Free Snowblind by Christopher Golden

felt like crying.
    “There are monsters in the yard.”
    “Go to bed, Isaac. There’s no such thing as monsters.”
    His eyes welled with tears. Yes, there are, he wanted to say. But he knew the tone in Jake’s voice. Sometimes they were best friends—they did everything together—and sometimes Jake treated him like they were worst enemies, like everything Isaac said or did, even breathing the same air, was stupid and babyish. Isaac wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t a baby anymore and when Jake treated him that way he usually just gave it right back to him … but it hurt so much. Tonight, none of that mattered. Tonight, Jake had to listen.
    “Come look,” Isaac said.
    “Go to bed.”
    “Jake—”
    “I’m not kidding, Ike. I already told you. No monsters. No faces at the stupid window. You heard a branch or just the snow hitting the glass. Go to sleep or I swear to God I’m going to pound you.”
    Isaac thought about screaming, considered going across the hall to wake Miri. He could go to his mother’s room but Niko was there and it made him nervous, thinking about bothering them. And the longer he looked out the window, watching those figures slipping through the storm, the more he thought they weren’t just dancing … they were playing. There were four of them now, and if they were playing, maybe they weren’t monsters after all. Not really.
    The snow had built up on the screen so much that he could not see very well and the frost of his breath on the glass had made it worse. Isaac pulled back and wiped at the condensation, then bent to peer outside again.
    They were gone.
    He blinked and looked again, craning his neck left and right to see if they had gone into a neighbor’s yard. It surprised him to realize that he was a little sad, and he unlocked the window and forced it open. The storm had swelled the frame and he had to work at it, the wood squealing a little.
    “Ike, what the hell?” Jake murmured. “Close the damn window.”
    Isaac ignored him, reached out and tapped some of the snow off the screen. He leaned on the windowsill and pressed his face against the screen as the wind gusted past him and the frigid cold invaded his bedroom. The sheer blue curtains billowed to either side but he ignored them, scanning the night and the storm.
    “Goddammit!” Jake snapped. Isaac heard him whip back his covers and climb out of bed, heard him grunting as he stormed across the short distance between them. “It’s freezing out there!”
    “Well, duh,” Isaac said, still searching the yards on either side and across the street, forcing the screen a little, trying to get a better look around. “It’s a freakin’ blizzard.”
    “Isaac,” Jake said, his voice full of menace.
    Jake grabbed his brother’s arm. Isaac tugged uselessly at his grip, turning toward him as that familiar fraternal anger blazed up.
    “Let go!”
    “You had a bad dream,” Jake insisted. “And if you saw anything outside that wasn’t just your imagination, it was Mr. Pappas walking his dog. Nobody else would be walking around out there in the middle of the night.”
    “It wasn’t Mr. Pappas,” Isaac said softly, glaring at him.
    “Then who—” Jake began, but his words cut off.
    His gaze had shifted. Isaac saw that Jake wasn’t looking at him anymore but staring past him, at the window, and the terror blooming on his face made Isaac spin toward the window just in time to see the blue-white figures rushing through the storm, long arms reaching forward, long fingers and hands and forearms sliding through the screen as if it weren’t there at all, sifting through in a spray of ice crystals and shadows.
    Frozen fingers clutched at him, cut his skin, turned his bones to rigid ice, and then they pulled. Isaac hit the screen face-first, his arms coming after. His back scraped the underside of the open window and he flailed his arms, trying to grab hold. A hand grabbed his ankle and only then did he hear the screaming. His