Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

What Moves In the Cold

The coldest of winter days. The sun shining bright with only a few shrivelled clouds in the sky. Even with the sun so vibrant above the cold is obvious. There is a stillness to the air that is visible, as if the world, or this frigid part of it, has stepped out of time for the moment. Nothing stirs. The chickadees and magpies and other birds that do not migrate have vanished. The skies empty, their calls silent. The coyotes and foxes are huddled in their dens. There is only a whisper of a wind, as if it has forgotten its way. Hour by hour, day by day, time does not pass and the cold remains. A picture hanging in a frame. 

The sound is different in the midst of such stillness. When nothing else is moving, the sound of distant footsteps on hard snow is startlingly near. You look for the person but they are somewhere beyond the next hill. There are strange noises in such cold. Some are things you simply never noticed before in amidst the general cacophony of life. The hum of the transformer on the power pole, the occasional rush of a car passing on the highway several kilometres away. Those sounds were always there but now you can actually hear them, loud and present set against the stark quiet. 

But there are other sounds too, inexplicable and unidentifiable, that only exist in this kind of cold. Something between a whistle and groan that comes as the sun sets and only when standing near the house or the garage. At first you think it is the building itself, protesting against the weather, but it sounds too alive for that. Is there some miserable creature huddled against the building for warmth?  

An investigation reveals nothing except the prints of an absent bird hopping about on the snow. There is a feeling like something is there, something watching you. The air briefly stirs, stinging your cheek, and you decide to go in. As your feet crunch under the hard and brittle snow you hear the sound come again. A mournful howl from no animal you have ever heard from before. You quicken up the steps to the door and inside to the warmth.