The evening darkness has gone from being a cozy introduction to early winter to an association with the dangerous. Every day the sunlight is banished more and more. Soon there won’t be any difference wether your eyes are open or closed. The world has bit its own tail and doesn’t know where it starts or where it ends.
It’s five in the afternoon, but it might as well be darkest night. Ana pulls up the zipper to her bubble jacket, hook her finger in the roller blinds and pulls it down a small centimeter. The snow has started to fall in thick, engulfing the world in its white blanket. The streetlights are bravely trying to fight the blackening tide, but the only ground they manage to cover is the one within their immediate reach. It’s not going to be an easy walk, but her head feels heavy after being inside all day. She’s desperate for some fresh air. What choice do you have when you’re locked to a computer screen until the last rays from the sun gets overpowered by impenetrable darkness? Such is the life of someone with an home office.
Ana ties the laces to the serious winter boots her dad bought for her. It was a tentative, yet firm gesture on his part. He thought it was silly of her to move this far up the mountains. Her parents didn’t understand why she wanted to get away from the coast where she grew up. They hoped she would buy a house – preferably in the same neighborhood as them – and settle down with a man and their fictive children. But she made sure to crush their plans about their «dream life» for her.
Ever since Ana was a little girl, she’d dreamt of snow, skiing and mountains. It was all because of her aunt. She had been an adventurer out of the ordinary, traveling the world looking for thrills. Especially in snow and foreign icy regions. She always returned with pictures, rosy cheeks and stories that mesmerized.
When her aunt suddenly died due to an incident during one of her trips, there was nothing Ana would rather do that to follow in her aunt’s footsteps in hopes that she could rekindle just a fraction of what she’d been told. That’s why she’d packed her suitcase and moved to a remote spot miles away from home, surrounded by mountains, woods and a cold that never really disappeared no matter the season. How long she’d stay here, she didn’t know. She liked it here, even though the darkness could get a little tiring. Even for her.
When her shoes are tied and a head light is strapped securely over a warm knitted hat, she sticks her hands in a couple of gloves and opens the door to greet the weather she consciously welcomed into her life. There’s no wind. It almost feels like everything is capsulated in a form of vacuum. She opens up her hands and lets them get filled up by the cold white mass in seconds.
She walks the few steps down from her front door to the ground and passes her car. It’s become a big mysterious blob during its stationary weekend trapped in the snow storm. She stomps her way through the driveway and finally reach the plowed main road. Her house is placed pretty high up and is one of ten houses sharing the same street, even though the word street is an exaggeration. The distance between them is over two hundred meters.
She takes the little detour that lead up into the woods. She knows of a nice round, which she knows is easily accessible. The snow falls heavily in the late afternoon, so her trip won’t be passable much longer. When she breaks in between the trees, the light disappear behind her and everything is covered in a dark blanket. It’s like stepping over an invisible border into another world. She turns on her head light on the lowest setting.
Thick snowflakes casts shadows as they sail down in front of her and joins their fallen brethren below. Shining the light forward, she sees that the snow is untouched. No one has walked here lately, even though the road has been scooped clear of the worst snowfall. She starts walking, feeling as if she is an astronaut exploring a new planet.
The silence is deafening. She begins to regret not bringing her headphones, but she’s not planning on going far. And also; she needs a break from sounds and just expose herself to some nature. The soft treading of her feet sinking into the snow is the only thing she can hear. The lowest tree branches sticking out at every possible angle, are hanging dangerously close to the ground. Heavily held down by the snow. Now and then the urge gets too strong and she jumps up, grabs at a particularly engulfed white branch and pulls on it. She then quickly lunges backwards to avoid the small avalanche. It makes a hollow sound when it hits the ground.
After a few more minutes with this, Ana reaches the midway point of her route. That’s when she sees it.
Somehow, she’s been accompanied by a pair of footprints.
Ana frowns as she stares at the tracks that seemingly started out of nowhere. She lifts her head, letting the head light shine onward, and the prints continues endlessly. They start in the middle of the road. Ana scans both the left and the right side, assuming that someone came from the woods, but the snow is left untouched there. More than confused, Ana turns around to see if she missed the beginning of the tracks somewhere. But she hasn’t. They really just… came to be.
She’s so puzzled by the appearance of these mysterious footprints. How is that someone started their walk for that point? Without having broken through the tree line on either side? Slowly, Ana puts one foot in front of the other. Pushing forward. Feeling driven by more than confusion.
Fear.
She continues until she sees the crossroads where she always goes to the left, which will lead her to very end of her street. Always keeping her eyes on the footprint, as if they might disappear if she doesn’t. Well, who knows? They did the exact opposite just a little while ago. But she doesn’t reach the crossroads. Instead she stops a few meters away from it.
Here, the footprints takes their separate course. The left one continues to the left and the right takes the road to the right. As if an insanely long person decided to shoot up to the sky and walk in two directions at once. Which is impossible. But there’s still no sign of another human or an overlapping set of tracks to explain what she’s seeing.
A low thud indicates that a snow avalanche fell somewhere close by. Did it come from above? Ana bends her head backwards and shines the light up to the treetops. There’s nothing but twisted darkness there, except where her head light draws its golden fingers. It must have been a crow or something.
The scream gets lodged in her throat and Ana makes a strangled sound. The tree she just scanned, wasn’t empty.
A shapeless black shadow slips away from the ray of artificial light and jumps on over to the next tree, like a dark version of a chimpanzee. Only much bigger, and with arms as long as the tree trunks this creature is hanging onto. Branches are rustling all around, way too high up for her light to reach it, and it makes drowning amounts of thick snow fall to the ground in huge white explosions. Ana’s head almost spins on her neck, trying to see everywhere all at once. Then, like a horror interpretation of an elevator, something is lowered in front of her.
Two bony legs, unfathomably long, with a couple of hiking boots at the ends. They hit the ground and sink into the snow. Then Ana understands. The tracks worked like breadcrumbs, and without knowing it, Ana followed them right into the lion’s den.
Sweat is running in streams down her back and her hard breathing makes it feel like she has sand paper rolling around inside her throat. Ana throws herself around, fully intended on running for her life – but all of a sudden she’s weighted down by a surprising cold. For several seconds she doesn’t understand what happened and why she’s on the ground. But she sees it soon enough. An avalanche has fallen over her, keeping her down. She’s trying to find strength to stand up, but there’s way too many kilos of compact wet snow that she has to fight.
Shaking and shuddering, Ana can’t do nothing but watch as the body follows the two feet it is attached to. It’s hideous, with leathery skin covered in short, harsh hairs. Its limbs have to be well over ten meters long, but the upper body is the size of a human. It keeps lowering itself until it’s squatting in front of her – and she’s finally on eye level with this horrible monster.
The face is a crooked, grey mask that looks like it’s been picked apart and then reassembled by someone who doesn’t know what a face is supposed to look like. An eye bulges out of its socket, staring at her with a jet black iris. The other eye is either closed or non-existing. Its mouth is full of broken and chalky teeth, and the nose is nothing but a thin scar.
Ana finally manages to fill her lungs with enough air to scream, and so she does – for half a second. That’s when the creature shoots one of its hairy hands into the ray of light. Inside the palm of its hand, Ana sees something she first thinks is some kind of coin. But when it moves she understand what it is.
It’s the other eye, blinking and helping its owner assess its prey in a wider angle.
Ana starts crying. Now that she’s face to face with a creature taken right out of the deepest and darkest pit of nightmares, a crucial, but overlooked detail falls down in her head. Her aunt was found dead in a forrest similar to this. Was it really something of natural causes that were the death of her? If Ana were to guess now, she would say no. And, when the monster gets closer and blows its vile breath over her face, making her gag, Ana finally regrets not buying that house with the ocean view.
Fridatales 