Baby, It's Cold Outside

Opal stared on helplessly as her friend burned to death in the cozy fireplace before her, its mantle lined with stereotypically idyllic photographs of the black-haired, blue-eyed twins that had tormented them for the last and longest evening of their life.
She struggled desperately against her manacles, but the iron chains weighed more than she did, and the Christmas Tree they were attached to was so enormous and heavy with ornaments that it proved impossible to overturn. She tried to scream, beg, cry, anything, but all her vocalizations were incoherently muffled by the candy cane-stripped gag in her mouth. Even were she not gagged, it was hard to imagine she could ever cry loud enough to be overheard over the agonized, dying screams of her friend as the fire devoured her whole, burning down through her flesh and out through her lungs as she inhaled the blaze.
In a mix of terror and instinctive self-preservation, she thrashed against the cast iron screen that imprisoned her within the fireplace. The female twin sadistically forced her back with a poking iron as the male sat smirking on the couch, content merely to watch. When the twin withdrew the iron, it carried a large chunk of smouldering flesh on its end. Opal nearly threw up in her gag when she saw the twin ravenously tear off about half the flesh with her teeth and devoured it with a depraved relish before passing the rest to her brother for him to finish.
Eventually, inevitably, and all too quickly, Opal watched her friend succumb to the fire, reduced to a charring and blackening corpse coiled up in a fetal position. Opal broke down and sobbed feebly as the female twin hung a kettle over the crackling carcass and went to replay a Christmas album on their mid-twentieth-century record player.
Opal turned her gaze to the snowswept glass doors to what she assumed was a balcony. She briefly humoured the notion of somehow severing her hands free of the manacles, kicking them to the cannibal twins as a distraction and making a break for it, but quickly thought better of it. Since no one had heard or heeded their desperate cries for help, there was either no one else around or, if there were, they were allied or subject to the twins. Opal had no idea where she was, or how high up she was, and how far could she really expect to get with a pair of hemorrhaging wrists?
Still, after witnessing what they had done to her friend, it might be the most peaceful death she could hope for.
When the kettle began to whistle, the female twin returned to retrieve it, using it to fill a pair of pre-garnished glass mugs that she set on the coffee table in front of her brother.
“There we are, James Darling. The perfect holiday drink; extra strong Hot Toddies!” she announced enthusiastically, a drunken drawl already present in her speech. “All whiskey; no water. Fish fuck in it, as Frankie used to say.”
Affectionately cuddling up beside him, the twins clinked their glasses together in a toast before taking their first sips.
“As always, Mary Darling, your annual Christmas party has been a resounding success!” James congratulated her.
“Well, I can’t take all the credit. You rounded up the guests, after all,” Mary returned the compliment, laughing as she gestured towards the corpse in the chimney. “It’s a shame to waste all that meat, but it’s a special occasion. As much as I love my knives, burning to death sure is one heck of a spectacle!”
“It surely is. One that will be hard to top, at any rate,” he added, his gaze drifting over to Opal. “How about an encore, then?”
“Uh-uh. I’m sorry, James Darling, but I’m afraid we’ve reached that point in the festivities where my addiction to alcohol has triumphed over my addiction to violence and human flesh,” she apologized, while unapologetically taking a deep draught from her mug of hot whiskey.
“No need to apologize, Mary Darling. A balanced life means taking time to attend to all one’s addictions,” he claimed.
“Well put, James Darling,” she agreed. “Besides, I’m awfully cozy cuddled up here beside you. Instead of getting up, how about we give this girl an environmental challenge? This time, I’ll be the one who watches and you can work the control panel?”
“Sounds like a plan, Mary Darling,” James nodded, putting down his drink and pulling out an antiquated-looking bronze keyboard covered in hundreds of switches, knobs, buttons and faders. “Why don’t you explain how this works to our guest while I get this set up?”
“Right. Listen up here, Ducky,” Mary said as she leaned in towards Opal. “Do you know the song that’s playing right now? It’s Baby, It’s Cold Outside. Now, I’m a bit of a shut-in, but I’ve heard that this song is a bit controversial these days. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m old-fashioned or because I’m rather predatory myself, but this is one of my favourite Christmas songs. It’s also highly appropriate, since you’re going to have to choose between braving the winter cold or staying inside with a dangerously depraved miscreant – and her brother, who honestly isn’t any better. He’s just a bit more practiced in the social graces than I am.
“The choice might seem obvious at first, but you need to understand a little bit about where you are though. You’re inside our playroom, and we control everything in here. Everything. We can control it through sheer will when necessary, but my brother here has a bit of a knack for paratech and can make mechatronic controls that make the whole process much quicker and more precise. And outside the residence is still inside our playroom. So, the choice isn’t really between us and the cold, it’s between the cold we control and taking us head-on.
“You may not care for your odds in a fight with us, but keep in mind we do have one rather glaring Achille’s Heel; we’re horrible drunks.”
“I don’t think that’s an entirely fair assessment, Mary Darling. I’ve always considered you a perfectly lovely drunk,” James interjected.
“Ohhh,” Mary cooed. “Well, whatever kind of drunk I am, I am a drunk, and frankly this pint of whiskey is going to my head faster than I expected. I’m likely to be nodding off momentarily, Ducky, so you’d honestly just have to slip – to ship, to… bleh! To slit my throat in my sleep to get past me. That is, if my brother wasn’t sitting right here to protect me. Of the two of us, he’s always been the more functional alcoholic. I certainly feel safe with him here, but the choice is yours.”
Opal’s manacles suddenly unlocked and clattered to the hardwood floor below. Wide-eyed, she looked towards her tormentors for any sign of what they intended to do next. Mary just took another long sip of whiskey, while James smirked at her with his finger hovering over a button on his control panel. It wasn’t necessarily a rational decision, but facing the winter cold in only the tattered remnants of her clothes seemed like a safer option than just trying to get past the Darling Twins and out their front door.
Limping as quickly as she could, she bolted to the glass doors and out onto the balcony. She saw that she was several stories off the ground, and the landscape all around her was covered in freshly fallen snow. The air was cold but still, with fluffy snowflakes gently wafting downwards. This was odd since the sky was crystal clear and abundant with twinkling stars. Opal had no formal knowledge of astronomy, and had not spent much time staring up at the night sky, but she could still tell at once that the stars were wrong. They were too bright, too regularly spaced, and were moving too quickly.
Turning her attention back to the more prosaic matter of the ground, she saw that there was a snow-covered but plowed road leading straight ahead to a coniferous tree line and the lights of human habitation. It was the only sign of civilization she could see, and so she had little choice but to make for it.
Looking over the edge of the balcony, she saw that a snowbank of soft and fluffy fresh snow had piled up directly underneath her. Maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to break her fall. She took one final look behind her and saw that the Darlings were still sitting on the couch. Mary had already polished off her pint of whiskey and had unsurprisingly lost consciousness, her head rested upon her brother’s shoulder as she snored loudly. James, on the other hand, was still wide awake. His eyes were trained on her like a cat watching a mouse, just waiting for her to run so that the chase could begin.
Opal leaped over the balcony’s edge and into the snow below without a second thought.
She screamed as she was enveloped by the frigidly cold snow, but it successfully slowed her descent enough that her fall left her unharmed. Frantically, she tried to dig herself out before she suffocated, but the fluffy snow was so light that she was never in any danger of that. Within seconds she was free, the ploughed road and the possibility of escape laid out before her. Tearing the gag from her mouth and letting out hours’ worth of built-up screams all at once, she burst out into a sprint and raced to the village on the edge of the horizon.
She ran as much to keep warm as she did to escape from the Darlings, hoping that she could stave off frostbite long enough to get to some sort of shelter. She could already feel her toes starting to numb as they slammed against the packed snow beneath her. She could barely go more than a few seconds without checking to see if James was in pursuit, but she was otherwise mostly heedless of her surroundings. It took her a moment to notice that the streetlamps that lined the road appeared to be made of ice, and that their lights were paradoxically brightly burning flames.
Further up the road, she spotted what looked like humanoid figures lining its edges. Her first thought was of course that they were people, but almost immediately realized that that couldn’t be true. They were all completely white, as white as the snow around them, and so her next assumption was that they were snow or ice sculptures, or perhaps more permanent statues with a dusting of snow.
She didn’t dare to slow down to get a better look as she passed them, but she at least got close enough to see that they were made from ice. Or rather, they had a veneer of ice.
In the flickering light of the overhead fire, Opal could just faintly make out the distorted forms of (hopefully) dead bodies trapped inside. All of them were posed in a tableau of either Christmas or winter activities, from carolling to sledding to snowball fights.
Opal didn’t hesitate to pick up her pace and leave the ghoulish statues behind her, lest she share in their morbid fate. She was perhaps too reckless in her flight, as she finally lost her footing on the slippery snow and fell to the ground. The fall winded her, and the snow seemed to have gained an unnatural capacity for sucking the heat from her body. Shivering, she tried to right herself, but with every attempt, she just fell back down. The ground, which had moments before been packed snow, was now pristine and virtually frictionless ice that proved impossible to stand on.
Looking backwards towards the apartment building, she panicked at the sight of James skating towards her in a coat and toque. He deliberately held his hands behind his back, so that she couldn’t see what sort of weapon he was armed with.
Abandoning any effort to get on her feet again, she instead began to drag herself across the road to the steep snow banks that delineated it from the snowy landscape beyond. James would have to chase after her in either his skates or his socks, giving her at least a chance of outrunning him.
“Sorry dear, but a laborious chase through the snow is a bit cliché for my tastes,” James shouted at her. Before she was able to get off the icy road, it began to tilt downwards, enough that she instantly found herself sliding forwards against her will. Screaming, she flailed her limbs about wildly as she tried to slow her descent, but it all proved utterly futile as she just kept picking up speed.
Ahead of her, the road inverted its incline and turned upwards, forming a ramp that was sure to send her flying through the air and likely to her doom. She clawed desperately at the road as she slid down, but she succeeded only in ripping her nails from her cuticles. Faster and faster she went until she was inevitably launched skyward in a prolonged parabolic arch, screaming hysterically as the already freezing-cold air beat against her at speeds approaching hurricane velocities.
James was right behind her, soaring through the air with the calm, professional control of an Olympic skier. The two of them went over the tree line and into a small village of brightly lit gingerbread houses built around a frozen fountain in the circular town square. As Opal plummeted straight towards the fountain, she was certain she would splatter against it and that would be the end of her. At the very last second, however, the ice phase shifted back into water, or rather anomalous water that lacked all surface tension. She plunged down deep into it, and it was the coldest thing she had ever felt, but she wasn’t dead. She swam back to the surface and hauled herself out, huddling up against the fountain’s basin as she tried to retain as much body heat as she could.
She gradually became aware of the sound of skates cutting through the ice. Looking up, she saw that James was doing laps around the fountain, having not only survived his fall but landed unscathed with the elegance of a cat.
“So, what do you think of our Christmas Village?” he asked as he circled her like a raptor circling its prey. “I was worried you wouldn’t make it this far. Mary designed this place herself. It’s always a big hit with the kids. Until they see what’s inside, that is.”
He skidded to a stop in front of her, taking his hands out from behind his back to reveal he was carrying a large and heavy-looking candy cane.
“I’m going to give you one minute more, Opal,” he told her. “If at the end of that minute you’re still sitting here, I’ll beat you to death with the novelty-sized candy cane. If, however, you’d like to continue to fight for your life, however futile it may seem, I won’t stop you from running into one of these buildings to either hide or find something to defend yourself with. Starting now. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.”
Though she was shivering so badly it was hard to move, she forced herself to her feet and took a quick assessment of all the buildings around the town square. There was an inn, a shop, a post office, a town hall, a toy factory, a train station, and a chapel. The inn seemed the most likely to hold kitchen utensils, and the toy factory to have tools, both of which she could make into improvised weapons.
The chapel, however, had a steeple, and she got the feeling that gravity might prove to be the best weapon she could defend herself with. If she could get herself into a defensible position, a well-timed and well-placed kick could be enough to send James tumbling down a flight of stairs or over the belfry.
Grabbing hold of the fountain to steady herself, Opal hoisted herself back to her feet and took care to slide rather than walk over the frictionless ice towards the chapel. As James continued to count, she made her way up the steps as quickly as she could and pushed the gingerbread doors open as hard as possible.
And when they swung open, she screamed.
The inside was not made of candy and gingerbread but was rather just an old church in a dangerous state of decay. Out of every crack and crevice seeped a caustic black fluid that flowed as slowly as molasses in January. It crept upwards along surfaces, against gravity, with great gelatinous blobs of the substance budding off and slowly rising upwards like wax in a lava lamp. It all collected upon the ceiling where it formed into a mosaic of gauntly skeletal faces, jaws all held agape in silent screams to reveal multiple rows of rotten and malformed teeth. Their misplaced and supernumerary eyes and nostrils were nothing but abysmally cavernous voids, their hydrocephalic craniums all bulging near to the point of bursting.
“Thirty-four Mississippi. Oh, and do be careful of the Black Bile,” James warned. “It’s a manifestation of the eldritch rascal that gives us our power. We have to expunge it from our bodies from time to time so we don’t end up like our Uncle Larry. We keep it on this floor because it likes the cold. Thirty-five Mississippi.”
Tempting as it was to give up and just let James beat her to death with his candy cane, Opal forced herself to step into the Bile-infested chapel. She could hear the faces in the ceiling breathing laboriously and out of sync with one another, but they didn’t seem to react to her presence. The free-floating Bile on the floor and in the air showed no change either. She ran up a short stairway to the mezzanine, and then up the spiral staircase of the belfry. The staircase twisted around and around and climbed higher and higher, far higher than should have been possible. The higher she went, the more abundant the Black Bile became. She couldn’t avoid stepping in it, and it clung to her feet and slowed her ascent. She couldn’t avoid touching it, and she felt a dull, slow burn gnawing away at every inch of contaminated skin. She swatted the airborne blobs away as best she could, but some were so small she was sure she hadn’t avoided inhaling them.
She climbed for what felt like hundreds of steps, and peering down over the railing only confirmed that the tower was far taller now than it had been when she started. She braced herself up against the railing and began to weep, only moving again once she heard the sound of encroaching footsteps coming from below.
Eventually, she reached the top of what she feared might be an infinite staircase and emerged out into the belfry. The tower now rose many stories above the ground and she had no difficulty spotting the apartment building she had fled from in the distance.
But that was all she could see. Other than that building, the Christmas Village, and the road between them, there was nothing but endless miles of pristinely white snow. Even if she somehow evaded James, and his sister, and the Black Bile, and whatever other monstrosities inhabited this strange and nightmarish otherworld, there was no escape.
If her death was unavoidable, she thought it would be better to jump and deny James the satisfaction of the kill. Still, it wasn’t an easy thing to do. She hesitated, and that hesitation cost her the only choice she had in the matter.
“Sixty Mississippi.”
She reflexively spun around to see that James had silently caught up to her. Before she could react, he struck her across the face with his cane, delivering enough force to knock her over the belfry’s railing.
She plummeted down towards the hard icy ground, and this time there was nothing to break her fall.
***
Back in the penthouse of their residence, James stood at the window, smoking a cigarette as he admired his latest trophy.
“Morning, James Darling,” Mary yawned as she made her morning beeline from their bedroom to their bar. As always, she was none the worse for wear after her consumption of a normally fatal amount of alcohol, and ready for more. “Are you all right with eggnog eyeopeners for our morning cocktails?”
“After last night, I’m still very much in the Christmas Spirit, Mary Darling,” he agreed.
“Hm-mmm. Sorry I passed out early. If I had paced myself with that Hot Toddy, I could’ve stayed up a bit longer. I don’t know what came over me. I’m usually Mrs. Self-control,” she laughed as she took a swig from the liquor bottle before mixing the drinks. “So, after you put me to bed, you went running out after our last victim, right? I thought we were just going to let the cold finish her off.”
“I got an idea for what I wanted to do with the body, and I didn’t want her losing any digits to frostbite before I could get to her,” James explained.
“Hmm. You know, if I were the jealous type, which I am, I might be a bit miffed that you went chasing after some stray harlot on your own,” she reprimanded him. “What exactly did you get up to last night?”
“Come see for yourself,” James invited, waving her over to the window. With their cocktails in hand, Mary sauntered over to her brother’s side and peered out the window with cautious optimism.
Outside, James had contracted the road so that the Christmas Village was easily seen from their penthouse, and on the top of the fountain stood Opal, encased in ice. He had poised her as a figure skater, standing on one leg with her arms outstretched for balance, her frozen corpse reduced to a garden decoration to spruce up her killers’ estate.
“James Darling, I love it!” Mary swooned. “She’s the perfect centerpiece for the Christmas Village, and I can’t imagine a more fitting fate! We told her it was cold outside, but she didn’t listen! If only she’d known the exit to the playroom is out in the front lobby.”
“Merry Christmas, Mary Darling,” James wished, taking his cocktail in one hand and putting the other around her waist.
“Merry Christmas, James Darling,” Mary wished, kissing him fondly before taking her first sip of eggnog.
Category:The Vesper's Bell