Snow Bound Horror
Cold Storage
I have tried not to think about that time until now when you come around asking about what happened all those years ago. Since you’re from the government, I suppose this is an official investigation and I have to talk about it. I’ll do my best, but it’s real hard. What took you all so damn long to find me? You’re almost too late. I’m the only one left to tell it. Never mind; don’t matter now.
The snowfall was unrelenting. We were used to hard winters back then, but that snow was like nothing we had seen in our lifetimes. It fell so soft and thick that the forest on the far side of the valley vanished from view. After several days of snow, we almost forgot that a forested mountain lay only a few hundred yards beyond the village.
After more than two weeks, the snow reached to the tops of the first floors of the houses, smothering doors and windows. To leave our houses, we had to pry open a frozen upstairs window and climb or slide down the snow banks. The neighbor’s boy, John Cartwright, Junior, we all just called him Junior, was the first to do this when the family ran low on provisions and sent him out the window and down to the community smokehouse to carve off some bacon and beef.
Start from the beginning? That’s where I was, I think. It was snowing. Oh yes, the Cartwright boy, Junior.
His folks sent him out to fetch some meat. The smokehouse was in the middle of the village, close to the general store. The smokehouse stored the meat and perishables, and the store sold packaged dry goods and tinned goods. The women had put up fresh vegetables and jams in jars, and those were stored in the smokehouse. Anyway, the Cartwrights sent Junior out for meat.
What’s that you’re writing, son? Looks like chicken scratches. Shorthand? Oh, like Morse code, but with a pen and paper and not that little brass tapper. You ready?
Junior had been gone a long time; too long for him to just go get meat and get back to the house. I don’t know when he left the house, but I heard that it was just before dark, and after it got dark he hadn’t come back. His folks got worried, thought he might have fallen into a snow bank. But that wasn’t what happened to him.
Now, don’t give me that look. I’m getting to it. You just have to let me tell the story my way. You don’t have a choice. I’m the only one left so you’ve got to let me tell it my own way if you want to hear it. Besides, at my age, roundabout is the only way I can conjure the details of what happened back then.
So, Cartwright Senior takes a lantern, squeezes through an upstairs window, slides down a snow bank, and goes out into the night. He was worried about Junior getting into trouble – again. Junior wasn’t right in the head. He wasn’t mental. I mean he wasn’t slow; well, not too slow. Troubled is what he was; and he was trouble. He always had been, or was from about the age of six. He was mean; mean to animals and to children. He was smart enough not to pick on older and bigger kids, unless they happened to be both big and weak, soft kids, so’s he could make up the size difference by his meanness. Cartwright Senior couldn’t handle him all the time so he just tried to keep an eye on him and did his best to keep other folks out of harm’s way.
Give you an idea of how mean Junior was, one day he was out feeding table scraps to the pigs and when he turned his back to leave the pen one of them bumped him and knocked him down in the muck. Junior pulled a loose rusty nail from the pen fence and stabbed the pig’s eyes out. Senior had to kill the pig before he was full grown and carve it up for meat.
Junior was the kind of child who couldn’t just go do his chores and let it be. The only thing that saved Junior’s hide, kept Senior from sending him away to the Army, or just away, was that Junior was a hard worker, could do damn near anything around the farm, and by the time he was in his teens could outwork any three men in the valley when it came to plowing, mowing, bailing and stacking hay. And he could hunt and trap; brought in lots of food. He could find it in any season. He’d go out days at a time, even in winter, and set traps and shoot game and bring it in cross-country; had to be cross-country in winter because the roads were all impassable due to snow. Rumor was, he’d found himself a cave or a bunch of caves out in the mountains where he’d go and set up housekeeping while he set his traps or waited in a blind for a hungry wolf or deer to find the bait he’d laid out. Another rumor had it that he went to trap animals just so he could torment them, then he’d bring back the meat with no signs of torture. Anyway, he made himself useful; indispensible, you might say. Still, folks moved away from him when he was walking about.
Behind his back some folks joked about Junior’s weirdness. The jokes had an edge to them, especially when they were about the way he sometimes stared at the little girls. Some of us men thought maybe he went out to the woods for animals only so he could slake his carnal lust. Then there was the time old man Speck made a joke, more of a jibe, really. Speck had two little twin girls, Cora and Eunice, about seven years old when all this took place. Cartwright Senior one day thinks he’s going to be funny and says to Speck, “Say, your pretty little girls will be coming of age soon; might one of them make a good match for my boy Junior. He’s a good provider.” Without missing a beat, Speck says back at him, “In a pig’s eye!”
So, Junior had gone out to the smokehouse before dark and didn’t come back. He had dressed for the cold just to go down to the smokehouse. Senior didn’t see him leave so he didn’t know if he took any hunting gear with him. Junior was unpredictable sometimes. He might be told to do one thing, or he might tell you he was going to do one thing, and then he’d just go do something different and not let you know.
Senior went around the village asking if anyone had seen Junior. No, no. Nobody’s seen Junior. Senior had heard someone say that Junior might have gone off to one off his caves. Nobody really knew how many caves Junior had discovered or where they might be. Only the Indians knew about that sort of thing, and they’d all been killed off or persuaded to move out of the valley years back, so they weren’t around to ask, and even if they were I doubt they’d been willing to tell us. I heard those caves were sacred to the Indians.
What tribe? They were Intheways. Our daddies had run ‘em off. I heard it wasn’t pretty, not on either side. Now, what’s the Indians got to do with what you’re asking about?
We had pretty much concluded that Junior wasn’t in the village, and no one, not even Senior, was crazy enough to go out into the frozen country to look for him. Instead, Senior decided to visit the new Pastor, introduce himself and pretend he cared about going to services – the Pastor wouldn’t be none the wiser because Senior hadn’t been to church since before the new Pastor came to town – then ask a favor; ask him to ring the church bell like a distress signal, and maybe Junior would hear it and come back home. The Pastor rang the bell for a long time. That bell rang out all over the valley, out across the muffling snow, but Junior never came home.
Then, little Carrie Owen went missing. She was taken from her house. We later figured out how. I’m sorry. I have to stop a minute. This is hard to tell. All right, I’ll try to keep the telling in order.
It happened about three or four days after Junior went missing. Some of us men were making our rounds distributing food to the older folks who couldn’t get out easy when we found her. Some threw up right away, and these were tough old boys, mind you, men who were accustomed to slaughtering their own livestock, and some had fought in the Civil War.
Of course, I can describe it! Just hold on; I’ll get there. This ain’t easy, even after all these years.
Carrie’s daddy, Wade Owen, saw us bunching up in a knot down by the frozen river at the edge of the meadow and knew something was wrong. We tried to hold Wade back, but he feigned a knee drop and scooted between our legs. He wished he hadn’t. His little girl, ten years old, was splayed out like a snow angel, but not white, this one; all red. Her clothes had been torn off and she was split up the middle, from her privates up to her throat and her insides were spilled over the sides of the cut. Her little eyes were frozen open in terror. Red pulp was everywhere.
Eviscerated? I’m not sure what that means, but if it’s a fancy word for “gutted,” then yeah, Carrie was eviscerated. She’d been gutted real good and her old man was …. well, I can’t find the words to describe what he had to be feeling.
There was nothing we could do for Wade. We just stayed with him there until we were all about to freeze. Someone brought out a bed sheet and offered it as a shroud. No one was fool enough to mention a doctor. Besides, the doctor was about twenty miles down the road, but there weren’t no more roads, and with the snow it might as well have been a thousand miles between the doctor and us.
A couple of the men gently pulled Wade away from the spot and wrapped Carrie’s remains in the bed sheet. Wade nodded in a stunned sort of way to one of the fellows who then took the bundle over to the smokehouse and locked it up inside. The smokehouse became the village morgue.
Some of us started to look around for signs. At first we thought bear or wolf, but we soon knew better; wasn’t no wild animal had done that. Carrie was only ten.
Wade Owen was wailing about what was he going to tell Carrie’s mother. After Carrie was placed in the smokehouse, we all went with Wade back to his house. We wanted to be with him when he told Carrie’s mother what had happened, but we also wanted to find out how Carrie could have been taken out of the house. Speck and I had young children, too, and we didn’t want ours to be next.
Now here’s the part about how we learned what happened. Carrie’s folks woke up and found her missing. No upstairs doors or windows were open. Carrie’s chamber pot had been used in the night, but Carrie wasn’t in the house.
We found the break-in down in the root cellar, where Carrie’s folks hadn’t looked. A transom window at the top of the cellar wall had been ripped out. It was protected from snow cover by the roof of a lean-to at the back of the house where firewood was stacked. Wade had overlooked that spot. While we were looking around the house, one of the men took Wade’s guns. We were afraid he’d shoot himself. We got him good and drunk on his homemade whisky and put him to bed. Missus Owen said she’d keep watch over him and try to go see the Parson the next day. We left her sobbing and praying by the fire.
Right away we were thinking it had to be Junior. Wade wanted to go out and hunt Junior down. It was all we could do to keep him from going out to die in the snow. Defense is what we needed; not some foolish offense.
A few of us set about planning how to defend ourselves. We were down to two families with young children, my Christopher and Speck’s twin girls. We discussed inviting the Parson, but decided against it because the Parson was new to the community and didn’t really know us yet, and we figured that since he was a Parson, a spiritual man, he was a soft man. A soft man wasn’t exactly what we needed at the moment.
Mister and Missus Speck moved over to my house. Of course, their children came too, but we kept them with the women in a separate room while Mister Speck and I made a plan to secure my house. Since Junior had got through an exposed cellar window at the back of Wade’s house, we figured there was nothing to keep him from coming in through an upstairs window; walk right up a snow bank and through a window. Even if we boarded up all the windows, what was to keep him from breaking through with an ax or even with strong hands. He’d torn Wade’s window clean out of its frame.
You want me to describe the house? Like I said, the house was big. Heavy timbers all ‘round for structure, and no cellar with windows. My house was the most fort-like in the village, apart from the smokehouse, but we couldn’t live in the smokehouse. Still, no fort can’t be breached.
Yes, there was a breach. I’ll get to that.
I had plenty of firewood stored next to the pantry and one of us, either Speck or I, would go out in daylight to the smokehouse or the dry goods store when we needed provisions. Other families without young children stayed in their own houses. They were not as threatened as us with young’uns.
One time the snow stopped for a while during the day; that was two days after Carrie Owen was killed. Missus Owen had planned on going out to see the Parson the day after it happened but it was snowing too hard then and, besides, she couldn’t manage to get out of bed. She had to get acquainted with the Parson. He was new and she hadn’t been to church since he’d arrived to take up his duties only a month before. So the day the snow stopped for a while Missus Owen called on the new Parson to discuss what needed to be done, what could be done, for her daughter’s Christian burial.
In the circumstances, a dispensation from convention was required and granted. Carrie would be buried with the thaw, when the softening of the earth permitted. In the meantime, prayers would be offered for the departed child’s soul. The Parson asked about the welfare of the families and how they were managing. Missus Owen told him that the other family with children not old enough to use firearms, the Speck twins, had moved into my house. The Parson offered to minister to us in church or in our homes, as suited our convenience. Allowances had to be made for the difficulty of going out. Regular services in the chapel could wait until the snow abated. Missus Owen stopped by and passed the Pastor’s message on to me, and I told the Specks.
They, the Specks, were pleased that this new Parson had offered to have religious services in our home. Better for one person to venture out in the cold than many, we thought, especially when we were busy with protecting our young ones. Mister Speck thought we might benefit from spiritual comforting, so, several days later when the weather calmed some again, he went down to the church and invited the Parson over.
In the meantime, we settled in and made ourselves as comfortable as possible in the upstairs bedrooms. We had to be upstairs because the first floor was snow packed on the outside and got colder than the upstairs. The indoor kitchen was one of the four rooms downstairs. We had two fireplaces downstairs, too. We kept those burning along with the kitchen stove so the heat rose through ventilators and kept the upstairs warm.
My wife and I occupied our own bedroom, and kept our son in there on a floor pallet. Mister and Missus Speck took Christopher’s room and had their seven-year-old twin daughters, Eunice and Cora, in there with them. The villagers were resourceful people and they’d already canned and stored the harvest – grain, corn, beans, potatoes and the like -- and put up meat in the smokehouse. Each family had plenty of dry firewood and kindling in large indoor storage bins. We were ready for rough winters, and, as it turned out, we were ready for a siege.
No sooner had the Parson been invited to come over to the house for services than it started snowing again. It was a fierce snow. I took a shirtsleeve one time and a rag another time to the window but neither time could I see out that window. It was what you call a “white-out,” day and night. After two days, the chamber pots began to stink. It didn’t take two days for them to start stinking; they stunk as soon as they were used. For a while we tried dumping them soon after use by going out the window and dumping them to the side, then pouring hot ashes on top. That made a chute straight to the bottom of the snow bank. We knew we’d have hell to pay in the spring. That worked as long as it wasn’t snowing. Then the snow started again and we had to move the pots downstairs to the first floor. It was warmer down there for doing your business, but folks would have to take a candle with them in the night.
The strain of constant fear and guarding against Junior caused us to lose a lot of sleep, and loss of sleep started playing tricks on Missus Speck’s mind. We could hear her crying in her room and saying foolish things like there was nothing we could do to keep Junior from killing the children, and that sooner or later all the children would be killed. Maybe accepting it beforehand let her relax a little, but afterwards she started to feel guilty about what she was thinking and saying. She went back and forth with those feelings until we thought she was losing her mind, and her ramblings were getting on all our nerves. My wife tried to comfort the frazzled women as best she could. What finally worked was whiskey. Missus Speck was a teetotaler and very devout, but she discovered the medicinal wonders of a little watered down spirits. It settled her nerves. That worked pretty well.
One evening the Pastor finally appeared, rapping at the window that led out to the snow bank. The temperature had already fallen and it took a lot of effort and much noise to get the window open. The Pastor came in through the window and stood there shaking from the chill. He wasn’t shaking off that chill, so after warning him to pinch his nose against the odor off the chamber pots, I led him downstairs so he could warm himself by the large fireplace in the parlor, which we had taken to calling the cellar because it had come to resemble one.
The Pastor asked how we were managing with hygiene and sanitation. I could see that he smelled the pots. I explained that we were reduced to taking sponge baths. I showed him the windows where the glass had broken from the pressure of the snow and ice, and demonstrated how we chipped ice into pails and melted it on the stove for water, both for drinking and bathing. While he was warming his backside at the fireplace, I went to the back of the pantry, the cellar, and got some more wood to put in the stove.
After The Pastor got over his chilling spell, he and I went back
upstairs. He assembled us in my bedroom and introduced himself since we had not really met him formally. After the social preliminaries, he asked us if we would kneel with him in prayer. He asked for the Lord’s protection for us during our ordeal and especially for the safety of the children among us. Delicately, without referring to the details, he blessed in particular Carrie Wade and Junior Cartwright and assured us that Carrie resided in Heaven with Our Savior, safe in the arms of Jesus, and he asked for understanding and compassion and redemption and such for Junior.
The Parson blessed each one of us and said that he hoped to see all of us
soon in the Lord’s house when the weather permitted. He then took his leave, backed through the window and down the snow bank.
Three days passed, then came a shriek in the night, coming from downstairs. I grabbed my pistol and met Mister Speck in the hallway outside the makeshift door we’d put up to dampen the smell of the chamber pots. The door was open and the odor was fierce. I took the lead with my pistol cocked, ready to fire. Then I saw it, framed by the light from the fireplace.
The Speck twins, Cora and Eunice, were seated together on the settee. Mister Speck grabbed his wife and pulled her away. I couldn’t tell which girl was Cora and which was Eunice. Their heads were covered with chamber pots. Their little bodies were covered with the contents. They were lifeless. I removed the sacrilege from the girl’s heads, and when I did their necks flopped to the side, like ragdolls. Their little necks had been snapped like baby chicks.
My wife came down and heated up water. I led the Specks upstairs and let them be alone. I asked Mister Speck to watch the windows upstairs while we were busy downstairs. He said he’d do his best. I took my son downstairs with me, but led him directly to the fireplace and laid a pallet down for him and ordered him to stay there. He did. It took all night stoking the fire and melting water to clean those two little bodies. Their little dresses were burned in the fireplace. Sheets were brought down to wrap the bodies. It was getting where we were running out of sheets.
The next morning Mister Speck and I tried to figure out how Junior got in. Finally, we saw that the upstairs window was open just a crack. It was the window at the end of the hallway that ran between the upstairs rooms front to back. It was our “door window,” the window we used to step out to the snow bank leading down to the street. We had made sure we closed it tight each night, but now we saw that it was open. Our surprise turned to guilt, then to shame. We had let our guard down. Junior had come in during the night and crept down to the first floor where he waited for the girls or Chris to answer nature’s call. We figured that the girls had gone down to the pantry, believing that no harm would befall them because they were in the house-fort. There he’d struck. By dumping the pots onto the girls he taunted us and insulted our feeble efforts to resist him. That boy was a beast from Hell.
Finally, the snow stopped and the thaw set in. It was still white all round but melting, and the roads were passable. A horse and buggy with a man and woman and a large steamer trunk pulled into town. They, Pastor Wainwright and Missus Wainwright, stopped at the store and announced their arrival. They told the clerk that they had come to replace the former Pastor. The clerk was puzzled and asked, “Already? He’s only been here a short while. No, that couldn’t be. He died last fall.” Pastor Wainwright apologized for being so late in coming but his coming had been barred by the heavy snow. We have a Pastor here already, he’s told. “What denomination? Methodist. Can’t be,” Wainwright says to the clerk. Pastor Wainwright explained that he’s the only Methodist Pastor sanctioned by the Synod; him and his predecessor who died last fall.
The store clerk came running down the road to where Speck and Wade and I were standing outside my house investigating the remains of the snow bank below the upstairs window. It had collapsed with the melt and exposed a tunnel burrowed from near the road and ending in a little ice cave at the front door. That was the entry point. I turned the handle. The door wasn’t latched from the inside. I didn’t remember if I had latched and locked it, but, if I had, it had been unlatched and never discovered. The clerk caught his breath and told us a new Pastor had just come into town saying there ain’t no preacher supposed to be here but him -- the one just arrived with his wife; says the regular one died last fall and no other was sent to replace him till now.
Men ran to get their guns. I ran to the store to meet this new Pastor. I told him and his missus to stay in the store. I told the clerk to get their horse and buggy to the barn for feed and water.
We ran to the Parsonage. He’s in. He sees us armed. He began to run but was stopped at the rear door by men who stood blocking it. Some of the men hauled him outside. The fathers of the dead children bound his hands and sent the others away. The Pastor was hollering something about revenge, our loved ones for his, murdered by our fathers. I heard later that there was a struggle.
The Pastor’s shirt was torn and he had primitive tattoo markings all over his body. That was when the men were taking him apart, trying to get him to tell them what he’d done with Junior. He never did say. Didn’t say he didn’t know; just didn’t say.
No, I never saw him again after the men took him out through that door. The ladies came over and cleaned the place out and made it nice for the new Pastor, the real Pastor. This time we asked to see his credentials and he had them and showed them to us. We asked if the church ever sent a Pastor, even up country as we were, alone, meaning unmarried. No, that’s never done. Could give rise to problems, especially in small communities, he said.
Oh, yes, my son, Christopher, survived. He had kids of his own. All girls. He named each one after the girls who were killed that winter. He never had a boy so he didn’t have to struggle over whether to name him Junior. Christopher still lives in the village. He farms the valley meadow and raises livestock. It’s very peaceful there; a good place to raise children.
So, you want me to tell you what you might find if you go poking around up there, looking for remains. You wouldn’t go poking in the cemetery; that’s consecrated ground where decent folks are buried, including the children who perished that winter. You might instead go digging around the pigpen. Maybe under the pigpen. Wouldn’t find no grave, but you might find a fire pit with some bones. So I heard.
So, all your scratching has been for the official record of your investigation, then? You have one final question? Sure. You want to know who disposed of the Pastor? I thought you might be getting around to that. Well, then, my answer is – all them that’s dead and gone.
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