Snow Angels

My own version of a CreepyPasta. This has an alternate ending. Please read and tell me which one you prefer. I'm entering this into a contest and would love as much feedback as quickly as possible!

Scarnechia Cemetery

December 24, 2000, Christmas Eve

15:30 Hours

 

Once a month, my twin sister, Brianna, and I meet in Scarnechia Cemetery to pay our respects to our Grandpa Hank, who died twenty-seven years ago tonight.  The same night of the incident that would cause my sister to never speak again.

I pulled up alongside the cemetery gates at twenty-five past three, pulled on my hat and gloves, and stepped out into the freshly fallen snow, which crunched under my boots like shards of glass.  Covering my bare cheeks as best as I could with the tattered winter jacket I wore, I saw Bri sitting patiently in the snow next to Grandpa.  As I headed up the sloppily cleared path towards her, I checked my watch.  Its fading digital face read 15:27.

At 15:29, I was by her side; like always, she stayed quiet, but her smile told me she was glad to see me.  I hugged my baby sister, younger than myself by six minutes, but as she had ever since the incident, she stared off into the distance; the only sign of recognition came from the corners of her mouth.  When she is upset, they turn down ever so subtly, giving her lovely face the impression of someone who has just smelled a dead skunk on a humid summer afternoon.  The time was thirty seconds to 15:30.

The alarm on my watch went off at exactly 15:30, as it does every day we meet, and I knelt beside Brianna, bowing my head in silence and saying a short prayer for our grandfather.  At 15:35, I told him about what we had been doing since we had last spoken.  At 15:40, I returned to my sister and sat beside her, reminiscing about our childhood and remembering all of the fun we had.

At 16:25, I got up and kissed my sister on the cheek before trudging back to my truck.  I looked back and waved goodbye to Brianna as I reached the start of the path, then climbed into my vehicle.  As I adjusted my rear-view mirror, I thought I saw her smile curl into one of bitter hatred.  Rubbing my eyes, I looked again, but when our eyes locked she was smiling again.  I dismissed it as just my imagination.  I left at 16:30, just like every day we met like this.

 

Katashi Street Apartment Complex

17:15 Hours

 

I returned to my apartment, groceries in my arms.  I was surprised to find the door unlocked and slightly ajar.  I could have sworn I had locked it before I left, but I pushed the thought aside, since the proprietor did go into each room to collect the next month’s rent the last week of every month.  I shouldered the door open and walked into the kitchen, kicking it shut behind me.  I looked around, relieved to be home.  I had seen the neighbor’s children making snow angels in the park next door and had hurried home, the spring in my step more from fear than happiness.

It was 17:20… Before I continue, I suppose that I should explain this paranoia now, so you can understand.  I mean, who is afraid of kids making angels in the snow, right?  Well, when Brianna and I were five, Grandpa Hank caught us making snow angels in the yard and told us that every time someone makes a snow angel, an angel in Heaven loses its wings and falls to earth.  Spiteful and full of hatred, these angels, reminded of their past lives by the shapes in the snow, take the wings of the children who make them.  Then he told us a demon controlled these fallen angels; giving presents to the children who didn’t get taken away, and leaving the parents of those who did the burned up remains of their children's wings.  He had gone silent, which caused me to think there was more than what he was telling us.  He promised us that he could protect us only this once.  We promised never to make them again and from then on would leave for home if any of our friends suggested making them…

It was 17:20, I set up the small pre-decorated tree I had bought last year and brought out the only Christmas ornament from my childhood.  The six-inch plastic silver-painted star, dusty from sitting in a box for almost a year, used to top our Christmas tree every year.  Mom always said it brought good luck for the New Year.  I just thought it looked nice, and set it gingerly on the tree, stepped back, straightened it, then, satisfied, went to pick up a pizza.  I made sure to shut and lock the door firmly.

My watch read 18:10 when I started walking back from the pizza parlor down the street.  I detoured through the park and was about halfway home when something caught my eye.  I looked at the snow angels and turned to run, desperate to get to the safety of my apartment, when I suddenly remembered something; something I had repressed for so long, I had forgotten…

When Bri and I were eight, exactly three years after the warning, we were playing at the playground near our house when the neighborhood bully and his friends came around.  They were all bigger than us, being thirteen, and loved to pick on little children.  We were making an igloo when his foot kicked it in.  He laughed as his friends smashed the snowman we had just finished then he pushed Bri down.  He said something about how babies should be making “pwetty snow angels” and four of his friends grabbed my sister’s arms and legs, forcing her to make one.  She screamed and cried, but it made him laugh more.  I threw a chunk of ice at him, missed, and rushed him.  He pushed me down, got on top of me, knelt on my chest and forced me to make a snow angel.

When he and his friends left, we got up and walked home.  Bri looked at me, her lower lip quivering, and asked if the angels were going to take her wings.  I do not remember exactly what I had said to her, but it was something along the lines of how our grandpa was just trying to scare us; that it was only a story.  She nodded and we walked to rest of the way in silence…

I was shaken from my daze by a sudden blast of cold wind stinging my cheeks.  I hurriedly checked my watch.  The numbers read 21:00.  I had been standing there for almost three hours; I wonder what the locals thought of me as they walked by or looked out their windows.  I must have looked rather creepy standing there, wearing a tattered winter jacket and holding a pizza looking at child-sized shapes in the ground.  I hurried home, - since it was already pitch dark, - starving.

At 21:05, I reached the door of my apartment.  What I found struck me as odd; a package - hastily wrapped and topped with a sloppily tied bow - sitting on the floor in front of my door.  Looking around, I did not see any others in the hall, and there was not a card, so I figured that it was a gift from a neighbor, maybe that cute girl on the floor below me… I brought the present in, closed the door and opened it.  I almost dropped the small, innocent-looking angel tree-topper ornament the paper revealed.  I could not bear to look at it.  I just couldn’t.  The first thought through my mind was, ‘It f*****g found me!’

I shook my head and looked at the clock, 21:15.  I opened the pizza box, realized they got my order wrong, and shrugged, too hungry to complain.  Walking to my small living room, I flipped on the TV.  After channel surfing for about twenty minutes, I gave up; nothing was on anyways, just reruns of Christmas episodes and movies everyone’s seen thousands of times.  The time was 21:35.

At 21:45, I heard a childlike giggle, soft, almost muffled, as if heard through a wall.  Thinking nothing of it - it was probably the neighbor’s children above me - I went back to the gift I had received and moved it to under the tree, duct-taping it shut, just as a precaution.  I moved towards the bathroom and heard the giggle again, closer this time, followed by muffled thumps.  Again I figured it was the neighbor’s children; probably racing up and down the halls or stairs with a new toy.

My watch read 22:00.  I reached into my fridge, grabbed a beer and trudged into my bedroom.  I closed the door and changed into flannel pants and an old Metallica t-shirt.  As I fell asleep, empty beer bottle in my hand, the clock read 22:10.

I was awakened by a loud crash coming from the next room.  I awoke with a start, grabbed my old Louisville Slugger from my closet, and inched towards the door.  I looked at my clock, 23:44.  Whoever was trying to rob me was quite ballsy, it being Christmas Eve, and all.  I palmed my door open, and turned on the light, intending to catch the thief by surprise.

I was the one who was surprised.  No, not surprised, f*****g horrified, by the figure standing before me; the tree-topper angel I had put under the tree had grown to the size of an eight-year-old girl.  It coyly turned its head to face me, its false wings dropping to the floor, its white gown piling at her ankles to reveal a Succubus’s body, deathly pale and free of hair.  Her flowing blood-red hair covered her face, and she had her back to me. I could see two bloodied stumps between her shoulder blades that I immediately recognized as the remains of wings.  She turned her face towards me; pure hatred boiling in her eyes, her pale lips curled upward in a snarl of vengeance.

I reeled back in shock when I saw its face; I recognized her.  It couldn’t be… It just… How?  How did they get to her?  “B-Br-Bri…?”  I rushed to my sister, but as I reached her I was stopped, paralyzed, by some supernatural force.  What I heard next would have frozen me just as effectively.

“Don’t.  I have no time.  I am free from its control only temporarily.  I’m here to warn you; it’s coming for you.”

“Bri… How?  I just saw you at Grandpa’s grave!”

Her eyes softened as she nodded, the hatred on her face melting away.  “No need to speak; telepathy.  You don’t remember what happened that night, do you?  Don’t speak, I know you don’t.”   She touched my lips, “Let me remind you…”  She reached out and touched my temples, the pads of her fingers dead cold, and thirty-five years of memories disappeared except for one; a memory that I had long ago forced myself to forget…

It was 23:45 that Christmas Eve, the same night of the bullying incident, and we were up waiting for the sounds of hooves on the roof.  Bri heard it first; a heavy thump that drifted up from downstairs.  I heard it next; a second thump, closer and more defined, followed by a third, then a fourth.  She looked at me, her eyes wide with a mixture of excitement and terror.  I told her to hide under the bed and not make a sound.  She did as I told her, and I quickly hid in the closet.

The thumping continued, growing louder before stopping outside our bedroom door.  I heard the knob turn and held my breath.  I could see Brianna curl further back beneath the bed, pressing her tiny body against the wall.  I could see a dark figure in blood-red robes move towards our bunk bed.  I could tell the color only thanks to the nightlight we had on for Bri’s benefit.  The figure laughed and yanked back the covers, “Come out, my bad little angels! Come out, I’ve got a present for you!”  Its voice sounded just like Grandpa Hank’s.

Bri started to scramble out from under the bed to greet our beloved grandfather.  I tried to stop her, but my legs were like jelly.  I watched helplessly as she looked up at the figure, but whatever she saw above the robes caused her to scream louder than I’d ever heard her scream before.  She tried to scamper back under the bed, but the figure dragged her back out kicking and screaming, lifting her back onto the bottom bunk by her hair with ease.

The Fallen Angel, which is all I could figure it could be, pulled a long knife from under its robe, the light gleamed off an emerald blade.  Bri was screaming for someone (mainly me) to come help her, to make it go away…

Just then, Grandpa Hank shot like a bullet into our room and bear-hugged the demon, driving a knife deep into its chest.  The Fallen Angel laughed, shrugging him off, the robe falling with him.  I could see the ragged stumps of wings, or where they used to be, protruding from its naked back.  The ears, if you could even call them that, were long and pointed like a Vulcan from the old Star Trek films.  It turned on our Grandpa, lifting its weapon high and that’s when I shut my eyes as tightly as I could and covered my ears.  Even so, I could still hear my grandpa’s screams through my hands.

Approximately thirty seconds passed, " although it felt like years " then the screaming went from two voices to one.  I opened my eyes again, only to see the figure turn its knife on my sister once again and say, “Oh, my God!  Shut.  The.  F**k.  Up!”

As it spoke, it punctuated each word with a swift movement of its bloody blade. The first carved out Bri’s tongue.  The second turned her throat into a smile that gaped from ear to ear and spit a bright red froth.  The third pierced her heart.  The final slash hacked a pair of little angel wings from her back; I hadn’t noticed those before.

I blacked out.

The next morning, I woke up in the hospital, my mother sitting next to me, sobbing uncontrollably.  My father walked in, bleary-eyed and with a face full of stubble.  I pretended to sleep, listening carefully.  Apparently, the police figured that our grandfather had gone in to our room to rape my sister; she had fought back and he had flown into a rage, and then turned the knife on himself.  The only strange thing they found, which was a connection to other murders worldwide, was two lumps of coal in her stocking.

The memory faded as the rest of my life returned to me.  As Brianna removed her hands from my temples, I found I could move again.  I hugged her, finishing the motion I had begun, just as the analog clock on the wall ticked past thirty seconds to 23:45.  “Remember, no matter what happens; I love you, so much.  Run.  Hide.  Now!”

“Bri, you don’t have to do this…”  I stood my ground as she turned back to her robes, pulled out an emerald bladed knife identical to the one in my repressed memory, and turned towards me.  Her face had returned to one of spiteful anger, “Yes, I do…”

She charged me with a banshee’s wail, the knife held above her head, aiming for my heart.  I raised my bat, tears in my eyes, and swung when she got within range.  The sweet spot on the barrel striking her temple, she crumpled to the floor.  I swung again… then again…, and again…, and again.  I swung until her head was nothing more than a bloody pulp of brain, flesh, gore, hair and bone fragments.

I retreated to my bedroom, dropping my bloodied bat next to my sister’s prone form as I turned.  I glanced at the clock.  23:55; the nightmare was finally over.  No more fear of angels in the snow.  No more sitting awake all night long.  I collapsed on my bed, exhausted.

I was awakened at midnight, exactly five minutes later, by a thump outside my door, followed by demonic breathing; three puffs and then silence, repeated over and over.  Struggling against fatigue, I managed to press my ear against the door.  I blacked out.  However, before I did, I was able to discern a single word, “Ho… Ho… Ho…”

Extended Ending (Just keep reading from the end)

I awoke the next morning on the floor by my bed.  A splitting headache made me figure I was hung-over from drinking too much last night, and I assumed the pain in my back was from falling off a barstool.  I stumbled into the next room, noticed I had knocked over my Christmas tree upon returning home last night, and made myself breakfast.

I looked at the clock, which had stopped at midnight, and then checked my watch.  The display read 15:15.  Holy s**t, I’m late!  I hurriedly dressed, rushed out the door and hopped into my truck; the tires squealed as I sped down the road, destined for Scarnechia Cemetery.

 

Scarnechia Cemetery

December 25, 2000, Christmas Day

15:25 Hours

 

I pulled up alongside the cemetery gates, pulled on my hat and gloves, and stepped out into the snow.  I saw Bri and Grandpa " two headstones with lifelike busts sitting upon them " waiting patiently in the snow.  My sister’s was smiling that charming smile she always had.

The alarm on my watch went off at exactly 15:30, as it does every day, and I knelt in front of Brianna, bowing my head in silence and saying a short prayer for her.  At 15:35, I sat beside her, reminiscing about our childhood and remembering all of the fun we had.

At 16:20, I got up and kissed my sister’s bust on the cheek before trudging back to my truck.  I looked back and waved goodbye to Brianna as I reached the start of the path, then climbed into my vehicle.  As I adjusted my rear-view mirror, I saw something glimmer by the foot of her headstone.  I immediately thought, ‘That’s odd… Nothing was there yesterday… Was there…?’   I got out and hurried back towards Brianna; I dug at a small green shard under the snow.

When I managed to uncover the object " which was quite difficult in my Swiss-cheese gloves " I stared in shock at what I found; a long, emerald dagger with what looked like blood on the blade, two lumps of coal and a handwritten note that read, “Merry Christmas.  Ho… Ho… Ho…”

 

Reviews

[quarintine_deathangel]

Woah 0.0 even the story line reminds me of creepy pasta, which I was forced to listen to by one of my close friends, and a fangirl of his XD Your plot is awesome, theme is right on. The only two things I'd say is one use some major words that are big and extravagant that can stump people, it'll add to the horror factor and eccentricity. I would love to see you do a spoken word version of this, just to hear your spoken interpretation of it would be really interesting and that's how he gets 99% of his fear factor across. Then one technical thing, paragraph 7 line 7 between who and did put a comma, it'll make more sense. I got confused reading that. XD Amazing job, I love it compared to his work, this is an excellent writing ^^ thankyou for sharing! ^.^

[Alex Vidmar]

I'm working on a spoken word version now, background music and sounds to go with it. :) Thank you for your review! I'll be sure to notify everyone who's interested in hearing it!

T.L.W.A

[JACK REAPER]

not bad I usually don't like reading a story if it has the time being told to often but was a good story glad I read the entire thing

[quixotic_rose]

Whoa, I was no prepared for this type of horror story! I must admit I did like it though, since it takes alot to get me scared in the way of reading. I found both endings to be good, I do like the second one a little tiny bit better. Seriously, you had me going! nice work :)

[Brianna Van Zandt]

I know I probably shouldn't comment until after the contest, but I loved this. Suspenseful, beautifully written. Amazing. I would love it if you found a way to make it into a full story, or something like it.

Love you!

[Alex Vidmar]

Thank you, my darling! I can definitely do that! :) I love you too!

[Brianna Van Zandt]

Of course, Angel!

[Coyote Poetry]

I like the alternate ending. Less violence and more scary. I like the set-up of the story. Making the characters come alive and giving purpose to the storyline. I like the use of the snow angel and Grandpa Hank. You brought me in with the strong opening and held my attention to the last words. Good luck and thank you for sharing the excellent tale.
Coyote

[Alex Vidmar]

Thank you, Coyote

[TL Boehm]

I think I preferred the first ending too but the whole thing was superbly gut wrenching and fear invoking. I kept hoping against hope that there would be the "happy ending" - I'll never make a snow angel again. God knows what fury could be called down. Formidable story telling here.

[K-mo]

I really like this story a lot! I am one for thrillers and this definitely gives me a thrill reading it!! Keep writing my friend:)

[writingurl14]

I had to copy and paste in a word doc to be able to read it... I like the first ending better.
but with all teh times and stuff... I was very confused. Other then that i loved it!
what i understood was great! work on flow and see if you can mabye work on teh times

[Secret Lullaby]

I liked this! it was really good! A little hard to read though!

[Alex Vidmar]

Thank you for the feedback. Which ending did you prefer?

[Secret Lullaby]

The first! It was sad but way more interesting!!!

[Alex Vidmar]

Alright! please suggest this to others, I'm trying to get more feedback.