Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 19

Derek Leech had popped up apparently out of nowhere in 1961. A day after Colonel Zenf finally died in custody, he first appeared on the radar, making a freak run of successful long-shot bets at a dog track. Since then, he had made several interlocking empires. He was a close friend of Harold Wilson, Brian Epstein, Lord Leaves of Leng, Enoch Powell, Roman Polanski, Mary Millington and Jimmy Saville. He was into everything — newspapers (the down-market tabloid Daily Comet and the reactionary broadsheet Sunday Facet), pop records, telly, a film studio, book publishing, frozen foods, football, road-building, anti-depressants, famine relief, contraception, cross-channel hovercraft, draught lager, touring opera productions, market research, low-cost fashions, educational playthings. He had poked his head out of a trapdoor on Batman and expected to be recognized by Adam West — "it's not the Clock King, Robin, it's the English Pop King, Derek Leech". He appeared in his own adverts, varying his catch-phrase — "if I didn't love it, I wouldn't…" eat it, drink it, watch it, groove it, use it, wear it, bare it, shop it, stop it, make it, take it, kiss it, miss it, phone it, own it. He employed "radical visionary architect" Constant Drache to create "ultra-moderne work-place environments" for DLI premises and the ranks upon ranks of "affordable homes for hard-working families" cropping up at the edges of conurbations throughout the land. It was whispered there were private graveyards under many a "Derek Leech Close" or "Derek Leech Drive". Few had tangled with Derek Leech and managed better than a draw. Richard counted himself among the few, but also suspected their occasional path-crossings hadn't been serious.

They made fresh, ragged footprints across the empty fields. They were the only moving things in sight. It was quiet too. Richard saw birds frozen in mid-tweet on boughs, trapped in globules of ice. No smoke rose from the chimneys of Sutton Mallet. Of course, what with the heat wave, even the canniest country folk might have put off getting in a store of fuel for next winter.

"Refresh my memory," said Richard. "How many people are at your weather research station?"

"Five. The director, two junior meteorologists, one general dogsbody and a public relations-security consultant."

Richard had gone over what little the Club could dig up on them. Oddly, a DLI press release provided details of only four of the staff.

"Who's the director again?" he asked.

"We've kept that quiet, as you know," said Leech. "It's Professor Cleaver. Another Dick, which is to say a Richard."

"Might have been useful to be told that," said Richard, testily.

"I'm telling you now."

Professor Richard Cleaver, a former time-server at the Meteorological Office, had authored The Coming Ice Age, an alarmist paperback propounding the terrifying theory of World Cooling. According to Cleaver, natural thickening of the ozone layer in the high atmosphere would, if unchecked, lead to the expansion of the polar icecaps and a global climate much like the one currently obtaining in Sutton Mallet. Now, the man was in the middle of his own prediction, which was troubling. There were recorded cases of individuals who worried so much about things that they made them happen. The Professor could be such a Talent.

They huffed into Sutton Mallet, past the chapel, and went through a small copse. On the other side was the research station, a low-lying cinderblock building with temporary cabins attached. There were sentinels in the front yard.

"Are you in the habit of employing frivolous people, Mr Leech?"

"Only in my frivolous endeavours. I take the weather very seriously."

"I thought as much. Then who made those snowmen?"

They emerged from the rhyne and stood on hard-packed ice over the gravel forecourt of the DLI weather research facility. Outside the main doors stood four classic snowmen: three spheres piled one upon another as legs, torso and head, with twigs for arms, carrots for noses and coals for eyes, buttons and mouths. They were individualized by scarves and headgear — top hat, tarn o'shanter, pith helmet and two toy bumblebees on springs attached to an Alice band.

Leech looked at the row. "Rime-men, surely?" he said, pointedly. "As a busybody, you appreciate accuracy."

There were no footprints around the snowmen. No scraped bare patches or scooped-out drifts. As if they had been grown rather than made.

"A frosty welcoming committee?" suggested Leech.

Before anything happened, Richard knew. It was one of the annoyances of his sensitivity — premonitions that come just too late to do anything about.

Top Hat's headball shifted: it spat out a coal, which cracked against Richard's visor. He threw himself down, to avoid further missiles. Top Hat's head was packed with coals, which it could sick up and aim with deadly force.

Leech was as frozen in one spot as the snowmen weren't. This sort of thing happened to others, but not to him.

Pith Helmet, who had a cardboard handlebar moustache like Zebedee from The Magic Roundabout, rose on ice-column legs and stalked towards Leech, burly white arms sprouting to displace feeble sticks, wicked icicles extruding from powdery fists.

Tarn and Bee-Alice circled round, making as if to trap Richard and Leech in the line of fire.

Richard got up, grabbed Leech's arm, and pulled him away from Pith Helmet. It was hard to run in polar gear, but they stumped past Tarn and Bee-Alice before the circle closed, and legged it around the main building.

Another snowman loomed up in front of them. In a postman's cap, with a mailbag slung over its shoulder. It was a larger and looser thing than the others, more hastily made, with no face coals or carrot. They barrelled into the shape, which came apart, and sprawled in a tangle on the cold, cold ground — Richard felt the bite of black ice through his gauntlets as the heel of his hand jammed against grit. Under him was a dead but loose-limbed postman, grey-blue in the face, crackly frost in his hair. He had been inside the snowman.

The others were marching around the corner. Were there people inside them too? Somehow, they were frowning — perhaps it was in the angle of their headgear, as if brows were narrowed — and malice burned cold in their eye-coals.

Leech was on his feet first, hauling Richard upright.

Snow crawled around the postman again, forming a thick carapace. The corpse stood like a puppet, dutifully taking up its bag and cap, insistent on retaining its identity.

They were trapped between the snowmen. The five walking, hat-topped heaps had them penned.

Richard was tense, expecting ice-daggers to rip through his furs and into his heart. Leech reached into his snowsuit as if searching for his wallet — in this situation, money wasn't going to be a help. A proper Devil would have some hellfire about his person. Or at least a blowtorch. Leech — who had recorded a series of anti-smoking adverts — managed to produce a flip-top cigarette lighter. He made a flame, which didn't seem to phase the snowmen, and wheeled around, looking for the one to negotiate with. Leech was big on making deals.

"Try Top Hat," suggested Richard. "In cartoon terms, he's obviously the leader."

Leech held the flame near Top Hat's face. Water trickled, but froze again, giving Top Hat a tear streaked, semi-transparent appearance. A slack face showed inside the ice.

"Who's in there?" asked Leech. "Cleaver?"

Top Hat made no motion.

A door opened, and a small, elderly man leaned out of the research station. He wore a striped scarf and a blue knit cap.

"No, Mr Leech," said Professor Richard Cleaver, "I'm in here. You lot, let them in, now. You've had your fun. For the moment."