Winter Feast - Part One of Six

At the Springwater Resort in the dead of winter, several people were snowbound. Telephone lines were down, and the nearest town was sixteen miles away. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but the storm was intensifying where travel was becoming impossible.

The bartender, Shellie, had her husband drop her off earlier that afternoon. Now, she was stranded with the others until her husband could get through the heaviest storm to hit central Wisconsin in forty-six years.

Along with Shellie, was Darwin, a carpenter, and his girlfriend, Faith, who worked in The Dells at one of the concession stands during the season.

The others were Charlie, a delivery driver out of Chicago who came to the resort for his winter vacation. Gerald, one of the locals who never worked, yet he always managed to have a lot of money to spend, and then there was Yaz, Shellie’s brother.

There were other people who lived and worked at Springwater, but they were in their own units staying warm the best way they could.

Before midnight would roll around, the resort’s bar, The Hideout, would have five more people added to the list. A total of eleven. There should have been twelve, but one didn’t make it.

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“Worse damn storm I’ve ever seen.”

“I know, Yaz. I’ve never seen it this bad either.”

“Hell, who cares how bad it is, sweetheart. Set me and Faith up with another drink. Nothing like a good stiff drink to keep the blood flowing on a night like this.” Darwin wrapped his arm around Faith, who stood under him about half a foot, half-smiled, half-grimaced as Darwin pulled her ninety-seven-pound frame into his massive three-hundred plus pounds of solid muscle.

Charlie, who stood next to fire Gerald was stoking, looked out the window, watched a heavy snow fell across the expansive lake and half-shouted, “That’s about the truth, too. Tonight’s going to be a cold one by heaven. Wouldn’t surprise me if it don’t drop down to fifty below the way things are going.”

“I heard once,” Gerald said loud enough for Charlie to hear, “the last time it snowed like this, twelve people died in this very area. Course that was before all those condo units were built. My daddy told me when I was a boy that when spring rolled around, the bodies were all chewed up by wild animals and what was left of’em were frozen stiffer than a board.”

Charlie looked at Gerald who never batted an eye. “No shit.”

“No, not shit, just frozen dead mutilated bodies,” Gerald smiled slowly.

Behind the bar, Shellie was fixing another round, the fourth one in the last hour for her small group of customers.

“At least we still have electricity to watch TV and get weather updates.” Shellie grinned widely, trying to make light of a situation that was worsening as time ticked off the clock.

“Sis,” grunted Yaz, “I could try to get through. I could take Emmett’s Corner over to Holstead. It would cut about four miles and then I can bring back some help as in a good-sized plow.”

“You’ll do no such thing, Yaz! I’d feel terrible if anything happened to you. You happen to be the only brother I have if you remember right. Just because you’re older, doesn’t make you brighter than me. Just stay here and keep me company.”

“Okay, sis, but I know I could make it.” Yaz let the latter half of his sentence trail off his lips because he knew when Shellie got a stubborn streak in her, he could forget about changing her mind. Snowstorm, hurricane, twister, even a tidal wave were to come through here; nothing would budge her if she didn’t want budged on an issue. Yaz would stay, but he knew he could have made the trip safely.

Darwin, on the other hand, liked the idea.

“I got fifty bucks says you don’t make it, fella. Are you a gambling man, or just a talker?”

“Hey!” yelled Shellie. “I don’t need you egging him on. If I wanted him to go, I’d have let him. Now just drink your drink and leave him alone.”

Looking over at Yaz, Darwin grinned and said, “You always let your sister do your talking for you?”

“Dar,” spoke up Faith, “drop it, will you? You know that it’s way too bad for anyone to go anywhere in this storm.”

“Okay already. I can see I’m outnumbered. Forget about it. I was only teasing the poor guy anyway.”

Darwin’s and Yaz’s eyes met, and there was a glare of discontent spoken ever so silently. Darwin was about to say something sarcastic when the front door was yanked open and the blustering winds of winter could be heard racing and whipping around like a locomotive going right through the bar.

Brenda, the other bartender, struggled to get inside until Claude stood away from the fireplace after building a good-size blaze, and walked over to help her get inside and closed the doors against an angry wind becoming angrier being denied access inside.

“Hey, Brenda, it’s not healthy being out on a night like this. You should have stayed in your room and ….”

Claude stopped talking when he saw the look on her face; not a cold look, but a look of real fright that captured her eyes.

“Brenda, what’s wrong, honey? Talk to me.”

The others began moving closer to Brenda when Claude spoke those words. Yaz pulled a chair out from a nearby table and set it in front of the fire as Claude walked her to where she could get warm. Brenda was shivering, not only from the cold and wind outside, but from what she had just experienced.

“Well, ya gonna tell us what’s bugging you?”

Yaz looked at Darwin. “For a change, why don’t you just shut up. She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”

“I’m going to fix her a cup of coffee,” said Shellie. She had never seen such a look on Brenda’s face before.

The lounge area was quiet and remained that way until Shellie walked around the bar and placed a steaming cup of coffee between Brenda’s hands.

“Th-thanks, Shellie.”

“At least the cat ain’t got her tongue.”

Everyone stared at Darwin that time.

“Brenda, what’s wrong?”

“He’s at the bottom of the hill,” came a flat reply.

“Who’s at the bottom of the hell?” asked Charlie.

“David. He’s at the bottom of the hill. Oh, God. It’s terrible.”

Brenda started crying heavily, the sobs racking her body causing her to spill some of the coffee. After a few minutes, she managed to pull herself together.

“Brenda, how bad is he hurt?” Yaz was throwing on his parka as he asked, making his way for the front door.

“NO! Don’t go out there! There, there’s nothing you can do for him. No one can.”

Charlie, who suddenly became nervous, asked, “What do you mean by that, Brenda?”

“He’s, he’s … dead.”

Brenda suddenly became enraged.

“Are you deaf! He’s dead, that’s what I mean! I, I was coming down the hill to relieve Shellie and I didn’t see David until I was almost on top of him. First thing I did was shake him, but he didn’t move. Then I rolled him over to check his face for any cuts or bruises, thinking he might have fallen hard or something and knocked himself out. That’s when I freaked and ran the rest of the way here!”

“Don’t freak out on us now,” said Darwin. “What was it you saw?” This time the sarcasm in his voice wasn’t there.

“That’s just it, I didn’t see anything. His, his face, wasn’t … there.”

Faith shivered, grabbing Darwin’s muscled forearm around her shoulder and gripped Shellie’s hand. Darwin put his beer to his lips and guzzled half a can in one greedy gulp and for the first time he knew to keep his mouth shut. Gerald walked over to the window, then stepped closer to the fire and looked out into the blazing white inferno surrounding all of them.

“Maybe you were mistaken, Brenda. Maybe the storm made you think you saw something else.”

“No, Shellie. I saw what I saw. It was as if his face was either ripped off or something chewed it off.”

The room became even quieter before Yaz spoke.

“Shellie, there are seven of us here. David would have made eight. Who else is living at the top of the hill?”

“There’s the cook, Lucy, and her boyfriend, Matt. There’s Jesse, he’s the one hired to build the houses out along the strip, and our maintenance man, Mike.”

“May heaven help us all. That makes twelve.”

Yaz looked up at Gerald.

“Gerald, you aren’t saying this has anything to do with that wives’ tale about twelve bodies found in the area like it was back in 1953, are you?”

“Yaz, you and all the rest of you can call me a crazy old fool, but it was on a night like this when twelve people died.”

“Okay, so what?” chimed in Darwin.

“Yeah,” said Charlie. “Didn’t you say they were found in the spring, intact?”

“Found in the spring, yes. Intact, I never said that. I said bodies were frozen and mutilated. Big difference.

“There’s more to this story than any of you know. In 1895, this same area had some trappers up here over the winter. Most folks said until the winter of 1953, the snowstorm in 1895 was about the worse ever. It was the following spring twelve trappers were found dead, same way as those people in 1953.”

Brenda, Faith, and Shellie, were shaking and not because of the winds outside but because of the story. Gerald continued.

“Each man back then were found with their heads, arms and legs torn from their bodies. All the body parts could be found but one. The heart. Whatever it was; killed them in 1895 and 1953 didn’t have much sense because it didn’t know how to get right to the heart. Tearing the body apart seemed the only logical way of getting what it wanted.

“I’m not trying to be no campfire storyteller, but whatever it was that went and killed all those people, and mind you now, four of them in 1953 were women; it’s back again.”

Darwin was the first to say something.

“That’s a crock of shit if I ever heard anything at all. Nice story, old man. You almost had me going for a minute.”

“Gerald,” said Yaz, “I think that’s about enough.” Looking at Darwin and Charlie, he said, “Put on your coats and help me bring David inside.”

“What good will it do to bring him in here if he’s dead? He’ll just fester and start to smell. That’s what dead bodies do,” said Darwin.

Yaz shot him an angry look.

“David is dead, but his body doesn’t need to be lying around. There are animals out there that could pick up his scent and start chewing on his body. Show a little respect, asshole.”

Shellie grabbed his arm. “Yaz, please, don’t go out there.”

Brenda started crying again. “No! Don’t bring him in here! He doesn’t have a face! Please, don’t!”

“Relax, okay? If David is dead as you say he is, we need to get him covered up and make sure none of the animals get wind of him after daylight. Maybe, and I’m just saying maybe the reason you didn’t see his face is because it was covered with a lot of snow. Snow has this affinity for sticking to beards, and David has one heck of a bush on that mug of his.” Yaz forced a smile which brought a small one to Brenda’s face.

“Maybe you’re right.”

Yaz looked at Charlie and Darwin who were buttoned up and ready to march through winds at seventy-miles an hour.