The sheer chill of winter's grasp began to change the freshly fallen, powdered snow into sharpened tiny knifes as it froze into biting shards of ice over the small silent town hidden in the down valley of two blue mountain peaks; the now setting sun displaying streaks of deepening purple and red's that seemed to stain the mountain's sides before flowing down the valley like black stretching fingers before dipping into the still solid surface of the darkening waters reflecting in the lake for which the town was named; Black Lake.
The heavily, thickened, black painted letters of Black Lake could still be seen on the town's pale, Beachwood welcome sign, the wood cracked and splintered from the ages out in the cold winters, windy springs, mild summers, and frosty autumn's. Any visitor coming from the main road, it was only during the rainy spring that one could see the white lilies speckling down the entry sides; but now winter's cold snow began to turn the top of the frigid, unmoving waters creating a blanket of condensing ice slowly turning the black water's surface into a obsidian mirror perfectly trapping the pale glowing image of a half-moon in the blank sky.
But there was no way the small town or its people could ever know that a visitor had indeed arrived, for half a mile down from the pale wooded sign the visitor had made his way through the open park filled with bare, sleeping oak trees.
The road cutting like a black stream through the frozen snow continued into the small town, most of the buildings remained dark and undisturbed. The grocery store, small two-storey hospital, black bricked police station, and white tall steeple church had the only remaining lights on. Outside the church was a small fenced cemetery, the black scalloped fence only became colder with ice freezing the picket tops that barely glimmered in the moon's pale light.
It was outside this cemetery next to the black, Iron gate being watched by a dark stoned angel with eyes that seemed like hollow holes carved into the lightly curved cheeks; But the angel seemed to stand in lonely eternal vigil, waiting with its dark wings spread out ready as the angel of death to guide souls to the eternal wintry claws of death.
On the other side was a bench, a small shelter had been built around and over the bench to help the cold, and elderly out of the biting wind during church service until the young deacons could clear the black iced, cobblestoned path to the narrow church doors. No one could know that in the waning shelter of this bench weakly laid a strange new comer, even though the snow clearly showed the red staining drops bleeding into the snow that had led a clear trail behind him.
The drops let slowly to a congealing puddle that had begun to stick like loose gum to the black iced road, as the drops continued to fall along with the dropping temperature. The stranger painfully put his hand over the freshly torn flesh under his ebony, black coat His warm breath misted the air, but slowed as the warm blood flowed away from his cheeks and limbs. His legs were soaked, his pants beginning to stick to his flesh like iced tape despite how much the flesh shivered to keep warm.
the stranger's limbs started to turn numb, the cold beginning to bite into his bones. He could feel his mind growing dimmer; his cheeks began to bite with the cold causing his emerald eyes to want to close, to rest, to sleep. Un-linked thoughts began to spin in his mind, the flashed like short bursts of light across a video panel almost as I all his gradually freezing body could do was try to shock him back awake; but the memories only made his weary body grow more tired and drained. Just before his mind collapsed into the swelling darkness the memories of why he had come, why he ended alone in this cold hell, of why his sides bled into the staining snow reverberated like echoing whispers in his skull before being consumed by darkness like a dying candle reaching the end of the burning wick blown out by winter's killing wind.