Page 12 of Seasonal Fears

Harry’s eyes are part of what got her into painting. When they were in elementary school, they had a teacher who tried to tell them sky blue was a bright and sunny color with no real depth to it, and Melanie had already spent enough time matching Harry’s eyes to the sky to be distantly offended, in that way that is really only accessible to small children hearing something patently untrue from the adults around them. She requested and received her first watercolor set that same year, and began trying to capture the colors of the world as they were, and not as people wanted her to see them.

Even in her dreams, Harry is wearing the casual clothes he wears to practice, sweatpants and T-shirt and no real thought to how they go together. She has no idea what he’s going to wear tonight.

“Harry!” she calls, and steps out of the trees, moving toward him … or tries to. The sunlight burns where it touches her, searing her skin like acid that leaves no mark behind, and she knows at once that the clearing is forbidden: the summer is not for her, is for the sun-kissed boys like Harry, for the golden girls like Chloe from the cheer squad, who has been far less than subtle about her intent to “comfort” him if something happens to Melanie before graduation.

She shrinks back, recoils, withdraws into the shadow of the wood. Too late: he’s heard her and he sees her where she stands among the trees. Breaking into a wide grin, he jogs in her direction, and she wants to shout, to scream, to tell him not to come any closer. If the summer is closed to her, the winter is closed to him.

When he crosses the threshold, he collapses, and when she goes to him, he isn’t breathing, and he won’t wake up. He won’t wake up.

Melanie wakes to the sound of her phone alarm singing a jaunty tune, and her own voice, sobbing.

Jack Frost

CALENDAR SEASON: FEBRUARY 11TH, 2017: WINTER, UNDER THE WORM MOON.

The window is open.

That’s wrong: Melanie always remembers to close the window when she gets home, lest it attract her father’s attention and he looks closely enough to find the signs of her coming and going in scrapes on the windowsill. They don’t live in a crime drama, and he’s not an investigator, but she saw it once on an episode of Law & Order and hasn’t been able to shake the fear ever since.

She sits up, intending to close the window, and realizes something else is wrong, something bigger and more fundamental than an unclosed entrance: maybe the reason the entrance was left unclosed, when she has always been so utterly, exquisitely careful to erase all signs that anything has happened. She’s not alone.

Someone else is in her room.

Someone is sitting at her desk, flipping through one of her sketchbooks, and for a moment the offense of someone touching something so personal, so private, is a greater shock than the violation of having someone in her space to begin with. Only for a moment—only long enough for her to sit up and stare, and realize she still can’t hear her heartbeat, still can’t feel it trying to escape her body. Something’s wrong. She knows something’s wrong, knows she should tell her father immediately, but also knows she wouldn’t be alive if her heart really weren’t beating, so maybe this is normal. Maybe this is natural, and her body is giving her a much-deserved break.

Maybe.

The person at her desk looks up and smiles, teeth a white slash against the dimness of the room. That one expression puts the whole person better into focus, reveals details she wasn’t catching before in the sheer shock of their presence: it’s a child, maybe eleven, maybe twelve, dressed in bright yellow corduroy pants and a blue shirt covered in sparkling silver snowflakes. They have dark, curly hair, gathered into tight ponytails on either side of their head, and freckles covering what seems like every visible inch of their skin.

“I’m a girl, if that’s what you’re wondering,” says the child, tone casually matter-of-fact. “That’s what most people wonder when they meet me. The ones who try not to assume, anyway.”

“I was actually wondering what you were doing in my bedroom, and how you got in here, and why you were touching my sketchbook, in roughly that order,” says Melanie.

“It looked interesting and like the only thing in this room that hadn’t been vomited up by the Disney Princess Collection, I got in here the same way I assume you usually do, Miss ‘I have a big oak tree outside my window with suspiciously smooth patches worn into the bark,’ and I’m here because I was the closest one when we realized what was happening,” says the girl. She smiles again, white teeth in the darkness. “We need to have a talk.”

“You need to be somewhere that isn’t my bedroom,” Melanie counters, sliding out of the bed and standing. She fell asleep fully clothed, walked through the forest in the dress she only wears in dreams, and she’s prepared for this.

What she isn’t prepared for is the wave of dizziness that sweeps over her, nearly knocking her off her feet. It isn’t accompanied by a stutter in her heartbeat or any other feeling she can easily recognize; it’s just dizziness, shaking the world to its foundations. She catches the bedpost, holding herself up until the wave recedes and she can stand on her own again.

When she looks to the girl, she finds her watching with sympathy in her eyes. She isn’t smiling anymore. “That’s just going to get worse,” she says. “Means someone else is making progress. Maybe one of the others got around to their explanation faster than I did. I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to wake you up.”

Melanie frowns. “What do you mean, it’s going to get worse? Progress toward what? And why are you in my room?”

“I’m in your room because everyone with a season’s worth of sense knows who your father is, and there was no way he was letting me through the front door,” says the girl. “I’ve had my ascension less than a year. I’m not ready to give it up yet. And I had to talk to you, because you have no idea about anything, and leaving you unprepared isn’t right or fair.”

Melanie doesn’t think she’s ever been this confused in her life. “Unprepared for what?”

“For everything.”

The girl sighs and closes Melanie’s sketchbook, placing it carefully on the desk before resting her hands on her knees and focusing on Melanie herself. “My name is Jack,” she says. “It wasn’t always, but it is now, and it’s the only name that matters for me. I am the spirit of Winter Ascendant, which means I belong with you. I’m part of your household … if you win. If you make the most progress, the most quickly.”

It’s no relief for Melanie to realize she was wrong, because she’s even more confused now than she was a moment ago. She’s confused enough that it’s giving her a headache, and with the thought of pain, she realizes she’s committed one of the cardinal sins of her short existence: she’s ignored her phone alarm.

“Wait!” says the girl, says Jack, as Melanie reaches for her pills. She sounds genuinely alarmed, like Melanie is making some terrible mistake. “Wait, okay?”

Melanie pauses. “Why? I need my medication or my heart stops beating, and I’m supposed to be meeting my boyfriend at the school for the Valentine’s Day dance. Sorry, weird kid who broke into my room, but Harry is more important to me than whatever ridiculous thing you’re here to say.”

“Your heart can’t stop beating, because it already did,” says Jack. “You’ve been dead for hours, and you’re still moving around.”