“Tell me a story?” the boy asked while his grandfather tucked him in.

“A story?” the old man responded, as always playing dumb. “I don’t think so, boy. It’s late and your mother may not want--”

“--Oh, Grandfather. You say that every time. Tell me a story. Please?”

“You’ll hound me all night until you get your way, won’t you, boy? Oh, very well. Which one, then?” The elder feigned irritation, pretending he did not know which story to tell, although he knew exactly what the child wanted to hear.

“The Snow Angel!” his grandson cried out right on cue.

“Of course. The Snow Angel. A hundred stories I can tell the lad, but my grandson always wants to hear ‘The Snow Angel.’” Even as he spoke he could not hide his smile.

“Will you tell it?”

The old man kneeled beside the bed.

“Some parts of the story are pretty scary, you know. Are you sure?”

“‘God never listens to crybabies,’” the boy responded, as if he were quoting from Scripture.

“Very well,” the elder said, seating himself alongside the boy in his bed. He spoke in a voice just above a whisper, pretending that he was sharing a great secret.

“A long time ago - over sixty years ago on a wintry night just like tonight - there was a young man whose name was Chadworth Michaels.”

The child grinned with satisfaction at hearing the familiar name.

“. . . and every night,” the old man continued, “as the boy tried to sleep . . .”

. . . large insects squirmed beneath Chad’s skin and chewed on tiny mouthfuls of his flesh. That’s how bad the pain felt. As he lay awake in his bed pale moonlight shone on his face giving the boy the appearance of a small corpse. He was sweating again, a sure sign that this was going to be one of those difficult nights when sleep did not come easily. Such nights were more frequent now.

The day before, when the grown-ups had thought he was asleep, he had overheard Dr. Bennington telling his mother that the sickness had spread to the very marrow of his bones. Chad did not know exactly what ‘verymarrow’ meant, but because he could hear his mother crying he knew that it was bad. She had not cried like that since those last days he had spent in the hospital. Right then the boy knew that those insects inside him might never let him fall asleep. Feasting nightly on his guts they might even chew themselves clear out of his body . . .


“ . . . Are you sure you want to hear more?” the grandfather asked, as he always did at this part.

The child nodded his head, as the old man knew he would.

“Very well, then,” he continued. “On this one night . . .”


. . . the boy pulled himself from his damp sheets and went to the window to speak again to the full winter moon. “Make it stop hurting so bad. Please make it stop hurting,” he whispered, his voice sounding more like an old man’s than a child’s. He would not cry this time, he told himself. God never listened to cry babies.

The afternoon’s fresh snowfall still caked the windowsill but the magic of the winter scene was lost on Chad. He would be building no snowmen tomorrow morning nor would he be skating on Miller’s Pond. Snow was just one more thing in Chad’s world that seemed cold and dead.


The moon crept behind a cloud of dark wool and for a moment the back yard blanketed in white blinked out as if a night light had clicked off on the world. Perhaps he should try again to fall asleep. Perhaps this time God or maybe one of his angels might have heard him.

Tiny marbles of slush suddenly pelted the window pane although it had stopped snowing hours earlier. Chad heard something outside, a scratching fluttery sound that did not belong to the more familiar sounds of a howling winter’s night. A dozen more slush balls struck the glass like the tapping of a child’s fingers.

Tap-tap.

Silence.

Tap-tap-taptaptap.

Then silence again.

The tapping did not coincide with the wind.

Taptaptaptaptaptaptap . . .
 

“. . . taptaptap!”

The boy giggled here. His grandfather loved telling this part, and with each new tap he tickled the child in the stomach. They both laughed secretly so the grown-ups would not hear.

“Something was out there, all right . . . ”

. . . and it was just outside his window!

The roof of his father’s tool shed lay to the right of Chad’s bedroom window close enough to reach out to and touch. A lumpy pile of snow upon the roof heaved and swelled as if some creature no larger than a bird had become trapped beneath it.

Something the boy could not see was trying to free itself!

Chad slid the window open and a sharp wind gust struck his face like an icy slap. But it was not the wind that caused the snow squall to throb and pulsate on the roof of the tool shed. Whatever lay buried under the snow lump probably had caught itself in the ice which in the frigid night had become as sticky as peppermint candy. Squinting the boy still could not make it out. In the sky dark ghost rider clouds drifted free of the moon. For the first time the child could clearly see the small pile of snow and caked ice that sparkled like cut glass in the moonlight.

The grandfather looked over his shoulder at the full moon that shone through the icicles hanging like bony fingers outside the bedroom window. He leaned forward for dramatic effect, and the child instinctively moved himself closer to the old man. For both of them this was their favorite part . . .