Rise of the Snowmen Read online

  Had he explained the situation to anyone else he knew that the topic of red flags would come up with a heavy stress on the inability to commit, but… It was more than that. Taylor had layers to him, and at his base level he was filled with a self-sacrificing focused dedication.

  That dedication just wasn’t to Greg.

  They lingered on at Halstown, Taylor obsessively walking about the grounds to double-check for any evidence of a gingerbread house. He studied exiting children as well, without looking as if he did, his phone up to his cheek. He occasionally spoke, a smile hovering across his lips, widening at intervals as if he merely paced outside chatting away, getting caught up with some distant relation who only called around the holidays.

  Greg felt far more conspicuous leaning against the car.

  His phone rang while one of the administration walked out of the school to pull up the posted sign by the bus parking that announced the Christmas event.

  “Hello.”

  “There’s a shopping shindig over at the Upper Brantonville Firehouse. Venders in the parking lot. Ton of people. There’s a strip of trees between the lot and the old storage barns and the event lasts till five.”

  Greg raised his gaze to where Taylor was examining the third grade’s trees, but he had his back to the cars. “And you want to go there next?”

  “Fourth year anniversary of the event,” continued Taylor. “Could be worse than a mall, that place.”

  “I guess I don’t have much say in this.”

  “Sure you do. I can drop you off at your house and you can find Mandy’s present.”

  Greg hesitated. He didn’t want to go to the vendor fair. He wanted to go home, get the last vestiges of presents wrapped for Mandy, have time to cook a delicious anniversary meal with Taylor and then have some wild holiday marathon-level fun that ripped the sheets off and left them both sticky, satisfied, and bone-sore.

  But he doubted Taylor even remembered that anniversaries were something that happened in relationships and not just vendor fairs. He smiled vaguely, resigned to the fact that he might just have to be romantic enough for the two of them.

  “No, I’ll come.”

  “All right. I’m not seeing much around here.” And Taylor sounded disappointed. “We could take the scenic route, swing through the neighborhood, case out any realtor signs that might indicate houses standing empty.”

  Then he hung up the phone before Greg could respond.

  He drove around the neighborhood, sometimes doubling back on streets to appease Taylor’s precautionary desires. Each house, small in stature, had a yard half the size of a parking spot. Most of them bore the same deadened grass look to them, that beige that reigned in winter’s start, sparkling with frost in the morning for hours on end.

  Old hanging pots hung empty and bistro sets leaned against siding under minimal overhang protection, everything prepared for the long wait till spring. Taylor slouched in the passenger seat, his posture and that hardened gaze reminding Greg of when they’d met last year. A morning so fraught with emotion, at least on Greg’s side of things, that every second seemed emblazoned on his mind. The fury when Taylor had first attempted to snatch Mandy from Greg’s arms. The shock when the child he’d thought to be his daughter ducked and rolled and attacked with a sharpened snowflake ninja star. The terror when he’d watched reindeer leap into the sky, the real Mandy riding astride one that had white patches against its forelegs.

  And then the subsequent desperation interlaced with thankfulness, hope and fear, when Greg had demanded a place in Taylor’s hunt for the elvish intruders responsible for the kidnappings.

  It’d been the single-most terrifying day of his life. But for Taylor, it’d been business as usual.

  “There’s nothing here,” said Taylor, sweeping a hand through hair grown long enough to fall into his eyes. “Go ahead over to the firehouse.”

  Greg obediently turned the car toward a throughway. “Do you remember when we met?”

  Strained amusement oozed from Taylor’s voice. “Is this a trick question?”

  “You seemed to know what you were doing then.”

  “And I don’t now?” A caustic edge replaced the amusement.

  Greg ignored the question. “You were the only one who knew what was going on. At least that’s what I assumed. But it’s not true, is it? Stories of Krampus or folklore about creatures of myth who punish around the holidays are fewer and farther between than Christmas miracle stories, but they do exist.”

  “That’s all entertainment one way or another. Same as repetitious religious ceremonies. I think it’s all been born from a desire to mask reality.” Taylor didn’t look away from the window.

  “Or it could indicate that there are others who know and take action.”

  Taylor didn’t respond.

  “Could be that someone else has gotten to the elves first this year. Maybe some other child who had been saved by you in years past who now wants to help too.”

  Neither of them spoke as they turned into the firehouse’s parking lot. Greg squeezed the Camry between another compact and a more expensive sports car in the inclined grass that had been repurposed as extra parking and shut the car off. Only then did Taylor sigh.

  “Your optimism is encouraging…but not realistic.”

  “Babe, you don’t know—” Greg broke off as Taylor shut the door behind himself. He gripped the steering wheel, letting the cracked plastic eat into his palm, then continued in the now-empty car. “There are some good things about this time of year. If you’d bother to look.”

  By the time he stepped out of the car, Taylor was already weaving through the parking lot, forcing Greg to jog to catch up.

  They wandered into the vendor fair like browsing shoppers, though they bore little resemblance to the older grandmotherly types that dominated the edges of stalls. A younger crowd congregated about the spiked cider awnings and standing tables. Greg felt the temptation to join them, but resisted when he caught sight of a toddler dressed up like an elf, the boy passing by in a cheap stroller with a donut stick clutched in one chubby fist.

  He shuddered and averted his eyes. Not for the child, but for the very real memories elvish adornments summoned.

  For an hour, closing in on a second, they strolled up and down, back and forth, crisscrossing the carefully mapped out stalls with their bright red canvas tops. Taylor would chat with stall owners, run fingers over décor, sniff candles and soap as if thinking of buying them, but all the while his eyes flicked around constantly and his grin was a flash, here and there, gone again. Greg didn’t know what he was looking for specifically, but he followed Taylor, watching the other man just as much as Taylor examined the people around them.

  Laughter hung in the air. A holiday cheer that did not chip even an inch off Taylor’s pinched lips and taut shoulders whenever he turned toward Greg. All around were bright “Merry Christmases!” and “Happy Holidays!” and the occasional questions on the appropriateness of gifts. Toddlers begged for toys and squealed when handed peppermint lollipops. The young adult crowd staggered about with too-loud voices and quieter designated drivers.

  And through it all, the press of people, the aura of happiness, Taylor grew more and more frosty, more and more distant whenever he turned from another vendor, his handmade grin melting away.

  “There’s nothing,” muttered Taylor as they passed a stall filled with pastel-colored princess tiaras and fairy wings. “Where are they?” he demanded when they circled a tiny cul-de-sac of food venders—hot dogs and chicken and pulled pork. And a mournful “I don’t understand,” just barely reached Greg’s ears as they passed by a vegan candle shop.

  When they got to the end of the last row for a second time, Greg stepped in front of Taylor. “We’ve been over it all. It’s nearly five.”

  “They might still be here.”

  Greg chose his next words carefully and his tone even more so. “Taylor, you’ve said yourself that these places give little opportunity
for them.”

  “Little opportunity doesn’t mean zero opportunity.” And he raised an eyebrow, a sardonic smile playing about his lips.

  “You’re right,” Greg deepened his voice unconsciously. “Did you see anything?”

  Taylor blanched and turned, his eyes going everywhere but to Greg. “There’s barely any children here,” murmured Taylor as he spun slowly. “Babies in strollers. Groups of teens. Little old ladies and men taking advantage of the meat venders, but…”

  Greg laid a hand carefully on Taylor’s arm. “They’re not here. They’re not anywhere.”

  Taylor’s shoulders drooped and suddenly, he didn’t look like himself. Gone was the hunter, the chameleon, the man who could blend in anywhere, the man who saw more than he let on and would act before others could even process the situation. In his place stood someone wrecked and exhausted.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” His voice no more than a whisper of sound that scarcely reached Greg’s ears through the hum of noise about them.

  “Why?” demanded Greg. “This is good. This means those hundreds and thousands of kids we’ve seen in the last few weeks are all going to wake up Christmas morning with their families rather than in a nightmare.”

  Taylor’s jaw tensed. “Because it means… They’re still out there. Just taking someone else’s kid. In a different town, a different state. Somewhere else is getting hit harder.”

  Greg squeezed Taylor’s arm. “You can’t stop all of it.”

  With a searing, uncharacteristic glare, Taylor spun toward Greg. “But I could stop some of it. But it would mean…” Taylor pressed his lips together in a thin line and then turned away.

  But Greg heard what Taylor didn’t say. It would mean he’d have to leave.

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  This time Taylor’s glare was more a grimace. “This place’s a bust. Let’s go. We can still get Mandy’s present to her before dinner.”

  He stepped out of Greg’s grip and began to weave his way through the maze of vendors, his back disappearing quickly in the wash of shoppers. And for an awful moment, Greg thought this might be the last he’d see of Taylor. That the enigmatic man who had saved Mandy, and to a different extent, Greg, would fade out into the world, following a self-imposed quest that would never, ever end.

  For a moment, the fear held him stiff, then he shrugged it off forcibly and pushed through the churning mass of people to get his eyes back on Taylor.

  On the drive home, Taylor blurted, “I didn’t always live here. I’ve moved around, headed to places where missing children and Amber Alerts tipped into higher and higher numbers.”

  Greg nodded, but kept his eyes on the road.

  “Kids, they’re everywhere. Every country, every city, every town, every street. You safeguard one place, the bastards go somewhere else. You shave their numbers by a dozen and twice that many ascend from the bowels of the Pole, eager to prove themselves.”

  “Taylor…”

  “They’re out there.” Taylor tapped the window with his knuckles. “They’re out there. I know they are. I feel it all the way to my bones.”

  Greg turned onto his street, the tires crunching over the loose gravel along the edge.

  “This place… I don’t know. Something about it attracted them and it’s easier to hunt when you know the grounds.”

  “So you stayed.”

  “Plenty of reason to.” But Taylor spoke absently, his mind elsewhere.

  And what about now? Greg wanted to demand.

  He squeezed the Camry’s steering wheel until his palms hurt. His neighbors’ houses passed in a blur, a few with colorful lights already sparkling along gutters and window frames despite the evening barely beginning to set in, but the holiday cheer he’d shared with Mandy all last weekend had faded, leaving behind a dull threat that hung over his head as he waited for the other shoe to kick him in the groin.

  They pulled up to Greg’s house in silence. The car ticked like a too-fast clock, counting down until Taylor decided to leave because Greg and Mandy wouldn’t be enough of a reason to stay, not for someone like him.

  “I’m getting Mandy tomorrow,” said Greg softly, hands still clutching the steering wheel.

  “I know.”

  “Thought I’d take her to the tree lighting. The one in the square.” Long pause. “If you’d like to come.”

  Some of the tenseness in Taylor’s frame relaxed and once more he seemed to morph before Greg’s eyes, his expression turning more open and less consternate. “‘Course. She can use my shoulders when yours get sore. And I can keep a lookout. Just in case.” Then he grinned.

  Yet as they walked inside, Greg saw his expression close back up, Taylor’s gaze cutting out across the neighborhood, searching, always searching, as if wishing for something horrible to happen.

  Chapter Three

  Taylor filled a thermos with some of Greg’s gourmet coffee before slipping out the door in the early morning. He hadn’t slept, not well, continuously waking, walking Greg’s house, checking Mandy’s empty room with a sense of dread vibrating in his bones. He’d had to resist doing a drive-by of Katie’s house in the middle of the night. It’d been a close thing at three in the morning, especially after the white glint of the neighbor’s decorations had made his fingers tingle in anticipation of an attack. He’d had to talk himself down after the adrenaline had coursed through his body like a fucking battering ram.

  Christmas Eve had dawned a typical overcast day with grayscale stealing across the world. Just the sort of day for a snowstorm. Just the sort of day that sang of elvish mischief.

  And that gnawing sense of dread had not let up with the dawn.

  He saw Greg standing in the window of the living room as he backed the car up. Gave a wave, but not a kiss. Greg didn’t respond, his arms crossed over his delightfully bare chest, his expression disapproving. Whatever gears churned behind those stormy eyes probably having to do with all those questions Taylor had been successfully dodging for the past six months.

  He should have ended things last year, after Christmas. Should have moved so Greg couldn’t hunt him down. Found different seasonal work that would take him further afield. He’d convinced himself a few days of family and warmth wouldn’t be a problem. But he hadn’t counted on how seductive it would feel to wake up most days with an arm wrapped about his chest, to have a man listen to him, believe him. To care about him.

  To not have to lie.

  Hadn’t counted on Mandy either. On her being sweet as chocolate one moment and diabolical as Santa the next with that cackling laugh, reminding him of the kids he’d left behind that wintery night so long ago.

  Those few days had turned into a few weeks. Then months. Until here they were, facing a Christmas together—again.

  Like he had some sort of real relationship going on, with a man who truly cared. Who had a little girl who Taylor taught how to play chopsticks on her colorful keyboard and how to blow a stick of gum into giant bubbles. Bubbles that popped onto her face and into her hair, leaving them both scrambling to cut the section out long before the two of them could get into trouble with Katie or Greg.

  He flinched at the memory. Shook his head to free images of both Mandy and Greg, and turned toward Upper Brantonville and maybe some answers.

  John Brockstin lived in a townhouse about a mile away from the mall. A couple of old gnomes stood beside overgrown, tangled bushes in the middle of his small front yard and on his searing red door hung a wreath made of beer cans. A wind chime made of tabs and bottle caps stood deathly still above Taylor’s head as he leaned forward to ring the bell.

  The man who pulled open the door had a beard to rival Santa’s. Gray, like cigarette ash, his beard curled and leapt like stiff wire. His rounded belly stretched his shirt out and his cheeks, ruddy and bright, marked an early morning beer down the gullet already.

  “No,” said Brockstin. “I’ve done nothing. You don’t need to be showing up at mine and c
asting threats again.”

  “No threats. Just had a question.” He smiled for good measure, though it might have been wasted on Brockstin.

  Brockstin squinted, then poked his head out and cast around, searching for pint-sized, pointy-eared bastards, no doubt. Then he grudgingly allowed Taylor into the townhouse.

  “All right, all right, come on in. Close the door back up. This isn’t a pleasure call, kid. You get a question and then you’re gone.”

  The television murmured in the next room, a news anchor droning on about what gifts some A-lister had picked up for her kids. A dog—large and swarthy and golden-furred—lifted his head from a pile of cushions and when Taylor didn’t give any scratches, grew bored and lay back down. A smell lingered at the doorway into the kitchen where the dog’s dish sat licked clean, bits of food drying on the floor beside it. A well-used leash lay thrown on the coffee table from a recent walk and a bowl with the bare remnants of scrambled eggs and sausage sat next to a stack of small gaily-wrapped Christmas gifts.

  “Well, don’t get all quiet on me now. What do you want?” Brockstin collapsed onto his couch and plucked a bottle of beer off the table. “Presents are all the rage. Guess I can handle hearing one more request.”

  “Where are they?”

  Brockstin swallowed and replaced the beer. “You don’t have any hobbies, do you? Not passionate about anything? Every year, always the same. Give me info, John, give me info. Can’t seem to do much by yourself, huh?”

  “Where are they?”

  “Fuck if I know. Haven’t seen a dime from them this year.” He glanced over his shoulder where a Santa outfit lay draped over the recliner. “Checked on some of the other guys. Thought maybe the little buggers had found someone else, but haven’t found hint or sprinkles to give me any hope.”

  “You can’t tell me anything? Anything they’ve said to you?” Taylor cased the room as he spoke, taking in the curtains over the sliding glass door, the crooked mat, and the bookcase filled with books that looked more ornamental than read.