Chapter 3
Snow Dreams And Bug Bites
Amelia woke that morning with her heart thrilling. For a moment, she forgot completely why she was so excited, but upon laying eyes on the paper snowflakes festooning her room, the night before came back to her in a flood of happiness.
"That's right!" exclaimed the little girl, throwing back her covers and hopping out of bed, nightgown fluttering. She shivered a bit as her feet touched the frigid wooden floor before dropping to her knees and fishing her slippers out from under her bed. Amelia pushed her feet into them quickly and padded up to the window. Jack Frost had returned her kisses from last night, little "flowers" of frost exploding across her window; the early morning light that shone through them casting crystalline reflections on the floor. Almost hating to do it, the little girl pressed her hand up against the window, the warmth of it melting away the frost flowers. Pulling her hand back, she peered through the blurry spot she'd made, the landscape outside causing her to catch her breath.
Everything looked as though it was covered in a thick layer of white icing. Their lawn was now a glittering expanse of white interrupted only by the occasional mound where the hedges and bushes slept under their blanket of snow. Everything was perfect. Smooth, white and almost uninterrupted. It was the time that Amelia loved most after a snow. The whole world seemed clean and unmarred, completely cleansed.
Eager to play in the newly fallen snow, Amelia quickly changed out of her nightgown, pulling on a wool dress and her thickest pair of stockings along with her usual two-tone boots. Not wanting to take the time to brush her hair, the girl snatched up her knit beret and pushed her dark curls up into it. There was no time to be ladylike when snow was involved.
Taking the stairs two at a time, the little girl made her way to the first floor of the house, beaming with joy. Her mother and father were sitting in the parlor, sharing their morning tea and chatting quietly, and Jack was at the door, buttoning up his winter coat, a hat perched a bit crookedly on his head. The young man was quickly tackled by his little sister, staggering a bit and laughing as she wrapped her arms around his knees. "Well, hello! That was quite the enthusiastic greeting!" he chuckled, adjusting his hat. "How is my little snow angel?"
Amelia blushed at the nickname. "I'm good! Can we go play, Jack? Pleeeeeeease?"
Her older brother pulled his face into a theatric version of thoughtfulness. "Weeeell," he drawled over dramatically, "I don't know. Mother and father wanted me to shovel the walkway..."
"Oh, come on Jack!" Amelia pleaded, tugging at the hem of his coat. "You promised you'd play with me! You promised you'd do the things we did last year!"
Jack's face changed to a smile and he snapped his fingers. "So I did! Well, I'm not one to break my promises and I'm sure that they won't mind me building a snowman or two before I clear the walkway." Amelia flashed a smile at her brother before tugging more persistantly at his coat and heading out the door, chattering excitedly. The young man couldn't help but smile a little. His sister's good mood was positively contagious, and he could feel himself warming on the inside despite the chill weather. "Let's get you bundled up before we head out, hm? It's quite cold out there," he said, pulling Amelia's coat from the rack and holding it out for her. After a few moments of coats and scarves and mittens and gloves, the two were ready to venture out in the winter wonderland that had formed overnight.
Amelia's older brother was almost as breathtaken as she was at the scene before him. The lawn was a carpet of glimmering whiteness, and the once black, skeletal trees had been fleshed out by the snow, their white arms reaching to the overcast sky. Here and there he could see cardinals perched on their branches, some calling out in the crisp morning air while in the distance he could hear the jingle of harness bells from someone's sleigh. Mornings like this, Jack reflected with a fond smile, were what made winter his favorite season.
For a moment, Jack's sister simply stared in awe at the scene before her, much like her brother did, but soon excitement bubbled over in her and with a yell she plunged forward into the lawn, sinking nearly to her knees in the snow. Undaunted by the depth, she thrust her mitten-covered hands into the white bounty before her, drawing back a mound of snow which she quickly packed into a ball. Grinning mischeviously, the little girl whipped around and hurled the snowball at her older brother. The projectile exploded against his dark winter coat with a satisfying "piff", resulting in an exaggerated look of shock on the face of Jack.
"Why, Amelia!" he said with a grin, "I do belive that's a declaration of war!" The youth reached down and snatched up a handful of snow himself, tossing it at his little sister. She let out a happy squeal as it connected with her shoulder and the two began a heated battle. The air sang with powdery white bombs and gleeful laughter, the simple pleasures of a winter day taking both combatants. In his red-cheeked zeal, eyes locked on his sister, Jack didn't notice the little creature he picked up in a handful of snow. It made it's presence known quite quickly, though.
"OW!"
Amelia stopped in mid wind-up, looking worriedly to Jack. She may have been throwing her snowballs as hard as she could, but she didn't think she'd been throwing them hard enough to hurt her brother. "Jack?" she squeaked, her blue eyes growing large with concern and guilt. "Oh my, did I hurt you? I'm so sorry!"
"N-No! No, it wasn't you, Amelia. It...it was something in the snow..." Jack quickly shook out his hand, dropping the snow, and almost leapt clear out of his skin as it hit the ground.
Upon bursting on a cleared bit of the walkway, the broken snowball freed what was unmistakably a very large insect. It looked like a beetle, but it's enormous mandibles and unnatural color told the young man it was nothing that should have been wandering around in the snow. Or even in this area, for that matter. The only place he'd ever seen an insect that looked remotely like it was in his books and encyclopedia entries concerning animals of faraway jungles and forests. Whatever it was, he thought as he freed his hand from his glove and examined it, it certainly packed a lot of power behind it's jaws. The insect had not only pierced clear through his leather glove, but had also drawn blood. Not a worrysome amount, but the bite still stung horribly.
The boy was so mesmerized by the stinging pain and the simple fact that a mere insect had bitten through leather, he hadn't noticed his sister's crunching steps across the snow as she hurried to his side. Spying his hand, she let out a sharp gasp. "Jack! You're bleeding!" she cried. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm fine," he mumbled a bit thickly, shaking out his hand again as if it would disperse the pain. Instead, the stinging spread through his hand and up his arm, making them feel numb and heavy. The world seemed to tilt ever so slightly and Jack staggered to try and catch up with its movement. His head felt foggy and his vision and hearing quickly followed it, the snow appearing to rise up and engulf everything in a cloud of white. From some far off corner of the Earth, he thought he could hear Amelia calling out to him, but her voice, like everything else, faded to white.
When the world returned to him, Jack found himself not in his lawn, or even his home, but instead in a forest. For a moment he thought it was the forest that surrounded his house, but this one wasn't full of snow. Instead, it was occupied with trees that seemed to be in the throes of October, their branches bare or hung sparsely with dry, brown leaves. He realized he was laying on the ground, his fingers gloveless and digging into loose dirt or crumbling a handful of the brittle, dead leaves that carpeted the forest floor. Not wanting to tempt passing out, the young man sat up slowly, breathing deep of the fragrant autumn air. All around him were the smells of things dying and decaying, their pungent scents almost overwhelming.
Jack managed to get to his feet, still feeling slightly light headed and quite confused about his current surroundings. He was no longer dressed in his heavy winter clothes, but was clad in his suit of coal black and white pinstripes. Now, why on Earth was he wearing that? Had someone re-dressed him while he was passed out and moved him to this foreign wood? Was the insect bite causing him to hallucinate? Peering at his hand, the young man found the injury had mysteriously vanished, his skin smooth and unmarred. A crisp wind howled suddenly through the trees, shaking free a few of the leaves that still clung to the branches and bringing Jack back to the present. Wrapping his arms around himself, he did the only thing he could really think of doing. He began to walk.
As he walked through the wood, seeing no break in the trees as far as he looked, Jack began to try and figure out what had happened, exactly. No matter how hard he tried, though, he couldn't seem to come up with anything rational. Had he become like Rip Van Winkle, falling asleep for years and years and then waking again to some autumn in the future? No, that didn't make sense. No one could sleep that long and live. And if he had, surely Amelia would have had their parents bring him into the house at least. Perhaps he had been sleepwalking and had gone right out of the house and into the nearby woods. But that didn't make sense either. Why would he fall asleep in his suit? And when he was awake last, he was sure that it was the middle of December, not October. More sinister possibilities began to enter his mind. Maybe what he thought was his life was really a dream, and this was the real world. Suppose Amelia, his parents, the house and everything else were just some happy dream he was having while he slept in the woods and now he had finally woken from it. But then why couldn't he remember anything from before it? Jack stopped suddenly as yet another possible situation entered his head.
What if he was dead?
What if that insect was extremely poisonous and had killed him with its bite?
What if everything he'd been told about Heaven and Hell was a lie and this was really what the afterlife was like?
The thought sent a chill down Jack's spine and he quickly felt his pulse. It still thrummed away rhythmically under his fingers. His lungs still pumped air in and out of him. If he was dead, then death was much more alive than Jack had thought it would be.
Sighing, feeling even more confused about his situation, and now becoming quite cold, Jack stopped in his journey and hugged himself, rubbing his arms vigorously. What was going on? Why was he here? Where was "here," for that matter? Quite suddenly another wind kicked up, this one much stronger than the first. Jack huddled against a tree for some sort of shelter, his fingers clutching it's crumbling, dry bark.
Loose dirt and twigs snapped across his exposed skin like miniature bullets, and the branches of the trees bent and twisted, seeming to come to life. They reached down, scratching and gripping at him like bony fingers, catching on his clothing and tearing at his skin, pulling him into some strange embrace. The young man let out a shout of frustration and fright, struggling to free himself from the tangle of branches that ensnared him and held him fast to the trunk of the tree. Along with the stinging branches and freezing wind that buffeted him, Jack could begin to feel tiny, ticklings and scratchings prickling at his hands and going up his arms. Daring to open his eyes to see what this new assault was, a strangled cry of horror escaped him.
Insects. All of unnatural colors and shapes, similar to the one that bit him, were swarming out of the carpet of leaves on the ground and scrambling up the trunk of the tree to work their way into his sleeves or up his pantlegs. He could feel them scrabbling across his skin under his clothing, invading every inch of him.
But what truly terrified him, what chilled Jack down to his marrow, was a laugh that was carried into the woods by the wind. It was soft at first, but it gradually crescendoed, deep and booming and ringing in his head like the peal of a bell. There was something wrong with it. Something frightening in it that seemed to call to a long forgotten or buried fear that originated somewhere in the past and kept him up at night, violating his dreams and curling clammy, evil fingers out from the shadows of his room.
This was Hell. This was torture. It couldn't be true, he positively refused to believe it. This wasn't happening.
Jack threw his head back and screamed to the branches, to the trees, to the dull, overcast sky. To anyone and anything within earshot. "MOTHER! FATHER! AMELIA! HELP ME!"
And suddenly it all fell away. The whole of the forest dropped away from him as easily as if it were a curtain being pulled back, and he found himself sitting up on a sofa in the parlor, his heart beating like a drum and cold, wet snow and sweat trickling in rivulets down his face. Between gasping breaths, Jack looked about to see his parents and Amelia standing around him and eyeing him with worried gazes. His little sister in particular looked very concerned, snow still caked on her coat, shoes and stockings.
His father spoke first. "Jack...are you all right? Amelia said you picked up something in the snow that drew blood and then you passed out."
"It was some sort of insect," the young man said, looking to his hand to find the mark where he'd been bitten was circled with dry blood. "It bit me. I think maybe it just took me by surprise and I stood up to fast."
"An insect this late into winter?" questioned Mr. Skellington, looking a little surprised.
"Something like that," Jack mumbled, running a hand through his damp hair. He got up carefully. "I'm going up to my room to get this bandaged. I'll be back down in a bit."
He turned and left the parlor without another word, heading up the stairs, taking extra care with his steps. Amelia watched him leave, a nagging suspicion in the back of her mind telling her something was very wrong with her brother. Trying to ignore it, the little girl sighed and pulled of her wet mittens, plodding off to the kitchen to get her breakfast.
Snow Dreams And Bug Bites
Amelia woke that morning with her heart thrilling. For a moment, she forgot completely why she was so excited, but upon laying eyes on the paper snowflakes festooning her room, the night before came back to her in a flood of happiness.
"That's right!" exclaimed the little girl, throwing back her covers and hopping out of bed, nightgown fluttering. She shivered a bit as her feet touched the frigid wooden floor before dropping to her knees and fishing her slippers out from under her bed. Amelia pushed her feet into them quickly and padded up to the window. Jack Frost had returned her kisses from last night, little "flowers" of frost exploding across her window; the early morning light that shone through them casting crystalline reflections on the floor. Almost hating to do it, the little girl pressed her hand up against the window, the warmth of it melting away the frost flowers. Pulling her hand back, she peered through the blurry spot she'd made, the landscape outside causing her to catch her breath.
Everything looked as though it was covered in a thick layer of white icing. Their lawn was now a glittering expanse of white interrupted only by the occasional mound where the hedges and bushes slept under their blanket of snow. Everything was perfect. Smooth, white and almost uninterrupted. It was the time that Amelia loved most after a snow. The whole world seemed clean and unmarred, completely cleansed.
Eager to play in the newly fallen snow, Amelia quickly changed out of her nightgown, pulling on a wool dress and her thickest pair of stockings along with her usual two-tone boots. Not wanting to take the time to brush her hair, the girl snatched up her knit beret and pushed her dark curls up into it. There was no time to be ladylike when snow was involved.
Taking the stairs two at a time, the little girl made her way to the first floor of the house, beaming with joy. Her mother and father were sitting in the parlor, sharing their morning tea and chatting quietly, and Jack was at the door, buttoning up his winter coat, a hat perched a bit crookedly on his head. The young man was quickly tackled by his little sister, staggering a bit and laughing as she wrapped her arms around his knees. "Well, hello! That was quite the enthusiastic greeting!" he chuckled, adjusting his hat. "How is my little snow angel?"
Amelia blushed at the nickname. "I'm good! Can we go play, Jack? Pleeeeeeease?"
Her older brother pulled his face into a theatric version of thoughtfulness. "Weeeell," he drawled over dramatically, "I don't know. Mother and father wanted me to shovel the walkway..."
"Oh, come on Jack!" Amelia pleaded, tugging at the hem of his coat. "You promised you'd play with me! You promised you'd do the things we did last year!"
Jack's face changed to a smile and he snapped his fingers. "So I did! Well, I'm not one to break my promises and I'm sure that they won't mind me building a snowman or two before I clear the walkway." Amelia flashed a smile at her brother before tugging more persistantly at his coat and heading out the door, chattering excitedly. The young man couldn't help but smile a little. His sister's good mood was positively contagious, and he could feel himself warming on the inside despite the chill weather. "Let's get you bundled up before we head out, hm? It's quite cold out there," he said, pulling Amelia's coat from the rack and holding it out for her. After a few moments of coats and scarves and mittens and gloves, the two were ready to venture out in the winter wonderland that had formed overnight.
Amelia's older brother was almost as breathtaken as she was at the scene before him. The lawn was a carpet of glimmering whiteness, and the once black, skeletal trees had been fleshed out by the snow, their white arms reaching to the overcast sky. Here and there he could see cardinals perched on their branches, some calling out in the crisp morning air while in the distance he could hear the jingle of harness bells from someone's sleigh. Mornings like this, Jack reflected with a fond smile, were what made winter his favorite season.
For a moment, Jack's sister simply stared in awe at the scene before her, much like her brother did, but soon excitement bubbled over in her and with a yell she plunged forward into the lawn, sinking nearly to her knees in the snow. Undaunted by the depth, she thrust her mitten-covered hands into the white bounty before her, drawing back a mound of snow which she quickly packed into a ball. Grinning mischeviously, the little girl whipped around and hurled the snowball at her older brother. The projectile exploded against his dark winter coat with a satisfying "piff", resulting in an exaggerated look of shock on the face of Jack.
"Why, Amelia!" he said with a grin, "I do belive that's a declaration of war!" The youth reached down and snatched up a handful of snow himself, tossing it at his little sister. She let out a happy squeal as it connected with her shoulder and the two began a heated battle. The air sang with powdery white bombs and gleeful laughter, the simple pleasures of a winter day taking both combatants. In his red-cheeked zeal, eyes locked on his sister, Jack didn't notice the little creature he picked up in a handful of snow. It made it's presence known quite quickly, though.
"OW!"
Amelia stopped in mid wind-up, looking worriedly to Jack. She may have been throwing her snowballs as hard as she could, but she didn't think she'd been throwing them hard enough to hurt her brother. "Jack?" she squeaked, her blue eyes growing large with concern and guilt. "Oh my, did I hurt you? I'm so sorry!"
"N-No! No, it wasn't you, Amelia. It...it was something in the snow..." Jack quickly shook out his hand, dropping the snow, and almost leapt clear out of his skin as it hit the ground.
Upon bursting on a cleared bit of the walkway, the broken snowball freed what was unmistakably a very large insect. It looked like a beetle, but it's enormous mandibles and unnatural color told the young man it was nothing that should have been wandering around in the snow. Or even in this area, for that matter. The only place he'd ever seen an insect that looked remotely like it was in his books and encyclopedia entries concerning animals of faraway jungles and forests. Whatever it was, he thought as he freed his hand from his glove and examined it, it certainly packed a lot of power behind it's jaws. The insect had not only pierced clear through his leather glove, but had also drawn blood. Not a worrysome amount, but the bite still stung horribly.
The boy was so mesmerized by the stinging pain and the simple fact that a mere insect had bitten through leather, he hadn't noticed his sister's crunching steps across the snow as she hurried to his side. Spying his hand, she let out a sharp gasp. "Jack! You're bleeding!" she cried. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm fine," he mumbled a bit thickly, shaking out his hand again as if it would disperse the pain. Instead, the stinging spread through his hand and up his arm, making them feel numb and heavy. The world seemed to tilt ever so slightly and Jack staggered to try and catch up with its movement. His head felt foggy and his vision and hearing quickly followed it, the snow appearing to rise up and engulf everything in a cloud of white. From some far off corner of the Earth, he thought he could hear Amelia calling out to him, but her voice, like everything else, faded to white.
When the world returned to him, Jack found himself not in his lawn, or even his home, but instead in a forest. For a moment he thought it was the forest that surrounded his house, but this one wasn't full of snow. Instead, it was occupied with trees that seemed to be in the throes of October, their branches bare or hung sparsely with dry, brown leaves. He realized he was laying on the ground, his fingers gloveless and digging into loose dirt or crumbling a handful of the brittle, dead leaves that carpeted the forest floor. Not wanting to tempt passing out, the young man sat up slowly, breathing deep of the fragrant autumn air. All around him were the smells of things dying and decaying, their pungent scents almost overwhelming.
Jack managed to get to his feet, still feeling slightly light headed and quite confused about his current surroundings. He was no longer dressed in his heavy winter clothes, but was clad in his suit of coal black and white pinstripes. Now, why on Earth was he wearing that? Had someone re-dressed him while he was passed out and moved him to this foreign wood? Was the insect bite causing him to hallucinate? Peering at his hand, the young man found the injury had mysteriously vanished, his skin smooth and unmarred. A crisp wind howled suddenly through the trees, shaking free a few of the leaves that still clung to the branches and bringing Jack back to the present. Wrapping his arms around himself, he did the only thing he could really think of doing. He began to walk.
As he walked through the wood, seeing no break in the trees as far as he looked, Jack began to try and figure out what had happened, exactly. No matter how hard he tried, though, he couldn't seem to come up with anything rational. Had he become like Rip Van Winkle, falling asleep for years and years and then waking again to some autumn in the future? No, that didn't make sense. No one could sleep that long and live. And if he had, surely Amelia would have had their parents bring him into the house at least. Perhaps he had been sleepwalking and had gone right out of the house and into the nearby woods. But that didn't make sense either. Why would he fall asleep in his suit? And when he was awake last, he was sure that it was the middle of December, not October. More sinister possibilities began to enter his mind. Maybe what he thought was his life was really a dream, and this was the real world. Suppose Amelia, his parents, the house and everything else were just some happy dream he was having while he slept in the woods and now he had finally woken from it. But then why couldn't he remember anything from before it? Jack stopped suddenly as yet another possible situation entered his head.
What if he was dead?
What if that insect was extremely poisonous and had killed him with its bite?
What if everything he'd been told about Heaven and Hell was a lie and this was really what the afterlife was like?
The thought sent a chill down Jack's spine and he quickly felt his pulse. It still thrummed away rhythmically under his fingers. His lungs still pumped air in and out of him. If he was dead, then death was much more alive than Jack had thought it would be.
Sighing, feeling even more confused about his situation, and now becoming quite cold, Jack stopped in his journey and hugged himself, rubbing his arms vigorously. What was going on? Why was he here? Where was "here," for that matter? Quite suddenly another wind kicked up, this one much stronger than the first. Jack huddled against a tree for some sort of shelter, his fingers clutching it's crumbling, dry bark.
Loose dirt and twigs snapped across his exposed skin like miniature bullets, and the branches of the trees bent and twisted, seeming to come to life. They reached down, scratching and gripping at him like bony fingers, catching on his clothing and tearing at his skin, pulling him into some strange embrace. The young man let out a shout of frustration and fright, struggling to free himself from the tangle of branches that ensnared him and held him fast to the trunk of the tree. Along with the stinging branches and freezing wind that buffeted him, Jack could begin to feel tiny, ticklings and scratchings prickling at his hands and going up his arms. Daring to open his eyes to see what this new assault was, a strangled cry of horror escaped him.
Insects. All of unnatural colors and shapes, similar to the one that bit him, were swarming out of the carpet of leaves on the ground and scrambling up the trunk of the tree to work their way into his sleeves or up his pantlegs. He could feel them scrabbling across his skin under his clothing, invading every inch of him.
But what truly terrified him, what chilled Jack down to his marrow, was a laugh that was carried into the woods by the wind. It was soft at first, but it gradually crescendoed, deep and booming and ringing in his head like the peal of a bell. There was something wrong with it. Something frightening in it that seemed to call to a long forgotten or buried fear that originated somewhere in the past and kept him up at night, violating his dreams and curling clammy, evil fingers out from the shadows of his room.
This was Hell. This was torture. It couldn't be true, he positively refused to believe it. This wasn't happening.
Jack threw his head back and screamed to the branches, to the trees, to the dull, overcast sky. To anyone and anything within earshot. "MOTHER! FATHER! AMELIA! HELP ME!"
And suddenly it all fell away. The whole of the forest dropped away from him as easily as if it were a curtain being pulled back, and he found himself sitting up on a sofa in the parlor, his heart beating like a drum and cold, wet snow and sweat trickling in rivulets down his face. Between gasping breaths, Jack looked about to see his parents and Amelia standing around him and eyeing him with worried gazes. His little sister in particular looked very concerned, snow still caked on her coat, shoes and stockings.
His father spoke first. "Jack...are you all right? Amelia said you picked up something in the snow that drew blood and then you passed out."
"It was some sort of insect," the young man said, looking to his hand to find the mark where he'd been bitten was circled with dry blood. "It bit me. I think maybe it just took me by surprise and I stood up to fast."
"An insect this late into winter?" questioned Mr. Skellington, looking a little surprised.
"Something like that," Jack mumbled, running a hand through his damp hair. He got up carefully. "I'm going up to my room to get this bandaged. I'll be back down in a bit."
He turned and left the parlor without another word, heading up the stairs, taking extra care with his steps. Amelia watched him leave, a nagging suspicion in the back of her mind telling her something was very wrong with her brother. Trying to ignore it, the little girl sighed and pulled of her wet mittens, plodding off to the kitchen to get her breakfast.