Snow Super Short Stories

By the time the snow melted, five people were dead.

The village of Viremoor had always been quiet, too quiet, Detective Eloise Marrin used to say, before Winter Garden came alive with ghosts. It was supposed to be an old, forgotten estate. A crumbling relic hidden behind frost-covered hedgerows and rusted iron gates. But over the course of two months, it became something else:

A stage for murder.

Five victims. Five perfect crime scenes. And all of them, in one way or another, pointed to Thomas Vale, the godson of Victor Harroway, the late owner of the manor and a man with enough wealth to buy a town’s silence.

It was the unmistakable sound of a small animal’s limbs breaking through the crest of fresh-fallen snow.  Then I saw the shape of it just outside the semicircle of the lantern’s light and it looked to be a small dog or half-grown wolf.  Blacker than the night it was and it darted from a hedgerow of dormant bushes to a wood pile.  Against the backdrop of snow, which had a nightly, bluish tinge, the canine showed up rather well and I saw that it had a great, bushy tail.  I then realized that my uninvited visitor was a fox.

I reached up for the burning lantern and held it up high before me.  Peculiar, I thought, that the fox would run toward me rather than away.  As the light hit its eyes, they glowed red as twin embers.  Hoping for a better look, I eased forward a step with the lantern.  

The black fox uttered a sound that was somewhere between a growl and a low yelp.  A chill ran up my spine.  My first reaction was to promptly straighten my posture and stand steadfast.  Even then as the fox ran off, it seemed to have a firm grasp on me, for I could not move for at least a half minute’s time I am sure of it.

As the fox disappeared, I lit my pipe for a second time as it had gone out.  As I stood there in the cold darkness, savoring the pipe smoke, staring out into the blackness of the night, it occurred to me how rare it was for one to see a black fox.  I did not recall ever hearing of anyone else seeing one.

He had expected to have fallen by now. Part of him wanted to but his feet kept trudging through the snow. The cold had stopped bothering him and all he wanted was to sleep but some stubborn, thoughtless, and uncaring sense of survival kept him walking southeast across the arctic wasteland.

His sword hung reassuringly on his back. The furs he wore sheltered his body from the sharp bite of the cold. Only his face was unprotected and this he covered from his nose down with a strip of blanket. His large pack was lighter now that his tinder and food were almost depleted. He was starting to feel as empty as his meager supplies.