Daniel ignored the sharp bite as the cold sunk deeper into his bones. The last of the pale light faded ghostlike beneath the thickening mass of snow laden clouds that triggered the street lights along his quiet street. He scraped a mitten-covered hand across his red and dripping nose. Just a little more, he thought as he patted the rotund snow man in his front yard. He used the nut shells to fashion a wide grinning smile and added his sister’s red checked hat to the head. There, he thought. He looks good! Daniel stepped back, half turning, to see if his sister had a good sight of the round fellow. She waved from her chair by the window. Her leg in a heavy cast, there would be no snow ball fighting for her.
Fists on his hips, he surveyed his
creation and nodded. He bent to pick up the carrot and add the final touch to
his snowman when he saw the neighbor’s yard next door. The house was dark as always. They never
decorated for any holiday, but at Christmas it seemed they turned off even more
lights. Now, in the front yard there was
a figure shaped from the fresh snow. In Daniel’s
yard, the bright white snow was fluffy and soft and could easily be rolled into
giant balls for his snowman. Next door,
however, the snow appeared darker, silvery.
The neighbor’s snowman wore a black hat slanted down over its icy face
and a satin scarf hung down the front. Its two arms were formed by the gnarled
black branches of a dead tree.
Daniel forced himself to look away;
there was something disturbingly compelling about the figure. He felt so terribly cold, wanting nothing
more than to go inside to warm up. But it was weird how he kept finding himself
transfixed by the snowman. He twisted around in the snow and stomped up to the
front door, willing himself to not look back as he rushed into the warmth and
light of his home.
At bedtime, the wind wailed as
freezing rain peppered the darkness outside his bedroom window. Throwing back his covers, Daniel crept softly
to the window and peered into the dark at his fat, jolly snowman. His sister had
loved it and spent most of the night staring at it from the window near the
fire.
Something pulled his eyes and
thoughts like a dark magnet toward the neighbor’s yard. Daniel jumped and fell
back into the room.
Heart pounding, he looked out the
window again to confirm his initial impression. It was closer. The dark, icy
column with its twisted arms, slanting black hat, and sinuous black scarf that
whipped like a serpent in the freezing wind was no longer in the yard next
door. It was a foot inside his own. It no longer stared blankly out to the
street, but now its frigid face was facing Daniel’s own creation.
The wind moaned and roared around
the window like the cries of arctic beasts. Outside, ice-laden branches were
the cracking bones of their prey. Chilled despite the warmth of the room,
Daniel turned away, afraid of this icy intruder. It couldn’t be, he thought. I
must have thought it was deeper into the neighbor’s yard that it actually was.
Daniel mustered the courage to peek
again into the frigid night.
It was closer.
Each time Daniel looked away in
chilled fear, he would turn back to find the snowman closer, its twisting arms
reaching out.
Suddenly, the bright red hat lifted
off the head of Daniel’s snowman and fluttered about like a moth in the amber
glow of the street lamp. Inches as a time, the dark, silvery column of ice
moved closer. The red hat spun on the
breeze and drew up above the black hat of the encroaching figure. It spun and twisted in the swirling wind
until it was a ruddy blur. A black branch shot out from the neighbor’s snowman
toward Daniel’s. A sudden icy rattle knocked at the window and the street light
went out.
Stillness came with the dark.
Daniel found the sudden, searching quiet more unsettling than the roaring wind.
He felt his heart pound as dared not breath. Daniel stood there in front of the
window with the certainty that something crucial was happening outside in that
cold, frozen night. He felt it
breathing, he sensed it searching, and he knew it was waiting.
Daniel couldn’t say how long he had
stood there waiting, but his feet had grown cold. Still, he watched the black
outside, searching with horrible anticipation for some sign of what was
happening.
He waited. He watched.
In the pale silver light of dawn, details
became manifest. An icy sheen covered every tiny branch and icicles hung like
brittle fingers from gutters and roof and phone lines. A buttery sun fought to
crawl through the crystalline clouds. He
sought out the alien snowman, but could see no trace of it anywhere.
“Danny!!! Oh, thank you Danny!” his
sister was yelling from downstairs. She is
going to wake Mom and Dad, he thought as he dashed out the room and down
the stairs.
“Cut it out, will you? You’re gonna
get us in trouble.” He said as he came to where her makeshift bed had been made
near the window.
“Thank you, Danny! How did you do
it? Did you go back outside after we went to sleep? Like Santa Claus?” She was
pointing and smiling. He turned to look out the window and stumbled back a step
at what he saw. “You are the best big
brother in the world!”
He walked to the window and pulled
the curtains apart to reveal the scene.
The snowman he had created in the middle of the yard now stood just
outside the window. He was turned to face toward the window but it seemed he
could also look at the yard. He seemed
taller, straighter, and different. The
bright red hat still perched on his head but across his front he held, like a
soldier might hold a weapon, a gnarled and blackened length of branch. Around one end was tied, like a trophy, a length of shiny black
satin.
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