Rise of the Snowmen

by Emmi Lawrence

  Taylor swiped his gun and knife before staggering toward the bathroom, his clothing clutched in one hand. His burdens all fell to the tiles in a clatter and fumble of fabric and metal. The beam of the flashlight bounced and stuttered, occasionally sparkling the frosty edges of the windowpanes.

  Once the door had swung most of the way shut, dropping the bedroom to a dim cast, Greg turned his attention back to Mandy. He’d already swapped her sopping nightgown for one of his shirts, but now he pulled the comforter down and added one of his sweatshirts overtop so she’d be warmer.

  “I’ll get you some socks.”

  “Your socks are too big.” She wiggled her toes, then tucked them back away.

  He gave her a perfunctory kiss on the forehead. “And your socks are buried in a snowstorm.”

  Buried in a snowstorm, just across the hall.

  He pulled each sock up past her knees, which was better than nothing, because he couldn’t exactly dress her in his pants. At least his shirts came down far enough they covered half her legs. She tucked her knees into the shirts as he pulled the comforter back over her head. Then he tugged on more of his own clothing, adding a long-sleeved tee to his undershirt and jeans.

  “Daddy?”

  He dropped to his knees before her. She sat in the shadows of the comforter, her eyes glinting in the frail light from the neighbor’s left-on Christmas lights.

  Was that sparkle elvish magic? Had they rescued the right Mandy?

  He stroked her hair out of her face with fingers he forced not to tremble.

  “Sweetheart?”

  “What about my present?”

  He almost laughed, but held it down at the seriousness in her expression. “Don’t worry. We’ll still have Christmas. You’ll still get your presents.” At least Katie’s house would be a welcoming warmth for Mandy, presents and all.

  Her gaze flicked to the mostly-closed bathroom door. “Taylor’s present, Daddy. It’s paper. And when my picture of the pumpkins got left on the counter it got wet and it ripped.”

  “Well, if that happens to Taylor’s present, then you can make him another. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  She pouted, squeezing the jump rope close to her blanket-wrapped chest.

  Beyond the bed, where the door to the hall remained closed, there came a rush, then a spattering of something wet against the walls. From under the door, snow began to inch inward, little by little. The clumps prodded over one another, growing in size quickly as if escaping some plight.

  “Taylor! The snow’s filling the hall!”

  Greg scooped Mandy back up, the comforter trailing, and then hefted the baseball bat again in his main hand. Taylor came staggering out of the bathroom; he’d dressed, but his feet remained bare and likely half-frozen from the way he walked. But he didn’t let that stop him. He twisted the flashlight around in his palm, his knife hanging off one of his belt loops, his gun tucked in the back of his jeans, and maneuvered in front of Greg.

  Hand on the doorknob, Taylor glanced over his shoulder. “We can go out through the garage to get to your car. Where are your keys?”

  Greg’s mind went blank. “I…”

  “Never mind. I have mine. We’re going out the front then. Straight to my car. Don’t try to grab anything. No keepsakes, no computers. Straight to the car.”

  “What about our phones? Couldn’t we call someone? I left mine charging in the kitchen.”

  The look Taylor shot him was filled with strained exasperation. “Who? The police? The electric company?”

  Greg hugged Mandy closer. Nodded. “Straight to the car,” he murmured.

  Taylor looked as if he’d say more, mouth open, eyes alight, his breath coming shallow and quick. Then his lips pressed in a thin line and his glower turned toward the hall as he cracked the door open.

  A gust of biting frost slipped into the room, ghosted around them, tugging at the comforter, shuddering the blinds. Mandy squeaked and shifted, her legs lifting and a set of toes digging into his belly. Outside, a howl began, low and deep and ominous.

  “Stay behind me,” said Taylor.

  Then he pulled open the door. Piled snow tumbled into the bedroom, but Taylor paid it no mind, stepping into the hall in his bare feet, one hand holding out his flashlight, the other smoothly pulling his gun and setting it evenly under the light. Only a slight shiver in his torso gave away how cold he must have been, feet buried in the snow, body still struggling to warm.

  “Snow angels like to lie in wait and then launch themselves at you. You can see them, though.” Taylor reached over and yanked Mandy’s bedroom door shut. “There’s usually a depression in the snow.” He waded forward, gun trained into the bathroom, then he forcibly tugged that door shut too. “A divot or depression that doesn’t belong.”

  “A depression? Not a drift?” asked Greg, eyeing the shadowy large pile of snow that had gathered against the linen closet.

  “Yes. They eat the snow. Sort of. Like they gather it into themselves, pack it down tight.”

  “Like the snow angels I make?” asked Mandy, her voice muffled.

  Taylor didn’t answer as he side-stepped, training his gun first into the open kitchen, then sweeping through the living space where the tree stood dark and forebodingly in the corner. The flashlight’s beam reflected off the television, off the glass on the mantle where photos of Mandy sat canted.

  “Sure, sweetheart,” murmured Greg. “Like the snow angels you’ve made before.”

  “Except worse,” added Taylor. Then he spun around and trained his gun down the hall past Greg, only the barest shiver in his arms betraying his recent fight with an angel. “All right. Behind me, go!”

  Greg rushed past, jeans damp from cuff to knee and his feet going frozen, toes beginning to ache fiercely through the double-layer of socks he’d put on. He paused at the door and reached for his hanging coat, but Taylor was pressed up against his back in a flash.

  “Leave it! Out!”

  “It’s below freezing, Taylor. We’ve no shoes and no coats and—”

  “And if we can get in the car, we’ll have a heater and plenty of places to go. We’re not digging through this snow for shoes. Go!”

  Mandy let out a squeal then and her jump rope scraped against Greg’s cheek as she brought it up in a haphazard, jerky motion. “Taylor!” Her scream pierced Greg’s ears and traveled further down into his heart. “There’s an angel!”

  From under the Christmas tree the snow rose, a blanket stretching outward, a wing over the coffee table, another fluttering the curtains. Taylor shot twice, the snow pulsing outward, the sound echoing in the small space. Mandy’s jump rope swept out, but got caught in the comforter, half of it falling limply to hang and smack against Greg’s leg.

  “Damn it, Greg, move!” shouted Taylor. He shifted in front of Greg as the angel slunk back, rolling its top like a rippling wave.

  Yet when Greg shifted the baseball bat to his other hand and tried to yank the front door open, it wouldn’t budge. The locks! Of course. He snapped the deadbolt, then twisted the knob’s lock and tried again. Still stuck. Ice lodged in the cracks. Frost layered over the hinges.

  Behind him, Taylor’s gun exploded again, the noise once more echoing painfully in the snow-dampened room. Mandy twisted in his arms, becoming a squirming mass of blanket and girl, so much so that the bat slipped from his fingers and landed softly in the snow. She plastered her hands against her ears and let out a quiet cry, the kind that swallowed itself in the face of terror, her little body shivering even through the comforter.

  “Damn angels!” shouted Taylor, before he smacked right up against Greg’s back.

  Greg staggered into the door, Mandy’s encased form lurching half out of his arms. He pushed off the frosty door one-handedly, feeling Taylor pull his weight off a moment later from the force. Then he dropped Mandy into the snow, right under the coat rack, the puffy purple sleeves on her heavy coat landing to either side of her head like giant tentacles.


  “Stay here!” he demanded.

  He braced himself, toes curling painfully, and used two hands on the door, jerking at it, slamming his shoulder into it between yanks. Ice cracked and splintered. The door groaned and the hinges squeaked as it finally gave way between his pulls. It snapped open, then got caught on the foot of snow at their feet.

  He quickly kicked at the snow, finding his bat in the process, which he snatched up and slide between the frame and the door, levering it open wider and wider until he could shove the door open fully. There he paused, breath coming in huffing, painful gasps.

  Before him, like a curtain, lay a sheet of ice. It flickered with the blue and white lights of the opposite house’s Christmas decorations. It shimmered with what looked like sparkles or stardust. And most importantly, it blocked the way.

  “Greg?” Taylor’s voice wavered.

  Greg glanced over his shoulder to see Taylor partially bent, his face too shadowed to see clearly, but the beam of his flashlight shining directly on one of the couches—that same couch Greg had pressed Taylor against just hours ago. An old blanket that had been thrown over the couch’s back now lay spread and rippling. As if some creature tapped from underneath. As if the blanket covered an undulating ocean.

  “Did you trap it?” asked Greg.

  With a jerk of his chin, Taylor answered, “There’s no really trapping them. Only thing that kills them is heat and fire. It won’t distract it for long.” He backed away from the couch, though his flashlight beam and gun remained trained on the rippling blanket and the snow angel it strived to contain.

  At Greg’s feet, Mandy struggled to stand, making gashes in the snow and sinking more than she succeeded in straightening. “Daddy?”

  “Hold on, sweetheart. Daddy’s got to get this doorway cleared.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” asked Taylor.

  Greg wound back the baseball bat. “Just a little ice.” And he swung.

  The bat jarred in his hand as he connected. The clear ice, with its shimmering refractions of blue and white Christmas lights, cracked and whitened, spreading an opaqueness across the surface. He swung again and again, as Taylor shivered behind him. The motion heat up his torso, but left his feet numb in the snow.

  “Daddy! It’s coming, Daddy!” Mandy’s shriek cut off as she plopped back down on her butt, the comforter a mass of folds and layers about her, swallowing her like a snowdrift.

  “Greg! Any time now!” Taylor fumbled at the coat rack, but tossed a jacket toward the couch instead of pulling one on.

  The ice chipped and splintered, spitting icicles into the house, across the snow bank that had become his entrance, some of them flying far and away from the foyer to sink small holes across the living room. The aluminum of the bat reverberated, a metallic song in the air, a painful vibration up Greg’s arms.

  A gap appeared. A jagged crack, that buckled and pitched outward, grew until its outline looked like sharpened, mismatched teeth. Greg jammed the bat through the gap and swept it wildly back and forth, cracking those teeth off, shattering them into glass shards. Taylor’s presence remained behind him, though Greg couldn’t stop the rising image of Taylor being enveloped by another snow angel, this one larger, more powerful, swallowing him whole, Greg’s bat unable to dent the creature.

  At his side, Mandy screeched—half-terror, half-war cry—and swung her jump rope, though it caught on a hoodie above her head more than it whipped out.

  With a deep breath of frigid air and a tightening of every muscle, from thigh to shoulder, he spun the bat downward. Then he twisted, braced himself and threw his shoulder into what was left of the curtain of ice.

  He fell through the icy doorway with a shattering crash and landed hard against the porch, straight into a pile of snow at least two feet deep. The wind crashed under the overhang, spitting snow and throwing glassy ice shards against the siding so they sung out in a raging song. Above his head, the world whirled, something unnatural, mystical, evil, spinning an elvish storm into being where one hadn’t been before.

  “Daddy! Are you okay? Daddy!”

  Greg scrambled up and staggered back through the doorway, chunks of ice stabbing him through his socks. Taylor had thrown his jacket on—good, that was good—and had found his sneakers and was twisting his bare feet into them, though given how much snow squished up around his ankles, they might not help much at all.

  The entire coat rack had been knocked over the couch where the snow angel struggled to escape. The sleeves of Mandy’s coat flapped and shifted where the angel shoved in resistance. The wind whipped in from behind him, blasting the Christmas lights and ornaments on the tree so they tinkled against one another creating a dreadful disharmonious melody.

  “Here.” Taylor shoved a coat against Greg’s chest and then slipped past him through the door. “Come on!”

  Mandy, still tangled in the damp-spotted comforter, tried to stand. “My whip didn’t work, Daddy. I did it just how Taylor showed me, but it wouldn’t snap. It wouldn’t snap!”

  Greg tamped down a shudder, draped his coat about her head and shoulders, then swept her back up into his arms. The thick ends of the sodden blanket hung heavier than before, weighing him down. “You can try again, sweetie. Just wrap it back up and get it ready.” He bent and snatched the baseball bat from the snow, grateful that the orange contrasted so sharply and visibly.

  “But what if it doesn’t work? What if they get me?” She was crying again. Voice dipping low, then achingly high, before dropping entirely off a cliff.

  Greg paused and pressed his forehead against hers in a quiet moment, his heart aching, his memories filling with thoughts of her gone. Gone like last year. Those awful hours where her life stood in limbo, him not knowing whether he’d ever get her back, ever see her again.

  “I won’t let that happen. They’ll never get you. Not ever, ever again.”

  Just outside the doorway, Taylor stood in front of them, his gun trained into the darkness as if he might fight off the very shadows. The wind howled loud enough to be confused as its own person screeching its existence to the world. The neighbor’s decorative blue and white lights from across the street had become invisible behind the sudden onslaught of the blizzard.

  A crash shuddered across the overhang above their heads, broken gutter sections clanging together as they fell, debris spilling sideways as the wind dragged it toward the driveway. Mandy shrieked and Taylor swung his gun and flashlight up to their right in a smooth, graceful movement, his expression calm, but eyes filled with fury.

  A tree branch hung below the overhang, its twigs and frost-eaten pine needles twitching in the storm. Beyond, where the flashlight’s beam weakened to nothing, the snow thickened, a white blanket, spotted and mottled and glinting in the darkness. Shadows and starlight.

  “What is that?” asked Greg. But he knew.

  Flashbacks of last year. The scents of nutmeg and clove surrounding him from gingerbread walls. The sticky candy cane he’d wielded. The snowman with its face fallen in on itself, coal eyes sliding, mouth drooping, body becoming a misshapen mess. Branch-arms snapping.

  Greg tightened his grip on Mandy and hurriedly waded through the snow and wind and storm after Taylor, the tail of the comforter dragging behind them. For his part, Taylor didn’t seem surprised, not when the branch swept down, twigs curling around the railing of the porch. Not when a shadowed face with a stunted, twisted carrot nose bent to peek under the overhang. Not when that mouth opened and a freezing blast of a scream shot across the porch, shuddering Mandy’s wind chime and blowing against the last, clinging bits of ice in the doorway so that the shards chimed and shivered and dropped like knives into the snow.

  Taylor shot once, straight into the snowman’s face, a shadowed hole appearing for a moment before the snow fell in on itself. Then he stepped forward. “Go! Get to the car. I’m right behind you.”

  “But—”

  “Please, babe.”

  He turned a pleading, frenzied lo
ok toward Greg. For just a moment, they were back in the throes of the previous year, back when it was Greg pleading for Taylor to let him help, let him search for his own daughter no matter how insane the situation. No matter how dire.

  That look in Taylor’s eyes was as almost as furious as Greg had felt back then. A reflection, a desperation to protect and provide for the people he—

  “For fuck’s sake, go!”

  Taylor slid his gun into his jeans, and with a spin, yanking his knife free, he stabbed straight through the snowman’s woody wrist. Right where it connected to its twig-like curling fingers. The wood cracked. The flashlight flickered and fell. Taylor brought his foot up and stamped hard with the heel of his sneaker until the wood snapped completely.

  With the snowman’s roar behind them, Greg shuffled across the porch toward the steps, relying on years of memories of walking this path out of the house toward the driveway. A blinding white enveloped him and Mandy, the wind cutting through his sweatshirt till he felt he wore nothing. Skin prickled. His body shivered. His grip on the baseball bat went white-knuckled. His jeans were more wet than dry, clinging to his legs, tugging at his hair. Mandy grew heavier by the step, her whimpering increasing, her toes pinching into his belly and back.

  “I hate the snow,” she wailed. “I hate ugly elves. I want Bobby Pie!”

  He ignored her, pausing only to heft her higher, to glance behind him at the porch where Taylor’s flashlight glinted through the mess. The snowman roared again, and this time the sound diffused through the air, losing some of its power now that Greg was in the throes of the blizzard’s arctic strength. The creature itself was more shape than substance, an inkling glimpsed through the storm, stronger still when a crash rang out, as if it had smacked against the porch again.

  Greg clutched Mandy a little tighter and shoved forward through the dark. He angled his rush through the ever-deepening snow so that he aimed where he thought Taylor’s car sat parked. It had been further back than normal, not pulled all the way to the garage because Katie’s SUV had been in the drive, as if Taylor had worried it’d be too intimate of him, too claiming to pull past her.