Cold Comes Walking

The "Creature"

    The wind whispered through the dark empty trees like a warning in a foreign language. Winter had arrived, and with winter came the "Creature".
   It's no surprise that weird things happen in Appalachia, but winter always brought out the worst in the forest, for me anyway. My name is Victoria, I live in a small farmhouse in rural Appalachia with my family.
     My family's property is practically the only sign of civilization for miles. We have a neighbor down a 1 track road, 5 miles away. He's a single old man, senile, and as creepy as the road to his small, weathered cabin.
    When my siblings and I came across the run down, glorified shack one day, we thought it was abandoned. Until a short, crooked, old man emerged from the cabin with a double barrel shotgun. Since then we avoided the general vicinity of his property at all costs, our parents exercised the same caution.
    While winter during the day was beautiful, it carried the same eerie feeling as night time did. More so now since I was the only kid living at home, as the youngest I was doomed to eventually be on my own, just me, my parents, and our ancient hunting dog.
    Since all my adventures were now embarked upon solo, the forest was silent, no laughter, no yelling, no snowballs being flung at your head like a surprise assault. With it being so silent, it was hard to differentiate noises, was the snow crunching behind you footsteps? Maybe a curious deer? Or a creature as old as the trees?
   While all of Appalachia was creepy as hell, there was something sinister in the woods surrounding your family's property. Something as cold and as bitter as the landscape surrounding you. Sure there was always something lurking, in the wet spring, hot summer, and the crisp fall. But something only ever came around when the warmth from the sun was weak, and everything was under a blanket of white.
     That sense of dread once the last leaves fell from the trees, the morning after the first snow arrived. It had made itself known only once, your grandfather barely lived to tell the tale. He was in his late 20's checking his trap line around the house, after that the details of his encounter are fuzzy, but he was forever changed after seeing whatever he saw that day.
     No one had seen it in 60 years, no one else
had that "feeling" the sense something was stalking them like my grandfather carried for the rest of his life. That was until my grandfather's tragic death. Right around my 10th birthday, when my grandfather was found horribly mangled only a mile behind the house.
   Ever since that day, every winter, that feeling of dread, uneasiness, that kind of bitter cold that soaks through your bones, settled in my body. It remained there until the snow began melting, and the days became longer. Ever since I found my grandfather, it was as if something had attached itself to me. Like my grandfather was the host to this awful parasite, and I was the new host.
   It was the 15th anniversary of my grandfather's death, only 5 days from my 25th birthday. I come out here every year, to try to connect to my grandfather, we had been so close, me being the one to find him was both ironic and a cruel twist of fate. An awful last image of the man that had been such a huge part of my short decade of life.
   Lost in thought, that image of him still burned in my mind, you're suddenly pulled out of your head. A scream vibrates through your bones, echoing over the forest.