Young Writers Society

This version of "Black Snow" still has some blood and death in it, but the particularly nasty details have been omitted for those who don't get excited by sheer carnage, and want to focus on the mystery/paranormal aspect of the story. Enjoy ~

                      

My name is Norval Hawkes, Chief Investigator at Lullin Police Station, Vermont. My purpose here is to record my experiences in a case that has scarred me. At the time of typing this paragraph, December 3 of the year 1936, it is six months since this happened.

Let's sum up the pretenses first:

Lullin had always been a quiet town, its issues few and far between. That was why the call regarding an absolute inferno caused such an uproar. The local firemen got the flames under control, but in its discreet rural location, the house had burned for a long time. On the surface, nothing remained but blackened beams and heaps of rubble.

However, a deeper look turned up a would-be basement, and that would be the reason for police involvement. Even from the top of the stairs, we could see the charred bones that barely resembled a human being, crawling desperately toward the surface.

One of five bodies that turned up from that cursed room.

Already suspecting foul play, the investigation proceeded immediately. The ruins provided no more clues, not even how the fire started. My assistant, Lester McCoy, established an equally fruitless paper trail.

After being uninhabited for a long time, the house fell into the possession of the Burki family, who moved in just eight days prior to the fire. They were a traditional type; a married couple and four children between the ages of seventeen and eight, having recently relocated here. Records and word of mouth proved that they didn't cause trouble, and they seemed eager to get involved with the community and the church. No rivals, no known relatives, no past owners of the property, and no sign of who sold the house to begin with.

The trail of evidence was gone, if it was ever there to begin with. Just as we began to fear the case would go cold, though, the answers quite literally walked through the door.

Two days after the fire, a girl entered the police station, and was promptly identified as the youngest member of the family.

Irene Burki was easy to recognize by her vibrant auburn hair, mild freckles, and blue eyes. Supposedly, due to severe red-green colorblindness, the family would treat her to an array of yellow clothes and toys, a hue much easier for her to admire. That explained the purely yellow and white dress she arrived in, with yellow shoes and yellow hair ribbons.

This should have been great news, but this was the start of a descent into madness and chaos.

Irene was escorted to an interrogation room, where she waited with a shocking amount of patience until I arrived. Mr. McCoy accompanied me; he expressed concern about the girl's stability, but in my eagerness to get to the root of the problem, I dismissed his worries and proceeded full-speed ahead.

The state of that room is now vividly stuck in my brain. The door was closed, and the ivory-toned walls were bare. One crack near the roof subconsciously irked my peripheral vision. The grayish wooden floor creaked with each step we took. The air was musty and carried a faint smell of ink and parchment. At the simple table, Irene sat on the side closer to the back wall, while Mr. McCoy and I occupied two chairs across from her. Mr. McCoy had a compact black typewriter with him, ready to record the conversation.

As I sat down, I extended a friendly greeting. "Irene Burki, it is a pleasure to have you here with us. I am Mr. Hawkes, and this is my assistant, Mr. McCoy. He'll be recording everybody's responses, so please don't mind the typing noise. Just speak as you normally would."

"Nice to meet you, young lady," Mr. McCoy said in a tone much nicer than mine.

Irene did not respond to either of us. She just stared forward with a blank, unchanging expression. With her skin resembling porcelain, hardly a ruffle in her sunny attire, and faint breathing as her only movement, she looked like a doll. One that would belong to the child of a Victorian-era aristocrat. Though it sounds nice in writing, it was unnerving to witness in real time. After all, dolls are lifeless. How could a breathing human look lifeless too?

Already, I knew something wasn't right. Of course I would not ascribe any malicious intent to a child, but I couldn't help watching her very closely as the interview proceeded.

While Mr. McCoy typed away, I explained, "About two days ago, we found your new home burned down. We also can't find any members of your family. Do you know why that is?"

Irene still didn't say a word. I began to wonder if something was physically wrong with her.

Mr. McCoy made an attempt. "Can you explain what the last thing you remember is? Where did you come from, and how?"

Irene's eyes shifted toward him, her posture stiff as a board. She remained silent.

I tried a new angle, asking, "Someone told me that your family is new to Lullin. Is that right?"

Though I didn't receive any words, Irene's gaze snapped back to me. Finally, I found something to capture her attention.

"Do you know what brought your family up here?" I asked.

Like someone pulled the string to her voice box, Irene began to speak, but her tone was flat, strained, and blunt. Her mouth barely moved; I could swear there were points where it didn't even sync with the words. Those words, likewise, sounded like they were answering a different question.

She said, "We moved into the house eight days ago."

"Yes, I remember hearing about that," I remarked with hope. "Do you know why? Do you remember your mother or father talking about it?"

Again, she answered in her own way.

"On the first day at dusk, we watched a black snow fall. We saw it from the big window in the loft. Just like during winter, it covered the trees, the ground, and the rooftop. When my brothers, my sister, and I went out to check, it was very cold and melted in the heat. We could roll it into balls, and when thrown, they would explode into powder. Only, this powder was black like charcoal. By dawn, our second day in the home, it was gone and we all felt sick. My parents and siblings had become weak and sick. Father tried to go into town, but every time he left, he would walk back out of the trees within minutes. Even though he insisted that he never changed directions."

I was utterly baffled, so much so that I couldn't find the words to say. I glanced at Mr. McCoy. He was still typing, but reflected the same confusion.

Irene continued, "We stayed together for the rest of the day, and at the very same time as before, the black snow fell again. We watched until we fell asleep, all laid out on the floor in the loft. Come morning, the snow was gone, and I woke up to the crackling of the fireplace. Our two cats were dead inside."

A chill crept down my back. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"We tried to move on. Our father buried the cats, while our mother made breakfast. However, the milk had turned into blood, and when Mother cracked the eggs, black sludge oozed from the cracks. It smelled like rotting meat. We threw it all away, but no matter how much we cleaned up, the smell stayed in the house. We already felt sick, so with that air, we kept vomiting throughout the day."

In a voice straining to be calm, Mr. McCoy asked her, "What did you eat then? When was the last time you had any kind of meal?"

Rather than answer, Irene continued her story. She was hardly acknowledging that we existed at this point.

"We stayed together and ate scraps for dinner. Approaching night three, the black snow fell again, but we were too sick to care, and our parents were too busy trying to clear the smell of death. We eventually fell asleep. When we woke up, we all felt sick, but Dennis had it the worst."

I had just enough sense to know that she was talking about the third child.

"Dennis wouldn't stop vomiting. We started counting the seconds between his episodes, and the furthest we got was two and a half minutes. He was lying on his side in the bathroom, twitching and heaving. His eyes were empty like a toy. He spat up everything that went in his body, until blood showed up in his spit.

His skin was pasty and felt like paper. His breaths were less than a second long, and his whole front was as hard as a rock. Before noon, he died on the ground, curled up like a spider. Father failed to get him help because the only road still looped back to the property."

That, I could not stomach. The thought of anyone dying in such a manner was horrible enough, but the vividity and sheer carelessness with which Irene described it all sparked an irrepressible rage in me. I glanced at Mr. McCoy, trying to ground myself again. I saw the same terror as he typed out these wicked answers. Looking back now, I wish I could have told him to leave right then.

I shot up from my seat and slammed my palm against the table. "N-Now listen, young lady, this is going too far. I do not know who taught you to tell such vile stories, but it is absolutely inappropriate. Looping paths, some evil black snow; I need nothing more to know it's all a fib. You should feel ashamed!"

I watched that wretched girl for what must have been thirty full seconds, but she said nothing. She didn't move, and her blank expression didn't shift an inch. It was also around then I realized that, throughout this entire exchange, I never once saw her blink. Those dead blue eyes of hers, just mildly annoying at first, were now making me deeply uneasy.

Mr. McCoy cleared his throat. "Irene, what happened the next night?"

I muttered, "Lester, what are you doing?"

Mr. McCoy whispered to me, "Children speak their own language, Norval, especially during difficult times. I know this sounds wild, but we need to keep listening. Once we pull back the layers, we may just get a breakthrough. Trust me."

As vexed and uneasy as I was, Mr. McCoy's words were more than reasonable, and I knew from my own experiences that there was truth to them. He braced himself to continue typing. I swallowed my reservations and retook my seat.

"Continue your story, please," I spoke calmly.

Irene did nothing different. In the same robotic way, she explained, "After Dennis died, Father moved him into the basement and locked the door. No matter how many times he tried to leave the property, he always returned to the house within minutes."

"Did the black snow come back?" Mr. McCoy asked.

"Night four. The black snow fell again. That time, however, Father ran out into the cold and tried to leave. Again, he returned in just a few minutes, but now he was moving slowly and said nothing. He locked himself in the bathroom for the rest of the night. Meanwhile, I tried to fall asleep by the window. I thought I saw something moving outside, but I closed the curtains and fell asleep before it got too close. I was too scared."

I couldn't help but sneer, "You don't seem very scared now."

Irene did not respond.

"Continue," Mr. McCoy insisted.

"The next day, I woke up to Bertie's screaming."

I knew Bertie was the eldest. Seventeen, just a month from being a legal adult.

"Mother told me to stay, but I still followed her. The noise was coming from the bathroom. I could smell blood from all the way down the hall, even though we were having to get used to it by now. When I finally got to see, blood was smeared everywhere, especially around the tub. Dennis's body was in it. Father stood over him, shaking and holding a razor. Ford asked him what he was doing, but he said nothing."

Ford. The second child, I recalled.

Again, I struggled to retain my composure. It was the first time in years that I had been made so uncomfortable by an interrogation. With the analogy she gave, I was barely able to keep my bile down, but I continued to listen. Another regret of many in this entire ordeal.

"Mother screeched at him. It took a while for her to get through to him, but eventually, Father picked up what was left of the body and went back to the basement. As soon as he passed the door, Mother slammed it shut and locked it. We heard Father banging on the other side, so much that I was afraid he'd break it down. Mother told us not to open the door under any circumstances and kept the key on her. We could still hear him slamming things around, or returning to bang on the door now and again."

Mr. McCoy absently nodded, typing those last few words. "Night five?"

"At dusk, the black snow fell again. Mother gave us the last bit of clean water, then picked enough maggots from the oats for us to eat dinner. When Ford and Bertie went to bed, she went out to search for supplies. I watched her walk past the window. Something big and dark was following her, but again, I looked away. I fell asleep before she came back.

The next morning, she was still gone. We waited, and eventually, Ford went to search for her. It was from a bedroom that we heard his screaming. Bertie and I ran there immediately. Mother was holding him down.

Bertie pulled her back, and we saw Ford with blood all around in his face and neck. Like a madwoman, Mother bit into Bertie's arm, then she jumped on him again. She just kept tearing and clawing at him. Bertie kept trying to pull her off, but she wouldn't stop. Not until the blood made a massive pool, and Ford stopped moving."

"And..." I hesitated to speak, trying to find the words. "What happened to your mother?"

"Bertie snuck the basement key from Mother's pocket, then grabbed a vase from one of the moving boxes and smashed it over her head. She collapsed, and Bertie dragged her body to the basement door. She unlocked it, then as quickly as she could, she went in and pulled Mother down the stairs. I could see from the door. Bertie laid Mother on the ground, but when she tried to climb back up, we heard rapid 'thuds' getting closer.

It was Father, but all his skin was missing, exposing pink flesh. 'Come to me,' he yelled at us, but Bertie ran up the stairs and locked the door again. We heard him slam into the other side of it, banging madly on the door just like the first time. After a while, we could hear Mother yelling at us too. It was very hard to fall asleep that night."

I sighed, "Let me guess. Black snow?"

"Bertie and I watched the black snow fall until we went to sleep. The next morning, when we woke up, we waited for a long time, but there was no more noise coming from the basement at all. We went hungry that day, and we cried a lot. The next day was worse."

I felt my teeth gritting as I braced to hear this next account. In her typical way, Irene began to explain.

"After night seven, I woke up and found Bertie in front of the fireplace. She had just lit a match and threw it into the pit. There was a lot of tinder and paper inside, so the flames grew fast. I told her it was a good idea, because it was cold. She said nothing, though. After a moment, she picked up something else. She stayed sitting in that spot, but turned toward me. I looked down, and in her hands, there was an iron poker for the fireplace.

Right when I was in the middle of asking what it was for, she turned the hot poker toward herself. I looked away before I saw what happened, and when I finally looked back, she had fallen into the flames."

I struggled to avoid letting that image come together in my head. I didn't want to see it.

Irene continued, "It took a long time for me to drag her body to the basement. I saw Father at the top of the stairs, with the razor shoved through one ear. At the bottom of the stairs, Mother was dead. I put Bertie next to her, then went back and pulled Ford down too. I locked the door, just like they did, then went back to the loft."

Mr. McCoy cleared his throat, yet his voice still came out strained. "Why did you do that?"

Irene ignored him. I leaned toward her with a stern expression, trying to employ some form of intimidation.

"What about the last night, Irene?" I asked. "The night of the fire."

"I watched the black snow all alone. Once the powder had built up, I opened the door and walked outside. It was cold and wet, but I kept going, toward the road leading back to town. I heard something behind me, but I never looked back. I kept walking. I found some markings that my Father must have left during his attempts to leave. Then I found his red truck crashed against a big rock. Finally, I walked out of the trees. I saw the same house I just tried to leave, just like Father. Only, this time, I didn't go inside. I turned around. Something was standing there."

"Something?" Asked Mr. McCoy. "And then the house went up? What do you-"

I cut him off with a sudden gasp. Something just clicked; something that seemed minor, yet sent a chill up my spine.

"Irene, you said you saw your father's red truck?" I said bitterly. "You did say that, didn't you?"

Irene shifted her eyes onto me.

"You're colorblind," I insisted. "You can't see the colors red or green. How did you see a red truck?"

Irene didn't respond. Feeling uneasy, I left the room quickly; I intended to pull up something from my office. Hurrying down the hall and toward the entrance, the first thing I noticed was how silent it was.

Then, at the entrance, I caught a glimpse of something through the glass doors and neighboring windows. Something that made me stop in my tracks.

I couldn't believe it.

I approached one window with slow, rigid steps. My heart was beating like a hammer against my chest. I tried to blink the sight away, then even pinched my arm. However, I was staring at the undeniable truth.

Black snow had covered the town outside. A town plagued by gray skies, its streets darkened and empty of life. Powder, the hue of charcoal, built up on the rooftops and in the streets. Dark gray frost, like countless needle-like shards, spread from every edge of the glass pane.

I put one hand against the glass. It was colder than ice. It burned my skin, even through the glove I was wearing. This was not natural.

"This cannot be real," I whispered.

A distant clatter forced my attention elsewhere. Without thinking, I ran back to the interrogation room.

However, it was empty.

The chairs that Mr. McCoy and I once occupied were now tipped over, while the one Irene had been in was practically disintegrated on the floor. The only light was flickering madly.

All that remained was the typewriter. One page was in the machine, halfway printed.

Without thinking, I approached and pulled the paper out. To my shock, I only read half of my last question before an entirely new section picked up. I remember every last word in that damned paragraph.

"'The child had been left alone and had nowhere to go. After days of hiding within cursed walls, she opened the door and stepped into the black snow. She tried just once to walk away, knowing something was following, watching, stalking. When she failed, she turned back and met the divine beast face to face. As she embraced the darkness, the beast did not use her as prey, but as VESSEL.'"

I couldn't take it.

I ran to the door and charged out into the black snow, keeping my head down. The cold burned my feet and hands, worse than any winter day I had experienced before. The smell of smoke, sulfur, and rotting flesh was almost overwhelming.

I only looked back once, but I wish I hadn't.

In the window of the station, Irene was watching, and towering over her was a bestial shadow. Its jagged antlers stretched past the frame, and its white eyes were piercing.

In perfect sync with the girl, with one claw on its humanoid hand, it started slowly tapping the glass. Each tap hit my ears like they were daggers of ice, prodding into my brain.

'TAP!'

'TAP! '

'TAP!'

I turned away and kept running, but at my first step, I could hear a heavy 'thud' like a hoof behind me. It made me run faster.

The 'thuds' kept coming, accompanied by a disgusting 'crackling' like broken bones. It couldn't have been more than a few feet behind, but I swear, there was at least one moment where it got as close as a hair from me. I could feel its rotten breath against my neck. I never looked back, though.

I kept running, and eventually, the noises stopped.

The unnatural freeze receded to one more tolerable.

The snow was still everywhere, but it faded from that frightening coal-black to a pure white.

I slowed down then, and when I looked up, I realized that I was staring down the local church. Without ever looking behind me, I went in and sealed the door behind me. On a pew toward the back, I never slept -I barely moved, until dawn the next day.

When I finally left, with the pastor's blessing for reassurance, I saw Lullin as it should have been. There were people all about, the sun was shining, and there was not a trace of snow.

It took days of wallowing in my regret and shame, before I finally gained the nerve to go back. I shuddered at the sight of the station, but I pressed on and learned the truth.

It was like nothing ever happened. Nobody recalled Irene entering the building. There were no records of any interrogation with her. The same people who alerted me to her arrival were now absolutely dumbfounded at the mere mention of her name. Then, to throw salt in the wound, Mr. McCoy was missing. His case remains unsolved, and his family is oblivious.

For as traumatic as the experience had been, there is no word to describe the guilt I felt -that I still feel today. I abandoned a little girl and my own assistant. There are so many grim reminders in the station that I stopped counting them. Revenge, absolution, a chance to bring them back, an opportunity to destroy that thing; whatever the result may be, I want nothing more than to settle this case for good.

So I watch the sky very closely, waiting to see the black snow fall again.