As winter approaches most are overjoyed by Christmas and festivities, I however alone in the mountains of the north just hope to pass one more rough winter. In many places of this world the cold started to diminish around the world, I however don’t posses this luck.
Every winter something strange happens, I will today explain this since of my old age while writing this won’t advantage me in surviving and I can at least warn people of this place and the horrible mistake of ending up in my place.
Back when I could remember my age I was around my twenties and as I prepared to bear a family I had the stupid idea of going somewhere more isolated to live just to get away from city life. At first it was your usual mountaintop residence, mostly old people living there taking care of sheep or just doing normal things people at the countryside do. The only rule there besides the usual no stealing no murder, etc.. was that you had to be very quiet during winter.
A few months passed by, my wife gave birth to a beautiful son on the date of December 1st 1976 and I was honestly expecting to be congratulated but everyone looked stunned and afraid. I regret not listening when they told me to leave.
Years pass but every winter I could feel a dark presence, I could feel something growing in the shades, my doctor told me over the phone that it’s probably paranoia and nothing to worry about. Although if it was just me being paranoid I would not be writing my story right now. When my son was aged 6 I could hear it scratching downstairs at my door while I could just sit there and listen knowing what it was after.
After a while of this happening every year my wife would give me extra attention during the winter months for comfort but it was never enough, when he was 6 I could hear scratching at 7 I could hear footsteps from the room, my wife is a heavy sleeper so I’m not surprised when she probably taught I was just making “ghost stories” up to scare my son of going out and catching a cold.
The thing I heard was very much real and I begun to see why the older folks there were panicking at the birth, The noise awakened something and now it was drawn to us. I noticed nobody but one lady around my age talked to me, the lady told me the others wouldn’t talk to me so the curse won’t affect them but told me she didn’t believe in those superstitions and just found it rude to ignore someone all of a sudden.
My son got homeschooled by my Wife since everyone in the town saw us as “cursed”, as I continued to not take any action towards the weird things they started to take actions towards me. I noticed it more and more I gave it the nickname “the cold curse” Every year winter seemed to get even colder and dangerous. I had to start cutting wood as a hobby just to keep heat inside the house.
I don’t get why I didn’t listen because each time the fire went out I could feel the cold laying on me like a blanket and I could hear walking each time the fire went out, my son by then was aged 12 and he also noticed weird things happening. He told about how he could hear scratching on the window at night, when I opened the window later to let the air in there were visible scratch marks from the outside.
I told my wife that we should move back south but she always gave me my pills for paranoia and told me that I’m just scaring myself with a sweet smile. She either saw it too and denied it or she believes I scared her into hearing it. I could see her sometimes open her eyes look around and have a scared face each time the noises arose. Every single time we woke up I asked her if she heard it but she always looked very confused each time I tried telling her.
When my song was aged 14 my Wife mysteriously disappeared with her only sign of life was that her side of the bed was messy and her possessions still were intact, You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to tell that the thing took her. My son claims to see her in his dreams telling him to join her.
For a few years this was a regular basis I lived by, in spring-middle of autumn life would be relatively normal except for the usual crosses people hung on our door and the woman I used to chat with also mysteriously disappeared. I always felt uneasy, just leaving the house to cut wood made me feel watched. I tried to run away with my son with the car but it broke down.
At night I always stayed up just to fuel the fire, he was already 17 so who knows what bad things would await me if I let the fire die. For a brief moment I closed my heavy eyelids just to relax and I fell asleep that one night, My son told me he saw something in his room lurking in the dark while the cold was impossible to miss. He couldn’t say anything for the whole say just “I saw it” repeated over and over again the same monotone voice almost like a broken record.
The next night he disappeared too even if I kept the fire open that whole night. After the incident, I just assumed the cold curse was after my son not me. After things slowly went back to as normal as you could get them my neighbors started talking to me again.
about 20 more years passed since he disappeared and slowly it came back. I could hear my son’s voice calling me telling me to join him and his mom, I for sure wouldn’t want to tell the others they would just isolate me again. So I kept it to myself, the whole thing happened again.
I could hear the walking again and it wanted me to give up to take me too. Everyone in the village also claimed to see strange things like the lights on at my place flashing S.O.S. in Morse code and my wife and son seemingly sitting on my front porch trying to get inside with arms so cold they turned dark and hard not even being able to turn the doorknob.
Today is the 28th year since he went missing and each night makes me more and more sure it will end for me soon. I can hear their voices banging on my door to let them in, last night the knocking stopped. As I’m looking through the window I notice the first snowflake fall and as I’m looking out the window I realize their reflection in the window isn’t from the outside.