The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

aimed blows and she would be free. The hatchet must have fallen in the stream. She crawled back
into the black water, put her hands down and searched the stony bottom.
Nothing.
In despair, she sank to her knees, scanning the snow on both banks. And then she caught sight of the
blade poking up out of the water two metres in front of her. And already she knew, before she felt
the wire jerk, before she lay down flat in the water with the melted snow gurgling over her, so cold
that she thought her heart would stop, stretching like a desperate beggar for the hatchet, already she
knew that it was half a metre too far. Her fingers curled around air fifty centimetres from the
handle. Tears came, but she forced them back; she could cry afterwards.
‘Is this what you’re looking for?’
She had neither seen nor heard a thing. But in front of her sat a figure, crouched down. It. Sylvia
scrambled back, but the figure followed with the hatchet held out to her.
‘Just take it.’
Sylvia got to her knees and took the hatchet.
‘What are you going to do with it?’ the voice asked.
Sylvia felt the fury surge up inside her, the fury that always accompanies fear, and the result was
ferocious. She lunged forward with the hatchet raised and swung low with an outstretched arm. But
the wire tugged at her, the hatchet just sliced the darkness and the next moment she was lying in the
water again.
The voice chuckled.
Sylvia fell onto her side. ‘Go away,’ she groaned, spitting pebbles.
‘I want you to eat snow,’ the voice said, getting up and briefly holding the side where the jacket had
been slashed open.
‘What?’ Sylvia exclaimed, in spite of herself.
‘I want you to eat snow until you piss yourself.’ The figure stood slightly outside the radius of the
steel wire, tilted its head and watched Sylvia. ‘Until your stomach is so frozen and full that it can’t
melt the snow any longer. Until it’s ice inside. Until you’ve become your true self. Something that
can’t feel.’
Sylvia’s brain perceived the words, but could not absorb the meaning. ‘Never!’ she screamed.
A sound came from the figure and blended into the gurgle of the stream. ‘Now’s the time to scream,
dear Sylvia. For no one will hear you again. Ever.’
Sylvia saw it raise something. Which lit up. A loop formed the outline of a red, glowing raindrop
against the dark. It hissed and smoked as it came into contact with the surface of the stream. ‘You’ll
choose to eat snow. Believe me.’
Sylvia realised with a paralysing certainty that her final hour had come. There was only one