The cold, bitter winter air bit like a lion’s jaw, cmping down with a ferocity that stole the breath and numbed the skin. A sharp, stinging sensation made Chris wince, not just physically, but also within the depths of his soul. Each breath was a reminder, a reminder of a lost promise now resurfacing. Each step in the snow was a reminder as well. The crunch of it reminded him of the day it all began for him. The day his life became enshrouded by the prospect of death.
Chris kept moving along even with the winter air banging against his very soul. The wind seemed to carry whispers inside itself. Secrets rustling about alongside the bare branches on nearby trees. The branches themselves seem to be a prelude, they look to be pointing towards something. They are pointing towards something, my demise, he thought cynically.
As Chris gains on the path to his home, so too does the wind. The shadows on the winter floor looked like hands waving goodbye to him. They pressed and clung to the snow like grasping cws. The eerie silence set in, thick and suffocating like the wind. The winter itself felt…alive, drawing him closer to the inevitable, a cold, hungry predator lying in wait for its prey.
Chris neared his home. The wind started to let up. He turned onto Dixon Street from Penny Road. He noticed that the snow closer to his home was less thick and more uneven than the snow sitting outside the bar. The audible crunch of the snow underneath his boots became quieter and was overtaken by the sound of his boots walking on Dixon Street asphalt. He saw his home slowly coming into view, a one-bedroom apartment he rented out six years ago.
In those past six years, not a single neighbor compined about Chris, if you asked any neighbor, they would all say the same, “Yeah he’s a great guy! No problem with him, he’s quiet and respectful.” Chris prided himself on that and he almost enjoyed it on the same level.
His house was only a few yards away now. The brown-tipped roof was a welcoming sight, especially with all this cold wind and snow. Chris made it onto his driveway and started to search for his keys (his front door keys, which had a race car on the key chain, he loved race cars as a kid) when something caught his eye. Over on the right side of the fence was a patch of uncovered snow.
It wasn’t unusual, this te in February, to find splotches of wet grass where stubborn drifts had finally yielded. Patches of sickly green, slick with melting snow, dotted the ndscape like festering wounds. However, what was disturbing about this splotch was its utter, unnatural dryness. The grass, a brittle, faded yellow, looked parched, almost calcified, as if it never had the experience of snow, let alone the lingering damp of a winter’s end. It was a bone-dry isnd in the sea of slush.
The surrounding area, a ndscape of dull, gray-white snow, stretched out like a wrinkled, frozen shroud. Every other splotch was the same, glistening patches where the snow had given way, the grass beneath slick and cold to the touch, like the cmmy skin of something dead. But here, here was this desiccated circle, the air around it was hot like a campfire.
Chris slowly approached with each footfall deliberate, cautious. The faint scent of old paper, like an old newspaper (more specifically something that set out overnight in someone’s yard), reached his nostrils. He was now only a couple yards away from the mysterious object which Chris could now make out as an old newspaper clipping. Impossibly it stood still, even with the ferocious wind now calming down. It was still windy, but this paper didn’t budge an inch. It didn’t move a muscle.
Finally, Chris gave in to his curiosity, a morbid fascination overriding the primal screams of his instincts, which were cwing at him, demanding he leave. Run inside. Shut the door. Hiding beneath the covers, the child within whimpered. Wait I’m not a kid anymore, he thought, the fragile tranquility hidden within that thought quickly shattering against the rising dread. Yes, he was an adult, yes, he was 53 years old, and yet he found himself to be 13 again. He knelt and picked up the crumbling paper.
His fingers were still rather stiff, so when he grabbed the paper, it almost slipped completely out. Luckily, he reached for the paper with both hands. Holding it felt…familiar. The paper itself felt old and brittle. The ink should’ve faded by now, but instead, it was clear as day:
THE UNDERGROUND CALAMITY IN CARMA HILLS, OREGON
Chris looked for the printout date and saw it, it made him shiver. This article was printed on July 29th, 1985. Two days, two days after they went down to the mines to fight. Him and everybody else. This was the newspaper article detailing what happened. “A rge Earthquake has shaken the community as the officials are still tallying the death toll. How the earthquake came to pass is still under investigation, but officials are working diligently to figure out exactly what happened.” The rest of the article is cut off from here.
Chris flipped the paper and this is what made his heart skip a beat. The shock nearly sent him reeling, a physical jolt that made his vision swim and blood pound in his temples. All his courage, so carefully constructed, evaporated like mist in the harsh gre of a porch light. On the back was a photo of the mine entrance that Chris recognized from the history books at the library.
It was a photo from the Mine Colpse of 1945. Instead of an empty entrance (how the original photo was or at least how Chris remembered it when he researched the town over the years), there were six bodies of children not more than 12 years old at the entrance, each one Chris recognized. One of the bodies was Chris, his face stuck in perpetual screaming as if he died that way. All of their eyes were vacant and empty, but their mouths were wide open, screaming for help that never came.
Underneath the horrifying photo was a caption that tore away at the very sanity of Chris: “Here lies 6 unfortunate children who tried to change their fates but died while doing so. They had such unfortunate lives”, the text started to change. It changed before his eyes, the words jumped up and started to move on their own. The children in the photo started to grow older, the years rolled by on their faces, they started to become taller, and wrinkles formed. They shifted their eyes towards Chris, they were all looking at him now, looking at him with fear in their eyes. Chris could see them become 20, then 30, and finally, 40 before the text stopped moving below the photo and read: “Unfortunately, they grew up to happy lives and circumstances only to be yanked back to where they belong, where they would try again, and where they would fail again. Chris had the worst luck, he stayed behind all those years, so he had to bring them back, bring them all back.”
Chris shivered. The realization hit at the same time the smell did. The smell of rotting flesh and copper, like old pennies. In the far corner of the still image, in the darkness of the mine entrance, Chris noticed a hand waving to him. Waving hello at first, then the hand started to beckon him, calling him to the darkness of the mine; it was a challenge, and he knew there was no backing down. As quickly as he noticed the hand, it was gone. Chris threw the photo down to the ground. He was hoping it would nd on the article side so he wouldn't see that horrible image, but he wasn’t so lucky.
The photo y there, the image still, him and his friends id there dead as doornails. Chris leaned in further, he didn’t know why. Maybe it was anger, denial, or maybe it was curiosity? Maybe courage. He didn’t know, but what he did know was that the photo seemed harmless now. Then, the unthinkable happened; his friends started moving. One by one, they all got up from the mine entrance, even Chris. Their faces were still the same, still looking at Chris. This time, however, they started moving. They shuffled their way to Chris slowly like zombies. He could hear their moans. The smell of death grew stronger and stronger, and they got closer and closer until they reached all the corners of the photo. The photo started to elongate, it became rger and rger. Chris was too mesmerized by the growing photo to realize.
Chris felt a sort of tugging on his leg. He looked down and let out a cry so loud the men on the moon could hear it. Below, out of each corner of the photo, he saw six hands grabbing at his legs and ankles. He jumped back and started kicking to throw off the decaying hands, but it was no use. They grabbed hold of his ankles and started pulling. Pulling to where? Oh god, he thought, the photo, they’re pulling me into the photo!
His feet were the first to take the plunge, the pain searing up from his feet to his ankles, then to his legs. The decaying hands had reached his waist and were pulling stronger. “HELP!”, he screamed multiple times. Unfortunately, it seemed no one could hear him. He kept struggling more and more. He flipped over onto his stomach and started cwing away from those monsters. Behind him, he heard voices, but he never turned to look back. He only cwed and cwed. Finally, by sheer luck, the force of will, or the grace of God, he stopped sinking altogether, in fact, he started to climb out. His fingers clung to the dirt and the grass, and Chris started making headway out of the still-growing photo. Eventually, he made it out of the photo altogether. He scurried across the wn and made it to his front door when he turned around back to the photo.
The hands were gone when he looked back at the photo, but something worse was in their pce. He could only see the thing's head and eyes. Its purple eyes stared menacingly at Chris. It had one hand out of the photo clinging to the ground itself. It had pasty white skin, and it was bald on top. The creature raised its hand and waved at Chris. It didn’t do anything else. It only raised its hand, waved seemingly goodbye, and then slowly went back into the photo without ever saying a word. Chris only saw its eyes and head, no nose, mouth, or clothes, just its eyes and head. Chris turned and went inside his home.
