Frosty
Billy and Zoë were always said to be good kids, not getting in fights, making the sports team, honor roll, debate team, cheer squad, chorus and band. Both moderately popular jacks-of-all-trades, they managed to make prom king and queen even though they were just friends, and got scholarships to the same college. Billy played sports year round, but managed to talk about other things, mainly debating, singing or playing clarinet. Well, not when he was doing those things, as they involved his mouth. He had a tall, muscular build, his features seemingly mismatched. He had soccer legs and basketball feet, baseball arms on a football torso, which his head was thankfully not too small for, his white blond hair contrasting with his frequently red face. Zoë's body, however, seemed more perfectly constructed. She had toasted mocha skin and shiny black hair, large brown eyes, long willowy arms and legs rippling with muscles and small, athletic breasts that did not get in the way when she cheered, played the flute, lacrosse, tennis or cricket. Both frequently smiled, especially when the life-long friends found out they were going to college together.
"Kill me now."
"Come on, Zoë. Your sisters are cute."
Zoë shot her friend a stare far icier than the weather. It was only a few days before Christmas, and they'd only gotten the first real snow of the year the night before. Zoë had been quite petulant about it, she rather liked snow. Billy could go either way on the subject. It was wet and cold and kind of pretty, which might have explained why Zoë was so fond of it. Billy chuckled to himself.
"How old are they? Ten, twelve?"
"Alisha is twelve, Trisha's eight."
"And do you remember what you were like when you were eight?"
"No, I was bust being eight at the time." she replied blandly. "Why, do you?"
"I remember some skinny young flutist blaming me for the unholy squawk in the winds section."
"Oh we were eight, everyone was making unholy squawks." Zoë waved the comment away mildly. "Anyway, you got me back the next day."
"And you got me back later in the week." Billy retorted. The conversation lulled for a moment. "How did we wind up being friends, anyway?" Zoë laughed, and Billy felt compelled to join in. The mist out of their mouths hung in the air a moment before dissolving.
"Anyway, what kept you? I thought we were going to meet up at noonish."
"Yeah, we were... but, since I was in town, with my car, then my parents made me move a bunch of heavy stuff."
"Like what?"
"Boxes of old crap. Mostly uncle Phil's stuff. You know, we all thought he'd be leaving us his house, not his unsorted pile of... whatever."
"Creepy Uncle Phil?" Zoë asked, wrinkling her nose. "Wasn't he a ***** not fair, Zoë. You only met him once, you do not get to call him 'creepy uncle Phil', and they never proved anything." Billy chastised. "Anyway, he was my uncle, and I'm the one who had to sit on his lap for the family picture, so if anyone gets to call him a creepy *****, it's me."
Alisha's head straightened from where she was burying her younger sister in snow.
"Who's a *****?" she called.
"No one, Alisha, we weren't even talking about that." Zoë called. She started walking towards her sisters. "Why don't you get Trisha out of there and maybe we can do something together." She broke a path through the snow with Billy trailing after, as her sisters clumsily stood and shook themselves off.
"Can't say I'm really sorry he's dead, though."
"No one asked you to, Zoë; the man was a creeper." Billy replied, breaking through the snow behind her. Upon reaching the girls, he knelt and pressed a handful of snow between his glove experimentally.
"I think this is sticky enough to make something with." he commented, rounding the ball in his hands.
"Can we have a snowball fight?" asked Alisha, eyes glinting with childlike malice. Images of Trisha on the ground crying, Billy's bulk falling face first to the ground, and Zoë's face plastered with dripping snow filled the eldest sister's mind. Alisha was small, but she was vindictive and a dead shot with a snowball.
"Hmm, how about we make a snowman instead?" the eldest sister suggested. Trisha squealed with glee, throwing herself backwards into the snow, and Billy smiled up at his friend.
The four of them set themselves quickly to the task, the college students succumbing quickly to nostalgia, and in Zoë's case, the sibling dynamic. She ordered the younger girls about affectionately, alternately arguing and stopping fights.
"This is great." Billy grinned, pushing along a large mound of snow. "I haven't made a snowman since I was a kid."
"Me, either." Zoë admitted. "Around middle school, trying to be cool became a full-time job."
"So how come it never sticked?" Alisha asked with the grin of a child who knows she's going to be getting away with being a smartass. Zoë started packing snow to throw at her sister, but Billy took it out of her hands and added it to the ball he'd made.
"This one's about ready to add to the bottom." he commented breathlessly, his cheeks already redder than anyone but him got without serious danger.
"How are the girls coming with the head?" Billy asked. Zoë lifted her head and peered over the partially-constructed snow sculpture. Despite her best efforts to prevent a fight, Alisha was very quietly throwing small globules of snow at her little sister whenever she was looking far enough away that she could justify looking innocent. It looked like Trisha needed a reprieve before the screaming and crying started.
"Guys!" Zoë called. "How's the head coming?"
She straightened and looked at her sisters.
"Alisha! Stop that before you kill her!" Zoë schreeched. Billy looked up. The middle sister was ineffectively encasing Trisha's head in snow, trying to pack it in place before it melted.
"But Zoë," Alisha grinned. "How is the snowman going to think without any brains inside of his head?"
"Then don't pack it around Trisha's head! There's no brains there!" Trisha shook snow out of her curls indignantly.
"Hey! I do too have brains!"
"Then why were you letting her pack snow around your head?!" Zoë countered, tromping towards them. "Now stop being idiots and make the snowman right."
"Stop being so bossy! We'll make the head!"
"And from what I've seen of your sisters, it's one or the other." Billy added. Zoë stopped storming to laugh, and the younger sisters stuck out their tongues in unison. He smiled to himself and went to join them.
"Come on, one more to go. Let's pull together and make this snowman." he said. "Gee, whatever would you girls do without a man around to lead you?"
All three of them reacted to this last comment the way he expected them to, pausing their work on the snowman to pelt him soundly with poorly-packed snowballs.
"Do you have a carrot, Zoë?" Trisha asked. The young woman looked at her friend, who looked at her uncomfortably. The hadn't planned on making a snowman. Therefore, no carrots.
"Uh... carrots are so overdone. Let's try something original." The children did not look like they were going to buy this route, and Billy also looked doubtful.
"Uh, Billy? Why don't you get my camera out of your car?" she smiled somewhat evilly. Billy narrowed his eyes. He knew "go get my camera" was code for "Rummage around in your car for something we can finish off this snowman with. I want to go home, my snot is freezing to my nose."
Billy nodded and went to the car.
"Crazy. They're all crazy. Were their parents like, 'This one's crazy. Let have another so we get a sane one? Whoops, this one's crazy too...' " Billy muttered happily as he approached his car. He felt silly leaving it unlocked, even though he was back in his quiet hometown and there was nothing of value in the car anyway. At the same time, he felt offended thinking that he needed to, here of all places.
The car held as little of value as he suspected it would, some rumbled-up fast food containers, a couple of those reusable shopping bags that he kept buying more and more of every time he went to the store; since he never remembered to bring them in. There was a little round button that had fallen off of someone's purse or vest. Not one of the ones that actually held things closed, the kind that said things like "Your candidate sucks, my candidate rocks" or "I'm too much awesome for you to handle". This particular button said "cool dude".
He found what he was really afraid might have been an old chicken nugget, but turned out to be a charcoal briquette, so he put it into his pocket with the badge.
His eyes fell to the cardboard box.
"Hey uncle Phil." he muttered. "Want one last chance to play with kids?"
He opened the box experimentally and grinned. Perfect. An old black top hat lay right on top of the pile. Nothing said "traditional snowman" like a top hat. They'd probably even forgive him the badge.
He returned with his bounty, hiding the piece of resistance in his coat. It was hard to walk with a hat in your He found that in the meantime, the girls had found or perhaps liberated, some branches, comically long things with a great deal of twigs coming off of them.
"Well, it's time to finish off the failman." Billy said with sarcastic brightness that made Alisha actually smirk. Zoë narrowed her eyes at him and smiled back, though somewhat sarcastically.
"So what have you got?" Alisha asked bruskly, running towards him to collect the items.
"Well, I've got a charcoal briquette."
"Very good."
"How do you figure?" asked Alisha.
"And a 'cool dude' button."
"That's appropriate for someone made out of snow." Zoë replied. He handed her the briquette and the button. "And..."
He reached up the back of his coat and tried to pull out the hat. His face fell, and he tugged harder.
"It's stuck."
"What's stuck?" Zoë asked, coming around to help.
"There's a hat and it's stuck and it's poking me-"
"Why did you stick a hat down the back of your shirt?" Zoë asked, trying to extricate it and exposing much of Billy's skin to the winter in the process.
"Akk!" was his reply. After a moment, she freed it, dusting it off and checking it for dings from being mistreated.
"Hey, it's a snowman hat." said Trisha.
"You know, humans wear them too."
"Really? Who?" she asked. Billy paused, unable to find an answer, and changed the subject.
"They used to make these out of beavers, you know." he mentioned with false calmness, trying to freak out the girls. Trisha just wrinkled her nose in confusion, and Alisha didn't react at all.
"So that's a dead beaver?" Trisha asked.
"Nah, I think they stopped that before the fifties." Billy replied. "This one was my uncle's, so it's probably some kind of fabric."
"I thought they made those out of plastic these days."
"Well, he's not buying hats these days, is he?" Zoë replied. She turned to the snow sculpture. "We might as well trim the snowman..."
"Ah, I forgot the camera." Billy muttered, clapping a mitten to his head.
"You wanna go back for it?" Zoë asked.
"Mm, maybe after we finish it." he replied closing in around the pile of snow. Trish cocked her head.
"He needs a scarf."
"Well, I didn't have one of those..." Billy began, but fell silent as the little girl unwrapped her own from around her neck. The snowman had a good foot and a half on her, so it took her three tries of hopping in place, swinging the scarf, to get it around the top ball. Billy considered helping her, but in the end decided she was too adorable hopping up and down to stop.
"What're we going to do for the mouth?" Alisha asked.
"Well, I didn't really find anything for the mouth, so we'll just make a dent in the head, like in Calvin and Hobbes."
"What's Calvin and Hobbes?" Trisha asked.
"What's Calvin and Hobbes?!" Billy echoed.
"Kids these days..." Zoë shook her head. She broke the charcoal into two pieces and buried the eyes into the snow, then effectively punched the snowman in the face to form a mouth.
"He looks angry." Trisha commented.
"Well yeah." Zoë shrugged. "I just punched him in the mouth." Alisha shook her head. The young man turned to her.
"Wanna do the nose?" Billy asked, handing her the button. Alisha looked at it critically.
"That's not a carrot."
"Well, the hat's not plastic, either." he retorted. She accepted this and placed the badge, standing on her tiptoes to get just the right angle on it. They stood back and admired their work.
"All he needs is a hat." Zoë said proudly.
"Why don't you put it on, Billy?" Trisha asked, hugging his leg. "Everyone else has done something."
"Yeah, Billy, it's your turn." Zoë agreed. "Give him one of those jaunty angles. This man is a pimp."
"Zoë, there's kids right here." he replied nervously.
"Actually, I taught Zoë the word 'pimp'." Alisha commented blandly.
"That is a lie!" the eldest exclaimed.
"Just put the hat on."
Billy sighed and placed the hat on top of the snowman, nestling it firmly onto the packed snow. For a moment, they all stood back and admired their work. The wind rose slightly, and the scarf floated on the breeze picturesquely. There was a soft creaking, like when water freezes inside a live tree. Billy paused, cocking his head and trying to place the noise. It sounded very close. like, within the group close. Maybe the arms of the snowman were catching in the wind as well? Yes, that must have been it, because they seemed to be moving slightly.
Quite suddenly, the branch nearest Zoë swung up and caught in her hair. She cried out in shock and tried to pull away, but found the more she pulled the more tangled she was. Each of the juctions in the branch seemed to turn in on themselves, catching her firmly.
"Argh! Ah, get it off!" she grunted, pulling at the arm.
Slowly, the top ball pivoted on it's torso to turn the mismatch of features towards her. The children screamed and threw themselves back onto the snow, scrambling as they fell. Billy's hands balled in fear, but other then that, moving did not occur to him.
When the face turned fully to Zoë, it's features shifted slightly. It stayed mostly blank, no eyebrows, a attitude button for a nose and expressionless eyes.
"Do you think I am deaf, you little b***h?" croaked a faint voice, the hollow of the mouth moving slightly. Zoë screamed and tried to pull away, but the only managing to stumble in the snow, not falling, not moving, just pointless flailing.
The thin twigs of the snowman's fingers wrapped around Zoë's neck.
"You slander me while you use my best clothes as children's toys? How dare you? How dare you?"
"Sla-sland-" Zoë choked out, feat blocking her throat as much as the wooden fingers.
"I'm not a *****." the ghost snarled, tightening his grip.
"You stay away from her!" Billy screamed, regaining his faculties enough to try to pull the snowman's arm away. It shattered in his hand, but the end that wrapped around Zoë's neck remained, the grip only tightening. She gagged, dropping to her knees and pulling at the wood around her neck.
Billy ran to Zoë and tried to get his fingers under the hand to pry it off.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit!" he chanted, snapping off the fingers one by one. The snowman laughed and Billy started working faster. He finally placed where he knew that voice from. This was worse then just a homicidal snowman.
"Fuu...." Zoë gasped, lacking the air to finish off the monosyllabic word.
"It's Phil. It's Phil. Oh, dammit it's Phil." he muttered, stomping the broken branch into the ground.
"What?" shouted Alisha, cowering behind a nearby pack bench. "Shut up and get away from it!"
"Oh, yes, brilliant idea; I never would have thought of that!" Billy screamed. He half dragged Zoë as he pulled her to her feet. He kept shouting all the while, his face brilliantly scarlet with cold and anger.
"It's Phil's hat and it-- it's crazy, but he sounds just like uncle Phillius! That- that is- That's my uncle in there!"
"He was scary before he was dead!" Zoë exclaimed.
"But that can't be a dead guy!" Alisha protested.
"It's a talking snowman that's trying to kill us. Please tell me how it being a ghost is impossible." Billy shouted exasperatedly.
"Don't talk about me like I'm not here, Billy Boy." the snowman said. He extended his too-long arms and threw his body forward with a tremendous crash. The three balls separated slightly, then drew back together, the snowman moving on his face and belly like a worm, rearing with every thrust to stand erect again, then crashing again to the ground, making the front of his body flatten and the creature misshapen. It's arms drew it forward with freakish speed, lashing out to the end of it's reach and then drawing the body after it. Each time it moved, the ground shook beneath the children, making running difficult, and with the snow nearly impossible.
Alisha tried to run away from the creature, but with every step she seemed to change her mind as to what direction would be most effective. Her eyes flashed back and forth in her head like a panicking horse. The snowman dropped to his front again, the thud shaking Alisha off her feet and into the snow.
The snowman shot his hand forward and caught Alisha around the face and drew his own close to hers, so close she felt the cold coming off of his body. She would have screamed, but with all the gasping of falling; she hadn't the air in her lungs to do more then squeak pathetically.
"Forgive my rude little nephew for not introducing us." the displaced voice said, the featureless hollow moving out of sync with the words. "My name is Philius Hitchner."
"Get away from her!" Zoë screamed, running lightly across the snow, her boots slipping but her body still moving forward.
"It's his hat!" Billy shouted, trying to pull the remaining sister to the car, "His hat made the snowman him!"
"Well, it's my scarf!" Trisha retorted, standing as firmly as she could manage. "That thing is as much me as it is him." Billy tried to think of a response to this, but was distracted by Zoë leaping at the snowman. She tried to get between her sister and the golem, but before she was in range the too-long arm whipped out and knocked her clear across the field.
The eldest sister lay face-up in the field, staring at the pale blue sky with a bemused expression. The wind was gone from her lungs, and she felt vaguely disoriented. There was something she was supposed to be doing. It was why she was so full of adrenaline. She just had to remember what it was, and why she was flat on her back in the snow.
"Zoë!" Billy screamed, turning back to try and help his friend. He ran ungracefully but effectively across the ice, feet flailing as he moved. Why wasn't anyone seeing this? Why wasn't anyone hearing this? They weren't far from the center of town.
Alisha screamed, stumbling backwards. The boy's head turned towards her. Her danger was more eminent then his friend's. Billy changed direction and covered enough ground to grab at the long, swinging arm.
"Stop!" he shouted. The golem stopped moving briefly.
"Come now," the ghost said, turing it's head around the wrong way to face Billy. "It's been so long since I've been out in the world. And Billy, how you've grown. We have so much lost time to make up for." The mouth twisted horribly, and Billy stumbled backwards. That horrible voice made him feel like a scared child again. He barely knew his uncle, but it was more then he wanted. Every word he said sounded like he wanted to hurt you, but had to talk to you civilly instead. He was like that when he was alive, and dying had done nothing to improve his opinion of other people or improve his mood.
"Come on, Billy boy. Let's play." growled Phillius' ghost. With a crunch like snow being trodden on and another set of cracks like breaking branches, the snowman contracted and leapt up at Billy. The sound as it hit the ground again was tremendous, shaking them as they stood. They began to run. Cracks traveled up the bottom ball.
"Get to the car!" Billy screamed at the girls. Alisha had no problem with this idea, and made for the car as fast as she could manage, which naturally made her stumble on the slush and fall to the ground. She scrambled to stand, slipping with every movement but desprately moving forward.
Trisha had started crying; loud terrified sobs with very few actual tears. She didn't seem to have grasped the idea of running as firmly as her sister and just stood in place, shaking.
"Get the hat." Zoë panted, kneeling in the snow. "It all started with the hat, get the hat!"
As foolish and childish as she felt, she gathered snow in both hands and clamped it hard together. The snowball whizzed by the top of the moving pile, not disturbing the article in question. The creature shifted on it's body, sliding towards her like a slug and chuckling darkly to itself.
Trisha stood by a park bench, chewing at her lip. She clenched her eyes shut for a moment, screwing up her entire face, then ran blindly at the monster.
"Trisha, what are you doing? Get back here!" Billy screamed, running after the child.
"Trisha!" Zoë screamed, pulling herself upright with a great deal of slipping. The problem was, with the paced snow and ice, throwing yourself on your belly and drawing yourself up like a slug was actually a more effective way of moving than running, and the snowman, crashing along on his torso, was moving faster than them.
Trisha lost her footing and slid along her bottom, directly toward the beast. She managed to stop herself only a few feet short. He stopped moving and reared to his full height, swinging his long and broken arms at his sides as he did. Trisha was well within their range. Slowly, her little chin lifted as she watched the ghost extend to well above her height.
"I'm not afraid of you." the little girl lied. "I'm not afraid of you! I make you more than you made yourself! I'm not scared!"
"Then you're stupid!" said the ghost with a laugh.
Trisha trembled, her chin crumpling in with repressed tears and her cheeks shiny from the cold and from what she couldn't hold in. If the ghost bore down on her now, his bulk would probably cover her, if not crush her entirely. And he seemed quite willing to do so. She grit her teeth and somehow screamed through them, eyes closed as the tiny girl launched herself at the snowman, catching his torso with her knees and grabbing at his head. The two of them fell back into the snow.
"Trisha!" Zoë screeched, closing the gap between them.
The long, twisted wooden limbs had wrapped around the the little girl's torso; however of the two of them she looked better off. Her knees had crushed the packed snow of the torso, and each of the three balls lay separate on the ground. The charcoal briquette eyes turned, but rather than back and forth as eyes do in sockets they moved independently of each other, rolling back and to the sides with no clear back or front of the eye.
"We couldn't wait for you to melt..." the child floundered for an insult. "Thing!"
The teenagers reached the fallen snowman, but Alisha hung behind, trembling in the snow.
"You've got him, Trisha, you've got him..." Zoë breathed, trying to hold the crushed torso down and remove the eyes from her sister at the same time.
Billy stood, panting, over the creature's head. The hat lay in the snow directly beside The snowman's head. Some of the snow had started to unpack and still clung to the interior. The young man's breath was short and his face was flushed, but he had the b*****d down. The charcoal eyes turned in their sockets. They looked nearly amused.
"Don't worry, Billy Boy." the ghost chuckled. "I won't be gone long."
Billy snarled and raised his boot, crushing the snowman's head beneath his boot. The laughing stopped, and the cold winter morning was finally still.
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