by Lex Sinclair
In retrospect Tom was right: what they’d done was imprudent and incredibly irresponsible. They should have either have left the body well alone or they could have informed the authorities straight away. Anything would be better than hiding it in the boot of Tom and Kate’s car. Yet it was him - Charles - and he alone, who had convinced Kate to take the corpse with her, because he sincerely believed it was the safest thing to do for all their sakes. Tom hadn’t spoken to him ever since the night they hauled the body into the boot, and who could blame him?
Tom was right, he was an arsehole.
According to the book he now read, it was forbidden for any person to interfere with these extraordinary beings, unless they were told to do so by one of them. Charles scanned the text to find out why. It didn’t give any explanation as to what happened to those who did interfere. And that’s what frightened him more than anything else. Yet so far Charles was only one third of the way into the book. Perhaps the more he read the more explanations to his frantic questions would be given. All he knew now, though, was what they’d done during the snowstorm was indeed unlawful and nonsensical.
They now needed to retract what they had done previously; albeit with good intentions and hope they would be forgiven.
Charles used the arms of his recliner to help get him on his shaky legs so he could hobble his way to the toilet. He put the toilet seat down and sat. He didn’t need to emit a number one or a number two; what he needed was to dunk his haggard face into a basin full of warm water. He turned the hot water tap on, waited for it to warm up before putting the plug in. He watched as the steaming water escalated to the rim. Then he leaned over and sunk his paper-white face under the surface. He stayed like that for a few moments then lifted his head out again. He grabbed the towel from the rack and dried himself.
This method was surprisingly refreshing.
Then he poured the cold coffee down the drain in the kitchen, swilled the mug clean of coffee and sugar, refilling it with cold drinking water. His doctor reiterated about how he should drink plenty of water throughout the day, instead of coffee and alcohol all the time, to prevent him from becoming dehydrated.
Also, fresh drinking water cleansed the system and his guts.
Charles appreciated his doctor’s genuine concerns for his well-being, and knew what he said to be the nothing but the best advice. However, at this moment in time, it would be a lot easier for the old man to open a bottle of Scotch, drink a few glasses and fall asleep without a thought of having any more ghastly nightmares of consequences he and his friends might endure because of their hasty actions.
What they had done was beyond their comprehension; therefore they shouldn’t be made to endure misery. But the spirit of the corpse might be so furious it wouldn’t see it from their perspective and not grant them its forgiveness.
Charles wished he hadn’t read the book about ancient occults now. He was far too old to be giving himself more worries than he could handle. He was a poorly aged man in his mid-fifties, who had very bad health. He wasn’t twenty-five any more. He should be sitting in his recliner watching the TV without a care in the world, as long as he could enjoy his early retirement.
Maybe Tom and Kate had got rid of the body on their journey home, or some other time since he’d last spoken to them. Maybe they’d dumped the body somewhere and called the police, he thought. If so, he had nothing to fret over.
That would be good. Yet for some reason his intuition told him that wasn’t the case; that Tom and Kate still had the dead body somewhere hidden on their property. He stared at the phone on the small oval table next to his recliner and wished it would ring.
***
Gradually evening became night, and the night shrouded the cottage in a veil of darkness. Charles switched the TV on. He wasn’t taking in what the programme was about, and he didn’t particularly care. The TV had been switched on for company. Sometimes the comforting peace and quiet during the day became an eerie silence at night. Over the years though, Charles had got used to it. But after reading a third of the occult book, he needed to focus on something pleasant which would placate him.
On these occasions, Charles contemplated what life would’ve been like if he had married. Perhaps the loneliness he felt during the night when the wind howled and the thunder rumbled would not exist. Charles brought to mind what a woman once told him about ten years ago, while he was getting drunk in one of the unkempt pubs where he was a regular customer. She’d said, ‘A good woman can turn a man’s life around for the better before he realises his best years are over.’
Being heavily drunk, Charles hadn’t taken any notice of the woman. He thought she was a weird fucker and continued drinking until the landlord announced it was closing time. But now, recollecting that day, and being ten years older, and wiser, Charles realised what the woman told him was like the Frozen Man story - true. She’d tried to give him some advice and he had thrown it back in her face. He’d wasted the best part of his life, drinking it away without a care for his health or the state of his soul. Now, like a lot of things, it was too late to undo.
He leapt out of his chair when the phone began its shrill ringing, scaring him half to death. On the second ring he snatched the phone out of the cradle and put the receiver to his ear. ‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Charles? It’s me, Kate. You called earlier.’
He smiled at the sound of the sweet, tender voice on the other end of the line.
‘Yeah, sure. How are you?’
Kate hesitated for a second. ‘Yeah, I’m all right... I got your message. Is everything all right?’
Without thinking he nearly said that everything was great, because that’s what he told all his friends, even if his health was making him bad. However, he couldn’t do that now, otherwise Kate would want to know why he’d phoned her.
He should just spit it out and be honest with her, but now wasn’t the time. ‘I need to talk to you,’ he said.
‘What about?’
‘I think you know about what?’
‘You mean, about the Frozen Man?’
He coughed, and then said, ‘Yes.’
‘Why? What’s the matter?’
‘Do you still have the corpse?’
‘Yeah. It’s stashed away up in the loft, in the garage. Why?’
Charles cleared his throat. ‘It’s a long story. But simply put - I think we made a big mistake, and we need to undo what we did, pronto.’
A long silence fell between them.
‘What do you mean?’ Kate asked, her voice shaking.
‘Look, it’ll be easier if we could meet up. You, me, Tom, and if I can reach Carlton, then him as well. We’ve got things to discuss. How about we meet up this weekend?’ He could sense Kate’s shock, and felt guilty for having induced it; although this would be the right thing to do.
They arranged to meet at a quiet café in the town centre in Brecon on Saturday.
‘Can you tell me anything, Charles?’ Kate asked, concerned.
‘My father’s story was true. I found out a lot about the frozen men and women in a book on the occult and extraordinary humans that explain in depth about the type of person Nathan and the corpse in your garage really were. They weren’t all do-gooders’
‘Shall I get rid of the body?’
‘No, not yet. You’d better read the book I got first before we make a final decision. But once you’ve read it I’ll think you’ll agree with me. Tom was right... we should’ve never touched it. Don’t hate me, Kate. Please. I swear to God I didn’t know.’
‘I don’t hate you, Charles. I just wished you had read that book you’re talking about before we carted the corpse back to our house. It would’ve saved a lot of fuss.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ he said. ‘Oh, I almost forgot -’
‘What?’
‘Have you or Tom had any nightmares about the Frozen Man, or anything remotely similar?’
‘No, I haven’t, and I don’t think Tom has, either.’
‘Okay. Good.’
‘Is it important?’
Charles paused. ‘No, I guess not.’
Kate told him she would see him Saturday and terminated the connection.
Charles put the phone down, feeling slightly better now that he’d talked with Kate and arranged a time and a place on Saturday, where they would get together and discuss carefully how to proceed.
***
Kate called Charles back from the phone in the bedroom while Tom sat downstairs watching the TV. He decided he didn’t want to listen to their conversation, after all. It would only anger him - and right now he could do without any more stress.
He was disappointed because Kate had decided to call Charles back. And now the discussion had finished, Kate also regretted phoning returning the old man’s initial call. She still liked Charles, but after what he told her, her muscles trembled and were numb all over.
The part that scared her the most was when Charles reluctantly admitted that Tom had been right all along. He’d complained to her for almost a whole month about what they had done was a felony and immoral, and she’d refused to pay any attention to him because of what Charles originally told her, only to find out now that Charles had in fact been misguided. The old man had let her down.
She and Tom had quarrelled constantly almost every day for two weeks. For a short period, Kate imagined it might cause them to split up. Fortunately that hadn’t happened. But it had created a lot of tension between them which they could have done without, and it was all thanks to Charles’s outlandish beliefs.
Kate didn’t like to blame him, but like Charles said himself, Tom was right.
Tom had been right about everything. They should have left the body where they discovered it and informed the authorities, instead of meddling with the unknown. Now Kate had another dilemma on her hands: should she go downstairs now and tell Tom the precisely what Charles had told her? Or should she just mention that Charles wanted to see them outside the café 11a.m. on Saturday for a chat? He deserved to know the complete truth - but not if he was going to mad at her and Charles worse than last time. She may not hate Charles but Tom did, with a passion. This might send him over the edge.
She mulled it over until she came to a definite conclusion: no more secrets and lies and half-truths, this was her husband’s house as well as her own. He had a right to know everything. And he had given her Charles’s message in the first instance. He didn’t have to do that. He could have deleted it and not informed her. But he’d trusted her, the way she was going to trust him.
Kate went downstairs to explain to Tom, the way Charles explained to her.
Tom hit the mute button on the TV and looked at Kate, aghast. ‘Say it again?’
‘He said that you were right.’
Tom jumped up off the sofa; the corded veins protruding from his neck pulsed. He looked as if he was going to smash something with his clenched fists. ‘I don’t fucking believe this,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I told you all along that what we were doing was insane, but you blatantly refused to do as I asked. And now the same prick that got us into this whole mess is telling you he was wrong?’
‘He didn’t know until he read some book on the subject. He was just trying to help us.’
Tom shook his head. ‘There you go again!’ he shouted. ‘You’re still sticking up for him, even now, after what he’s done to us. How do you know he hasn’t called the police already, huh?’
Kate averted her gaze from Tom’s. ‘If he did they’d be trying to break down the front door.’
He held his head in his hands.
‘Are you coming with me on Saturday to talk this through civilly, or not?’
Tom nodded. ‘Oh, I’ll be there, Kate. You can count on that if nothing else.
And I’ve got a few things to get off my chest to the old bastard, too.’
‘Don’t come if you’re going to get all aggressive, Tom. We all made a mistake. Just because you were right and the rest of us were wrong doesn’t give you the right to go around shouting and screaming.’
Although, Tom was on the verge of exploding with inordinate rage, he appreciated what Kate said to be accurate. He collapsed onto the sofa beside her again and said in a softer tone, ‘I’m just annoyed that you trusted some stranger - regardless of whether if he’s a nice guy or not - over me. I mean you’ve known me for years and yet you ignored all my warnings and pleas, just so you could be told that I was right from the start. You could’ve saved us all the disputes and aggravation over the last few weeks if you had listened to me when all this started.’
‘I know,’ she croaked, tears threatening to leak. ‘But if you give Charles a chance you’ll find he’s not a bad person. He just made a bad choice, and now he wants to try and get himself and everyone out of this ordeal without any punishment or harm.’
Tom wrapped his hands around Kate and kissed her on the cheek. ‘So, what do we do now? Do we get rid of the corpse or not?’
‘Not yet, he said. If it is safe, then we should keep it where it is until we’ve read the book which refers to the Frozen Man he told us about.’
‘So this Frozen Man tale is actually real then?’
Kate nodded - yes. ‘The book he read is factual, supposedly, so yeah, it must be real.’
Tom contemplated everything Kate had told him, trying to make sense of it all, if that was possible.
9
Saturday was upon them faster than they anticipated. It’d been raining incessantly all through Friday and didn’t cease until dawn. The tattered sky hinted another miserable, gloomy grey day across the country. The four discoverers met in a quiet café in the town centre at the time they had arranged.
Charles had picked Carlton up from his house and was giving him a lift back once the meeting came to a conclusion. He brought the young black, lithe man, who’d grown a goatee since the last time they’d seen each other, up to date with the information found in the ancient book. Carlton hadn’t been angry with Charles, although he didn’t have the dead body on his property. In spite of this, he was quite alarmed at being contacted out of the blue by the old man. The two men positioned themselves at the far end of the room at the booth next to the window and nearest to the toilets and were glimpsing some of the old black and white framed photographs displayed on the interior walls around the cosy café of Brecon, when Tom and Kate entered and approached their booth and sat down opposite them. Tom immediately noticed the leather-bound book inside a white shopping bag.
The waiter arrived at their table a couple of minutes later and took their orders before disappearing behind the counter again.
Charles removed his reading specs from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket.
‘Thank you for coming on such short notice,’ he said to Kate and Tom.
Tom thought this old fart was trying to be a professor of some sort addressing them formally.
The old man waited for the waiter to bring their coffees, teas and a large doughnut, sprinkled in sugar for Carlton, then pulled the tome out of the bag and rested it on the table in front of him. ‘As I’ve already said, I came across this book in the library. If I hadn’t have been wandering around aimlessly, browsing at nothing in particular - which, incidentally is not like me - I would’ve never have known of its existence. It’s almost as if it was a part of destiny for me to stumble upon it, perhaps.’
Tom snorted laughter. This guy’s fuckin’ incredible. Such naivety!
Charles acknowledged this by raising his hand up in the air, as though he surrendered his beliefs to Tom’s more practical perception. ‘Fair enough,’ the old man said. ‘Anyway, I haven’t had the chance to read it all
, because as you can clearly see the size of the book and its tiny print are rather unkind to my ever-deteriorating eyesight.’
Tom consulted his wristwatch purposely so Charles could see.
‘Look, Tom, let’s get this out of the way before we go any further, shall we?
I’m terribly sorry if I have offended you or your wife in any way. Now it’s up to you whether you forgive me or not. I’m not asking you to forget about what we did against your better judgement, but could you at least give me a chance to redeem myself? I think I deserve that much, if nothing else.’
‘Just cut to chase, Charles. Some of us don’t have all day to discuss this supernatural bullshit.’
Charles sighed, shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’
Kate swatted her husband’s arm and ordered him to apologise, which he refused to do.
Charles could see it wasn’t going to get them anywhere. ‘Anyway,’ he continued ‘I have placed a bookmark in certain chapters that I deem relevant to our dilemma. But I think I should read from text so that this time we all agree, and we all know a little bit more about what we’re dealing with.’
Carlton bit into his doughnut and said with a mouthful, ‘He’s right. The only way we’re going get outta this hole is if we all work together, like a team.’ This created a titter among them. Carlton had not only emphasised Charles’ opinion, while spitting bits of doughnut - but he’d also broken the ice in the ambience between Tom and the old yarn-spinner.
Charles opened the tome removed the bookmarker and squinted to read the print. ‘This is roughly about someone, who like us, stumbled upon a Frozen Man and then suffered of unspeakable nightmares.’
All four of them looked terribly afraid.
“By the light of the lantern I ascended the staircase in the darkness of which I am accustomed to. A month has passed since I saw the strangled cadaver amidst the towering cedars that swayed in the gentle breeze. Upon this amazing discovery I returned home and buried the hideous temple that was anything other than human in the six-acre pasture plot of land. I have never seen, nor do I ever wish to see again, such a ghastly face one can only describe as evil.
