by Lex Sinclair
‘Anyway, after their bodies had been examined, it was confirmed that they belonged to the landlord and his daughter.’
Kate moaned.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said. ‘But you would’ve killed me if I didn’t tell you.’
‘I - I still don’t understand what this has to do with Charles, though?’
Tom pulled her closer to him and kissed her forehead. ‘It doesn’t matter. I think that’s all the grief you can cope with for now, don’t you?’
‘I wanna know!’ his wife shouted, demanding the imperative information she sought after.
Tom sighed. ‘He’s been missing for months. No one has seen him or heard from him at all. And after what happened to his friends, it’s no wonder the police are presuming that he has also met with foul play.’
Kate dried her eyes with her sleeve. ‘This is awful,’ she muttered.
‘Yeah, I know, hon... I know. That was the police just then. They’d been searching his cottage when they came across his notepad with our phone number in it. They wanted to know if Charles was staying with us - hiding from someone, perhaps.’
Kate took a sip of her orange juice she held in her lap, and said, ‘Do you think this has anything to do with the Frozen Man?’
Tom would love to tell her it was all some terrible incident that occurred up in the mountains and it had nothing to do with them meddling around with a mysterious cadaver, but his wife wasn’t stupid, far from it. Kate could read him like an open book. She knew him too well, to know when he was lying. ‘I don’t know. But there’s nothing for you to get upset about. What’s happened has happened. Who knows maybe Charles will turn up fine.’
‘Highly unlikely, though,’ she pointed out, staring impassively at her drink.
‘Well, until they find his body, anything is possible.’
He kissed her again, hoping that Charles did turn up alive and well, but like his wife said - it was highly unlikely.
***
A silhouette of a man stood before her in a room she didn’t recognise. She laid in a bed, covered in white sheets, tied down, the hairs on her neck standing to attention. Where am I? She looked to her left and saw the door leading to the outside of the room. Then she looked right and saw a rectangle-shaped window.
She tried to focus on any of the buildings’ outside, in her limited view, that might tell her the location. Instead dazzling white mist enveloped her view in a thick blanket. Thunder rumbled above in a single, sudden explosive sound.
‘Who are you?’ she asked the immobile shape, with no face. The man wasn’t a man at all. She understood that much. Nevertheless, she wanted to know who was staring at her, hidden in the dim, as the clouds rolled over the white light.
She feebly battled against the restraints. They wouldn’t budge an inch. She was at the shape’s mercy.
The slow footfalls on the linoleum crossed the room and drew closer. Her heart punched her chest like a cold fist.
‘What do you want?’ she screamed.
The booming thunderstorm answered her, but no voice.
‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she begged.
The shadow stood at the left hand side of her bed, reached out to touch her.
She squirmed.
Lightening flickered, and for a split second she thought she saw the corpse of Charles staring at her, holding her dripping ovaries in his blood-stained hands, grinning in the purple-blue flicker. Then the shadow vanished, as though he’d never been there in the first instance, only in her vivid imagination.
She noticed she wasn’t strapped down to the mattress any more. She sat bolt- upright.
There was something damp and coiled in her lap on top of her flimsy nightgown. She flinched when she touched its wet, slippery substance. Yet she picked it up, anyway, in spite of the vile texture. Lightening flashed brightly again and this time what she saw wasn’t a figment of her imagination.
***
The shrill of the alarm clock woke Kate with a start. She threw herself back against the headboard, feeling the duvet and her nightgown fervently for something that shouldn’t be there, and slid back down to her pillow when she found nothing, much to her relief.
Tom frowned at her, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’
Kate shook her head. ‘I just had an awful dream.’
‘Oh. What about?’
Kate stared out the window, comforted at the sight of their recently mowed lawn, and said solemnly, ‘I don’t think you want to know.’
‘It had something to do with the Frozen Man, then, I take?’
‘Yes.’
Tom rubbed his haggard face, wondering if he and his wife would ever escape the nightmares that continued to haunt them. ‘What was it about?’
Reluctantly, Kate told him her nightmare. Then she turned away and faced the window. Tom didn’t know what to say. He wanted to be able to assure her that everything would be all right in the end - but he couldn’t promise something which he had no control of.
Kate rolled out of bed and stood at the window. ‘Is this baby really ours?’
‘I’d like to think so, yes. I mean we’ve been trying for a baby for a few months before all of this began. We’re both two healthy, fairly young people. I don’t see why not.’
Kate stared at him and said, ‘That’s not what I asked?’
Tom threw his arms up in the air. ‘God Almighty, Kate! What do you want me to say? My guess is as good as yours. How the hell am I supposed to know what’s gonna happen in the future? All we can do is hope that everything works out well for us. I’m just trying to be positive.’ He yanked the duvet off him and strode out of the bedroom.
Kate looked down and caressed her protuberant belly.
***
Tom knew deep down in his heart that the old, cordial man he and his wife met and grown fond of, had to be dead. If Derek (whom he had never called, and wished now that he had), his daughter and the unfortunate camper hadn’t been found dead, he would have kept an open mind to the possibility that Charles might still be alive. However, it had been four months since the police made the horrific discovery in North Wales.
If Charles was still alive, surely someone would’ve seen him by now. It’s better to believe the worst, then if his body does eventually turn up it won’t be such a shock to the system, he told himself. God knew he and Kate had had a lot of terrible shocks since they met the old man; albeit not his fault, at least not intentionally.
Has the Frozen Man come back somehow? he wondered. If it has - how is that possible? Yet ever since the night when the monstrosity of a corpse grabbed him, nearly costing Tom his life, he was willing to believe almost anything could happen. They had stood around the hearth and watched as the carcass burned to its last embers. Now, incredibly, it haunted their dreams. Anything is possible, anything.
If Charles had died at the hands of the Frozen Man, did that mean both he and Kate were doomed, too? The Frozen Man, Charles had told him about on the night they met each other’s acquaintance had been a far different one from the one they had cut down from the tree, who threatened to kill them. Not all men are the same, though. Not even if you’re a special type of man, he thought.
He stood in the doorway gazing at the bedroom, which would belong to his unborn child and wondered whether or not they were going to have a boy or a girl. It didn’t matter one iota to him or Kate. It would be nice just to have another addition to their family. As long as the child was born healthy and had no difficulties, nothing else mattered.
Maybe it wasn’t the Frozen Man who had killed the three people that night in the forest. But what made him believe it to be the Frozen Man had been when he’d found out that two of the bodies were left hanging upside down, skinned, while still alive. How could any ordinary man - no matter how powerful he was - carry not o
ne, but two bodies, up to the treetops and do something he could hardly think of, let alone do? It was impossible for a human to do that, but not for a Frozen Man.
When the detective inspector asked him if he knew of anyone who may have had a grudge against Charles, Tom said no. After all, Charles lived alone, up in the mountains. How could anyone hate someone they scarcely saw? Yet Tom had wanted to tell the detective about the Frozen Man. Nevertheless there would be no way on this earth that he would be taken seriously if he started prattling on about dead bodies discovered encased in blocks of ice, and corpses trying to kill them. There were just some things that were best kept secret. This was one of those things.
He prayed that nothing untoward should befall either himself, his wife or their unborn child, but understood that - unlike a Frozen Man - he couldn’t control his fate entirely. Tom could only pray to God that everything would be all right.
Yet who was to say God thought that he and his family deserved to be saved after what they’d done?
The bedroom’s looking nice, anyway, he thought, trying to think of something else; something besides wild notions that churned in his stomach.
He closed the door shut and then descended to the ground floor. He entered the kitchen and saw Kate standing at the worktop smearing peanut butter on slices of bread. He wrapped his arms around her and said, ‘How’re my two most favourite people in the whole world doing today, huh?’
Kate smiled. ‘We’re both fine.’
‘Good. Listen, about yesterday- ’
‘I don’t really want to discuss it, thanks.’
‘I know. All I wanted to say was, to forget about it. Well, not forget about Charles... I know he and I never really saw eye-to-eye and quarrelled a lot in the short time we knew one another - but he was a nice guy. I mean that.’
Kate nodded unhappily. ‘I hope he is alive,’ she choked.
‘Me too.’
Tom went to the sink and drew himself a glass of cold water.
‘I’m going out to do some baby shopping. I won’t be long.’
‘Do you want me to come along?’ he asked.
Kate put the pieces of bread together and then cut up four horizontal sandwiches, shaking her head. ‘No. It’s okay. I’m not gonna be gone long, anyway.’
‘Are those for me?’ he asked, pointing to the peanut butter sandwiches, knowing full-well that Kate didn’t eat peanut butter.
‘Duh. I’ll put them in the fridge, just in case I’m not home in time for lunch.’
Tom fished a twenty pound note from his jeans pocket and handed it to her.
She thanked him, and kissed him lovingly on the lips. Five minutes later Tom stood by the front door and waved her goodbye. When Kate drove away towards town, he went back inside and switched the TV on.
***
After about ten minutes circling the hectic car park, Kate finally found herself a space and reversed her car carefully between the two stationed vehicles on either side. Then she used the cobbled-path leading across the river and into the town centre. She welcomed the crisp, clean air and radiant sun shining on her face. It did her good to do some light exercise, such as walking, the doctor had told her, as long as it wasn’t anything arduous or excessive.
When Tom informed her of the gruesome deaths and that Charles had been missing for a few months, she grew terribly anxious. Her breathing accelerated, and that wasn’t good for her baby. Not to mention her awful nightmare later on that night. She became convinced the only time the nightmares came, was when she grew anxious and began contemplating about the corpse they had cremated, what now seemed like a thousand years ago.
Kate went to the ATM machine outside the bank and drew another twenty- pound on top of the twenty Tom had given her. Then she made her way to the baby shops to buy nappies and other types of products her unborn child would need. As she done this, Kate passed a woman’s clothes shop window. A long black velvet dress modelled by a mannequin caught her undivided attention and showed how it might look on her if she didn’t have huge belly hanging over her belt buckle. The dress was stunning. It was something she’d have purchased without a second thought. Also, Tom would have loved the way it hugged tightly around her sensuous curves. But being pregnant had stolen more and more of her confidence than she first anticipated.
Kate gaped at the price tag and saw the forty-pound price tag hanging from the neck and sighed with exasperation What a shame, she thought. She had forty pound in her pocket. If she wasn’t pregnant she would have been able to afford it, no problem.
As she marvelled at the sexy dress a little while longer, she saw someone in the background limping in her direction her at a snail’s pace, growing larger, yet still without any distinctive features in the reflection of the glass. Kate’s eyes widened. The lethargic gait of the tangible form approaching her grew closer, but for some reason, she couldn’t spin around or run away. The image in the reflection held her captivated.
The charred corpse stood directly behind her, and she squirmed when she felt its warm, odourless breath on the nape of her neck steaming the glass. This is really real! her mind screamed.
‘Hello, Kate,’ said the corpse.
‘Oh my God. It’s you - you’re actually talking to me,’ she gasped.
‘Yes, Kate, that’s right. I am talking to you, here and now. In the charred flesh. Nothing like the present, is there?’ She didn’t respond. ‘What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?’ The corpse cackled.
In the reflection pedestrians strolled on by, either not hearing or seeing the corpse, or simply deciding it was in their best interest to ignore it. Yet surely, someone would stop and stare like most folks do when they see something out of the ordinary.
A charred corpse wandering around town in broad daylight ought to be considered out of the ordinary, she thought. So why aren’t they reacting, even in the slightest?
‘You’re not real,’ Kate told herself, wanting desperately for it to be true.
The corpse leaned over her shoulder and spoke softly into her ear. ‘Oh, but I am, Kate... I most certainly am.’
She squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten. When she got to ten, she tentatively opened them.
‘BOO!’
Kate shrieked. She bent over and covered her eyes, leaning against the shop’s advertising window. People passing by seemed to stop what they were doing all of a sudden and stared at her, the way she’d hoped they would have done a few moments earlier. She knew she was blushing fiercely. She had every right to.
When she stood upright again, a man wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap and a white T-shirt with the slogan, ‘Jesus Loves You,’ written on it underneath a picture of Jesus giving a thumbs’ up and winking at whoever looked at it, approached her. ‘Are you all right love?’ he asked, appearing genuinely concerned for her well-being.
She looked maddeningly left to right, thinking she might see the corpse lurking behind a corner smirking at her. But there was no sign of it. ‘I’m fine, really. Thank you,’ she said.
He tipped the brim of his baseball cap. ‘I thought it had something to do with your baby, then. Fuckin’ shit myself, I did.’
Kate was too embarrassed and upset to smile or say that she liked his T-shirt.
Instead she assured him she was all right, and then hurried around the corner into the baby shop, wanting to forget about what had happened.
29
Tom was relaxing in the corner of the sofa next to the arm where he rested his plate of peanut butter sandwiches and put his can of Diet Coke on the floor by his feet. He was watching the highlights of last weekends football matches when the doorbell rang. He picked up the remote and turned the volume down. That’s odd, he thought. He wasn’t expecting any visitors today and the postman had already been to their house early in the morning. Unwillingly, Tom peeled himself of
f the sofa and ambled down the short hallway took the latch off the door prior to opening it.
He winced as the direct sunlight blinded him momentarily. He raised his hand up to shelter the glow and squinted to see who it was that stood on the doorstep.
The shape standing before him didn’t look familiar.
‘Hello, Tom. Good to see you again,’ said a croaky voice that he recognised but couldn’t quite place. ‘May I come in?’
‘What? No! Who are you?’ Tom said, utterly confused and alarmed.
‘Permit me to surprise you,’ the shape croaked.
The tangible shape climbed the step and blocked the sunlight out of Tom’s face so he could see clearly. The father-to-be reeled backwards, tripping over his toolbox, landing on the wooden-panelled floor with a bone-crunching thud.
‘Well, I did surprise you, didn’t I, Tom? Give me that much, at least.’
Tom opened his parched mouth, but no sound came out. His pulse throbbed in his temple.
‘Aren’t you going to invite your old buddy inside? Surely you haven’t forgotten your manners? I mean we haven’t seen or heard from one another for a several months.’
The colour had drained form Tom’s face, even though he was facing the dazzling sunlight. ‘You’re breathing like a man on the run, Tom? What’s the matter?’
‘I... I... though... t, you were...d - dead.’
‘No, Tom. You could just say, I went away for a while... to gather my thoughts and prepare for the next step.’ The corpse paused. ‘Let me in, and I may spare you and your family. What do you say?’
Tom used the radiator to support him as he got to his feet. ‘I can’t believe it’s you,’ he uttered.
‘Why not? Were you hoping I had perished and you would live and be jovial until the end of your days, Tom?’ The creature sneered. ‘Tell me that’s not what you were hoping for, deep down inside that cold, black heart of yours?’
‘You’re not him! You are not HIM! You stole his body or somethin’?’
‘Are you going to let me in, Tom?’ it repeated.