snow – Pen of the Damned

The demon stood in the snow.

Fergus saw it standing in the knee-deep powder through the small window of his front door.

“Don’t try to do too much out there,” his wife Nancy called from the kitchen. “Just take your time.”

“I won’t, don’t worry,” he answered distractedly.

“Amber might join you out there in a little bit if that’s okay.”

Fergus could hear his daughter playing upstairs and nodded.

With his winter jacket, boots and gloves already on, Fergus pulled his toque down over his ears and with a deep breath opened the front door.

It wasn’t very cold although the wind packed a sharp bite as Fergus grabbed the shovel leaning against the house. Ignoring the demon, he began tossing snow from the driveway onto his lawn.

Not much time had elapsed when a burning sensation erupted in his chest. Damn acid reflux.

The demon spoke. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”

“What hurts?” Fergus asked, keeping his back to it as he dug into the snow.

“Your heart.”

Fergus paused, acknowledging the comment. “It’s acid reflux,” he muttered. “That’s all it is. Acid reflux…”

After a few more minutes of shoveling, the pain grew worse. Grimacing, Fergus stopped and rubbed at his chest. “Is this your doing?”

The demon seemed closer yet remained motionless. Only its mouth moved. “Maybe. You don’t see surprised to see me.”

Shaking his head, Fergus said, “No. Somehow I knew you’d be back.”

“Back?”

“I saw you that day,” Fergus said.

“When?”

“The day my father died.”

The demon’s mouth twitched ever-so-slightly, staring hard at Fergus with its emotionless, black eyes. “What did you see?”

“I was only five but remember watching from the living room window,” Fergus began. “It was similar to today. A storm had just dumped over a foot of snow on us and Dad went out to clear the driveway.”

Fergus dug the shovel into the snow and heaved the pile aside.

“You didn’t look real, almost like a reflection off the snow.” Fergus glanced at the demon who appeared even closer. “I remember him looking at you, like he was listening and then nodding. You reached out, touched his chest for a moment and he collapsed. The doctors said his heart gave out.”

The demon nodded. “They always do.”

Fergus rubbed his own chest again, “I had nightmares about you.”

“Worried that I would come for you?”

Fergus shook his head. “No, what scared me was wondering what you said to him.” He took a step toward the demon. “What did you say?” He glared into the demon’s eyes, noticing that they rippled in the wind.

“I explained your family’s unfortunate legacy. Would you like to hear it?” Not waiting for an answer, the demon continued. “Basically, thanks to a distant and sadistic ancestor of yours who made a deal with my master, your family has to forfeit a male soul to us every generation. We leave it up to you to determine whose soul we take.” In the blink of an eye the demon was face to face with Fergus. “Your father gave us his.”

The front door opened and Amber bounded from the house into the snow, drawing her father’s attention. “Hi Daddy,” she called out playfully.

“Hey there, sweetie,” Fergus replied. Turning his attention back to the demon, he asked, “So why go through all of this? Why not come and take the one you want?”

“As I said, you or a male from your family has to make the decision. That was the deal. Sadly, since you have no brothers, it will end up being you.”

“What if I say no?”

“Don’t.”

“If I’m the only male and I say no, then are you shit out of luck?”

The demon’s brow creased and its eyes narrowed. “Don’t.”

“Or else what?”

The demon blinked and time stopped, frozen in place. Snowflakes hung motionless in midair. All went deathly still. Fergus found he could turn his head but quickly grew concerned when he realized the demon was no longer in front of him. It was kneeling in front of Amber. Her eyes were wide, full of fear; her mouth open forming an ‘O’ shape. She’d never looked so fragile or terrified.

The demon had the tips of its fingers inside of her chest.

“Get the hell away from my daughter!” Fergus screamed trying to run but his feet would not move.

“This is your only warning,” the demon hissed. “You may hold the initial choice of whose soul we get but when complications arise, the rules change and the choice becomes ours. We can take any soul we want at that point. It would still be better if you made the decision to honor the original deal, but either way, a soul will be coming back with me.”

It twisted its hand slightly deeper into Amber’s chest.

Tears streamed down Fergus’s face. “Get the fuck away from her!”

“Then make the choice.”

Fergus screamed, “Take mine, damn you!”

In a flash the demon was back in front of him. “You made the right call,” the demon grinned.

Time resumed as Amber shook her head, slightly dazed. She looked at her dad and smiled as the demon plunged its hand into Fergus’s chest. The cold, demonic fingers wrapped around his heart, slowly constricting it.

With his legs growing weak, Fergus sat back in the snow. A tingling spread through his body but after a few seconds it began to subside. Fergus then felt nothing as the demon pulled its hand out.

“Are you okay, Daddy?” Amber asked.

The demon disappeared and Fergus’s world went dark as he replied, “I’m fine… sweetie…”

~ Jon Olson

They preferred the angry gnash of the storm over the silence.

Like nervous teeth, the panes chattered. The rafters creaked; dust floated down upon their heads.

The man—the man who had been taken in—spoke in a hoarse whisper. “I’ll go. I’ll do it. If it wasn’t for your family, I’d still be out there. Or worse.”

No one answered. No one argued his point, either. Finally, the father spoke. “The shed is about twenty yards back. It’s unlocked.”

The man massaged his crooked chin. “Door swing in or out?”

The father believed it was a good question to ask; this man was sharp. Pride swelled within him. It had been harrowing, but his family had done good, risking their wellbeing to drag the man in from the outside. But a pit burned the father’s stomach. The man had gotten lucky once. Luck would not prevail a second time. “In.”

“Long as the wind didn’t bang it open, I’m good.”

The father pressed his hand against the pane, its surface cooling his fever within. He could see nothing beyond the glass, however. “The generator is in the back, set on blocks. It should be deep enough into the shed to be protected. When you stand in front of it, look down to your right. The gas can will be there.”

“Only one?”

The father felt his family press behind him. Mother’s face stooped lower than the boughs of the snow-laden trees. What remained of them, anyway. She clutched their children—son and daughter—under breasts that hadn’t been touched in years. “Yes.”

“Mm-hmm.” The man knew what that meant. The generator would power the house for another full day, at most. “I won’t allow your family to grow cold. I’ll fill it. When it runs out, we’ll figure out what’s next. Together.”

The man shrugged into his coat, careful not to worsen the tear along the shoulder seam. He tugged his wool hat until it hung low over his brow. He looked at the children, the souls-sucked-dry children. “Together,” the man repeated, not sure for whose benefit he’d said it, and cradled his rifle in his arm.

He reached for the door, but the father seized his hand. “Keep low. Don’t stop.”

The man grunted and was ready. The father twisted the knob. The wind shoved the door aside, and immediately the shrieking swallowed the man as well the snow, the blinding snow. The father threw his back into the door, snaring the blizzard’s icy tendrils in the jam. The storm howled; the panes rattled like tormented bones. “He’ll make it,” the father said, talking to the walls. “He’ll make it.”

The father watched as the man sunk thigh deep into the drift, watched and lost him to the white. The blizzard erased his footprints in one exhale. Then he waited. The minutes passed. “We needed him,” he said to the mother. “It could’ve been me instead.”

“It should have been you instead.”

He exhaled icy smoke, then chewed the inside of his mouth. He slowly turned around, keeping vigil at the pane. Snowflakes clung, mounting and growing ever deeper, white locusts of a great plague. Minutes. Minutes. Minutes passed.

“Gas can’s emptied by now.” The father visualized the man’s progress, the man’s steps. “Priming it…cranking it over…he knows what he’s doing…he knows…”

The children sniffled on the hardened snot clotting their noses. And their mother hugged them close to a heart that had long grown cold.

The father clutched the knob. Waiting. It vibrated in his hand. “Any minute.”

A gust charged the house, a mighty bull outside the walls. The rafters groaned; dust danced upon their heads; small, ghostly marionettes. “Any time now…”

He heard a distant crack. Another trunk snapping. Another tree succumbing to the storm. He thought of his neighbors, the elderly neighbors, for whom he’d once mowed their lawns. “Any…time…now…”

A spirit beckoned from the nether; the man emerged, white, spectral white, coat and hat and legs white, face and brow crusted in wind-driven snow. The rifle slung like a long ice shard over his shoulder. “I told you,” the father said, voice rising like the wind, “I told you!”

The man, mere feet from the door, polluted the drift with a crimson spray. The father jerked from the window as if struck. But his eyes stuck to the pane.

They swirled round the man, the needle teeth, the razor claws, unnatural piranhas of winter’s blight, tearing and cutting as the gale disguised their intentions. The wind kept the man upright, and the drift kept him mired. And they swirled, swirled till the man was no more.

The crimson spray disappeared, the drift a new blank canvas from which to paint. The man’s entrails clung briefly to the pane before slipping away.

He shuddered, the father did, but he would not cry. He covered his mouth. “We lost a good man.”

Then a loud click in the father’s ear. “We lost a good man,” the mother said, “and now we have none.”

The father felt the cold metal against the back of his head. It pushed forward, forcing him toward the door. “We have power now. When it runs out, we’ll figure out what’s next. Together,” the mother said to her children.

“You won’t survive without me.”

“Maybe not. But I sure as hell won’t die with you.”

The rifle burrowed into the base of his skull. He clutched the knob. He would freeze to death without a coat, without the proper clothes. He prayed that would be the best thing to come.

The father stumbled into the maw of the blizzard. It chewed him alive.

“There, there, my babies,” the mother cooed to her children, watching as their father filled the pane. “There, there.”

~ Joseph A. Pinto