‘Snow’ – By Mark T. Bates (The Curious Dark #6)

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‘Snow’

A short story …

By Mark T. Bates

(2025)

***

31^st October 1987

Danny looked out of his bedroom window as snow fell lightly onto the glass, his brother’s Sony Walkman clasped tightly in his palm. His dead brother’s missing portable tape-player, that had now appeared without rhyme or reason in a box under his bed. A note attached to the box in the unmistakeable handwriting of his brother, which simply said; Play me at midnight, if you want me to come home. He looked out of his window into the night, the snowfall glistening against the moonlight, and he stood mesmerised. Unable to think clearly, not knowing what to do for the best. Should I tell my parents what I have found? I don’t think Mikey would want me too …

Danny was just twelve years old when his older brother Mikey Mulwray had burned to death in an abandoned wooden building a year ago to this day. A hut which sat deep into the forest which lived behind their parents New England home. Mikey was sixteen at the time. The vocalist and guitarist in a Thrash Metal band called Demon Blood, and the leader of a gang of slacker-teenage Heavy Metal fans in their town’s high-school. A gang who wore denim jackets adorned with Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth badges, whatever the weather.

Mikey and his group of friends had spent the Halloween evening of 1986 terrorising the local neighbourhood by trick or treating, well mostly tricking, as they drank beer and ran amok through the town. Then they had headed out into the woods armed with a bunch of guitars, and a plan to sit around a camp fire, play music and smoke pot all night.

They had made the abandoned wooden lodge in the woods their own. The Devil’s Hut, as they called it, was a good fifteen minutes’ walk south into the woodland. It sat by a clearing close to a stream that was good for fishing and paddling in, an area only accessible by torchlight once the sun had gone down, and if you knew the correct route to take. Mikey and his friends spent much of their time down by the stream, graffitiing the walls of The Devil’s Hut and covering it in various Heavy Metal band stickers.

No-one knows exactly what happened to cause the fire that killed Danny’s brother that night. It is said, from those who were in attendance, that the gang had played their music and smoked their drugs, while their camp fire roared in a pit some distance from the hut. It is rumoured, but not confirmed, that Mikey had perhaps attempted to take the tone of the evening into a dark direction. For it is said that he had been growing fond of reciting Satanic verses when he played his guitar at night.

Certainly, the lyrics in his songs more than hinted at a growing fascination with the Lord of Darkness. There are supposedly police reports which confirm that by 2am on the 1^st November, all attendees of this Halloween gathering in the forest had left the woods for the comfort of their own homes, leaving just Mikey Mulwray there by himself. It is said he had planned to stay there until dawn, continuing to celebrate Samhain alone, with just The Devil’s Hut for shelter.

But it was just before dawn that the calls had begun to flood the local emergency services, when a blazing fire could be spotted in the forest from nearby homes. A fire which was pumping thick black smoke high into the sky. By mid-morning the fire had been extinguished by the experts, but the wooden lodge had been badly burned and damaged by the flames. Flames which had also ignited a number of close trees. It was a miracle, no doubt helped by the unusually cold autumn weather and fresh fall of snow, that an uncontrollable wild-fire had not occurred. Engulfing the wider forest and reaching out towards the neighbouring residential properties.

It was very fortunate indeed given the circumstances, that this disaster had not occurred. But for the Mulwray family, it was still an unfathomable tragedy. As it transpired the badly charred body of their eldest son had been discovered within the ruins of the hut which had caught alight. Their son Mikey was long dead when his remains were discovered by the fire crew, but the events leading to the fire and his tragic subsequent death remain a mystery to this day.

Yes, it had snowed on that Halloween night in 1986, and here was the peculiarly out of season snow once more a year later. A steady white dust falling from the sky, beginning to settle on the floor as if it were already winter. Danny looked out of his window, watching the snowfall with the forest in the background at the bottom of his parent’s garden. He caressed the tape-player, his brother’s beloved Walkman; not knowing what to do for the best, as tears streamed from his eyes.

***

A few hours later, Danny was laying on his bed staring at the ceiling. The Walkman by his side, the headphones resting on the pillow next to him. He had lay there silently waiting for his parents to go to bed. They had both popped their heads around his door to say goodnight around 11pm, and Danny had thrown the corner of his duvet over the tape-player as they had done so. For he did not want them to see it. Not that he thought they would have noticed it on reflection, or even understood its significance if they had of done. For it had been a year since Mikey had died. Burned to death in The Devil’s Hut on that snowy Halloween night. And his missing Walkman was the least of their worry or concern.

Danny didn’t think his parents would even recognise the tape-player as being that of his older brother’s. They probably didn’t even realise it was missing from Mikey’s bedroom, the room they had kept virtually intact from the very last day he had occupied it. But Danny knew the Walkman had been missing. He’d searched Mikey’s room high and low for it, every nook and cranny in fact. For he knew what it contained. The one demo tape that Demon Blood had recorded.

The only recording Danny knew of which featured his brother screaming into a microphone whilst playing guitar. He had played it to Danny the very afternoon before he and his friends had headed out to cause havoc that Halloween evening. The evening which had turned into a true nightmare for Danny and his family …

Yet now here it was. Returned after all this time, and with a note seemingly from Mikey himself attached no less. Danny had been laying on his carpet reading a copy of Rock Circus magazine whilst listening to the new Def Leppard LP on his record player, when there in the corner of his eye, he had seen a strange and unusual looking box poking out from under his bed. A box he knew did not belong to him. A box he knew he had not put there. So here he now was, laying on his bed some hours later, his bedside clock ticking close to midnight. Still awake … wating.

Finally, the big hand of his clock clicked into place, pointing vertically upwards and smothering the little hand out of view. It was midnight. It was the witching hour, and Danny had to make a final decision as to what he was going to do. He placed the headphones around his head and covered his ears with the speakers. He closed his eyes, lay back on his pillow, and pressed play.

***

Within a few seconds the sound of the tape coming to life buzzed in his ears. The sound of a guitar being plugged into an amp and the knob being turned up to ten. A blast of feedback fuzzed before the noise of a symbol being hit four times crashed alongside the unmistakeable sound of Mikey’s voice; One, Two, Three, Four … Then came the explosion of noise. The stabbing of his brother’s distorted guitar, a bass guitar pulsating with dark menace, the clatter of percussion alongside the thumping of drums. The music was fast. It was heavy as fuck. As heavy as anything Danny had ever heard before. Mikey had always said that he wanted Demon Blood to go harder than Slayer ever had, and this demo more than proved that intention.

It had been a year since Danny had heard this music, recorded just before his brother’s death. He was pretty sure this was the only recording they had ever made. He had never heard from the other band members since the tragedy, and certainly hadn’t heard anything further of Demon Blood in the last twelve months. But to be honest without Mikey, there was no Demon Blood anyway.

Danny lay there, slowly becoming lost in the music. Before finally, after a couple of minutes or so, the part he had been waiting for came to life. Mikey started singing, no, screaming over the music. Spitting indecipherable lyrics with pure venom. Danny smiled to himself as he allowed the voice of his brother to take over his senses. He kept the volume relatively low, as he didn’t want the noise of the headphones playing to be audible enough to disturb his parents. But as he lay there listening completely absorbed, he suddenly became aware of another sound outside of the small speakers that pressed against his ears.

One, Two, Three, Four … there was a rapping on his bedroom window.

Danny’s eyes shot open. He pulled the headphones from his ears and hit the pause button on the Walkman. His heart was thumping, his breathing heavy. He lay there in silence, and then it came once more … One, Two, Three, Four. Danny sat up, sweat building on his brow. And as if under some kind of trance, he found himself rising to his feet and walking slowly towards the curtain which covered his bedroom window.

As he reached his destination he drew back the curtain, half expecting to see his brother’s face staring back in at him. He had seen Salems’ Lot after all, and feared he knew all too well how this was going to go. But there was no face there beyond the glass. He picked up a torch from his desk and shone it out into the night, down onto the ground of his parent’s garden. And he froze.

His brother may not have been there, but in the freshly set snow that covered the path, were footprints. Unmistakeable footprints which began at the bottom of the garden where the edge of the woodland sat, leading all the way up the to the backdoor of their house. And next to the footprints the snow was stained. Stained with what looked like droplets of blood.

Danny shuddered as he switched off the torch. He realised he had almost stopped breathing altogether the whole time he had been looking outside. He decided he needed to go to his parent’s room, to wake up his dad and show him what he had seen. To explain about finding his brother’s tape-player with the message under his bed. He slowly turned away from the window as he contemplated what his parents might say when he walked in and woke them up. But as he completed his turn towards the door, there in front of him no more than a few metres away, was Mikey. Standing in his bedroom, looking straight at him as if it were the most natural occurrence in the world.

Danny stood frozen for the second time in as many minutes. His brother was not as he had remembered him alive. Instead, he appeared as he did in Danny’s most terrifying of nightmares. His skin was badly burned, charred like Freddy from Elm Street. He also had a burned, almost completely bald head with just a few clumps and random strands of singed hair remaining, where a long dark mane once rested.

But the face of this apparition was unmistakeably that of Mikey’s. What was left of his clothing hung thread-bare from his scalded body, some of the material had melted into his flesh. All that remained intact were his leather Dr. Marten boots; the bottoms covered in snow. Snow which had been trodden across the carpet of Danny’s bedroom, leaving wet footprints from the door which stood slightly a jar, to where Mikey was now standing.

Mikey looked into his younger brother’s eyes, and just as Danny was about to scream, Mikey raised an arm and pressed a finger to his lips … Shhh little brother. Come with me but be quiet. We don’t want to wake mum and dad. Mikey turned and walked towards the door, pausing to look back over his shoulder at Danny who remained rooted to the spot. I said come with me little brother, he repeated, beckoning Danny to follow him with his finger. Danny did as he was asked and followed his brother out of the room.

They walked quietly across the hall, then down the stairs, with Mikey leaving wet marks on the carpet the whole way. From the bottom of the stairs they moved, almost silently through the kitchen and out of the back door into the garden. Danny following his older brother like a faithful dog, as he had always done. For he had looked up to Mikey his whole life, worshipping the ground he walked on as he had grown up in his shadow.

Once they were both outside Mikey stopped walking, turning back to his brother as he did so. We’re going out into the woods little brother. I want to show you something. Mikey had a torch in his hand – strange that Danny hadn’t noticed it before. He turned on the flashlight and walked down the garden towards the gate which provided access through to the entrance of the forest. Danny followed, he was cold, only wearing his faded The Goonies pyjamas, and a pair of old slippers. It had not occurred to him to dress for the occasion, whatever that may be.

He didn’t know why he appeared to be following the re-animated corpse of his older brother into the forest, the place of his demise. But he followed nonetheless, hoping that if he were awake, and this was real, then it was going to end with Mikey returning home to their family. So that they could all be happy once more.

After trudging through the crackle of the forest undergrowth, and the crunching of the still settling snow on the footpath for a good ten-minutes, the brothers eventually reached the spot Danny knew he was being taken to. The clearing by a stream, where the remains sat of the burned and decrepit lodge his brother had been cooked in a year ago. Keep following me little brother, we just have this last bit to go. Mikey walked into the ruins of the fire-damaged building, climbing over a pile of white stones as he did so. For the whole hut had been surrounded by these stones. Stones which appeared to have been carefully laid out in a circle around the lodge.

Danny continued to do as he was asked, thinking only at this point how happy his mum and dad were going to be when Mikey returned home to them in the morning. As he stepped over the stone circle a loud humming sound began to throb in his ears. The sound travelled across his forehead and started swirling around his brain, causing a sudden and intense migraine that felt like it was going to explode inside his head. He looked upwards as his eyes rolled backwards. His body went limp and he began to fall … straight into the outstretched arms of Mikey.

***

When Danny’s eyes opened, he found that he was laying on his back, staring directly up towards the night’s sky through the derelict roof of The Devil’s Hut. He was tied down, his arms and legs pulled outwards. His hands and feet tethered to large wooden stakes which had been drilled down into the ground. His body stretched into the shape of a star. His eyes started to dart around in panic. He began twisting his neck to move his head from side-to-side. The only part of his body he was able to move.

On the wall in front of him, a spray-painted black marking loomed large. Danny recognised the graffiti as a pentagram, with what looked like the head of an animal inside. Possibly some kind of horned goat. He knew his brother enjoyed drawing pentagrams; for his school books had been covered in the etchings when they were provided to his parents following his death. But in this moment, he had no idea what this all meant, or what was going to happen to him.   

Danny lay his head back down, his neck now aching from him wriggling and writhing on the floor. He was truly captive. As he lay there looking upwards, the face of Mikey suddenly appeared above him; I’m sorry little brother, he said. But this is the only way I can return forever. Mikey’s face moved down closer to Danny’s, and he kissed him on the forehead. Then he stood up, and flicked a Zippo lighter into life so that Danny could see the flame dancing in his hand. He walked over to the wall and held the lighter next to the bottom of the pentagram, and within seconds the marking went up in flames, burning perfectly bright upon the wall.

Mikey turned his back to the flaming symbol and started muttering. The words were alien to Danny, complete mumbo jumbo. He pulled a can of lighter fluid from his pocket, and started flicking it over the trapped body of Danny as he continued reciting his demented prayer. Soon Danny was covered in the fluid, the smell  of sulphur burning in his nostrils. All the while, the flaming pentagram continued to blaze on the wall.

Then Mikey stopped talking. He was standing directly above Danny’s head once more. He looked down at his brother, and for just a moment their eyes met. They stared at each other in complete silence, and Danny could see fire burning deep in his brother’s pupils. Then Mikey dropped the lighter down onto Danny’s chest, instantly setting alight his pyjama top. Danny started to cry as the heat engulfed his body, he closed his eyes … and he screamed.

***

Danny Mulwray sauntered slowly through the woods towards his home. The first of dawn’s light providing all he needed to see the path in front of him. The snow had begun to melt, there was just the remaining slush of now muddy ice bordering the path as he walked, bare chested and shivering in the cold. When he reached his family home, he let himself in through the back door, kicked off his filthy slippers, and tiptoed up the stairs so as not to wake his parents. Then he climbed into his bed, and once again closed his eyes.

A few hours later Danny woke up. He lay in his bed awhile, studying his hands front and back, listening in silence as he heard movement downstairs; the clattering in the kitchen of his mum and dad making breakfast no doubt. He pulled himself up and walked over to the mirror which hung on his bedroom wall. He looked into the mirror, and intently studied his face. He smiled to himself and found the reflection smiling back, as he whispered the words; hello little brother …

Danny recalled emerging from the cinder of the hut as if from a cocoon before he walked home, and he knew the wooden walls of the building and the bones of his former body were now conjoined together as ash on the forest floor. As the faint sound of sirens rang in the distance outside, he knew it was time to go see his parents, for he had missed them this last year. Danny smiled into the mirror once more; thank you little brother, for now we are one. He turned and slowly walked towards the bedroom door, glancing down at the Walkman which lay on the bed as he passed … and he began laughing.   

*** End ***

Copyright 2025 Mark T. Bates

All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

‘Snow’ first appeared on The Dark Corner in October 2025, and can be listened to soon as an exclusive narration at http://www.creepypod.com

Mark T. Bates – Writer Bio

From a young age, Mark immersed himself within the world of genre storytelling. Devouring paperbacks from the likes of Stephen King & Clive Barker, while immersing himself in the movies of John Carpenter & David Cronenberg. All combining to lay the foundations for a life-long love of Horror, Fantasy & Sci-Fi, which has naturally transcended into a passion for telling his own tales.

A number of his short stories can be found online in places such as Crystal Lake Publishing’s Patreon, and The Dark Corner blog. Mark is publishing his own on-going flash-fiction series ‘The Curious Dark’ on www.kult-zilla.com – where he also writes plenty of Horror adjacent non-fiction.  

His debut novella – ‘The Curse of Six’ – released with RDG Books in the autumn of 2025, whilst his second novella – ‘A Slow Decay of Flowers’ – follows in 2026 via Baynam Books Press. 

Mark can be found online in all of the usual places!

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‘The Curious Dark (Vol.1)’ – by Mark T. Bates