The darkness in the cabin wasn’t empty; it was heavy. It pressed against my eardrums like deep water, smelling of cold ash from the fireplace and the metallic tang of the blood on the wedding dress huddled in the corner like a murdered bride.
“Elara, hand me the hammer,” Julian whispered.
His voice was tight, a wire pulled until it hummed.
I fumbled on the floorboards, my fingers brushing against the cold steel of the tool head. I passed it to him in the dark.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
He was nailing a bookshelf across the front window. It was a futile gesture. If Elias wanted to get in, a few inches of pine and some drywall screws weren’t going to stop him. Elias had lived in the earth for twenty years; he knew how to break things that were built to stand.
“Phone lines?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“Dead,” Julian grunted, driving another nail home. “And the tires on the truck are shredded. I checked before I bolted the door. He didn’t just slash them; he carved them off the rims.”
We were grounded. Trapped in a wooden box on the side of a mountain while a hurricane of rain and madness swirled outside.
I moved to the kitchen, dragging the heavy oak table across the linoleum. It screeched, a sound like a dying animal that made us both flinch. I flipped it onto its side, creating a barricade facing the back door.
“It’s a siege,” I whispered to myself.
This wasn’t a hunt anymore. A hunt implies movement. This was static. He had us pinned, and he was going to take his time.
I crawled behind the table, pulling my knees to my chest. The floor was freezing. My breath plumed in the air, illuminated by the occasional strobe-light flash of lightning through the cracks in the boarded windows.
“Julian,” I said, my voice trembling. “He knows we’re in here.”
“Yeah,” Julian said, sliding down the wall to sit next to me. He reeked of wet wool and gun oil. He checked the cylinder of his service weapon by feel, spinning it. Click-click-click. “He knows.”
“Why isn’t he attacking?”
“Because he’s not done playing,” Julian said bitterly. “He’s setting the stage. He delivered the costume”—he gestured vaguely toward the dress—”and now he’s waiting for the actors to learn their lines.”
Bang.
A rock hit the roof.
It wasn’t a pebble. It sounded like a boulder. The tin roof vibrated, the sound echoing through the small space like a gunshot.
I gasped, grabbing Julian’s arm.
Bang.
Another one.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
They rained down on us, a hailstorm of stone thrown by a giant hand. He was circling the cabin, pelting us from all sides. testing the shell.
“He’s testing the structural integrity,” I whispered. “He wants to see if we’ll break.”
Then, the singing started.
It cut through the roar of the wind and the drumming of the rocks. A voice I knew. A voice that sounded like gravel grinding together, trying to mimic the cadence of a nursery rhyme.
“Little pig, little pig…”
The voice drifted from the front porch. Then, impossibly fast, it came from the back window.
“Let me come in.”
I covered my ears. “Stop it,” I hissed. “Stop it, Elias.”
“Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin,” he sang, his voice dropping an octave, mocking and guttural.
“He’s playing the Three Little Pigs,” I realized, the absurdity of it making me want to scream. “He thinks this is the house of sticks.”
“He thinks he’s the wolf,” Julian corrected. He raised his gun, aiming it at the darkened window above our heads.
“Then I’ll huff,” Elias roared from the darkness, his voice booming like thunder. “And I’ll puff…”
A heavy object slammed into the front door. The wood groaned. Dust trickled down from the ceiling beams.
”…AND I’LL BLOW YOUR HOUSE DOWN!”
The cabin shook.
“He’s going to breach,” Julian said, shifting into a crouch. “Elara, stay down. If that door opens, I fire. I don’t care who he is.”
“He won’t come through the door,” I said, my mind racing through the logic of the games. “The wolf didn’t come through the door. The wolf went down the chimney.”
I looked at the fireplace. The flue was open. Cold air was pouring down into the room.
“Julian, the chimney!”
“It’s too small,” Julian dismissed. “He’s a big man, Elara. He can’t fit.”
“He fits where he wants to fit!” I shouted. “He lived in a wall!”
Suddenly, the bombardment stopped.
The rocks ceased. The singing cut off.
The silence that followed was worse. It was the silence of a predator coiling its muscles.
The wind howled, battering the siding. The rain lashed against the roof.
“Where is he?” Julian whispered, sweeping his gun back and forth in the dark.
I crawled to the window, peering through the gap between the bookshelf and the frame.
The yard was a pitch-black void. The trees were thrashing in the gale, looking like drowning men waving for help.
Flash.
Lightning tore the sky open. For a split second, the world was bleached white.
And there he was.
He was standing in the center of the yard, thirty feet away. He wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t crouching. He was standing tall, his arms spread wide as if embracing the storm. The rain slicked his long, matted hair to his skull. His coat flapped around him like broken wings.
He was looking right at me.
In the strobe-light flash, I saw his face. The scar. The ruin. And the smile.
It wasn’t a smile of hate. It was a smile of invitation.
Darkness.
The lightning died, plunging us back into blindness.
“He’s in the yard!” I screamed. “Julian, twelve o’clock!”
Julian scrambled to the window. He shoved the barrel of his gun through the crack.
Flash.
Lightning again.
The yard was empty.
“He moved!” Julian yelled. “Where did he go?”
He shifted his aim, swinging the gun wildly.
Then, a shadow detached itself from the side of the woodshed, moving impossibly fast toward the porch. A hulking, terrifying shape that moved on all fours like a beast.
“Stop!” Julian shouted.
He fired.
CRACK.
The muzzle flash blinded us both, a searing blossom of orange fire in the small room. The smell of cordite stung my nose, sharp and acidic.
We waited for the scream. For the thud of a body hitting the mud.
Nothing.
Just the rain.
“Did you hit him?” I asked, my ears ringing.
“I don’t know,” Julian gasped. “I don’t know.”
He pulled the gun back, his hands shaking.
From the darkness outside, a sound rose. Not a scream of pain.
Laughter.
It started low, a rumble in the earth, and grew into a high, wheezing cackle that sounded like dry leaves skittering on pavement.
“You missed,” Elias sang from the darkness. “The Bad Prince missed. Now it’s the Wolf’s turn.”
Then came the sound of metal tearing.
A screeching, grinding noise from above our heads.
I looked up.
The roof.
He wasn’t coming through the door. He wasn’t coming down the chimney.
He was peeling the tin roof off the cabin like the lid of a sardine can.
“Upstairs!” Julian roared, grabbing my arm. “The loft!”
We scrambled backward as the ceiling boards above the kitchen groaned. A crowbar—or maybe just his bare hands—punched through the wood, sending splinters raining down onto the table where we had just been hiding.
Rain poured in through the breach, soaking the floor.
“Get back!” Julian shoved me toward the bedroom in the back, the only room with a solid ceiling.
We retreated, slamming the bedroom door and dragging a heavy dresser in front of it. It felt pathetic. We were rats scurrying deeper into the hole while the terrier dug us out.
I huddled in the corner, clutching the revolver Julian had given me earlier—my own weapon, useless in my pocket until now.
“He’s coming in,” I whispered.
Julian stood by the door, his gun leveled at the wood. He looked like a man who knew he was about to die, but was determined to make it expensive.
“Let him come,” Julian said, his voice dropping to a growl that sounded disturbingly like his brother’s. “I’m done missing.”
But outside, the tearing sound stopped.
The laughter stopped.
The only sound was the rain falling through the hole in the roof, splashing onto the kitchen floor.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
It sounded like a clock counting down.
He was inside.