LITMIR.BIZ

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bearskin hat sitting proudly upon the old man’s head. He does not need it now, so the boy lifts it down, awkward only when he has to wrestle it over Grandfather’s ears. His eyes light momentarily on the old man’s jackboots too, but they will not fit, and he does not relish the idea of seeing Grandfather’s feet with their bulbous blue veins now devoid of all blood.

      It is time to leave, so leaving is what he does.

      Up the dell he goes, through luminescent snow. The woods in dead of night are no different from the woods at dusk, and for this the boy is thankful. The same light is captured in the snowbound canopy, the same ghosts move in the darkness, the same sounds startle and echo and live longer in the boy’s imagination.

      There are sounds in the forest, spidery things that scuttle on the very outskirts of his hearing, so that every time he whips his head round all he sees is frigid undergrowth. Every stem is crisped in white, every gnarled root iced with sugar like a wing of the angel. When he exhales, his breath mists, obscuring by degrees the deepening forest. It condenses in the rim of Grandfather’s bearskin hat, so that before long he is wearing a crown of ice itself. Soon it encroaches onto the skin of his forehead. It pierces him and holds fast, binding head to hat.

      In this way the boy huddles through the forest. His lashes are heavy, the ice creeping down his face to make a carefully crafted death-mask, but at last he sees the car between the trees. The whole body is draped in ice.

      He tries the handle at the driver’s side, but it is stuck. He heaves again, to no avail – and, this time, when he tries to let go, he finds his naked fingers held fast. He tugs and tugs, but the winter has him in its grasp.

      Panic takes him. He twists around, but he cannot twist far. Careful that the skin of his other hand should not touch the treacherous ice, he draws it back inside the eiderdown. A moment later he tries to prise his hand free. Cold is surging along his fingers and up his arm. He thinks: what will happen when it touches my heart? I’ll be frozen forever, only to wake up in a hundred years, thawed out by some wanderer of the future.

      He has a thought, and spits on his trapped hand. The saliva works a sorcery, thawing the thin ice and letting him work an inch of flesh free. He spits again, and then again – and, in that way, he is able to tear himself away.

      At last, he remembers: when Grandfather lifted him out of the car, the door remained ajar behind him. He tramps to the ditch side and sees that door still open by inches. The winter has tried to seal the gap, closing the crevice with barnacles of ice just as skin grows back over a wound, but its work is not yet done. With effort the boy is able to force his way in.

      The cold of inside does not have the same clarity as the cold of out. He heaves the door shut, to the satisfying sound of ice crunching against ice, and imagines he can hear the tiny clink of crystals interlocking.

      The key is still in the ignition. All Grandfather has to do is turn that key and the car starts rolling. When the car is rolling, its undercarriage rattles and the floor gets hot – but when he puts his fingers around the key he finds it frozen in place, bound to the car by the same ice slowly smothering the forest.

      Inside the car he cannot see out; through that icy cocoon all he can see are different shades of grey and black. Perhaps this is what Grandfather’s ghost feels like, if it still lingers inside his corpse. He shrinks back into the eiderdown, holding himself. He thinks: if I sleep, morning will come, and with it the morning thaw.

      It is not long after he closes his eyes that his teeth begin to chatter. He concentrates on holding them still, but to do so he must tense every muscle in his body and soon the effort is too great. It is only when he gives up trying that he begins to lose sensation: first his feet, then his legs, his hands and arms. At last, the only parts of him awake are his chattering teeth; then, even they pass out of all thought.

      ‘Wake up.’

      He turns, entangled in eiderdown, not knowing where, nor even what, he is.

      ‘He’s coming for you. You have to wake up.’

      All he can feel is a circlet of pain running around the edge of his head. He is wearing an icicle crown and, rather than growing out, the icicles have turned on him, growing into flesh and bone. He shivers. It is not a shiver of cold, but a shiver of fever. It is the kind of shiver mama got every time they said they were making her better, and put the wires into her veins.

      Mama’s voice. He remembers it now. She says, ‘Wake up, my littlest friend. He’s coming to find you.’

      ‘Who is, mama?’

      ‘He’s coming out of the wood …’

      The boy’s eyes snap open. No sooner is he awake than mama’s voice is gone. He fights the eiderdown off to find himself trapped, somehow, on the inside of an ice cube. It takes a moment, but then: the car. I am in the car.

      Outside, the snow dark is paling, but he cannot see the trees. All is occluded by ice.

      Something moves.

      As soon as he senses movement, other shapes fall into stark relief. Edges become distinct and distances become apparent – and, although the ice still magnifies and shrinks according to how deeply its scales have grown, he can make out individual trees.

      He can make out, too, a figure coming lurching over a fallen bough.

      In three great strides it is at the side of the car. Its hands seem to caress the windows and doors, but then it retreats. He thinks, for a moment, it is gone back to the forest, but then it appears on the ditch side of the car, brandishing a bough it has lifted from the winter wood.

      The boy scrabbles against the furthest corner of car. His fingers find the handle, but it is held fast. He remembers the crunch of ice on ice, the sensation of the tiny crystals locking together, just as surely as this bearskin hat has become a part of his head. He tries again, unfeeling fingers fumbling – but still nothing.

      ‘Are you in there?’

      It can talk. The shadow man can talk. Its voice is distant, a ragged whisper as a thing might make if it did not need to take any breath.

      The boy holds himself tight. It is only movement that he sees. Perhaps it is the same for this forest ghoul. If the boy does not move, he will remain invisible in his icy tomb.

      ‘I can see you.’

      He has to be lying. His body is held rigid, refusing to take breath. The ice from the bearskin hat is creeping down his face.

      ‘I can see you, boy …’

      At last, he exhales. Two great gulps, and a horrible pain explodes in his chest; he has swallowed air so frigid that veins of ice are spreading across his insides, groping from organ to organ like happened with mama.

      The forest shade’s hands grapple with the door. Now the ice relents. The shadow forces the bough into the tiny crack and, with a sound like shattering pipes, the door flies open.

      The bright white of snow behind him is blinding. It takes long seconds for the boy’s eyes to become accustomed to the glare. Slowly the silhouette gains features: a flat, crooked nose; eyes like sunken canker scars.

      ‘Come on, boy, get yourself out of there. I’ll have to start a fire.’

      ‘Papa?’

      ‘You shouldn’t have run off like that. There’s things in these forests.’

      It feels as if his insides are coming apart, like a patchwork blanket with a loose thread that, once teased, begins unravelling and cannot be stopped. The sensation tingles up and down his arms, the wormy bits that make up his innards wriggling, uncontrolled. It is, he knows, a feeling of pure relief. He bobs in it, as if still cupped in the ice-cold waters of his dream.

      ‘Is it really you, papa?’

      ‘Who else would it be?’

      The boy says, ‘Well, there’s things in these forests …’

      ‘I just told you.’

      ‘I

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