Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. The Sins of the Father's Father Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

THE SINS OF THE FATHER’S FATHER

Campbell Scott ran to the small shed behind the house for the garden hose while Duncan Scott dug the snow away from the steel spigot that rose two feet from the ground at the rear of the property. The spigot had once belonged to a school, but the school had been dismantled and the property left to overgrow.

Campbell and Duncan knew little of the school’s history, though were of no age to ponder why such a large section of land might remain vacant when every other empty lot around town was bought up within days of being listed. What they did know was that the school was Catholic and that their grandfather had been the master—as far as they could tell, this was equivalent to being the principal, or close enough.

Now, however, they were thinking nothing of the school or the big empty space; they were thinking about having the last snowman standing once spring began to tickle its warm fingers along their stretch of world.

“Hurry up,” Duncan said, the mouth and handle of the spigot barely uncovered.

Campbell tromped through the snow toward his elder brother, dragging behind him a green garden hose that left a brown trail of dirt in its wake. Once to Duncan’ side, Campbell tossed the end of the hose at his brother. Duncan affixed it to the spigot mouth.

“Make sure it’s tight,” Duncan said.

Campbell screwed the steel gun on the other end, nodding to his brother as he did so.

Duncan got to his feet and reached for the gun.

Campbell jerked his hands away. “No, I’m spraying first!”

Duncan sneered at his brother, folding his arms over his chest. “Better be on mist or you’ll shoot a hole in him.”

The brothers had spent the last 45 minutes crafting a snowman—googly eyes on springs, rubber nose, chattery teeth mouth, and arms made of three-fingered twigs—and would now commence solidifying it with a gentle spray from the hose. Not twenty minutes later, the boys rushed into the house sporting ice sheaths over their mitts and ice walls built onto the fronts of their coats, leaving the hose behind on the lawn. The snowman, which they’d named Mr. Teeth, stood firm and solid, there, upon the section where the two property lines met.

—

Campbell blinked open one eye, squinting at the window that overlooked the backyard. Distantly, the sound of thwumping footfalls drew closer in two-second intervals. He opened his other eye and faced his brother who slept in a bed identical to his own, just three feet across a bare spot of carpet.

“You hear that?” Campbell whispered.

Duncan side-eyed his brother. Of course he’d heard it, he was leaned on elbows, facing the window.

“What is it?” Campbell whispered.

“I don’t know.” Duncan climbed from bed and looked out onto the yard. The moon was little more than a sliver and revealed only blackness below.

The thwumping sounds ceased moments after Duncan rose, though a new sound replaced it: scratching. Duncan stepped backward until his butt nailed a bedpost.

“What is it?” Campbell whispered again; this time the words were little more than a hiss.

Duncan swallowed, shaking his head, stomping toward the closet. Quickly, daring to shift his focus mere seconds, he located the flashlight he used whenever he snuck out of bed to read Goosebumps. He clicked it on, stepping slowly to the window.

The scratching grew louder and louder and louder, then changed altogether. A skinny grey object played against the glass, scratching with a sound like nails against a chalkboard, like polystyrene blocks rubbed together. The brothers flinched, Campbell covering his ears as he did so. In quick succession, five more grey digits appeared, as did a goofy face with vibrant white—

“Mr. Teeth,” Duncan whispered, the blue beam of his flashlight tight on the icy face.

The teeth chattered five times in a rapid motion before the window began to rise, letting the cold, cold night inside.

—

“What’re you boys doing?”

Duncan and Campbell barely glanced at their mother as they continued rolling together snowman parts. They couldn’t look long; if their mother saw the tears frozen on their cheeks, she’d demand an answer, and if either of them broke, Mr. Teeth would be very, very mad.

“Building snowmen,” Duncan said, his tone curt, impatient.

“Why so many?”

It was Campbell’s turn to answer their mother. “We need them for students.”

Duncan quit rolling his ball and tossed loose snow at his brother, mouthing the words, “Shut up,” his face pointed away from their mother.

“Okay…well, don’t leave that hose out to freeze,” she said before turning away to hurry inside.

The brothers continued building until they were called in for supper around the TV.

—

Mr. Teeth ordered the brothers outside a few minutes after midnight. The boys dressed in damp coats and soggy boots, fresh tears playing down their faces.

“Don’t worry, it will all be over soon,” Mr. Teeth said, tone raspy and harsh. “Be good boys and fetch those red gas cans from the shed.”

As they walked, the nineteen snowman faces watched them, their heads turning subtly to see every moment of movement. Mr. Teeth then explained what had to happen next.

Campbell pouted out his bottom lip. “We aren’t supposed to play with fire.”

Mr. Teeth’s mouth chattered five heavy strikes before stopping to say, “You’ll do as you’re told, or you’ll never see your parents again.” He’d made this threat three times already.

The fire lit and the icy snowmen and the exhausted boys watched the remaining snow shrink until it was gone, revealing the green, green grass beneath.

“Burn the grass,” Mr. teeth said. “Make it soft for your shovels.”

The boys did as told.

—

Maryanne Moore held an unbranded microphone beneath her chin, facing a camera on a tripod, a circus of people and snowmen directly behind her. “I’m here at the site of the former St. Francis Xavier Residential School where two boys have discovered the remains of what appears to be between ten and twenty children. The school’s records have no mention of deceased children, making this another sudden, though not surprising, tragedy in a long history of atrocities committed by the Catholic Church in cooperation with the Canadian government…”

Duncan and Campbell stood for pictures, but answered no questions, not even the ones their parents demanded from them. They didn’t dare.

—

Theresa Scott sat up in bed, looking first to the window and then to her husband, Logan. Six grey tines played against the glass, scratching out a hideous tune. She squinted, leaning closer until she understood what it was that she was looking at: a face.

She screamed.

Logan popped upright. “What is it?”

“Snowman,” Theresa said, pointing at the window.

The world beyond the room was gloomy, but far from full dark. The clock read: 6:49. The three of them remained quiet, as if waiting for Simon’s magic word that would send them into action.

The glass suddenly shattered inward and Mr. Teeth’s stick arms stretched inside. Logan was too stunned to move as those wooden fingers encircled him. Theresa fought, swatting and screaming, but eventually succumbed. They were pulled outside, thumping painfully onto the frozen ground.

“What do you want!” Theresa said as the icy snow man pulled them toward the property line and the mass grave their boys had discovered.

“Quiet, or you’ll never see your children again,” Mr. Teeth said.

The other snowmen trailed after Mr. Teeth and the Scotts.

“What the fuck is happening here? Wake up! Wake up!” Logan said, tightening his eyes before springing them open, as if that were the magic recipe to relieving nightmares.

Mr. Teeth dropped both the Scott parents at the lip of the mounded dirt. The bones had already been removed, but the hole had remained when they’d gone to bed.

“Dig,” Mr. Teeth said.

“What the fuck is—” Theresa began but was cut off.

“You’ll do as you’re told, or you’ll never see your children again.”

In the face of such a threat, in the face of such impossible monsters, they got busy. The soil came away easily and quickly, as it was only recently shoveled into the hole. At the five feet mark, Theresa sank her shovel into something meaty and yet solid. A moment later, Logan’s shovel crunched through a mystery.

“You’ll do as you’re told, or you’ll never see your parents again…that’s what your father told us,” Mr. Teeth said before chattering with mechanical menace.

Theresa lifted her shovel, the tip coated with blood. Logan, wide-eyed, dropped to his knees and began brushing dirt off his sons. Theresa screamed and screamed and screamed, all the while 19 souls hooted in their temporary snowman vessels.

XX