Snow

that it was locked.

  “Grandpa, open the door,” I yelled out. I waited for a few moments and pounded on the door, but no reply. I walked over to the living room window to find that the curtains were now drawn shut. I knocked on the glass in hopes that maybe he had just fallen asleep by the window. I heard a rustling inside and the front door creaked open.

  “Chris, is that you?” my grandfather said.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Why’d you lock the door?”

  “I was just…I don’t know. It was nothing,” he said as I walked in. He quickly slammed the door behind me and pushed the lock closed.”

  “Are you ok, Grandpa?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just…the snow. It surprised me.”

  “Weren’t you the one that just told me before I left that it looked like snow tonight?” I said as I brought the pizza into the living room and set it on the coffee table.

  “Yes, yes…I did, but it just…surprised me.”

  “Um, ok.” I sat down and grabbed a piece from the box. Surprisingly, it was not yet completely cold. “It did seem to whip up quickly. The pizza guy got stuck at the end of the street. Good thing that we didn’t wait longer to order.” Grandpa was staring at the closed curtain. “Are you sure you’re ok?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s just the snow. It does something to me,” he said as he sat down next to me and grabbed a piece of the pizza. His eyes never left the window.

  “This is gonna sound weird, but did you make those snowmen outside? I’m sure that’s impossible, but…”Before I could finish, he dropped his pizza and limped to the curtain and pulled enough away to steal a peek outside.

  “Turn off the light,” he whisper-yelled at me. I looked to where he dropped his pizza topping-side down on the couch. I picked it up to see a giant grease stain had already formed.

  “My mom’s gonna kill me.” I said.

  “Quick, turn off the lights,” he called out again. I was still staring at the grease stain. “Do it, now.”

  I reached over to the only lamp that was on and flipped it off. The TV remained on, but it was on silent. There was a news report on that looked to be about the snowfall. “What’s your problem, Grandpa?”

  “I’m sorry to drag you into this, but I guess you’re a part of it now,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Mrs. Munson, she was a witch, you know?” he responded without a look of humor in his face that you would expect to see when someone says something like that.

  My grandfather used to live on his own on the other side of town. Up the street from his home lived Mrs. Munson. She was part of a family that was well known throughout the area. Everyone who grew up here knew the history. The family roots could be traced to some of the original settlers in the county. However, in recent years, the family had seemingly died off and it was within the past year that she too had passed away

  “Mrs. Munson was a witch? Grandpa, that sounds crazy.”

  “Shut up and listen,” he said as he peeked back out the window again.”Remember last year when your mom found me on the side of the road? I told her I just went for a walk and fell. Well, obviously, that’s not really the whole thing. I had lived by Mrs. Munson for many years, but I had only ever spoken to her a few times. She kept to herself a lot and didn’t leave the house much. On the rare occasion that I did speak to her, she always seemed a bit odd. She had this way of speaking to you, but you always felt like she was looking and talking to someone directly behind you. It was a strange feeling.”

  I reached for another slice of pizza. This was starting to seem like taking care of him was going to be more work than I anticipated. At least he wasn’t going to be boring. “So she broke your hip because you called her a witch, Grandpa?” I asked somewhat sarcastically.

  “Don’t be a smart aleck. I’m trying to tell you something important here. I did go for a walk that day. That much is true. I just went two blocks over to the convenience store and got me a lottery ticket. On my way back I noticed Mrs. Munson’s garden that stretched around the side of her house. There was a single giant tomato growing on the outer edge. I walked up to it to get a good look and it was beautiful.” He made his hands into fists and pressed them together. “It was perfectly shaped and larger than my two hands put together. Much finer than the ones I was growing in my own garden. Honestly, I didn’t intend to take it, but it was just so perfect. I looked around and towards the house, but it didn’t seem like she was home so I quietly plucked it. Before I could even set a single foot off her lawn, I heard her voice and there was, I swear, a crack of thunder followed by her voice which was even louder and more terrifying. I could feel her words. They were pulling at my mind. That sounds crazy, but with each word, I could feel something clawing at my body. My only thought was to get away, but my body just refused to move. I fought against my own strength and was finally able to pull away and I ran. I could hear her behind me shrieking. I couldn’t make out most of it, but the one part I caught, which never left me was, ‘They will find you when the snow comes.’ Those words didn’t scare me until now.”

  “And then she broke your hip?”

  “Obviously, I’m not in any shape to be running, but I was able to get a few houses down. Foolishly, I looked behind me as I ran. I tripped and fell into the ditch and broke my hip. Thankfully, she didn’t follow. I had my phone in my pocket, so I called your mom to come get me. I still had the tomato in my hand, so I ate it and scratched my lotto ticket while I waited. I put that out of my mind as best I could until the news said that we might get snow.”

  “So Mrs. Munson was a witch that broke your hip or cursed you with snow because you stole one of her tomatoes?”

  “You make it sound so petty, but anger runs deep and revenge should never be trivialized.”

  “Ok, that’s great Grandpa, but it sounds kind of crazy. I wouldn’t go around telling people about that.”

  Our conversation was then interrupted by a tapping on the window. It was so soft that we were unsure if we had heard it. We both looked towards the curtained window in silence. Then it happened again. This time, there was no mistaking that we heard something. It was a slow deliberate tapping. There was no way to mistake that what we were hearing was anything other than someone trying to get our attention.

  “Were you expecting anyone?” Grandpa whispered.

  “No,” I replied. Grandpa made a motion for me to keep my voice down. From all the snow outside, it wasn’t likely that anyone would have driven up and we hadn’t seen headlights flash against the curtain. “Maybe it’s just one of our neighbors.” This time, I whispered back for his sake. The tapping on the window happened again as I walked to the front door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m gonna see who it is.”

  “Don’t do that, they’ll get inside.”

  Grandpa was slowly making his way over to the door, but I had already unlocked it and peeked out. I quickly closed it and fixed the lock again. “Ok, Grandpa, that stuff you were just saying about Mrs. Munson, is that really what happened?”

  He looked confused, “Yes, God’s honest truth, why?”

  “Because there’s a snowman outside knocking on the window. What do we do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Weren’t you in the army or something? Don’t they train you for stuff like this?”

  “Chris, no one trains anyone about anything to do with witches or snowmen. Ok, let me think. What do snowmen not like?”

  “The sun!”

  “It’s already dark; we’re getting no help there. We need heat. What do we got that makes heat? The heater. Chris, turn the thermostat up as high as it will go,” he said.

  I ran into the hall and flipped the thermostat up to ninety-six, where it maxed out. “Ok, done. Now what?”

  “Does your mom have a hairdryer?”

  I ran upstairs to my parent’s restroom to rummage. When I came back downstairs, Grandpa was pulling an extension cord from und
er the sink. “I got the hair dryer and I also found a curling iron and clothes iron.”

  “Good, plug into one of these.” He handed me an extension cord and took the curling iron and clothes iron from me.” I plugged the hair dryer into the extension cord and wrapped the rest of it around my arm. I would be able to quickly plug it into an outlet wherever I was in the house. Grandpa did the same, but also put on one of my mom’s flowery kitchen aprons and hung the curling iron in one of the pockets. The clothes iron was a bit too big to do the same, so he draped it over his shoulder from the cord. I reached into one of the cabinets and pulled out a metal strainer and put it on his head. “That’s for just in case.”

  We had forgotten about the tapping. For a while, it was a constant steady sound. Only now it had changed to a hard thump against the glass.

  “Chris, they may be ready to try and make their way in. We need a defensible position. There’s too many windows down here. We’ll have to move upstairs.” We made our way to the stairway. There wasn’t going to be an easy way to do this. Grandpa put his arm over my shoulder and I helped him slowly up each step.

  At the top of the steps, I released him to lean against the wall while I grabbed a wheeled desk chair for him to sit in. As I was wheeling him into my parent’s bedroom, we heard what must have been the living room window shattering. I locked the door and plugged our extension cords into outlets.

  “What do we do when they get up here?” I asked.

  “We’re just gonna have to hope that these things get hot enough.”

  We could hear more crashing sounds coming from downstairs. It sounded like they were breaking the rest of the windows out and took to smashing whatever else they could find: the lamp, the glass coffee table and probably some decorative vases that my mom kept by the front door. We could then hear a sloshing watery sound beyond the door. They were coming up the steps.

  “Maybe they’ll not know how to use a door knob.” I should have just shut up. At that moment, we could see a line of barbed wire snake its way through the crack under the door, move up towards the knob, clicked the lock open, wrapped itself around the knob and turned it.

  “Oh crap,” Grandpa said.

  I grabbed the back of his chair and pushed him into the restroom. The extension cord unplugged and he started rolling it up with him. I turned to see one of the snowmen making its way into the room. It was the smallest one whose rock eyes had fallen out. For a moment, I wondered, “Does it really need those rocks to see?”

  I flipped the hair dryer to high and pointed it directly at its face. It melted up slightly and a small piece fell away. I immediately regretted this because I realized that it probably didn’t know I was standing directly in front of it until I did that. It lunged directly at me and pinned me to the ground. I managed to keep the dryer directly on its head even while pinned down. The mud and slushy snow melted and dripped onto my face. Its barbed wire arms seemed to extend and grab mine so that it could point the dryer away. Blood began running down my arms where the barbs were cutting into me.

  There was no mouth on the snowman, but I swear I could hear it growling at me. It then pressed its head against mine and I could feel it start to envelope me. I closed my eyes and suddenly felt cold water splashing against me. The snowman pulled back and released its hold on me. Seizing my chance, I was able to pull myself out from under it.

  “Are you ok, Chris?” Grandpa asked. He had the shower head in his hand and had turned the pulse setting on high and was spraying it into the room. The water was hitting the snowman and icing up around it, making it unable to move. “Hit it with something!”

  I grabbed the hot clothes iron that we had set on a side-table and swung it down onto the snowman’s head. It shattered and the pieces melted away from the continued spray from the shower.

  “Where are the others? I saw four on the road.” We couldn’t hear any other sounds in the house except for the wind that was now blowing through the living room window.

  “I don’t know. No others were with it.”

  “Maybe they just sent one in to check things out. What do we do now?”

  The light in the restroom went out. We both looked at each other and realized that the power had been cut.

  “I think it’s about to get very cold in here,” Grandpa said as he fished a flashlight out of one of the apron pockets.

  “The hair dryer worked pretty well, but it also got it really mad.”

  “We’re gonna need something stronger.”

  “My dad has a blowtorch in the shed.”

  “That could be dangerous. Are you certain that there were only four of them out there?”

  “Yeah, that’s all I saw out by the street and I didn’t see any others in the yard.”

  More crashing sounds could be heard downstairs. No doubt the TV and china cabinet. “Close the door,” Grandpa said.

  I grabbed the flashlight and crept over to the door. Peeking down the steps, I could hear something at the bottom. I flipped the light on to see the three remaining snowmen at the foot of the stairs. The largest one that was wearing the hat was slowly making its way onto the first step. They didn’t have legs, so it looked more like they were oozing along the ground like snails. “They’re coming up,” I said as I re-entered the room and shut the door.

  “All of them?”

  “Yeah, it may take them a few minutes since I don’t think they’re good with stairs, but they’re coming.”

  “We’re gonna need that blowtorch from the shed. I won’t be able to get out to the ground myself because of my hip. We’ll have to lower you out the window with a sheet, you grab the torch and tie it back to the sheet and I’ll pull it back up and take care of the snowmen.”

  We grabbed the sheets off the bed and tied them together, then to one of the handles in the restroom shower and threw the other end out the window. I crawled out as Grandpa started to lower me down. “If anything happens and you can’t make it back to the window, just make a run for it. They’re only after me so don’t get in the way of them if you don’t have to. I suspect that they won’t chase you. This is my fault this is happening, so I can’t have you getting hurt because of it.”

  I reached the ground and looked around. The sky had cleared completely of clouds and the moon was nearly full and glowing overhead. This lighted my way to the backyard shed. Luckily, my dad never locked it. Closing the door behind me, I flipped the light on and looked around for the blow torch. This was easily found along with the lighter and a welder’s mask. I put the mask on and flipped the hood up. I ran out the door with the intent of getting back to the window as fast as possible.

  I stopped in my tracks immediately on exiting. Standing in the backyard between me and where I needed to be was another snowman as tall as the house. It turned to look directly at me as it heard the shed door slam closed behind me. It let out a growl from its mouth less head that shook the ground. I ran behind the shed without any clear idea of where to go. I heard a cracking sound behind me. The smaller snowmen’s arms were made from barbed wire, but this one’s arms looked like they were made from telephone poles which it was now using to smash the shed. A few quick smacks and it was leveled.

  The area around the house was surrounded by trees, so I ran towards the tree line. Looking back, the giant snowman had continued to follow me. Thrashing its arms around at the trees, it roared with each strike. The trees began falling before it, but they were slowing it down. Grandpa had told me to run if things got bad, but it now seemed like anyone in the area was fair game. I was going to run out of trees for cover soon, so the least I could do was try to get back inside the house to help Grandpa and then decide what to do from there.

  I continued to run through the trees around to the front of the house. The giant snowman was still smashing through trees along the backyard looking for me, so I bought myself a little time. At the door, I lowered the welder’s mask, turned the regulator on high and flicked the lighter. A long blue flame erupted from the to
rch head. Running inside, and up the steps, I found that the three snowmen had made it up the steps and into the bedroom. Grandpa had closed himself inside the restroom and was no doubt spraying them when they tried opening the door.

  I walked up behind the snowman with the hat and swung the torch in a line that cut him in two. The other two snowmen turned, looked at me and then down at their fallen friend. They let out more growls as I swung the blowtorch at them. Just like the first one, it cut through their bodies with their pieces falling to the floor. Grandpa opened the restroom door and began spraying down the fallen pieces with the shower head. They quickly iced up and then melted into the carpet.

  “Ha-ha, we did it, Chris.” Grandpa said. As if on cue, the blowtorch flame died and the room was shook by the giant snowman that had apparently given up the search for me and was now taking to smashing the house.

  “No, there’s one more. One very big one. We need to get out of here. It’s going to smash the house down!”

  At the top of the steps, Grandpa looked down into the darkness. “I can’t get back down there.” Another crash from the giant snowman arms shook the house. “You’re gonna have to make a break for it on your own. I’m sorry I got you dragged into all of this, but I’m gonna have to face this alone now.”

  “No, I can help you get down. We made it up pretty easy. Getting down shouldn’t be so tough.” There was another crash. The wind began whistling in as one of the upper bedroom walls fell away.

  Grandpa took a slow first step down. “That’s not it. Once we get to the bottom, then what?” I can’t run anywhere once we’re down.” There was another crash against the roof. The house creaked as the boards and drywall above began to shift. He took another step down as I put my arm around him and helped him limp down a few more. I could see the pain in his face with each step.

  “This really put me through the ringer. We put up a good fight though didn’t we, kid?” We were nearly at the bottom of the steps now. I could hear the roof over the upper bedrooms falling in. The house wasn’t going take much more. “You’re gonna have to run now. Unfortunately, I don’t know how you’ll be able explain any of this to anyone. I would love to see the expression on your parent’s faces when they come home though.” He let out a chuckle as we reached the bottom of the steps.

  Then there was silence. The crashing from the snowman’s rampage had ceased. All that could be heard now was the creaking of the splintered wood that was loosely holding the remaining walls of the house together.

  “What happened?” I asked. We made our way through the kitchen towards the back door. I opened it up to the sounds of birds chirping. The cat, absent until now, ran inside seemingly oblivious to any of the recent events. The giant snowman was melting away as it thrashed around in the