The Snow Goons Live
I stare at the frost on the windowsill, and hear the rush of wind, muffled by the snow falling from the sky. It's a beautiful sight… for everyone but me.
I walk, slowly, to the calendar and clock on the small table on the opposite side of the room.
December 23, 2:23 PM.
Damn it, couldn't they have waited three more days? I think to myself. Couldn't we have had one last, nice Christmas together before they killed us all?
Of course, I would have preferred for none of us to have to die at all, but at this point, there was no alternative.
"Hooray! Isn't it great that we're getting real snow for Christmas, Daddy?" shouts a voice beside me. It's my daughter. She's six years old… like I was. I love her, as any father should, but I can hardly bear to look at her now – not when I know what she's about to go through.
"It sure is, muffin-chops," says another, more mature voice. My wife, this time. She hugs our child from behind, gives her a peck on the head, and flashes that beautiful smile at me.
I freeze for a moment. I always do when she looks at me that way. It makes her look like that… that girl.
"Sweetie, how about after dinner tonight, we all go outside and play in the snow?" she asks. I try my best to look excited – and to not look at the little girl's shining eyes – when I reply, "Of course we can!"
"YAAAAAAY! Finally I get to play in real snow!" exclaims our little one, in her usual enthusiastic way. Her mother picks her up, swings her around, and carries her out, both laughing.
I look at the clock again. 2:25. 21 more minutes.
I haven't told them.
I still have no idea how I did it. I had no knowledge of the occult, and I didn't even know the "snow demons" really existed. I had no evil plot behind what I was doing. None of the requirements for summoning evil spirits fit. I was just playing around. I built a snowman and tried to bring him to life using some silly incantation.
But somehow, someway, I made a huge mistake.
I made the Snow Goons.
They were hideous monsters of snow, stick, and rocks. They lumbered about stupidly, like something out of Frankenstein. They had no personalities, no complex thoughts, not even a concept of self-preservation: their only goal was to create more of their kind… and to kill their creator.
And their creator was me.
I should have known to fear them. I treated it like it was some big game, and as if the only penalty for losing was the shame of losing. These cursed monsters were horribly dangerous, but I thought of them as little more than a nuisance- and when I finally managed to kill them (in a very clever way, if I do say so myself), I shrugged them off, saying simply, "Snow Goons are bad news."
Oh, yes. They are bad news.
I check the clock again. 2:31.
My wife has begun to cook food that will never be eaten. Our daughter is sitting on the floor, playing with her little zebra, Angelica. Both are all smiles.
15 minutes now.
They came back the next year.
From what I can remember, I was still foolishly unafraid. I figured that since I had fought them before, I could fight them again. As if they were just little dogs, that would go away if I bludgeoned them enough times, as if they would just go down without a fight like last time.
And… well, they did, that year. I killed them by using a leaf blower to melt them. There weren't as many of them that time, since I knew what I was dealing with. But still I was not afraid, and I didn't ask the questions that I should have.
I should have asked how they came back when I made no attempt to summon them.
I should have asked why they didn't freeze to ice when I doused them with a hose, the way they had before.
I should have asked why they came back on the same day, of the same month, at the exact same time, as they had last year.
2:33.
The girl is pacing around in circles, clutching her zebra to her chest. She's clearly impatient. She wants to go outside. But if she knew what was out there, she would not.
13 minutes.
The third year, I was finally afraid.
I witnessed their return that time. I was outside, with my closest, most beloved friend, when it happened. A group of sticks and rocks inexplicably stood up, and clumped into piles of snow that morphed into a grotesque wintery beast. As it stood up, it immediately shuffled over to us, pushed my tiger friend aside, and tried to stab me…
Were it not for my best friend and his powerful pounce, I'd have been the one divided into a million pieces, not the Snow Goon.
They appeared far quicker than I expected. Just moments after my friend killed the first, four more had appeared on all sides of us. We had no visible opening- it was as if they had planned ahead. Once again, my friend saved me, by placing me on his back and barely managing to jump over one of the Goons, but I knew there was no way he could hold them off for much longer. As we bounded across the white landscape, trying to reach my house, hands would pop out of the snow and try to grab me. Even the snow itself wanted me dead.
As we neared the relative safety of my home, we also neared my next-door neighbor, making snowmen of her own. She didn't believe me when I told her the first year. She thought I had made the Snow Goons myself.
But she believed me that year.
The monsters were on her before she even had time to react. They plowed over her, burying her in the snow. I don't know whether she died of suffocation, or of being crushed by the bodies of hundreds of uncaring demons.
I had never seen a Snow Goon kill someone before. I wish I never did.
2:35. 11 minutes.
Naturally, it made the news. The whole country was shocked. No one had a plausible explanation for a little girl being crushed by several tons of snow, despite the area having only 1-½ feet of snow, at the most, and there being no snowfall at all that day. No one had a plausible explanation for the tremendous amount of smashed, tire-tracked snow and splintered tree branches that littered the streets, either, but only because no one noticed them. Good thing, too- or else my father may have noticed that the car had been moved.
I should have told someone. Not that they'd have believed me then, but come the next year, I'd have proof. But I didn't tell anyone. I was still a foolish child of 8, grappling with the loss of a very close, very dear friend. A very dear friend.
I don't think it was really love back then. Just a sort of deep, profound admiration; I was too young for love. But having only memories of someone can twist your perception of them. And as I grew older, the more I grew to love that girl. I could never forget any of the things that she said and did for the paltry 3 years we knew each other.
It might have been unhealthy at times. I may have made some enormous decisions solely based on my love for her. But could you blame me? I was still developing. Something like that happening to a child can cause some damage…
Especially considering what happened the next year…
10.
Nothing was getting the best of me this time. I knew they were coming, and I was prepared. I had numerous primitive weapons, from baseball bats to golf clubs to leaf blowers to matches with an aerosol can ("my own flamethrower", I liked to call it- I'd always wanted one). I knew they were coming, though I didn't remember the date. I made sure to always be ready, so that I could get rid of them the minute they came.
My parents worried about me. They couldn't understand why I'd spend entire days alone with my friend, shouting endlessly that I was ready for "them". I told them I was just playing, but I doubt they believed me. I was far too serious about the whole endeavor, as if it was life-or-death. Which it was.
No one would have to die this year or ever again.
9.
At last, they came, on December 23rd (I made sure to make a note of it). The minute I spotted one, I ran forward and smashed it to pieces. I did the same to the next three, and the five that followed, and the two after that. But that was all I could do, for the entire arsenal of clubs and bats that I had brought outside with me had been destroyed.
The Snow Goons' bodies were too tough for them to withstand. Snow had easily destroyed metal.
Yet another piece of information that I should have noticed, but didn't.
As I climbed into my room through the makeshift ladder I had constructed, I didn't notice the odd way it shifted when I neared the top. I was too focused on grabbing my new batch of defenses. This time, it was a water gun (even though water didn't seem to affect them anymore), a wooden bat, and a broom.
I turned around to my window and saw a Snow Goon staring back at me.
8.
I screamed. I know it was foolish of me, but I wasn't thinking straight! There were things trying to kill me and they had found a way to enter my only sanctuary!
I expected my parents to come bounding up the stairs any second, and for my dangerous secret to be revealed at last. But all I heard was another loud scream, to match my own.
OH GOD, NO! I thought to myself. I dashed downstairs…
…and there was my father, laying there, covered in snow and with a stick pierced through his lung.
Above him was a Snow Goon with three arms and two heads, one with a stick jutting out of his head and a carrot nose, and the other with three eyes and two head-sticks. It looked up, our eyes met, and he started up the stairs after me.
I screamed again, ran up to my room and jumped out the window- thank god my friend was at the bottom to catch me, or I'd surely have died.
I looked around. There were no Goons to be found. A depressed portion of snow led directly to the doors and windows of my house- all of which had been shut, except for my bedroom window. I climbed up the ladder, closed that, climbed back down, and waited. Surely they would eventually melt inside.
Yes, it was cruel, abandoning my parents like that. But I was just a kid! And how much could I really do with so many monsters in an enclosed space, with easily broken weapons? You could forgive me, right?
Right?
7.
I waited there, in the cold, for an incredibly long while. It may have been hours, it may have been minutes, but it felt like weeks. Eventually, I figured that it had to be over by now (whatever "it" was, I wasn't sure), and cautiously re-entered my home.
The entire inside of the house was wet. The floors, the walls, even the ceiling. Completely soaked. Littering the floor were small specks of whiteness, the last vestigial of the invading Snow Goons. Someone had turned the heater up to nearly 90 degrees, and they had all melted.
Standing in the middle of the living room was my mother, completely blank-faced. At her feet was my father. He was dead.
Without another thought, Mom told me that we were moving.
6.
I never bothered to tell her just what those horrid animals were. I had the feeling she didn't want to know… and any way, it wouldn't be the last time she saw them.
It seemed like a nice place to settle back down. Our new home was in the mountains. We were somewhat isolated from the world, as it was about a mile from any other house or town. Obviously it was hard without Dad- especially with the knowledge of how he died- but the two of us managed to make a decent household.
I was 11 by then, but I still felt a childish excitement for the oncoming of Christmas. I counted down the days feverishly. December 18! December 19! December 20! December 21! December 22! December 23!
...December 23?
I impulsively looked out my window. But they weren't there.
…But of course they wouldn't be there! I mean, we had moved thousands of miles! Nothing could hurt us all the way out here! There's no way…
There's no way…
There's…
No.
NO!
I saw them. They were ascending the hill, headed straight for my house. They had followed me. They had come 5,000+ miles just to find me. There was no escape. My Mom and…
My Mom!
I slammed open the front door and jumped off the front porch, to where my mother was shoveling snow. She had seen them, too- and we crashed into each other in our hurry. We barely managed to escape the Goons' grasp. We rushed, together, back to the safety of our house. But the snow was deep and thick.
Only I was fast enough.
I was powerless to stop them. All I could do was stand at my window and watch them rip my mother apart. When it became too hard to bear, I turned to my friend- my only friend, now- and hugged him tightly. After that, I sadly lurched over to a telephone and dialed 911, trying hard to ignore the hundreds of pounds of snow that was desperately slamming against the walls of my house.
5.
It took 20 police officers to take them all down. 13 lost their lives. More deaths that I could add to my growing list.
I begged the surviving officers to never breathe a word of what they saw. They agreed. Officially, Mom had died of a "heart attack", and Dad of a "household accident".
That was the story I told every foster home I came to.
That was the story I told every home that I forced myself to leave when the snow began to fall.
4.
I rarely ever spoke at school anymore. My "mischievous" antics were a thing of the past. I generally sat by myself, in the back.
The other kids ignored me most of the time, and those that did talk to me mostly brought the pity party. I suppose there were plenty of reasons to feel sorry for me- my parents were dead, I was always moving, and I had no friends.
But all the same, their half-hearted condolences did nothing for me. Those who offered friendship were ignored- I already had the only friend I'd ever need. There were even a few girls who expressed interest in me "that way"- but they weren't that girl, so the answer was always no.
I always feared winter. I knew that the Snow Goons would always find me. No matter where I hid, as long as there was snow, there would be Goons. So, every single year, I requested that I be transferred on the 23rd. It always worked- somehow, they couldn't get to me if I was constantly on the move.
This method of evading danger saved many lives several times over, but it did terrible things to my mental wellbeing. I was constantly afraid and on alert. I never made acquaintances with anybody that I didn't need to know, because I knew that I'd be gone by the next year.
The years went by.
3.
When I turned 18, I was forced to start supporting myself. My current foster parents were polite enough to find me a job and a dingy apartment, but after that, I never heard from them again. I didn't really like them anyway.
I worked the night shift at a department store. My friend came with me every single night. My coworkers gave him strange looks sometimes, but he never minded, and neither did I. I could never be without him.
My life actually began to improve at this point. My pay wasn't that bad. My apartment, small as it was, suited my needs and didn't require as much fixing up as it appeared.
My mood improved so much that I even started a genuine relationship for the first time. She was a nurturing, polite girl, and had a good head on her shoulders. Her sense of humor was impeccable, and she was never afraid to speak her mind. She had beautiful short brown hair and light skin.
She was just like that girl. The closest I'd ever come to seeing her again. I never told my girlfriend, but every time I looked at her, I saw that girl in my mind.
2.
I was 20 years old that year. It had been a full 14 years since I placed that curse on myself. And for the first time since then, I felt no worry during the Christmas season. My girl was always near and always there for me, and I was looking forward to spending the season with her family. My closest friend lay by my bed every single night, protecting me, as he always had. And best of all, the weather forecasts all said No Snow.
Yet, on December 23rd, at exactly 10:46 in the morning, snow spontaneously began to fall. It wasn't very cold out, and there hadn't been any clouds before. I was surprised, but I paid it no heed.
As the day went on, the snow fell harder and harder. The radio stations were all amazed at the freak, completely unexpected snowstorm that had spontaneously erupted. I had a lunch date with my girlfriend that day, and as I drove home to pack for our trip, the snowfall became a blizzard. I could barely see through the blithering snow that smashed against my windshield. The weather was bitter and cold as I walked out of my car and towards my apartment.
It was as if the snow itself was attacking me.
As I entered, I casually glanced at the clock. It was 2:46…
2:46? Where had I heard of that before?
I shrugged, hung my coat up, and entered my bedroom. My friend was waiting for me, giving me a friendly pounce as always. I hated them when I was younger, but by now I looked forward to them. They were a reminder that he was always there, and always ready.
And ready he was. The minute I hit the floor, he jumped up into my face and warned me that a storm was coming. I corrected him, saying that the storm was already there. I got up and pointed out the window….
And there they were.
It didn't matter that there wasn't supposed to be any snow. They found a way to make it. No matter what I did, they would find me. On December 23rd, at 2:46, the Snow Goons would always come.
As always, their attack was immediate. They climbed up the walls, and broke through the doors and windows. I grabbed a lamp and began assaulting the Goons with it… and before I could stop him, my friend dove out the window after them.
"HOBBES!"I screamed.
Mom, Dad, the cops, that girl… they were enough already. But I couldn't lose him. Not him. He was my life. He protected my. With him, I felt safe.
And as I looked out the window and saw the piles of stuffing and torn fabric, I knew that I was safe no longer.
I tore out of my bedroom, dashed out of my apartment building, and I ran. I ran forever. Ran until the Snow Goons were far behind me. Ran until I forgot where I was. Ran until I realized where I was. I was on the front steps of the home of my lover.
I pounded on the door and she answered. I threw myself at her, and asked her to marry me.
I told her that I'd go anywhere she wanted, and do everything that she asked, as long as we never, ever, went to a place where there would be snow.
1.
And for a while, it felt right. We moved out west to the oceans, and settled down in a small house. We loved each other. And not long after, we moved, we were blessed with a little girl. She, too, reminded me much of that girl.
Each year, at Christmas time, our little girl would look at the white blankets on all of the television specials and ask me what it was. And each year, I'd tell her that it was snow. She always wanted to see real, live snow, but I always told her no. My wife, remembering the promise she made when I proposed, agreed with me.
Until this year. This year, she finally relented. She found us a nice cabin in Ohio to stay for the entire month of December. I was angry and horrified, but not as angry and horrified as the girl was happy. So I was silenced.
I debated internally whether or not I would tell them. Would they even believe me? I doubted it. But… there had to be some way to stop the oncoming tragedy.
The more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that no, there was not.
Zero.
The attack was completely instantaneous. The second the clock read 2:46, the Snow Goons were breaking through the walls. I heard my little girl scream. It was the most heartrending sound I ever heard. Seconds later came another scream from my wife, and I knew that it was all over.
I had vowed to protect the world from the Snow Goons. I told myself that no one would ever again have to die by their hands. But I failed. My family was killed. That girl was killed. Unwitting police officers were killed. My best friend in the world, the closest friend I ever had, was killed. And now, my attempt at a new family was about to die, too.
I knew it was useless, but I grabbed a makeshift weapon (a lamp) anyway. The least I could do was make a feeble attempt at defending my family.
I followed the source of the sounds to the kitchen, where I saw my wife and daughter on the ground, panicking, with Snow Goons looming above them. As I raised the lamp to attack, a peculiar thing happened: the Goons abandoned attacking my family and all turned to face me. This made me think for a moment:
That girl died when she entered the path between the Snow Goons that were chasing me, and myself.
My father died in front of the stairwell that led to my room.
My mother died because she was outside of the house that I was in, and so were those police officers.
My best friend died trying to protect me.
Every single person that had died by the Snow Goons' hand died because they got in their way.
Remembering this, I tossed my weapon aside.
"Honey? What are you…?"
The nearest Snow Goon and I locked eyes. We inched toward each other.
"Daddy? What are these things? What are you doing?"
I stood eye-to-eye with the snow monster, and let him gore me in the chest.
"DAD!"
I crumbled to the ground as my family ran to my side. They looked at my wound, and they knew that I was about to die.
"Honey, what were those things?" asked my wife.
I looked at the Snow Goons that surrounded us. They were no longer animate, and had all toppled and began to melt. I told her, "You don't need to know. It's not important any more."
My daughter couldn't stop staring at the fatal stab in my chest. Her eyes teared up. "Dad… I love you," she said.
I smiled. "I love you too".
The crying worsened. "I don't want you to go!"
I stared into her eyes the way she stared at mine. And with my final breaths, I told her:
"It's okay, Susie. You're safe now."
I no longer looked at my family. I was gone from them now. Instead, I saw my parents, and my best friend, and that girl.
They said nothing. I looked at them, and gave them all a group hug of apology. And they embraced me back, in forgiveness.
The Snow Goons were never seen since. I began the curse, and with my death, it ended. But I know that these events will someday be repeated. And so I leave this warning: the Snow Goons live. They are gone for now, but they always live.
So watch what you say and watch what you do when you're playing in that snow. I don't know how they came to be. And neither will you.