November 10, 2025
10:00 PM CST

It began on a Tuesday.

The forecast was clear. Not a cloud for miles. But the moment Hank Walker stepped out to feed the goats, something soft and white touched his cheek.

He looked up.

Nothing. Pure blue sky.

But it was snowing.

Not drifting flakes. These fell straight down in rigid lines, as if dropped from an invisible ceiling. And it was only falling on their land—nowhere else.

Their farmhouse, the pasture, the old barn—all dusted in white while the fence line marked a hard boundary. On the other side, dry grass waved in late autumn breeze.

By evening, it was six inches deep. The cold followed—biting and unnatural.

Hank’s wife, Marnie, said it reminded her of the winter her sister died. The same smell in the air. Like smoke and rust.

Their daughter Ellie caught a flake on her tongue and spat it out. “It’s salty,” she said. “Like tears.”

That night, the snow turned gray. In the morning, the animals were gone—no prints, just shapes in the snow, curled like they’d lain down to sleep and melted into it.

Then they heard the bell.

An old, rusted cowbell hung from a nail in the barn—silent for years. But now it clanged at odd hours, even when the wind was still.

When Hank ventured out to take it down, he didn’t return.

They found his coat outside the barn, heavy with frost. Inside, only his boots, steaming gently. His voice echoed faintly from somewhere beneath the snow.

By the third day, the flurries began to fall up.

From the fields, the barn roof, the porch—flakes rising into the blue as if un-falling. A reverse storm, pulling the world away flake by flake.

Ellie pressed her face to the window and whispered, “It’s coming from below.”

That night, Marnie dreamed of a sky buried under their land—a second firmament hidden deep in the soil, now waking. What they’d always thought was heaven above… had a twin below.

And it was hungry for warmth.

By morning, only the farmhouse remained untouched. The rest was snowbound in skyless silence.

And Ellie was gone.

Just her shadow, burned into the snow like soot.

Now Marnie waits.

The flakes have started to drift sideways.