Bonechiller Read Online Free Page B

heave myself over the edge of the ditch and roll onto the ground.
    Getting onto my feet, I peer into the night till I find the marina lights through the trees. Then I lurch into a jog.
    I don’t look left or right, and definitely not back. Myshoes crack through iced puddles. The uneven ground tries to trip me up.
    There’s the house. So close.
    Thirty feet. Twenty.
    I can sense that thing behind me, insanely quick and huge. Reaching out to claw my back and swat my legs out from under me.
    Ten feet.
    I lunge at the back door and twist the knob with my frozen fingers. Thank god nobody locks their doors around here.
    Slamming it shut with my shoulder, I turn the dead bolt.
    Can’t believe it. I’m still breathing.
    There’s a window beside the door. I pull back the drapes and peer out into the dark, leaning away from the glass, half expecting that beast to crash through.
    But the night is empty. At least that’s what my eyes tell me.
    Only, I know better.

FIVE
    Sleep. The big eraser.
    Cutting off one day from the next. Making yesterday history. Giving you enough distance to shake your head and say: What was I thinking?
    Last night was a really bad dream, a psychotic nightmare. Judging by the headache hammering my skull to the beat of my heart, I might even have a concussion.
    My memories are broken in pieces. What’s real, and what’s hallucination?
    I’ve been lying in bed here trying to glue the pieces back together. I keep getting these crazy images flashing in my head, of this massive, albino-skinned thing. Of silver, mirrored eyes. And teeth. Endless rows of bladelike teeth.
    These images are scattered like shrapnel in my head. Jagged pieces that won’t fit together in any
sane
way.
    I cracked my head pretty bad—that I’m sure of. The rest must be delusions caused by head trauma.
    I must have looked like an escaped mental patient racing down the road last night, wild and breathless. Chased by some stray dog I hallucinated into a freak-show monster from hell.
    Blame it on the concussion, or just the weirdness of the night—the death-defying joyride, the overdose of exhaust fumes, the fire, the kiss.
    Right. The kiss. I didn’t imagine that too, did I?
    Swinging out of bed, I set my feet on the frigid floor and shiver. The furnace in this place is moody, some nights sweating you out from under the covers, other times leaving you to freeze. I put my hand on the radiator. Man, you could make ice cubes on this thing.
    Parting the drapes, I find my window frosted over, leaving only a small clear patch in the center. The lake looks grim in the gray morning light, with snow devils chased across its frozen surface by the wind.
    I’m about to turn away and steal another half hour of sleep when I see a figure in a parka walking along one of the wooden docks, past boats hibernating under their tarps, locked in the ice. The wind pushes back the parka hood and I recognize the orange wool cap underneath.
    What a lunatic! Sun’s barely up and Dad’s out there in the polar chill. He’s a borderline insomniac, can’t sleep more than a couple hours a night, since—
    Since Mom died.
    No! Not going to think about that.
    I stand with one foot on top of the other to minimize contact with the hardwood ice rink of my room. I’d love toslip back under the sheets and find the sweet spot, the little hollow of leftover body heat. But if I crawl back in now, I ain’t coming out till spring.
    Before hitting the bathroom, I have to kick away the doorstop I wedged under my door last night to keep out demon dogs and other delusions. I couldn’t get to sleep until I’d checked the window latch a half dozen times and even looked in the closet to make sure it was unoccupied.
    I shake my head at my insanity, but the ache inside my skull flares up. Take it slow.
    Shuffling down the hall, I decide it must have been some overgrown stray dog. A Great Dane on steroids. Or maybe a moose. I hear they still wander into town sometimes, in the