Trembling With Fear 6-16-24

Our Neighbourhood, In Decline, by Benjamin Larned

INCIDENT 1

The snow came down in heavy sheets, two feet of ice by dawn. Trees fell and power lines snapped, roofs collapsed. We woke to a pure blanket of white. The plows haven’t come through. No one has shoveled. No one has gone out at all.

 

INCIDENT 2

Silence for hours. No cars, no sirens, no voices. Just gray sky and falling snow. Then someone screamed down the street. It was a cold, sharp sound, muffled by the clouds and ice. A moment later we almost didn’t believe it had happened.

There are screams now and then, all cold and sharp and muffled. But outside we don’t see anyone. The snow is unbroken. It’s beautiful outside, when everyone is quiet. We try to think of that instead.

 

INCIDENT 3

Something moved at dusk. A pack of children, dressed for the cold, pulling a sled of metal tools from house to house. We don’t know what it means or what they’re doing. There are screams, though, wherever they pass. Their tracks don’t disturb the snow. They might as well be ghosts.

 

INTERLUDE

It hasn’t snowed in days and the ground is still pure white. Nothing has melted, and no one has stepped outside. Or perhaps the snow has covered their tracks. 

None of us risk venturing out. We see each other in the windows and make gestures, but otherwise keep to ourselves. The quiet is almost natural now. When a scream pierces it, we all flinch. It isn’t often that someone screams – maybe because no one has gone outside. We will keep to this routine until we learn something.

 

INCIDENT 4

A local girl, only eleven or twelve, has come into possession of a gun. She’s been walking from house to house and shooting everyone inside. The gun never seems to run out of bullets. 

 

INCIDENT 5

There’s things in the pipes. Things creeping from underground. Were they dormant before, or have they just appeared? I hear them sliding and scratching past. People talk about a thing of clotted vegetal rot, spawned from gutters and sewers across town, sliding out of toilets or vents and swallowing people alive in their homes. I stay up at night and listen in case they break through. It might be picking and choosing; it might come out of the sink any minute, and stop me from writing this. I can almost hear it in the drain.

 

INCIDENT 6

We heard the warning at dawn. A dead girl has appeared in the uppermost window of the mansion on 11th and Penn. She has a smile so insane it kills people at a glance. There’s bodies all around in the snow, they say, and the girl just smiles and smiles.

 

INCIDENT 7

The unmelting snow has begun to radiate. We see it through the windows, like a never-ending Christmas parade. Someone built snowmen out of it, or the snowmen built themselves. They shift around at night, impossible colors roiling past the window. 

 

INTERLUDE

What is happening to us? Is it a widespread hallucination, or a curse? Are we being punished? Have we all been taken into the same hell? Or is the whole world like this now, snowed in and out of its mind?

 

INCIDENT 8

Isolation has driven us mad. We couldn’t have seen what we saw. The shadows outside the window were not human. They looked like trees, decorated for Christmas, prowling through the snow. I pulled the blinds back for an instant and found needles trailing across the lawn.

 

INCIDENT 9

Someone has started setting fires. We can see smoke and orange flares now and then through the windows. Maybe it’s vandalism, maybe it’s just self-defense. Whatever the reason, they’ve started to spread. We huddle in the center of our homes, under furniture and counters, as the strange shadows pass outside; we pray that they won’t burn us next.

 

INCIDENT 10

Every few days someone loses their grip and shoots whatever they can, usually themselves. It’s hard to blame them. We never check to see who died. It isn’t smart to go near the windows.

 

INTERLUDE

Many of us have abandoned houses altogether. With so many things in the pipes, burrowing through the ground and up into basements, slithering through the toilet bowl or out the very walls, these people have elected to live outside in tents. At least their vantage point is good and clear. It must be so cold, though, in the snow that never melts.

 

CONCLUSION

There will be no more reports. We won’t look outside. We won’t respond to calls or knocks. We will keep the doors and windows sealed. Sometimes a person will pound at the door and beg for help, but they stop eventually. We hear them running through the snow, howling for mercy, only to shriek and go silent. We never see what gets them. It’s something big, and fast, and it’s never far away.