The Frozen Christmas of Elmsworth

Every year, my family would pack up the old station wagon and drive three hours to my grandmother’s farm in Elmsworth. The farm had been in the family for generations, a sprawling property of withered cornfields and a decaying barn that creaked like old bones. The main house was a Victorian relic with peeling wallpaper and floors that sloped in odd directions. It was always cold there, even in summer, but at Christmas, the chill was a physical presence that seeped through the walls and clung to your skin.

I was nine years old, and that year, the family reunion was as chaotic as ever. Aunts and uncles filled the kitchen with laughter, and the smell of roasting turkey and cinnamon drifted through the rooms. Outside, a light snow began to fall, dusting the bare trees with a ghostly white. My cousins, a gaggle of older boys I never quite fit in with, suggested a game of hide-and-seek. I was hesitant, but the fear of being called a chicken outweighed my reluctance.

I drew the short straw and became ‘It’. I counted to fifty, my face pressed into the scratchy wool of my coat, while the sound of their sneakers scattered like scattering mice. Thirty seconds in, I chanced a peek and saw the last of them vanish into the cornfield’s edge. I knew I had to find a spot they’d never think to look. The farthest point of the backyard was a forgotten orchard, the trees bare and skeletal, their branches like crooked fingers reaching for a pale moon.

I sprinted through the snow, my breath coming in white puffs. The orchard was silent, the only sound my own heart thudding in my ears. I was searching for a good hiding spot when my foot landed on something slick beneath the snow. I slipped and fell hard, my hands plunging into the cold white powder. As I pushed myself up, I felt a sticky wetness on my palms, not from the snow but from something dark and viscous beneath it. It pooled around my fingers, staining the pristine white with a spreading crimson.

A sharp pain shot through my ankle, and I let out a strangled cry. Panic rose in my throat as I realized how far I was from the house, the warmth and safety of the party. I called out for my mother, my voice cracking, but the wind stole my words and swallowed them whole. I limped toward the back door of the house, each step sending jolts of agony up my leg. The back porch was dark, the lights from the front windows casting long shadows across the warped boards.

I pushed open the door and stepped into a narrow hallway that smelled of damp and old wood. The house was eerily silent here, the sounds of the party muffled by walls and distance. I was halfway to the kitchen when I noticed something odd. Three white clothes, stiff and faintly glowing, hung from the ceiling in the hall, swaying slightly as if moved by a draft. They were the kind of thin, almost translucent gowns you’d see in old photographs, like burial shrouds.

I froze, my breath catching. I knew I should yell for someone, but my voice seemed stuck. I took a hesitant step closer. The gowns were suspended from hooks that I hadn’t noticed before. They swayed gently, and a cold draft wrapped around me, making me shiver violently. As I watched, the middle gown began to rotate slowly, as if something inside it were turning. I glimpsed a pale face, gaunt and hollow-eyed, staring at me from beneath the folds.

I screamed then. A shrill, animal sound that tore from my throat. The gowns whipped around, the fabric snapping like wind-torn sails, and the face disappeared. The hallway plunged into darkness, and a sound like weeping began to echo off the walls. I stumbled backward, my ankle screaming, and collided with a side table, sending a vase crashing to the floor. The shattering glass was like a signal, and suddenly, the front door burst open, and my family spilled in, their laughter dying as they saw my face and the bloodstains on my hands.

My mother rushed to me, her face a mask of fear. ‘What happened?’ she cried, clasping my shoulders. I started to explain about the hidden orchard and the blood, but when I gestured toward the hallway where the gowns had been, they were gone. Only the hooks remained, empty and rusted. My cousin Tommy, the eldest, laughed nervously. ‘Probably old man Hargrove’s laundry. He used to haunt this place.’ The others chuckled, but I saw the unease in their eyes. They didn’t believe me, but they sensed something wrong.

That night, in the room I was assigned, the cold was so intense I could see my breath. I lay in a bed that smelled of mothballs, listening to the house creak and groan. At 3 AM, a sound woke me: a soft, dragging noise from the hallway outside my door. I crept to the keyhole and peered out. The corridor was dimly lit by a single bulb, and there, shuffling past, was a figure in one of the white gowns. It moved with a halting gait, its head tilted at an unnatural angle, and I watched as it dragged a long, rusty hook along the floorboards, leaving a fresh scratch mark in the wood.

I didn’t sleep again that night. I clutched the covers, my heart pounding, until the gray dawn seeped through the curtains. The next day, I tried to tell my parents, but they dismissed it as a nightmare. ‘Too much candy, you’re imagining things,’ my father said. But I wasn’t. I saw it again twice more that visit, always near the back hallway, always watching me. Each time, I tried to confront it, but it would vanish when I got close.

On Christmas Eve, during the Noche Buena feast, I crept away from the table and made my way to the orchard. The blood I’d seen was still there, a dark stain in the snow. I knelt and brushed the powder aside, revealing a rusted horseshoe and a shard of bone. A sudden realization hit me: this was where the farm’s last owner, old Hargrove, had supposedly died. The locals said he was a hermit, a cruel man who had vanished under mysterious circumstances. They whispered that his ghost still wandered, looking for something.

I was so absorbed that I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me until it was too late. A cold hand gripped my shoulder, and I spun around. The figure in white stood there, its face now clear: skin like parchment, weeping sores, and eyes that were completely black. It opened its mouth, and a scream like a thousand crying children pierced the air. I woke up in the house, my family gathered around me, my mother dabbing a cold cloth on my forehead. ‘You fainted in the orchard,’ she said, her face pale. ‘We found you just lying in the snow.’

I didn’t tell them what I’d seen. But I knew then that it wasn’t a dream. The blood had been real, and so was the ghost. It was looking for something, and it had chosen me. As the years passed, the visits to Elmsworth became more frequent, and the sightings increased. I never told anyone, not until now. The ghost of the orchard, the weeping in the walls, the blood in the snow—it became a part of me, a secret I carried like a stone in my chest. And every Christmas, when the snow falls and the wind howls, I hear that scream again, and I know that something is still waiting there, in that frozen place, for me to come back.