I see them vaguely in the darkness. Their eyes glow green in the firelight and their sharp white teeth shine hungrily in their wide mouths, plumes of steamy breath floating forcefully into the frigid air. They wait. They are patient, but I can see the desire in their dreadful grimaces, in the long, slow strings of saliva descending from chin to ice-covered snow.

I watch the play of the fire as the harsh wind gusts past the slim shelter of the overhang, pushing the blaze nearly flat, threatening to shrink it to nothing. Then the gusts abate briefly, and the flames flare upward again. Icicles melt slowly from the stone roof. The drops hiss as they plop into the flames. I feel no heat. My legs are frozen, and the numbness spreads slowly up my torso.

They watch, too, some of them pacing, some of them standing still, all of them silent, waiting for the inevitable death of the only obstacle between them and me. I have no sense of time, only a sense of growing terror while the fire sputters, diminishing under the cold, steady, watery assault. The fire is my life, keeping them at bay.

The silence is the most maddening part. The only sound I hear is the steady hissing of water meeting fire, drop by drop. I become aware that the cold fingers of my left hand stroke the long scar along my left cheekbone and down to my jaw, a nervous habit I developed years ago. The scar came from a diamond ring; it belonged to my foster father. I still see his vivid green eyes staring upward the next night, his body twisted in a heap at the foot of the stairway, the marbles I had placed on the second step from the top rolling down and bouncing off his inert form.

My reward was that I got to stay. The widow, a plump, pious woman whose conservative dress hid the bruises her husband inflicted on her, doted on me. I think she suspected the truth and saw it as God’s deliverance for her faithfulness. After moving from foster home to foster home, it was the first time I felt real agency. I felt like God had delivered me, too.

At her husband’s funeral, she introduced me to a tall, gaunt, dark-haired man named Ezekiel Crane, the sexton at her church. He had a firm handshake and a crooked yellow smile. His pale blue eyes surveyed the fresh bright red scar on my cheek. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, almost like a question.

Later, he approached me during the luncheon and asked a few questions about my interests. Then he said, “Young men like you need strong male figures in their lives. I’d like to invite you to a club that can provide that.”

“Is it the Boy Scouts?”

He grinned. “No, nothing lamestream like that. We’re called the Sword of Truth. Come check us out.”

He gave me the time and location of the next meeting, which was held at a nearby farm. I looked around – most of the group were adults. Ezekiel started the meeting with the pledge of allegiance to the flag, followed by a prayer, and then said, “Men, our country is under attack from outside and from within. We can either knuckle under to the forces of darkness…” he looked at me, “… or we can take control of our own destinies like the free white Christian men we are.”

He talked about the infestation at the southern border, the liberal pedophiles in the deep state, and the epidemic of wokeness and gender confusion in our schools. I could see that last part firsthand – teachers trying to make us ashamed to be white in America. After all the foster homes I had finally found where I belonged – restoring America’s mission in the world as the beacon of freedom and decency to the world. The irony that I would wind up here now, surrounded by these malformed beasts flashes through my brain.

I learned how to fight with a knife and learned how to shoot, but until I got out of high school, I mostly showed up with the Sword of Truth to break up protest marches. We were always undercover, arriving in small groups separately, but acting in concert on signal. After I got out of school, Ezekial deployed me all over the country. I stood my ground in Charlottesville when the antifa mob tried to scare us away. I cracked looters’ skulls in the Black Lives Matters riots while the woke elite let them run wild. I broke through the barricades when they stole the election in 2020. Then I got called to go underground for bigger things.

A sharp wind howls mournfully through the barren rocks of this frozen island, jolting my mind away from the memory and back to the misshapen creatures at the shallow cave’s entrance. The darkness obscures their shapes and their number. Sometimes I sense a multitude pressing closer just outside the flickering light. They make no sound. There is only the wind and the constant hiss of water hitting flame.

The raid that had placed me here had gone smoothly at first. We’d broken into a high security chemical lab and requisitioned canisters of a psychoactive agent that induced fear and aggression. The target was the Mexican border, where a caravan of rapist, drug-dealing animals was threatening to invade our country. Releasing the gas would make them turn on themselves like the vermin they were before they even reached the Rio Grande.

We got in according to plan, but our plane was hit as we escaped. One of the bullets must have nicked the fuel line. The tank emptied when we were over the ocean. Our small, damaged plane crashed into the sea offshore of this island as the pilot and Ezekiel frantically scuffled in the cockpit, a mixture of uncontrolled rage and abject terror flashing across their features. I saw their bodies slam against the walls as the water rushed in through the broken windshield, watched the light leave their eyes before I forced open the door, threw out the life raft, and plunged into the icy water. As I scrambled over the side into the raft, I saw the swell of something large just beneath the waves.

I searched the dark water for signs of my companions. Only one surfaced. He screamed as he breached the water next to the raft, his arms flailing. I could not see what held him, only the large jaws around his leg. His fingers clutched at the sides, threatening to take hold, capsize the raft, and spill into the water with him and whatever that thing was. I swung the paddle. There was a sickening thump, a hiss of air bursting from his lungs, and I watched his limp frame sink. The paddle dropped from my hands, following him into the sea as I sat panting with terror.

I heard the loud hiss of escaping air. The raft began to deflate. Water seeped in through a ragged tear. I reached, but the paddle was gone. My legs were covered with freezing water. I saw the jagged outline of the island’s coast in the darkness. I leaned over the edge of the raft and skimmed the surface with shallow strokes, fearfully scanning the surface for whatever creature had taken my comrade. I felt the water swell beneath me.

The raft was nearly flat as I closed on the rocky shore. I clambered forward, splashing over the front of the raft into waist-deep water, taking in mouthfuls of brine as I stumbled through the breakers onto the wet, stony beach.

I couldn’t rest long. The wind over my freezing wet body urged me to find shelter and fuel for a fire. My cigarettes were ruined, but my lighter still worked. Choking, I crawled, then stood and walked stiffly over the dark, uneven ground, feeling my legs go numb. I found small sticks for kindling and larger dead branches, found the partial shelter of a stone outcropping, and built my fire, only noticing too late the large icicles hanging above the flames.

I have maintained my vigil all night since my arrival on this barren, frozen rock. Our arrival. I thought I had landed alone but I brought them with me.

As the flames hissed under the melting icicles, they came one by one. They don’t look human anymore, but I know who they are. I remember every face, and I know them by their eyes. Those eyes, whose last sight was my twisted smile merging with the long scar along my left cheekbone and down to my jaw, the eyes that witnessed my secret murders. I always knew they would come for me someday.

I want to run, but my legs are useless now. The taste of sea salt fills my mouth. My lungs are filling with water. Their eyes glow brighter with vengeful anticipation as the fire dies, but they do not advance. They only watch, grinning their sharp, smug grimaces. Their silence is replaced by a low hissing, like the hiss of the icicle melting into the flames, like air leaking from the raft or a dying man in the water and the low wind blowing through the rocks. Like the gas escaping from the bullet-punctured canister behind me in the back of the sinking plane.

– WC Clinton