I’ve never told anyone this, but I thought this might be a good time and place to talk about the winter I spent at Green Hill. I was only twenty, so about fifteen years ago, and I had just dropped out of college. I honestly was never much of a student, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and I was just kind of drifting when this great job opportunity sort of just fell into my lap.
There’s a place called Green Hill in northern North Dakota, it’s an awesome state park, it does crazy business during the summer months, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. But they have to close in the winter times because the snow gets so bad. We’re talking like, ten feet of snow sometimes. But with that much snow, it can cave in the roofs of cabins and other buildings, so they hire four people every year to basically keep knocking the snow off. There are other things you have to do, but snow removal from roofs is the main thing.
My uncle had done it a few years back in the day and he stayed in touch with the guy who put the whole winter program together, and he knew I was hurting for money so he put me in touch with the guy. A few weeks later, I was flying up to North Dakota. The guy who I spoke to was too old to do the job himself anymore, but his right-hand man Jerry picked me up from the airport and drove me to Green Hill. The first snow hadn’t come yet, so I got to appreciate just how beautiful the area was. The trees were bare, but I could just imagine how it all looked in greens or even the orange and yellows of fall. And there were plenty of evergreens too. The whole place was just cool.
That first night the four of us all stayed in the main resort building, where Jerry spent his winters. Jerry was like fifty, a big guy who liked to work out. And there was Mike, a guy in his thirties who was going through a divorce and had been looking to get away. And lastly, there was Spencer, who would be staying closest to my cabin, so he was going to be the guy I saw the most. Green Hill was a big park, and we each got a cabin, and we were on the hook for like, a ton of acres. Spence was barely older than me and we hit it off right away. We all got pretty drunk that night, and so Jerry didn’t drive us around to our cabins until the next afternoon, and not the morning as he had planned.
A week passed before the first snow, and I spent time four-wheeling around my area, clearing fallen branches from roadways, doing some light upkeep on various buildings, and things like that. But when that snow did come, boy did it come with a vengeance. I woke up one morning to two or three feet of snow. The four-wheeler stayed in the shed, and the snowmobile came out.
I went around to the roofs of the buildings I was in charge of and shoveled the snow off, or even used a flame thrower. That was quite the thrill, getting to melt away snow with a big jet of fire.
For that next week, it snowed every day and night, and melting or shoveling the snow off of cabins proved to be a full-time job. My cell phone didn’t get any service here, but the four of us had radios, so we would chat a bit most nights.
Jerry kept reminding of us a rule he had given us on the very first night. When the snow came, no one was to be outside after the sun went down. I thought it was kind of a weird rule and asked him why. The guy took a minute to answer me, but he said it was just easy to get lost in the dark, and with the snow, you would freeze before any of them could come to get you when they realized you were missing.
But after two weeks of being completely alone beyond short little chats on the radio, I was going stir-crazy. I radioed Spence and told him that I was going to head over one evening after I got done with my work. He seemed excited to have company. I went over and we drank beer and played cards and listened to some records. We had a good time, and by the time I was leaving his cabin and heading back to mine miles and miles away, it was past midnight. He told me I should stay and leave in the morning, but it was quite a trip and I was worried about getting to the snow late in the day so I went ahead and split.
It was spooky driving by myself that late for real. An absolutely surreal experience and I kept letting my mind get away from me. Every shadow I saw was a bear or a wolf, things like that. I took a turn on the trail and my headlight swept over something directly in the middle of the path and I slowed my snowmobile to a stop.
It was a deer, or what was left of it at least. The animal had been torn in half, its blood stained the snow around it. It was snowing, but there was hardly any snow on the corpse so I know it had been killed recently. I couldn’t help but feel as though I was being watched. I freaked and ran for my snowmobile and kept on. When I got to my cabin I went in and locked the door. The whole two hours back from that deer carcass I had been sure whatever had killed it was following me. I convinced myself I could hear it crashing through the frozen snow and bushes along the trail. I sat for a long time at one of my windows, staring out into the darkness. I saw nothing, and eventually fell asleep, right there in the chair I had dragged over.
I told Spence the next day on the radio about the deer, and he told me he had been finding animals that had been torn apart all around his area. We decided to tell Jerry, but I omitted the fact that I found my deer during the night. He told us we needed to stay away from anything like that, and the bodies wouldn’t last long in the wilderness, it wasn’t something we needed to worry about. He told us again to make sure we stayed in our cabins at night.
Another week passed. We were there for three months, and time was slowing to a crawl. I felt lonely and secluded, and I hadn’t counted on just how hard it would be not to see people every day.
Eventually, none of us could raise Spence on his radio. We had still been talking every night, but I hadn’t gone to visit him again. Jerry said he was going to drive over there, and asked me to come one morning. He had to go right by my cabin to get to Spence, so I told him I would.
We drove our snowmobiles down the trail. We didn’t come across the deer carcass I had found. When we got to Spence’s cabin my heart sank. His front door was hanging wide open, and as we went inside we saw the place was trashed. The kitchen table was turned over, along with a chair. Spence was nowhere to be found. Jerry muttered something under his breath, and I’ll never forget it. It sounded like he said “damn it, we had a deal.” but I can’t be sure. When I asked him what he had said he told me he was just thinking that Spence had gone stir crazy. He told me it happened sometimes, people just couldn’t handle the seclusion and they went crazy and they wandered out into the woods and were never seen again.
We checked the shed nearby and Spencer’s snowmobile was still there. If he had left, he had walked. We searched the area but found no signs of him. Back at my cabin later on in the day, I felt sick to my stomach. I had spoken with Spence just that night. He hadn’t seemed crazy, he was making jokes, laughing, all that stuff. Talking about how much he missed women. It just didn’t make sense that he would have gone out into the woods to die.
A few nights later I was woken by a strange sound. I crept to a window and looked out. There was something at the treeline, moving slowly around my cabin. I followed its movement, going from window to window. I could just see a dark shape, hard to make out in the darkness and snow. But whatever it was, it was big. Much bigger than a man. I thought it might be a bear, but it was walking upright. I watched it for hours, circling my cabin. It never approached.
The next morning I went to look for tracks but the snow was falling so heavily there were none. After some thought, I called Jerry and told him what I had seen. He told me I was probably just seeing things, but there was something in his voice that alarmed me. He sounded as though he was hiding something.
A few mornings later when I woke up and went out to start my work, I was shocked to find deep marks on my cabin door. I had heard nothing the night before, but it looked like something had come along, and tried to get in. Something with big claws had raked through the wood as though it was butter. I called Jerry again, and he told me I had better come to stay with him after I got my work done. He said I would be fine during the daytime hours, but I needed to make sure I was to his place by nightfall. He told me he would tell me everything.
I was scared shitless. Something strange was going on, and I rushed through my work and headed to Jerry.
He poured us drinks when I got there and we sat inside while the sun went down. He told me everything. It was so crazy I wouldn’t have believed him if Spence hadn’t gone missing, and I hadn’t seen that shape in the night. He told me there were large creatures in the woods here, they came with the snow and they stayed all winter. They were horrific beasts with claws and teeth but they were smart and they had agreed to leave the cabins alone. Anything they found in the woods at night was fair game, but they had stuck by their agreement for nearly a hundred years. At least until Spence. Jerry was worried that one of the bests had gone rogue, or maybe they all had. He wondered if we needed to abandon our posts and leave.
Something slammed against his door just then. It burst open and I saw the most terrifying creature I have ever seen in my life. It was covered in fur, white like the snow, and it had a snarling mouth lined with razor-sharp teeth. Its eyes were all black, its fingers ending in six-inch claws. Jerry was up in a flash, running for a shotgun that hung on the wall. The creature saw him and ran for him, moving impossibly fast.
I’m ashamed to say it but I ran. I ran right out the door. As I dove atop my snowmobile I heard a gunshot, and then I heard Jerry scream. I turned the machine on and just drove. I don’t know where I was going. I just drove along the trail. I never looked back.
There was a small town nearby and that’s where I headed, getting there at about two in the morning. Nothing was open save a small hotel. I went in and told the man behind the counter everything. He listened to me, and I could tell as I spoke that he knew of the creatures. he gave me a room for free, and the next morning I left, getting a ride to a small airport a few hours away.
Green Hill closed for good that winter, and I’ve heard that no one goes into those woods anymore. I’m glad about that. Let those fucking things eat deer and not people.