Snow Over Interstate 80
Martin M. Clark
It was Christmas Eve.
Man, was it ever.
There was a rak-rak as the erstwhile drummer loaded a shell into the breech. He sure likes his 12-gauge, does Mister Winston. Me, I had my .455 Webley, a real antique from an era before smart ammunition, when ‘stopping power’ meant putting as big a hole as possible in your enemy.
You might think the two of us made for unlikely partners. I mean, I’m Jack Frost, the Iceman, the proverbial loner—and Winston, for all his bonhomie, wasn’t exactly big on friends who’d return his calls. So, yeah, it was a marriage of inconvenience, something we’d just have to live with.
The truth was I needed him more than he needed me. A while back I’d ended up on Santa’s Naughty List. Bad things happen to those on the Naughty List, and this particular Bad Thing was out for blood.
The trick is to stay one step ahead until you make amends, until you become the proverbial reformed character, someone Jiminy Cricket would be proud to call ‘pal’. Well, I’d tried that, I’d tried being a good little boy—inserting myself into every saccharine-sweet tale going. Wonderland is where stories live on, if enough people believe in them, and was thus a target-rich environment when it comes to heart-warming schmaltz. So, I’d bought the entire stock from a freezing match girl, kept a robin warm under my coat, even left anonymous gifts on doorsteps—none of it mattered a damn.
As I couldn’t use the classics to make amends then it was time to get up-close and personal with later fiction. Old-school fairy-tales—take anything by Hans Christian Andersen—are pretty much set in stone. Sure, you can lurk around the edges, tweak the details for fun and profit, but they contain few surprises. More recent stories are more fluid, made malleable by enthusiastic readers with little thought for those of us who have to suffer the consequences. Hell, even Bill Sykes has his devotees, and he is one man you do not want to tangle with, believe me.
So, I’d been moping around Wonderland, feeling sorry for myself, when a little bird told me to try song lyrics.
Wonderland sounds like it’s going to be, well, wonderful , but if you’ve been paying attention to all the stories from your childhood, half the creatures in it are often having a pretty bad time. Feathered smartarses aren’t necessarily a help. Sometimes they’re responsible.
This one fluttered his wings, gesturing at our surroundings. “You’re Jack Frost, fairy-tale character turned hitman, taking a walk in the snow-covered pine woods behind Uncle Tom’s cabin, and you’re querying me about realism?”
“Point taken.” I frowned. “But song lyrics? How do they qualify as classical anything, let alone literature?”
The robin hopped down a couple of branches. “Bob Dylan. The man is way more than he seems, a troubled troubadour of his time. Oh, as a performer he’s a nasal whine in search of a key, but as a lyricist he’s point-man for a whole bunch of narrative imperatives.”
“Screw that!” I tried to shy away, stumbled, and fell on my ass in the snow.
Robin snickered. “Aw, the big, bad Iceman scared of an ickle-bitty plot device?”
“Damn straight. If one gets hold of you then it’s sayonara, free-will. I’m Jack, all the Jacks, so I know what it’s like when you have to kill.” I may keep him stamped down, chained in the metaphorical dungeon, but I know he’s there, The Ripper, lurking at the back of my mind.
I struggled to my feet and brushed powdery snow from my overcoat. “Gimme a Plan B, bird-brain.”
“I’m telling ya, Jackie-boy, we’re talking primo situational angst here. Resolving one of the schnozmeister’s situations will bury that Bad Thing under a ton of good karma. Trust me, I’m a robin.”
There was a long pause. Snow continued to fall. There was a chill in the air that made even me shiver, and it wasn’t all down to the weather.
I sniffed. “Tell me more.”
I flexed my hands on the wheel. “What’s she driving again?”
Winston dabbed gingerly at his nose with a Kleenex. “Sixty-nine Chevy with a three-ninety-six, fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor. I know that’s a lot of muscle for a broad, but she can handle it.”
“Uh-huh.” That’s the trouble with lyrics: open the door to one set and a whole other bunch try to squeeze in as well. If this carried on we’d end up getting roasted by Puff the Magic Dragon. I peered through the windshield where the blades were making heavy weather (no pun intended) of the driving snow. “And what was wrong with her calling a tow-truck?”
“A tow-truck on Christmas Eve, costing how much? Anyway, she don’t need no damn tow-truck. It’ll be the carburettor, it’s always the damn carburettor. Just needs a little of that old Winston magic.”
“Meaning she sweet-talked you out on a night like this, rather than spend good money?”
He glared at me. “As I remember you offered to ride along, man. Anyway, she said a couple of the locals had done a drive-by. If she leaves that rig by the side of the road they’ll strip it bare by morning, Christmas or no Christmas.”
“This Arabella, sure sounds like she knows the value of a dollar. No offence.”
“None taken. Yeah, ever since I’ve known her…” Winston trailed off. He twisted slightly in his seat to see me better, finger around the trigger of his shotgun, “Say again, how is it we know each other?”
I laughed and shook my head. “Jeez, that blow to the head must have hit harder than we thought. Our mutual friend, Winston, remember?”
The confusion in his eyes was obvious but he nodded, slowly. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry, man, for a moment there… never mind.”
We drove on in silence for a while. Winston wiped at the side window. “That’s eight-mile. Start looking for the Chevy. It’s cherry-red, should stand out even in this—hey, you hear that?”
Part of me knew that if I denied it strongly enough it wouldn’t be real. “Hear what?”
He licked his lips. “Like, you know, jingle bells.”
“You high, my man?” I managed a grin although my scalp was tight with fear. “What’s this, Santa Claus is coming to town?”
Winston squirmed in his seat. “Yeah, well—” Something swooshed low overhead, making us both duck. He squashed his face against the glass, trying to peer out and up. “You see that? What the hell is it?”
I gripped the wheel. “Nothing, man, nothing. You’re just wiz and got me spooked as well. Look, up ahead, that sure looks like a red Chevy.”
Thankfully Arabella had been on the way to drop off gifts when she broke down, leaving us playing catch-up. Trying to spot her on the other side of the Interstate would have been difficult, at best. I pulled in behind the other car and we both got out.
A sting of snowflakes made me curse and shy away, blinking. That doesn’t happen to me—I’m the goddam Iceman—meaning there was more malice than moisture in the air. A near-anonymous figure swathed in a fur coat emerged from the Chevy. Winston and Arabella stumbled into each other’s arms, oblivious to everything else.
I looked around, confused, my usual affinity with Winter somehow smothered by the snow. Then an 18-wheeler swept past, all spray and airhorns…
…and it left its shadow behind.
A Bad Thing doesn’t exist on its own. It takes what it finds in your soul and feeds on it, crafts memories into fear made manifest. And my soul is not a good place to be.
The shadow slid across the highway to become a grey patch of snow against the banking. It shrank in on itself, darkening as it did so, a concentration of every terror and failure and hurt I’d ever experienced.
I’m Jack Frost. For every child who’s gazed in delight at the spread of a frost fond on a window, there’s a homeless hobo freezing to death in the biting cold. I don’t make the rules and sure as hell can’t appeal the decisions. All I can do is be there, for the good times and bad.
This was not a good time.
The Bad Thing drew itself up, like the melting of a grey snowman but in reverse. I clawed for my gun, fighting it free from the folds of cloth. The slick gunmetal glittered with frost, an extension of my very being.
The snowman sprouted distinct arms, legs, head. A mouth. “You think yourself so clever, don’t you, Jackie-boy? The arrogance of endurance in an age where retrieval has replaced memory. Well, we both remember what you’re really like, don’t we?”
I aimed my revolver—the only gun fired during the Christmas truce on the Western Front, 1914. That kind of provenance gives a weapon power, it makes it more real, and ‘real’ was all I had. “So I killed Santa,” I snapped, “what about it?”
“Three times, by my reckoning.”
“Two times, three, it doesn’t matter. You can’t kill an idea, and that’s what he is, the wellspring of kindness and generosity. All I did was take down a version that was a little tired, a little stale, so that he could be made anew.”
The grey apparition laughed, if you can imagine a laugh that was the antithesis of mirth. “Oh Death, where is thy sting?” It stepped towards me, leaving bloody footsteps in the snow. A long sliver of ice extended from its right arm. “Well, let’s find out, shall we?”
The Webley roared, punching a hole the size of your fist clean through the snowman’s chest—only for it to close up immediately. I switched aim and blew the right arm off at the elbow. The snowman paused while his severed limb dissolved into a grey stain, which flowed over to rejoin the main body. A fresh forearm sprouted, complete with ice blade extension.
His tone was mocking. “Tedious, Jack, tedious. You want to blow a few more limbs off, get it over with? We both know how this is gonna end. You can’t escape Wonderland, Jack, although you try so hard. You can’t escape how you’re written. I’m the hurt, the fear, the darkness on the edge of town, and I’m here to reclaim you.”
There was the crunch of footsteps in the snow beside me and Winston raised his shotgun. “What the hell is he doing here?”
I licked my lips. “Winston, what is it you see?”
“Huh? That’s Lonnie, Lonnie Rae. Bastard used to kick my ass back in the day, him and his brothers. What’s going on?”
The Lonnie Rae Snowman laughed. “Everyone has a past, Jack, a backstory. Even those drawn from a song sheet. He can no more escape his fate than—”
Three candy-stripe sugar canes speared his right arm and shoulder. Where they struck, the grey snow sizzled. A shadow swept overhead and I caught a flash of red, a waft of sweaty animal, the jingle of bells. The snowman hissed—pure venom given voice—and plucked the makeshift missiles from his body.
Santa Claus dropped from the sky to land beside me in a 3-point superhero stance, kicking up a flurry of snow. I swear I’ve never been so happy to see the fat man before or since. He straightened up slowly and pointed at my nemesis. “I knew it was a mistake using you and this time you’ve gone too far, way too far. Be gone, Boogieman!”
The grey snow swirled as if caught in a mini-twister, then resolved into a grinning gargoyle, with glowing red coals for eyes. “One name amongst many, Claus. One name amongst many. You might as well call me ‘Hate’ and have done with it.”
“I’ll call you anything you choose. But you go no further, not this night.”
“What, you thought that I wouldn’t dare show my face on Christmas Eve? Well, all the joy you bring to the world has to be paid for, it has to be balanced out. And I’m here to collect, starting with Jack.”
Despite the situation, I felt a curious detachment. Our surroundings suddenly seemed cramped, hemmed in, as if we were inside a giant snow globe.
No, not a snow globe—a dream.
A figure appeared out of the blizzard, behind the gargoyle. It was a girl, a young woman, in blue silk pyjamas, twirling a walking stick in the manner of an oversized baton. I grinned, I laughed out loud, I lowered my gun.
The woman seized the cane in both hands, twisted the top, and unsheathed a long, glittering blade. She raised the swordstick above her head in a stance that would have graced a samurai master. “Hey, Mister!”
Hate turned towards her, slowly. When he spoke, the term ‘baleful’ didn’t even come close. “You cannot threaten me, a force of nature.”
“I’m Carole Greola, I’m fifteen.” She swung the blade, “And I can do what the fuck I like, in my dream.”
Her blow bisected Hate with a sound like fingernails on a blackboard. For a moment the two halves stood there, their interior faces revealed as a mass of writhing red worms. Then the sound and shadow of a fuel tanker swept by, although the vehicle itself remained indistinct, and when it was gone…
…the snow where the apparition had stood was once again deep and crisp and even.
The blizzard died away, like someone had turned off a wind machine. I sensed an absence at my shoulder and looked around—Winston, Arabella, both cars, all gone. Interstate 80 was an empty expanse of blacktop, a straight line between Nowhere and Someplace Else.
Santa sniffed. “I had that covered, you know. It was all under control.”
Carole slid the blade back into its housing and stepped forward. “Yeah, right. Just make sure my letter goes to the top of the pile and we’ll call it even. Deal?”
He laughed, the proverbial Ho-Ho-Ho. “Deal. Although part of me is surprised someone of your age still believes in me. I guess any friend of Jack’s has to have a vivid imagination.”
“I prefer to call it the art of the possible, sir.”
The sleigh swept down in a flurry of hooves, striking sparks from the roadway. The elves jeered, blew raspberries, and I swear one mooned me as Santa climbed aboard. He regarded me in what was obviously his stern face. “Take care not to read too much into this, Jack. We’ll never be friends, but you’ll understand that abomination couldn’t be tolerated. Not tonight, not ever, and for setting it loose you have my apologies.”
I grinned and put my gun away. “I’d settle for a new diamond tie pin. I gave the other one away to some homeless orphan or another.”
“I don’t think saving a starving streetwalker is in quite the same category, given the, ah, commercial nature of your relationship, but at least you came out behind on the deal, which is the important part. Now, I must be off—people to see, places to visit and all that. I’d offer you a ride but neither of you really need one, given where we are.”
Carole waved and I tipped my hat as the sleigh lumbered into the air and was rapidly lost from view amongst the low clouds. There was an awkward silence.
I cleared my throat. “So…”
“Yeah, good to see you too.”
“That whole twirling thing. Cheerleading?”
“In my dreams.” She smiled. “Literally. My hand-eye coordination sucks. When I’m awake.”
“Uh-huh. Glad you kept the swordstick.”
“I hide it in a hollow curtain rail during the day, sleep with it under my pillow. When I dream nobody messes with me.” Carole frowned. “Those other people, the cars, I know things come and go in here, but that felt different somehow. Like it was out of my control.”
“They’re called ‘narrative imperatives’. Not so much a shove in the right direction as a kick in the ass.”
“Santa trying to show you the error of your ways?”
“It started out like that, but, as they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I don’t think either of us expected to meet anything coming in the other direction.”
She laughed, an adult laugh rather than childish giggle. “You’re what my mum would call ‘trouble’, aren’t you, Jack?”
“I’ll have you know the term is ‘mischievous’, young lady. It’s the way I was written, it’s the way I’m remembered, it’s the way that I am. Now you, on the other hand, seem to have morphed into some bad-ass angel of vengeance since last we met. Not that I’m complaining, you understand, but setting yourself apart can be a lonely road.”
“I have this—” Carole gestured with the swordstick “—to remind me I’ll always have a friend. At least in my dreams. Speaking of which…”
I smiled. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Directed interactions are the stuff of monumental headaches, so don’t put up with this on my account.”
Carole stepped up and kissed my cheek. “Merry Christmas, Jack Frost.”
And she was gone.
Her dream started to bleed back into the ‘real’ storyline of Snow Over Interstate 80, but I no longer needed it. I spun in a swirl of coat-tails…
…to stand once again amidst the pine woods close to Uncle Tom’s cabin.
The robin was perched on an overhead branch. “Have fun, did we?” Before I could answer he darted away in a flurry of wings, dislodging a smattering of snow to dust my hat and shoulders. And something else, something heavier that dropped onto the brim with a loud pat.
I removed my hat, half-expecting the little bastard to have shit on me. Instead I found a silver tie pin with a diamond head. It glittered in the half-light of the snow-covered forest, as bright as any star. Somewhere ahead of me a town clock began to strike—it was midnight.
Christmas Day.
One of the good ones.
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