by Rose, Willow
He gasped and held a hand to his face in disgust when he saw the half-eaten body of Ms. Gyldenfeldt on the ground. Emma gasped as she realized the dog was no longer eating the body but was now sitting nicely at the foot of the chubby snowman again. All of them looked like ordinary sculptures again.
"But ... but ..." Emma stuttered.
The policeman squatted next to Ms. Gyldenfeldt. "What on earth happened here?" he asked.
Emma looked at the other man and suddenly realized that the policeman, nice as he was, would never believe either of them. Just like her mother hadn't believed her.
"Little girl?" the policeman asked. "What's your name?"
Emma's hands were shaking, her voice trembling as she spoke. "E ... eee ... Emma."
The policeman nodded. "Okay then Emma. Could you please tell me what happened to this woman? Did you see it happen?"
Emma nodded while sobbing.
"Okay, now please tell me what you saw."
Emma took in a deep breath. The policeman was examining the body closer now, walking around it, turning his back at the snowmen. Emma saw the chubby one move behind him. She gasped.
"Don't go too close," she said.
"What was that?" the police officer said, stepping even closer.
"Don't go near them," the man in the long black coat said.
"Go near what?" the policeman asked.
"The bad snowmen ... even the woman and the dog," Emma said. "They look nice, but they're really not."
The policeman shook his head. "I don't understand. Did you see the snowmen move too, Emma?"
She nodded fast praying that the policeman wouldn't go any closer. The chubby snowman was now stretching his arms out, towards the policeman. Emma whimpered. "Please," she said crying. "Don't go too close."
The policeman turned quickly and the chubby snowman returned to its position. Emma was certain she saw a grin on its face, but maybe she was the only that saw it, since the policeman didn't seem to be intimidated by them at all. He smiled and walked even closer, causing Emma to shiver in fear.
"Don't ... it will eat you," she said.
The policeman laughed. "These things? Do you mean to tell me these small snowmen, sorry, man, woman and dog, do you mean to tell me that they are dangerous? Vicious man-eating monsters? I do believe your parents have let you see too many scary movies, little girl. But you do have a great imagination, I’ll give you that. Learn how to use it wisely and some day you might be a famous writer."
If I ever write about this no one would ever believe me, Emma thought.
"Now I need to know what really happened here," the policeman said. He looked at the man in the black coat. His eyes were as terrified as Emma's. "Is this the woman who is also the mother of your child?" he asked.
The man in the black coat shook his head. His cigarette was burning in his hand.
"Then who is she?" the policeman asked.
Emma could detect that he was getting slightly annoyed with all this. He sounded like her mother when she had too much of Emma's chatting about dragons and fairies that she believed lived on their roof. Emma could use a little fairy magic by now. A little fairy dust to change the course of things.
The man in the black coat shrugged. "I've never seen her before."
"Ms. Gyldenfeldt," Emma said. "She was looking for her dog, when she was attacked by ... by that thing," she said and pointed at the snow-dog that now looked like an innocent as any snow sculpture.
"She was looking for her dog?" the policeman asked. He rubbed his beard. "What dog? Where is the dog now?"
"The chubby snowman ate it."
The policeman exhaled deeply. "Okay. Let's try something else. Michael. Where is the body of Liv?"
Michael's hand with the cigarette was shaking heavily as he lifted it and pointed at the snowwoman. "That's her," he said. "It looks just like her. Hair and everything."
The policeman turned and looked. Then he stepped closer while both Michael and Emma gasped. "Oh come on," the policeman said. "I admit it is a very well done sculpture, but it is still ... nothing ... but just that. A snowman," he said and reached out his hand to poke the snow and show them that it was nothing more than snow. But as soon as his finger touched the cheek of the snowwoman, the policeman's facial expression changed drastically.
He pulled the finger back and stared at it. Then he screamed in pain.
"Aaaarrgghhh..."
He was still staring at the finger that was now turning pitch black. "Frostbite," he said. "I have frostbite. It hurts like hell."
Emma and Michael simultaneously stepped backwards while hyperventilating as the policeman started jumping in the snow, yelling all kinds of bad words Emma wasn't allowed to hear, in pain. Emma watched as the finger turned more and more black and the bite seemed to spread to his other fingers. It was like touching the snow had infected him with something, she thought. Something really bad. Soon his entire hand had turned black. Then a cracking sound followed as the fingers began falling off one by one. The policeman screamed in pain as his entire hand soon fell off and the blackness from the snow spread to the arm, the elbow and soon his shoulder. Next his arm broke off and Emma began screaming again. The blackness ate its way towards his face and as soon as his mouth was covered he stopped screaming and so did Emma. Paralyzed she watched as the blackness spread into the policeman's eyes and shut them down one by one.
Emma was certain she saw all of the snow sculptures grin as seconds later he fell forward face first into the snow.
13
Michael acted quickly. As soon as Officer Johansen had fallen, he ran towards him and grabbed the gun out of his holster. He lifted it and fired three shots at the chubby snowman.
"This is for Liv and this is for making Jonathan motherless," he screamed while shooting at the snowman.
The bullets went straight through and left three holes in the snow. Michael lowered the gun, panting. He stared at the snowman, but nothing happened. It didn't move but it didn't fall apart either.
He looked at the little girl. "Emma was it?" he asked.
She nodded without answering.
"Okay, Emma. You and I are the only ones to know about this, the only ones to live and tell about it. We need to figure out a way to eliminate these snowmen. Now where did they come from? You live nearby? Have you ever seen them before?" Michael spoke without removing his eyes from the vicious snow sculptures. No snow figure should ever creep up on him or anyone else again for that matter. He was determined to stop them by any means possible.
The girl nodded. "I live right down there," she said without letting her eyes drift away from the sculptures either. Like Michael she knew that once you turned your back on them, they would attack. She had seen it too. To be honest he was slightly relieved that he wasn't the only one, since there had been moments - especially at the police station - where he had the feeling that he might have just lost it, that he might have finally gone completely insane. He knew the police officer thought he was just covering up a murder very poorly, but if that made him take action, then so be it.
"When did you first see the snowman?" Michael asked.
"This morning," she answered. "I was out playing in the snow and saw it. It seemed nice at first but then it ate Ms. Gyldenfeldt's dog and that wasn't a nice thing to do."
"I bet you went back and told everybody about it, didn't you. And they didn't believe you?"
"No. My mom thought it was just another of my stories."
"So Ms. Gyldenfeldt came out here alone to find the dog and she was attacked?"
"Yes." Emma paused. "I watched what happened to your wife. I saw it from my window. I tried to yell, but you couldn't hear me."
"Friend," Michael said with grief. The sad truth was that he had actually cared about Liv. A lot even. It was just that his home situation right now prevented him from being with her. Even if he did want to. Even if he did - deep down inside - want to be with her instead of Pernille. He couldn't leave his wife. Who did
that? Who left a wife when she had just learned that she couldn't have children? Everyone would think that was the reason, he left because she was barren. But there were so many reasons that he had planned on telling her just before she had the news, but he kept postponing it and now that she had this thing to fight with, he could barely do it, could he? Maybe he wasn't that much of a bastard after all, he thought to himself, regretting having been so mean to Liv. Now he would never get the chance to explain to her that he did it to protect her, to protect Pernille.
"What?"
"She isn't my wife. She ... was just my friend."
"Oh, okay," Emma said, then looked down at the half-eaten body of Ms. Gyldenfeldt. "I couldn't save her," she said. "Just like you couldn't save your friend."
Michael was still panting heavily. Thinking of what happened to Liv made him almost hyperventilate. He tried to calm himself down by taking in a couple of big breaths.
"So what do you propose we do now?" she asked.
Michael stared at the chubby snowman. It still hadn't moved, but the bullet holes didn't seem to have caused any damage either. He debated within himself as to what that meant. He wanted so badly to believe that he had hurt it, that he could hurt the snowmen by shooting them. If not, then he had no idea how else to kill them.
A voice in the distance startled him and for the first time since he shot the snowman he looked away. Someone was approaching. He saw her running through a backyard beneath the hill yelling. The voice was pitchy and sounded alarmed, almost petrified.
"EMMA!!!"
14
She was screaming her heart out. Terrified to the bone by the things she was imagining could have happened to her daughter, Agnete yelled and ran across the yard wearing nothing but her expensive silk-shirt and the skirt she loved so much her daughter was forbidden to pull it.
"EMMAAA!!!" she cried out again.
The sound of three gunshots had startled her, ripped her out of her gentle, slightly tipsy conversation about the newest collection from Manolo Blahnik shoes and the pros and cons of custom-sewn silk underwear. When she heard the first shot she thought it came from somewhere else, but when the second slammed through the air, she got up and ran to the stairs calling for Emma who she thought was still upstairs. The third shot rang out as she stood in her daughter's room with the broken door and stared out the window at a strange man with a gun pointing at her daughter.
That was when she began running. Down the stairs, through the front door not caring one bit about her guests or the fact that she was hardly dressed for outside adventures. The only things she had managed to yell at her startled friends were the words:
"Call Thomas now! Make him come home!"
Without knowing if anyone caught it, she was out of the door, running through the icy snow towards her daughter and the strange man.
"Emma, Mommy is coming," she yelled as she left the yard and came to the foot of the hill.
The snow slowed her down, but never tired her. Her sudden almost supernatural powers came from the maternal instincts that had been awakened inside of her and now fed her muscles with adrenaline to keep going, no matter how steep, no matter how high the snow became. If there was one thing Agnete feared more than Emma getting fat - it was losing Emma to some vile stranger with a horrible childhood and a screwed up relationship to sex and children thinking those two belonged together. There was a reason why Agnete feared that more than anything else in this world.
At only eleven years old, she had met one. On her bike on her way home from the farm where she took riding lessons, she drove past some man walking on the biking trail, some man who apparently had a thing for young girls wearing breeches. As Agnete passed him he lifted his hand and hit his fist directly into her face, causing her to fall off the bike and onto the hard asphalt. She still remembered how it scraped her cheek. The man then came closer and once again drove his fist into Agnete's face causing her to black out. When she woke up she was tied to a tree deep in a forest she didn't recognize even if she knew all the forests surrounding her childhood neighborhood and the farm since she often went horseback riding in them. The man had tied her to a tree and now he was standing in front of her with his dick in front of her face. As soon as she opened her eyes he stuffed it into her mouth and began moving back and forth, while Agnete thought she was choking and felt like throwing up.
For several hours he had used her for all kinds of atrocities that she denied herself the right to think about ever since, before he finally decided to kill her. He put a knife to her throat when he heard voices nearby. Startled, he ran off instead. Afraid he might return and finish the job Agnete hadn't said a word, not even when some nice people found her and took her to the hospital. Not to the police, nor to her parents. The shame and the guilt made her lose the ability to speak for several months and finally her parents had decided to send her away. They picked a boarding school at the other end of the country for her to get as far away as possible from what happened to her. They hoped that she would be able to somehow forget and move on. Soon Agnete started talking again (with a little help from some good friends she made and a nice emphatic teacher) and eventually she did move on. But she never forgot.
"EMMAAAA!"
She was close now and could almost reach out and touch her. Emma hadn't turned her head much to Agnete's concern. She still stood with her back turned and stared at the two snowmen ... two? There were two now? And what was that? A dog?
Agnete froze as she put her hand on her daughter's shoulder and witnessed just what it was Emma was staring at with paralyzed eyes.
In the snow lay two bodies. One was half eaten and looked very much like ... could it be?
"Irene?" she stuttered.
And who was that lying a few feet to her left? Was it a man in uniform?
"Emma. What's going on here?" she said and looked at the strange man relieved to know that he wasn't pointing the gun towards Emma or her, but at the snow sculptures. "Emma?"
"Don't come too close to them, Mommy," she answered without turning her head.
"Too close to what?" Agnete sighed. "Emma, will you please just explain to me what is going on here?"
"It's the snow sculptures," the man suddenly said.
Agnete looked at him. The gun was shaking in his hands. He was sweating even in this cold wind.
"I don't understand."
"I don't expect you to," the man said. "But your daughter and I have both seen it, seen them. And we're waiting for their next move."
Agnete stared at the man in the black Armani coat. She thought she recognized him from somewhere. It took a few seconds before she knew where from. Then she blushed. She had known him, once many years ago. They had met in the restaurant close to City Hall, he had offered her a drink, and she had accepted, then spent the night with him. The next day she had expected him to call, but he never did. A month later she ran into Thomas at a concert and the rest was history. Michael was his name. Nothing but a bump in the road on her way to the life she had now, she thought.
"What do you mean next move?" Agnete said more confused than ever. "Do you mean to tell me the snowmen have moved?"
"They can more than just move, Mommy," Emma said.
Agnete noticed a change in her daughter's tone of voice. She suddenly sounded so adult, so grown up.
"They attack when you turn your back to them," she said like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Agnete's heart was racing now. She couldn't figure out if this was part of her daughter's vivid imagination and a crazy man believing them, or if they were in fact telling the truth. The Michael she had known back in the day didn't seem crazy enough at least not back then, but who knows what might have happened to him since. People could go crazy from one day to the next, she had read. It could be latent, just waiting to be brought to the surface. Agnete decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. There was after all two bodies on the ground.
"Are you telling me that those three snow sculpt
ures killed those two people?"
Michael sniffed. "I tried to shoot the snowman, but made nothing but holes in it. Don't think it did any real damage, though."
Agnete rubbed her forehead. She stared at the body of Irene, then at the police officer in the snow. "We need to call the police," she said. She grabbed Emma by the shoulder. "Come on sweetheart, we need to get you inside. I don't know what happened here, but I do know that I need to get you to safety."
Michael nodded. "That's a good idea. Get out of here, while you can."
Emma turned her head and stared at Michael. "But what about you?" she asked.
Agnete was shivering in cold now; she grabbed her daughter's hand. "Just come with me. I'm sure the man will be fine."
Emma still didn't move. "We can't leave him here. They'll attack; they'll eat him like they ate the dog and his wife."
"Friend," Michael corrected her. "She was just my friend."
Agnete felt frustration rise inside of her. She had an eerie feeling inside that wouldn't go away. It no longer mattered to her what really happened out there in the snow, all she cared about was getting her daughter and herself back in safely. She stepped in front of Emma and squatted in front of her. Emma stared at her with great terror in her eyes.
"Mom, you're too CLOSE!" she yelled.
Agnete didn't even get on her feet before she felt something grab her throat. She sputtered while being choked and tried to scream, to tell her daughter to run, but only spitting sounds left her mouth as she was slowly dragged backwards.
15
"It's got Mommy! The snowman has got MOMMY!"
Emma was screaming from the top of her lungs while the nice man in the black coat stepped forward.
"SHOOT IT!" Emma screamed as she watched her mommy being dragged backwards. "SHOOT!"
The man fired a shot that made such a noise Emma had to cover her ears. The man was blown backwards while the bullet went straight through the snowman's head and left a big hole in its forehead. But that didn't stop it. It still had its long branches wrapped around Emma's mother's throat, dragging her through the snow while choking her. Emma was desperate now. She knew that as soon as her mother touched the snow that the sculptures were made of, she was doomed, killed by the blackness like the policeman. Either that or the snow sculptures would eat her mother, nibble on her skin and crunch her bones. She had seen them do all of those things and she wasn't going to just stand and watch while they did it again. Not to her Mommy.