The Weather Outside is Frightful

A newlywed couple and their firstborn baby of only nine months have been trapped inside their holiday home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, by a giant snowstorm that was plowing through the city.

There was less than a week until Christmas, and they were baking cookies to celebrate the holidays and give their new baby an amazing first Christmas.

Completely unbothered by the blizzard outside, the family of three were playing Frank Sinatra’s cover of “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” loudly throughout the house while baking candy cane-shaped sugar cookies, the words echoing,

Oh, the weather outside is frightful

But the fire is so delightful

And since we've no place to go

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

And that it did. It snowed, and it snowed—seemingly neverending. It just kept piling on, one inch after another, until it was basically impossible to push open any door in the house.

When the torrential snow finally came to a stop several hours after it had begun, the family had plenty of time to not only finish baking the cookies and eat half of them, but to also prepare and bake salt-dough ornaments for their tree, which take around five hours to finish.

Everything was going well for this family, so much so that there were already presents under the tree and cookies on a plate for Santa. The only question now was how he was going to get inside with all the snow piled atop the chimney.

* * * * *

With all the snow on the ground encompassing everything in sight, it was nearly impossible to get a wifi or satellite signal, leading the family to have to use their imagination in the absence of any sort of media. But it wasn’t difficult, given the spirit in the air.

But it did lead the father to see something he couldn’t explain. Something was outside; in the several feet of snow, there was something unusual. He saw not an animal or a deer or even a child, but something much more eerie.

Words. He saw words in the snow.

He thought about it for a second, staring at it intently, hoping its message would become clearer. And just when he thought he could make something out, his daughter cried to him, ushering him to move his train on the toy tracks that lay in the middle of them all.

So, he did. He thought it was better to entertain his child than to hear her scream when he didn’t.

The only problem was that when he looked back up, the words were gone. Or what he thought were words were gone. He was questioning it now.

Maybe he had only thought he saw words. Perhaps they were never there. Maybe it was just a strange pattern in the snowfall.

And that’s what he chalked it up to. He didn’t want to pay any more attention to it out of fear of missing out on the holiday time with his family. So, he sat up, refocused his attention on his beautiful wife and her wonderful mini-me, and pretended nothing was wrong because, in his mind, nothing really was.

* * * * *

Bedtime came early for the family, with the snow blocking out most of the sunshine, making it appear much darker than it would normally be at that time of the day. So, the father and his wife tucked their sweet little angel into her cozy little bed and began to make their way to their own room, stopping only to clean up a few toys and rearrange the living room.

The mother and father were working in unison, making the process of cleaning go undeniably quickly, when the father suddenly stopped and his eyes became trapped on something outside. This caused his wife, too, to stop, but she didn’t look outside; she merely looked at him.

“What are you looking at?”

He glanced at her, his face pale and his eyes wide. “The word,” he whispered to her, his hand outstretched and pointing to the outside.

She looked directly where his hand was pointing. “There’s nothing there,” she said, her voice a little quaky with fear at what her husband was talking about.

“Yes, it’s right there!” He peered back outside, knowing what he saw, but it was gone. And in finding that it was gone, he took a step back and fumbled over a small toy, trying to find the breath that had been sucked out of him by the dread.

The wife, now in shock, pretended to dismiss his worries. “I think it’s time for bed. You seem a little delirious,” she said jokingly, clearly not convinced of it herself.

* * * * *

Now everyone was in bed, but no one could sleep. The daughter was far too antsy and excited for Christmas, and the parents were, well, unnerved.

The father stayed up, replaying the images in his head, knowing that what he saw was real. He lay there, thinking to himself.

There were words. No. One word. There was one word. It started with an H. It definitely started with an H. I remember all of the lines. And there were five, no, four letters. It started with H, and there were four letters. Help? Hail? Hate? Hint? Hide? Hide. That’s it. I remember. It was hide. But why’d it say hide?

Suddenly, he was jostled from his thoughts at the sound of a loud thump somewhere in the house.

He and his wife made eye contact, both still on edge, and the mother began to cry. Quietly, tears leapt from her eyes, signaling the panic inside her body. The husband tried to comfort her, but with no luck because there was another thump, louder than before, that made his wife’s body recoil like she was being beaten.

They both froze, the mother shivering, when, out of nowhere, there was a high pitched, ear-piercing scream. But it wasn’t an unfamiliar scream. It was one they both knew very well, one that they had heard for the last nine months.

The mother stopped crying, looked her husband in the eyes once more, and yelled louder than she ever had yelled, “Lindsey!”

Both of them jumped out of their state of fear and out of their beds, tripping and tumbling over their own feet as well as the sheets that ended up tangled around them, running frantically, trying to get to their little girl.

But as soon as they got there, the screaming stopped, and, as far as they could tell, everything was normal.

Maybe it was just a nightmare.

They both slowly crept their way to their daughter's bed, inch by inch, step by step, and right before they could peer over the cradle bars, there was another thump, the loudest it had been, and it was right behind them.

They paused, once again frozen in fear, when a voice hissed at them like a snake with a million tongues: “Hide!”

No one moved or made a sound. The baby didn’t scream or cry, or make a single peep. From the loudest of thumps and the most gut-wrenching voices to complete silence.

The husband finally built up the courage to turn around. Meanwhile, the wife was still completely unable to move or even make a single sound. And when he fully rotated around, he met eyes with the most gruesome-looking creature he had ever seen.

It had black eyes and odd black, textured skin that looked somewhat slimy to the touch. It’s mouth was a gaping hole, like a void waiting to devour its next star. It was taller and more girthy than any human on the planet could ever dream to be, and all of its limbs seemed to be turned backwards at the joints, making it look like some sort of monster dining table with an appetite for violence.

But the most unusual part of this giant beast was what lay on its head. It wore a Christmas hat, making the hellish devil appear somewhat festive.

And when it saw the eyes of the horrified father, it lashed out like a viper trying to catch its prey, knocking him over and forcing him to shove his wife and flip his daughter’s cradle.

But what waited inside the cradle could no longer be described as his daughter, or anyone’s daughter, for that matter. It was barely human—a skinless corpse, crimson red with no sign of life, or that it ever actually lived.

Blood poured out of the bed and pooled all over the floor, the tiny lifeless body rolling out and landing face-up where all they could see were the lifeless eyes and disjointed jaw, joustling the mother from her hypnotic state and thrusting her into screams of sheer agony.

The creature leapt forward with loud growls that could cause one to go deaf, emitting its distasteful breath. This, combined with their baby’s blood all over the room, caused the two to gag, forcing them to drop their guard and become all the more vulnerable to the mammoth beast.

The creature grew closer until it was basically on top of the wife; her screams not nearly enough to keep it away. And then it opened its mouth that seemingly could hold the universe, engulfed the wife’s head until her screams sounded like nothing but muffled whispers, and bit down.

The crunch of all of the bones in her neck breaking filled the room as the husband crawled away, corning himself against a wall several feet from the door.

The creature ripped the head away from the body, taking out part of the spine with it, and ate the head, each bite calling louder toward fate.

But the creature eating gave the man just enough courage to truly believe he had time to make it to the door and escape. So, he tried. With all of the passion left in his body, he hopped to his feet and began to run. But he didn’t get far before he slipped on the blood of his daughter and now also his wife, crashing to the floor and drawing all the attention from the creature’s meal and to himself.

The creature’s head snapped towards the man, who was now crawling for dear life towards the door, as if the beast could not pass the threshold that was once his daughter’s room. As if making out would lead to safety.

But he could not even make it to the door before his foot was grabbed and gnawed off by the monster’s vermin teeth, sending pain throughout his entire body and causing him to lose blood so quickly that he could barely even see straight.

Still, he pulled himself together, the creature distracted by his disconnected limb, and made way for the door, but it was only hope.

As soon as his hand landed outside the line that marked the daughter’s room, he was dragged back inside and devoured in a single bite, with no time to scream or even attempt to put up a struggle.

It was all over.

This family who was desperately waiting for their favorite holiday of the year, was stopped short. All of their hard work from just a few hours earlier went to waste at the same time a song they all knew too well played calmly throughout the house.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful

But the fire is so delightful

And since we've no place to go

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!