Skylights Through the Snow

A short horror story , written by Ariel Marcy~

Winter tends to hit hard and stick around for quite a long time here in my hometown of Jasper County Illinois, I myself have never been a fan of it. The cold and the snow tend to invite a seasonal depression and an emptiness for my family and I. Soon after first snowfall the town is masked in a blanket of glistening white, that is unfortunately bound to turn to a pile of dirt brown filth. Christmas than rolls by and it doesn't get any easier for me and my family year by year. Beyond even the innate feeling for anyone who isn't rich & incredibly privileged that you are left with a struggling financial situation and lack of stability, in order to reset you for the next year.

See, My family & I also find Christmas to be nothing more than a brief period of grief for our long passed mother. Mrs. Hackett was her name , our dear mother whom seemingly passed long ago. Mother disappeared without a trace, though if im being honest not without warning. Mother into her older age became obsessed and delusional ,repeating stories about bright lights and moving white shadows. How one even sees a WHITE shadow was well beyond me & back then she could never seem to explain herself. Any time she tried, without fail she would begin to tremble and became non verbal with us. Nobody in the family could seem to get through to her not even Thomas, my older Brother whom she told most everything especially after dad passed.

We used to live out with mom in the country in a nice and tidy little log cabin. The cabin was surrounded by a thick layer of forest and not so far away was a cemetery ,small and almost never busy. Sometimes we wondered and feared about "silly" things like the living dead and spooky little grey men , Aliens of course im referring too. For many years of our youth our Mother's increase in stories and departure from sanity let my siblings and I horribly afraid and paranoid of the cemetery, the cornfield , and even the sky itself.

Some Years after Moms mental decline with no proof or genuine answers we became more annoyed than afraid at the constant never ending flux of stories and panics. Looking back I do wish at the time we'd have done more for her, I should have helped her into a nursing home or some sort or at the very least set her up with therapy and moved her out of that home. But how can any of us truly blame ourselves, we were children the oldest of us only being 14. I'm not sure if it sounds horrible now or not but I do think it was to my and my siblings benefit to go into foster care, it saved us from a horrible and terrifying childhood and life, possibly a lack of one at all.

Nobody had visited the house since mom went missing. We had all shown up the day of her disappearing because of COURSE we did she was still our MOTHER. It was a very complicated and difficult day for everybody and I believe even back then we were all dealt a great deal of guilt and regret that day. Especially Thomas who had cried the most of any of us. Thomas was at an age during it all that he could at least attempt to understand and sympathise with Mom's faltering mental health. I guess I began to write in general as a way to vent and clear my head of it all, however it was to no avail. The guilt had been eating away at my brain for years and years pestering and eating away at my brain years and years and years. I decided last December to return to the little cabin just once more with Thomas to finally get the chance to say goodbye to mom for real the only way we can now.

I met with Thomas at the train station as it was quite a ways to mothers and the winter conditions made such a long drive too risky and complicated. We took in each others company warmly exchanging a hug and striking up a heartfelt conversation. We reminisced about the bits of positive memories we could pick out from our childhoods with Mom. We spoke to each other about back when Dad first passed and to our surprise Mom got even more on the ball with things in more caring ways, We remembered waking up to Mom in the kitchen blasting oldies and cooking up a full course breakfast complete with a stack of pancakes, sausage and bacon, apples, orange juice, and sometimes on the occasion a homemade blueberry muffin one for each of us. There were six of us in total , four rowdy boys and two girls counting myself, tho it'd be a lie to say me and my sister weren't rowdy in our own right.