A Chilling Vacation

It had been three years since we last went on a vacation. At the end of the year, I took my husband, Josh, and our two daughters, Helen and Carina, to the Canary Islands. According to the weather forecast, it was going to be sunny and warm for a week. The night we reached the house we had rented, Helen and Carina woke Josh and me up with excited yelling around 1:00 a.m.

“What’s going on? Why are you two up?” I asked.

“Mom, it’s snowing outside, and there are huge snowmen!” Helena said.

Josh and I held their hands and walked over to the front. The air was much colder than it was when we had arrived that evening, and to Josh and my surprise, when we came upon the living room windows, we found the outside world blanketed by snow. It was most likely ankle deep. While the snow was just unexpected, what was bizarre and eerie were the snowmen that towered around the vicinity. Each of them was of humanoid form and were well over eight feet tall. How could anyone have made them so quickly?

The sudden appearance of the snowmen was the subject of the town the next day. No one seemed to have any idea of who could have made them. Even stranger was the fact that a group of people who were out celebrating till midnight had not seen any signs of snow even when they went to bed half an hour later. How in the world was this possible? 

I told Josh it was best we leave at once and re-plan another vacation for a later date, but he thought it would be a waste of time and money. Helen and Carina pleaded with me to change my mind as well. In the end, we decided to continue with the vacation. That night, however, things took a turn for the worse.

I couldn’t sleep most of the night—I didn’t want to. Josh and the kids were asleep as I lay there in that haunting, cold silence. But I must have dozed off at some point, because I woke up to find my phone saying it was 3:30 a.m. I had fallen asleep for almost an hour, and Josh was no longer next to me.

I called out to him, but I got no answer. I looked around the house, but he was nowhere to be found. Helen and Carina were luckily still asleep in their beds. I went to the living room and took a peek through the foggy window. Nothing seemed to be amiss until I noticed that one of the snowmen had shrunk in size and was wearing clothes. And those were not just anyone’s clothes: they were Josh’s.

I ran back to Helen and Carina and woke them up. Not wanting to keep them out of my sight, I asked them to follow me as we ventured out into the haze before us. As we neared the suspicious snowman, I asked Helen and Carina to stay a foot away from me as I inspected it. I started pulling the snowman apart at the arms and, suddenly, I began to notice that there was something behind the frost.

Was it…? No!

I clawed away at the snowman, this time focusing on the head, until I finally came face-to-face with the bitter, cold truth: Josh was gone. Somehow, he was entrapped in the snowman. He wasn’t breathing. I took my daughters back inside and called emergency services at once. In the hours that passed, the entire neighbourhood learned that things were even more serious than I had thought: ten more people had suffered the same fate Josh did. None of us knew what to believe, but most of us decided to leave town without a second thought.