Dead of Winter (2 page)

Now, he slowly stepped up to the
window, his breath held, the feel of the wet pajama pants
unpleasant against his skin.

They won’t be
there
.

But they were.

In exactly the same
positions as before. A sudden need to throw open the window and
shriek
what do you want why are you
standing in my yard?
down at them struck
Ryan hard in the chest and he almost acted on it, until reason
kicked back in and he stopped himself. That would be crazy. Opening
the window might be just the move they were waiting for. His breath
fogged against the glass and warmed his face.

He noticed something then, something
awful, something he should have noticed before.

The air around the figures was still,
unbroken.

They have no
breath
.

A noise in the hall made him jump.
Creak.

Creak.
Thump
.

Ryan started to turn.

And one of the men in the yard moved.
Ryan gasped.

The move had been slight. So slight he
almost hadn’t caught it. The one on the right had tilted its head
at him, as if confused by his actions, or the lack of
them.

But as much as it seemed he
had to, he couldn’t dwell on that now. Because this time, there
was
definitely
someone out in the hall. The creaking of the floorboards he
could have explained away as the same phantom walker he’d imagined
on the stairs, but the thump could be nothing but a
footfall.

Thump
. There it was again.

Heart hammering madly, Ryan cast a
quick glance over his shoulder, almost expecting to see the people
in the yard had flown up and were leering in at him, their dead
faces pressed against the glass. But no, they were still down
there, watching. Ringed by leafless walnut trees.

Ryan padded slowly across the room and
stopped a few feet from the door.

Somewhere out in the hall, a door
opened. No attempt had been made to hide the sound of the knob
rattling or the hinges creaking. Unsteady footsteps thumped
one-two-three across the hall. Stopped.

Ryan’s breath rasped. He shook. Folded
his arms to steady himself.

Silence.

The fear within him seemed caught on
the scale dead center between relief and outright screaming terror.
The footsteps were too confident, too uncaring to be those of an
intruder.

Dad?

Thump, thump,
thump
.

Again they stopped.

The only bathroom in the house was
downstairs. Ryan seized on the memory of many nights waking to the
sound of his drunken father struggling to negotiate the hallway,
blinded by the light. His old man had even fallen down the stairs
once and sprained his ankle, though the following day he’d claimed
he’d twisted it while playing baseball with his cronies. But Ryan
knew different. He’d heard it all, the rattling calamity, the
startled cry, the hiss of pained breath through clenched teeth, the
call for Mom.

The footsteps started again and he
almost cried out his father’s name.

But isn’t that what they
want you to think?
a voice inside him
cautioned and he clamped his mouth shut.
You’ve seen two of them down there. Who says there isn’t a
third?

That was true. What if that was
another one of them out there, pretending to be his father? Trying
to coax him out by fooling him into feeling safe?

But the footsteps…They’d come from up
the hall, from the direction of his parents’ room and not the
stairs.

You were asleep. One of
them might have crept into your father’s room.

He hadn’t thought of that.

Call for Mom.

Yes. That was it. That was the thing
to do.

But wait. What if that was one of them
out there. Wouldn’t calling Mom lure her right into its
arms?

His thoughts felt tangled,
confusion overwhelming him until he found himself crying again.
Soundlessly.
Why is this
happening?

Thump, thump, thump, thump,
THUMP!
The footsteps jerked him to
attention and he hastily wiped the tears away with his sleeve and
focused on the door. Something grazed the hallway wall.
Close.

The thumping stopped.

Ryan’s gaze fell to the light beneath
the door. Twin shadows in the amber light, cast by the feet of
whoever was standing outside.

“
Dad?” he
whispered.

Quiet, but for the wind hushing the
night.

“
Daddy?” he repeated and
almost screamed, almost died of fright when an answer
came.

“
Ryyannn?”

The boy stepped forward, then back,
his arm outstretched, uncertainty making a dance out of his
movements.

It’s a trick! They’re
trying to trick you!

But how could he be sure?

Don’t open that door!
They’ll get you!

But what if it was his father,
squinting at the door wondering what the hell was going on?
Wondering if he’d imagined hearing his son’s voice. Then he’d
leave, go downstairs or back to bed. Leaving Ryan alone
again.

And that couldn’t happen.

“
Ryyyaannn? That
youuuu?”

The boy was at the door before he
could change his mind.

RYAN NO!

Sobbing now, ignoring the ripple of
fear that passed over him, Ryan tugged the door open. The light
blazed in his eyes, momentarily making a hunched shadow of the
thing standing there. A noxious odor rolled across the
threshold.

The voice inside him fell
silent.

The house fell silent.

Then a board creaked as the shadow
moved forward a step. “Ryan? What the hell’s goin’ on? Why you
up?”

The tears came in a torrent Ryan was
helpless to stop as he rushed forward and wrapped his arms around
his father’s waist, almost sending both of them
sprawling.

“
Ryan? Hey! What’s…?” Large
muscular arms pried him loose and his father squinted down at him
through eyes so full of red veins Ryan was amazed he could see
through them. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Why are you
crying?”

“
The win—” Ryan started to
say, then wiped his eyes and rushed back into the bedroom. No. Had
to check. The very worst thing that could happen now would be for
him to tell Dad everything only to have the creatures in the yard
vanish like they were supposed to. Like they did in the
movies.

“
Ryan?”

Everything was all right, Ryan
realized, a surge of confidence brewing in his chest. Daddy was
here now and even monsters with no breath would think twice before
crossing his father. With the foul stink from the man clinging to
him, a smell he now found infinitely comforting, Ryan closed his
eyes and leaned forward to look out the window.

Please be there. Please be
there. Please
.

“
Ryan? What are you
doing?”

Ryan opened his eyes. And grinned
triumphantly.

Relief swelled over him. “There’s
someone in the yard. Come look. They’ve been watching me all night.
Two of them. They’re not supposed to be there, are they Daddy? And
they’re not breathing!”

A weary sigh from behind him, followed
by a click as his father switched on the light, casting a yellow
oblong out onto the thick white snow beneath his window.

“
There they are. Come look!”
Ryan said, narrowing his eyes, unable to stem the excitement now
that his lonely night of terror was over. Whatever those things
down there had come for, they wouldn’t get it now.

He rubbed his fists over his eyes.
Felt the grit of forgotten sleep come away.

He looked down and pointed at the two
figures, now bathed in hazy light.

And froze.

Even from here he could see the
mistake he’d made in the beginning thinking there were two men down
there. There weren’t. Nor were they the wicked monsters of his
imaginings.

One of them was a woman. The one with
the tilted head

(
because it’s coming off
)

was a woman.

His mother. Glittering in the light,
ice forming a skin over her body, holding her in place, holding her
still and firmly planted in the mound of snow at her
feet.

“
Ryan? What are you
doing?”

Ryan began to tremble, a whine
building in his throat, trapped there with all hope of a
scream.

Daddy sounded as if he
needed to clear his throat. Daddy’s reflection grew bigger in the
window. Beneath which, another version of Daddy, the
real
Daddy, stood in his
very own mound of snow, arms pinned to his sides, skin alive with
crystals, mouth open and filled with snow.

Staring.

The shadow filled the window, draping
darkness over the figures frozen below.

Ryan watched it, allowed his eyes to
meet the reflection of the liquid blue sparks hovering just above
his head.

Gasping and gurgling, a sound he had
mistaken for his father’s snoring. He now realized it had been
nothing so innocent. As icicles met his skin and darkness filled
his eyes, all awareness of pain and death swept away from him,
leaving him with one single shred of a thought.

That in the morning there would be
three figures in the garden.

DOOMSDAY FATHER
CHRISTMAS

On a hill overlooking the city, the
old man sat quietly in his sleigh, the reins still gripped in his
gloved hands. His hooded gaze roved over the houses down in the
valley to his right, a mass of twinkling lights brimful of
expectant children, each one led into sleep by the promise of what
the morning would bring.

And what
, the old man asked himself,
will the
morning bring for me?
Immediately the
answer presented itself, courtesy of his wife's disembodied voice,
which he cherished and abhorred in equal measures, depending on the
wisdom it proffered at any given time.
You
get the satisfaction of bringing joy to so many
children.

"And how do I do that?" he asked
aloud, his breath forming ghosts around his face. At the head of
the reindeer, Rudolph, his muzzle badly scarred around the faintly
luminous bulb of his nose, glanced back over his shoulder, as if he
thought he had been addressed. The old man looked at him and felt a
twinge of sadness. Of them all, of everyone on earth, this poor
dumb animal was probably the closest he had to a friend. It had
sacrificed much to stay by his side, enduring the bullying of its
brethren, the life-draining effect of the genetic anomaly that made
its nose seem to glow in sympathy with the moon, the Arctic hunters
and their desperate plight to return home with him as their
trophy.

"It's okay boy," he told the animal,
and it watched him for another moment, doubt in its watery eyes,
before joining the others in grazing.

They need you, Nick, now
more than ever
, his wife said, and he
frowned. More and more these days she spouted Hallmark sentiments
designed to allay the doubt that grew worse each passing day. Once,
she'd been right, but he suspected even she didn't believe her
words anymore. They had seen and endured too much over the
centuries, had witnessed too many changes for the worse. He didn't
however, greet her remarks with hostility, at least not in her
presence, for he feared what might happen if he disabused her of
what little festive spirit still lingered within her. She might
lose her smile, and with it, all remaining hope that things would
ever again be like they used to be. There was already enough
distance between them, committed as she was to supporting a pursuit
he no longer believed in.

Prancer snuffled and shook his head,
rattling his bridle. The old man chose to think of it as
coincidence, and not agreement, or denial of his thoughts. He
looked down at his hands, their deterioration visible through the
rents in the material. The fingers were thin and spindly. For a
long time he had not aged, the clock stopping at sixty-one, but it
seemed now that he was being punished for his cynicism and ennui.
Immortality was apparently a privilege that could be revoked if he
failed to fully immerse himself in the role assigned
him.

But he was tired. So very
tired.

And though the world continued to
celebrate the seasons and the days marked for joy, he saw little
joy on their faces. Instead he saw billboards and commercials
instructing exhausted parents where and when to spend money they
didn't have on extravagant toys that would be forgotten or broken
in six months. He saw the transient delight on the children's
faces, a facade that hid their disappointment at not receiving
something bigger, better, and more expensive. He saw the parents,
broke and on the verge of divorce, drinking too much to avoid
confronting the reality of their situation, and each other, or
arguing silently while their children grew bored and flipped idly
though channels on the TV, hardly seeing anything at all. And on
every channel, between commercials designed to inflame the greed of
the child and make them rue their choice of gifts, were visual
representations of the old man, ho-ho-ho'ing his way down chimneys
far too small to accommodate him, or rescuing some wretched waif
from heartbreak and loneliness.