Shadows in the Snow

Power is fickle at the best of times where Uncle Harvey’s house lies out in the country. Being well over an hour from any major city and several miles from even small country towns makes maintenance for the roads and powerlines difficult to say the least. Any major weather threatens to shut the whole thing down, and it can take days for someone to come out and repair the lines. Knowing I can be stranded without power at any time, I keep a generator and a stock of fuel in the barn in case of emergencies.

Emergencies like this one.

When the power goes out county-wide following a mid-winter blizzard, I know it’s time to lug out my trusty generator and hook up the essentials. I have plenty of battery-operated appliances as back-ups to the back-up of course, compromised of three flashlights, a small portable heater, and a radio. Tuning to the local news station, the newscasters tell me they’ll need to clear the main roads of snow first, then slowly make their way out to where I live before restoring the power. It may take a couple of days, or, in my personal experience, more likely over a week. No worries though; I’ve done it all before.

On this first day, I drag all my blankets, coats, and pillows into the living room of the house, right next to the kitchen. It will be easier to keep one room warm instead of the whole house and I intend to spend most of my time here anyway. Next, I make a schedule for running the water through the house—grateful the water is still on—to prevent the pipes from freezing and bursting. There are only the taps in the kitchen and the one bathroom so this is fairly easy to maintain. Third, I move the food from my fridge to a cooler and place the whole thing outside on my porch to keep cold. Finally, I pull out the extension cords from the closet, check each one for any fraying or damage, and hook them up to the generator.

My generator is only a two-pole machine, not incredibly efficient, but enough for what I need. I don’t have any big machinery or farm animals to upkeep after all. However, this does mean I have to pick and choose what I power and when I power them. Throughout the day I run the generator in intervals, keeping my phone charged and a corded space heater running. At night, I use it to power one to two lights and the microwave—just enough to see and cook dinner with—before shutting the whole thing down before bed. Content with my system and sure I’ll last the week just fine, I drift off to sleep.

On day two the radio tells me the main roads have yet to be cleared but they hope to finish by the end of the day. To me, this seems to track with my theory of getting power back by next week.

After bundling up and having an admittedly chilly breakfast, I decide to venture outside. No new snow has fallen since the blizzard and I can still see the footprints I’ve left hauling materials back and forth across the property. This place used to be an academic agriculture farm, back when Uncle Harvey was still here, so there is a small field for experimental planting just behind the large storage shed to the right of the house. I shield my eyes looking across the landscape and fix my gaze at a far back corner of the field. Somehow, despite the morning sun lighting the field up white, there seems to be a shadow out in the field.

I walk a few yards closer to get a closer look. The shadow does not move as I make my approach and I try to remember if I saw it yesterday when I was setting things up. Maybe it’s a fallen tree branch, blown into the field during the blizzard? Or a mound of snow casting an unusually long shadow in the morning sun?

I glance down to watch my footing on a patch of ice, not wanting an accident when so far from anyone to help. When I look back up, the shadow is gone.

On day three, I spot something standing in the shed while I’m grabbing more gasoline for the generator. It’s at the very back, amongst the spare tractor parts and miscellaneous tools that haven’t been moved since the 60s. I almost miss it, being so consumed in my task, and that makes me wonder how long it has been there. Tall and slender, the thing looks like a distorted human from where I am standing in the driveway. I gently place the gas canister down, careful not to spill the precious resource, and inch my way into the shed.

The sound of chains swaying in the winter wind sound like windchimes. There is an old Cadillac parked in here, taking up about half of the space, and the shadow seems to be doing its best to hide behind it. Not that it’s moving at all. It’s just…standing there.

As I creep further into the shed, a ray of sun from one of the window streams into my line of sight, momentarily blinding me. When I step out of the light and my vision clears, the shadow is gone. Nothing stands at the back of the shed but the junk my Uncle Harvey has left behind.

The newscasters on the radio say the power will remain down in rural areas for at least another three days. Something about a shortage of workers and more complications than they had expected. By this time, day four of the power outage, I’m still doing fine on food and gasoline for the generator. I’m not confident in my mind any longer, however. I haven’t been sleeping since seeing the thing in the shed. Especially not now that I’m seeing them in the house.

Sometimes they’re tucked away in the corners behind open doors, but turn out to be a coat hanging on the door handle. Other times they’re at the very back of open closets, disappearing once the clothes have been pushed aside. I have since gathered all my extra coats and shoved them /in/ the closet, closing the door.

Still, I see them. One standing statuesque on the porch behind a support beam, disappearing when I round the corner. One peering around the corner of the basement steps, gone in the beam of my flashlight. On night five of the power outage, I wake to see one standing over my sleeping form on the couch. It has no face, not even a distinct form, but I can /tell/ it is watching me. My heart races as I fumble for my light, but as usual the figure is gone when I look back up.

The generator runs constantly now, keeping the living room well lit so the shadows don’t have a place to hide. I still see them during the day, tucked away in the shadows left by the morning sun, but I am never letting them get that close to me again. The shadows watch from a distance, waiting patiently.

“We should have power back up for the rest of the county by tomorrow,” the newscasters cheerfully tell me over the radio. It’s day eight of no power and running the generator constantly throughout the night has left me with less than half a tank of gas to work with. “Everyone should be back to normal by the end of the weekend, how nice is that?”

The sun set two hours ago and I can hear the generator splutter as it runs on the remaining fumes I’ve left it with. The lights in the living room flicker and die, leaving a void in the night as dark as it is silent. No, that’s not right. Not silent. I just couldn’t hear them under the sound of the generator running nonstop.

I’m sitting on the living room couch, a flashlight clutched in my fist, and I see the shapes all around me. They flicker in and out of existence as I fan the light back and forth across them, but this does not comfort me. The one thing that has kept me relatively sane these last couple of nights is the fact that these shadows never seem to move. I thought, perhaps, they couldn’t move once they had spawned.

But as I watch them now, after each sweep of my flashlight, I realize the shadows have been coming back closer. The shadows aren’t standing still anymore. They’re moving.