Buried During Snowfall – Chapter 1
The Letter That Should Not Exist
The letter arrived on a Thursday morning buried beneath unpaid bills, medical journals, and a grocery coupon Adrian Vale had no memory of picking up. The envelope itself looked ordinary at first glance — pale cream paper, no return address, his name typed neatly across the front in faded black ink. But the moment he touched it, something felt wrong. The paper was cold. Not metaphorically cold. Physically cold, as though it had been sitting inside a freezer moments before arriving at his apartment door. Adrian stood in his kitchen staring at it while rain battered the city outside his windows. He lived alone on the fourteenth floor of a concrete tower overlooking Greyford, a city that always looked wet even when it wasn’t raining. Most mornings began the same way for him: black coffee, nicotine gum he pretended replaced cigarettes, and silence thick enough to hear the pipes groan behind the walls. But that morning, the silence felt different. Heavy. Watching.
He opened the envelope using a butter knife.
Inside was a single sheet of paper folded exactly three times.
No greeting.
No signature.
Only four typed sentences.
At 8:17 PM this Saturday, Evelyn Mercer will die inside Bellgrave Station.
Her throat will be cut beside Platform 4.
The first officer on scene will vomit after seeing her hands.
You failed to save them then. You will fail again.
Adrian stopped breathing for a second.
Not because of the threat.
Because of the final sentence.
“You failed to save them then.”
Only three people alive knew those exact words.
And one of them had been dead for eleven years.
Adrian slowly sat down at the kitchen table. Outside, thunder rolled across Greyford like distant artillery. His fingers tightened around the paper hard enough to wrinkle it. He read the lines again. Then again. He already recognized the typing pattern before admitting it to himself. Every lowercase “g” sat slightly crooked. Every period had too much ink. The machine used to type this letter was old. Ancient, probably. Same as before.
Same as his letters.
He stood abruptly and walked toward the hallway closet. From the top shelf beneath old case files and dust-covered notebooks, he pulled down a locked metal box. The key still hung on the inside frame exactly where he always left it, though he rarely opened the box anymore. He told himself keeping those files was professional necessity. Research material. Historical evidence. The truth was uglier. He kept them because part of him feared forgetting.
Inside were thirty-seven letters.
Every one sent by Elias Thorn.
The man newspapers once called The Snowfall Butcher.
Adrian spread them across the table with trembling hands. Old paper. Old nightmares. Each letter carried the same machine-typed precision. Same clinical tone. Same eerie calmness. Elias never wrote emotionally. That was what frightened investigators most about him. He described murder the way accountants described taxes.
Then Adrian found it.
A letter dated eleven years earlier.
You failed to save them then.
The exact sentence.
His stomach tightened.
Elias Thorn was dead.
Adrian had identified the body himself.
He remembered the smell of burned flesh inside that collapsing farmhouse. Remembered melted beams dripping sparks into snow. Remembered police flashlights cutting through smoke while officers dragged out a charred corpse from the basement. Dental records confirmed the identity within days. Case closed. Public relieved. City moved on.
But Adrian never fully believed it.
Because they never found the children.
A knock suddenly hit his apartment door.
Three slow knocks.
Adrian froze instantly.
Nobody visited him.
Not anymore.
The knocking came again.
He approached carefully, every nerve tightening beneath his skin. Years of profiling killers had left him with instincts bordering on paranoia. He checked the peephole.
A woman stood outside.
Mid-thirties. Dark coat soaked from rain. Blonde hair tied back tightly. Sharp eyes already scanning the hallway before he even opened the door.
Detective Mara Quinn.
Greyford Homicide.
Adrian opened the door halfway. “What do you want?”
Mara looked exhausted. “You answering phones again or still pretending civilization collapsed?”
“I changed my number.”
“You change everything except your habits.”
She noticed the papers scattered behind him instantly. Detectives always looked around homes like burglars pretending to be polite. Her eyes narrowed slightly.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“You came here for fashion commentary?”
Mara ignored that. “There’s been another body.”
Adrian’s expression didn’t move.
“There’s always another body.”
“This one asked for you.”
That made him pause.
Mara studied him carefully before continuing.
“Victim was found last night in Riverside District. Male. Mid-fifties. Eyes removed postmortem. Chest carved with numbers.”
Adrian’s heartbeat slowed.
Numbers.
“What numbers?”
“1977.”
The room suddenly felt colder.
Adrian turned away from her and walked toward the kitchen window. Rainwater crawled down the glass in twisting lines like veins. He already knew where this conversation was heading before she spoke again.
“The victim taught at Ashriver Boarding School.”
There it was.
Ashriver.
Even hearing the name felt rotten.
A forgotten boarding school north of Greyford buried deep within frozen pine forests. Closed after a violent winter incident decades earlier. Officially, seven students disappeared during a snowstorm. Unofficially, far more vanished than records admitted.
And Adrian had been one of the surviving students.
Very few people knew that.
Mara stepped into the apartment uninvited. “You never told me you went there.”
“Because it’s irrelevant.”
“Not anymore.”
She placed a crime scene photo on the table.
Adrian stared at it silently.
The victim’s chest had indeed been carved with numbers.
Below the numbers was a second carving.
A single word.
FOUND
Adrian felt genuine fear for the first time in years.
Because only Ashriver survivors would understand what that meant.
Mara watched his reaction carefully. “You know something.”
Adrian didn’t answer.
He was no longer looking at the photo.
He was staring at the victim’s left hand.
Three fingers were missing.
Exactly like the children they found buried behind Ashriver’s east dormitory thirty years ago.
Adrian suddenly grabbed his coat.
Mara frowned. “Where are you going?”
“Bellgrave Station.”
“Why?”
“Because if the letter is real, someone dies there Saturday night.”
“You’re not making sense.”
Adrian finally handed her the envelope.
She read it once.
Then twice.
Her face slowly changed.
“That’s impossible.”
“Yes.”
“You think this is a copycat?”
“No.”
“Then what are you saying?”
Adrian looked directly at her.
For a brief moment, genuine terror crossed his face.
“I think,” he said quietly, “someone wants us to believe Elias Thorn never died.”