Pure Dead Frozen (8 page)

What Big Eyes You Have

T
itus barely looked up when Pandora came into his bedroom. He hadn't heard her—his headphones were clamped to his ears—but he had felt the cold rush of air from the corridor outside as she closed the door behind her.

“Ugh—it's like a furnace in here.” Pandora fanned herself with her free hand, the other holding a brick-sized wooden box against her chest. “How can you stand it? It's unbearable.” She crossed the room to the window, and then, as if struck by something, turned back. “Hello? Cloth ears? Are you in there? Is there life?”

Titus ignored her, his head bent over a notebook in which he was scribbling a single word over and over again in uncharacteristically tiny, crabbed handwriting.

“Why are you writing ‘Eternity' a thousand times over?” Pandora demanded, leaning over his shoulder just as Titus snapped his book shut and removed his headphones.

“What?” he mumbled.

“I feel so…um…privileged to have you as a brother.” Pandora sat down on the edge of the desk facing Titus, swinging her legs back and forth in time to her words. “There you are, lost in thought, creating your literary masterwork in your overheated bedroom, literally sweating out each word…for which future generations will thank you, nations will call you blessed, and…and why do I have the distinct feeling that you're not listening to a word I say?”

“Are you still talking?” Titus said wearily, his face milk-white despite the terrific heat in the room.

“I've found something I want you to have a look at.” Pandora opened the lid of her wooden box and from inside removed a dark gray velvet bag.

Titus's face betrayed no curiosity, no interest, nothing at all. His expression was inscrutable, as fixed and inanimate as a mask. Something of this must have snagged Pandora's attention, because she peered at him sideways and said, “Are you okay? Forgive me for mentioning it, but you look a bit spaced out. As if you're not really here….” She tailed off, lacking the language to express what she could only define as an absence.

“I'm fine,” Titus muttered, not feeling even remotely fine, but fiercely determined not to share this with Pandora. At least, not yet. In truth, he'd been feeling decidedly weird, off and on, ever since they'd gone to visit Mum and the new baby that morning. It was nothing serious—at least, he hoped not—but he'd felt shivery and just…
off
. Like a flu thing, but not: he'd felt freezing cold, as if his veins were steadily silting up with icy slush. He couldn't blame the ambient temperature either: Pan was rapidly removing layers and moaning about the heat. God. He was still
freezing,
despite having turned the radiator up to high. And one of his eyes still really hurt, for no reason he could think of. Earlier he'd looked in the mirror, tried to see if he'd picked up a bit of grit—although it felt nastier than that; more like a shard of glass, cold as ice—but his reflection had stared back at him, giving no clue whatsoever as to what ailed him.

Squinting at Pandora, he realized she was holding something out for inspection.

“Pretty cool, huh?” She raised her eyebrows and added, although the object spoke for itself even if Titus wasn't doing so, “It's a snow-globe thing. A whatchamacallit. Come
on,
Titus, you know this stuff….”

“A
boule de neige,
” Titus muttered, rubbing his sore eye.

“Don't sound so excited. Jeez, you're
such
hard work right now. What
is
it with you? Don't tell me it's the baby?”

“Don't be stupid,” Titus snapped, stung at last into a normal reaction. “The baby's just…a baby. I'm glad both it—I mean
he
—and Mum are okay. Okay? I'm not jealous, if that's what you're hinting at.”

Pandora stared at him, her swinging legs slowing to a halt. “Actually, Mr. Hyper-Paranoid, I wasn't hinting. I was wondering out loud. I did think the baby was really sweet, though. It looked just like a wee version of you—”

“Thanks a bunch—”

“Well, you said that about me and Damp when she was a new baby, and
boy,
was she ugly.”

“And she wailed the house down,” Titus added with a shudder. “Ugh. Babies are such a
pain
.”

“Now you're talking.” Pandora smiled. “Anyway, check this out. I found it in the game room.”

“Yeah. The snow scene. And your point is…?”

“
So
impatient. Okay, so look more closely. It's not just any old snow scene, is it?”

Titus forced his injured eye to focus, causing it to water prodigiously. Through a smear of tears, he tried to see what lay inside the little glass dome, his difficulty compounded by the fact that the snow inside it was swirling around like a bonsai blizzard. Then he got it.

“Wow. Cool,” he breathed, wondering when the flakes would settle down on the bottom of the dome and allow him to examine the miniature scene more closely.

“What d'you think those wee black things are?” Pandora asked, pointing to a clump of little black dots swirling through the snow toward the beautifully rendered tiny StregaSchloss.

“Gnats?” Titus guessed, although how the snow globe could have suffered an invasion by Scotland's perennial summer blight was hard to imagine.

“I don't think so,” Pandora whispered. “Look again. They're circling the house.”

“It's totally realistic, isn't it?” Titus said, fascinated by the oddness of holding a shrunken version of his home in his hands and idly wondering how much longer it was going to take for the tiny snowstorm to stop. He had a vague memory of owning a snow scene before, but he was almost certain that it hadn't been a super-swirly one like this. In fact, he was positive that he'd developed major arm strain from continually having to jiggle and shake its sluggish snowflakes into some semblance of a blizzard. Assuming that the storm would settle faster if he wasn't holding the snow dome in his wobbly hands, Titus laid it on his desk and turned to see Pandora framed at the window.

“Not gnats,” she managed to gasp, her throat suddenly so dry that she could barely get the words out. She was saved from further explanations as a long, blood-chilling howl sounded from outside, followed by another…and another.

As he joined his sister by the window, Titus could make out dark shapes in the garden through the swirl of snowflakes. Looking up at the windows of StregaSchloss through hungry yellow eyes was a vast pack of wolves, silent now as they paced outside the house, silent with the certainty that what they sought lay within its walls. Desperately, Pandora tried to remember if Minty or Damp had shut the door to the kitchen garden earlier that morning—really shut it, as opposed to just pulling it to. Fear clawed at her as she realized she hadn't seen Damp or Minty for ages, and then, from downstairs, she heard a confusion of feral snarls and scufflings, followed by a muffled crack.

“DAMP?” she screamed, already halfway down the corridor before she'd even had time to think, hoping that the thudding footprints behind her were Titus's and not those of a pack of underfed wolves delighted that lunch had finally been served. Skidding downstairs shrieking Damp's name, aware that she was a hairsbreadth away from total hysteria, Pandora didn't pause to consider what she was going to do if she found the great hall thronging with fanged beasts. All she could think of was how Damp wouldn't have known that the big gray dogs were dangerous—not until the first one knocked her to the ground and sank its teeth into—

There were more snarls and hideous clotted rending noises, and as Pan rounded the corner of the landing, she could see the grisly remains of one wolf below, lying in a pool of blood on the floor of the great hall. Then came another crack, and another, closer, much louder—

“DAMP!” Pandora bawled, just as Titus caught up and grabbed her.

“Try not to panic, but there's a wolf behind me,” he hissed, his fingers digging into the flesh of Pandora's arm. “Don't make any sudden movements,” he continued. “Don't look at it. Try and act as if it isn't there…. Just keep on walking downstairs. And breathe. Yeah, breathing's good. In, out, and all that stuff. Good. Great. You're doing brilliantly. Keep going. Yup. Let's try for the kitchen, shall we?”

They were stepping gingerly over the corpse of the fallen wolf when a blurred shape came at them from the darkness of the boot cupboard. With no time to think, Titus and Pandora fled shrieking down the corridor and into the kitchen, slamming the door behind them. From somewhere nearby came a series of loud cracks, but by then they had realized that they'd made a fatal error. The kitchen was freezing cold, and just as they wondered why this should be so, round the open back door came a questing muzzle, above which glinted two cold yellow eyes. The pack leader shuffled into the kitchen, followed by two of the biggest wolves Titus and Pandora had ever seen. As if this wasn't bad enough, a further two wolves, unwilling to queue for lunch by the back door, decided to shortcut the whole process by jumping straight through the window into the kitchen sink in an earsplitting explosion of broken glass.

For one frozen moment Pandora stared straight into the eyes of the pack leader as it paused to savor her scent. Things flashed past in Pandora's mind: the smell of lavender, her mother's smile, Damp's infectious laughter, the sound of waves crashing on the white stones rimming Lochnagargoyle…

…and then, with a grunt of effort, the wolf jumped, its heavy body, for that instant, almost graceful as it arced toward Pandora.

Some Baby

T
he woman behind the car-rental desk watched the approach of a man carrying a crying baby. The infant's mouth was opening and shutting like a fish's. As the door to the car-rental office opened to admit them, the volume of the baby's wails increased a thousandfold, causing the woman to sigh heavily, roll her eyes, and give her chewing gum three vicious chugs. Smiling insincerely, she launched into her greeting.

“Good afternoon, sir. How may I be of assistance?”

“I want to rent a car,” Isagoth said, his jaw clenched so tight it ached. “Frankly, I'd've thought that was obvious enough. Why else would anyone bother to come through your door?”

Ah, the woman thought. A joker. Oh, joy. Oh well, pal. Two can play at that game.

“Terribly sorry, sir, I'm afraid they're all out at present….” This blatant lie didn't even cause her to blush, so expert had she become at dealing with members of the general public from the shallow end of the gene pool. She was about to smile once more when a searing pain ripped across the middle of her chest. As she fell, gasping, across her desk, the man stepped forward and grabbed her by her hair, forcing her to look at him.

“What I want is a car. What I do not want is to be jerked around. Now, are you going to rent me one or…?”

The pain increased to a pitch where she began to white out. Black spots danced before her eyes and she tried to speak, to call out, to make him stop whatever it was he was doing—

“And let me just point out that you're going to be in a whole world of pain if you tell another living soul about this.” And then he let go and stood back to hush his howling baby.

The office door opened to reveal a young couple maneuvering large suitcases on wheels behind them. The woman behind the desk realized that she probably owed them her life for arriving at that moment. By the time the couple had succeeded in dragging all their luggage into the office, Scary Man with Baby was dangling a set of car keys from one hand and flashing everyone the tired smile of a harassed parent.

“Got to go”—Isagoth sighed—“get this little fellow back to his mummy. Thanks for your help. 'Preciate this….” And with a final despairing bleat from the baby, he was gone.

         

The hotel receptionist at the Auchenlochtermuchty Arms leaned forward to stroke the baby's cheek and forced herself not to recoil at the sulfurous stench that suddenly filled her nostrils. Poor
baby,
she thought, forcing a smile onto her face and mouth-breathing as she cooed insincerely.

“Who's a dear wee baby, then? Lovely navy blue eyes. And what's your name, pet?”

Isagoth's brain seized up. What the hell should he say? Babies' names weren't his thing. Obviously.

“Er, yeah. He's…uh…called”—his eyes fastened on his car-key fob—“
Hertz.
His name is Hertz.”

The receptionist frowned.

“Dutch,” Isagoth muttered. “It's an old Dutch name, Hertz. On my mother's side.” Then, aware that he was beginning to babble, he clamped his mouth shut.

“Er…lovely,” the receptionist managed. “And you'll be wanting the room for…?” She allowed this question to dangle while secretly taking in a huge lungful of air through her mouth. Ugh. Talk about evil diapers.
That
one takes the biscuit.

“Initially, a week.” Isagoth produced a credit card and slid it across the counter to the receptionist. While she made a copy of his details, he smiled to himself, delighted by the ease with which he'd invisibly rejoined human society. The baby was the single most useful accessory he'd ever had. If anyone was asking too many questions or proving too interested in details of Isagoth's hastily forged human identity, all the demon had to do was pinch the baby hard, and immediately people couldn't get rid of him fast enough. Fact was, for all their mealy-mouthed love of all things small and squeaky, most human beings would rather have flossed with a circular sander than spend more than twenty seconds within earshot of a wailing infant.

Minutes later, in the privacy of his room, Isagoth found himself experiencing the undiluted ferocity of Baby Strega-Borgia's displeasure. Despite being a senior demon who'd spent many millennia inflicting pain, spreading terror, and corrupting innocence; despite being the kind of entity you most certainly wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of; despite his reputation as the Arch-Bogeyman, a reputation that sent a shudder through even the vilest infant demons spawned in the nurseries of Hades—despite all of these, Isagoth felt his heart miss a beat as the tiny baby took another deep lungful and let rip from both ends.

Aghast, Isagoth undid the stained Onesie and peered uncertainly at what lay inside. The baby appeared to be wearing a dirty plastic bag around its bottom, a bag that, when opened by means of two blue tapes on each side, turned out to be full of the weirdest stuff Isagoth had ever seen. Black, sticky, and relatively odor-free, what it lacked in smell it more than made up for in quantity. And more was to come.

“STOP, I command you,” he roared in vain as the baby frowned and bore down.

“Surely there cannot be
more
?” the demon wondered out loud as the plastic bag proved itself to be woefully inadequate for the task.

“Where is it all coming from?” Isagoth mused, trying to grasp how it could be that such a tiny creature could turn itself into such a prodigious poo factory without completely deflating like a human whoopee cushion.

Moments later, the show was over. The baby, his diaper, his Onesie, and most of the facing parts of his totally inadequate caretaker were coated in a thick and rubbery layer of meconium—the impossible-to-remove contents of every newborn human's bowels, the black poo from hell. With a faint squeak of satisfaction, the baby fell asleep, a perfectly justifiable grin hovering around his mouth. Mission accomplished.

Babies, 1; Demons, 0.