The Boy Made of Snow

by Chloe Mayer

  ‘What did he do to you?’ he said again.

  ‘It was awful!’

  ‘Yes?’ He reached out and patted my shoulder.

  ‘It wanted to …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It tried to … eat me …’

  I glanced up at him to see if he’d believe me. Understanding seemed to fill his face, which changed his features; he looked disgusted.

  ‘It’s all right, son,’ he told me. ‘You don’t have to worry about him hurting you any more.’

  His expression confused me because I’d never seen anything like it before – it was kind and furious at the same time.

  I looked away from him into the faces of the other men. One by one their expressions changed and I saw the same hot light come into their eyes.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ one murmured.

  My mother’s face was a mirror of theirs and I heard her whisper, ‘No!’

  I wasn’t entirely sure they’d believe me about the Troll so I was a bit surprised by their reactions. Obviously, I thought they’d be angry when I told them the Troll had nearly caught me, but I hadn’t expected their fiery eyes.

  All day I’d been very frightened – but the sudden change in the men scared me even more. I looked at Mother but her eyes were closed now and it seemed she was further away than ever.

  ‘He’s shaking like a leaf,’ Mr Higgins said. His voice was ragged with emotion. ‘Argh, God, that revolting tramp should never have been allowed to stay around here. Filthy, dirty …’

  The nice man took his hand off my shoulder and was now avoiding my eyes. He stood up.

  ‘Where is he, boy?’ Mr Higgins growled, and pointed towards the forest. ‘Up there?’

  ‘No, no! No, I—’ I was desperate to keep them away from the woods; the further away from Hansel the better.

  ‘Tell them, Daniel!’ Mother burst out. It was like she’d suddenly come to life. ‘You have to tell them, so they can find him.’ She looked at the men. ‘You must see this man is more dangerous than the PoW. You have to look for him first, surely? He has to be arrested.’

  She wanted them to catch the monster for me! The men exchanged glances.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ the nice man said to me. ‘He’s never going to hurt you again. But you have to tell us where it happened. We know you were in the woods when he … attacked you. Your mum told us you’d been playing. He lives in there, isn’t that what you said?’

  I stared at Mother then stared up at him. How could I stop the Home Guard traipsing around the forest? I didn’t see how it could be avoided now.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I looked down at my dirty, bloodstained hands as I wrung my fingers. ‘It happened in there. But not very far from here. It was where it lives.’

  ‘You need to take the boy home,’ Mr Higgins said to my mother, even as he was already moving – striding towards the forest entrance.

  A couple started to follow him but the nice man said, ‘Wait, wait!’

  Mr Higgins turned to look back at him and the others stopped walking too.

  ‘We need him to show us where this tramp lives; we can’t just hope we bump into him. That hasn’t worked out very well for us so far today, has it? I didn’t see any tramp in there. Did any of you?’

  There was a beat as Mr Higgins appeared to consider this. I looked at Mother but she was watching Mr Higgins.

  ‘All right,’ he said, and he looked at me and added: ‘You’ll have to show us where the tramp is.’

  ‘I want to go home,’ I said. ‘Mother?’

  ‘Go with the men, Daniel. Show them where … it happened.’

  She didn’t want to take me back with her.

  ‘Go home, Mrs Patterson,’ Mr Higgins said. ‘Wait there for us. We won’t be long.’

  She nodded and walked away. She avoided my eyes as she left.

  ‘Come on then, lad,’ Mr Higgins said to me and led the way into the forest.

  I was at the back with the nice man. Ahead, one of the others was slapping his truncheon against his open palm as he strode along.

  Once inside the forest, they all turned to me.

  ‘Now you have to show us the way,’ Mr Higgins said.

  So I went to the front of the group and was the leader of my second mission that day. At least I actually knew where I was going this time – and, luckily, taking them to the Troll’s dirty lair in the forest was taking them in the opposite direction from Hansel.

  As we walked, the men seemed to swell with energy. They were muttering amongst themselves, using swearwords.

  I was so exhausted I wanted to lie down right there on the forest floor and go to sleep. It must be very late in the afternoon by now, I thought. I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for hours. My body was so tired I wasn’t even shaking any more. I felt like I was past fear, past anything.

  But I stumbled on, taking the men to where Mother and I had seen the Troll in the woods.

  I didn’t really think about what would happen when we got there. I didn’t really care. It probably wasn’t there anyway – it was more likely to be under the bridge in the tunnel.

  The one thing that spurred me on was the thought of what a good job I had done leading these men away from Hansel.

  After a while, I saw the tattered sheets and tarpaulin up ahead.

  ‘This way!’ someone shouted from behind and rushed past me. ‘Let’s get the bastard!’

  We were closer to its lair than I’d realised. The men started running towards the nest and one tripped over a tangled tree root in his hurry to get there. I ran after them. I didn’t feel tired any more; my blood was rushing around my veins now.

  That was when I knew what was going to happen. But I wasn’t sure how it made me feel. I was still scared, but now I was excited too. I did hate and fear the Troll, and I did want to protect Hansel. It was like that expression Daddy used sometimes; I was killing two birds with one stone.

  I wanted the men to frighten it. And yes, I wanted them to hurt it and drive it out. I strained to see up ahead. Maybe it wasn’t even there – but before the thought was formed, I saw them dragging it out from its broken-down home into the light.

  I ran forward to see a couple of them grabbing onto its filthy clothes and arms.

  The Troll’s dirty black beard and straggly hair made it look even more animal-like as it turned its head about wildly. It struggled as they shouted at it, but mostly it seemed stunned. These weren’t boys from the village tormenting it for fun.

  ‘Up there!’ Higgins roared, jabbing his truncheon up at a thicker part of the woods over a little verge. The men pushed and pulled the Troll up into the cover of the trees.

  Their truncheons began to batter it before it had even reached the top of the small hill. That was when it found its voice. ‘Wha … What?’ But the words turned to screams and then to grunts while it tried to protect itself.

  The Troll fell onto its knees and was dragged even deeper into the woods by its arms. Farmer Dawson was wheezing and had fallen behind the others but now he was scrambling up the verge ahead of me.

  The men seemed to have forgotten I was even there. I followed, making my own way up the verge, where I hid behind a tree to watch. My hands were shaking, so I gripped the bark to make them stop.

  It was curled into a ball and its arms covered its head.

  ‘Eugh, he stinks!’ one of the men cried, as he swung his foot into the Troll’s side. ‘He stinks of piss!’

  The truncheons were flying and the noise sounded like somebody was whacking a stiff sofa, except each whack was met with a grunt or cry from the Troll. The only time the blows didn’t make that whacking sound was when the wood connected with bone, and then I knew one had struck its head.

  ‘Argh! Stop! Stop! Help!’ it managed to scream.

  The man with a rake was using it, sharp claw end down, to beat at the Troll’s back, tearing the fabric of its coat and carving up strips of flesh like a fork through butter.

  ‘DIRTY – STINKING –
POOFTER – PERVERT—’ the nice man bellowed as he raised a truncheon again and again.

  After a while, the others stopped and fell back, and just Mr Higgins and the nice man carried on with their truncheons.

  I saw the blood colouring their weapons as they were raised, ready to rain down on the Troll once more. I couldn’t take my eyes off the attack. It was fast, and clumsy. Not like a fight at the pictures at all. I could smell blood in the air, and a strong stink of urine.

  I thought I might vomit, but I couldn’t look away.

  Some of the men had hung back on the edges from the very beginning. The others who had peeled off from the beating now stood panting, watching as Mr Higgins and the nice man continued.

  Farmer Dawson, who was one of the men who hadn’t laid a finger on the Troll, cried out ‘Higgins!’ at one point, but Mr Higgins didn’t stop and nobody said anything else.

  None of the men stopped it, and to me it seemed they were looking on as though an unpleasant job, one that had to be done, was being carried out.

  I felt so sick I wanted to stop it myself, but I thought of Hansel in his hole and I knew that this had been meant for him. This would have been his fate.

  There was a sickening crack and I knew it was the Troll’s head breaking open.

  The nice man didn’t look nice any more. His spectacles had flown off and landed nearby, but he didn’t even seem to notice he was blind. He and Mr Higgins were sweaty and their hair fell about their faces. Their teeth were bared and their eyes were glassy. With a retch I realised they looked like Trolls too.

  The crack and crunch of head bone gave way under the pounding to a wet squelching noise and then I saw globs of shiny white goo mixed with blood flying into the air with every whack.

  The others backed further away, and at last Mr Higgins stopped, dropping his truncheon and resting his hands on his hips as he panted.

  But the nice man was still there, standing over the Troll’s mashed and mangled head, pumping and pumping, raising his arms and bringing the truncheon down over and over again.

  ‘Joe,’ Farmer Dawson said.

  But the nice man couldn’t stop. His fleshy face was red but he carried on.

  ‘FILTHY … PERVERT!’

  It was brains. Bits of brain that were spattering his clothes and face. He didn’t seem to notice. Strands of matted hair streamed from the bloody end of his weapon each time he raised it.

  Eventually, Farmer Dawson rushed forward and grabbed his raised arm. The nice man looked around, startled, like someone who’d been shaken awake while sleepwalking.

  And then there was silence.

  The silence seemed to last for a long time.

  ‘… We were just meant to teach him a lesson!’ a shaken-looking, stocky man said finally. He said it as though they had all discussed the matter beforehand and that the plan had somehow gone wrong. But I knew there had never been a plan.

  ‘Christ, Higgins!’ Farmer Dawson said.

  The other men, who held their own bloody weapons by their sides, said nothing.

  ‘He deserved it!’ Mr Higgins said, eventually. He looked defiant. ‘Some men are too cowardly to do what needs to be done, but not me! And what’s more, I’d do it again!’

  Some of them looked down.

  I thought they’d forgotten I was with them, but then Mr Higgins said: ‘Have you all forgotten what that pervert just did to that boy over there?’

  He pointed his bloodied truncheon in my direction and they all turned to look at me, where I held onto the tree to keep myself from falling down.

  That truncheon, pointing like a finger, sent the blame of the Troll’s killing over to me. The Troll’s blood was on their hands. But now it was on mine, too.

  29

  There stood poor Gerda, barefooted … A whole regiment of snowflakes advanced against her.

  From The Snow Queen

  Annabel made herself a stiff drink of gin when she got back home, to settle her nerves and still her shaking hands.

  She knew the Home Guard would come here. It was very important that the house looked presentable. Normal. Above reproach.

  So she cleaned.

  She remembered her shopping basket in the front garden and went to retrieve it. The apples had crushed the blackberries and their juice had bled through the brown paper. She dumped the whole lot in the outside bin, basket and all.

  It was early evening now – it had been more than two hours since she’d left the men and the boy in the woods – but her head was still reeling. Everything was spinning so horribly out of control.

  And to think: everything had been perfect when she’d woken up that morning. She’d been going to buy treats!

  First Hans’s disappearance, and now … whatever it was that the tramp had done to Daniel. She couldn’t bear to think about that and pushed unwanted images from her mind as she scrubbed at the kitchen floor with a damp rag.

  Nothing I can do about that, she thought as she worked on the stained linoleum; the Home Guard will take charge of the situation.

  She felt guilty for thinking it, but at least it had distracted them from hunting Hans and she had encouraged them in this. If Hans really had escaped – left of his own free will – then it could only be connected to her. He’d surely find a way to get a message to her, so she could join him later.

  After the men had taken the boy back into the forest, Annabel had considered trying to run the long way round to Hans’s orchard, to search the shed as she’d initially planned. But all her energy had ebbed away when Daniel told them about the disgusting tramp. Again, she quickly clamped down on that train of thought.

  Even if she did still have enough fight in her to go to the orchard, she didn’t think she’d be able to get there and back in time before the Home Guard came to return the boy to her. And what if somebody – Dawson, or the old colonel – should find her? There might be a guard stationed there even, searching the place for clues just as she’d intended to do. How would she explain her presence? So she thought it was safer if she did what Higgins had told her to do. And she’d gone straight home.

  She scrubbed harder and harder at the floor with her rag; the frenzied activity was helping her avoid thinking of Daniel and was warding off the fear for Hans wringing out her insides.

  Another worry began to gnaw at her now … Could she be in danger herself? Had somebody found out about their relationship? Or if Hans really had run away before attempting to contact her – what if they caught him and made him talk, so that he was forced to reveal the affair himself?

  Oh God, the whole village would know what she’d done. She might be arrested. Reggie’s parents, her parents …

  The stains were long gone and Annabel slowly leaned forward and lay her hot forehead on the cool, damp lino.

  After a moment or two she shook herself into action and stood to rinse out her rag at the sink; the sitting room still needed doing. She went through and decided to start with the windows.

  A moth was sitting on one of the windowsills, as though he were gazing out at the front garden. She wondered if he really was looking out there or if he was asleep – weren’t moths nocturnal?

  Before she killed it, she leaned forward to have a closer look. Its furry head and wings looked dusty, as though they would feel chalky to the touch. When she was a child she had thought that moths were just decrepit butterflies. Their wings were so drab and featureless, and she had thought that their beautiful colours had faded the same way a person’s hair would fade, becoming duller and duller until it was grey. The moth looked like an ancient butterfly, too tired even to hold up its wings behind its back.

  She pressed her cloth down hard on its still body and when she looked at the cloth afterwards, there was just a smudge of grey-brown dust left behind. It was as though the creature had never even existed.

  She jumped when the doorbell rang. She had been so distracted by the insect, the cleaning, and her own churning thoughts that she hadn’t noticed the group of me
n walking up her garden path.

  She looked out of the bay window then to see them gathering at her doorstep. They must have seen her, framed in the window, inspecting her cleaning cloth. They stared at her. How? Fearfully? Angrily? She was suddenly reminded of a picture from one of Daniel’s books – the terrified villagers marching with fire and pitchforks to the monster’s castle in Beauty and the Beast.

  In front of them, borne forward, was the child. She was shocked all over again by his appearance. He was dirty, scratched, bloody. His clothes were torn. His eyes, his eyes though … They were huge and wild and frightened and frightening.

  She stood, frozen, like Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked at something she should never have seen. She stood there so long, Higgins had to ring the bell a second time.

  She opened the door and the men – some of them were bloody too, she noticed now – tumbled into her narrow hall. She was propelled backwards, as though she were nothing more than a piece of seaweed adrift in the onslaught of the tides.

  In the sitting room, she faced the dishevelled men. The boy was shaking violently, his teeth chattering audibly.

  ‘What was your lad doing in the woods anyway?’ Higgins began, and his sudden bark of words was too loud in the quiet of the house. He was furious with her. ‘What was he doing in the woods, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Higgins,’ Dawson said to him, ‘don’t …’

  Annabel felt herself begin to tremble again. She would have spoken, asked them what had happened, but her mouth was so dry all she could do was swallow. Maybe she wouldn’t have asked anyway; she was afraid to know the answers.

  Some of the men seemed jittery, shifting from one foot to the other. It felt as though everyone was in motion in that little room; nothing was still.

  The mirror man, who seemed to have lost his glasses, stepped forward. He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Daniel jumped and spun around as though he had been branded with a hot iron. The man’s hand recoiled, hovered in the air. He raised his other hand too, open-palmed, to show he was not a threat.