It was snowing heavily – it had not stopped all day and I sensed it was going to continue for the next few hours at least. And that was my second mistake of the day . . . the snow. The first was leaving home at all, but – hey, we all get it wrong sometime, I just never expected to be risking our lives when we ventured down the white covered road to Kendal on a late afternoon in December. Merry Christmas everyone, war is over and there is peace on earth. Hell – yeh? We needed a few things from the supermarket, it wouldn’t take long to get there and back, we’d be gone a couple of hours. Katie jumped in the car without hesitation; she always liked a visit as it usually meant treats, make up or a DVD? As you would expect she never went home empty handed, but is that what dads are good for? The wheels slip on the road searching for grip, it was there somewhere under the veil of ice. Maybe I was foolish, either way up I was definitely naive, after all this old piece of tin is a BMW, the ultimate in snow, don’t ya know? I can joke about it now, it’s all melted away and we are back with the living, but at the time my stomach churned with fear and a sense of impending death made me see life in a new light.

The ASDA car park is half empty, most people have heeded the extreme weather warning – why hadn’t I, the idiot father who knew better of course? It was only a forty minute car ride, the main roads seemed relatively clear and the gritters were up and down the byways spitting their goods onto the tarmac with insane regularity. The car locked, we go inside through the automatic doors, grabbed a trolley and let its wayward wheels guide us swiftly along, the sky outside dark and brooding like something sinister from a post apocalyptic film, yet I didn’t grasp the menace hiding in the carpet of grey hanging like a heavy blanket from the sky and like fools we went about our business as if we had all the time and not a care in the world. Three bags of shopping and thirty five minutes later, Katie holds her glittering prize and we enter the outside world again and I stop in shock and dismay at the sight that greets us at the car parks edge. The place is unrecognisable and looks like the landscape of an Austrian holiday resort in the throes of a heavy winter storm, I can’t see the car, I can hardly see my own feet as we trudge across the thick snow that crunches and squeaks as we walk. I look at my daughter, she looks back speechless and raises her eye brows in a ‘what the hell’ expression of both joy and despair. Maybe she sees the funny side of our predicament, but I do not, faith in my ability to understand weather patterns and there meaning to man on earth evaporates like African rain on a hot tin roof. We dump ourselves and the shopping inside the car, I’m anxious to leave as I know time is running out, my brain calculates the shortest route home but I have doubts we’ll get by unless this snowstorm is an isolated geographic phenomena. I should have looked at the weather on my hi-tech tablet; I try not to beat myself up about it but Jesus Christ what a fool I am?

We head out slipping and sliding, the car glides across the hidden tarmac like its wearing skates, I try and hide my fear from Katie but she sinks deep into the seat looking away from me and out of the window up into the laden sky. Several miles later we stop, we are in the country and the roads seem impenetrable as they disappear into the hazy distance. Darkness is falling, the fields to our left and right look like roads and the roads like fields, we are the only car I’ve seen moving in the last half hour and as I suffer frustration at our lack of progress, desperation pounds away at my brain – saying to me ‘why why why?’ I don’t know what to do, which way to go and how do I get there – cars don’t like heavy snow. Rivers of panic run cold through my veins, Katie is looking for answers, but I don’t have any. I’m lost, my head crumbles and I seem unable to make any meaningful decision that will get us home safely. I think all is lost and I’ve probably made the worst mistake of my life, it could end in tragedy? Some common sense in my gut tells me to get back to town, if we have to dump the car because the roads are totally impassable then at least we’ll find some shelter from the storm, a hotel, a pub even, or a community centre opened especially to cater for the lost and bewildered. Decision made, I bravely turn the car around and head down the hill feeling happier that I’m back in charge, everything is white except the sky which is now black and claustrophobic, within its dark foreboding cloak it gives out the sensation it could collapse any second and crush us as easily as an insect beneath a fallen brick. The car skirts across the heavy snow, it must be six or seven inches deep, any small incline puts the vehicle under pressure and even without traction control it fights to gain valuable inches over the white plain that stretches out before us. At one point Katie gets out and pushes, we seem trapped by the immovable magnetism of snow and tyres, I push also and steer at the same time and we move again slowly inching our way over a small plateau. Then we are flying – too fast – I daren’t touch the brakes, it could be the last thing I do. Something in the road, shadowy dark against the reflected bright of the snow appears in the cars headlights – I must slow, got to slow down – we are going to collide with this thing . . . person.

‘Hold on Katie, this is not good.’ I see her face turn to me and it looks worried.

‘Oh bugger,’ she says.

It’s a deer, momentarily startled by our headlights, it suddenly peers at us knowing it is doomed if it does not move, and then bounds across the road and leaps effortlessly over the half hidden stonewall like it is only a couple of feet high. The car is out of control; my face must be a picture as I’ve been in this predicament before, sliding down a road in the white-out of a snow storm, no place to go, nothing to do but hope and pray our Lord and master is looking down at us favourably in our strange moment of danger. ‘It is Christmas after all Lord.’ I hear myself murmur. Seconds seem like hours, then bang and bump, the car slides up an embankment turning crazily, it seems to be at an impossible angle like it could turn over and then time stops abruptly and all I hear is wind, the splatter of icy fingers on the windscreen and Katie breathing as if there is only a few more gulps of air in the world and she has to grab her share before it runs out.

‘Okay,’ I say?

Katie replies, ‘I think so?’ The headlights are still on but are pointing down at the road, we are half way up a steep incline the back of the car pointing skywards, but we are unhurt and then I hear the sound of another vehicle approaching.

There are headlights coming down the road, they almost look alien as they try to pierce the heavy dark and snow, looking like a million laser beams as the light is refracted through the flakes that drift endlessly down to earth. My heart lifts.

‘Help Dad?’ she asks.

‘Maybe?’ I say. It’s a tractor, a big tractor, a John Deere as I recognise the green and yellow of its paintwork. It stops and a young man descends the short ladder from the cab, I can tell this by his casual attire and then his face appears at the driver’s window and he scrubs the snow and ice away with a bare hand.

‘You all okay?’ he says. ‘Anyone hurt in there?’

‘No – we’re both okay, can you help us out?’ I ask.

The car is relatively undamaged, some small marks and a minor dent or two – but nothing to get excited about. I realise how different it might have been had our speed been a few miles per hour faster. We could have cleared the dry stone wall, careered clean over it and then . . . a drop of twenty feet into a reservoir on a cold and dark night and potential disaster – in this snow we may not have been found for days. Tom, the man with the tractor, attaches a rope and pulls the old car into a more suitable position at the roadside, just for fun I turn the key and it starts.

‘No way you’re moving Sir,’ says Tom. ‘There’s not a chance you’ll get any further tonight, all the roads are screwed up and there are cars abandoned everywhere, at the roadside, in the middle of the road and tons of minor accidents. I’ve just picked my mum up from the hospital, she’s a nurse there and I had to cut through a couple of fields to make it back here, but we only live round the corner so . . . ‘ He stops and considers the problem.

‘Can you help, I don’t know what to do Tom if we can’t get home tonight, I really don’t want Katie and me to sleep in the car on a freezing night like this, we could die?’

‘No, look, listen,’ he says. ‘I’ll tell you what we need to do, there’s a pub about four miles back down the road towards Kendal. They have rooms there and I’m sure the tractor can get us through. It might take a couple of trips as I can only get two in the cab. I’ll drop my Mum off at the house and come back.’ I shake Tom’s hand in gratitude and see a smile spread over Katie’s face as she contemplates the adventure, sure in the knowledge she is saved from the killer weather. ‘Be about five minutes,’ he says.

‘No rush,’ I say. ‘I’m just so grateful Tom that you’re putting yourself out for us. Strangers an’ all.’

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘If we can’t help each other then what is this world coming to?’

Ten minutes later and he’s back, there’s another inch of snow on the ground and my old car is beginning to disappear under a white sheet, it’s slipping into camouflage with the rest of the countryside. Walls, animals, everything is turning into a dark white canvas before our eyes, how Tom knows the geography of the road is beyond me, but by mutual consent Katie climbs aboard the giant hulk of a tractor first and is suddenly hidden behind reflective windows that sting with the rattle of icy pounding snow. They move off and become enveloped by the snow storm in seconds and then I am alone in a fragile alien landscape, I move and the ground crunches under my ridiculously inappropriate footwear, the snow must be seven or eight inches deep and still it pours from the black sky and as I look into the heavens and the flakes ram and tickle my cold face I wonder if I’ll ever see Katie, my wife and any semblance of humanity again? There are times when you feel like the only living human in the world, the cold penetrating your soul, time slipping slowly away like waiting for a coma to end, then I hear it – the tractors return and I thank God for his kindness and faith in keeping a pathetic human like me alive on a dreadful night like tonight. Momentarily, I put my hands together and pray, if I had been any more humble I might have knelt in the snow and cried for forgiveness of any sins I had committed in my lifetime, but that John Deere was on me in a few short seconds, it’s powerful low geared four wheel drive and massive tyres making easy work of the thick snowy carpet. I just couldn’t stop thanking everybody; I must have had a grin on my face like the happiest man in the world, but all I had was my life and faith in human nature – after all, what more did I need – oh and Tom of course, but as you know, he’s a hero of the highest and most deserving kind. I asked for his phone number and address that I might thank him somehow after we had all returned to sanity in a week or two after the maelstrom had calmed itself.

Disaster strikes! We arrive at the pub and sidle up to the bar, which is quite full considering the storm that’s blowing and growing outside – must be customers that are local or trapped like us? There are no rooms, the place is booked solid, not even a manger for us to make our beds in. What the hell do we do now, panic begins to set it and my heart sinks, dropping down my legs and out of my toes onto the damp stone flags that line the bar side. No-one offers any help, but that doesn’t surprise me, nor am I disappointed by their selfishness, it doesn’t matter; we’ve had more help tonight than we should ever deserve. We could venture back to the car, it’s only four miles away but there is a nice chance we could die from exposure trying to find the old tin can before we spend a night freezing our ‘you know what’s off’ as the dark lonely hours slip by and we wait for dawn or hypothermia to arrive. I try to remain calm in front of Katie, I can’t let her see how worried I am, it would only spoil her adventure and ruin the image of me keeping her safe at all costs and as I ponder our dilemma I place my clasped hands behind my back and pray for guidance, keeping all my old wrinkled fingers crossed for good measure. Hope is all I have tonight but I must keep it at the top of my list of needs. I smile at the barmaid, ‘Two pints please.’ Might as well make a night of it, Katie’s only seventeen but who cares, not me and neither must they, as I’m not asked for an ID about her age. Be reet though won’t it, must be taking pity on my predicament? ‘Yes, cider please love, it won’t keep the cold out will it, but it’ll make me feel a whole lot better?’ I think it’s her way of apologising to me as there are no rooms to let, not even a cramped broom cupboard, ah well, here comes the onset of a drunken stupor – maybe they’ll let us sleep on the cosy upholstered pub seating. Yeh, right? ‘Fish and chips twice with mushy peas please, yeh, we are just over here by the log fire. Thank you, oh and two more pints please. Yes a tab would be good.’ The lady smiles at me and I feel my ego stroked and grin back like an idiot.

Out of the corner of my ear, the phone tinkles away on its cradle at the bar, it’s shouting for someone to come and answer its call.

‘Hello, yes that’s right. Oh no, well that is a shame but I fully understand under the circumstances. No, no, that makes perfect sense and it is bad. Yes – must be a least a foot deep by now I reckon. Okay all the best and a merry Christmas to you. Look forward to seeing you in the New Year. Bye.’

I choose not to listen any further; it’s an irrelevance that has no consequence to me, just a passing of small talk and time. ‘These are nice Katie, what do you reckon?’

‘Grand,‘ she says.

‘Can we have two more pints love?’ The lady behind the bar walks over; I’m not sure if she’s annoyed but there is a determined look written across her face.

‘You won’t believe it,’ she says with a smile. Face full of chips, I look up from my meal.

‘I won’t?’ is my response.

‘No,’ she splutters trying to hold back a look of excited glee.

‘Surprise me then, is it we won this week’s free meal and we can eat the whole menu for nothing?’

‘No, room 24 just cancelled because of the snow, you got yourself some beds.’ I leap up from the table, knocking splashes of cider all over the place from the full glasses and kiss her on the forehead.

‘Thank you,’ I say holding her head in my hands and look up at the ceiling and mouth sincere words of gratitude. If the Lord was watching he would fully understand my delight, I cannot begin to express what I feel, a weight is lifted and I feel free from doubt knowing we are safe and warm and have a room and beds and a full English breakfast to look forward to in the morning. I kiss the lady from the bar once more.

‘Two more pints love.’ I demand in celebration.

‘Eighty five quid,’ she answers. Like a comedian I think quickly and reply.

‘That’s dear for two pints?’ She laughs; the joke is not lost on her.

‘For the room silly.’

We drink a little more, my seventeen year old daughter and me, watch some TV in the taproom and play a couple of rounds of pool with the locals, what could have been a disaster turns into a healthy social occasion and we laugh and joke and have fun. At some point, late evening, I look outside into the road rubbing the heavy condensation from the window and the scene under the sodium lights is like the desolate winter landscape of a disaster film, or the backdrop from an ancient Christmas movie – the wind is still rattling the window frames and under the glare of the street lights the snow is coming down sideways and heavy, there is no definition to objects outside and I guess there must be at least a foot of the white stuff on the ground. Nothing is moving, it could be the beginning of the end of the world?

Our room is nice and comfortable, a little eighties in style perhaps, but warm and clean and we hit our respective beds with bleary minds, tired eyes and stomachs full of drink and food and we are asleep in minutes, the rigours and stress of the day long departed. Dreams come quickly, as they always do, and I drift away on several threads of weirdness and obscurity. The sequences make sense, but don’t, I feel pain and happiness, colour and people and places I know, yet they are all so perverse and fluid that I forget the content the second I become awake. The bedside light is still on and casts shadows across the dim room, Katie lies still and quiet dreaming of good things and bad, someone sits at the small desk opposite my bed under the large TV screen. It doesn’t bother me I’ve had these dreams before, the suffocating weight on the chest, the temporary physical paralysis and horror of the ‘old hag’ watching and waiting at the bottom of the bed. She’s not here today, she may be taking a long earned holiday from the drudgery of work, it’s a scruffily dressed man and he appears to be writing on a memo pad. I pull myself up onto my elbows, head resting against the headboard and talk just like it’s the most obvious thing to do when you are in a dream of your own making.

‘Everything okay is it?’ I ask the shadow at the desk.

‘Oh yes just fine, I got to make this list before I forget, it’s the age you know makes you absent minded. A few ideas for presents, because it is Christmas after all and the guys in the office deserve some treats don’t they? But to be clear, I don’t usually sit down when I’m on duty; it’s not good etiquette is it?’ says the shadow clearing his throat as he half turns to look at me.

Suddenly this dream feels more real than dream, so I pinch myself and it hurts; now I’m not too sure this really is a dream. ‘Should you be here . . . in our room, that doesn’t seem like good manners now does it?’

‘Oh – but it is, I have to be here – I have my orders you see.’ The man says firmly.

‘So what’s your name then?’ I ask.

‘Daniel Mayflower is my nom de plume; we never give out our real names, that’s definitely not allowed and is contradictory to rule 386, sub section 22a in the code of conduct, the management is most clear about stage and pen names. Anyway, I am fully at your service now that sleep seems to have deserted you. A professional Thatcher by trade is how I made my living.’

‘Oh,’ I say surprised, ‘didn’t think there was much work round these parts for a Thatcher?’ I appear to be stranded in a room with a madman from which I’m going to struggle to escape or potentially murdered.

‘Well these days the works limited, I grant you that, but in the day I was a bit of a giant in the roofing industry.’ Suddenly he becomes agitated for no reason I can see. ‘Look – what are you doing, you can’t be awake; awake is not in the program, so go on, get back to sleep?’ He stands and walks towards me, his face in shadow, but I note his attire is old and rural and he makes to put some kind of spell on me.

‘I’m okay about the sleeping thing, honest I am, so you needn’t bother yourself about that.’

‘Well if you insist, but I shouldn’t be doing this when you’re awake, we can’t have special clients knowing they are being watched – that’s just not right or practical is it, we’re a secret society which means nobody knows about us . . . right?’

‘Well in theory Daniel, but that’s all gone to pot hasn’t it because you’re in my bedroom in full view whilst I am awake, but listen I’ll not tell a soul – it can be our little secret right? And as you broached the subject, what is this watching thing you’re talking about?’ I say rubbing both eyes, the filter of sleep slowly disappearing into minute particles as my senses return to normal. This is no dream, I’m pretty sure of that, but I could be wrong.

‘Well it’s a simple story that goes like this, as a guaranteed special holy being in the eyes of the rest of mankind and personally ordained by the highest presence himself, you have to be kept safe until the magic of your goodness is released and passed over at the correct moment and that allows you to fulfil your predetermined destiny. That bits crystal clear right? But the thing is – you shouldn’t know any of this, not now, not ever and forever, because this should have happened when you were in the throes of dreams. Do you not recognise me John; I’ve been in your head a thousand times, stirring up the cauldron of ancient memories just for a bit of cerebral fun. That’s just naughty of me, isn’t it?’ He shrugs like a schoolboy found smoking behind the bike sheds whilst kissing a girl for the very first time – embarrassment is what he feels.

Anger fills my head with sudden hatred; as all I’m hearing from this strange apparition is blah, blah, blah? ‘What the hell are you taking about Daniel, you’re speaking in riddles and what’s coming out of your mouth makes ridiculous sense, yet you expect me to understand.’

‘Well you nearly died tonight.’ He says quietly without a spark of emotion.

‘No – I didn’t.’

‘I hate to be in conflict with your personal understanding of the situation John, but from my view point it was a very close call and only the deer in the road slowed your progress. At that speed you would never have made the corner, so the embankment and wall would not have saved you from an exceedingly watery grave. Death by drowning, in my experience, is such a messy way to go and not an option I would vouch for in leaving this mortal coil. Lungs full of freezing water, all swallowed down because there’s no more air left to breath, and your daughter, what about her? Would you relish watching her pull those hideous faces as the life drains painfully from her body . . . no, thought not. So that’s what the good Angels do, they keep you safe, and to be honest John you have the very best there is, others would kill to have yours. Now this is the rub John, so listen very carefully, the simple things last in your world, the little things that is, the nice thoughts about friends and family, those selfless acts of random kindness that come over you when you least expect it – you know the score? So the Angels look after the good ones, the generous, the honest, the truthful, the teachers of wisdom, the givers of hope and positivity. Those like you John, the saviours of mother earth, those precious souls that guard the future of mankind and make the children we raise good and ambitious.’

‘Angels saved us?’ It is a question I struggle to ask in the face of pure absurdity.

‘Well yes, of course, what don’t you understand? They shape shift, it’s not difficult for an Angel to become a deer or a rabbit, indeed any living thing is extremely easy to replicate.’ He says puzzled at my impossible stupidity. May be I am dim-witted, or it’s the beer dulling my intellect or the broken sleep pattern I’ve endured, who knows, but the contemplation of a premature death syndrome scares the hell out of me. To be honest I don’t understand, so what does it all mean – these vague words, these strange inflections and whispered insinuations? Am I insane, in the aftermath of an aneurism or perhaps already dead and awaiting classification in a halfway house between heaven and hell? I have no idea, we only went for a ride in a car, to a supermarket to buy treats – it is Christmas, peace on earth and goodwill . . .?

‘Daniel,’ I say irritated, ‘best you go now and then when I wake up and look forward to my full English breakfast with my daughter, I’ll think back and none of this will have happened because you will be just a nightmare dream I cooked up in my tiny brain and then forgotten as the light of the morning breaks my first thoughts. That’s as it should be, am I right?’

‘John – you’ll always remember me, in your thoughts and dreams and even the sublime moments of terror that drift in and out of your subconscious. I am the shadow you see in the corner of a darkened room, the black cat crossing the road, the hazy smoke of a lost childhood memory that escapes you like a butterfly on the breeze.’ He stands over me and I see reality for the first time in the silhouette of a face I instantly know and it hits me like a brick, hurts me and stuns the pleasant sensations from me as would a savage blow to the kidneys.

‘Yes – I am you, the future you, the God amongst men you always hoped to be and the person you will one day become. I saved you John. Saved your kindness, the loving soul inside you that breeds fear and loathing into the hearts of the damned and wicked and the evil rogues and vagabonds that prowl in the trash bins of society and pray on the helpless and weak, the very members of the club you will hold presidency over?’

I crawl to the corner of the bed and weep in anger and heartbreak. ‘Get away from me, stop this torture Daniel, I’m just a man, an ordinary man – nothing special, not a God?’

‘You fool, you silly stupid fool.’ He comes closer and I curl into a ball of panic. ‘Look at this face, the lines and the contours, the structure of the bones. Love yourself, love me – embrace me – we are the same. God’s gift to society, you will not perish, there is work to be done. So many things to put right John.’

‘But why me?’ I ask panting with terror at thoughts of permanent changes to my future prospects of everyday life.

‘A more appropriate question is why not, you’ve been chosen, and anyway we couldn’t let you die. Not now, not tonight in the snow and ice of a winter’s tale. That would have been a cruel blow to the child, never to have met his father.’

‘But she’s here and asleep, never knowing this . . . this . . . association ever took place, we’ve spent seventeen years together.’ I ponder a moment, lost in a half forgotten comment. ‘You said his father?’

‘Like I said, you have a special purpose, a gift so rare we cannot just let it wither and die like a rose without water, it has to be nurtured, fed the right mixture of life so it can blossom and become the messenger, the mechanic, the philosopher, able to give dreams and inspiration to the meek and desolate. Every child needs a father.’

‘What child?’ I ask.

‘An unborn son John, one growing inside your wife. Like I say . . .’ and slowly like mist evaporating in the glare of a sunny day he disappears inside me, the two of us become one being and he is gone.

‘ . . . we need to look after the children of the world.’ It comes out of my open mouth without any thought, my words, my phrasing, my voice.

I stretch and yawn, pull the covers around my neck and turn onto my side, thoughts of sleep glide over me like the haze of a drunken stupor and the memory of current dreams slip into obscurity. I remember something vague about children and kindness, but it lasts a brief second and is gone as the darkness of involuntary thought draws a veil over reality and I sink into the well of slumber dreaming of Santa and Rudolph, presents and the birth of a child.