The Frozen Man

by Lex Sinclair

  He served another five customers before 11:00p.m. Then he closed the pub for the night. He deliberated about what he should do, or if he should do anything at all. After all, whether Charles was home or not had nothing to do with him.

  Maybe it would be better if he kept his nose out of Charles’s business from now on. He locked the doors, turned off the soft blue bar lights, climbed the stairs and went to see if Rhian was still awake. He knocked on her bedroom door gently, and heard her say, ‘Come in.’ He eased it open and stood on the threshold watching his gorgeous daughter, combing her beautiful thick hair with a brush while watching the portable TV.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  Rhian nodded. ‘Uh, huh.’

  They gazed at one another for a moment. Derek thought his daughter looked like her mum more and more every day. It pained him in some ways because he believed that no one should or had the right to look like his wife. But Rhian had his eyes, not her mother’s. And she had her own unique personality, too.

  ‘What’s wrong, Dad?’

  He leaned on the doorframe and said quietly, ‘I’m worried about Charles.’

  ‘Didn’t you see him tonight?’

  Derek shook his head. ‘No. Last time I saw him, was when he came in during the day a few weeks ago. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.

  Rhian frowned. ‘That’s not like him. Most of the time you have to force him to leave.’

  ‘Yeah. I know.’ He chuckled. ‘The thing is I’ve tried phoning him three times today, at different times and there’s no answer.’

  Rhian put the comb down and stood up, her nightgown falling past her knees.

  ‘Did you two have a falling out or somethin’?’

  ‘No, no. Nothing like that.’ Derek paused, considering on what he was about say. ‘He’s been very poorly as of late. I’m just concerned that something’s happened to him and he can’t get to the phone.’

  Rhian looked alarmed. ‘What do you wanna do about it?’

  ‘Well... if he’s not answering the phone, maybe I should go up there and check on him; make sure he’s all right.’

  ‘When?’

  Derek averted his gaze and said softly, ‘Now.’

  ‘Now? Dad, its quarter past eleven. You can’t go driving out to Charles’s place at this time of night. If he is there - which he more than likely is - he’ll go mad if you knock on his door and wake him up, just to see if he’s all right.’

  She’s right, he told himself.

  ‘But what if he’s seriously hurt, and he’s unconscious or somethin’? If I don’t go and check on him now, he’ll be lying there ‘til the morning.’

  ‘Dad, he’s not your responsibility. He’s a fully grown man. He can take care of himself. Get some sleep. Try him again on the phone first thing in the morning. If there’s still no answer, then go over there, during the day. I know he’s your best friend, and Charles is unwell, but if he can’t be bothered to take care of his health, why should you?’ Rhian didn’t mean to sound brusque, only sincere.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ he said.

  Rhian smiled. Then she crossed the room and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Don’t worry so much. I’m sure he’s just fine.’

  ‘I never used to worry,’ he said, ‘’til it was too late.’ His eyes cast down, doleful, thinking of his wife. The way Rhian looked at him then made him regret saying that.

  ‘That’s not true, Dad. And deep down you know it. Mum knew so too.’

  He thanked his intelligent daughter, said goodnight, then closed her bedroom door behind him, and stood on the landing feeling much better now that he’d discussed the situation and made a prudent decision. Nevertheless, as he lay on his bed, Derek’s mind took longer than usual to switch off and succumb to a relaxing slumber.

  23

  Derek’s eyes snapped open, wincing as sunlight slanted through the bedroom window onto his face, causing him to squint. He stretched his arms and legs out and yawned, then pulled the quilt off him and slid out from underneath. The first thing he did was check the time on the wall above the headboard behind him. 8:23a.m.

  He decided he would have a sufficient breakfast with Rhian to start the day in advance to phoning Charles. He devoured two slices of cheese on toast and gulped the last of his orange juice. Rhian put the dirty dishes and glasses in the sink while he took the phone off the hook and dialled the familiar numbers. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, hoping that Charles would answer, so that it would save her dad the hassle of having to drive over to the cottage.

  Derek listened to the constant ringing tone and waited, and waited. He prayed for the old man to answer; just to put him out of his misery. But he never did... and at last he, reluctantly conceded.

  He shook his head at Rhian, ‘No answer. There’s definitely something wrong.’

  Rhian made a glum face. She had to admit it didn’t sound good.

  ‘I’m gonna head on over there and see what’s up. Stay here. If everything’s all right, I’ll call you from Charles’s place. All right?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, watching him make a hasty exit.

  Derek grabbed his jacket off the coat hanger at the back door, told his daughter not to worry herself, on the contrary to his own emotions, got into his Skoda and drove to Charles’s residence like a bat out of Hell. He pulled the visor down, shielding the dazzling sunlight and pressed his foot hard on the accelerator.

  Lots of inane notions buzzed around in his head, mostly dreadful ones. He tried to push them away, but they persisted much to his annoyance. He just wanted to relax and see for himself - and not be scared out of his wits before he even got there.

  When he approached a bend, Derek eased off the accelerator and then when the road ahead of him straightened out again, applied pressure, impatient. As the Skoda screeched around another sharp bend, up and over the steep hill, in the near distance he caught sight of the cottage. He brought his car to a halt at the gate leading to the his friend’s residence. Leaving the engine running, he got out, unlocked the gate and eased it open. The rutted dirt road joggled the car, until eventually he brought the car onto the flat surface of his friend’s front yard.

  Derek smiled when he saw the Jeep to the side of the cottage. His friend was home. Yet that didn’t mean there would no immediate trouble awaiting him.

  When he stepped out of the vehicle he slightly staggered due to the bumpy ride up the dirt road. He ambled to the entrance and rapped on the wood. ‘Charles.

  It’s me, Derek. Are you all right?’ He waited patiently for a minute, the anxiety coursing through him fraying his nerves. No answer. The second time he banged his fists on the door, hard. ‘Charles! Charles! Are you in there?’ he called out.

  Derek didn’t like to go snooping around other peoples’ homes, but this was becoming more and more disconcerting. He needed to find out what had happened to his friend. He couldn’t care less if Charles came to the door and told him to get lost, as long as he could see for himself that everything was as it should be. He shielded the sunlight with his hands and peered through the window into the living room and saw nothing amiss. No body could be seen sprawled out on the living room floor where it had been. The landlord couldn’t see any sign of his friend or any disturbance from his vantage point. He sighed.

  Then returned to the front door and turned the knob to see if it would open.

  It was locked.

  Unsure of how to proceed, Derek stood there and began yelling, ‘Charles! CHARLES!’

  What the hell am I supposed to do now?

  He made his way around the side of the cottage to the back yard. Derek approached the back door assuming it would be locked, and felt a surge of anxiety rush through him when he unexpectedly found that it opened. Now, did he dare go into his friend’s home without invitation (albeit for
a good cause)?

  Or did he continue to yell out Charles’ name and then head off home none the wiser? For some peculiar reason, the latter idea sat well with his conscience, as if his intuition knew something he didn’t.

  He’d come this far. He may as well go inside now. If Charles did spot him, he had a very good reason, didn’t he?

  He pushed the door open and stared into the dim enclosure. Charles must be in here somewhere, otherwise the back door wouldn’t be left unlocked, he thought.

  He stood on the doorstep... still unsure whether or not he should enter regardless of the dread washing over him like a massive tidal wave. He put one foot over the threshold tentatively, as though he were stepping into an unseen abyss, and then called out to his friend another three times. Surely, if the old man had been inside asleep or awake he would have definitely heard him that time. Charles wasn’t deaf.

  Derek looked over his shoulder, contemplating whether he should phone for someone to check on his friend instead. But Charles’ only true friend was him.

  He knew for a fact that Charles didn’t have any living relatives, at least not in this country, anyway. Even if Charles did see him, he could simply explain why he came in. Charles would understand. You didn’t have to be an avid viewer of TV programmes like A Touch of Frost or Inspector Morse to know something was terribly amiss. Derek called out one more time to no avail, took a deep, quivering breath... then entered.

  As soon as he did, his stomach became a ball of writhing snakes. He crept through the small vestibule into the adjacent kitchen, turning his head left to right like a spy, hoping to catch a glimpse of something or someone. When he passed under the archway into the living room and saw that the bed and recliner chair were empty, he realised then that his friend could only be in one other room if he was in fact home.

  ‘Charles; it’s me, Derek!’ he shouted; pleading that Charles could hear him from behind the closed bathroom door and answer him. Instead, his ears were filled with the deafening sound of silence.

  Please, be in here and be all right, he prayed. Then he knocked hard on the door... waited, before easing it open. He only needed to open it ajar to see the toilet, basin and the bath were also void of Charles’s presence. ‘Where the hell are you?’ he muttered.

  He turned on his heel and ambled back into the living room. There he stood in the centre of the room squinting against the sunbeams and noticed dry blood smears on the alabaster wall next to the kitchen. Or was it just a stain, not necessarily blood? He stooped down for a closer inspection... then reached his hand out and touched red stains. When he retracted his hand and looked closer at his fingertips, he knew it was blood.

  He shuddered involuntarily.

  This is not good.

  Derek stood erect and shook his head. He didn’t know what to do next. The sight of blood unnerved him. Should he go home and call the police? No, that would be ludicrous. What could he say the problem was - his friend wasn’t home, and there was a dry red stain on the wall, which may or may not be blood? It looked like blood, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was.

  That’s stupid and irrational.

  Derek put his hands on his waist and pulled his jeans up. Then as he turned back to face the wide, living room window he saw a black, leather-bound book, which looked similar to a Bible. It caught his undivided attention, regardless of the fact that reading books didn’t interest him in the slightest. He crossed the room and picked up the ancient tome off the rug and opened it up. No wonder Charles’s eyes were drooping and tired and bloodshot whenever he came over for a drink, he thought. The flimsy pages and tiny print could only be read if you narrowed your eyes. Not to mention the amount of pages. Surely, Charles didn’t spend all his time reading ancient books.

  He closed the tome to the cover and read the title embossed in gold print.

  ‘Myths, Urban Legends, The Frozen Man, and other Supernatural tales.’

  Derek frowned. He hadn’t realised his friend enjoyed reading such dreadful occult tales. He knew what a myth, an urban legend and the supernatural were - but what the hell was a Frozen Man? Did it mean dead bodies resting in a morgue? He scoffed at the book. But then opened it anyway.

  Derek started riffling through the pages, reading little excerpts and gazing at the intricate illustrations, when, without warning, the pages freed themselves from him and began turning over and over by themselves. Slow and deliberate at first, as though by an unseen hand and then faster and faster, until it stopped on a page which caught the astonished landlord’s eye. He tried desperately to convince himself that what he thought he’d just seen hadn’t actually happened - and he imagined it.

  He sat down on the recliner and lifted the book closer to him into the sun’s radiant glow and read... The sacrifice of the Frozen Man is not to interfere with human life... Although there are frozen men, who, like human beings differ from good to bad. They all possess identical powers bestowed to them by God, which they chose to share with the world. However, the world is not ready for some of these extraordinary sightings.

  The frozen men were a small group of men, who broke the cardinal rule and enjoyed the pleasures that can only be granted to the humans. They had sexual relations with lustful women who give birth to their children. Soon they too multiplied and walked amongst the others as though they were human - but were far from ordinary.

  Some of the children grew up and abided by the rules of not interfering with mankind. But the strong majority argued with the Almighty God’s laws, and lived life as an average human being on the façade, but underneath went searching for the luxuries of this world and not the everlasting. They believed that they were entitled to the same trophies as the humans, despite being put here on earth to show humans who suffered that there prayers were heard, and their sorrow could be felt by a higher power they were unable to grasp.

  Soon the frozen men performed miracles for their own selfish needs, and sold their services to the villagers and townsfolk for a high profit. They had turned their backs on God and became cruel and glutinous for money, food, property and most of all... women. The humans, envious, retaliated against these miracle-performing strangers, who appeared out of nowhere and took everything that rightfully belonged to them for granted before moving on to their next destination.

  Legend tells us that a Frozen Man who is murdered or desecrated by a human in any way will perish, suffering excruciating pain.

  The very few frozen men around the world who were doing what God had asked of them, remaining unseen and unheard of from society. If they were seen and heard by angry mobsters and were killed they would have to forgive those that trespassed against them. (Much like the indelible story of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection).

  However, there were others who used their gifts to act out in vengeance. God disowned these frozen men, for they were no fine example of Him. They were just as bad as the humans, far worse in most cases, because they knew the difference between good and evil and had consciously chosen the latter of the two to spite Him.

  A Frozen Man posses his powers eternally .He can exist in another form even after he is dead, the way some people believe in life after death. Yet the Frozen Man could still interfere with the living and cause them great harm.

  One Frozen Man, who had been caught sexing a female, was tied to a pole ready to be burned alive, when he allegedly cried out, ‘I will have my vengeance in the next life on you mortals! You are nothing! You will perish and crumble to pieces with your bodies, but I will live on... I am for ever! I will feel your wrath, and you will feel mine! The plague is coming! The plague is coming! THE PLAGUE IS COMING!’ he roared.

  The angry mob ignored this man’s delirious threats and chanted intensely, ‘KILL! KILL! KILL!’ They assumed his threats were that of a frightened man awaiting his inevitable doom, seeking forgiveness, hoping they would cut him down and spare him.
>
  Two weeks passed after his death the village was struck by an overwhelming plague killing all but three people, who had been against the murdering of the Frozen Man...

  Derek stopped reading when he came to the end of the paragraph, stunned at the account of what had happened to the townsfolk. It’s probably not true, though, he assured himself. But not even his mind sounded convinced. He turned the page and stared at yet another intricate illustration: this one of the Frozen Man tied to a large pole, tongues of flames licking his bare feet, face taut and staring at the onlookers with malice in his eyes; not the slightest bit afraid of the impending death. For a moment it seemed the Frozen Man glared directly at Derek as if it was his fault.

  Unnerved by the life-like illustration, Derek flipped the page over and read another chapter of the Frozen Man section.

  He froze. This can’t be happening! This is not real!

  He remembered why the Frozen Man sounded so familiar and caught his initial attention. Charles had told them a story on that cold winter night during the snowstorm when they were all stranded in his pub. He must have been reciting a tale from this very book he held in his hands. Someone had asked him if the tale was true or not - he couldn’t recall who - and his friend said he didn’t know. He also told them that his father told him the tale, the way his father had told him. It didn’t make iota of sense. None of it. Charles wasn’t prone to telling lies. Surely this book he held in his grasp wasn’t based on facts. It couldn’t be.

  No way. It was ludicrous.

  Fascinated, though, Derek read on...

  ***

  The creature shuffled through the forest, smelling the sweet-aroma of the pines and the clean, crisp countryside air. His stumbling, lethargic gait hampered him immensely. This creature had once been an ordinary human in his first, mortal life. But now his frail cadaver made his way through the towering trees to the opening. The creature lowered itself on a stump and gazed at the rolling pastures below. The sun shone splendidly but he remained hidden in the shadows of the dense forest.