Chapter Twenty Three

If you assume concurrent with end of season 2, Sam would be 14 and Chris 12 right after IICY.1

Twelve year old Chris Griffin prowled carefully through the big house, looking for his brother Sam. His mother was locked up in her den, and his father was outside shoveling the walk, during the middle of the raging storm. One look at his father white, pinched face had made Chris keep his mouth shut on any smart remarks. After that press conference where Helen Morgendorffer had ripped apart the mayor, the two boys had sat quietly in awe of her technique. They both had a major crush on Quinn, their sisters redheaded friend, and former vice president of her stupid "Fashion Club." But Sam had been strangely quiet once they had gotten home, refusing to wrestle with him, or play any video games.

Finally, Chris decided to check their sister's bedroom. Sam was laying on the carpeted floor next to the bed. He had pulled up the pink bedspread, and his head pillowed on his arm, was looking underneath it. Chris flopped down on the floor next to his brother, peering intently, and at first could see nothing. As his eyes adjusted to the semidarkness, he made out a white blob, and hesitantly reached out for it. A rasping snarl and hiss made him gasp and roll away.

"Come on, Sam, it's just Sandi's stupid cat!"

The long-haired white Persian cat, Fluffy, maintained his position under the head of Sandi's bed against the wall, keeping his wary green eyes on the two boys, who had often tormented him with firecrackers and Super Soakers. Sam stayed down on the rug, still staring at the nervous animal.

"Chris?" Sam finally said.

"Yeah?"

"What if Sandi never comes back?"

"What? What are you talking about, Sam?"

Sam remained on the floor, still staring under the bed.

"What if she never comes back? What happens to us, to Mom and Dad?"

Chris shrugged.

"Thing's will just go on, I guess. Mom and Dad will go back to normal. I guess they'll save some of her stuff, pictures and things, give the rest away. Probably get rid of the cat. Mom always did say he sheds all over everything. Never did figure out why Sandi liked it so much, as fussy as she is about her clothes."

Sam rolled up and stared at his younger brother. Chris was surprised to see his eyes blinking rapidly.

"Do you know what Mom's doing right now? She's crying!"

Chris gaped in disbelief.

"Mom? No way, man! You're crazy! Mom's tough as nails! Maybe Dad, but not Mom!"

"Yes, Mom! Didn't you see Quinn's Mom and sister today, the way they were?"

'Well, yeah, but what does that have to do with this/"

Sam sighed in frustration, trying to express himself to his little brother.

"Look, we both think Quinn is hot, right?"

"Well, yeah!"

"Well, if she thinks Sandi is good enough to be her friend, what about us? Sure, brothers and sisters fight all the time, but do you see other girls going to school with a lot of bruises like Sandi was? Did Quinn?"

"Hey, don't blame all of that on me. We both did that stuff, and so did Mom!"

"Well, maybe we were wrong, and so was Mom!" Sam shot back. "Sandi was a stuck up pain, but we didn't need to hurt her like that! Kicking and bruising her until she'd be crying! Remember that time she fell down the stairs, and broke her leg because we were fighting? What if it had been her neck!"

Chris hesitated, confused.

Sam pressed on.

"Sandi would've been dead! It would have been our fault. Sandi might be a little taller than we are, but we're both a lot stronger than she is. If one of us ever did marry Quinn, would you do that to her!"

"What? No way, Quinn is great!"

"Well, you really think Quinn would get off on seeing Sandi get hurt?"

Chris stared down at the pale blue carpeting in his sister's room. Finally, he said,"No, they're friends. Quinn came over here all the time, to help Sandi get back into shape, after she broke her leg. We just made jokes about how fat she was, but Quinn helped her out."

Chris stared down at his brother, while Sam stared steadily back up at him. In a weak voice, Chris said, "But, what about the cat?"

Sam rolled back over, still staring at his sister's pet.

"I just think she might like it if she knew he was okay, you know?"

Tom Griffin throw himself into the backbreaking labor of shoveling the sidewalk and driveway. His shoulders soon burned with the effort, but there was something satisfying in the intense physical labor, that he didn't seem to feel any more from the rest of life.

I should have married Patty Wells. She was always so happy to see me, and such a good sport. Still, there was that mole ... .

Still, he had married Linda. She was so forceful, and she was a real tiger when they were alone together, that it was easier to get along with her by letting her be on top when she wanted to be. Which, he admitted to himself, was all the time.

But the way Sandi had been looking at him lately tore at him. There was the look of someone who had been let down, been betrayed by the one she trusted most. Sandi had always seemed so much like Linda, so forceful and commanding, that he had never thought she needed any help with anything. But when her fights with Linda had turned physical, Sandi seemed to become a helpless little girl. She hadn't once struck back at her mother. And now her brother's were doing it to her, too. Sandi had always dressed so fashionably, and the weather had been getting colder. It had taken him a while to figure out why she was wearing long sleeves and pants. But still, he lived there, too! He should have noticed something, shouldn't he?

Linda had been so frustrated lately too at work. She came home seething in fury, her manner colder and colder. The few times they had been intimate had been almost scary, the way Linda had thrown herself into the act almost like an assault.

Had Sandi run away? It didn't seem possible, but still, she had been so miserable lately. But where would she go? Sure, she had a few friends, but they had disappeared with her too. Tom honestly couldn't think of them being close enough to leave their lives for Sandi's sake. Had she committed suicide, and taken them with her? Tom had been increasingly glad that their family didn't own any guns. Linda had never been interested in them, and Sandi had been too fashionable for them. They both sought control by other means.

But Sandi had seemingly crumbled after last summer, tried to be nicer, and her daughters failures had seemed to point out toLinda of the faults in her own life. Her sheer hatred of Helen Morgendorffer had become almost an obsession, and Sandi's closer ties to Quinn had almost become a insult to his stressed out wife.

The howling wind suddenly doubled it's raw fury, knocked the worried man to his knees. Tom gasped in the frigid blast, feeling the drifting snow rising up around his hands and ankles, almost trapping him like quicksand. Using the snow shovel as a prop, he staggered to his feet. The wind almost seemed to take a personal interest in him, slamming him again and again. He staggered towards his now barely seen house. The snow drift's danced under his feet, rising up in strange cones, like small tornadoes. The terrified man felt almost helpless, like a giant had reached down from the sky to crush him in it's cold grip.

Jake slammed his shoulder into the cracked wood of Quinn's bedroom door a second time and it broke under him. His bare feet stumbled on first the ruined door, and then the frost-covered bedroom floor. He swore, the frost cold on his feet, looked up and gasped. A swirling column of snow filled the center of Quinn's bedroom, it's soft white glow reflecting off the ice crystals that sparkled over every square inch of his daughter's formerly pink bedroom. Off to one side of the glowing, swirling column was Quinn's three paneled mirror screen. Jake fell to his knees as he saw what was reflected on the panels. A starved, gaunt Quinn, licking something off a floor, while a haggard Tiffany looked on hopelessly. Sandi Griffin floated in space curled up in a fetal position, sobbing, and screaming, her bare emaciated body showing every bone. Stacy Rowe, seemingly buried deep beneath the earth, unable to move, but still alive, and able to scream.

Jake stared in revulsion at the horrific images. He was vividly reminded of the pictures he had seen from World War II, when the Allies had overrun and liberated the concentration camps, of men, women, and children showing every bone under their mostly bare skins, of pits of the dead that looked exactly like the pitiful living survivors. But this was his little girl! This was little Quinn, whom he had helped to teach how to walk, who he had rocked to sleep. She had grown up into a beautiful, confident young woman, ready to go to college, and take on the world.

But now she was in Hell, to her fathers disbelieving eyes. How? Why? His daughter didn't deserve this, and neither did her friends. They were just kids, still in school! How could something like this be happening? Who was doing it to her? Damn it, not while her father could do something about it! He balled his fists and started forward.

And then She stepped out of the column of snow. Her long black hair flowed down her slender frame, like black silk. Her narrow, delicate features were framed by the hair, highlighting the dark pools of her eyes, the vivid red of her lips. Her white kimono seemed to be made out of mist drifting across her porcelain perfection, the exquisite curves of her petite figure, the soft mounds of her small breasts.

A wave of desire crashed into Jake, knocking him to his knees. He wanted to crawl after this, this Goddess, beg her for the slightest of favors. For a brief moment, he would have worshiped her. He knew she expected him to, demanded it.

But the frost sparkling in the bedroom (Quinn's bedroom?) suddenly paled. Quinn! His little girl! Quinn needed her old man, her dad. His daughter. Helen's daughter. Helen Barksdale. The woman he had married in 1975, and been madly in love with even before. Jake's love for his often demanding wife had been a constant point in his life, drowning out the miserable childhood and poor, often hostile, relationship with his father.

But he had never doubted Helen's love for him, or his for her. The deep-seated passion they shared, that had shored him up during the darkest of times, during his steady estrangement from his parents, his often bad jobs, his failures with clients and friends. Helen was always there to be leaned on, sometimes too much so, but she was always there. Now she had needed him. Helen and Daria both needed him, for Quinn's sake.

And he had almost failed. Because of this, this, . . . thing, in Quinn's bedroom! Jake had never been the smartest or bravest of men, but he could dimly sense some strange connection, between this ghostly apparition and his daughters and her friend's disappearance. Raw desire and lust flooded his soul, warring with his deep rooted, basic decency, of the loving husband and caring father that defined his often confused soul.

The Yuki-Onna had stood quietly, almost as if she could see the deep-rooted conflict in this man's soul. This man was the red-haired girl's father, the leader of the four victims in the cabin. Dim memories of her own parents surfaced in the quiet stillness of her mind, disturbing her, brief memories of the short time she had spent with her own living son, when he and she had still been alive, before she had paid her own price, made her own bargain, not with the Gods and Goddess's of old Japan, but with deeper, elemental forces.

But she was old. So old that she could barely remember a time when she had walked through snow, not floated above it. When her only child had nursed from her warm breasts, not become a frozen lure of death and horror. When the mere touch of her hand had brought comfort, not a soulless, frozen death, and eternal solitude in the starry skies.

Jake crawled toward her, his body colder and colder, his breathing more and more strained. He couldn't feel his hands and feet anymore, could feel his straining heart pumping in his chest.

See, old man! I'm doing this! Your good-for-nothing son is going that last mile! I'm going to save my little Quinn for Helen and Daria! My little girl! You never came to our wedding! You never saw how much better our marriage was than yours and Moms!

Jake's steadily blurring vision showed him the still figure before him, gazing down on him, almost tranquilly, with a sad, yet cruel smile. The contrast of her red lips, with the otherwise stark white and black which composed her image vividly reminded him of blood and snow. Whose blood on the snow? The image flashed again into his mind, Quinn kneeling, licking something off a wooden floor, while Tiffany lay nearby, looking on, her neck covered with a rude, red-stained bandage. Jake suddenly knew what Quinn had done, could feel her mingled revulsion and excitement, her fear of becoming . . . what?

Jake knew it was only a few feet from the door to the foot of Quinn's canopied bed, but he felt like it had been miles. Sharp pains shot through his chest, a reminder of his weakened heart, his previous heart attack. He struggled harder, barely able to see his hands, when something appeared on his frost-covered skin, dripping bright and red. He shakily raised the numb hand and touched it to his lip, leaving a smear of blood. His lips had cracked open. His blood trickled down his face, dripped on the floor.

Jake raised his nearly dead hand to the white figure he could now barely see, in entreaty or threat he could now barely remember. "Please, Quinn . . . my little girl, give . . . her." He slowly collapsed on the floor, his body close to lifeless, still straining forward. She looked down at the dying man as she had looked down on so many others over the years. A brave man, this one, who had conquered his lust and fear. His soul still drove on, trying to force his almost lifeless body forward, to stop her. She sighed, and reached down for the brightly burning ember deep in the man's chest.

Daria and Helen both cautiously advanced up the dark hallway. Helen had forced her stubborn daughter to at least put on her father's gloves and coat, even though it felt like a tent on her. But it kept her warm. Helen had hurriedly dressed herself warmly in a coat and slacks, taking the lead in the hallway, her small key chain flashlight dimly lighting their way. She tightly gripped the small can of pepper spray in her other hand. Daria still tightly grasped one of her fathers golf clubs in each hand. Frost sparkled on the walls and floor, drifted eerily in the air before them. As they turned the corner, they saw a brightly shining mist spewing out of the doorway to Quinn's room, one half of the broken door laying in the hall, but no sign of Jake.

A quiet moan followed by a whisper of "Jake" from her mother caused tears to run down Daria's close to frozen face. Daria made a quick decision, and pushed ahead of her mother to the bedroom door, the icy mist coating her, settling on her numb skin and floating hair. Static electricity crackled in the floating auburn strands drifting above Daria's slight shoulders. Helen hurried after her. Daria gasped in the subarctic cold that flowed from her sister's bedroom, but pushed ahead before her mother caught up, her foot coming up hard against the snow covered body of her father on the floor. He didn't stir at all as Daria knelt beside him, brushing the snow from his still face, his eyes wide open, snow crystals sparkling in his hair, and on his eyelashes. Her mothers loud scream echoed in the room behind her.

"Oh, My God! Jake! Daria! Behind you!"

Daria looked up in sudden terror, as a pair of cold white hands gently caressed her face, and tilted it up to meet the cold inhuman gaze of the Snow Woman.

1Contributed by RLobinske. Thanks!