CHAPTER 28
When Tammy and I go to collect the infant school children for the morning assembly on Monday morning, we really can’t help but overhear a bit of the conversations they’re having. What’s different about this morning is that they all seem to be having the same conversation.
“What’s with the bruise, Sarah?” One little boy is asking.
“My skipping rope got caught around my neck,” the little girl with a nasty looking bruise on her neck replies. “It was like a snake, I couldn’t get it off.”
Another little boy with an arm in a plaster cast is saying, “It just zoomed across in front of me and tripped me up on the top stair. I don’t even know how because there was no one using the remote control.”
“My bear keeps staring at me,” one girl is saying to another girl. “It watches me wherever I go.”
“My doll moves,” the other girl replies. “I left it on the chair but when I woke up it was sleeping next to me in bed.”
“My Etch A Sketch said something bad,” another girl says. “I wasn’t playing with it. It was on the desk and I hadn’t touched it, but my mother came in and got really mad at me for writing bad words with it.”
“My dad says my Jack in the Box is trying to give him a heart attack. It keeps jumping out by itself even when it’s turned off.”
“My remote control car doesn’t listen to the remote. It ran straight into my mother’s ankles the other day and she got angry at me so I put the remote down to prove I didn’t do it, and the car carried on running into her ankles.”
“My—”
“Everyone stop a minute,” I say loudly.
They all stop. It’s good to be a junior sometimes.
“Where did you all get these toys from?”
I have my suspicions.
“Santa,” they all chorus in unison.
As I thought. Except they don’t know he’s not really Santa but is in fact Anti-Claus, and I would think he has got a hold of some possessed toys. No wonder he was giving them away. I can’t wait to tell Blizzard about this.
Dad is standing in the main square of the mall when I get there, talking to Blizzard and Santa. They wave brightly when they see me.
“Oh good,” Dad says. “I was starting to worry.”
“Why?” I ask. “I’m not late.”
“No, but there’s something a bit funny going on today. I was a bit worried about you walking around by yourself.”
“Why?” I ask. I suddenly realise that the mall is almost completely empty. Many of the shops are closed and there were hardly any cars outside. “Where is everyone?” I ask Dad as I look around the scarily empty building.
“It’s the strangest thing. Seems there’s some sort of blockage on the motorway. The main road has been shut down since this morning, and there’s so much black ice on the B road that police have advised not to use it. Except those of us who live within walking distance, no one can get into town. I’m the only security guard here. As of an hour ago, Don had been sitting in his car on the motorway in the traffic jam of the century since nine o’clock this morning.”
“Wanna know what the blockage is?” Blizzard asks, and I recognise her ‘I know something you don’t’ grin.
“Sure,” I say.
“Snowmen.”
“Snowmen?”
Blizzard nods.
“Yes,” Dad says. “That’s the most sense I could get out of Don. He seems to think that there are snowmen lined up across the motorway and nothing is shifting them. Mad, eh?”
“Er, I guess?”
“I think something’s got lost in translation somehow,” Dad says. “I don’t think he means actual snowmen made of snow. It’s probably a nickname for a terrorist group or a herd of cows or something.”
Blizzard minutely shakes her head.
I take this to mean that the blockage is actual snowmen made of snow.
“He can’t mean actual snowmen,” Dad is continuing. “I mean, firstly we haven’t had any snow since last week, and secondly the sun is out and it’s actually quite toasty for mid-December. Snowmen would have melted by now.
Eventually Dad walks away, still muttering about a group of protesters who might call themselves snowmen.
“I take it that they are actual snowmen,” I say to Blizzard as soon as he’s gone.
“Yup,” Blizzard sounds almost gleeful. “We’ve worked it out. They’re Anti-Claus’s snowmen of course, but this is what he does. He’s a Santa, so he has elves, just like we do, except our elves are good and spend all their time making presents, and his are bad and are here, controlling fake snowmen and god knows what else.”
“So the snowmen are fake then? The ones that have popped up in every garden?”
“Half fake, half real,” Santa chimes in. “Funnily enough I’ve seen the prototype, but not with the intention of being used for evil purposes obviously. Basically the outside of the snowman is real snow, and inside is a hidden cavity where the elf hides. The outer layer of the cavity is kept frozen so the real snow on the outside stays cold and stays put. The elf can then control the snowman from the inside, and from the outside it looks like a real snowman so no one ever suspects a thing.”
“I took Rudolph out for a fly,” Blizzard says. “Just to see what was really going on. Obviously I couldn’t get too close or they’d have seen me, but you should see the motorway. There’s literally just a wall of snowmen, it’s no wonder the cars aren’t going anywhere. There must be at least two hundred snowmen, just lined up in rows.”
“Can’t they snow plough these snowmen?”
“They’re trying from what I could see, but there’s only one snow plough in the whole county, and it looks like the snowmen are pretty firmly attached to the ground.”
I nod. “Well, I found out something interesting in school today too.”
“Oh yeah?”
“So you know all those fabulous toys that Anti-Claus was giving away? Turns out they’re all possessed or something. The infants classes in my school were talking about all the harm these toys have been causing. There’s a kid with a broken arm, another kid with a skipping rope that tried to strangle her, and one with a Jack in the Box that jumps out of it’s own accord. One boy was saying that his remote controlled car started ramming his mother’s ankles by itself. Another one said their doll moves in the night. I asked them where they got the toys from and they all said from Anti-Claus.”
“Ahh,” Santa nods. “I knew there would be a catch. It’s just a shame that the children have to suffer for it.”
“Didn’t your sister get a doll from him too?”
“Oh crikey, yes she did. I wonder if that’s behaving itself. Are the elves in the toys too?”
“No,” Santa says. “They’re ordinary toys with a chip in them. The chip is remote controlled. Somewhere the elves will be gathered controlling the toy by remote.”
“So is there anything we can do about it?” I ask.
“I wouldn’t think the snowmen on the motorway will stay there long. Elves don’t have a very long attention span. No doubt they will get bored and toddle off by morning.”
“Are these the snowmen from the gardens?” I ask. “I mean, when we had snow the other night, first thing in the morning all these snowmen popped up in everyone’s garden and I was suspicious because there’s no way there was time for the people to actually build the snowmen. If I go home now, will the gardens be empty because the snowmen are on the freeway, or are there more snowmen?”
“Probably the same ones. Anti-Claus doesn’t have an unlimited supply of elves so he has to make the best use of the ones he does have.”
I nod.
“So what else are his evil snowmen likely to do?”
“Well, that’s the problem, we don’t know until they do it. I guess just keep out of the way of snowmen, Kaity, and if you see a group of them together it might be a good plan to walk very fast in the other direction.”
/> “Oh, you don’t need to tell me that,” I say.
Dad comes back then. “Just been on the radio,” he says. “They’re saying that it’s actual snowmen blocking the roads. What a complete nightmare. And how have they not got rid of them yet? Who in their right mind would build snowmen in the middle of the motorway for god’s sake? What is this country coming to?”
“Probably just kids playing?” Santa says gently.
“In the middle of the night? In the middle of the busiest road this part of the country has?”
“I suppose…”
“I’m thinking of shutting the doors early,” Dad says. “There’s no one here and no one coming by the looks of it. You two can go home if you want. Kait, you want to go get a McDonalds or something with me?”
“Sure,” I say.
Who can say no to that?
“Take care, both of you,” Santa says as we all get up to leave.
“Remember what we said about walking in the other direction,” Blizzard adds.
“Oh, I will,” I say. “They creep me out enough just by standing there. I really have no desire to go up to one.”