This will probably get me into trouble if I name names. Her family is looking for her and the last thing they want is the guy she was dating to be ‘telling stories’ that paint a different picture from the one they want to tell the police. For that reason, my name is John and her name is Sarah.
I own a holiday home where there is usually a lot of snow. The week I took her up there was one of the warmer times. The only ice one saw was on the nearby mountains, and maybe a few frosted windows early in the morning. It was the kind of cold that made you want to stay in bed in the mornings, no matter what needed to be done.
And that’s one of the reasons I took us there and not some hotel by the sea. We’d always be going out to do something instead of enjoying each other’s company indoors. Something we hadn’t done in a long time, considering work and distance between us. Nothing a warm fireplace in a secluded house couldn’t fix.
The drive there was long and a little uncomfortable. The sun had fallen, so I turned on the lights and settled in for a slower, more careful drive.
“So, you’re not speaking to me now?” I said.
Sarah flexed her fingers and examined her nails. She must have regretted that attempt at casual indifference because she stuffed her hand back in her sleeves and gave a little shiver in reply.
“You’re not so young that you can get away with childish behavior like that,” I chimed.
She looked at me slowly with wide eyes.
“You did not just fucking say that,” she said with a tremble of anger.
“Much better,” I said, placing a hand on her knee and squeezing it for a moment. “Now, how ‘bout telling me what I did wrong.”
“Well, if you don’t-”
“Sarah, we’re fast becoming a cliche if you’re going to say the same things.”
“You’re an asshole. You think you know everything, don’t you?”
“Here we go,” I sighed.
What followed was the usual back-and-forth and I enjoyed every minute of it. It also made the drive pass by quicker, not that I got tired of seeing asphalt, frosted grass, and frigid trees in the headlights. Occasionally, we passed another car slowly making its way between towns. There was one that followed us for a while with their blinding brights on, but luckily, I turned off the main road and went down the dirt road leading to my holiday home soon after.
I looked at their car in the rear-view mirror as I drove and cursed them out.
“Temper temper, John,” Sarah chimed.
“Don’t you ‘temper temper’ me,” I growled.
“I thought we were going to have a relaxed holiday together,” she continued teasingly. “So far, it’s as relaxed as a trip to the dentist.”
“Well, let me tell you…” I stopped myself and took a deep breath. I knew she was just trying to get a rise out of me. I knew she meant well. Sometimes, she was just too damn good at it. “Tell you what, if a dentist is on your mind, we can play doctor when we get there.”
“Oh,” Sarah smiled, falling into a happy silence.
I could see the shape of my holiday house in the distance. Against the dark blue gaps between the silhouettes of trees was the blocky shape of a two-story house that had everything. Large windows, comfortable furniture, modern kitchen. Twelve large empty rooms and all we needed for a relaxing holiday.
I gave her a slow tour once we were inside. We got our things from the car. I unpacked the food in the kitchen while she took care of the clothes. I wandered around the place again after that, just to make sure everything was in place. More specifically, I stopped in the living room.
I eyed the fireplace, hearing a low whoosh of air that had traveled down it. Starting a fire late at night seemed like a silly idea, but I was in a silly mood. Strangely, it did feel a little warm already. I figured it was because the living room had all that warm furniture, or maybe Sarah had kicked the heaters into overdrive.
I heard the fireplace whistle again as a stiff breeze swept over the house. I approached one of the windows and looked through a gap in the curtains at the dirt road leading to the house. I could see a glittering of dew on the grass in the moonlight. The stars were clear for all to see, another plus of being in the countryside. If it weren’t so cold, I would have stepped out with Sarah to admire them - turn on the romantic charm and pretend I knew a few constellations.
I closed the curtain and smiled to myself. Satisfied with my look around the bottom floor, I turned off the lights in the kitchen and went up to see Sarah. She was waiting for me.
Sleep was easy. The bedcovers were heavy and warm, Sarah was lying against me, my head half-sunk into the cushy pillow, and the bedroom was filled with room-temperature air from the heater - it was lazy bliss. Only, I am not a young man anymore and I had woken up with an urgent need to go to the bathroom.
Reluctantly, I climbed out of bed. After finishing in the en suite bathroom, I was thirsty. Sarah had woken up, I told her I was going to the kitchen. Sarah moaned something about shutting the door behind me before yawning herself to sleep.
It was a slow descent down the stairs. I didn’t turn on the lights because I wanted to see if I could reach the bottom without them, but it just made it so much more frustrating. For a moment, my heart jumped when I saw a flicker of a shadow. I paused near the bottom of the stairs, trying to understand what I saw.
My heart had skipped into a faster beat, but my mind was unsure why. I guess the natural reaction of anybody is to be scared in the dark when encountering something, but what? Did the coat rack by the door scare me? Was my imagination playing tricks on me? What the hell happened that was so…threatening?
By the time I made it to the kitchen, I dropped the thoughts completely. I poured myself a glass of water and sipped at it. Once my dry mouth and throat were wet enough, I drank down greedy gulps and wiped my mouth with my forearm. A tiny light caught my eye and for a moment I glanced up at the corner of the room.
My security camera.
I forgot I had set them up all around the house and outside as well. Every room had a camera. Security was something I was very careful about in my early days. When I bought the holiday house, I was thinking that someone would break in and steal something, or squat in the attic like I had read about in the paper. Just about anything could happen when I was away for months, maybe even a year.
I had an app on my phone, I could check the cameras. It was in the bedroom. Before I could even hit the kitchen lights to go back, I heard a whisper of wind. I knew it had come from the living room fireplace, but it sounded a lot louder than it should have - a lot closer. I found myself getting a closer look, using the light pouring into the hallway to help me find my way to the living room.
I think that’s when it started, truly. I find myself doing things without actually really wanting to do them. I wanted to put the empty glass away, or in the sink, but I carried it with me. I wanted to turn on the light in the hallway, but I didn’t.
I just walked straight into the living room, stopped behind the couch, and looked at the fireplace. I heard the whisper, the distant echo of something…human. I heard the sound of cloth being dragged. Sarah appeared beside me, the blanket wrapped around her body. She seemed half awake and just as interested in the sound coming from the fireplace as me.
Part of me was glad she was hearing it too, so I turned back to the fireplace, not knowing what to expect. I stood there for a long time…I think several hours. Everything was drained from me. The fireplace no longer whispered as it had said its message hours ago, but I still stood there.
Slam!
It came out of nowhere and made me jump. I bashed my knee on the sofa in front of me and hissed. When I tried to grab my knee, I dropped the glass and it bounced off the couch, landing in front of the fireplace and smashed into pieces, scattering shards all around. I turned around to where the sound had come from and saw that I was alone. Sarah was nowhere in sight.
I hobbled into the hallway, quickly getting used to the pain, and stopped outside the door. I saw it, the same thing which made me pause on the stairs. It was a shadow underneath the doorway. Something I didn’t really focus on, but this time I noticed it for sure and my mind remembered.
A cool light was momentarily interrupted by a very human shadow. Sarah’s shadow.
It couldn’t have been more than five seconds before I saw that shadow and opened the door, but when I did, I saw only the empty night and a discarded blanket. I didn’t hear running, or hear a car engine. She couldn’t have moved that fast.
Yet she did. I saw Sarah at the edge of the woods. I saw a hand slip over her pale shoulder and guide her further in. I didn’t know what to think at first. I saw her willingly, silently, walking into the woods with someone. It didn’t make any sense. She barely had any clothes on, it was icy cold, I just couldn’t…I couldn’t think straight.
I grabbed a coat from the coat rack and shoved my feet into a pair of shoes. As ridiculous as I must have looked, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t waste another second, so I chased after them.
I entered the same point in the treeline that they did, using the natural light of the sky and moon to help me find my way.
It wasn’t easy. My legs were already being scratched to hell, the low-hanging branches gave my head a few cuts and bruises. Trying my best to catch up was only slowing me down, so I decided to run at a more even pace. It was easy enough to spot Sarah’s pale form in the darkness, but the stranger who was with her was as dark as the inkiest shadows. His shape was hidden by a large cloak and his head was covered in a mass of messy hair.
It could have been a woman, but something told me that it wasn’t.
Every time I lost sight of them, even if it was brief, they would jump ahead a few meters. Every tree that blocked them from view ended up putting them so far ahead it didn’t feel like I was catching up at all. It was a surreal nightmare, where I was running but getting nowhere. Yet, I was conscious, and that made the experience all the more terrifying.
I lost sight of them one more time and they jumped so far ahead they were out of the forest and standing in the clearing beyond. I couldn’t let myself lose sight of them again. I kept them in view by taking the hard path and crawling over bushes and under branches. It worked. The two didn’t disappear again, but they weren’t even going anywhere.
I saw them moving, but they weren’t walking away. I stopped walking and just looked at them. Sarah and the stranger were looking at each other turning around each other, holding hands, and making flowing gestures.
They were dancing a twirling dance and in the light of the moon, I could see the stranger clearly.
He was tall, maybe over seven feet tall. He was draped in a black robe and cloak. It held onto his lanky form, sagging in many places - as if his body and limbs were as thin as wires. His hands were gloved and small. His head was covered in that messy hair that I mentioned earlier, but there were two peaks of white bone, horns, protruding from his head. As they danced, the horns grew larger and darker, until they were twisted black goat horns.
The man twisted again, blocking Sarah from view with his size. It was a split second, but as he moved out of the way, Sarah was no longer there. The creature was dancing by himself. growing darker even in the moonlight, until he blended in with the shadows of the trees and mountain behind him.
He disappeared.
I walked out of the forest, towards the spot they danced. It was empty. I could see footprints, Sarah’s footprints, but not the creatures. Yet, the grass they had danced on lacked the glitter of dew, pulled away by the black robes the creature wore. It was the last piece of evidence that they existed and it would fade quickly.
I turned on the spot, looking towards the trees with a cold, empty heart. I knew I would lose when I ran into the forest, I knew it every time they jumped ahead when I lost sight of them. By the time it had registered, I was already broken.
I checked the cameras. It showed Sarah leaving the house, but no stranger in sight. Not even when I checked the time something crossed in front of the door as I descended the stairs. Most strangely, I didn’t seem to leave the house. On camera, I simply stood there, bobbing from side to side as I stared at the fireplace.
I called the police and explained to them what happened.
I won’t go into the legal matters that followed too much. As you can imagine, I was a prime suspect, but with no evidence of anything, and footage showing Sarah leave as if in some trance, some aspects of my story were believed, but twisted to fit another story invented by the detective. I think his final conclusion was that the heaters in the house had leaked some kind of toxic chemical that affected both of our minds.
It explained my strange story and the weird way she left the house neatly, so it was the story that the law accepted. Sarah’s parents didn’t believe it and blamed me, but without any evidence to suggest foul play, they couldn’t do anything, no matter what they told the police.
I can’t blame them for how they feel. In their position, I might think the same. Yet, I can only think about it from my perspective and I’m not about to question what I saw. Even if the camera footage disagrees with me, I know what I saw.
She didn’t walk away, she was taken. She wasn’t alone, I saw her dancing with him.