now and then a sharp crack, like river ice giving way under a great weight, closer each time. He is walking. He has no need to run.

His smell reaches you first: cold stone, pine, and under it a sweetish note. Then comes the sound, a groan so low you feel it in your breastbone.

He has your scent. Human. Warm. Salt and fear-sweat, and the copper of the scratch on your cheek.

His mouth floods and his jaw aches at the hinges. In the hollow of his belly, his stomach lets out a long, echoing growl. It has been a very long time since he ate one of you, and he remembers exactly how it tastes.

Rock under your hands. A split of deeper darkness in the cliff, just wide enough. You go in.

The wind cuts off. You press your back into the stone, hold your sleeve over your mouth, and listen.

Nothing.

Your foot shifts, and the thing under it rolls. It is light, dry, and hollow.

The floor of the cave is pale, and none of it is snow. Ribs. Long bones split for the marrow. In the corner there is a walking boot with the laces still tied, and it isn't empty.

You have run, all on your own, into his larder. Behind you, the grey light at the entrance goes out.

Antlers grate along the ceiling. Claws drag down the wall, slow, like a child trailing a stick along railings, and chips of ice patter from his skin as he comes. He does not hurry.

One enormous hand plants itself beside your head, and the claws sink into the rock like a thumb into cold butter. He leans down. Silver drops hang from his pointed ears, chiming faintly, the only gentle sound in the cave.

The cold coming off him makes your teeth ache. He looks at you for a long time: your mouth, the pulse in your throat, your shaking hands. You turn your face away.

His hand closes on your jaw, fingers so long they meet behind your skull, and turns it back as easily as a doll's. His mouth opens. It keeps opening.

The tongue is grey, too long, ridged like a cat's. He drags it up your cheek from jaw to temple, slowly, taking the sweat and the thin line of blood from the scratch.

He holds very still, and you can see him tasting. The sound that rattles up through his chest is the noise a starving thing makes at the first mouthful.

A claw hooks the neck of your jumper and travels down. The wool parts with a long, dry rrrip. He is careful about it, the way you are careful peeling fruit you don't want to bruise.

Cold air touches your collarbone, and then his mouth closes over it. For a moment he only holds you there, a row of cold points resting on the bone. Then he bites.

Not deep but deep enough. The skin gives with a small pop you hear inside your own body.

He pulls back, and a thread of red stretches between his mouth and your skin, and breaks. His tongue passes over his teeth. A shudder runs the whole length of him, and his stomach growls like stone grinding on stone.

A starving animal would have finished already. He is hungry enough to kill you and old enough to wait, and he means to make you last.

“Human…” The word comes out cracked and slow, like a door forced on rusted hinges. He has not used words in a long time.

“Warm.” His eyes drop to the wound. “ I. Hungry.”

He lets go of your face.

Before you can think, your hands are flat against his chest, shoving with everything you have left.

It is like pushing a cliff. His skin burns your palms with cold, and he doesn't move a centimetre. He looks down at your hands, and then at you.

Slowly, one corner of his mouth lifts, and the smirk shows you how far back the teeth go. “Food… plays tough.” He tilts his head, and the antlers scrape the ceiling.

“Good. I like.” His eyes drop to your collarbone, where the blood has run down in a thin dark line.

“ You. Mine.” It is barely a rasp. He does not hold you this time, and he lowers his head toward the wound slowly, as if daring you to stop him.

His breath reaches your skin, and it is colder than the air. Then his mouth opens, the long grey tongue slides out, and the tip of it touches the blood.

.