u/IPRAYNER — reddlx

part one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1smbkf8/my_town_was_destroyed_by_its_competitions_part_1/

part two:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1spyy7r/my_town_was_destroyed_by_its_competitions_part_2/

part three:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1sqlwh1/my_town_was_destroyed_by_its_competitions_part_3/

part four:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1srp810/my_town_was_destroyed_by_its_competitions_part_4/

part five:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1ssf7pr/my_town_was_destroyed_by_its_competitions_part_5/

part six:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1sv8xsq/my_town_was_destroyed_by_its_competitions_part_6/

Part seven: Retribution.

I had thought to go to bed that night for the first time in ages feeling that I had

actually accomplished something – I had saved more kids from being savaged by

snowmen – hell, I had saved lives.

However, at six am in the morning I was woken unceremoniously by the door of the

custody cell being flung open by a cheerful duty officer with an industrial strength

mug of builder’s tea. “Look sharpish – Nordale wants to see you.”

I was escorted to Louis’s erstwhile office, where Nordale was simultaneously

watching Louis’s bodycam footage and reading the notebook from the altar. “I have

never understood why all of these fools who mess around with ancient rituals think

they can just take elements from one and shove them into another and it will work.”

Nordale ran his fingers through his rumpled hair. He looked simultaneously tired and

energised, having clearly been working all night.

Louis had been deemed more useful than me and had similarly been up all night. He

just looked exhausted.

“After all,” Nordale said, looking up at me for the first time, “you wouldn’t expect your

car to work if you put diesel into a petrol engine, would you?” Nordale slammed the

notebook shut. “He clearly mistook Vuoittáhuvvan and Vuoittaeaddji - and why he

thought a pottery bowl would do instead of a wooden one just beggars belief… What

is it with two-bit so-called satanists using candles? It can still work in daylight…” He

sighed, gulped down the remnants of his coffee and continued: “Well, now we’ve got

Holmes and Watson back together. You must be feeling pretty chuffed with

yourselves, eh? After all, you’ve saved the town, eh?”

His fist thumped the wooden desk.

“Well, most of the snow has gone already,” Louis said, optimistically, “and all of the

snowmen are demolished, so yeah?”

“I think we achieved more last night than you did…” I added with a sneer, still angry

from being detained overnight in a police cell.

“Oh yes. You have achieved a lot,” Nordale replied darkly. He sat back in his chair

and replayed the bodycam footage of me smashing the bowl with the vile – oh God,

it was breathing – lump of snow. He paused the video footage. “Do you know what

was inside that bowl?” he asked, gesturing towards it.

“No?” I said, feeling suddenly less certain and proud – and sure that he was going to

tell us.

“No. Neither do I, now, because you smashed the bowl and dissipated its contents.”

“Well, does it matter? The snowmen all died, didn’t they?” Even as I said the words,

some part of me balked at the fact that I was talking about snowmen being able to

die. And live.

“In many rituals, especially ones as poorly constructed as this, there is a thing that

we like to refer to as the anchor. Some refer to them as conduits. I prefer ‘anchor’ as

the very item that allows spirits or entities to enter also keeps them tethered to that

one thing. Now, whatever they did was strong enough to control weather systems,

even if it was just in this one small town. And now, they are no longer tethered to the

bowl. Or the snow.” He paused and sighed, exasperated. “And now I have

absolutely no idea what they will do…”

“Well, surely they would already have done it?” I scoffed. “We’re still here, aren’t

we?”

“How do you know they haven’t?” he asked, his voice deadly hushed. “They’ve had

over twenty years to build up their control – and it seems as if no one even noticed.”

Louis frowned. “It did seem kind of odd, now you mention it, that snow seemed to be

lasting longer. I mean, when we were kids, it was always gone by mid-February at

the latest – and now, no one expects it to go before early April. Heck, we’ve had

Easter Sunday snowball fights…”

“While everywhere else, snow has become a rarity,” Nordale observed. “Anyway –

come on. Up to the house, and you can show me everything you messed up last

night,” he stated, picking up his coat. “Breakfast is on you two – make mine a bacon

butty. I got them last time…”

We walked to the house through a village glowing green in April sunlight, all traces of

snow having melted away with scarcely a trace remaining. Small rivulets of water

trickled down the side roads to disappear into rivers. A strange littering of abandoned

scarves, hats and pebbles adorned the greens and gardens.

Inside the house, and we gave Nordale the full guided tour of what we had

discovered - such as it was. The basement was ankle-deep in water and I had to

keep dragging my mind away from the fact that we were wading through the remains

of the Dacres. I’d never expected to meet dead Dacres twice in my life, I must say –

but that was how it felt to me.

Nordale was kind of OK once you got to know him a bit – you just had to cope with

him continually reminding you how much you had messed up – but it was almost

sympathetic, in a kind of “poor dim kids” kind of way. When he was finally finished,

asking question after question and occasionally scribbling things down in a battered

note-book, we returned to the town.

Back in town, there was a real bustle about the place: the baker’s shop had a healthy

queue, ice-cream was definitely back on the menu in the warm, spring sunshine, and

a gaggle of kids were playing football on the green. Some parents and small children

were having impromptu picnics and the world felt a wonderful place.

“I haven’t seen it like this since I was a kid,” Louis said, wide-eyed. “Shame we’re not

able to enjoy it; back to being under arrest…”

Nordale barked out a loud laugh: “Call yourself a policeman? When did I read you

your rights? Nah – you’ve just been ‘helping me with my enquiries’ – and I just

needed to keep you from burning down the entire town.”

We were both stunned as we clambered out of the car. Nordale shoved twenty quid

into Louis’s hand. “Here – I definitely made your child cry, the other night; go and get

her an ice cream.”

Louis didn’t argue; he trotted off towards the green where his wife and daughter were

clearly enjoying an al fresco lunch.

I smiled at the sight but didn’t join them; Louis needed to be with his family and I

needed to collect my things from the police station. I headed back in with Nordale

and asked the duty officer to retrieve my wallet and car keys from wherever they had

been placed in safekeeping. The station was quiet; apparently most of Nordale’s

team had returned to base – wherever that was.

“For a man who’s not under arrest, you don’t seem all that happy,” Nordale

commented, peering at me quizzically.

It was true – I still had an uneasy sense of foreboding, at odds with the warm

sunshine and blue skies outside.

“It started snowing before Christmas, and it has snowed most days since then - even

yesterday. So?...”

Nordale looked up sharply. “So how did months of compacted snow disappear in just

a few hours?”

I looked at Nordale. “You said they had learned to control the weather?”

But before we continued to explore that thought, we became abruptly aware of a

deep vibration, a faint shaking that seemed to affect the whole building. The pen on

the desk-sergeant’s desk rolled to the ground. Overhead, the strip-lights flickered.

The room was suddenly much colder, my breath forming clouds as I exhaled - and

as the power went out, all we could hear was screaming.

Nordale tilted his head sideways, listening intently, his lips moving soundlessly. “Get

to a cell!” he yelled.

“What?” I stammered, but just then, glass sprayed the room as windows were

shattered by huge hail stones; an arctic blast screamed into the room, chokingly

thick of snow, hail and debris.

“Cell!” he yelled, grabbing my arm and hauling the desk-sergeant along with us.

I lost track of the time as we huddled in the cell, listening to the ice-storm blast its

way through the station. The screaming outside could no longer be heard… it only

lasted a couple of minutes.

We only emerged when a shaken Nicholls forced the door open, her forehead

gashed and bleeding. She had apparently been working in the evidence lock-up and

had hunkered sown there.

The station was a scene of utter destruction. But nothing compared to the world

outside. Whilst Nordale was focusing on ensuring that Nicholls was ok, I staggered

out onto what had been the green.

Dead people and the sounds of grief: the sight overwhelmed me and I stood,

motionless, as tears streamed down my face. The huge hailstones had struck

vulnerable bodies with the force of missiles. Everywhere, blood coursed through the

sheet ice creating a lake of redness.

“Louis!” I yelled. “Louis!” I staggered over towards where I had last seen Rosie and

Kylie. She was dead, her eyes staring sightlessly at the sky. I followed the trail of her

blood as it trickled across the ice to where it encountered Louis’s still form. He was

curled around Rosie, a human shield, trying to the very last to protect his child, but

she too was dead.

I fell to my knees and howled…

Nordale found me still kneeling in the bloody slush but he wasn’t focused on me – he

was looking past me.

“Why?” he asked, his tone low and enraged.

I heard his question and I saw where he was looking: at the top of the green a single

smiling snowman stood alone…

The grinning pebble mouth did not move. But I heard the hiss: “We’re best…”