Chapter 10
December 1985
The city was preparing for Christmas. Snow had covered all the yards, parks, and public gardens, and continued falling from the sky in thick, downy flakes. Streets were crowded; the pre-holiday bustle was felt in the air. Friday, past midday, the rush-hour was about to begin. Crowds were flooding the shops, flowing towards the subway through the underground crossing, jumping into buses and trams.
Jan was walking together with the stream of people, slightly more noticeable among others with his bright-coloured ski cap and the incredibly long striped scarf carelessly wound around his neck, with its ends sticking out from beneath his half-zipped jacket.
Squinting slightly from snowflakes landing on his lashes, he was looking around the festive street, decorated for the holiday. He stopped by one of the shop windows, noticing in it among the hung-out garlands and Christmas balls a wonderful thing – a snow globe. Last year he saw a couple of them too, maybe even in this very window. In one there was a tiny ancient castle, in the other – a Christmas tree, a miniature copy of the one at the main square.
This globe differed from those two. Strictly speaking, it didn't have anything referring to Christmas or to New Year – neither inscriptions, nor decorations. Inside it stood a snowman – exactly of the kind it is usually depicted: three lumps of snow set one upon another, orange nose carrot, something black on his head, with its form reminding him of a minuscule flattened bucket. The minuscule broom was stuck into the snowman's side. The crumbs of foam plastic (or whatever the snow was made of) covered the globe's bottom with a thick white layer. In the "snow" two thin lines going parallel to each other could be seen. Ski tracks.
It was quite an unusual globe. Jan wanted to shake it, so that he could see those snowy flakes swirling, and then landing slowly. Suddenly he noticed one more strange thing about it. One of the snow crumbs wasn't white, but of some indiscriminate color, as if painted. Or maybe it was not the same material, but a grain of something else which got behind the glass together with the handful of foam crumbs. Jan stood by the window and peered into the small world inside the glass dome until somebody carrying a huge Christmas tree asked him to step aside – the street which the shop window faced was very narrow in this part.
Finally tearing himself away from contemplating the window, Jan went on his way. He'd definitely bring Irena here and show the globe to her – It's most likely just for decoration here, and was not on sale, otherwise it would have been bought long ago. He was also planning to go to the main square – it was so beautiful there now - to gather some fir tree boughs near the Christmas tree market, and to ski in the park with Irena tomorrow, or maybe even today, if things turned out well.
There was so much left to do.
…
"Do you know what impression I've had during the last few days?" Irena asked.
"No. What?"
"That somebody is following me."
Jan raised his eyebrows slightly. "What… following? Who?"
"If only I knew. The sensation is as if they are watching. I don't know…like…trying to make me out."
"But… maybe you are imagining it?"
"Imagining it? Jan, I'm in my right mind. Never in my life have I had such a feeling, and now I have it. I got so sick of it last night that I stopped in the street and asked loudly, "What do you want from me?"
"And what happened?"
"Nothing, of course. But I didn't expect to receive an answer right there, in the middle of the street anyway."
Jan looked attentively around, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and made a helpless gesture.
"And right now you have this sensation, too?"
Irena touched the white fur ear muffs which served as a winter hat to her, adjusting them.
"Yes, right now too."
Jan didn't know what to answer to that. He looked into Irena's anxious face and had no idea what she was talking about. As for him, he didn't have any unpleasant sensations since he'd regained his composure, and felt good now, except that he was aching all over after yesterday's long time skiing – it was for the first time this year.
By the way, in the park yesterday, when it almost got dark, Irena suddenly stopped at one of the turns.
"We'd better not go this way."
"OK. But why?"
"It's barely illuminated."
"So what? We won't lose our way." Jan smiled, but Irena remained serious.
"Recently I saw something… somebody there. In the snow."
Jan didn't understand.
"Well, if I say it like that, it will certainly sound like complete nonsense. Somebody was there. At first it seemed to me that the snow was moving. He…it was like a part of the background, because it was white all over…or in white. It wriggled there in the snowdrifts like… a maggot of some kind. Only it was human-sized."
This explanation sent shivers down Jan's spine. He didn't have any doubts about Irena's words – she would never make up anything like that. And it was highly unlikely just her imagination, she wasn't one of those who started seeing things which never existed after hearing or reading too much of scary stories. So, she had really seen something. But what was it? When she just mentioned that she'd seen something in the snow, he immediately wanted to suggest going there and look together, but after her explanation he realized he won't go that way. He was never too bold or determined, and turned back without objecting much.
On the contrary, her words about shadowing and watching scared him not in the least, rather, intrigued. Who knows, he thought, maybe somebody was following him too (though, on the other hand, who on earth would need to spy on him?), but he would have never noted that shadowing, because he was too focused on himself. Gee, even if ten people lined up into a column right behind him, he wouldn't have noticed them at once. Irena was much more open to the outside world than him, that's why she sensed something was wrong. It wouldn't hurt to find out who took it into his head to follow her and scare her. And what it was there, in the park, on that poorly illuminated path…
…
Irena left soon, saying she had things to do. Jan, after some aimless wandering, turned towards home.
Having scarcely entered the yard, he stopped, looking perplexedly at the big, of about his height, snowman which grew as if by itself just in the center of the playground. Some children were frolicking around, but it was obviously not their work.
Jan approached, examining the heavy-looking black cooking-pot crammed on the snowman's head. In addition to the pot and the classic carrot the snowman was decorated with "buttons" – pieces of thick branch lined in a vertical row on the middle snow lump. One "button" fell out and now was lying at the foot of the snowman. Jan picked it up absent-mindedly and wanted to stick it back into place, when he suddenly noticed that the thing he picked up wasn't a piece of wood.
It was an oblong metal whistle. To blow that whistle in the frost would be the best of ideas, aha… Jan was about to hail the playing children and to ask who of them lost it, but what he saw in the next moment made him part his fingers and step back.
Half-covered by the newly-fallen snow already, but still noticeable enough. Imprints of skis in the snow.
He has seen all this earlier. Shrunk to a tiny copy.
Jan was backing away until he ran into a bench. He sat down, or, rather, fell down onto it and clutched the wooden seat, hardly keeping from reaching out to make sure that he won't touch the glass walls of a dome grown around him, and slowly, forcing himself to do that, he looked up, almost expecting the lucid liquid substance to pour down from the sky together with snowflakes, drowning him and making him forever a prisoner of the giant flask.
His hand suddenly began aching from stinging cold. Jan looked down at his own fingers gripping the edge of the seat so hard it made his knuckles turn white and saw, saw the grayish icy crust forming on the bench's surface. It was crawling closer and closer…
What the hell was going on here?
Jerking his hand back, Jan sprang to his feet and rushed home headlong.