Bonechiller Read Online Free

oxygen.
    Up ahead, I can just make out the light at the end of the road, marking the turnoff for the marina. First Line, finish line.
    Crossing Second, I can’t help looking back. My vision is blurred with tears from the frigid wind.
    Nothing. Nothing. Maybe it’s had its fun, and now—
    No. Diving from ditch to ditch, it clears the Line withouteven setting foot on it this time. My eyes must be screwing with me. There’s no way anything can move like that. If it’s making any noise now, I can’t tell past my own gasping and my shoes pounding the snowy gravel.
    Focus on the light! Eyes on the prize.
    That beacon in the black grows slowly. So slowly. As I close in on it, a few more lights from the marina wink in and out through the trees.
    I might just make it.
    Then my foot hits a patch of ice. Staggering wildly, I fight to stay vertical. But I go down hard. Hands out, I barely avoid bouncing my head off the ground.
    I crouch on my knees, dazed, sucking air into my starving lungs.
    I’m dead!
    That thing’s going to come leaping out of the ditch now that its prey is down.
    The growl rises up from the shadows.
Hungry
.
    Seconds tick away, marked by the ragged wheeze of my lungs and the low rumble in the dark.
    Is it getting closer? I strain to see. Ten feet in any direction and the black is absolute. I can feel that ghost itch again, the sense of being watched. What’s it waiting for?
    Wide-eyed, I search the gloom.
    There! Its breath rises in wisps over the far edge of the road, like gray smoke. The growl rolls with the rhythm of those breaths.
    I get back on my feet, stumble the first few steps and keep going. I fix my gaze on the light at the end.
    The wind tries to blow me back, but I fumble on. So close now.
    The light-post comes into view, and a glowing circle of snow at its base. Like a little island of safety, of sanity in this crazy night.
    I grab the post, leaning against it to face the dark. Outside the edge of my little island, the world disappears.
    The turnoff for the marina is a stone’s throw away. Two lines of lights run along the twin piers that stretch out onto the frozen lake. I can pick out the yellow glow from the windows of the marina house.
    A hundred yards away. A million miles away.
    Behind this post, the two runoff ditches tunnel under First Line, merging into one big ditch that feeds into the lake. I shoot a glance over my shoulder. Did that thing get past me?
    The night waits. I strain to hear, but there’s only the hollow rush of the wind.
    I can’t just stay here, turning into a human Popsicle, pretending this pool of light is any protection.
    Then I feel it, the vibration before the growl. I swing my head around.
    I almost piss myself. The sound is all around, echoing inside my skull.
    Screw this!
    One last sprint to the house. My only shot. But is that thing still in the ditch? Or circling my little island, waiting to take me down?
    The growl turns my legs to rubber.
    Come on! You can do this. Ready? On three.
    Three!
    I push off and burst down First Line.
    Just as I cross the border from the light into the black, a pale blur rushes at me in an avalanche of speed.
    Then it hits! The impact knocks me off the road. As I tumble, the black ditch yawns wide to take me. I’m falling into nothing.
    The ground hits me like a frozen hammer. My left shoulder slams against ice-hard muck, my head cracking with an explosion of red sparks behind my eyes.
    I slide to the bottom of the ditch.
    What? What? What?
    Focus! Gotta focus.
    But my brain’s whipping around in a blender. I try to slow that nauseous spinning.
    It’s so dark. Like the whole world has been snuffed out. Like I’m blind.
    I roll onto my back, and my shoulder screams in protest.
    I catch some light leaking down from the post on the road above. The bulb is just visible over the rim of the ditch, like a moonrise.
    I’m staring at that glow, the only thing keeping me from getting swallowed by the black, when a shadow moves across