This Crual Place, Beyond the Blizzard (English Version)

Chapter 2

A dishevelled and wild-eyed man pulled his way up the wooden rungs, patchy bundles of matted hair swinging across his face. When he saw me, he paused, wired eyes suddenly morphing into something rabid, before continuing up the ladder with fervour.

As if dislocated his jaw dropped wide open and flopped around on its hinges. I didn't know what the expression meant, but suffice to say I was fucking horrified. Those eyes... they betrayed hunger.

I flopped onto my back and fumbled with the zipper on my bag, tearing out an ice pick and steeling myself. Two sets of blackening fingers curled over the rim before me, followed by this bestial vestige of a human climbing up onto the snow in all his wiry might.

"H- hey, what are you doing there lad?" I chuckled with transparent unease.

He almost looked surprised after I spoke, as if language was a foreign concept to him. He sucked air in through his teeth with a hiss.

"Cold, cold... so hungry. You... warm. Fresh." He spat in a gravelly voice.

I backed up, raising the ice pick clutched tight in both hands. The man went a few uncoordinated steps, before lunging out of nowhere and diving on top of me.

I yelped in fear, falling backwards and raising the pick horizontal in defence. Spittle sprayed from yellow teeth gnashing inches from my face.

Acting swiftly I rammed the blunt handle of the pick into his throat, causing him to recoil. Only seconds later he persisted with all his rage, seeming to shrug off the blow to his jugular as though it were an insect bite.

In the scuffle he managed to grab my right arm, and sunk his teeth into my wrist. I screamed and let go of the pick with my right. Instinctively I swung it in my left, the sharp end sailing true and embedding directly into the side of his neck.

Viscous blood exploded over my face as I wrenched the pick back towards me, tearing the front of his throat open in a ragged gash.

The man shot up straight in response, stumbling uncontrolled back to the edge and dropping limply into the open air.

Despite my close call, something else disturbed me. The blood that had poured out onto me was cold. I don't mean lukewarm, cold. If not freezing. No steam rose into the air as one might expect, it just curdled and froze on my clothing.

With no other choice, I crept back to the rope ladder and looked down.

A ratty woman had just climbed up into view and paused after seeing the man's body supine on the platform.

"Ugh, goddamn it. Again, Curt?"

What she said took me aback, but the bubbling laugh from 'Curt' was the kicker. Throat practically nonexistent, he was alive. And laughing.

"Hey, uh, sorry about him. You can come down, it's safe."

I almost joined Curt in his hysteria. It was such an absurd proposition.

"Safe? You're dangling off the edge of a fucking cliff!"

"Let me rephrase. Safer. Trust me, you don't wanna spend another minute up there."

"What? Nah, fuck this. I'm out of here."

"Are you? Are you really? Take a look around. Where in the name of God do you think you are right now?"

"No idea, but even if my chances are one in a million at getting home I'd rather die out there than stay here."

"Me too, traveller. Me too."

With that the conversation was over. The woman turned her attention to Curt. I refused to witness any more of this madness and stormed off back up the slope I'd come down from.