The events in this story took place in 1847 in a big castle in a kingdom of Scandinavia. The names of the people have been changed to protect their privacy.
Monday, February 3. Anne Arindall and her sister Ella had just finished their royal studies. Anne was going on 15. Ella was almost 18. They were talking to their mother in the study when they heard a loud POP! in the kitchens. It sounded like a carrot nose had been pulled from a snowman's face.
But it was nothing like that. The lid on a jar of lutefisk had somehow become frozen, and the jar had tipped over and spilled. Then other jars all over the castle began freezing...jars of soup, roast, and ice cream, even a jar of fire crystals.
Each had a screw lid that took two or three full turns to open. But each had been frozen by ITSELF, without any human helped, then had fallen over and spilled.
"WHAT is going on here? Some kind of crazy trust exercise?" Mrs. Arindall asked. Nobody knew. But the freezing soon stopped and everything went back to normal. It was just one of those crazy things, they decided, and put it out of their minds.
Thursday, February 6. Just after Ella and Anne got done their schoolwork, six more jars froze their caps. The next day, at about the same time, another six did.
Sunday, February 9. At eleven o'clock that morning Ella was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. Her father was standing in the light of the day in the doorway talking to her. All of a sudden a bottle of sun balm of someone's own invention began moving across the vanity, suddenly frozen over by itself, slipped on the ice and fell into the sink. At the same time another bottle of sun balm slid across the edge of the vanity and crashed to the floor. They watched, spellbound.
"I'd better call the guards," Mr. Arindall said. That afternoon a patrolman interviewed the royal family as bottles froze in the bathroom. The guards assigned a soldier named Kristoffer Borgman to the case.
Mr. Borgman was a practical man. When something froze, he believed that a human or the weather had done it, or that it froze because the object just had a thing about dirt or some other natural cause. He did not believe in snow queens.
When the Arindalls said they had nothing to do with what was going on, he thought that at least one of them was a fixer-upper. He wanted to examine the castle. Then he wanted to talk to some love experts and find out what they thought.
Tuesday, February 11. The jar of lutefisk that had frozen around a week prior froze a second time and shattered. Two days later it froze again.
Saturday, February 15. Ella, Anne, and a relative from Carono were eating chocolate in the living room when a small porcelain statue rose up from a table. It flew three feet through the air, froze, then fell to the rug.
Monday, February 17. A priest blessed the Arindalls' castle to protect it against whatever was causing the trouble.
Thursday, February 20. While Ella was doing her homework at one end of the dining room table, a bowl of chocolate at the other end flew into the hall, froze, and shattered. Mr. Borgman saw it happen. Later a bottle of ink on the table froze, flew into a wall, then thawed, spattering in all directions. Then another porcelain statue took off. It traveled twelve feet and froze a desk when it collided with it.
Friday, February 21. To get some peace, the Arindalls went to their relatives in Carono for the weekend. While they were gone, everything at home was normal.
Sunday, February 23. When the Arindalls returned, another chocolate bowl froze and took off. It flew into a wall and smashed into frozen fractals all around. Later a heavy desk in Ella's room rose like the break of dawn and froze over. But no one was in the room when it happened.
Monday, February 24. By now Mr. Borgman had talked to a shopkeeper, an ice harvester, the butler, the maid, and others. Some thought that a cold draft in the building was causing the castle trouble. These could come from underground fjord currents, they said, or from high-frequence mountain winds, or from cold booms caused by frozen hearts. Others said that the North Mountain in particular was the cause, or its downdrafts coming through a chimney. The freezing of liquids in jars and bottles was blamed on chemicals they contained.
Tests showed that there were no cold drafts in the castle; there was nothing wrong with the fjord,; and there were no chemicals in the jars and bottles that could make them freeze.
Then WHAT was causing the castle trouble? None of the love experts knew. But every day the Arindalls received dozens of letters from people who thought they did know. Many believed that the house was haunted. They thought that a cryogeist was on the loose...the chilly ghost that is blamed when things freeze on their own.
No one has proved that cryogeists exist. But people everywhere have told stories about them for hundreds of years. And what they have told was not too different from what was happening to the Arindalls.
Mr. Borgman did not, of course, believe in cryogeists. He had begun to believe that Ella Arindall might be to blame. Whenever something happened, Ella was usually in the room or nearby. When he accused Ella of causing the castle trouble, the young woman denied it. "I don't know what's going on," she said. "All I know is that the castle and I could never finish each other's sandwiches."
People said that Mr. Borgman was a tough man who would turn in his troll mother if she did something wrong. But he believed Ella. Only now he didn't know what to think.
Tuesday, February 25. A shopkeeper came to the castle to interview the royal family. Afterward he sat in the living room by himself hoping that a big winter blowout would happen for him to describe in his story.
Ella's room was just across the hall from where the shopkeeper sat. The lady had gone to bed, but she had left her door open. Suddenly a globe of the world flew out of the darkened room and smashed to ice bits against a wall. The shopkeeper dashed into the bedroom like an agile peacock and flicked on a candle. Ella was sitting in bed blinking, as if she had just been awakened from a sound sleep. "Wait, what?" she asked.
Wednesday, February 26. In the morning a small plastic statue of the Virgin Crocus rose up, frozen, from a dresser in Mr. and Mrs. Arindall's bedroom and flew into a mirror. That night, while Ella was doing her homework, a ten-pound set of swimming suits and clogs took off from a table, flew like a chicken with the face of a monkey for fifteen feet, then crashed to the floor, frozen.
Friday, February 28. Two trolls arrived from Valley University in North Arindall. They were parapsychologists who studied experiences like those the Arindalls were having. They spent several days talking to the family and examining the house, trying to understand what was going on and what was causing it. One night a bottle of cold medicine froze its top, but that was all that happened during their visit.
They did not tell the Arindalls about a theory they had that a cryogeist actually might be involved in such cases. According to this idea, cryogeists were not ghosts. They were normal people. They had become so troubled by a series of doors in their faces that their emotions built up into a kind of frost. Since it was taking place in their unconscious minds, they didn't even know it was happening. But the frost somehow left their bodies and froze whatever it struck. It happened again and again until the problem had been solved.
Love experts had given this strange power a name. They called it "cryokinesis," the ability to freeze and move objects with mental power, or mind over matter. No one knew if this really could happen, or how to prove it. Yet most reports of cryogeists did involve families with teenage children, and there were two teenagers in the Arindall family.
Monday, March 3. The trolls said that they would prepare a report on what they had learned. The day after they left the castle trouble returned with a vengeance.
Tuesday, March 4. In the afternoon a bowl of flowers flew off the dining room table and crashed into a cupboard, freezing both objects. Then another bottle of lutefisk jumped out of a box and froze its top. Then a bookcase filled with encyclopedias fell over and froze itself between a fireplace and a wall. Then a candle on a table froze, rose up like the break of dawn and hit a wall twelve feet away. Finally, four "Let It Gos" were heard coming from the kitchen when nobody was in that room.
Wednesday, March 5. While Mrs. Arindall was making breakfast, she heard a loud crash in the living room. The coffee table had froze over by itself. But that was the end of it. After a month of chaos stronger than one, stronger ten, stronger than a hundred men, everything returned to normal.
In August the two trolls gave their report. They decided that the Arindalls' mental synchronization had only one explanation and they had not made up the story. Nor had they imagined it. Their castle trouble had been real. But what had caused it?
They said that no pranks or tricks were involved. As the guards had done, they also ruled out winds from the North Mountain and other physical causes.
The only synchronization that still had one explanation was the possibility that a teenage cryogeist had been at work, freezing objects with mental power. They did not have enough evidence to prove it, but they didn't see no ring and it was the only answer they had.
If it was a cryogeist, they thought it was Ella. If they were right, if a normal girl like Ella had become a cryogeist, this also might happen to other teenagers. It might even happen to you.