Free Freeze by Daniel Pyle Page B

Bub.
    He’s dead. And you have to get out of this room before you are, too.
    The creature attacked again, this time whipping its tentacle instead of swinging it. Tess twisted to the side, and the writhing icicle of a limb glanced off her hip, leaving a freezing wet streak down the side of her pajama bottoms and smacking into the floor by her foot.
    She heard a sputtering sound and realized she’d somehow managed to hold on to the candle. It had gotten wet but hadn’t gone out. Her hand shook, and the flame flickered. She turned away before her ragged breath could blow it out. Fresh white exhalations drifted away from her face.
    Against the wall, Bub moved. He turned his head and looked at her through watery, dazed eyes.
    He was alive! Surely hurt, at least a little, but alive. He got to his feet and shook. Water flew off his fur and onto the wall and dresser.
    Tess didn’t know what to do, doubted there was any kind of self-defense playbook for this sort of fucked-up situation, so she did the only thing she could think of: she turned to the monster, pulled back her arm, and hurled the candle at the thing’s head.
    The creature moved, but not quickly enough. The candle hit it on the side of the face (if you could call that cracked slab of ice a face) and slid down to its torso and the mess of writhing tentacles. The beast shrieked a high-pitched, broken-glass shriek and pulled all of its limbs in on itself, wrapping itself up like a mummy. The candle hit the floor, smoking but no longer on fire, and the room darkened.
    “Bub! Run!”
    She turned toward the door and heard him right behind her. As they hurried into the hall, she grabbed the knob and pulled the bedroom door shut. She had no idea if the creature would be able to open the door, if it would be able to follow them, but a closed door would at least slow it down for a second. 
    Just as the door hit the jamb, something pounded against it from the other side. The knob shook in Tess’s hand. The whole wall seemed to shake.
    The whole wall? More like the whole damn house.
    She backed away, and Bub backed up right beside her, limping worse than ever, never looking away from the door, never losing contact with her leg. Tess put a hand on his head, trying to reassure him as best she could. Or maybe trying to reassure herself. Her teeth continued to chatter. The cold seeped into every last one of her muscles and bones.
    The thing struck the door again.
    BAM.
    Tess realized it wouldn’t need to know how to work the doorknob. Before long, it would break right through the door. Their doors weren’t cheap, contractor-grade things, but they weren’t exactly stone solid either.
    She turned around and led Bub into the living room.
    What are you going to do? What can you do?
    She ran to the fire and huddled in front of it, shivering. The logs burned and sent waves of heat out across her chest, arms, legs, and face. Bub sat down beside her, shaking, whining. She put her arm around his neck and tried to think.
    You have to go on the offensive. If you wait for it to come to you, it will. It will come, and it will tear you to bits.
    She stared into the fire. The creature had seemed terrified of her little candle. What if she brought something bigger this time?
    The thing smacked the bedroom door again. The sound boomed through the hallway and into the living room. Tess jumped, and the muscles in Bub’s neck tightened.
    She started to tell him it would be okay, but before she could so much as open her mouth, something thudded in the kitchen. Tess looked up, and the piece of cardboard Warren had taped over the window slid across the linoleum. It had a thick sheet of ice and snow on it and a crater in the middle where it looked like something had kicked it in.
    Another series of thuds echoed through the kitchen and into the living room. Like footsteps. Except she didn’t guess you called them footsteps if the creature making them had no feet.
    The thing in the kitchen let out a