A Winter Story Pt 1

What does our protagonist find in this new town?

It was cold. So very cold. The sun’s light shone down to the white covered earth; filtered through a thick veil of dark clouds. The wind howled through the trees all around me: howling, like an angry revenant, as if the dying ghost of the season’s first winter storm. Each step brought about a wet crunch and each exhalation a grey fog that went to join the equally grey clouds above. The overwhelming coldness seemed to permeate every facet of existence here: seeping into the very core of the land itself.

Before this week, I didn’t think it could get this cold, having spent most of my life in the western edge of the Mojave Desert. Certainly  it got cool at night, but nowhere near this unrelenting, abhorrent cold. I sighed deeply. Another cloud floating to the ether. I watched it rise and disappear...this place was so different. Everything, absolutely everything, was different. And, not for the first time that week, I felt a pang of of homesickness course through me.

One of the most glaring difference was the sky. The sky in the desert almost always ran a deep sapphire, and not the usual mixture of grey and azure here. The horizons there stretched to eternity, and the skies themselves to infinity. Here both were choked by the climbing clawing branches of the oaks, and the beeches and the spruce trees, and blotted out by the towering evergreens. It felt claustrophobic, and that feeling, like the cold, seeped in everywhere. The forests seemed to crowd and converge in every direction whenever my mind would focus on it. And, for perhaps the thousandth time that week I thought about how coming here was a mistake.

But like the last thousand or so times I steeled my resolve in that instance. I knew that I needed to make the move. I needed to get away from the desert I so loved, and I needed to get away from everything and everyone that I knew. Need was the ultimate driving factor, and the need wouldn’t go away if I moved back there now. If I did so, I’d probably find myself more miserable than I currently am, and no way of escaping. And escape was my need.

A car rushed by, the bust of cold air kicked up by it’s passing knocked me out of my introspection and back to the cold, dismal reality around me. I shifted the weight of the frozen cord of pine tucked underneath my arm to keep it from slipping on the ground and felt small slivers of hardened bark pierce the polyester and cotton layers that were meant to protect me from the wrath of winter. In fact, it was the best coat the guy had at the store a couple towns south of here. I shivered --what a useless coat, and once again adjusted the firewood so it would not poke at the tender flesh of my underarm: an ultimately useless action as it pierced the jacket and tickled my arm once more.

It was a quaint town: one that I would probably not be able to point to on a map if asked. The population was no more than two thousand--I might be the two thousandth, in fact, if it weren’t for the fact that I had visited once before: when we went to go see my mother’s mother a couple of summers ago, or if it weren’t for the fact that my mother grew up here and talked about it constantly. I’ve wondered over the last couple of days: did my mother think the way I did about my hometown? Were the skies of the desert different to her? Did she think the endless skies were far too large? Like standing beneath a vicious ocean? Were these claustrophobic skies cozy and inviting to her? Did she miss this biting winters as I missed the warm summers of the Mojave? I’d have something to ask her when -if- I spoke to her again.

As I sank back into my inner self, my feet carrying me unconsciously onward, through these unfamiliar streets and back to the house, a breath of life was breathed into the waning storm: reanimating that once fading ghost. It started with a single, unseen flake, falling on the tip of my nose. Then another on my cheek, like the cool kiss of winter itself. And then on my eyelash, and finally all around me. Next were the winds, howling back to life, ripping through the empty, white streets and the reaching bare branches. How much further did I have to go until I would reach the house? Until I reached shelter? D****t, I should have paid more attention to the path this morning. I pulled up the collar of my sweater higher than it was meant to go and carried on: determined to make it home before I got too lost in this raging blizzard.

The storm continued to grow and swell around me. A rather harsh wind picked the loose snow at my feet and blew through me, tossing the flurry into the surrounding fog that had risen in response to the tempest I was in. Within minutes this fog seemed to close in on me, assailing me from every direction, making it difficult to see more that a few feet in front of me. If I didn’t hurry up, I’d probably lose my way in this storm. With this thought in mind I hunched my back, tucked the wood further into my underarm and picked up my pace.

A couple of minutes later I came across a familiar and, at that point, welcomed sight: the beginning of a narrow stretch of bridge that seemed to me at the time a red carpet: albeit a couple of hundred yard red carpet. Just cross this bridge, and another dozen more yards, I’d be safe and warm next to a fire, the smell of burning pine filling my nostrils and the room.

The bridge spanned a rather deep river bank over a creek that was no doubt frozen underneath. As the wind whipped underneath the narrow bridge, and through the rocky sides of the bank, I could feel the foundations of the bridge creaking, as I held onto the railings, and felt my heart jump more than a few times. It wouldn’t fall, I told myself. It’s made of solid concrete, and had probably survived thousands of similar storms. Starting on it took nearly all of the will I had accumulated at that point.

And how quick lived that will was. As I took a single step on the bridge I froze in place. Somewhere down the hundred or so yard expanse a sound carried on the howling wind. A sound that I would never have expected standing there in that weather. The sound of someone sobbing.

Why? Why would someone be out here willingly in this weather? No doubt there was someone, as the sobbing persisted with every passing moment: the quick rapid breaths of sorrow sounded over the howling, screaming winds. Unconsciously, standing there, my mind went to stories that my uncle would tell: how water and rivers would trap lost and wandering spirits. One story in particular would stick in my mind: the story of La Llorona. The weeping woman.

The story goes, according to my uncle, that there was a beautiful woman, after giving birth, or after her husband had cheated on her, or abused her, (the reason changed with every retelling), dragged her children from their cribs and beds to a nearby riverbank. One by one she tossed each one into the swelling river: their bodies being swallowed by the rapids, and their heads dashing against the rocks that parted the river’s flow. After her cruel work was done, she stepped into the river herself, letting it wash her away. The waters of the river captured her spirit ,and now she wanders riverbanks looking for children to drag into the depths of the rivers to be with her and her children.

I shook the ridiculous thought out of my head: La Llorona was a story used by adults to dissuade children from wandering too close to rivers during the rainy season so they wouldn’t find themselves being washed away, and to make sure that they didn’t disturb any of the moccasins or other water snakes that made their homes in the pieces of driftwood that would gather on the banks. It was a cautionary tale, as most stories of the paranormal were. But I would lie if I said that I didn’t start across the bridge with huge amounts of trepidation.

With each step forward. With each passing inch the sobbing grew steadily more loud. What was once a pianissimo, slowly crescendoed with every trepid step. It was inhuman, I told myself, this sobbing. It’s some angry spirit, waiting to drag me down to the frozen depths below, my irrational side told me. It’s the wind, whistling through a branch, my more rational side countered. But, to me, it sounded like sorrow. Piano now. And then, in the center of the bridge, mezzo-piano. The climbing crescendo coming to a halt mere inches away: a few more steps forward: out of the swirling fog around me, and I would see the source of my terror. For the first time that morning I trembled more from fear than from the cold.

What would be waiting for me, beyond this pale fog? A young woman with long, dark hair, matted with river muck and a white nightgown, sticking close to her emaciated form as water froze at her feet? A branch stuck inside the railing at an odd angle? I took a step forward, my answer mere inches away.

And then it came into view: the source of my terror. Despite what horror, or mundane thing I was expecting, nothing could have prepared me to what it actually was. What was sitting in this whipping winter wind? What did I see pass the thick white fog?

A girl.

Author's Note

definitely a rough draft. Critique would be appreciated.