Author: Keith Foreman. Keith is a self-confessed Lovecraft nerd and member of the Edinburgh Writing Collective. He lives in Scotland, and would probably get more writing done if he wasn’t also playing Roleplaying Games.

You stop being able to hear it, after a while. I don’t mean the whisper ghosting of the snow settling around you, that seems to numb the sounds of the forest in much the same manner that the cold deadens your extremities. I mean the crunch of the snow under your feet as you walk. For a time, that is all you can hear, once you’ve been walking for a while, but eventually, even that sound fades. It passes out of all awareness so that the realisation of it is unsettling in itself. In honesty, I don’t know when it was that I noticed. It was some time after the lamplight from our carriage had been lost in the swirling blizzard behind me.

I don’t know how long I had been walking, for even time seemed to become like ice. All I really knew was the trees around me, the ever-present snow and the grim knowledge that my family were waiting for me to return. It had been my selfish pride that had insisted we could make it through the cold to the next town, my arrogance that had us push onward despite signs that our horse was ailing and exhausted. So when the poor beast could go no further, unable to drag our carriage along the snow-packed road for even another step, I elected to strike out on foot to get help. My Katherine and the children, Robert and Anna, would be better off staying with the carriage, I reasoned. There was some warmth within, and oil to light the lamps. I had even gathered wood for a fire should it be needed. I was sure it would suffice. After all, we had been travelling through the night and the town must have been close.

Still, I had not yet found salvation. Eventually, my creeping awareness came to understand that I had lost the road, somewhere in the dark and the cold, and that the forest was no longer regimented on either side of me and was instead all around. I found myself reaching to touch one of those ancient boughs in disbelief. I’d been so certain that my path was true. That presently I would emerge within sight of the town, the lights and sounds of winter gaiety. The townsfolk would be surprised to see me, but kind and generous and understanding. They’d invite me to their hearth and press upon me warm drinks of spiced cider. I would decline, insisting that we retrace my steps at once and bring aid to my family, and only reluctantly and with sadness would I accept their offers and condolences. For how could they retrace my steps when the snow settles so thickly and I couldn’t even be sure of the route I had taken.

I glared at that tree then and cursed it for its silent vigil. For some irrational time, I was sure that it and its fellows were judging me. Bearing some ancient, heartless witness upon my folly and self-regard. Well, to hell with them. Let them be sentinel while life moves on around them. Let them gather the snow as a mantle and pretend that they’re fit to judge me. And when the weight of time catches up to them as it does us all, let them fall and rot unregarded. My anger gave me new strength then. My steps were firmer and as determined as when I’d started my trek. The town had to be close. It had to be.

Snow deadens more than sound and sensation. I’d pushed on for some time and had seen the thing before I realised I’d seen it. Motionless as I approached through the dark haze and eerie quiet, it moved only as I got close enough to see it wasn’t just another tree or snow-bent sapling. I was the only thing in that forest that moved. And then I was not. If anyone or anything heard my cry of surprise, I can’t say. It moved. When I say it moved, I mean it turned its head to look at me. And in the seconds after my voice had been lost to the cold night, it reached out one pale, long arm and strangely blacked finger and beckoned me. What else could I do but follow?

It kept pace ahead of me, no matter how quickly I tried to keep up. It always seemed to be just at the edge of my sight. With the wind and ice in my eyes, I could barely make out more than the merest outline of its features, so I couldn’t say if it were man or beast. Its limbs were long, corpse-pale and freakishly jointed, yet even at a distance I could see its fingers were dark as dirty coal. Its waiflike frame was adorned with a number of peculiar lumps around the back and shoulders, though its head was long and almost equine in countenance. You might ask what madness would have me place my steps after such a thing, yet at the time it seemed to me to be the only thing to do. There was no thought in my mind of any other choice I might make. It wanted me to follow it, so I did. All the while I felt that its eyes were on me, even when it was turned away and scurrying over the snow in that unnerving way that I could not.

We would have made an eerie pairing, if anyone had seen us. Me struggling through each drift, chilled to the bone even in my wrapped coat and thick scarf. It moving like the snow was solid underneath, and naked and uncaring to the elements. To ask for how long we continued our procession would be meaningless, so know instead that eventually my boots scraped on hard-packed earth and stone under the snow, and I realised that the trees had parted and I was on the road once more. The thing continued to beckon me, more urgently than before, and with the road came a deeper sense of urgency and purpose. It was leading me to where I needed to be. I fancied I could almost hear the sounds of the townsfolk singing winter laments around their fireplaces. I broke into a half run, though I stumbled often, heedless of anything other than that need to be moving.

But it was not to the town that the thing led me. There came, further ahead of me on the road, a drift of snow and ice larger than the ones I’d been wading through all night. Taller than myself, and taller than the thing would be if it ever stood fully upright. Beside it was another, smaller mound, strangely shaped. As I approached that mound of snow, I felt a chill in me that had nothing to do with the winter night. There was something uncanny about it, something that tugged at me with its familiarity, something that made my steps falter as those of our horse had faltered when it pulled the carriage. The thing had scurried atop the snowdrift and beckoned, and some aspect of its elongated grin took on a malevolence that turned that inner chill into the blackest ice.

With hands that trembled for reasons other than the cold, I reached to claw and brush and pull away the snowdrift. With each handful, I revealed more and more of the truth. My panted breathing became a whimpering that seemed far away to my ears, even as my breath turned to ice crystals in the air. First I uncovered the iron frame of an oil lamp, its glass cracked by the cold. Then the wood of a carriage door, warped and splintered. I had to pull with all my fading strength to get the door open. I screamed then. I screamed long and hard. In pain. In self-loathing. In grief. For huddled in that ice-rimmed carriage were three awfully familiar bodies, blackened by the frost.

The thing revealed itself then, suddenly lit by the carriage lamps as they flared to brightness. It crawled down from above and into the carriage like a spider. Its horse’s head regarded me with the same hate my horse had done as I tried to force it to keep pulling. The bitter black faces of my wife and children regarded me from the vile lumps on its shoulders and back, their frost-cracked lips soundlessly cursing my name. The thing raised its head and howled. Its anguish and loss and despair drove me stumbling back. My tears froze on my cheeks. It pointed at me then with frostbitten fingers, pointed past me down the road. I ran. I fled that hideous wailing cry and the damning eyes and the bodies in the carriage.

I ran until I couldn’t hear the thing screaming, or the whisper of the snowfall, or the crunch of my footsteps as I went. I don’t know how long I went like that before I realised I couldn’t hear any of it anymore…I just know that it was some time after the lamplight from the carriage had been lost in the swirling blizzard behind me.

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