A few years ago, I found the following on my niece’s computer, we managed to piece some together but not all. Any input would be appreciated.
Names have been changed, but I have kept the places the same. I will edit these if I feel any threat to our privacy.
February 28th, 2018.
We are in the house now. We can’t make the sound stop. We have decided to write things down, keep a record.
We think that David is outside.
The snow drifts are so high, I can’t see anyone outside the window, but even if someone was right in front of it- I don’t think I would have much of a chance.
James’s Nan is making us tea, she is shaken, but the whole family is here.
I’m glad they think of me as family.
We have agreed to write everything down, there’s a pit in our stomachs but right now I am going to have tea and wait by the window. Wait for David.
I think we feel better now. We slept and had some tea, Sarah lent me some spare clothes, and everything is starting to feel less surreal.
David still Isn’t here.
Me, James and Annabeth are sitting around the computer.
We feel stupid.
They are laughing because no one wants to admit it.
They keep laughing as I make an excellent narrator.
Beast from the east has pummelled our small village. It started with people being unable to get in and out of the village and that isn’t so unusual. With two roads in and out it’s not hard for weather to trap us all semi-regularly.
But it has never been like this.
The snow came thick and fast and at first it was novel, we walked up the lyn and had a snowball fight before David’s dad called him and he had to walk three miles to Devil’s elbow on the outside of town to help.
His dad had gone to the nearest town 17 miles away to buy some tins, and to get some bits and bobs for the old folk around the village, his car already unreliable had given up after the steep hill.
I think he was the last one who managed to get in before the snow completely cut is off from civilisation.
At first, we still had electricity, but neighbours had already started to look after people, dropping of spare bedding and hot water bottles to those who didn’t have much. After a while the single dropped.
This happened while me David Annabeth and James were walking up to the heaps to sledge, James’ great grandma was very sick, and he needed distraction.
We spent maybe two hours up there before we were all soaked through. David and James had had a snowball fight two seconds in- and were both trying to hide the fact they were shivering.
The snow had started to pick up quickly, so we trudged into the dense corpse alongside the creek. We were mostly covered there, and we huddled together to stop the cold wind from getting into our bones.
David told us about a shed further into the woods, so we made our way there. We were still freezing, but it largely sheltered us from the cold wind. David filled up an old coke bottle he had with some snow, after a while he took some of his medication, with the now water.
After we all tried ringing home it was then we realized that there was no signal.
We decided to wait some more. The sound of the wind moving through the branches was so loud, and although we were sitting in silence, I was relieved when David, who is normally the quietest of us all started chatting, eventually, we were all singing songs and laughing.
We decided it was safer to head back now, while we still had at least another two hours of light, rather than waiting and risking having to go back in the dark and being even colder.
We were nervous about David too, who always seemed to be sick and tired easily. He looked uneasy constantly tapping on one of the wooden work benches and clearing his throat.
When we snow was so thick, it seemed to attack us going straight into our eyes. We had not been out ten seconds when we could barely see. Luckily, we knew the path well, but a 10 min walk from the edge of town into the centre took nearly 40.
We split up at the crossroads, David and Annabeth lived in flats above the shops in the square, while James and I lived in the older cottages a little further out.
I went inside with James; his whole family was there. His mum and dad, older sister, his grandma, and his aunt.
They had been worried, and we spent the next twenty minutes apologizing and explaining what happened as his dad trudged to my house, to explain to my parents where I was and that I was safe.
Sarah lent me some clothes and I went upstairs to change.
I could hear Donna murmuring softly to her grandma. James’ mum is always good to me, and I don’t like knowing how much sadness this situation is causing them.
I tried to go downstairs quietly, but I stepped on a floorboard in the creaky house and Donna came out.
She hugged me and I apologized again, I said how much I loved Grandma. She likes everyone to call her grandma. She told me how much grandma liked me, how when I was little, she visited my mum in the hospital and said I had strong lungs as I cried and cried at her. This was a sentiment that she echoed to me a lot, after I screamed at a bully and during my first school play, and recently when I was part of a debate on locally the best way to fight global warming.
Strong lungs, she had said, strong lungs and a stronger voice,
Donna and I had talked for a while. She asked me how James was holding up, and I told her the truth. He was struggling, he was trying to get to terms he would be losing his great grandma, and he couldn’t.
She asked me, then- if I could try and get James to say goodbye.
I said I would try.
We went downstairs and played trivial pursuit. James’ Dad Pete, won by a milestone. James and I said it was only because it was an old set, and questions were no longer relevant, and he knew all the answers because he had played with the same set since he was a kid.
I like to think we are half right.
We were halfway through a heated game of monopoly when Annabeth fell through the back door. It scared all of us, the snow was obscuring most of the first-floor windows, so despite Anna’s bright pink scarf we didn’t see her coming.
Out of breath, she demanded if we had seen David, that his parents were out looking for him and that she hadn’t seen him since leaving him to go into her house.
It had stopped snowing, but it was dark.
Donna and Ray told Annabeth to stay here, and us to stay inside, and they head out towards the square.
They had brought flashlights and three hot water bottles and an extra coat with them.
Sarah, Nanna, Lillian (J aunt) me and James sat downstairs before Lillian went upstairs to sit with Grandma. About an hour later my mum came in to check on us.
She told us that dad had gone out looking too and mum was going to go wait at Montgomery’s house in case David came back.
That his parents hadn’t seen him since he left us.
Annabeth told us she had left him practically outside his front door before walking to the other end of the square.
My mum said that Joanne (David’s mum) said his wet coat and shoes were in the hall, but his dad’s coat and his wellies had gone.
We sat in silence then confused.
Mum left and Lillian came downstairs, she was pale, and couldn’t meet our eyes.
I followed James into the kitchen, and he asked me to come upstairs with him.
He held her hand, she wasn’t fully lucid. But it still felt every time she opened her eyes they stared into my soul.
I didn’t tell James this.
It’s 4 Am, Donna is back, she’s exhausted. There’s been no sign. most people who are able to look are, and thankfully the snow has held off, but it’s cold. So cold.
I fall asleep while the sky is dark blue, I wake up, and I hear people murmuring about a body and my blood runs cold. I stay still and try to hear past the blood thumping in my ears. She’s gone. She slipped away sometime last night when I am sleeping. They don’t know what to do with the body.
I am too tired to feel guilty at the relief that it isn’t David and fall back asleep.
I’m not sure why I am writing this. I feel fuelled by pure terror, I need to write this down, I just know there is something. Something here that needs to be said but I don’t know what so I am going to write everything
I’m not sure why I don’t think he’s dead, child-like naivety?
Me James and Annabeth join the search, Yielding nothing, we come home for lunch, we eat stew as Lillian cautiously asks us for an update.
We go out later, we walk towards the wood and look in the shed. David’s water bottle is crumbled on the floor. Empty,
James says he is sure that David took it with him and looks at his dad. At that moment, it was like watching a small kid whose pet had run away, and we had stumbled upon his ball.
His dad nodded, and we spent two more hours, slowly walking further and further away from the house in a circle, before silently heading home.
I felt tied to that forest, tied to a place where I know David had been, where he had lived, where he threw a snowball at James so hard it winded him, where he offered me his gloves, where his breath plumed in front of him as he chatted to keep the silence at bay.
It felt like the woods were pulling me back, and the only reason I felt I could keep walking away from them was James and Annabeth.
Annabeth, who felt so guilty, and whose normally rosy cheeks were grey with something other than cold.
James who I knew felt the same pull to those woods, but also to his home, where Grandma would teach us the most amazing things, where her laugh would fill the house, where her body lay suspended between life and rot upstairs.
It had started to get dark, and Ray had given us each a flashlight. We walked past Annabeth’s house and instead went to mine. After fussing with my dogs, we lay in my bed upstairs, each huddled under a different blanket wearing my old pyjamas as our clothes dried by the fire.
We asked to walk the long route around the edge of town, through the trees before dipping off the trail onto the gravel path and walking through the field to get to the square. We wanted to look for David, and dad out of pity more than anything else let us. He insisted on coming with us.
I’m not sure what would have happened if Dad didn’t walk with us.
Her face lit up and I heard a name building in her voice, and then suddenly.
It was almost like she flew instead of falling, down the steep side of the hill and into the bushes.
I heard her wheeze before I saw the blood.
It didn’t take long for her to stop wheezing. For a short while, I tried to listen to it as an extension of the forest, merging Annabeth’s gasps for air with the wind that swept through the branches and the houses. James silently took my hand, anchoring me in place as we listened.
Anna was pleading for help. Except it wasn’t Anna, it was a raspy wheezing voice. That voice was a voice our Anna could never have spoken in.
I’m not sure how I got here, I’m in James’ house again, with dad sitting beside me, James’s net to his mother and there’s silence. At some point, we went home.
Maybe a different way because I didn’t see the blood.
And I can hear dad telling mum about Annabeth parents. How they cried, how it could have been any of us, how he was relived it wasn’t me.
Last night I dreamed. I dreamed of Annabeth’s laugh and the blood that must have bubbled from her mouth, I dreamed of David and his competitive streak, and his body, cold and ridged, given a half burial.
Then Grandma appeared. You have strong lungs; you have a strong voice. Then there was Lillian’s apologetic face and her brown eyes that never left the floor. Grandma again, you have strong lungs you have a strong voice. And then the trees were saying the same thing, reaching out their knotted fingers to me getting lost and tangled in my hair pulling me closer and closer and closer into the forest.
I woke up to someone tapping on my window, and a woman’s hand stroking my hair. She told me not go to the woods, and then her thumbs were pressing into my eyes, her hands holding my head. Imploring me. Ordering me. Not to go into the woods.
But I was there already, surely?
I could hear the way the wind raced through the trees, and the words the trees said to me, they were thanking me, and so was the earth. I could feel myself starting to shake as she held my head tighter, repeating herself, as is her words could weed the roots that had already made their home in my head. And I could feel the bark pressing into my back and the snow falling on my face.
I woke up then. James is here, he says the woods are talking to him too. He says Lillian begged him not to go, as he rubs his eyes. He says he has reason to believe her. He says he thinks he knows what’s happening and I need to trust him. He tells me grandma dying now is no coincidence that I need to listen. He doesn’t want to go. I haven’t told him I am.
From here out, the account is written. “James” told me it was with Amy when she was found, I don’t believe him. She was so sick; he didn’t get to see her for two weeks. He was not with her. I know he is lying to me, but it does not feel sinister.
This is a mistake. I am writing this in the shed. I saw Annabeth first, her and her pink scarf in the middle of the field. I walked for ages, she never moved, but I never caught her.
David told me to listen to the trees, but I Don’t want to. They are mean they aren’t thanking me anymore but the noise of the quiet, the noise of the forest of the creek and the birds and the trees and the sounds of the roots trying to grow in frozen ground is making me insane.
All I want to do is lay down in the snow, maybe if I am part of the woods, it will stop tormenting me.
I am trying not to, but the trees. The trees are singing old songs I don’t understand and Grandmas here, crying she’s sorry, I’m worried this is always the way it was going to end. It’s for the town she says, It’s for the town.
The trees are telling me to go to sleep in a blanket of snow, Grandma says it will burn worse than fire, but it’s for the town.
This village never gave anything to me why should I give anything to it.
I don’t have a choice.
She’s right.
Amy was found fairly quickly. It was assumed she was at the Rosendfalls during the house fire, when it was realized she wasn’t another search party was sent out. They found her laying in the middle of the woodland, almost as if she had been placed, one of her hands by her side another by her chest, her hair immaculate and parted perfectly despite the wind.
An emergency vehicle managed to get through, and she was taken to hospital where she still now remains in a coma.
James visits regularly, he was burned badly during the fire, but there were no casualties. They were unable to retrieve the body of the great-grandmother and she burned with the rest of her house, something her family remarked she would have wanted.
Before James ever gave me the password to her laptop, and told me about her diary, I didn’t know how to make head or tale of what had happened, now I am even more confused.
Amy was born when I was 6, she was 17 when everything happened and would be 21 now. I am 27 and have taken to going and drinking in the local with James.
More I drink and he has water.
I blamed him originally for losing her, and until today he lived with that blame.
I felt like he was always working up the courage to try and tell me something when we were together and last night he did.
He said this will sound crazy, but I need you to listen.
He told me of his theory.
He told me how his grandma would talk to him about magic when we were young, would teach him to respect the small, seemingly insignificant things like bugs or weeds. That how his aunt had begged him not to go into the forest during that storm, that how she had whispered there were things he would never understand. How that night his grandma told him everything. How she melded magic to help the village, like how the women in her family had done before her how everyone died in odd ways, her grandma died during a drought where the summer was so hot, she would have sworn the air was steaming, and how with her, four people had been taken. How he should have been straight with Amy who would have given him the benefit of the doubt, how he should have stopped going outside when he thought he was seeing Grandma when he knew she lay dying in his home. How he should have listened to her.
How now the village was dying because four people were not taken. How he thinks David and Annabeth and even Amy is stuck, stuck with the trees, as they become one with their roots, how he sees them. How he wishes he wouldn’t.
He hung himself later that night.
I used to think it was because I called him insane, told him I hated him, told him to get out. But now I think he truly believed it.
When Amy’s life support was turned off, I saw her, she smiled at me.
The chill and fog seemed to lift from the village, and the grass finally seemed to grow, and the trees shrunk back, and the creeks stopped edging towards the houses,
It seemed as if all was well.
But I see Lilian, I see her daughter. And I see how my son wants to play with her, and I snatch him away,
Lillian looks at me and she is sad. Sad as a parent that I am denying her child the joy of friendship. Sad knowing how marked her child’s life will be by death, and how she will never be able to escape this village, how she maybe will never want too.
Any and all help to find further info will be much appreciated.