THE NIGHT IS FREEZING FAST

THOMAS F. MONTELEONE

 

 

“Oh damn!” cried Grandma from the kitchen. “I’ve run right out of shortnin’ for my cake!”

“Are you sure?” asked Grandpa. When his wife cussed, she usually was very sure. He eased the Dubuque newspaper down from his face and peeked at her through the kitchen door.

“’Course I’m sure! And if you want a nice dessert for after Christmas dinner, you’ll get into town and get me more shortnin’!”

“What’s ‘shortnin’?” asked Alan, ten years old and always asking questions at what always seemed like the wrong moment.

“But it’s a blizzard goin’ on out there!” said Grandpa. “And it’s Christmas Eve to boot.”

“What’s ‘shortnin’?” asked Alan.

“Rolf, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get into that town and get me my shortnin” Grandma used her tone of voice Alan had learned long ago meant no foolishness.

Grandpa must have noticed it too because he said, “Oh, all right.”

Alan watched him drop the newspaper and shuffle across the room to the foyer closet where he pulled out some snow boots, a beat-up flapdoodle corduroy hat, and a Mackinaw jacket of red and black plaid. He turned and looked wistfully at Alan, who was sitting on the rug watching the Baltimore Ravens play the Kansas City Chiefs on TV.

“Want to take a ride, Alan?”

“Into town?”

“Yep. ‘Fraid so.”

“In the blizzard?”

Grandpa sighed, stole a look toward the kitchen. “Yep.”

“Okay. It sounds like fun... we don’t get snowstorms like this in L.A.!”

“Fun?” said Grandpa, smiling. “Oh yeah, it’ll be great fun. Come on, get your outerwear on, and let’s get a move on.”

Alan ran to the closet and pulled on the heavy, rubber-coated boots, a knit watch cap, and scarf. Then he shook into the down parka his mom had ordered from the L. L. Bean mail order place. His first encounter with cold weather had been a great adventure, a great difference in his life.

“Forty-two years with that woman and I don’t know how she…”

“What’s shortnin’, Grandpa?”

The gray-haired man had just closed the door to the mud porch behind them. He was muttering as he faced into the stinging slap of the December wind, the bite of the ice-hard snowflakes attacking his cheeks. There would be roof-high drifts by morning if it kept up like this, he was thinking.

“What? Oh... well, shortening is butter or oleo, or even cooking oil, I think. Whatever it is, it’s for making cakes.” Grandpa stepped down to the path he’d shoveled toward the garage. It was already starting to fill in and would need some new digging out pretty soon.

“Why do they call it that? Why don’t they just call it butter, or margarine?” Alan had already lost interest in the question, even as he asked it. The hypnotic effect of the snow was captivating him.” Do you get storms like this all the time, Grandpa?”

“‘Bout once a month this bad.” Grandpa reached the garage door, threw it up along its spring-loaded tracks. He shook his head and shivered from the wind-chill. “And to think your mom and dad are cruising the Caribbean! Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“I’d rather be here,” said Alan, shaking his head. He smiled, obviously immune to the shrieking cold and the missile-like flakes. “This is going to be the first real Christmas I ever had!”

“Why? Because it’s a white one? Grandpa chuckled as he walked to the door of the 4-wheel drive Cherokee and slowly climbed in.

“Sure,” said Alan. “Haven’t you ever heard that song?”

Grandpa smiled.” Oh, I think I’ve heard it a time or two…”

“Well, that’s what I mean. It never seems like Christmas in L.A. even when it is Christmas!” Alan jumped into the Jeep and slammed the door. “Boy, Grandpa, it’s really coming down, now…”

As his grandfather backed the vehicle from the garage, swung it around and churned down the long driveway toward Route 14A, Alan looked out across the flat landscape of the farm and the other farms in the distance. There was a gentle roll to the treeless land, but it was lost in the wall of the storm.

In fact, Alan couldn’t tell where the snowy land stopped and the white of the sky began. When the Cherokee lurched forward out onto the main road, it looked like they were constantly driving smack into a white sheet of paper, a white nothingness.

It was scary, thought Alan. Just as scary as driving into a pitch-black night.

“Oh, she picked a fine time to run out of something for that danged cake! Look at it, Alan. It’s a regular white-out, is what it is.”

Alan nodded. “Jeezoowhiz, how do you know where you’re going, Grandpa?” The first twinges of fear were creeping into his mind.

Grandpa harrumphed. “Been on this road a million times, boy! Lived here all my life! I’m not about to get lost. But my God, it’s cold out here! Hope this heater gets going pretty soon.”

They drove on in silence except for the crunch of the tires on the packed snow and thunk-thunk of the wiper blades trying to move off the hard new flakes that filled the sky. The heater still pumped chilly air into the cab and Alan’s breath was almost freezing as it came out of his mouth.

He imagined they were explorers on a faraway planet an alien world of ice and eternally freezing winds. It was an instantaneous, catapulting adventure of the type only possible in the minds of imaginative ten-year-olds. There were creatures out in the blizzard great white hulking things. Pale, reptilian, evil-eyed things. Alan squinted through the windshield, ready in his gun turret if one turned on them. He would blast it with his laser cannons…

“What in heck?” muttered Grandpa.

Abruptly, Alan was out of his fantasy world as he stared past the flicking windshield wipers. There was a dark shape standing in the center of the white nothingness. As the Cherokee advanced along the invisible road, drawing closer to the contrasted object, it became clearer, more distinct.

It was a man. He was standing by what must be the roadside, waving a gloved hand at Grandpa.

Braking easily, Grandpa stopped the Jeep and hit the button that lowered the side window a bit. The blizzard rushed, slicing through Alan’s clothes like a cold knife as he looked the man standing in the storm. “Where you headed?” cried Grandpa over the wind. “I’m going as far as town…”

“That’ll do,” said the stranger.

Alan caught a quick glimpse of him as he pushed into the back seat. He was wearing a thin coat that seemed to hang on him like a scarecrow’s rags. He had a black scarf wrapped tight around his neck and a dark blue ski mask that covered his face under a floppy-brimmed old hat. Alan didn’t like that not being able to see the stranger’s face.

“Cold as hell out there!” said the man as he smacked his gloved hands together. He laughed to himself, then: “Now there’s a funny expression for you, ain’t it? Cold as Hell.’ Don’t make much sense does it? But people still say it, don’t they?”

“I guess they do,” said Grandpa as he slipped the Jeep into gear and started off again. Alan looked at the old man, who looked like an older version of his father, and thought he saw an expression of concern, if not apprehension, forming on the lined face.

“It’s not so funny, though.” said the stranger, his voice lowering a bit. “Everybody figures Hell to be this hot place, but it don’t have to be, you know?”

“Never really thought about it much,” said Grandpa, playing with the heater controls. It was so cold, it just didn’t seem to want to work.

Alan shivered, uncertain whether or not it was from the lack of heat, the words, or the voice of the stranger.

“Matter of fact, it makes more sense to think of Hell as full of all kinds of different pain. I mean, fire is so outrageous, don’t you think? Now, cold ... something as cold as that wind out there could be so ...subtle but be just as bad, right? The man in the back seat chuckled softly beneath the cover of the ski mask.

Grandpa cleared his throat and faked a cough. “I don’t think I’ve really thought much about that either,” he said as he appeared to be concentrating on the snow-covered road ahead. Alan looked at his grandfather’s face and could see the unsteadiness in the old man’s eyes. It was the look of fear, slowly building.

“Maybe you should …” said the stranger.

“Why?” said Alan. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it stands to reason that a demon would be comfortable in any kind of element as long as it’s harsh, as long as it’s cruel.”

Alan tried to clear his throat and failed. Something was stuck down there, even when he swallowed.

The stranger chuckled again. “Course, I’m getting off the track we were talking about figures of speech, weren’t we?”

“You’re the one doing all the talking, mister,” said Grandpa.

The stranger nodded. “Actually, a more appropriate expression would be ‘cold as the grave’…”

“It’s not this cold under the ground,” said Alan defensively.

“Now, how would you know?” asked the stranger slowly. “You’ve never been in the grave ... not yet, anyway.”

“That’s enough of that silly talk, mister!” said Grandpa. His voice was hard-sounding, but there was a thin layer of fear beneath his words.

Alan looked from his grandfather to the stranger. As his eyes locked in with those behind the ski mask, Alan felt a burst of acid in his gut, an ice pick threatening his spine.

There was no staring at the stranger. There was something about his eyes, something which seemed to lurch violently behind them.

A dark chuckle came from the back seat.

“Silly talk? Silly?” asked the stranger. “Now what’s silly and what’s serious in the world today? Who can tell anymore?! Missiles and terrorists! Vampires and garlic! Famine and epidemics! Full moons and maniacs.”

The words rattled out of the dark man and chilled Alan more deeply than the cold blast of the heater fan. He looked away and tried to stop the shiver which raced up and down his backbone.

“Where’d you say you was going, Mister?” asked Grandpa as he slowly eased off the gas pedal.

“I didn’t say.”

“Well, how about saying right now?”

“Do I detect hostility in your voice, sir? Or is it something else?” Again came the deep-throated, whispery chuckle.

Alan kept his gaze upon the white-on-white panorama ahead. But he was listening to every word being exchanged between the dark stranger and his grandfather, who was suddenly assuming the proportions of a champion. He listened but he could not turn around, he could not look back. There was a fear gripping him now. It was a gnarled spindly claw reaching up for him, out of the darkness of his mind, closing in on him with a terrible certainty.

Grandpa hit the brakes a little too hard, and even the Cherokee’s 4-wheel drive couldn’t keep it from sliding off to the right to gently slap a bank of plowed snow. Alan watched his grandfather as he turned and stared at the stranger.

“Listen, Mister, I don’t know what your game is, but I don’t find it very amusing like you seem to and I don’t appreciate the way you’ve dealt with our hospitality—especially on Christmas Eve.”

Grandpa glared at the man in the back seat and Alan could feel the courage burning behind the old man’s eyes. Just the sight of it gave Alan the strength to turn and face the stranger.

“Oh, yes... is it that time again? I’d forgotten…”

That made Alan feel even more weird. How could anyone forget it was Christmas?

“Just trying to make conversation.” The man continued in a velvety soft voice. It seemed to Alan that the stranger’s voice could change any time he wanted it to, could sound any way at all. The man in the mask was like a ventriloquist or a magician, maybe.

“Well, to be truthful with you, Mister, I’m kinda tired of your conversation,’ and I’d like you to climb out of here so my grandson and I can be on our way in peace.”

The eyes behind the mask flitted between Grandpa and Alan once, twice. “I see…” said the voice. “No more silly stuff, eh?”

The stranger leaned forward, putting a gloved hand on the back of Alan’s seat. The hand almost touched Alan’s parka and he pulled away. He knew he didn’t want the man touching him. More acid churned in his stomach.

“Very well,” said the dark man. “I’ll be leaving you for now ... but one last thought, all right?”

“I’d rather not,” said Grandpa as the man squeezed out the open side door.

“But you will.” Another soft laugh as the stranger stood in the drifted snow alongside the road. The eyes behind the mask darted from Grandpa to Alan and back again. “You see, it’s just a short ride we’re all taking ... and the night ... well, the night is freezing fast.”

Grandpa’s eyes widened a bit as the words drifted slowly into the cab, cutting through the swirling, whipping cold wind. Then he gunned the gas pedal and the engine raced. “That’s enough of that crazy talk, Mister. Have a nice day!”

The Cherokee suddenly leaped forward away from the strange man. Looking back, Alan could see the stranger quickly dwindle to nothing more than a black speck on the white wall behind them.

“Of all the people to be helpful to, and I have to pick a danged nut!” Grandpa forced a smile. He looked at Alan and tapped his arm playfully. “Nothing to worry about now, boy. He’s behind us and gone.”

Alan nodded. “He was creepy, wasn’t he?”

Grandpa grunted, kept looking at the snowed-up road.

“Who you figure he was?”

“Oh, just a nut, son. A kook. When you get older, you’ll realize that there’s lots of funny people in the world. Some funnier than others.”

“You think he’ll still be out on the road when we go back?”

Grandpa looked at Alan and tried to smile. It was an effort and it didn’t look anything at all like a real smile.

“You were afraid of him, weren’t you boy?”

Alan nodded. “Weren’t you?”

Grandpa didn’t answer for an instant. He certainly looked scared. Then: “Well, kinda, I guess. But I’ve known about his type... almost been expecting him, you might say.”

“Really?” Alan didn’t understand what the old man meant.

Grandpa looked ahead. “Well, here’s the store…”

He eased the Jeep into the half-plowed parking lot of Brampton, Iowa’s only full-scale shopping center. He ran into the Food-A-Rama for a pound of butter while Alan remained in the cab with engine running, the heater fan wailing, and the doors locked. Looking out into the swirling snow, Alan could barely pick out single flakes anymore. Everything was blending into a furiously thick, white mist. The windows of the Cherokee were blank sheets of paper, and he could see nothing beyond the glass.

Suddenly there was a dark shape at the driver’s side, and the latch rattled on the door handle. The lock flipped up and Grandpa appeared with a small brown paper bag in his hand. “Boy, it’s blowin’ up terrible out here! What a time that woman has to send us out!”

“It looks worse,” said Alan.

“Well, maybe not.” said Grandpa, slipping the vehicle into gear. “Night’s coming on. When it gets darker, the white-out won’t be as bad.”

They drove home along Route 28 which would eventually curve down and cross 14A. Alan fidgeted with the heater fan and the cab was finally starting to warm up a little bit.

“Grandpa, what did that man mean about a ‘short ride’ we’re all taking? And the ‘night freezing fast’?”

“I don’t rightly know what he meant, Alan. He was a kook, remember? He probably don’t know himself what he meant by it.”

“But you said you were kind of expecting him …”

“Oh, I was just thinking out loud. Didn’t mean a thing.” Grandpa pretended to be concentrating on the road.

“Well, he sure did make it sound scary, didn’t he?”

“Yes, I guess he did,” said Grandpa as he turned the wheel onto a crossing road. Here we go, here’s 14A. “Almost home, boy! I hope your grandmother’s got that wood stove hot!”

The Jeep trundled along the snowed-up road until they reached a bright orange mailbox that marked the entrance to Grandpa’s farm. Alan exhaled slowly, and felt the relief spreading into his bones. He hadn’t wanted to say anything, but the white-white of the storm and the seeping cold had been bothering him, making him get a terrible headache, probably from squinting so much.

“What in—?” Grandpa eased off the accelerator as he saw the tall, thin figure standing in the snow-filled rut of the driveway.

“It’s him, Grandpa.” said Alan in whisper.

The dark man stepped aside as the Cherokee eased up to him. Angrily, Grandpa wound down the window and let the storm rush into the cab. He shouted past the wind at the stranger. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming up to my house!”

The eyes behind the ski mask seemed to grow darker, unblinking. “Didn’t have much choice,” said the chameleon-voice.

Grandpa unlocked the door and stepped out to face the man. “What do you mean by that?”

Soft laughter cut through the howl of the wind. “Come now! You know who I am ... and why I’m here.”

Suddenly Grandpa’s face turned pale, his eyes became vacant and empty. He nodded his head quickly. “Yeah, I guess I do, but I never knew it to be like this.”

“There are countless ways, said the stranger, who was no longer unknown to the old man. Now excuse me, and step aside …”

“What!” Grandpa sounded shocked.

Alan didn’t know what was going on, but he could detect the terror in his grandfather’s throat, the trembling fear in his voice. Without realizing it, he was backing away from the vehicle. His head was pounding like a jackhammer.

“Is it the woman?” Grandpa was asking in a whisper.

The dark man shook his head.

Grandpa moaned loudly, letting it turn into words. “No! Not him! No, you can’t mean it!”

“Aneurysm …” said the terribly soft voice behind the mask.

Suddenly Grandpa grabbed the stranger by the shoulder and spun him around, facing him squarely. “No!” he shouted, his face twisted and ugly. “Me! Take me!”

“Can’t do it,” said the man.

“Grandpa, what’s the matter?” Alan started to feel dizzy. The pounding in his head had become a raging fire. It hurt so bad he wanted to scream.

“Yes you can!” yelled Grandpa. “I know you can!”

Alan watched as Grandpa reached out and grabbed at the tall thin man’s ski mask. It seemed to come apart as he touched it, and fell away from beneath the droopy brimmed hat. For an instant, Alan could see or at least he thought he saw nothing beneath the mask. It was just an eye-blink of time, and then he saw, for another instant, the white angular lines, the dark hollows of the empty sockets.

But the snow was swirling and whipping, and Grandpa was suddenly wrestling with the man. Alan screamed as the man wrapped his long thin arms around his grandfather and they seemed to dance briefly around in the snow.

“Run, boy!” screamed Grandpa.

Alan turned toward the house, then looked back and he saw Grandpa collapsing into the snow. The tall, dark man was gone.

“Grandpa!” Alan ran to the old man’s side as he lay face up, his glazed eyes staring into the storm. “What happened? Grandpa! Oh Jeez!”

“Get your grandmother ... quick,” said the old man.” It’s my heart.”

“Don’t die, Grandpa ... not now!” Alan was frantic and didn’t know what to do. He wanted to get help, but he didn’t want to leave his grandfather in the storm like this.

“No choice in it,” he said. “A deal’s a deal.”

Alan looked at his grandfather, suddenly puzzled. “What?”

Grandpa winced as a new pain lanced his chest. “Don’t matter now …” The old man closed his eyes and wheezed out a final breath.

Snowflakes danced across his face, mixing with the first tears, and Alan noticed that his headache, like the dark man, had vanished.