Have you ever seen blood in the snow? There’s something about it.. It’s almost pretty. It tries to spread like a cloud in the water, but can only reach so far. The crimson red against the pale white surface almost seems to glow, it is so vibrant.. It’s something I never expected to see, and never did see until I moved from the dangerous city to a quiet, safe, small town.
I’m Alex. My fiancé, Annie and I have lived in Philadelphia most of our lives. We often discussed moving to a small, quaint area where you have privacy and a feeling of safety. The kind of place where you know your neighbors. After covid, we were both working remotely, so we had our chance.
Eventually, we found a good deal on a nice little house in a quiet neighborhood in northern Pennsylvania. It was a way nicer place than we could afford closer to the city. We decided to pull the trigger.
“Small town” is a bit of an understatement. There are only five or six households in our little county. You’d have to drive about 20 minutes through back roads and forest until seeing another house.
It’s a drive we’ve had to make a couple times because we have to go to town for a lot of grocery shopping and other things. There’s a small gas station walking distance from our new house, but it’s a very small place with one pump and a small general store.
It’s not a Dollar General, just a general store. That’s how small this area is. Not even a Dollar General.. There are some things we can get at the general store, but every now and then we have to make the trip into town.
Our neighbors have started carpooling with us into town. It saves gas for us all to go together but that isn’t the reason. The real reason is that they are Amish. In fact, everyone in the county and our little neighborhood are Amish, except for us and the owner of the general store.
We quickly befriended our closest neighbors, Seth and Heidi. Annie and I grew accustomed to our new community. We really enjoyed living there before the storm hit.. We like having our little general store in walking distance. The owner Ben, would even serve drinks after hours there. It became a sort of nightly tradition to have a nightcap at the store. But as I said, this was before the storm hit..
It happened a few weeks ago. The winter was getting colder by the day. We constantly worried about the families that didn’t use electricity. They were tougher than us though. We did get Seth and Heidi to agree to hold onto a couple walkie-talkies in case of emergency. Mainly if someone needed a ride to the hospital or something like that, they’d be able to get a hold of us or Ben.
We expected a snowstorm during the week, but it seemed to have missed us. We had no idea that it was only running late. Friday night, I didn’t have a care in the world. I was at the store pretty late with Ben, Seth, and Heidi. Annie went to bed early, but she didn’t get much sleep.
When I woke up the following morning, Annie was wide awake and looked nervous.“What’s going on? Did you have a bad dream?” I asked.
“I heard noises outside last night. It sounded like someone was out there,” she replied.“It might have been me coming back from the store. I’m sorry if I woke you up.”
“No, it was after you went to bed,” she said. “I woke up and heard something rustling out there.”
“It’s probably just forest noises and what not,” I said, trying to put her mind at ease. “We’re used to the white noise of the city. It’s so loud that you don’t hear the individual sounds outside. Out here, you hear the animals, tree branches breaking in the wind, the wind blowing something over, critters, etc.”
She agreed, but still seemed nervous. It was like she wanted to shrug it off, but couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was wrong.
As we were having our morning coffee, Ben called on the walkie. With cell service being scarce here, and so many people in the community not having phones, walkie-talkies have quickly become the go to source of communication.
“We’ve got some weather comin,” Ben said.
“I thought it missed us,” I replied.
“So did I..” said Ben.
“As bad as we thought it was gonna be the other day?” I asked.
“Starting to look like it might be worse,” Ben replied.
“I’ll head over in a minute here. Just let me finish my coffee.”
Before heading over to the store, I wanted to make sure we had enough gas for the generators in case the power went out. When I went out back to the shed, the can was knocked over and empty. It was strange. I had just filled it. I figured an animal must’ve gotten in there, but too much snow had fallen to see any prints. Maybe that’s what Annie heard the night before.
I grabbed the gas can and went to the store to meet Ben. We knew we had to check on the Amish families, make sure they were aware of the bad weather coming, and check and see if they needed help preparing for it.
I walked into the general store and saw that Seth was already there, talking with Ben.“Big storm comin!” Seth said.
“I heard. You guys are welcome to stay with us if you don’t feel like running the generator all night, I said.
“We’re prepared,” Seth replied.
“Have you seen David or Sarah?” Ben asked.
“I haven’t seen anyone today,” I said. “Are they the family that lives around the corner?” I asked.
“Yeah, the Amish folks,” Ben laughed. “I’m trying to warn everyone about the storm, but they haven’t responded.”
“Are they the only ones who haven’t?” I asked. “What about that old guy who’s always pissed off?”
“That’s Mr. Kaufman,” Seth said. “He won’t respond. He told me that me and Heidi were going to hell because we use walkie-talkies and generators..”
“He’s a very.. traditional guy,” Ben added.
“He gives Amish folks a bad name,” Seth continued, “It’s because his kid wasn’t interested in the Amish lifestyle. He bailed as soon as he was old enough. Now he takes it out on everyone else.”
“We know Kaufman isn’t gonna respond, but David and Sarah would have,” Ben said. “We have to check on them.”
Their house was a little further of a walk, so we took Ben’s snowmobiles over there. We knocked on the door, but there was no answer. We started looking around the outside of the house. To try and figure out where they might’ve gone. Their horse was in the stable out back. They couldn’t have gone far unless they were picked up.
“I found something,” Ben yelled.
Seth and I went over to where Ben was along the side of the house. He pointed out the series of footprints. He explained to us that the wind had been blowing predominantly south, so the footprints were visible on the south side of the house right up against the house where not as much snow had fallen.
“Someone was out here,” Ben said.
We again tried knocking on the door, banging on the door really. Still no answer. We were all getting pretty nervous and decided to kick the door in.
Ben kicked in the door. It only took a few seconds for us to notice the blood. There was blood all over the floor and splattered on the walls. We followed the blood trail down the hallway, continuously, calling out for David and Sarah.
The trail led to their bedroom. The door was closed. There was a large number two drawn on the door, presumably in blood. We slowly opened the door.
What we saw in there was pure savagery.. It’s difficult to describe. Their hands and legs were bound in rope. They looked like they’d been placed on the bed together. The room was absolutely covered in blood. They had an absurd amount of wounds, cuts, bruises, and even some missing limbs.
David was missing four of his fingers. His Achilles tendons were both slashed. Sarah’s eyes were cut out. The back of their heads were both caved in.. Ben noticed what he described as defensive wounds, implying that the two were alive throughout most of what happened to them. I can’t even imagine the terror they experienced.
The three of us stood in silence for a moment, almost in disbelief. I’ve never seen anything close to that horrible. I can’t imagine that any of us had. We all tried to catch our breath and regain our composure. That’s when it hit me.
“Annie!” I screamed. “We gotta go!”
I quickly explained to Ben and Seth that Annie had heard noises outside the previous night and that my gas can was emptied. At the time it was easy to blame animals or the wind, but after what we saw, I wasn’t willing to take any chances.
We raced to my house to check on Annie. My heart was pounding every second of the ride over. I jumped off the snowmobile before I’d even come to a stop and flung the door open. Annie was sitting on the couch, talking to Heidi..
“What’s wrong?” She asked.
Ben came inside and we explained what we knew. Seth was about to run home to check on Heidi, before realizing that she was there with Annie. I called the police while Ben checked the rest of the house. He made sure nothing was out of place and everything was locked tight.
I was connected to the police station in the larger town roughly a half hour drive away. The operator explained that they were stretched thin because of the storm, power outages, etc. She said they would try to send a car over but that fallen trees and white out conditions have made it difficult for anyone to get through.
Ben suggested that we all ride out the storm at the general store. Annie and I got a duffel bag and packed up any supplies that could be helpful. We grabbed batteries, warm clothes, knives, and other small weapons.
Annie and Heidi drove the car over to the store while we followed them on the snowmobiles. We got inside, locked up the doors, and then went to get us all something to eat. There was a few minutes of silence as we all tried to process what was happening.
“Do you think the people who did that to Sarah and David were outside our house last night?” Annie asked softly.
“I don’t know..” I said. “We’re all together now, though. The cops are sending someone. It’s going to be okay.”
“What about the Kaufmans?” Ben asked.
“You know Kaufman,” Seth replied. “He might have done it.”
“You think Kaufman killed them?” Ben asked. “That little old man and his little old wife?”
“You never know,” Seth replied. “He always said that we were all fake Amish. Does anyone else have a motive to do something like that?”
“Being an ass doesn’t make you a killer,” I said. “It’s pointless to randomly speculate anyway.”
It was quiet for a while after that. Ben made some food, but none of us ate very much. Ben armed himself with his gun, but he only had one. The rest of us tried to find assorted blunt objects or knives for the time being.
Eventually, there was a loud bang on the door. We all jumped up and stood close in the middle of the room. Ben aimed his gun at the door and stood in front of us. I prepared to fling the door open with Ben ready to shoot.
With my hand on the lock, I counted down. “3, 2.., 1!”
I whipped the door open, and Ben aimed his gun, only to be met with another gun pointed back at us. It was a police officer. After a tense little standoff, we were able to explain that we were the ones who called. Ben put his gun down before the officer put down hers.
She came inside. She introduced herself as officer Grimly, and we explained everything we knew. We told her that the Kaufman‘s were the only ones not accounted for.
“I’m gonna have to go check on them,”
“I doubt they want to be checked on,” Seth said.
“They have a right to know what’s happening in their neighborhood,” Grimly replied.
“We can follow you up on the sleds,” I suggested.
“No way,” Grimly replied. “You don’t wanna take a snowmobile out in weather like this. There’s a ton of fallen trees and visibility is awful.”
“She’s right,” Ben replied. “You may know the terrain, but the terrain changes in a storm.”“You should take a walkie,” Seth said to Grimly.
“I didn’t know Amish people could use these,” she quipped.
“We aren’t all alike,” Heidi said.
“My apologies,” Grimly replied.
“Just keep it on this channel,” Seth said. “It’s the one we all use. We all have one. Careful though, the button sticks.”
“Call me if you see anything,” Grimly said as she prepared to head up to Kaufman’s. “I’ll try to be quick.”
We nervously waited behind. We were all very anxious to hear back from Grimly. It was silent in the store as we all waited around the walkie-talkie.
As we waited, Ben was using his walkie to cycle through the channels on the off chance that there was someone else in range who might need help. To all of our surprise, he found someone.
At first, we could only hear the crackle and some static, but eventually we heard a voice. It was a man’s voice, whispering to whoever they were calling..
“I see the cop.. She’s at that white house.”
All of our eyes widened upon hearing that. Before anyone could say anything, another person responded.
“I’ll be right there. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
We all started to panic.
“We have to tell her!” Annie yelled.
Seth reached for the walkie to call Officer Grimly. She happened to call him moments before he could say anything to her.
“The Kaufman’s are okay. Very stubborn, but okay,” she said.
As soon as she stopped speaking, Seth squeezed the button and screamed that someone was watching her. We waited a minute for a response, but then heard Officer Grimley start talking again without hearing the beep.
“You’ll be safer if you come with me..” she said.
We then heard another voice, which we quickly realized was Mr. Kaufman.
“We can take care of ourselves!” he exclaimed.“What the hell?” I asked.
“Oh my god..” Seth said with a horrified look on his face. “The button’s stuck.. I told her that it sticks sometimes when you call out.”
It was clear that he was correct as we listened to Grimley continue to argue with Kaufman about coming with her. A panic ensued once more.
“What are we gonna do?” Heidi cried. “We have to help her!”
Ben started hitting the ringer on the other station to try and interrupt the attackers as Seth continued trying to get through to Grimley on ours. There was still no luck as we could still hear a frustrated mr. Kaufman arguing with Grimly over the walkie.
Shortly after Ben started hitting the ringer on the other station, a voice could be heard.
“Cut it out with the ringer,” one voice said.
“It’s not me,” the other replied.
“Turn it off and stay where you are. I can see you.”
The combination of fear, anger, and helplessness took over the room. We knew that none of us could make it to Kaufman’s house in time to be any help. We weren’t even sure if we’d make it at all in our crappy car. It was old and didn’t hold up well in the snow, let alone a blizzard.
We could only listen and hope. We could still hear Grimly arguing with Kaufman. Their conversation abruptly halted after a banging sound could be heard.
“Someone is here,” the officer said, still not, realizing that the button was stuck on the walkie.
Back at the store, we panicked. We continued listening, hoping that the cop and the Kaufman‘s could hold off the intruders.
“I see someone out there,” Officer Grimly said. “Stay away from the windows!”
“Where!?” Mr. Kaufman aggressively replied.
“I just saw him,” she said. “It’s hard to see with all the snow whipping around.”
“Are we in danger?” Mrs. Kaufman asked.
“No!” Mr Kaufman shouted. “These punks are gonna regret stepping foot on my property..”
“There’s another one! I see him!” The officer exclaimed. “Is there a back door? We could sneak out to my car.”
“There’s no back door,” Mr. Kaufman sneered. “I ain’t running anywhere.”
“They’re both around the side of the house!” The officer yelled. “If we move quickly, we can get to my car.”
“I ain’t running!” Mr. Kaufman repeated.
“I’m gonna go out there,” The officer said. “Stay away from the windows.”
For a minute or so, we didn’t hear anything. We could just hear brief noises as they moved around before we heard officer Grimly’s voice again.
“It’s stuck!” She said, confused.
“Let me get it,” Mr. Kaufman said, sounding irritated.
We could hear grunts and a little banging from over the walkie that we were all now huddled around. After what sounded like them trying to get the door open, Mrs. Kaufman once again spoke up.
“What is he doing out there?” She asked. “He’s dumping something.”
“Where?” Grimly asked.
Moments later, we heard the officer gasp. I could hear the terror in her voice as she said, “Oh my god.. We have to get out of here..”
It was tough to make out what was happening over the walkie talkie at first. We began hearing screams and Grimly asked Kaufman again if they had a back door. Before long she seemed to attempt to contact us again, not knowing that we could hear what was happening. All she said directly to us was, “They’re burning the house!”
“We have to go up there!” Annie cried.
“It’ll take way too long if we can even make it up there in your car” Ben replied. “If the house is burning, we don’t even have the supplies to put it out. We’d need my truck, and it’s not even running right now. Even if we had it, it would still be a long shot. Rushing up there can only get more people hurt.”
Annie was angry. I wanted to defend her, but Ben knew a lot more about that type of stuff than me. I also knew how rough the hill leading up to the Kaufman’s house got when the weather was bad. It didn’t feel good, but we decided as a group to stay put.
I’m not sure how much of a decision we really had. I don’t know how we could have put out a house fire ourselves. Regardless, the remainder of what we heard over the walkie talkies will haunt me forever..
It was a lot of yelling and panic, the sound of glass breaking, and eventually.. crying. I don’t want to describe it in too much detail.. It’s difficult.
We knew what was happening, and we were powerless to help. At a certain point, the officer spoke to us directly again. She was at a point where she was aware that she wasn’t going to make it. I can’t imagine how that feels.. She asked us to pass on a message.
“This is officer Allison Grimly.. My daughter Connie will be starting highschool next year.. Please tell her to be strong. Work hard and don’t take any shit from anybody! Tell her that I’m sorry I can’t help her pick out a dress for winter formal, but that she should still go. Tell her not to put her life on hold because of this.. Tell her I love her more than anything, and that I’ll always be with her.. And to you guys listening, I’m sorry.. I wish I could’ve done more to help you.. Just.. kill these bastards..”
After that, there was a loud thud.. and that was it. We kept the walkie-talkie on for a few more minutes, but didn’t hear any new voices after that. We sat in relative silence for a few minutes. Nobody wanted to be the first one to speak.
Ben silently walked behind the counter and grabbed a bottle of rum along with some glasses. He began pouring drinks.
“I don’t think we should do that,” Seth said. “We gotta be on our toes.”
“You don’t have to have one,” Ben whispered somberly.
Seth took one anyway, as did the rest of us. It was a difficult feeling. We really needed some time to process and decompress, but we didn’t have time. We needed to be in survival mode.
“We have to go on the offensive,” Ben said.
After a short discussion we found that Ben had one firearm at the store, his hunting rifle. Seth said he had some guns at his house. Other than that, we didn’t have much more than tools and blunt objects, as well as an old box of fireworks.
We decided that we needed to go to Seth’s to get weapons. We couldn’t just wait in the store for them to come and burn that down too. We needed to even the fight. Ben suggested that someone stay back at the store because it had the most supplies and we couldn’t risk the intruders taking it over.
After some debate, Seth and I decided to run to his house for the guns. We took the snowmobiles, not wanting to risk the car. We figured that if the weather calmed down, we might be able to drive out of there at some point.
We reached Seth‘s house without incident. I followed Seth inside as he ran back to his bedroom. It wasn’t long before he started to panic.
“They’ve been in here!” He said. “Guns are gone.”
“So now they’re more heavily armed, and we have nothing..” I moaned.
“Wait,” Seth replied.
He pulled out some boxes from under his bed. After digging through them for a minute, he pulled out a pistol.
“It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Just out of curiosity, how many guns are missing and what kind were they?” I asked. “How nervous should we be?”
“It’s uhh.. a couple hunting rifles, a revolver.. It looks like they got the big one too though..” Seth nervously replied.
“The big one?”
“Yeah..” Seth muttered. “It’s uhh.. pretty powerful assault rifle.. semi automatic.”
“Perfect,” I sarcastically said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s not your fault,” I replied. “We’re outgunned though. We gotta come up with a plan. Let’s get back to the store. We’ve been gone way too long anyway.”
We made our way back to the store, looking over our shoulders, the whole ride. We couldn’t see any sign of the assailants. We got to the store, knocked on the door, then anxiously waited for them to let us in. After an uncomfortably long wait, Heidi opened the door.
“They came!” She cried immediately as we entered the store, tears streaming down her face.
“Where are they?!” Seth shouted as he drew his pistol.
“They ran out the back,” Heidi replied.
I yelled out to Annie. I couldn’t see her and quickly noticed that Heidi had blood on her hands. Those few seconds felt like forever. I felt a monumental sigh of relief when Annie came walking from the back room.
She had blood on her as well and was crying. I ran to her and wrapped my arms around her.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“No..” she whimpered. “They got Ben..”
We followed them to the back room, and there he was, lying motionless on the floor. He was covered in blood. I could see several stab wounds. His shirt had been ripped open and a number six was carved into his chest..
Seth and I both asked what had happened as we frantically tried to check to see if Ben was breathing, desperately hoping he was still with us. Annie and Heidi both already knew that he wasn’t.. Heidi explained to us what had happened while we were gone.
“We all started gathering things we could use as weapons. Annie and I started making that,” Heidi said, gesturing toward a collection of buckets, cans, jars, and other, seemingly random objects from around the store.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Well, we started making some homemade styrofoam napalm,” Annie said. “It’s easy to make, and it could be really effective if we can set some sort of trap. We also made a couple Molotov cocktails. We got some of the fuses from the box of fireworks and emptied some of the powder from firecrackers. We were hoping there would be something more heavy duty in there, but it’s mostly sparklers and roman candles.”
“..How did you learn to do all that?” I asked.
“Degenerate cousins and YouTube?” She shrugged.
“So what happened,” Seth asked.
“We heard knocking at the front door,” Heidi replied. “We thought it was you, but couldn’t tell from the window. We tried yelling out to see if you’d respond, but didn’t hear anything. Ben was somewhere near the back when we abruptly heard glass shatter. We heard Ben yelling in pain moments later as we both went for a knife. I followed Annie to the back where we saw a man in a ski mask crouched over Ben. Annie lunged at him and stuck him in the back or shoulder with the knife. He jumped up frantically, trying to pull the knife from his back and quickly ran out the back door. We locked it back up and watched from the window as two men got on snowmobiles and drove off that way. Annie barricaded the broken window while I tried to resuscitate Ben, but it was too late..”
“What’s with the 6?” I asked.
“I think it’s the number of victims..” Seth replied. “First couple had a 2 written at the scene, three more at the Kaufman’s, then Ben males 6..”
It was an uncomfortable thought. Are they really just doing this randomly? So much horrific violence caused, and for no specific reason?
We had a brief moment of silence for Ben before covering his body with a sheet. We vowed that we would give him a proper burial when this was all over.
I held Annie and tried to tell her how brave she was. She now seemed more angry than afraid.
“We should get out of here,” Annie said as she started packing some of the homemade weapons into a backpack.
“I agree,” Heidi added. “We can’t just sit here.”
“We take all the weapons we can find, arm ourselves the best we can,” Annie said. “We drive as carefully as possible without puttering.If they come for us, we defend ourselves! We fight.”
“So.. aside from wrenches and kitchen knives, what do we have for weapons?” Seth asked.
We didn’t have much. We had Ben’s hunting rifle with limited ammo as well as Seth’s pistol. We had some knives, large wrenches, a bat, and a tire iron. We had Annie’s styrofoam napalm and Molotov cocktails. We also had some low octane fireworks.
We loaded the car and headed off. My knuckles were white around the steering wheel as I nervously drove into the whiteout conditions. Everyone kept a close eye out of their windows. We weren’t moving very fast, but we were moving.
To be continued tomorow…