Ashes Where the Snow Should Fall

It was supposed to snow that night.

The air had that sharp, metallic taste that always comes before winter, and the world held itself in a kind of breathless pause. The weather reports swore a blizzard was on its way. The children in town were already giddy at the thought of waking to a white world, to sleds and snowmen and steaming mugs of cocoa.

But in Hollow Creek, snow never came the way people expected.

Eli knew that better than most. He’d grown up in this valley, where the winters were long but strangely unpredictable. Some years, the first snow fell in October; others, it wouldn’t appear until January. But this year was different. The air didn’t smell of frost—it smelled faintly of something else. Something darker.

He stood outside his cabin, watching the heavy clouds roll in over the mountains. His breath rose in white puffs, yet the cold didn’t bite the way it should. It was the kind of chill that seemed to come from the inside out, as if the land itself was remembering something it wanted to forget.

And then… he smelled it.

Smoke.

Not the warm, inviting scent of a hearth fire, but the acrid, stinging burn of something vast and hungry. He turned toward the ridge, heart thudding, and saw it: a faint, curling ribbon of black rising into the sky.

It was coming from the old Mill House.

No one had lived there for years, not since the fire that took the Harris family. People in Hollow Creek didn’t talk about it much, except in whispers. They said the house burned every December 14th—no matter how many times it was rebuilt, no matter who owned it. And on that night, it never snowed.

Eli grabbed his coat and flashlight, his boots crunching on the frost-bitten ground as he made his way toward the ridge. The closer he got, the stronger the smell became, until it choked the air. But when he reached the clearing, there was no fire. No light. No sound but the wind.

The Mill House stood exactly as it always had—abandoned, gray with rot, its windows like blind eyes staring out into the night.

But the snow… still hadn’t come.

He stepped onto the porch, each board groaning under his weight. The door creaked open without resistance. The air inside was heavy, thick with the scent of burned wood, though nothing smoldered. And then he saw them—ashes scattered across the floor like dark snowflakes, drifting in the faint beam of his flashlight.

The hairs on the back of his neck rose.

A whisper moved through the room.

It was so soft, he might have thought it was the wind, but the words were clear: “It was supposed to snow.”

He froze, the flashlight trembling in his hand.

The whisper came again, closer this time. “It was supposed to snow.”

Eli’s breath quickened. “Who’s there?”

Silence.

Then, from the corner of the room, a shape emerged. At first, it seemed like a shadow, but shadows don’t have eyes—glowing faintly like embers. The figure stepped into the light, and Eli saw her.

A girl. No older than twelve. Her dress was old-fashioned, scorched at the edges. Ash clung to her hair like soot, and her skin was pale as moonlight.

“You’re one of them,” she whispered. “You came to see the fire.”

Eli’s voice caught in his throat. “What fire?”

“The one that took us. The one that comes when the snow should fall.” Her voice was calm, almost gentle. “It’s coming again.”

As if on cue, the wind howled outside, rattling the loose shutters. Ash began to swirl through the air, more and more, until it filled the room like a black blizzard. Eli coughed, shielding his face.

“Leave,” the girl said, her voice suddenly sharp. “Leave before it finds you too.”

The floor beneath him groaned—not from his weight, but as if something beneath was moving. Heat rose from the boards, growing hotter with each passing second.

Eli turned and ran, stumbling out into the cold night air. He didn’t stop until he reached the ridge. When he looked back, the Mill House was glowing faintly, as though embers pulsed inside its walls.

But still… there was no snow.

That night, Eli lay awake in his cabin, watching the sky. He waited for white flakes to drift down, to erase the smell of smoke from his clothes. But morning came, and the ground was bare.

In the days that followed, Hollow Creek whispered again. Some said Eli had seen the ghosts of the Harris family. Others claimed the land was cursed—that every December 14th, the fire returned to claim the snow for itself.

Eli never went back to the Mill House.

But every winter, when the air grew sharp and the clouds gathered over the mountains, he would step outside, close his eyes, and breathe in.

And if he caught the faintest trace of smoke, he knew…

It wasn’t going to snow.