by AE Lhamon
The snowflakes are as big as down feathers, and Todd thinks it’s never snowed like this before, not here in southern Ohio, where the usual December flurries are hard and fast but melt by afternoon. This is good, staying snow — wet packing snow, not dry crumbly powder. Come on down, Todd thinks as he stares up into the pigeon-colored sky, the flakes that look dark gray as they float but land white on his cheeks and chin and eyelashes. Come on down.
He and his sister Jelly run outside every fifteen minutes or so with a wood ruler to measure. At two inches, school will be cancelled. They stay out too long in too-thin clothing, shivering, watching the flakes land and cling (six centimeters! seven!) until they can't take the cold any more.
Hot Toddy, Jelly has called Todd since what seems like forever, a phrase from some British show she’s seen. She's only six and so probably doesn't even know what a hot toddy is (Todd, at ten, doesn't really know either, only that it's some kind of drink). Cold Toddy, he says now, shivering, when they run their fingers under the hot tap even though their older brother Ike tells them not to, that they will go into shock probably. But Todd doesn't know what that is, either, and so they ignore him.
Cold Toddy, Jelly repeats, her eyes surprise-bright in her ruddy face, the words breaking up with giggles.
Chilly Toddy, he says, grinning, and her giggles bubble into shrieks.
Freezing Toddy, Todd keeps on. Frozen Toddy.
Frigid Toddy, she gulps out, and then they’re both quivering with gasping hilarity while Ike looks on, shaking his head.
Kids are so fucking stupid, Ike says. At seventeen, he's the oldest.
Language, Mom says.
When the snow reaches two inches, Mom winds Todd and Jelly up in scarves and hats and sweaters over long sleeves and then jackets over those. Two pairs of socks and then boots cinched up tight.
Then outside, to snow angels. To snowman making, and, though Todd and Jelly have never done this before, they know the snow must be rolled up like a carpet to make a body. When the snowman is together they carve into his white lopsided head facial features and then, when they find they have no coal, they take food coloring from the kitchen and give him green stain eyes and a red stain smile. They get an old coat and a scarf and dress him. The snow keeps falling.
Mom and Dad come out for a little while. They throw snowballs at each other. Dad tackles Mom and she squeals, Let me up Greg, you moose. She goes inside before too long because she’s cold. Dad goes into the garage to get the snowblower, which he’d bought five years before and only used once.
We have gas for this thing? he calls, rapping on the kitchen window. Mira, we got gas for this?
In the big red tank I think, she shouts back, her voice muted through the window.
No, the tank’s empty.
Todd and Jelly start an igloo, but despite the rising snow (three inches! four inches!) they’re soon scraping down through to the muddy grass-dirt. They bring some old cut-up particleboard sheets out of the garage where Dad is trying to drain gas from the lawnmower, swearing, his back hunched against the wind, complaining of his soaking feet because he's wearing sneakers. Todd and Jelly plant the boards on their sides and start packing snow in around them until they have a square sort of snow-adobe-lean-to. They bring a sheet from the house and stretch it across the top of the snowbode for a roof and pour water to freeze it to the walls. They sit inside in their own exhaled warmth while the snow creeps up and up (five inches! six inches!), as flakes pool in the center of the sheet, weighing it down until the fabric roof breaks free of its ice and collapses on them. They fight their way out, laughing. They shake out the sheet and go inside for more water — trudging through the snow, calf-deep for Todd and deeper for Jelly.
Mom won’t let them go back outside.
It’s getting bad, she says, watching the continued descent of the snow with an expression pinched with worry.
***
It’s dark by six. The wind picks up. At eight the power flickers, flickers, goes out.
Find a lighter, Mom calls in the darkness, holding tea lights in each hand like a saint. They find flashlights, and they gather the decorative candles in their glass dishes and put them all together on the kitchen table. The house fills with the smells of cinnamon apple and fresh linen, cedar and forest pine, the candlelight flickering and red and indistinct.
While they hunt for more candles by flashlight, Dad calls for Todd to come outside.
Dad? Todd asks, closing the sliding deck door behind him. Soon the snow will be too high to slide it at all.
His dad is standing on the deck, in unblemished snow now nearly halfway up his calves. The snow falls gently, like raindrops shaken from an umbrella. It’s darker inside the house than it is outside.
It’s because the snow reflects light, Dad says, as if reading Todd’s mind.
They stand on the porch, breathing frigid air that hurts Todd’s teeth. The silence is pillowy, profound. Todd wants to ask what his dad wants him for, but doesn't, afraid of breaking the silence; instead, he watches his father, and sees the creases creeping around his eyes. Todd’s seized with a sudden terrible fear: my daddy will be old one day. He tries to push the thought away. No no. No no.
Todd can hear the family moving around in the warm house (but cooling now that the heat is out, along with the lights). But he doesn't want to go in just yet, even though he’s come out only in his jammy-jams, his feet hurriedly stuffed into his boots. He’s cold — Frosty Toddy.
No, he wants to stay out here with his dad forever, in this special silence, watching the snow fall.
Far off, there’s the hazy wink of Christmas lights, green and red. The houses in their neighborhood are widely spaced, on two acre lots, and across the sea of white those lights seem as far away as stars.
Generators, his dad says finally, putting a hand on Todd’s shoulder. The power folks will get everything back up again soon.
And without another word, they go inside.
Mom and Ike and Jelly have brought blankets and pillows into the living room, where the fireplace is — gas. Small blue light licks at the fake logs. When they’d first moved into this house, back when Jelly was only a dream, Todd had slept that first night on the couch in the living room because his bed wasn’t yet together. Only he hasn’t slept at all, watching that blue light, having never seen a gas fireplace before and sure it was wrong, the way the little blue flame slithered on the undersides of the logs as if it were trying to avoid his eyes. I’ve got you, he’d thought, I’ve got you, sure it couldn’t burn the house down so long as he was watching.
But he was only a little kid then. Four. Younger than Jelly is now.
Mom flicks the fireplace switch and the fire blooms up with a curtain-billow sound, orange and hot and greedy.
It’s ventless, she says. So we can’t burn it for too long. She comes and sits in the blankets amongst them. Jelly climbs into her lap.
Let’s tell scary stories, Dad says.
The house creaks around them.
No, Mom replies. Jelly squirms in her grip.
Come on, Dad says.
Mom sighs. Once upon a time, she starts.
Ghost stories don’t start with ‘Once upon a time,’ Ike interrupts from where he's not participating, staring at his phone instead.
Once upon a time, Mom says, there was a house that was haunted by ghosts. The ghosts rattled the house’s shutters and slammed its doors, and all the villagers wouldn’t come near it, so afraid of what was inside. They let the house fall to ruin, and used stories of it to scare their children at bedtime. They said, ‘You must never go near that evil house.’
What happened? Jelly whispers.
One day someone from far away came up to the house, Mom continues. She was a real estate agent. She found there were no ghosts at all, just a drafty old house and a bunch of villagers who were superstitious. She fixed the drafts and took down the shutters and replaced the old banged-up doors, and sold the house to a nice man from Wichita, and everyone lived happily ever after. The end.
Todd and Dad groan, but Mom gives them Momlook and says, Now it’s bedtime, don’t you think?
***
They wake to a great crack, like lightening. Disoriented, Todd can hear Dad swearing poisonously, sleep-bewildered. A door slams and then silence.
What’s happened? What’s happened?
Everyone fumbles up, the living room dim with the red light of the fireplace. The air is warm and stale. The parlor curtains had been left open and the snowpack reaches the window’s bottom pane, now, the line of it peering into the house like a Peeping Tom. Above it, the snow is still coming down as dense as tv static, but not gently like before — now, it whoops and screams.
Mom gets up, turns the fireplace off. But then the room is lit only by eerie candlelight, so she flips it back on.
The door slams. The bright white circle of a flashlight flits around the walls and the floor like a fairy.
What is it?
That tree near the garage, Dad says, pulling off his gloves, stomping his boots on the carpet even though Mom says, Greg.
Probably a combination of the weight of the snow and the wind, he says. Looks like the power’s still out everywhere, too.
While it's warm here, Todd can feel the cold’s fingers reaching in, trying to get at them. He has to pee, and when he unwinds from his blankets and pads down the hall those probing fingers become grabbers, stealers — reaching up from the tile floor, from the air all around him. He pees for what feels like his whole life, flushes the toilet. It won’t. He jiggles the handle a few times, pads back, hears his mom say, Maybe we should be thinking about—?
There’s someone outside.
Jelly is the one who says it. She's standing by the parlor window, looking out into the snow.
Don’t joke, honey.
I’m not. Look.
She points. They look out into the whiteout and see nothing. For a minute, at least. It’s like driving through the forest, when the dense line of trees breaks to reveal a lonely house or a powerline tower — but only for a second. As Todd watches, the whirling white slackens for an instant and yes, there, he sees someone standing in the snow. Someone in a dark parka, in a hat with furry flaps and a fur band across the brow. Trapper hat, his dad calls them. A strange man is standing in the yard, in knee-deep snow, staring at the house.
Who is it?
But just as fast the snow closes up over him again. Mom and Dad have come to stand behind Todd, and there must be another one of those moments from up high because they both jump at the same time. Mom’s hand flies out to grab at Dad’s elbow.
Jesus Christ, she whispers.
Language, Ike calls from the living room. He’s sitting curled up in a blanket nest, on his phone, playing Sudoku.
It’s just the snowman, Dad says. The snowman the kids made earlier.
But he sounds unsure.
Maybe it’s Tim Donahue?
Tim is three hundred and fifty pounds.
Call the police.
I think it’s that snowman, really. Or maybe someone looking for help and they got turned around in the snow. Almost happened to me. But Dad brings out his phone. No service. Must have knocked out the cell tower, he says.
What do we do?
Dad goes to the front door.
Don’t Greg, please.
It’s stuck, help me. It’s frozen stuck.
Greg, don’t.
Dad gets the door open with a splintery cracking sound. Winter barrels with its punching cold hands and its howling, the more than two feet of snow that has blown up against the door standing firm against them, like a command: don’t come out.
HEY! Dad shouts. HEY! DO YOU NEED HELP?
No answer but the wind.
***
If I’m not back in ten minutes, just wait longer, Dad says with a wink. He disappears out the door. Todd sees him for a moment through the parlor window, the familiar fairy of his flashlight dancing across the snow. Dad turns and waves. Then he vanishes into the white.
The rest of them — Mom, Todd and Jelly — go back into the living room and try to be normal, to play card games by firelight. Your dad will be fine. Ten minutes pass. Mom keeps getting up, going to the door and then the parlor window and looking, her eyes fixed on that place they had seen him last while Todd and Jelly and Ike sit by the fluttery fire, playing Go Fish. Ike’s phone has died.
One seven?
Jelly passes over her card with a harried, tight expression.
Ike?
Whatever. A four?
Todd wins.
Twenty minutes.
Two twos?
Go fish.
Thirty minutes.
Mom suddenly gets up, grabs her coat off the counter.
He got turned around, she says. Must have. It’s so easy to get lost in the snow.
Maybe he headed towards one of the houses with generators, Todd says. He’s probably there, waiting for the storm to break.
But she’s putting on her boots, throwing a scarf around her neck. Putting on Dad’s motorcycle gloves. She gets the shotgun out from under their bed, loads it from the box of bullets above the dresser.
Lock the door behind me, she says. Pull the curtains. Don’t let the fireplace run much longer. I’ll be back soon.
Mommy nooo, Jelly starts howling, her tense expression breaking with a fury of tears. Mommy nooo! It’s not until now that Todd realizes they’ve all been whispering.
Mom hugs Jelly briefly, then pushes her away. She pulls at the door, and for a hopeful minute Todd thinks it won’t open. But it does, and the snow is up over Mom’s knees. She pushes into it, against the wind, makes it only a few feet before the storm pulls her behind its curtain.
We’ve got to be chill Toddies, Todd says to Jelly as he closes the door. Cool Toddies, while she cries and cries. He puts a hand over her mouth.
***
Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Todd and Jelly sing Camptown Races softly until Ike snaps at them to quit it already, stop being so fucking annoying. They sit. They pull at the carpet fibers. They burn pieces of inconsequential paper in the fire, blackening the fire pit. Waiting.
Todd gets up, returns to the parlor window, pokes aside the curtain that he and Jelly pulled closed as Mom had directed. It’s just the snowman, he thinks. But they hadn’t put a trapper hat on the snowman. And sometimes when the white breaks that figure is maybe not quite in the same place as before, not as far behind the wreckage of the snowdobe. The thought won’t quit, the thought that out there in the snow there is someone
(something)
and it’s got dad and maybe now mom
(it’s popping dad’s eyes like bubble wrap, it’s ripping mom’s ears off with its teeth)
and they can’t hear anything because of the wind.
Todd thinks of catching the fire with his eyes, how the fire couldn’t burn them up as long as he was watching. So when he catches a glimpse of that dark figure again Todd holds his gaze. As if he’s snared there by Todd’s looking.
The snow falls. The wind blows on and on.
Let’s tell ghost stories, Ike says. Todd, come on.
I’ll be there in a second, Todd calls back. I’ve got you, he thinks. Like that blue licking fireplace flame.
Ike starts without him. So there’s this family—
Once upon a time, Jelly insists.
Once upon a time, Ike says, there was a family of farmers. And they had a bunch of potatoes in their basement, but they left them down there too long and all the potatoes rotted. And because they rotted the whole basement filled up with poison gas. So one day, the father goes into the basement for something, and the gas is so strong he dies right away. Just falls down dead. And then his son goes looking for him, and he goes into the basement, and the gas kills him too.
Ike licks his lips. He looks up, as if expecting Mom to be there saying, Stop it, stop it. But she’s not there, of course.
And then the mother goes, too, Ike continues. And then the other children. They all die, one after the other.
What’s the ghost in your story? Jelly cries, bursting into a fury of renewed tears. What’s the ghost?
***
A single sharp crack wakes Todd, and he realizes he’s fallen asleep standing, his forehead pressed against the cold window glass. The snowline is nearly to the middle of the pane.
Mommy? Jelly says, startling awake.
It’s the wind, Ike says sleepily. A tree branch, like before.
Todd blinks, rubs his eyes, looks and looks, waiting for the white wall to break.
The figure isn’t there.
I’ve lost him, Todd realizes, horrified. I’ve lost him.
Ike goes to the door.
You’re not going too? Jelly demands. Ike shakes his head, wrenches open the door and shouts MOM! DAD! into the white. They listen for anything under the wailing wind — a call for help, or the crunching sound of boots on snow.
Boots on snow.
Boots on snow rushing.
Shut the door! Todd screams.
Dad? Ike calls, peering into the blinding snowfall.
SHUT THE DOOR! And when Ike doesn’t Todd throws himself across the room, slams himself against the door, throws the bolt.
They wait, panting, for something to hammer from the other side, for something to howl.
Silence.
I’ve lost him, Todd says. I don’t know where he is.
I’m going to check the house, Ike says, trying to make his voice deeper, steady, though Todd can see he's clenching every muscle to keep from shaking. Ike picks the silver baseball bat out of umbrella stand by the door, then a candle from the kitchen table. He disappears down the hallway, and Todd can hear him as he moves through the dark places, cursing when he bumps into things, checking under beds, behind doors, in the closets, the rattling twists of each locked doorknob as he clears the rooms like police.
The windows, Todd calls. He’s returned to the parlor window, looking, trying to find trapper man again. Are all the windows closed?
Todd can imagine the man in his trapper hat peering in at them, his cupped hands pressed against the glass. Can imagine Ike pulling back the curtains and there is the trapper man, looking in at them with food color stained eyes and a red red smile.
Ike tugs the windows upwards with the curtains still closed. Window after window after window, not looking out. One of the windows in the dining room gives easily. The wind rushes in, the curtain blows back, a shelf of snow falling onto the floor.
Ike closes it, locks it. He circles the house again, cursing, shivering, the baseball bat cocked over one shoulder. Because maybe trapper man had found that window and is in a closet now, crouched, or behind a door, needle-straight and soft-breathing, and every time they move he moves behind them like a shadow, slipping into places they don’t see.
Two shakes of the door handles. Two tugs on the windows. Ike checks, checks again. He tries to close the parlor curtains but Todd doesn’t let him.
I’ll catch him, Todd says. Ike doesn’t reply.
***
Todd doesn’t know what time it is when he catches trapper man again. The snowfall has slackened, the wind let off. Trapper man is back by the snowdobe, whose particleboard walls poke above the glittering layer of white like the remains of a shipwreck. There’s a motorcycle glove in his mouth.
Todd’s heart gives a terrible wrench — No, Mommy! Daddy! No no! But maybe it’s just a blot of the stain of his food color mouth. It’s still dark outside. The firelight doesn’t penetrate far.
Ike and Jelly are asleep on the couch, piled like puppies.
Ike.
Ike.
Ike wakes with a start. Todd doesn’t turn, doesn’t take his eyes off trapper man.
I’ve got him, Todd calls. Todd can see behind trapper man the faraway glow of those blinking Christmas lights, reflecting off the snow. The snow is so high, up to Todd’s chest now, and Todd wonders how long until they’re buried entirely.
You and Jelly have to help me, he calls. It’s been hours since he started searching, and his eyes are tired, feel crusted with sand; they keep wanting to drift away from trapper man, to hold their blinks too long.
Jelly, Ike says. Wake up.
Wake up, Jelly. More frantic now. Wake up.
Trapper man has lost his coat, and he stares at Todd from his sunken place in the flawless pan of white with his splotchy eyes and big blood-colored smile. He chews the motorcycle glove like a spinach leaf.
Ike lets out a horrible low moaning sound. The fireplace is ventless, he says.
He comes to Todd and Todd feels washed with relief. He’s just there, Todd says. See him? If you watch him then—
Ike goes to the parlor window and tries to pull it up.
What are you doing? Todd cries. Stop! He goes to Ike, tries to shove him off without breaking trapper man’s inkstain gaze. Stop it!
The window won’t budge.
The fireplace is ventless, Ike says as he shoves Todd back, as he retreats, and Todd can hear him flick off the fireplace switch, can feel the cold rush in to fill the places the heat no longer holds.
The fireplace is ventless, he keeps repeating.
Todd can’t help but glance after his brother, to watch as Ike goes into the kitchen and reaches to the window above the sink, trying to pull it up.
Stop it! Todd howls. Stop, you’re going to let him in!
He looked away only for an instant, but it’s enough. Trapper man is gone.
The window gives with a sharp scraping sound. Just an inch, then two. The frigid wind fights against the stagnant heat of the cut-off fire.
Ike has left the baseball bat by Jelly, who is still sleeping. Rosy-cheeked, like a princess.
Todd has surprise on his side, and Ike hits his head on the counter when he falls. Blood creeps across the tile.
Cool Toddy, Todd calls to sleeping Jelly. He forces the kitchen window closed again, then crosses to turn the fireplace back on to keep Jelly warm. He returns to the parlor window, the baseball bat still in hand.
I’ll catch him again, he assures her.
The wind picks up, blowing the blizzard back in.
AE Lhamon is a 2018 graduate of the Clarion Fantasy and Science Fiction Workshop and the former fiction editor of the McNeese Review. Their work has previously appeared in 7x7.