The flash fiction that you are about to read is an elongated and reworked version of an even shorter tale I wrote a couple of years ago. I suspect I am trying to channel my inner “Inside No. 9” persona here – but see what you think. I give you “Ice Road to Houdan.”
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The road that tied Houdan to Faverolles often became impassable in the stony depths of winter.
It was especially so in the bitter months which called close on the year of 1867, and the children that slid between the two settlements, skimming to chattering rest, had decorated the treacherous land with rows of silent bonhommes des neige.
To walk past them at midnight, after a liberal libation of Pernod, was a thing plus troublant. All of the villagers commented upon it. The twelve sentinels. They appeared to loom over one with a menace that could send you toppling into the drift, drunk or no. The legend soon spread. La douzaine du diable.
There were those who refused to walk along that way after dark, claiming an evil had befallen the villages, and the icy creatures were somehow cursed, but such tales did not worry Old Patrice.
An elder of Faverolles, his favourite haunt was a café a few miles northeast of home, and it was his habit to walk there on a Saturday and spend the Sabbath in blissful recovery.
It was a Sunday that I passed back the other way, one early fresh snow-kissed morn. Treize. A thirteenth ice sculpture had joined its brethren, a coven with a new, demonic leader. The latest eerie creation was especially large, with a plump body packed hard by the cackling, breathy slaps of the nocturnal children.
As I passed, three ice-footed hens, white, speckled, and cluck flapping in their hunger and wide-eyed ire, pecked around the feet, seeking some rare and frozen prize below.
It took perhaps a week for the villagers to notice Old Patrice was missing, but it was nearer spring before they discovered the true horror of what happened to him, unthawed even as they lowered him to rest.