Madame Vastra, the fabled Lizard Woman of Paternoster Row, knew death in many shapes and forms. But perhaps one of the most bizarre of these was death by snow.
It was a cold day in December, just as the nineteenth century was greying with old age. The snow was falling less heavily than on previous days, but the air was still alive with a coruscation of dancing flakes.
Tired of sweeping snow from the workhouse yard, Harry and Jim (surnames unknown even to themselves) decided instead to make a snowman. Knowing Mr Ransit to be availing himself of the benefits of a hot fire in the workhouse offices, they left the yard to fend for itself for a few hours.
In a secluded corner of Ranskill Gardens, unobserved by passers-by, they set about their task. They worked hard, struggling to keep warm in the inclement conditions. They started with a small ball of packed snow, rolling it along the ground. It gathered more and more snow as it went, getting larger and larger. Before long, the two young lads had rolled a snowball ample enough to form the body of their creation.
A short while later, and a smaller snowball formed the head. Between them, they lifted it and placed it on top of the body. The snowman was now taller than they were, so the task of balancing frosty head on snowy shoulders was not straightforward. Pieces of coal from Jim’s pocket made eyes, and pebbles from the edge of a nearby flowerbed served as buttons down the snowman’s front, pressed into the cold, yielding body.
A broken carrot, saved for the purpose with admirable forethought by young Harry, was positioned as the snowman’s nose. Beneath it, he described a smiling mouth with his finger.
‘It’s a shame we don’t have a hat for him,’ Jim opined.
‘Give him your cap,’ Harry suggested.
‘Give him yours,’ Jim retorted.
‘Nah,’ Harry decided. ‘Don’t reckon Mr Snowman will feel the cold.’
They both laughed at this, and before long an impromptu snowball fight had started between the two.
Finally, cold, soaked and exhausted, the two boys sat down in front of the snowman and admired their handiwork. As they sat there, the afternoon drawing into early evening, there was a crackle as if of gunfire followed by a percussion of lights and sparks in the sky above.
‘Fireworks!’ Harry exclaimed.
‘Must be left over from November the fifth,’ Jim observed. ‘We had that weeks ago.’
‘Or Christmas has come early.’
They watched the display for several minutes. At some point – he could not say exactly when – Harry observed that a dark figure wearing a top hat had appeared in the corner of the gardens behind their snowman. He too seemed to be watching the display. As the last few fireworks exploded in the evening sky, the man pushed something Harry could not clearly see into his coat pocket, turned, and stepped back into the shadows by the back wall of the gardens.
‘Who was that?’ Harry asked.
But Jim had seen no one. ‘Probably come to admire our snowman. Here,’ he added as a final explosive crack echoed round the enclosed space, ‘we’d better be getting back. Still got that yard to sweep.’
At least now the snow had stopped falling they could sweep the yard without it merely filling up again, Harry thought. But before they left, the two boys paused to admire their snowman one last time.
It was taller than either of them, and wider than both of them together. They were about to turn, reluctantly, and leave, when a portion of snow fell away from the front of the frosty sculpture. Two of the pebble-buttons fell with it. Jim retrieved them and pressed them back into the snowman’s chest.
‘Wonder if he’ll still be here tomorrow,’ Harry said.
But Jim did not reply. The boy was staring at his index finger – the one with which he had pressed the pebbles into the snow.
The end of his finger was a livid red. Even in the fading light of the evening, Harry could see what it was.
‘Blood! You cut yourself, Jim?’
Jim shook his head. He looked at his finger, then to the snowman. His gasp of horrified astonishment drew Harry’s attention back to the white figure.
Where Jim had pressed one of the pebbles into the chest, the snow was stained red. A patch of scarlet was spreading slowly through the icy crystals.
‘The snowman!’ Harry gasped. ‘It’s – it’s bleeding!’
Not only bleeding, the snowman was moving. The body seemed to shimmer. Frosty particles broke free and fell to the ground. Drops of red broke free of the wound, undulating down the snowman in thin streams of viscous carmine.
Tentatively, fearfully, Jim reached out to touch the snowman. As soon as his fingers met the frozen surface, the snowman seemed to explode. Snow collapsed from round the core of the body, falling away to reveal what was inside.
The boys stood frozen by fear as well as the cold. They had made this snowman – had rolled the snow to make the body and then the head. How could what they now witnessed be possible?
Because, inside the snowman, packed deep into its frozen heart, was the body of a woman. Her features were deathly pale, her coat stained with blood. Her gloved hands were clenched together in front of her, reaching out as if pleading for help or praying for salvation.
But it was too late and there was no help to be given or salvation to be had. Because as Harry and Jim watched, the woman inside the snowman collapsed lifeless to the frozen ground before them.
They both ran. Without thought or strategy they took to their heels to put as much distance between themselves and this grotesque impossibility as possible, their caps flying from their heads, such was their haste. But in the fading light, fearing for their very lives, somehow they became separated from each other.
Jim found himself in an unfamiliar street, behind Ranskill Gardens. Running fast, head down, he collided with someone before he even knew they were there. He stumbled and fell to the snowy ground.
‘Here, let me help you up.’ A dark figure reached down to him. Jim saw only a silhouette – dark coat and top hat. Then a gloved hand closed on his own and hauled him to his feet.
‘Now,’ the figure said, ‘where are you going in such a hurry, young man?’
Harry had run in a different direction. But he too collided with a dark figure. He too fell to the ground. His cap went flying, but Harry made no move to recover it.
The figure Harry had met was shorter, broader, wearing a heavy black cloak with the hood pulled up to obscure its features. Powerful hands clamped down on Harry’s shoulders and lifted him bodily to his feet. Harry was surprised to observe that, despite his evident strength, the figure was barely as tall as he was.
An unsettling grunt of satisfaction emerged from the hood of the cloak.
‘You are not a female,’ a gravelly voice said.
‘No – no, sir,’ Harry admitted.
‘Where is the female?’ the cloaked figure demanded.
In Harry’s mind at that moment there were thoughts of only one female. ‘She’s dead,’ he stammered. ‘We made a snowman, and she fell out – dead.’ He doubled over, feeling suddenly sick. ‘Oh my cripes,’ he gasped. ‘I ain’t never seen anything so…’
As he spoke, he looked up at the figure standing in front of him. It moved slightly so that the light from the nearest gas lamp shone inside the hood of the cloak and illuminated the visage concealed within.
It was the hideous misshapen face of a troll.