"Little Hands in the Snow" by T. Craig

Little Hands in the Snow

by T. Craig

Sarah Winters was walking down the street at night when she first felt it. The sensation made her pause and turn her head slightly, trying to catch someone standing behind her. She glanced down at the pavement, watching to see if the streetlights would give away any movement in the shadows that might suggest she was being followed.

There were only the dark silhouettes of parked cars and the inner cityscape of buildings surrounding her. The blank canvas of snow deepened the shadows, giving them a sinking, dimensional feel.

She shrugged the feeling off and nestled her cheeks into the wool of her scarf, trying to absorb as much warmth as she possibly could. Regret filled her stomach now as she thought about insisting to her best friend, Jeanie, that she would walk home herself. They had met earlier in the city’s oldest graveyard, located beside the museum in the city centre, for a historical tour, and she had thought a walk in the snow would clear her head and do her good.

Big mistake, Sarah thought to herself.

She continued her walk home toward her apartment building, which was five blocks away. Despite her layers, she felt the hair raise on the back of her neck.

She felt like she was being watched.

Observed.

Again, she stopped and turned in a slow circle, trying to grab a glimpse of any perpetrators while also keeping her feet moving, hightailing it toward her apartment.

The white of the snow made her mind jump to white hemlock. The tour guide’s voice repeated itself in her head as she fought against the snow, forcing herself to walk faster.

“The plague pit is where the bodies of the children were piled into this area of the graveyard at the time of the Black Death. Many locals believed the children were possessed by an evil force, and to this day hemlock only seems to grow on this part of the hill. If you dig through the snow, the hemlock mysteriously grows in cold conditions. Local scientists have tried to study the soil and plants and still cannot explain how it continues to bloom in subzero temperatures.”

That was when she felt the creeping pressure tightening around her cotton glove, squeezing her hand. She froze and whimpered as she looked down, the pressure increasing with each passing second. There was nothing there, but she felt it—as if the small hand of a child had taken hers, squeezing harder with the death grip of a grown man.

Sarah yelped and tried to pull her hand away from the invisible force, but it clung to her. She felt more invisible claws escalating up her arm, dragging her backward. She pushed forward with all her might, bending her knees and gritting her teeth, forcing herself free.

A grunt escaped her mouth as she stumbled forward when the force finally let go.

She took off running down the street, pushing her feet through six inches of snow.

“HELP! Somebody please help me!” she screamed, but the deserted street answered only with silence.

A cold sweat broke out across her back, her eyes watering as her glasses fogged up.

She didn’t see the kerb of the entryway and collapsed into a heap. Her glasses fell into the snow, but she recognised the double arched glass Victorian doors of her apartment building. She crawled toward them, pushed them open, and scrambled into the doorway—until something coiled around her ankle.

Her face struck the cold terracotta tiles as she slid back across the threshold into the snow.

Sarah coughed, wiping snow from her eyes and nose. When she finally opened them, she saw something rising from the ground, like icicles forming in reverse. Slowly, they shaped themselves into white porcelain hands.

She realised she was sitting in a circle of small hands in the snow and cried in dismay as she hugged her knees to her chest.

When she looked at her feet, she shivered harder, even though she hadn’t thought it possible to feel any colder.

Three small heads emerged just above the snow, pale, frostbitten, and dead. The two outer heads had longer hair, while the middle one appeared to have shorter, wavy hair. It was difficult to tell the colour as the snowfall thickened.

All three pairs of eyes opened at once.

Sarah shrieked.

The last thing she saw was hands and heads edging toward her in the loud silence of the falling snow.

The next morning, Sarah’s body was found outside her apartment building, surrounded by small handprints in the snow.

Since then, hemlock has grown there all year round.