Snowman - Samuel Dunbar

SNOWMAN




Samuel Dunbar




You never expect to see a ghost. Even if you get an eerie feeling that you might be, you can often explain it away. People who see ghouls and phantoms are often thought to be slightly insane, gripped by self-induced fantasy, or just not very bright.

Ghosts are often thought of as earthbound spirits. These entities roam old houses, ones with stories to tell. The haunt is often historic - a site of misfortune and suffering. Ghosts are envisioned as being vaporous images, apparitions. These spectres are seldom confused for real people due to these, and other obvious characteristics.

Our ghost came to us during a cold blustery winter evening. He did not rise and take to dwelling in our home; he chose to stay outside of it. He did not look like a goblin, no white sheet, no transparent parts, no floating about, no sinister moaning.

He came to us from the snow. He was borne of the cold and frost. He was not something children happily roll up, stick a carrot in and call a snowman.

This snowman was our ghost, our wraith.


CHAPTER ONE



June 12, 1979
Serenity



I would never forget this day. It was a time that should have been marked with memories of joy. In the end would be a date etched with remorse.
It was to be the contentment of finally achieving a long sought-after goal. We had grasped at a simple dream. Not that it was a big dream, one that was out of reach. It was rather uncomplicated.
That is not how it played out though, not by a long shot. It was just the start of a nightmare.
We had made that first step in moving away from a home that we had lived at for fifteen years. It was a nice home. It was a place that had grown warmer with familiarity. It was going to be hard to leave a place where you had developed roots. To us, the home had grown out of its usefulness.
Our boy, Joe, had been out of the house for a decade. I had retired five years earlier. We did not need to be close to the city any longer. There was no work, or schools to fret over anymore. It was now our time, my and Lisa’s time, to be together and enjoy what we had driven toward our entire lives. It would be like when we were first married, but without the burden of having to buy a house, get a career, and start a family. We now would have all the time in the world to be together, to be alone.
It was not that we had grown to dislike the home where we had lived. It was a bungalow on a fair sized lot in a hushed suburb. It was far away from crime, industry and urban decay.
It was not that we disliked our neighbours; some had become quite close over the years. We played cribbage with the Churchill’s just about every Friday night since the late sixties.
We just realized we were getting old. One of our first thoughts as a couple was to one day having a nice little house on a river or a lake, swathed by nature. That did not seem very much to ask for after years of saving and crimping. We used to talk about the dream of ours quite a bit, especially in the bumpy times where a pay cheque barely seemed to be enough. Now we had no justification in keeping this dream distant. We also realized that it was a now or never situation. We had to do it while our health was still good enough. This actuality was hard to bow to, but true nonetheless.
Our son now lived on the other side of Ottawa. He had been married for nine years. He had met his wife at the Carleton University. They now had two little girls. Joe had a stable job with a good income at the Industry Canada. We did not need to stick around in case things went awry with him. He was well on his way, established.
This day, June 12, 1979, was the day Lisa and I found the particular home that met all of our expectations. We had described this home to each other all those years ago. It was like the closing stages of a fairy tale, everything falling into place.
At least that is what we thought was happening.




The unrelenting heat pulsated from the foggy flow of the Ottawa River. The cicada bristled from its habitat among the stuffy pines that flourished along the rocky bank. The sun scorched a route through the light blue sky. In the distance, grey clumps of clouds lined the horizon, framing a perfect and scenic summer’s day.
A dusty gravel road ran along the riverfront. It had been firmly packed down by a steady current of vehicles. The other side of the river was visible, but only enough to see the odd dock jutting out into the water. Even less frequent was a black tiled roof breaking up the thick green vegetation.
The banks of the Ottawa were rather steep and unforgiving in parts. Rocks shot out of the soils and the beaches were mostly small stones as opposed to sand. That was the nature of the geography; the granite base was never too far from the surface. For this reason it was not an agricultural region by history, moreover it had a tradition of logging and paper mills.
Cottages, mixed with four season homes, were sprinkled along this meandering gravel road, which, in itself, was hardly ample enough for two cars to pass by each other. The unpretentious homes were a good stone’s throw from their nearest neighbour and those were the cluttered ones.
On one of the paved driveways, a rarity in itself, which also doubled as a boat landing, two swallows flapped down to the surface. The birds found it difficult to dwell on the asphalt, which had been trapping every ray of the smouldering sun. The birds soon departed for a cooler perch.
The swallows swept up to their more reliable haunt; the small white signpost at the top of the sloped tarmac. The tall trees around them shaded the spot, making it at least more comfortable for them to loiter. The hamlet’s name could still be read from the sign below them, even though the black paint had faded and even peeled in sections. The black had even weathered to the point where it was now grey in hue.
The village was called Crown Point. It had been obviously named for the way the craggy shoreline had domineered its way into the murky Ottawa River at that point. Most of the locals probably thought Crown Point had more to do with the British throne than the topography of the vicinity. Some even thought that French explorer Jacques Cartier had named the point for the King.
Three faded lime green mailboxes, containing numerous compartments, sat beside the signpost, facing the gravel road. Half were secured with a variety of locks, others simply dangled open. On breezy days nearby residents could hear the clatter of these open shutters, but had grown used to it with time. It was now a noise that was part of their realm. It was now an unnoticed fracas, one that if was omitted would be bothersome.
A telephone poll stretched up into the deciduous trees on the other side of the signpost. One could always smell the creosote that oozed from their trunks, especially on hot days like this. The top of the poll had a streetlight arcing out from it. The silver hub glistened as it snaked away from the canopy of the large maple that sat just feet away.
The light had been installed to make it easier for residents to make their night time mail pick-ups. At night, in the darkness, this light would tick constantly. It would only knock off when the sun rose. It was another audible quirk of the hamlet. The clatter of mail box doors and the tick of the lamp; both infuriating at first, but now welcomed.
The roasting and thick humidity of this June day was not unfamiliar. Ottawa had a few of these heat waves every year. The area could be caked in frigid snow, drenched by icy rains, or unctuous with sticky heat. It was an inhospitable climate to live in, but diverse in all of what nature had to present.
Some wondered, on days that managed to span this spectrum, why man, in all his know-how, would have selected this region to live in year round. It did not make sense, but they still kept on living there, year after year, and cold snap after heat wave.
If not for the vast mixture in weather conditions, people would not have a damn thing to whine about. People really do love to complain and bicker. The weather was the only secondary for the proper entity of abuse, the Government. However, most made their living in the Government.




Betraying the calm on this summer’s day was the sound of an outboard motor skipping across the dull water of the Ottawa River. Two ropes stiffened from the back of the boat to the hands of a water-skier. This young man had an uncommon form when compared to most water-skiers. A straw sun hat sat perilously on his head, yanked down to his brows to keep it from blowing off. It jumbled with every cascade made by his skies as they skipped over the ridges of water.
The boat was driven by a big teen, around the same age as the skier. Two girls, in one piece bathing suits laughed as they watched the antics of their friend from the back of the boat.
It was a nice, yet very hot summer day, and people, specifically these teens, partook in what nature had afforded them. They were older than high school kids that would still be in class this time of year. They were either college students or dropouts.
The red motorboat, with Evinrude engine, made a large oval pattern in the heart of the river. Their sporadic laughter could be heard over the whine of the motor and the smacking of the surging water against the hull.
The olive Ottawa flow had a conflicting bouquet, one stemming from a marriage of expired fish and sewage. Across the river was a town called Quyon, a French community. It was also another Province, Quebec. The Ottawa River was the border of Ontario and Quebec. Quyon was infamous for having their cottage waste lines dumping directly into the Ottawa, sans treatment. Everything downstream from this settlement was tinted with this nectar of human discharge.
The cross river belltowering was natural just because of the water. Causing more of a divide and general dislike was that they were another province, Quebec. The language by each Province was also different, English in Ontario, French in Quebec. So the sewage lines pouring into the river only added to the hate.
This was a muggy summer day. One of the first days like this they had had all year. Nature yawned in gratification under this sunny deluge. The residents could only put up with the underlying reek, which at times, they would not even notice. It had to be ignored on days like this, for escape to the water was the only way they could restore their psyche. There was, however, this great impulse to shower and wash once leaving the cool of the Ottawa.
The laughter from the boat revellers was accented by the understandable display of beer, an activity that was customary to all who enjoyed life in Crown Point. These young roustabouts were loud enough to be heard in most homes along the river. Some words were dipped in the valley drawl, with every other word not fit for younger ears. They were emblematic of their age, mischievous and borderline disrespectful for the most part, chiefly if gathered in a number of three or more.
Along the rock-strewn shores of the river, meek bursts of water slapped the stone surfaces in the wakes initiated by the motorboat. The water sluggishly lapped the greasy green-coated rock facings. In a few areas, dead fish and severed eels seemed to be gathered in moribund pockets. They were fatalities of either the effluence created across the river, or the odd propeller blade with which they had connected.
One of the homes along the river added further noise to the din of the day. Upon a large brown deck, which afforded a great view of the Ottawa, two cumbersome JVC speakers began to mash out music. The throbbing added to the gargle of the outboard motor. Summer had now legitimately begun.
Two young men ambled out onto the deck from the back door of the modest house. They gazed down at their friends on the river from their loft. The lads were chugging lager and intermittently playing air guitars. They were not alone out there on the sun-baked deck either. Two females were splayed in the corner of the thirty by thirty foot platform, taking in the sun’s rays and starting in on their first tanning session of the year. They were young and uninhibited, just wearing their bikini briefs while letting the rest of their unclad bodies take in as much sun as could be had.
The blonde had relatively large breasts for her age, and they were getting as brown as the rest of her. That showed that this was not a prank, but that her display of skin was an ordinary event. More corroboration that this was usual was that the males were not making that much of a deal over her topless appearance.
‘Unfucking real!’, the tall male with the beard hollered from the edge of the deck, pointing out to the water skier out on the river.
The skier finally saw the straw hat on his head fly off in a gust created by the speeding boat, but providence was on his side. In a fraction of a second, he took a hand from his bar, reached back and secured the hat in a miraculous display. It was a million to one grab, and the bearded male had witnessed it in awe.
The others on the deck arched their backs to see what had made him become so thrilled, but could only see the skier flopping the hat around on his head. They looked at each other, baffled by his antics, and let it go as a usual episode by him.
‘The twins look a little red,' Quipped the other male on the deck, making reference to the girl’s bare breasts. He was a younger and shorter version of Robert Redford. He cracked a mocking smile from behind his Foster Grants.
‘Pig,' Spat back the bare-chested blonde as she eased back into her customary sun catching pose.




‘The cedar logs are just beautiful, aren’t they Judd?’ An elderly woman spoke as she toed her way across the hard wood floor. Not a speck of furniture encumbered the large sunny room. The radiant sun beamed through the white sheers that draped the entire outer wall; made up entirely of bay windows. Through the white fabric, she could make out the green of the leaves, the red of the deck, the powder blue of the sky and the silvery sparkle of the river.
‘Looks like it would burn pretty quick too...’ Judd remarked crisply. He clutched his old worn hands behind his back as he flanked his wife in the stagnated air of the empty dwelling’s living room.
Judd’s wife gave him a sneer, showing her mild discontent toward his manner. It was a game he always played with her, seeing the bad in everything. He played it with others too, but only Lisa seemed to take it as it was meant, as a joke; or an irritant she had grown accustomed.
‘Just look at the location,' Lisa raised her hand from her purse and motioned through the white sheers.
‘Enough vegetation out here...’ Judd lined up some more sarcasm.
Lisa walked over to the wall and ran her hands along the cedar panelling. She could smell the wood, smell the mildew that only an old house could emit, but it was a strangely comforting aroma.
Judd trekked toward the bay windows that crept out over the deck. He scratched at his developed bald spot and eyed the teenagers that were water skiing down on the Ottawa. He smiled over their cavorting and it reminded him of his salad days. He did like the area, the home, the nature; even the price was one that he could live with.
‘This is the ideal place for someone who has retired... low taxes, quiet,' A woman’s voice came from another room. She sounded younger than the Tylers, and from her cadence seemed to be in sales.
Judd turned and eyed the big flagstone hearth that was near his wife. ‘Is this supposed to be the living room?’ He mumbled to Lisa.
‘Shhh,' Lisa lifted an eyebrow than looked into an adjacent room, checking to see if the woman was hearing any of her husband's remarks.
‘What was that Mr. Tyler?’ The woman now joined them in the empty living room. She had an amiable smile painted across her face, one that lloked to have been forced on for some time and now seemed natural.
She had her dark hair done up in a ball on the back of her head. Her glasses, which were actually plain glass lenses, made her look professional. They were cosmetic to her career. Her plain red dress and thin white blazer told of her femininity but this outfit was more of her trade. She held a Kanata Real Estate folder in the crease of her arm as she walked toward Lisa. Mrs. Tyler was the one she had to concentrate on if she was going to make the sale.
‘Is this air conditioned?’ Lisa’s voice crackled, trying not to inflect whether that would be a good or bad thing for the home to have.
‘Too damn cold in here if you ask me,' Judd started to rail from under his breath.
Lisa looked up, first in embarrassment, then appeasement, after she saw the cedar log rafters that made up a bulk of the ceiling.
‘Especially if I cut the grass out there...’ Judd continued to mutter, ‘...in the blazing sun, and then come in here and become frozen where I stand.' Judd smiled and turned to face the window. It was a game. He wanted to see what lengths Ms. Nelson would go to sate them.
‘Uh, yes it is,' Ms. Nelson reluctantly answered. ‘But you don’t have to have it set this low.' She began to realize that Mr. Tyler might be toying with her. She had come across his type before, trying to low ball a home that was for sale. She knew the Tylers were not that out of it, senile.
Nelson decided to change directions. ‘You’ll notice that the grade down to the dock is quite manageable, not like most of the others on this part of the river.'
‘Well that’s a dandy reason to buy this place,’ Judd continued to play his cranky old man routine.
The experienced real estate agent did not become flustered by his play. She knew how to handle his sort. He was trying to get the price down, pure and simple.
‘Ms. Nelson, excuse me, do you have the Hydro bills for the last people that lived here?’ Lisa spoke softly, hoping her request would not be too much of an inconvenience.
‘Yes I do have them. If you’ll both excuse me, they’re in the kitchen.' Nelson knew that wanting to see bills was a good omen.
The Tylers stood quietly as she left the room. Lisa began to look up the mouth of the fireplace; soot clung to the bricks as if there had been a fire in there just recently. Knowing salespeople, maybe there had. It would add to the home’s flavour.
‘It’s a very reasonable price,' Ms. Nelson handed Lisa the billing history as she came back into the living room. She looked for a sign that they would either leave or try to stay and barter.
Judd folded his arms across his chest and continued to scan the Ottawa from the back windows. He could make out enough through the white sheers as his eyes rolled among the trees, rocks and rippling river water. He leaned forward and glanced toward the neighbouring cottage, at first only making out the large brown deck and huge speakers that pointed out to the water.
Suddenly the motorboat slowed, and its people glanced up from the Ottawa. Judd had this urge to see what it was that had attracted their attentions. He parted the drape and edged his face close to the pane.
The neighbouring home was a little further down the slope and now Judd could see that there were four young people out on that deck. Two guys were sipping beer and loitering near the speakers. Then he could see the two topless nubile young women sun bathing on the deck’s surface.
Judd was tantalized at the prospect of these people might be his new neighbours. Life would not be boring. He knew that these kids might be loud and maybe even destructive. These young women were nothing to sneeze at, however. He also realized that this was something he could use to get Ms. Nelson in a stir.
‘Talk about solitude,' Nelson kept up her pitch, trying to perceive what train of thought these customers might be in.
‘I don’t know...if you really like it,’ Judd mumbled as he tried to get a better view of the young women. He had tossed the ball in his wife’s corner, knowing that Lisa had really taken a shine to the place. He also knew that he would take back the gauntlet when Nelson was hooked.
Lisa smiled as she continued her inspection of the hearth. ‘Well...I think it fits our needs.'
‘Great, great,’ Nelson was pleased that the sale had been easy. ‘Would you like to see more of what this home comes with?’ She was a little taken aback; after all, they had been only inside the house for five minutes. She was used to pulling teeth with seniors as her customers.
‘Do they live up here year round or just rent out for the summer?’ Judd asked in a tone that hinted there was something bad in the offing, setting his play in motion.
Nelson scurried across the hard wood floor wondering what had gotten the old man’s goat. Her heels tapped under her lithe weight. She closed in on the window beside Judd and pulled down the cord that drew the white curtains apart. She quickly made out what Mr. Tyler had been upset by.
Lisa remained in the centre of the room, scratching at the top of her head, clutching at her purse, and counting the electrical outlets, oblivious to the wrench her husband was throwing into the works.
Nelson’s face slowly turned crimson and her jaw dropped open. She was dumbfounded and could not think of an approach to take to put this in a positive way.
Judd glanced at her out of the corner of his sneer. He had won the game.
‘Well… well. Uh there are many elderly people up here, like yourselves,’ Nelson turned to Judd and could see the dissatisfaction in his eyes. ‘I’ll call the police…they shouldn’t be doing that…I’ll get it all sorted out.’ She started to ramble as she turned away from the glass, burrowing her red painted nails into the folder she was carrying.
Lisa stopped when she heard the word ‘police’ mentioned. What was this all about she thought? What had Judd done now? What had he done to final unnerve this woman?
Judd just grinned and brought his eyes back to the window. The four teens that had been on the deck started to make their way down to the dock. The girls grabbed their bikini tops and tied them back on as they made their way down the embankment.
‘Now why would you wanna go and do a thing like that?’ Judd had her now. ‘That’s just the kind of things I used to do when I was a teenager.’
Lisa gathered up her glasses and plied them to her nose as she swept up to the window and glanced around, not really seeing anything out of the ordinary, and anything close to being illegal.
Ms. Nelson turned to the couple, whom were both facing out to the river. She did not know what to think, or say. She did not know how she was going to regain the momentum she had had before the display of topless young girls at the neighbouring property. She did not know what to make of Mr. Tyler either.
‘Heck, being around them, with their exuberance for life just might add some years to me,’ Judd continued to chastise the real estate rep.
Lisa watched as two full figured young girls bounded down the planks of the neighbouring dock and dove off into greenish waters of the Ottawa. What the hell was going on? Lisa was lost.
‘They’re just going for a swim…is there some sort of law against that out here?’ Lisa turned at looked at this young woman who was threatening to call in the cops. ‘If my grandchildren can’t come here to cool off in the river… I don’t think we belong here.’ Lisa started to build her ire over the seemingly incidental play of the young people at the nearby cottage, and how that in turn would affect them if they bought this home.
‘No, no no…’ Ms. Nelson replied, eager to correct the situation. What kind of people am I dealing with here, she thought, accepting young people running around without a stitch of clothing on? ‘There’s nothing wrong with going for a swim in the river, nothing what so ever, but…‘
‘Then what?’ Lisa was becoming confused again, but was still bordering on anger.
‘It’s fine dear, nothing to worry over. I was just having the usual fun, that’s all,’ Judd finally brought an end to the game. He was a little bothered by the nude breasts he had seen, not for him, but for Lisa and the grandkids.
‘Yes…it’s just fine,’ Nelson was still trying to figure Mr. Tyler out, but it seemed positive, so why rock the boat. She pasted that professional, unflappable smile back on her thirty something face. ‘Would you like to work out the details, or would you like some more time to mull it over?’
‘My wife seems to have taken a shine to this house.’ Judd glanced at the hearth and imagined their first fire. ‘And I don’t care where I live so long as it’s dry and warm’. Judd knew Lisa would take his comments as meaning he really liked the house as well, and was going to try to get the price down.
Lisa nestled in closer to her husband, grabbing his hand warmly and giving it a squeeze. Her eyes sparkled. ‘I think we’ll take it’.

Ms. Nelson stepped through the insect drenched grass that made up a fair portion of the top of the property of what was now the Tyler’s new home. She carried a white backed sticker in her hand as she toed carefully through what seemed a sea of nervous grasshoppers. The front of the sticker was black with big orange lettering spelling out the word ‘SOLD’. It was the part of the job that real estate agents always look forward to, kah-ching.
She meticulously placed the sticker over her firm’s ‘FOR SALE’ sign, placing it at a precise 45-degree angle. She stepped back and looked proudly across the bright bold letters. She reached to the bottom portion of the sign and took off a strip that was fixed to the main sign by hooks. Her name and number were no longer of use here. Her work was officially done; it was time to move on.
As she made her way out of the gamut of slithering and soaring insect life, back to her bright red company sedan, a building noise caught her ears. She stopped and scanned down the gravel road. Bulging pines and gangly spruce trees blocked the base of the hill out. Suddenly a compact car, silver with bubbled headlights, splashed up from a scattering of stones and billowing dust trail.
Nelson gave the occupants a quick sneer; they were going way to fast through this calm village. She recognized the two girls in the Honda; they were those topless girls from next door. How could they parade around like that, have they no shame?
The blonde with the big round breasts looked decidedly angry. As for her dark haired, lithely built friend, she just sobbed in the passenger seat.
Relationships among young people always verged on two opposite trains. One was being love, which was more often than not an awesome lust and the other, was unadulterated hatred, which sometimes too was found in lust. Things were much easier when you were young and already knew everything.
Nelson continued to watch as their car scooted by the front of the Tyler’s new roost. She only then realized that she was going to be overtaken by the plume of dust and dirt that the car had picked up. It would surely cover the sparkling red paint of her car and entrench herself in a dry and clinging film.
She squinted and covered her nose and mouth as the cloud swarmed down around her. Yes, her prophetic thought had come to fruition.
‘Fucking degenerates!’ She mumbled as she swept the grim from her overly made-up face and swished the matter from the front of her red dress.
The dust had also settled across the Tyler’s relatively new Cougar. Judd was certainly not your usual senior, his car itself rained from a much younger mindset.
The sun was baking, very bright and still managed to wrench a glisten off both vehicles chrome plating. Nelson’s Malibu had magnetic door signs, detailing the firm she represented.
Trees and thick brush framed the outer side of the drive way and garage, they afforded little in the way of shade though. The interior of the cars was almost certain to be akin to the surface of a red-hot frying pan. Thank God for air-conditioning.
Across the road was a thick and forbidding forest. Tall scraggily trees stretched out from their grip on the rocky grounds. There were also countless thick pines, spruce and cedars. Bushes and weeds guarded the root systems of these much larger plants.
‘That must look pretty damn good,’ Judd’s voice startled Ms. Nelson as she continued in her quest to paw off the dust that had captured her and settled in the pleats of her dress.
‘Actually, this home could have sold itself; it’s got great curb appeal.’
Lisa slowly emerged from the stone walkway that ran up from their new home. She would get used to it.
‘Once again, congratulations on your new home,’ Nelson neared Mr. Tyler, who was scanning the upper portion of his new lawn.
Lisa approached them on the apron of the drive way as Ms. Nelson offered her hand to Judd. ‘I know you’ll just love it up here.’
Judd grabbed the young woman’s hand and muttered, ‘We’d better.’
‘We certainly will, and thank you for your time…and patience,’ Lisa jabbed her husband lightly in the rib cage and then took her turn in shaking Ms. Nelson’s hand.

Soon the driveway of the Tyler’s new residence lay barren. Both vehicles had gone along on their way, back toward Ottawa. All that remained was the freshly adhered sold sticker and the thumping of ACDC from the cottage next door.
The cedar log home was nicely tucked away from the gravel pitch and offered a serene view of the Ottawa. The bustling greenery and wafting breeze made everything appear tranquil, peaceful, and calm.
It was the home Judd and Lisa had been dreaming of owning someday, a dream that started when they were on their honeymoon at Lake Placid. Now they had what they had worked for the entire lives.
Nevertheless, no home was perfect; no fulfilment of a dream is perfect. Judd and Lisa knew this, expected this. However, what was to come they could have never anticipated.