In an effort to encourage a bit more writing, a friend at work and I challenged each other to write a story in the Victorian Gothic tradition. I struggled to find an idea that didn’t just feel like a sort of pastiche, but I remembered I had a dream a couple of years ago where an old man was telling me about his childhood in the snow, and the dream had an overwhelmingly sinister edge, so I thought I would try and turn this atmosphere into a story, although the dream was actually much vaguer than this.

I would appreciate it enormously if you would take the time to read it.

The Snow 

I could not sleep that night, I don’t know why. Perhaps because it was so cold. I felt tired, dreamy. Even now, I wonder sometimes, was it a dream? I could hear the soft breathing of my brothers all around me, and the endless creaking of the beams of the building that arched over us like the ribs of a restless beast. But there was a silence that filled the rest of the world, and it felt immense, and exciting.

The air was icy, my skin tingled, and I could see my breath in the dim light, drifting like a mist. I didn’t dare get up out of bed, it was against the rules. But the longer I lay there, the more I could feel a sense of strangeness and magic percolating through the air. 

Eventually I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I slipped out from under the thin blanket. As quietly as I could, I stood and tiptoed over to the window, my small bare feet pattering gently on the floorboards. We all knew which parts of the floor squeaked, and which parts you could navigate silently, and I picked my way across without a sound. I could even do it now, I’m sure, if you took me back to that horrible attic in that miserable orphanage. I looked around the room, full of gloom and sleeping boys, nervous in case I might have woken someone, but nobody stirred in the slightest. 

There were no curtains on the window, which rattled gently as a slight icy draught moaned in through the gaps and cracks, and I looked out on a world transformed – the same old narrow street, flanked by crooked houses, cobbled with bricks and spattered with filth, but now made pure by the thick blanket of snow. 

I cannot put into words the lightness of spirit that this scene inspired in me. It took my breath away to look upon this vision, shimmering and beautiful and serene.

Our lives were ruled by misery. We knew no different, so you might think that we adapted quite contentedly and unwittingly to an existence of hard work, little sustenance and no love, but we all knew with absolute certainty that we were unhappy. Moments of joy were few, and the passion with which we grasped them – when they came – was fierce and longing. This felt like a miracle. The snow was cascading from the black sky, and seemed to glow with an inner light. It was so cold, but it was a cold that embraced me and filled me and invigorated me, and I swear it had a smell, or some presence to an awareness beyond our five mundane senses, that made me feel alive and joyful. 

I watched the snow falling upon the stillness of the street, glimmering in the pale light, for several long minutes, and then I knew I had to go out into it. I shuddered at the transgression this would be from the strict rules that bound us, but I could no more resist the call of that winter night than I could choose to stop my heart from beating. 

I thought of what he might do, if he caught me. I imagined the look in his watery blue eyes, a look that was – all at once – hateful and angry and smirking and cold and empty. I could almost feel those long bony fingers in threadbare fingerless gloves wrapped around my throat – that was the worst punishment, when you couldn’t breathe, and little lights flew around in front of your eyes. Or sometimes you could see that he battled with his rage and gained control, and then he would whisper things to you that sounded sweet but made you empty, like how other children had families who loved them, and how lucky I was to find a home and be looked after even though I was unlovable. And I could smell the rankness of his breath as he hissed these things right into my face in those black nights. 

It’s strange to think how loyal we all were to him, even though we loathed him, funny how we would jump to his slightest command. I know that if we were called on to defend him we would do so unhesitatingly. I suppose he was our provider, and the instinct of the pack in the human soul is so deep and powerful. His word was the law. But in that moment, the law was powerless before a child’s need to be outside in that snow. 

I wrapped my bed blanket around me, and crept from the dormitory down through the building. I knew the front door would be locked but I also knew that there was always a window left open by a crack in the kitchen, so I scuttled my way there, pushed the window wide – though it resisted heartily – and I nimbly climbed onto the worktop and slipped out into the night. 

My bare feet stung at the bitterness of the snow, but there was a delight to it, a freedom. I had no plan, no thoughts beyond just walking through it, feeling the snow landing and melting on me. There was no sound to be heard apart from the crunching of my own footsteps and the swirl of a breeze. There was no drunk carousing in the distance, no animals crying in the night, there was not a church bell that chimed through the entire city. 

I breathed it in. I walked through streets that felt completely unfamiliar. I really couldn’t tell whether the snow had disguised the places I knew, or whether I had stumbled down unknown alleys. I passed under a crumbling stone arch that I was certain I had never seen before, and the wind whipped up, catching my blanket like a sail. I only just managed to grab it before it would have been whisked away into the snow-shaken sky. Gas lamps hissed quietly, lighting the labyrinthine streets. The night sky, starless and moonless, seemed full of a dim and ghostly light of its own. I shook a tree so I could delight in watching the snow fall. In doing so I disturbed a family of sparrows. They flitted up and around, swirling among the snow, chattering in fear, before flitting back down to their perch, and the warm comfort of snuggling into each other’s feathers. 

These images, in all their clarity, with all the purity of the feelings they brought, have never once left me in all my long years. Where all other memories fade and crumble, these moments are frozen in my mind, perfect, preserved in ice. 

How long I danced and ran and played in that white Eden, I couldn’t tell you, but there came a time when I started to tire, and fear of the reprisals should I fail to sneak back into my bed began to gnaw at me. My thin bedclothes started to feel feeble and sodden, and my body had begun shivering, my little chest of straining ribs heaving with the coldness of my breath. I turned in the street, trying to catch sight of a familiar landmark, and I spotted the stone arch beneath which I had passed a while back. And standing, or I should say stooping, in the archway, was a figure clothed in black. 

It was hard to make out, but it looked like it had its back to me. It was tall, even with the steep hunch of its posture, and there was something about the way in which its arms were slightly twisted away from the body that looked distorted and unnatural. I was afraid. I wanted to turn and run, but I also couldn’t draw my gaze away. Rooted to the spot, my feet going blue, I stared for a minute at the thing beneath the arch. 

Then it suddenly twitched its head, as if it had heard some surprising noise. And slowly, so painfully slowly, it turned towards me, and even through the twilight dimness I could see its two pale baleful eyes glowing intensely. I cannot begin to tell you what feeling that look expressed to me, it was something quite un-human and unknowable. I was stricken, not with fear, but with a great sense of sadness, or something like it. Without any power to resist, I walked towards the figure.

Drawing closer offered little more clarity. The figure remained dark and blurry and distorted. Its head twitched maybe twice again, unnaturally, as I approached. I walked right up to it, afraid, but curious, and then I could see its strange, sad face. I suppose you would most compare it to a very old woman, a face deeply furrowed with dark lines and wrinkles through leathery skin that appeared grey and malnourished. Its mouth was gaping and toothless, and the eyes shone with an eerie light as they flickered around taking in the sight of me. I could hear its breath, regular but rasping, and it held its head slightly to the side as if considering me carefully. It was monstrous. I feel reluctant saying so, but yes, it was monstrous and frightening, but not… Even now I find it hard to describe… It didn’t feel malevolent. In fact, the overwhelming impression that I had was that I had encountered an angel. 

I whispered a verse from the Bible, I do not recall which, and it seemed to break some kind of tension between us, and I felt like the figure relaxed a little. It beckoned me closer and moved into a kneeling position, so that it could be nearer to my height I suppose. Its movements were jagged, as if its limbs bent in wrong directions.  

‘Child,’ it whispered in a voice like machinery, ‘Do you know what I am?’ 

I shook my head. I did not, and to this day I still do not. 

‘How is it that you are here?’ it asked. 

My voice came out small and reedy, maybe through fear, or through the cold. ‘I slipped out the kitchen window, if you please, to play in the snow’, I said. 

The figure’s expression changed but it was impossible to read. It hissed through its toothless lips, and I believe it was laughing. It was only at that point that I began to worry that it might hurt me. It brought its face so close to mine that it became just an indistinct dark smudge, and I felt its cold fingers in my hair, lightly brushing over my scalp. 

‘I see,’ it said ever so quietly, ‘I see, and I understand.’ And it drew back again. 

I suppose I had a confused look on my face. It laid a hand on my shoulder. 

‘One gift, child’ it said, eyes gleaming. ‘One life. Is it him?’ 

I thought I understood, and I nodded. 

‘Time to go home,’ it said, and it took my hand and from that moment I did not feel a hint of the cold. We walked through the snow, through the streets, back to the familiar alleys, and back to the orphanage. We stood in front of that hateful squatting building, lopsided and cracked and peeling and rotten, and full of pain, and the figure beside me seemed to be regarding it intently, eating up every detail of it. 

It let go of my hand, and I knew it was time to slip back in through the kitchen window, but I was reluctant to go. I looked up at it, this monster, and it looked back down at me, and we held that look for a long minute, before the fear of being caught out here overcame me, and I raced off. Before I reached the side of the building, down which could be found that kitchen window, I looked back, and I saw the creature scuttling up the wall of the building, like the shadow of a huge bird flitting across the rocks of a cliff face. 

Remarkably I made it back to the dormitory without being caught, and I climbed into my hard cot. A scream blazed out through the cold night, an inhuman scream, like a raging animal, or worse. To me it sounded like something was being torn open, how metal might sound – I imagined – if you ripped it apart. It was so loud, painful in my ears. All my brothers woke, completely alarmed and terrified, jumping out of bed and adding their own shrill voices to the screams. Some clasped themselves together in fear. Some of the boys had nosebleeds, many wept. The scream continued, it seemed endless, it felt Biblical, apocalyptic. 

Even when it stopped, it seemed to ring on, echoing around that bleak room, echoing into the black skies, gradually quietening until it was just a faint drone in our ears. We were all looking at each other silently, with no idea how to react. Wordlessly we grouped together and set off to find the master, and in a long line we trouped through the orphanage and knocked at his door. Yes, we hated him, but who else was there to tell us what to do. We knocked again, and several times after that, and eventually summoned the courage to open the door. 

Inside we found his body lying on the floor, his face white, distorted into a vision of horror, his eyes rolled up into his head. His limbs were splayed out, broken in cracked angles, the ends of those horrible fingers blackened. It was cold in there, the window open, the thin curtains dancing in the wind as flakes of snow scattered and melted inside the room. 

The new master was quite a different sort of man, plump and happy, indulgent, always with crumbs and stains of food down his clothes, always with a laugh ready and waiting on his lips, always a jolly comment to offer in any situation. He was often confused, always disorganised, the target of jokes by the boys, but he was kind, and our lives changed. I always thought of this man as the gift that was given to me, by my strange friend that night. 

I am old now. It doesn’t snow as much these days as it did when I was a child, but when it does, I still walk barefoot in the night. People must think I’m mad, but it brings me such happiness. I felt it coming this afternoon, and saw the flakes begin to fall in the early evening. There was a shimmering glow to the sky, and I felt light in my heart. I will go out soon into the woods, but I felt compelled to consign this strange memory to paper before I do. Something feels different, as though this may be the last time. I have always looked for that strange figure, always longed to meet it again, and thank it for making things right. Perhaps tonight I will have that chance at last.