The Frozen Man

by Lex Sinclair

  ***

  Tom was shaken awake by Kate. It was only then did he realise he’d fallen asleep. He checked the digital time on the alarm clock - 5:11p.m. Because it was dark, Tom initially assumed it must be late in the evening. But he’d only been asleep an hour. ‘What is it? he moaned, closing his heavy eyelids. Kate continued to shake him until he sat up, irritating him. He met her wide-eye gaze.

  ‘The ice has melted,’ she said, grinning.

  The hairs on the nape of his neck stood to attention. Now he was fully awake.

  ***

  On the concrete floor inside the dimly lit garage a large pool of icy water seeped and trickled out from under the corpse. Tom had to do a double take. He wasn’t sure if his blurry eyes were playing a cruel trick on him or not. However, when he rubbed his tired eyes with the back of his hand, so his vision came into focus, he saw what he thought he saw a couple of seconds ago. He touched the radiator, flinched. It was red hot. When Kate turned the heating on, she specifically turned the thermostat all the way up as hot as it would go, ensuring the ice shielding the corpse would melt faster. She had also pushed the corpse next to the radiator to speed up the process. But what puzzled Tom was how a solid block of ice, as solid as a coffin could melt into a puddle on the floor in just one hour. It seemed as though the ice itself had wanted to melt as much as Kate.

  You’re being paranoid.

  Tom shielded his eyes with his hand, wishing he had fallen asleep and this was just a dream. ‘Why did you do this, Kate?’

  ‘Because I wanted it to melt faster than it would’ve done if we’d left it. Then you could carry it up to the loft as soon as possible,’ she said matter-of-factly.

  Tom shook his head in disbelief. ‘No. There’s another reason why you did this.’

  She scowled at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know goddamn well what I mean. You wanted the ice to melt so you could get closer to it; perhaps even touch it.’

  She chuckled humorously. ‘The body is still frozen, Tom. It’s just the block of ice that has melted, that’s all. It’ll weigh far less for you. That’s why I did it.’

  ‘Dear God, Kate. What have you done? You’re so stupid. You’re so fuckin’ stupid. It’s unbelievable.’ He pulled a stool out from under his workbench and sat down hard.

  ‘Are you going to carry the body up to the loft now?’ Kate wanted to know.

  ‘Bloody hell! That’s all you care about. Isn’t it?’

  ‘I just asked you a simple bloody question.’

  ‘No, Kate. This is far from being simple. Simple is using a hammer to knock a nail into a wall. That’s what I call simple. Carrying a stranger’s dead body up to my loft, when I should be calling the police to tell them we discovered it, is not simple!’ Tom’s cheeks were scarlet. At that moment in time he felt no love whatsoever for Kate. He never thought that would be possible, but from yesterday onwards it had been the truth. ‘You know what, I’d rather get fried with the bolt lightening if it’s all right with you,’ he said. ‘At least it’s quicker.’

  Kate went to her husband, placed her hands on his face and kissed his brow softly. ‘This isn’t just any old body,’ she said. ‘What we’re doing is a good thing. If we hand this body over they’ll cut it open and do all sorts of experiments on it, which we can’t allow. This is a body of someone far greater than any human being walking the earth. You could say we’re doing God’s work.’

  Tom snorted laughter.

  Kate knew Tom was a faithful Christian. She used the angle to manipulate him into trusting what she told him now. ‘The Frozen Man has no identity,’ she went on. ‘If we allow the authorities to get hold of the corpse the secret of the frozen men and women will be made public. Their secret will be no more...

  There are some things the world should never know.’

  ‘But according to the Bible,’ Tom protested, ‘it say’s quite clearly that the body is merely a shell. And that it doesn’t matter what happens to your body, it’s your soul that counts... nothing else.’

  Kate nodded. ‘Yes. I know what you believe, hon... but that’s only if you’re a human being, which these people are clearly not.’

  ‘Then what are they, Kate?’

  Kate glanced over her shoulder at the corpse sheathed in the weird silvery net of hair, concealing the identity of the individual’s facial features underneath. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  The tone of his Kate’s voice sent a cold shiver up Tom’s spine.

  ***

  He stared at it for what seemed like an eternity, but could only have been a few moments. He kept wondering how the hair had grown over the body as a form of protection. ‘Are you going to move it, or what?’ Kate asked, snapping him out of his dreadful thoughts.

  ‘Uh, yeah. I guess so,’ Tom said, wishing now he hadn’t agreed to touching it, let alone carrying it.

  ‘Then what are you waiting for?’

  A long pause created an unsettling ambience in the garage. Now that darkness had descended the corpse looked even more gruesome than before. A bead of sweat trickled down Tom’s forehead into his eye. He wiped it away fastidiously.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to touch it first?’ he asked Kate. ‘Make sure it is actually dead?’

  Kate’s eyes bulged. She considered his question seriously.

  ‘What? Hey now, Kate. I was kidding.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But you may have a point.’

  Tom drew in breath sharply.

  ‘Maybe we should make sure it is actually dead.’

  Tom was starting to fear Kate’s crazy, lost mind almost as much as the sight of the dead body lying on the floor in his garage. ‘No, Kate!’ he barked. ‘If I’m gonna do this, then I’m gonna do it now. The fuckin’ thing is dead already. Let it go! We’ve got one foot in the shit, let’s not go sticking the other in as well.

  Okay?’

  Kate didn’t answer. Instead she stared at the body, dazed.

  The sight of his own shadow scared Tom right now. He was having second thoughts about doing what he promised. Yet he knew that he couldn’t change his mind now. It was too late. If he didn’t want any part of this horrible ordeal then he should’ve refused to let Kate and the others dump the cadaver in his car when he had the chance. He did try, damn it. He’d been outvoted, and forced to do something against his will. Oh, God, please forgive me?

  Tom stooped down and braced himself, prior to doing something he never believed in a million years he could be capable of doing. He took a slow, deep breath, slid his hands under the spine-chilling, rigid corpse and gradually, peeled it off the concrete. He pressed his teeth together, breath quivering in his mouth.

  Kate stared at her husband, not saying a word - amazed and delighted at what she saw. She hadn’t expected Tom to actually go through with it. She was pleasantly surprised at the fortitude he was displaying.

  A narrow timber staircase led to the loft, coated with layers of dust. Somehow Tom managed to reach the staircase without fainting. Then he put the corpse down and dry-retched. He kept himself on his feet by placing his hands on the cold wall and fought off the bile burning in his oesophagus.

  Kate wanted to ask if he was all right, but it might come across as a sarcastic remark. It was palpable that Tom was far from all right. The last thing he needed right now was for his asinine wife to ask a brainless question, while he tried hard not to puke. He turned and faced Kate, and only then did she notice how pale and sick he looked. He glowed like a spectre in the gloom.

  ‘Could you grab his legs?’ he said, in a voice unlike his own.

  Unlike her husband, Kate did not hesitate. She moved quickly, grabbed a firm hold around the ankles and assisted her husband in hauling the body up the creaking timber stairs to the stygian loft. With a lot of exertion they fi
nally got to the loft they placed the corpse down in the middle of the floor.

  ‘I think it would be in your best interest,’ Tom said, panting, ‘if you wrapped a blanket around it.’

  Kate concurred. She made her way back to the house to get a blanket, leaving Tom alone with the corpse, in the dark and disturbing dim space. Merely thinking about what he had just done made Tom shudder. He’d touched a dead body with his bare hands and hauled it to the loft, knowing fully well that this act was wrong and against the law and his beliefs. Yet, somehow he found himself standing over the corpse, waiting for his wife to get a blanket and for his breathing to return to its normal rate.

  Why did that police officer have to come by when he did? If he hadn’t been driving past at that precise moment in time, when both he and Kate had been having a shouting match about what ought to be done with the dead body, none of this would have happened. He would be relaxing in his favourite place on the sofa in the living room with peace of mind, watching the TV or reading a book, or talking with his wife while they waited for their dinner to cook. He wouldn’t be standing in the dark loft above the garage staring at a sinister corpse sheathed a nest of odd-looking hair, wondering what exactly he was looking at.

  Tom hunkered down to take a closer look at body laid out on the filthy floorboards. Kate and the others are right about one thing, he confessed to himself. The body could not be normal. For one thing, there was no stench as such. The body hadn’t decayed in the slightest. Had that block of ice been a shield of some sort? If so, the corpse no longer had any protection. Soon it would begin to rot like any other cadaver of this world that isn’t frozen or preserved.

  A terrible thought came to Tom’s attention causing him to feel light-headed and dizzy all of a sudden. The body wasn’t that of a human. Therefore if they had exposed it to perish, then whatever powers the body had once held might punish them for destroying its purity.

  Tom rested his knees on the hard surface. Would it do something like that?

  Could it? Surely that isn’t possible. His head was spinning like a washing machine. This is crazy. It’s just a dead body for God’s sake. Get a grip. Kate sure is taking her sweet time. I wish she would hurry the hell up.

  Tom was about to pull himself up off the dirty floor and dust himself down, when he saw something through the nest of silvery hair that caught his breath.

  He staggered backwards. What he saw couldn’t be real. Yet it was as real as anything he’d ever seen in his whole life. A dilated pupil stared at him blankly.

  Tom pressed his hands on his face, over his eyes and shook his head frantically back and forth, too frightened to move, too frightened to utter a word, too frightened to save himself.

  A hand reached out and touched his shoulder. Tom recoiled, screaming. Then he heard a woman’s shrill scream echo his own. He opened his frenzied eyes and exhaled deeply when he saw Kate staring at him, irritated and confused.

  ‘Jesus, Tom! You scared the shit out of me. What the hell did you do that for?’

  Tom was incapable of speaking for a few seconds. He could see Kate had an old navy-blue woolly blanket rolled up and tucked under her arm. He glimpsed the corpse. He saw the nest of hair concealing the face. No eye stared at him, though. ‘I thought I saw something,’ he said.

  ‘What did you see?’

  He waved a disregarding hand at her. ‘Never mind.’

  ‘No, tell me. I want to know. Whatever it was that scared you, scared me, too.’

  He could see Kate was still annoyed with him, even though all of this was her idea. ‘I thought I saw the corpse staring at me.’

  ‘That’s insane. It’s dead.’

  Huh, look who’s talking? he thought - but he wouldn’t dare say it. ‘I know.’

  ‘Well, I got a blanket. All we gotta do is wrap it up, put it in the corner behind some of the cardboard boxes, then it will be hidden - and no one except us will know.’

  Tom shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Well, apart from the obvious, Kate, there’s a one thing that bothers me. Now that the ice has melted and the corpse is unprotected, even with the blanket; won’t it start to rot and stink through the entire house?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Kate said, in haste.

  Did she even listen to the question?

  Once they had wrapped the blanket around the cadaver and placed it under the rafter behind the old cardboard boxes, Kate and Tom exited the garage, flicking the light switch off in advance to closing the door shut, leaving the Frozen Man in absolute darkness.

  ***

  After closing the door to garage shut and locking it, Tom went upstairs to the Bathroom. He stepped into the shower stall and vigorously scrubbed away the scent of dust and winced at the images of him picking up the corpse, which now slept in the roof space above the once cosy garage, where he spent many evenings going through those cardboard boxes, pulling belongings - such as pictures and toys - from his childhood, feeling nostalgia, and remembering the wonderful memories he had been fortunate to take pleasure in as a boy. The loft had once been the doors to a palace of endless joys. Now it would be the home of the dead.

  Tom watched as the soapy water ran off his body in rivulets and slide down the drain. He doused himself in a week’s worth of body wash and shampoo. Yet he couldn’t clean himself of shame. There was no detergent for that.

  Understandably Tom didn’t have any appetite for food. He sat at the dinette table in the kitchen playing with his noodles, watching them slip off his fork and back onto the plate, body numb, mind vague. He ought to be wide awake and alert after the events of the last two days. Perhaps life would go as normal, in spite of the fact they had a corpse resting on their property.

  ‘What’re you thinking about?’ Kate asked, breaking the quiet.

  Tom wasn’t sure how to respond. He could barely look at his wife, knowing that because of her, his mind was in tatters. ‘Just stuff.’

  ‘What kinda stuff?’

  ‘Kate. Please. Give it a rest, would ya?’

  ‘Do you hate me?’

  He raised his head from his plate. ‘No... I don’t hate you, Kate. I don’t bloody like you, though.’

  ‘You’re just worrying too much about nothing. We had to do what we did to save ourselves. Isn’t that what it say’s in the Bible? God helps those who help themselves?’

  ‘Kate, this has got nothing to do my faith in God. This is to do with having morals, and knowing the distinct difference between right and wrong. And what we’ve done is wrong. It is so wrong. I feel as though we’re like Fred and Rose West, placing dead bodies on our property. This is the kind of shit people never forget. This is what makes ordinary people, infamous. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘You’re blowing this way out of proportion.’

  ‘Am I?’ Tom averted his gaze. ‘You know how I feel about it all, anyway. But you not agreeing with me is not the most hurtful part. I’ve said it before, but because of what you’ve allowed into our home, I can no longer look at you and feel like I know you the way I used to.’

  Kate would never admit it, but that comment cut her. Cut her deep. ‘That’ll pass,’ she choked.

  ‘Will it? I’m not sure it will, as long as that body is taking residence in our garage. I mean, what the hell is the point in bringing the corpse all the way back here if all you were gonna do is hide it away under a blanket, anyway? It just doesn’t make any sense?’

  ‘I’ve explained the reasons a hundred times,’ Kate said, raising her voice.

  Tom could feel another argument escalating to screaming at one another again.

  ‘We’re just going around in circles,’ Kate went on. ‘Why won’t you just trust me, your wife, for once, huh?’

  ‘I did, Kate. I trusted you everyday since we�
�ve been together, until this morning when you insisted we bring that corpse home with us.’

  Tom excused himself from the kitchen and sauntered into the living room to watch some TV. With a bit of luck he would find something to his interest that would take his mind off this ‘Frozen Man’ nonsense and arguing with his wife for the umpteenth time, and doing his utmost not to go completely insane; if that was possible.

  ***

  At 10:54p.m., Kate lumbered up to bed. Tom tried to watch a late night action film starring Sylvester Stallone, but just couldn’t concentrate. It seemed the more he told himself to think of something else other than the dead body, the more he thought about the dead body. Twenty minutes later, he too finally surrendered, got off the sofa, and drank the last of the cider in his glass, before putting it on the worktop in the kitchen. Then he switched the lights and the TV off and clambered up the stairs.

  Unbeknown to Tom or Kate in the pitch dark garage, somewhere up in the loft, something moved.

  A month later the dreams began...

  7

  Tom and Kate had moved on. The cadaver in the garage had been something neither of them had forgotten about, but at least they weren’t discussing it and arguing about it any more. They were both busy with work. Kate was a hairdresser at a beauty salon downtown. Tom was a full-time bus driver.

  Together they made a decent living and lived fairly comfortably.

  Today was Valentines Day, and Tom planned to take his wife out to a recently opened, fancy Indian restaurant after work. He’d booked a table for two a week ago, aware that it would cost a lot more if they simply showed up at the popular restaurant downtown without making a reservation beforehand.

  When she arrived home from work, Tom announced cheerfully, where they would be dining. Delighted by the news, Kate drew herself a hot bath, prior to getting dressed in a new short, sparkling blue dress which showed off her tanned, firm legs that seemed to go on for ever. Tom was already dressed in his black suit, waiting patiently for his wife to come downstairs so they could take their leave.