"Stalked and Stalker" Pt. 2 (Patreon)

I entered, and won, Dean Spencer's story contest for one of his pieces of art. I'm now completing it with weekly entries. This is part two.

Part One can be found here.

Paying Patrons can instead go here, for a compiled, slightly more edited version of the story-to-date, along with my thoughts and authors notes about each section.

(Low res image. High res will be used for the final product. Art by Dean Spencer)

(2)

“Mac?!”

Blaze’s voice echoed loudly, but calmly, from up the mysterious stairwell he found himself thinking of as ‘the trouble spot.’ MacKenzie marched carefully over to the entrance and saw Blaze looking down at him from her perch roughly 10 meters up. Her golden eyes flashed in the light of her own lantern, reminding him of the eyes of an Ussurian tiger that had once stalked him for days in the Russian Far East without ever attacking him. Like that tiger, MacKenzie was confident that if Blaze did ever attack him, it was not a conflict he’d win.

“I’m here, Blaze.” MacKenzie said.

Blaze gestured further up the stairwell.

“This goes another five or six meters up, then looks like it levels off. There’s some weird shapes in the wall and ceiling at that point, but I can’t make them out from here. I’d like to go to the top of the stairs, but it’s a little further than we agreed.”

MacKenzie slowly curled his fingers, feeling the joints in each pop one by one. He appreciated Blaze was taking his admonishments not to get too far ahead seriously, but she was obviously chomping at the bit. On the one hand, it was just another few meters. On the other hand, MacKenzie had seen too many situations go south because everyone pushed the safety concerns just a little further, each exception seeming totally minor, until suddenly everything cracked open in blood and gunfire.

On the other other hand, Blaze was the most experienced of them, and he’d asked her to join the expedition for a reason. Being too cautious about gathering information had doomed as many investigatory expeditions as pushing things too far too fast.

“Go ahead,” MacKenzie called up. “But don’t get off the stairs at all, not even one foot onto whatever platform is up there. If it needs more looking at immediately, I’ll move us all up there.”

Blaze nodded, her lantern revealing an excited grin. The grin made MacKenzie uneasy again, but there was no point in hiring experienced experts and then refusing to let them do what they were good at. As MacKenzie turned away from the opening, Alec duSeverency approached him.

“Meat’s no good, Mac. It looks fine raw, but as soon as I started cooking it… things began crawling out of it,” Alec said.

“What things?” Mac asked.

Alec held up his Le Vengeur dagger, which had a tiny squirming shape on the end of its 17 centimeter blade. MacKenzie started to lean in to get a closer looks, when Alec stopped him with a mittened hand on MacKenzie’s thick coat.

“They jump,” Alec said. “I don’t THINK they can jump off a knife-tip into your eye, but…”

MacKenzie nodded.

“JOHN!” MacKenzie called out to the professor, who was still doing something with the skull. As John Soloman turned his face towards them, his black skin shining in the light of MacKenzie’s lantern and the fire Alex had built, MacKenzie waved Solomon over… and shivered. MacKenzie hadn’t needed to shout just a minute earlier, and the fact he had to now bothered him. Alex moved toward Solomon, squirmy-thing-tipped dagger held ahead of him, and MacKenzie took at careful look around. The cold air made him instinctively squint, and it was difficult to see anything beyond the light of his lantern anyway.

But he forced himself to scan the larger area. Out to the tree line, along the coast beyond their boats, and across the slowly freezing lake. The sense of being watched grew stronger, but MacKenzie pushed that feeling down, for now. The wind had picked up without MacKenzie, or apparently anyone else, noticing. Letting weather sneak up on you was a common, and stupid, way to die in the Arctic. And out at the edge of his vision, MacKenzie saw trees whipping back and forth, and dull, gray clouds moving toward them… along the ground.

A blizzard. Coming in fast.