Stand on Your Own Head

The address on the card turned out to be a retirement home: Oaksdale Assistant Living. It looked...like an old folk's home. A nice one, but not what I expected. I walked in and there was a bored looking receptionist. I asked to speak to Mr. Houdin. I lied and said I was his grandson. She didn't actually seem to care - she just spoke to someone over the phone and then told me 'Bob' was in the garden.

As I walked through the retirement home, I saw all the elderly. They were sleeping and playing chess and reading the newspaper and watching television. It seemed so mundane after what I had been through.

I was expecting to find Houdin in a fortress-like home, where he would have a dozen locks and a massive security system. Instead, I found him in a wheelchair next to a row of hedges reading a yellowed paperback. He looked old, at least in his seventies. "Hello," I said.

"Hey," he said. "Someone send you?"

"Yes," I said and used the code phrase the man had told me to say. "A lad insane."

Houdin smiled. "Sane, huh. I should have figured. Can you do me a favor? Can you look over there?" He pointed at some trees. I looked. "See anything?"

"No," I said.

He nodded. "That's good. Sit down, kid. Let's have a chat." I sat down on the bench next to him. He looked me over and nodded again. "Well, you haven't looked up in the sky since you got here, can't be the birds. You're not scratching or itching or washing your hands, so it's probably not the doc. And you looked at the trees and didn't see anything, so we can rule out our skinny friend. So I'm going to guess...the cold one."

"Yes," I said. "They said I should run."

"They always say that," he said. "And it is the best strategy sometimes. It makes it...more of a game, you might say. Cat and mouse. But you can't run forever. Eventually, you give up the ghost. I ran for years. I missed my entire midlife crisis to running. I crossed the entire world. I went to places I never thought I'd go, yet I never really took the time to appreciate them. Because I was always running."

"How'd you live for so long?" I said. "I mean...you're still alive. And you're not running anymore. I thought...I actually thought you would be living like a hermit in some sort of fortress."

He laughed at that. "Nah," he said. "That's what you want at first, but soon you realize it doesn't matter. All the locks you could buy won't keep out one of them. If they want you dead, you're dead. The trick is to make them not want you dead. I remember the Cold Boy." He closed his book and looked up. "I had cut everyone out of my life. I figured I had to go alone. And after a few months of that, I started to hear this singing. I thought I was going insane at first, but I kept hearing it. 'Row row row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.' Over and over."

"That's happening to me," I said. "Exactly like that. How...how did you stop him?"

"Figured it was because I was isolated," he said. "So I started making friends again. I was a naturally friendly guy, so all I had to do was walk into a bar and buy a few rounds and soon I had a dozen new friends. They weren't real friends, but they were enough to keep the Cold Boy at bay until I could get back in touch with my family. He likes the lonely. If you aren't lonely, sometimes he won't go after you."

"Sometimes?" I said. "What does that mean?"

He shrugged. "That means that they got a strange set of rules. They behave in certain ways. They target certain people. You aren't one of those people, maybe they won't target you. Or maybe they will. Guess it just depends."

"On what?"

"If you're lucky." He scratched his chin. "Me? I've been lucky. Met a few of them and came out without dying. Can't use my legs anymore, but since I'm an old man, I figured I don't need 'em that much anyway."

"How long?" I asked. "How long did you run?"

"Started in '63. Stopped...oh, sometime in the '90s. Felt I couldn't run anymore. I said screw it and waited for one of them to come kill me. Funny thing is, none of them did. Oh, I still see them every now and then. Look at those trees again for me, will you?" I looked at the trees. There was a man standing next to them now. "What do you see?" Houdin asked.

"A man," I said.

"What's he look like?"

I looked closer at the man next to the trees, but my eyes become watery and started to hurt. "I can't...I can't see him that well," I said.

"'Course not. He's just dropping by, a visit from an old friend. I figure someday he'll appear right inside my bedroom and then I'll be gone. But I've lived long enough that I don't have many regrets. You, however, probably have a few."

"What can I do?" I asked.

He looked at me. His eyes were old and the skin around them was sharp with wrinkles. "Don't be so lonely, kid," he said. "Try to find someone you can run with. Even if you're afraid of exposing someone else, you can't stay alive and stay alone. Wish I could do more to help, kid, but that's as much as I have."

I got up. "Thanks," I said and started to walk away.

"Hey, kid," I heard him call out. "Get yourself a digital thermometer. It'll tell you when he's near. Won't stop him, but you can at least know."

"Thanks," I said again and left.

Henry is dead. He died sometime after being admitted to the hospital. They told me that the frostbite was too severe and even amputating his arm wasn't enough.

In the empty hospital room, where the doctor was gently explaining it to me, I heard a voice. A child's voice, but it sounded strange, as if it wasn't coming from anywhere, but everywhere:

"Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Brother John, Brother John? Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing. Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong."

The air grew cold and I could see my breath in front of my face. The doctor didn't seem to notice anything himself, though, because he kept saying that he was sorry for my loss.

I asked him to show me the way out. I didn't want to walk there alone.

My head hurts. My eyes still ache from...wherever I was.

Henry's in the hospital. They said that they might have to amputate his arm. When they brought him into surgery, he begged me not to leave him alone, but I couldn't stay. I couldn't.

Holly's dead.

I don't understand. I don't understand what happened at all.

She told me everything she knew about it. About the Cold Boy. She said that we were going to take the fight to it. "How?" I asked.

"It has minions," she said. "They call themselves the Children of the Cold. They can't be hurt by bullets, but I know what probably will hurt them." She brought out bottles, half-filled with alcohol, the tops stuffed with rags. "Molotov cocktails," she said. "It's time to fight ice with fire."

And so we made a plan. And we waited. We waited for the enemy to appear. "I see one," Henry finally said. He had the binoculars, he was our lookout. They were coming for us, but we could see them when they did.

I don't even know his last name. They asked me at the hospital, but I didn't know. His arm looked pale and dead. "Advanced stages of frostbite," they said.

"I see one," Henry said. "It's time," Holly said. We packed our Molotov cocktails and the lighters Holly had handed out (mine was bright green) and stepped outside into the cold. Henry pointed and we saw him: a small child on the edge of the quad, kneeling down, his eyes staring at us. They were black.

"Now what?" I asked.

"We follow him," Holly said. "They'll lead us to more, perhaps a lair of some sort. And then we burn it down. We see how they like fire."

We followed the black-eyed child. I'm sure he knew we were following him. He didn't care. I swear I heard him laughing sometimes, laughing at our naivete. At our stupidity.

He was leading us to a trap. Of course he was. Perhaps Holly and Henry were so consumed with destroying the enemy that they didn't see it. Perhaps they saw it and decided to go anyway. (I don't know why they were so gung-ho about it, but Holly said that it was personal for Henry, that some member of his family had been taken by the Cold Boy. One of the black-eyed children might have been his.)

So we followed the child and he led us to a building on the edge of campus. We followed him like fools. Holly went first and then Henry and I was last, holding my Molotov cocktail out like it would protect me. Inside was a corridor and then a set of double doors. Holly and Henry pushed them open and walked through and I turned around to check behind me. Then I walked through the double doors.

And I found myself someplace cold and white. All around me was a blizzard and snow began to cover my feet and legs. I tried walking forward, but just moving was hard. I finally realized that I still had my Molotov cocktail in my hand, so I lit it and watched it burst into flames, then dropped it on the ground. It created a small fire that warmed me for a moment before the flames completely died. I tried looking around, but all I could see was whiteness. A blank white nothingness.

I closed my eyes and felt my heat seeping away from me. I opened them and found myself back in the corridor. Holly and Henry were gone. I ran forward looking for them.

I found them a few rooms later. Henry said that he had been waiting for them. I didn't have to ask who. The room was covered in a thin layer of frost. Holly was lying face down on the floor. I turned her over to see how she was, then backed away and vomited. Her eyes had been frozen solid, then shattered. Her mouth was frozen in a scream.

I called 911. Henry was crying in pain, his right arm motionless and pale. I couldn't look at Holly's body, so I looked around the room. There was a whiteboard on the wall. Someone had written on it. Someone had written:

JE T'ATTENDS DANS
LE COEUR D'HIVER
LA COUR D'HIVER

I erased it before the paramedics got there.

It started to snow. Clumps of white snow covered the ground.

I was going for a walk, looking for a place to eat that was still open. I thought that I was going to have to finally resort to the old stereotype and eat Chinese food on Christmas Day.

And then it began to snow.

I looked behind me. No snow. I looked far ahead of me. The ground was devoid of anything resembling snow. It hadn't even been that cold. But now, right where I was standing, it was freezing. It was snowing.

I ran. And when I stopped, I looked behind me and the snow was melting. But then it began to snow where I was standing. So I ran again. And whenever I stopped, it started to snow.

An old joke that my grandfather had told rose unbidden in my mind: I've never seen snow, but I've seen snue. What's snue? I don't know, what's new with you?

What's new with me? Well, apparently, I'm being followed around by the embodiment of entropy and he looks like a little boy and he likes to sing songs and he's fucking around with by making it snow wherever I am. That's what's new.

I came to my apartment building. And outside, standing on the steps, was Claire.

"He's giving you a chance," she said. "He's showing you the signs."

"I don't want to be cold," I said, trying not to shiver.

"You already are," she said. "You are cold and alone. But you don't have to be alone." She held out her hand. "You can be like me. Be like us."

"Us?" I looked around and saw that the street was no longer empty of people. There were kids standing on the corner, standing in a circle. There were five of them, the youngest maybe eight, the oldest fourteen. They looked at me with black eyes.

"We are the Children of the Cold," Claire said. "With his touch, we were born again. We're never alone now. And we never will be. Join us."

It was so tempting. She was beautiful standing there in the snow. I wanted to take her hand. But there was something nagging at me. Nagging at my mind. I said, "Or what?"

Claire pulled back her hand. "He will take you no matter what. I was merely offering the easier solution. The one where you won't have to be alone. If you refuse this, he will take you and you will be alone forever. Alone and cold."

"Why?" I asked.

"It is what he is," Claire said. "No more questions. We need your answer. Will you come with us?"

I hesitated. If what she said was true, this was the better option. But I hated being forced to do anything. Dangle a carrot in front of me and I will turn the other way. Say "Do this or die" and I will refuse.

"No," I said.

Claire frowned. "I'm sorry you said that. I thought we would be together." She nodded her head and the black-eyed children started walking over. Some of them smiled and I saw that their teeth were white and sharp.

Then there was a loud screech and the bright light of headlights blinded me for a second before a voice yelled out my name. "Get it!" I looked behind me and there was a truck, a white truck with what looked like a fire hose in the back. A man was holding onto the fire hose. "Get it!" the voice shouted again.

The black-eyed children ran towards me. The man in the truck bed turned on the fire hose and it knocked them over like bowling pins. I ran towards the truck, but then felt someone grabbing my arm and turned. It was Claire. Her touch was colder than anything I've ever felt before. But then a hand grabbed by shirt collar and pulled me into the truck and Claire had to let go.

I turned to look at the driver and got another shock. It was Professor Holly Sachs. "Sorry I lied to you, kid," she said. "I had to make sure you weren't working with them."

"Them," I said and turned back. As we sped away, I could see Claire looking at me, her eyes as black as coal.

Santa's Beard

I went to my work's Christmas luncheon yesterday. I would have skipped it but if we go, we get the rest of the day off with pay. And I need money. I need money because I don't know what I'm going to do.

I haven't seen Claire since Thursday. I'm not sleeping that well. It gets so cold in my apartment and then I start thinking that it's because of, you know, him. The name that commenter said. The Cold Boy.

God, that sounds like a dumb name. I mean, when I think of some embodiment of cold and entropy, I think of, you know, ice giants and stuff from Norse mythology. Not a little boy. But maybe that's the point. Maybe it's a boy so we won't notice him, so we won't even look at him as he's looking at us.

At the Christmas luncheon, the heaters stopped working. It got real cold for everybody. It ended early because of that. My boss wished us all a Merry Christmas. "And a Happy Hanukkah," she said in my direction.

I don't have a menorah. I think even if I did, if I tried to lit the candles, they would swiftly go out.

It's too cold for candles.