Where Winter Finds You

As a hot flash cranked her internal temperature up, she cracked the window. And then put it all the way down. March in Caldwell, New York, was like winter in a lot of places still considered northerly in latitude, and thank God for it. Breathing in the cold, damp air, she told herself this was not a bad idea.

Nah, not at all. Here she was, alone at midnight, chasing down the lead on a story she wasn’t writing for her employer, the Caldwell Courier Journal. Without anyone at her new apartment waiting up for her. Without anyone on the planet who would claim her mangled corpse when it was found from the smell in a ditch a week from now.

Letting the car roll to a stop, she killed the lights and stayed where she was. No moon out tonight, so she’d dressed right. All black. But without any illumination from the heavens, her eyes strained at the darkness, and not because she was greedy to see the details on the decaying structure.

Unease tickled her nape, like someone was trying to get her attention by running the point of a carving knife over her skin—

As her stomach let out a howl, she jumped. And went diving into her purse again. Passing by the three Slim Jims she had left, she went straight-up Hershey this time, and the efficiency with which she stripped that mass-produced chocolate of its clothing was a sad commentary on her diet. When she was finished, she was still hungry, and not because there wasn’t food in her belly. As always, the only two things she could eat failed to satisfy her gnawing craving, to say nothing of her nutritional needs.

Putting up her window, she took her backpack and got out. The crackling sound of the treads of her running shoes on the shoulder of the road seemed loud as a concert, and she wished she wasn’t getting over a cold. Like her sense of smell could be helpful, though? And when was the last time she’d considered that possibility outside of a milk-carton check.

She really needed to give these wild-goose chases up.

Two-strapping her backpack, she locked the car and pulled the hood of her windbreaker up over her red hair. No heel-toeing. She left-right-left’d with the soles of her Brooks flat to quiet her footfalls. As her eyes adjusted, all she saw were the shadows around her, the hidey-holes in corners and nooks formed by the doorways and the benches, pockets of gotcha with which mashers could play a child’s game of keep-away until they were ready to attack.

When she got to a heavy chain that was strung across her path, she looked around. There was nobody in the parking lots that ran down the outside of the flanks. No one in the promenade formed by the open-ended rectangle. Not a soul on the road that she had taken up to this rise above Route 149.

Jo told herself that this was good. It meant no one was going to jump her.

Her adrenal gland, on the other hand, informed her that this actually meant no one was around to hear her scream for help.

Refocusing on the chain, she had some thought that if she swung her leg over it and proceeded on the other side, she would not come back the same.

“Stop it,” she said, kicking her foot up.

She chose the right side of the stores, and as rain started to fall, she was glad the architect had thought to cover the walkways overhead. What had not been so smart was anyone thinking a shopping center with no interior corridors could survive in a place this close to Canada. Saving ten bucks on a pair of candlesticks or a bathing suit was not going to keep anybody warm October to April, and that was true even before you factored in the current environment of free next-day shipping.

Down at the far end, she stopped at what had to have been the ice cream place because there was a faded stencil of a cow holding a triple-decker cone by its hoof on the window. She got out her phone.

Her call was answered on the first ring. “Are you okay?” Bill said.

“Where am I going?” she whispered. “I don’t see anything.”

“It’s in the back. I told you that you have to go around back, remember.”

“Damn it.” Maybe the nitrates had fried her brain. “Hold on, I think there’s a staircase over here.”

“I think I should come out.”

Jo started walking again and shook her head even though he couldn’t see her. “I’m fine—yup, I’ve got the cut-through to the rear. I’ll call you if I need you—”

“You shouldn’t be doing this alone!”

Ending the connection, she jogged down the concrete steps, her pack bouncing like it was doing pushups on her shoulders. As she bottomed out on the lower level, she scanned the empty parking lot—

The stench that speared into her nose was the kind of thing that triggered her gag reflex. Roadkill… and baby powder?

She looked to the source. The maintenance shed by the tree line had a corrugated-metal roof and metal walls that would not survive long in tornado alley. Half the size of a football field, with garage doors locked to the ground, she imagined back in its heyday that it housed paving equipment as well as things like snowplows, blowers, and mowers.

The sole person-sized door was loose, and as a stiff gust from the rainstorm caught it, the creak was straight out of a George Romero movie. And then the panel immediately slammed shut with a clap, as if Mother Nature didn’t like the stink any more than Jo did.

Taking out her phone, she texted Bill: This smell is nasty.

Aware that her heart rate just tripled, she walked across the asphalt, the rain hitting the hood of her windbreaker in a disorganized staccato. Ducking her hand under the loose nylon of the jacket, she felt for her holstered gun and kept her palm on the butt.

The door creaked open and slammed shut again, another puff of that stink releasing out of the interior. Swallowing through throat spasms, she had to fight to keep going and not because there was wind in her face.

When she stopped in front of the door, the opening and closing ceased, as if now that she was on the verge of entering, it didn’t need to catch her attention and draw her in anymore.

So help her God, if Pennywise was on the other side…

Glancing around to check there were no red balloons lolling in the area, she reached out for the door.

I just have to know, she thought as she opened the way in. I need to… know.

Peering around the door, she saw absolutely nothing, and yet was frozen by all that she confronted. Pure evil, the kind of thing that abducted and murdered children, that slaughtered the innocent, that enjoyed the suffering of the just and merciful, pushed at her body and then penetrated it, radiation that was toxic passing through to her bones.

Coughing, she stepped back and covered her mouth and nose with her elbow. After a couple of deep breaths into her sleeve, she fumbled with her phone to call Bill again.

Before he could say anything over the whirring in the background, she bit out, “You need to come—”

“I’m already halfway there.”

“Good.”

“What’s going on—”

Jo ended the call and got out her flashlight, triggering the beam. Stepping forward again, she shouldered the door open and trained the spear of illumination into the space.

The light was consumed.

Sure as if she were shining it into a bolt of thick fabric, the fragile illumination was no match for what was before it.

The threshold she stepped over was nothing more than weather stripping, but the inch-high lip was a barrier that felt like an obstacle course she could barely surmount—and then there was the stickiness on the floor. Pointing the flashlight to the ground, she picked up one of her feet. Something like old motor oil dripped off her running shoe, the sound of it finding home echoing in the empty space.