Buried During Snowfall – Chapter 6
The Headmaster’s Office
Adrian didn’t remember stepping onto the ice.
One second he stood behind the barricade beside shouting officers and rotating floodlights. The next he was walking toward the excavation hole while snow lashed against his face hard enough to sting. Someone yelled his name behind him — probably Mara — but the sound felt distant, muffled beneath the roar inside his own head.
The figure under the lake was gone now.
Only darkness remained beneath the broken ice.
Yet Adrian knew what he saw.
Not imagined.
Not trauma.
Not memory.
Something had been standing inside that room.
Watching him.
Two federal agents moved to stop him near the excavation line.
“Sir, step back.”
Adrian ignored them.
One grabbed his shoulder.
“Sir—”
Adrian hit him.
Hard.
Not planned.
Pure instinct.
The agent slipped across ice while nearby officers shouted immediately. Mara rushed forward before the second agent could draw his weapon.
“Everybody calm the hell down!”
Warren appeared seconds later looking furious beneath falling snow. “Remove him from the scene.”
“Try it,” Mara snapped.
Adrian barely heard either of them.
He was staring downward again.
The ice hole reflected floodlights like an open wound.
And for a brief second he remembered another night.
Another storm.
Children standing around this exact lake thirty years earlier while snow buried the world beyond Ashriver grounds.
No teachers.
No police.
Only students.
And the Headmaster smiling beside the hole.
Adrian staggered backward slightly.
The memory vanished again before fully forming.
“Adrian.”
Mara grabbed his arm firmly. “Talk to me.”
He looked sick now.
Not physically.
Mentally cornered.
“That room…” His voice sounded thin. “I’ve been inside it before.”
Mara froze.
“What?”
“I thought it was a nightmare.”
The wind intensified suddenly, carrying snow sideways across the lake in violent white sheets. Somewhere behind them generators hummed loudly beneath floodlights while federal teams prepared equipment near the excavation site.
Warren approached slowly.
“You should leave now, Doctor.”
Adrian looked directly at him. “Who was the Headmaster?”
Warren’s expression remained neutral.
“I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
“Don’t insult me.”
“You’re unstable.”
“I’m informed.”
Warren stepped closer until only inches separated them. “The past survives because people let it. Stop digging.”
Adrian almost smiled again.
“That’s exactly what somebody said before the children disappeared.”
For the first time, Warren’s calm cracked slightly.
Tiny.
But visible.
Mara caught it too.
“You were here before,” she said quietly.
Warren turned toward her. “Detective—”
“You knew about Ashriver.”
“No.”
“You reacted to the name.”
“That’s enough.”
“No,” Adrian interrupted coldly. “It’s really not.”
Snow crunched nearby.
Another agent hurried toward Warren carrying a folder. “Sir, you need to see this.”
Warren opened it quickly.
Then his face changed.
Not fear.
Something worse.
Recognition.
Adrian watched carefully. “What is it?”
Warren closed the folder immediately. “Nothing concerning you.”
Mara stepped forward. “That’s my crime scene.”
“Not anymore.”
He turned away sharply.
That confirmed it.
Whatever was beneath Blackwater Lake frightened federal authorities more than exposure itself.
And fear always meant vulnerability.
Adrian looked toward the ruined school again.
Ashriver stood silent atop the hill beneath snowfall like a thing waiting patiently.
Then he noticed something strange.
A light.
Third floor eastern wing.
A single dim yellow light flickering behind broken windows.
Impossible.
The building had no power.
Mara followed his gaze. “You seeing that too?”
Adrian nodded slowly.
Neither spoke.
Because both understood the same thing instantly.
Someone was inside Ashriver.
The climb toward the school felt longer than Adrian remembered.
Snow reached nearly knee-deep in certain areas while freezing wind tore through the trees surrounding campus grounds. Mara kept one hand near her weapon the entire time.
“You really think somebody’s up there?”
“Yes.”
“Federal didn’t notice?”
“They noticed.”
“Then why ignore it?”
Adrian looked toward the agents below near the lake.
“Because they’re focused on keeping people out.”
Mara frowned slightly. “You think they already know who’s inside?”
“I think they’re afraid to find out.”
The main entrance doors hung partially open when they reached the building.
Old chains rusted through years earlier.
Wind pushed softly through dark hallways beyond the entrance carrying the smell of mold, dust, and something faintly rotten underneath it all.
Adrian stopped moving.
The smell.
He remembered the smell.
His breathing slowed automatically.
Mara noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Lie.
Everything.
They entered carefully.
Flashlights cut through darkness revealing collapsed ceilings, overturned furniture, peeling wallpaper blackened by water damage. Snow drifted through shattered windows onto cracked tile floors. Yet despite decades of abandonment, parts of Ashriver still looked disturbingly preserved.
Like the building never fully died.
Mara’s flashlight passed over faded words painted across a hallway wall:
SILENCE IS SAFETY
She frowned. “That normal for schools?”
“No.”
Adrian’s voice echoed strangely in the corridor.
He knew this hallway.
Math classrooms to the left.
Dormitory staircase ahead.
Infirmary downstairs.
And at the very end—
The Headmaster’s office.
A sudden metallic sound echoed above them.
Footsteps.
Both froze instantly.
Second floor.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Mara drew her weapon.
“Police! Show yourself!”
Silence answered.
Then another footstep.
Adrian moved first.
“Mara—”
But he was already climbing the staircase.
The second floor corridor stretched long and narrow beneath weak flashlight beams. Lockers lined walls coated in mildew while old student photographs hung crooked inside broken frames.
Adrian passed one photo and stopped instantly.
The image showed Ashriver students standing outside beside Blackwater Lake.
Winter, 1977.
Dozens of children stared toward the camera expressionless.
And there he was.
Twelve years old.
Thin.
Dark-haired.
Standing front row.
Mara moved beside him slowly.
“That’s you.”
Adrian didn’t answer.
Because someone else stood beside him in the photo.
A boy with damaged left eye.
Noah.
The dead child from beneath the lake.
Adrian stared at the photograph harder.
Something was wrong.
Noah’s face had been scratched out.
Deliberately.
Deep claw marks tore across the image where his features should have been.
Then Mara noticed something else.
“There’s writing.”
At the bottom of the frame.
Fresh writing.
Not old.
Fresh.
Written in black ink across cracked glass:
YOU REMEMBER NOW
Adrian stepped backward instinctively.
A loud bang exploded somewhere above them.
Third floor.
Then came a sound Adrian had not heard in thirty years.
A school bell.
One long deafening ring echoing through dead hallways.
Mara jumped slightly. “What the hell—”
The bell rang again.
And again.
Then children began singing upstairs.
Soft at first.
Almost impossible to hear.
A choir.
Children singing together in perfect rhythm somewhere above the ruined building.
Adrian’s face drained completely of color.
“No…”
“What is it?”
He looked at Mara with genuine terror.
“That song…”
The singing grew louder.
Closer.
Adrian whispered the next words before the children upstairs did.
“…means somebody’s going to die.”