9. NINE
NINE
SNOWMAN
Every step I took crunched the snow, gnawing at the promise I'd made to her: I will find you. It was like a scratched record, just a line running in my head. A promise that, at its core, was a blade digging deep with every minute she wasn't here. Taking her away, disappearing together, and escaping all this just lingered in my brain like a far-off dream of a happy ending. But I wasn't entitled to happy endings. People like me did not get to escape quite so easily.
I had walked in circles for what felt like several hours, her trace every time slipping through my fingers. With every blink of my eye, the woods stretched a bit wider, the sun was almost swallowed by the oncoming night. The cold wind whirled through the trees and cut through my sweatshirt, chilling me to my bones.
Then I heard them.
Laughter. Distant, familiar, two voices carried the breeze like a curse. My body froze; my instinct kicked in, and I ducked behind a wide tree.
Josh and Vic.
The same ghosts haunting me two days ago, here they were again. Following. Waiting. Always waiting.
"We finished what we started," the words seemed to ring within my head in Josh's voice, cold and cutting.
I was only a few meters away from my kill kit. I'd buried four of them around these woods, always ready, always prepared, but for now, I just remained hidden, watching.
"Man, she was good," Josh said, shoving Vic as they stumbled along; their laughter was sharp, grating. Josh was the chief of police's son, Jan Johansson's golden boy , or so everybody acted. Wherever he went, trouble trailed behind him and his daddy wiped it clean: rehab, dead friends, assault charges—all covered, dismissed, forgotten.
Vic had been different, once . A coroner's son, quiet, a kid who never knew better but followed all the rules. And Josh had pulled him down with him deeper and deeper into that hole until the town, too small where everyone knew everybody without knowing a thing at all, was whispering and telling legends only.
Legends like N?kken , the spirit said to rise from the crimson river, stealing loved ones into the dark. People here believed in those tales. They believed snow brought new beginnings. But I knew better. This town wasn't blessed. It was cursed. And I belonged to it as much as the darkness did.
The papers had taken to calling me Snowman for months now. Their headlines screamed 'fear,' but all they knew was a smidge of the truth. I killed with no intention of making any snowmen, just buried monsters who came cloaked in plain skin. At one point or another in my life, I had vowed that I wouldn't ever be like him, my father, but I hunted people such as him; people should make sure legends remained in the literature and evil rotted six feet under.
I shifted, and my breath steadied, as Josh and Vic, too stoned to take notice, passed by me. A gut feeling told me to head toward where they'd come from. I followed, my footsteps slow, and cautious, the woods quieting around me as I moved further from them.
Then, suddenly I heard the river.
It was a familiar sound, constant, louder as I approached, but another thing drew my attention.
A coat of red color.
It lay crumpled in the snow near the riverbank.
My chest tightened, the panic swirling inside me like a vortex. I was running. My breathing was fast and hard, and my heart hammered so loudly in my ears that I could barely hear the rush of the water. I reached her and fell on my knees, touching her pale, numb face with shaking hands.
"Bree…," I whispered, my voice cracking.
She was so still, her skin cold. I pressed two fingers against her neck and searched for a pulse. It was faint, so faint that I might have sworn that I had imagined it. The jeans were halfway off, the white sweater stained with dirt; the red coat was unzipped, gaping open in a silent scream.
My teeth ground together, my jaw aching with the anger flooding through me. My fists curled, and for a moment, all I could see was red, the kind that filled rivers.
I carefully worked my arms under her fragile body and lifted her into my chest. She didn't stir; her head fell limply against me.
"I've got you," I whispered, though I wasn't sure who I was reassuring, her or myself.
The run back to the cottage felt endless. The world blurred, a rush of branches and snow as my boots pounded the ground. She was weightless in my arms, and that terrified me. Her body didn't fight. It didn't feel like hers anymore.
By the time the cottage came into view, my breath was ragged, my pulse racing. I stumbled onto the porch, fumbling for the key in my pocket, almost dropping it in an attempt to unlock the door.
"Come on, come on," I muttered, growling under my breath as my fingers shook.
Finally, the lock clicked, and I pushed inside, kicking the door shut behind me. I carried her to the bed, setting her down gently. Without hesitation, my hand plunged once more into her neck as I searched for that faint beat of life.
It's still there, barely, but it would do. I slapped the heels of my fists onto her chest, bringing it all to an end. "C'mon, Bree," I gritted out, voice cracking. "Fucking fight."
I pressed my fists into her chest rhythmically, relentlessly, until finally, her body contorted and she gasped in air. The sound was weak and fractured, but there. I exhaled loudly, my hands trembling, as I sat back a moment staring at her. She was alive. Barely, but alive.
I didn't waste another second, yanking my black sweater from the hook by the door and turning back to her. Her bright red coat was soaked and heavy; it clung to her. I tugged it off her carefully, the zipper scraping, letting my hands move through it. Then her sweater, her jeans—cold, wet, stuck against her skin like some dark, damp shroud. I left her in underwear now, her body shuddering hard, her lips purpled. She lay before me so white, so small.
I didn't like the fragile image of her that lay in front of me.
I slipped my sweater over her head; it was on her, yet still clung loosely around her. I gathered her gently together, pulling her up towards the top of the bed, and wrapped her up in the thick blanket up to her neck, trying to get warmth in her body. Her breathing was shallow but steady now. That was good enough.
"Who did this to you?" I whispered, my voice low, and angry, and I didn't even try concealing it. I lowered myself onto the edge of the bed and locked my eyes right on her face, paler than the snow outside. Her lips were purple, that ugly color, a shade I hated to see on her.
I had seen it before, far too many times. Twenty-six times to be precise. I knew that color, that cold, that fragility. On her, though, my stomach churned over. My jaw stiffened, and I found myself looking away, commanding my breathing to steady itself.
She’d crawled beneath my skin, slipped inside like a thorn, and had become so deeply embedded that pulling her out would have meant blood and pain. Without warning, without rhyme or reason. It wasn't supposed to happen. Not to me. Maybe it was fate, maybe some cruel joke, or maybe someone somewhere had finally figured out how to punish me for what I'd done.
And yet, here she was. The answer to questions I didn't even know I was asking. How could someone like me, someone who took lives without hesitation, care about hers? Care so much it made me mad? I'd thought I was hollow, numb to everything, to everyone. And yet, here she was, melting the frost I'd been carrying in my chest for years.
I loathed it. And I required it. I stood, walking slowly toward the window. The woods beyond had grown dark again, stretching the shadows between trees in wide veins of blackness. I tugged on the blinds in a single, fluid motion, cutting off the view. Turning around, I turned on the tiny lamp on the nightstand beside my bed. Delicate and airy, it cast across the room a weak veil.
I looked at her one more time, her breathing in short, shallow gasps, her chest rising and falling softly with each intake of air under the blanket. She was safe for now.
I turned and slipped out of the room, shutting the door softly behind me. I leaned against the doorframe, my hands coming up to bury into my face. My breath came heavy.
It was her.
I'd never felt this, not like this. Not knowing what this was at all, all I knew was that she made me feel alive in a way I never wanted to be.
She made me want to tear off the mask I'd spent years perfecting of the killer, of the monster, of the Snowman. For her, I wanted to be more, someone normal. A man who could take care of her. A man she deserved.
I had never felt so defeated in my entire life. Hours passed, and yet she didn't wake. Her breaths were shallow, her body unmoving, a pale ghost of herself. I couldn't bear it any longer. I carried her to the hospital.
Inside, the fluorescent lights above me buzzed cold as I spoke with the nurse at the front desk. I lied. I told them I found her on the road, lying there alone. A nameless Jane Doe .
I said I didn't know her, just that I'd seen her around town before. My voice was steady, and practiced, the mask slipping easily back into place, but underneath it, my insides were twisting.
I stood in the waiting room, hands shoved deep into my pockets to keep them from shaking. People came and went, families, children, nurses, all ghosting around me. But I stood my ground, my eyes fixed on the door behind which they'd disappeared with her, waiting for someone to say something, anything.
It wasn't until the doctor finally came out, his expression was grave.
"She was assaulted," he told me, as though those words did not carry the whole world upon their backs.
The room tilted, my heart dropping to my stomach as rage and grief joined in a storm inside me. I bit hard into the inside of my cheek, the metallic salt of blood flooding my mouth as I forced back my reaction. I couldn't scream. I couldn't break. But God, I wanted to, to tear the walls down, to rip apart the whole damn town that had let this happen to her.
It's my fault, the thought repeated, sharp as a blade. If I hadn't left her that night. If I'd found her sooner, just an hour earlier. If I'd been stronger, smarter, more in control. She wouldn't be lying there in that sterile hospital room, alone, broken.
The guilt consumed me. For years, I had worn the mask of a killer who didn't feel, a monster who buried his heart deep enough to forget it was ever there. But standing here now, I was melting, breaking apart for a girl I had no right to care for.
She was just a stranger, a girl who shouldn't have mattered. And yet, in one touch, one look, she had awoken something inside me I didn't think I still had.
Love. Kindness. Warmth.
Things this town had buried long ago, things that were dead inside me, all being dug up anew.
I clenched my hands in my pockets and stared with a frown down at the hallway where they pulled her. Her face danced in my head, fresh bruises, pale lips, the way her body weight had felt so fragile in the circle of my arms when I'd lifted her: all these still alive now in my memory.
I had let her down, and it was something that I was never going to forgive myself for.
I finally faced the glass doors of the hospital and stepped towards it, and outside, through the window, snow fell in thick, heavy flakes. I stepped outside into the cold air which bit my skin, yet I did not feel it.
I will make it right, I whispered to myself, my breathing a cloud in the freezing air.
I will make them pay.