AND SNOWFLAKE FLEW OUT OF THE WINDOW

AND SNOWFLAKE FLEW OUT  OF THE WINDOW

The fire crackled in the hearth, the flames, rising and falling, colored red the walls of the room. It had been snowing continuously for three days now  The Robbins chalet, which stood on the slope of the great mountain, at a considerable height, was almost submerged in snow. They, the Robbins, father, mother and three children, really couldn’t leave their precious refuge, they even could not think at all of setting foot outside their little castle, indeed neither foot nor nose. They, the Robbins, were very proud of their chalet, which for them was a kind of castle. Indeed , even if of modest size, their chalet  looked lovely. It was made entirely of stone, of stones of different colors. It had yellow walls and a pink roof,the steps of the staircase to the  entrance door were green and purple. . The chalet was in a splendid position, for the view overlooking the whole valley, with the lake, almost always frozen. They, Peter and Sheila Robbins, had bought that wonderful chalet at a very modest price. It must be said that until now ( then) they had not even wondered WHY such a low price for such a marvel.  It was only on the  third night of that incessant snowfall, that the Robbins began to wonder WHY they could have bought their small castle at a such modest price.

Already during the second day of forced confinement in their little castle, while the snow continued to fall unstoppable____now it came down precipitously, as if it were a waterfall, now mixed with gust of wind, thin as rain, now in large flakes that fell slowly,____the children of the Robbins started to give signs of impatience. They wanted to get out. They shouted that they preferred to be submerged by the snow , than to be locked in there, in that chalet , which had become a prison for them. Matthew, the eldest of the children, nine years old, after having complained and protested for that forced imprisonment, he had resigned himself to wait for it to stop snowing, in order to get out. The other two instead,  Matilda, of five years and Stephan, of three, had continued to paw, to scream, to stamp their feet against the door and the walls, and the window too. They begged, crying, ( weeping)  to be able to go out. They had even started to scream that they lacked air, they were suffocating to be closed in there. Peter had to bolt the door to make sure that the children  didn’t try to open it, as they had already done, even if they hadn’t been able to.   And the two little devils, Matilda and Stephan, they had even tried to get out of the window overlooking the terrace, trying to break the glass ( of the window). Thank God the glass was unbreakable and had remained intact, it hadn’t broken. Otherwise the snow, which kept on falling relentlessly, would have invaded the interior of the chalet.

It was now the third night that the snow continued to fall incessantly. Peter and Sheila had a hard time trying to get all three of their children to go to bed. Matilda, and especially Stephan, did not want to sleep at all. They kept asking that, for heaven’s sake, their parents let them go out.

In the end, after trying and still trying to put them to bed, but in vain, they, Peter and Sheila,  exhausted, after making sure, as much as possible, that those two little devils could not make disasters, ( they) went to bed, resigned to leave Matilda and Stephan awake, running from room to room in the chalet. They, the two little ones, told ( said) them they wanted to stay awake so they could see when it would end snowing . Then they ( Matilda and Stephan) would wake up mom and dad, who would finally let them go out! 

It was late at night  when Sheila and Peter were awakened by a terrible scream, which sounded more like the cry of a beast than a human scream. They found Stephan curled up in the fireplace  (hearth), where they had put out the fire before going to bed. The child was all covered , smeared with ashes. He, trembling like a leaf, crying, kept sighing: “ MOM…mom…”  Matilda was instead hidden under the bed on which Matthew was sleeping. She was crying and weeping too. Whose was that terrible, inhuman scream  that had made them jump out of bed? Peter and Sheila couldn’t understand it. They asked and asked again their children, but these kept crying, without answering. Then, after a while they insisted, Stephan, who kept crying and sobbing, pointed to the window which overlooked the terrace , and muttered: “ From the window! Down of the window! Mom! I’m afraid! That…that one throws me too out of the window!”  The window was closed , and the snow which had fallen on the terrace almost completely prevented one from being able to see out. Matilda, trembling, told that while they, she and Stephan, were in the living room, they had seen….A WOMAN….ah, but maybe it was A MAN instead…SOMEONE VERY BIG….” “ It was A GHOST! It was big big …a BIG ONE….that VERY BIG GHOST was all gray” Stephan, sobbing, interrupted her. Albeit with difficulty , as Matilda and Stephan spoke only in smudges, Sheila and Peter managed to understand that their two youngest children told that they had seen SOMETHING HUGE, but that it looked like more a shadow than a person in flesh and blood

_____  “It was A GHOST!” Stephan kept shouting_____who ( which) had thrown a child out of the window. Sheila and Peter didn’t know what to think-, that is, they thought it had been a nightmare, not something their children had really seen. Nobody could have entered the chalet.

While the snow continued to fall incessantly a powerful roar made the chalet jump , and suddenly a red light entered the chalet from the window. On the wall of the living room the great, gigantic silhouette of someone, which was holding something on his arms, appeared. The children started screaming: “ HELP! HELP! That one throws us out of the window too!” Also they, Peter and Sheila, were terrified. They couldn’t understand what was happening under their eyes.  That dark silhouette, with that sort of bundle on his arms, broke away from the wall , went to the window, opened it , and, throwing out the bundle he had on his arms, said, in a terrible, raspy voice, a hellish voice: “ Ah! Ah! Snowflake ! Down of the window! Go! Fly! Ah! Ah! Ah!” What until then had been ( had appeared) an indistinct bundle, just outside the window, it appeared, only for a moment, with the aspect of a very small child, a child of a few months.

The children, frightened, very agitated, clamored. They kept shouting that they wanted to get out of the chalet, where they were afraid of being thrown out of the window too. Meanwhile Matthew had woken up, and also he had started shouting that he wanted to go out of there. The children tried to get out of the bolted door and, since they couldn’t, they tried again to break the shatterproof glass of the window. Of course they didn’t succeed in it. Then, suddenly, the window opened on its own, without anyone opening it. And once again SOMEONR flew out of that window. On what happened that night the testimonies of those present to the fact were discordant. Matthew claimed that Stephan had thrown himself  out of the window. While Matilda told that had been that gigantic, gray shadow which had thrown the child out of the window. Peter, instead, swore that he had seen her, Sheila who, in exasperation, had thrown Stephan out of the window. That night not only did Stephan fly out of the window, but Peter killed Sheila, believing her to be the murderer of their little son.

The Robbins, when they bought that wonderful chalet , and even later,  were unaware of what had happened a lot of years earlier there, in that lovely little castle. A young woman had killed her child of a few months, throwing him out of the window. Even then it had happened by night, on a snowy night.