Timeless Snow ✓

Ch. 30 - August

Running out of ideas to search on the internet, you focused on your painting instead. No one had come to interrupt you thus far, having a nice and peaceful thirty-five minutes. You didn't quite discuss how long you'd be allowed to use this space. You just silently hoped it wasn't a short stay. The sounds of scraping against cloth canvas and the squirt of paint as it covered the bare surface below it seemed to echo in the incredibly silent room. You would have liked music, but that wasn't really allowed here. You just let the sounds of the room lul you into a tranquil sense of silence that you didn't mind as much.

Your mind clouded with throughs of how you could solve the mystery of 'Kasey Bowers' and the secret of 'Sam'. Your body moved on autopilot, letting it call the shots of what you'd paint and not putting too much stock into what it was that you were painting. When you finally zoned back in and took stock of your surroundings, you checked around your surroundings for signs of life. No one in the room or standing outside of the window into the room. Good. You pulled the now closed flip phone closer to the center of your canvas and further out of sight from prying eyes. Lastly, you checked on your work. The piece you had been mindlessly creating for nearly half an hour. You could only hope you hadn't messed up the entire piece.

Which, once you finally saw it - you weren't sure if you did or not. Beside the weathered older man looking to the ground now was a tombstone. Had your brain went somewhere dark and ruined a good picture or did it mean something? Your eyes narrowed on the gravestone painted in the picture, seeing if you by some lucky change, added a name. You didn't. Why a grave then?

Slumping down in your seat you set your color pallet to the side and your brush near it. Your hands folded in your lap as you fixated on the painted scene. An old man and a grave. Was it a picture of foreshadowing? Fear for the future? A portrayal of being afraid of death? Shaking your head from the nagging wonder you reached out for the flip phone and brought it back to yourself. Cracking it open, you began to type in the search bar:

"Kasey Bowers Death"

You had already searched everything else you could think of, why not one more? You weren't sure if you really should call it a blessing that not many names came up for that search, or tragic that some did at all? You scrolled down through the page, reading over each quick summery of text for anything that 'spoke' to you. A murder investigation and another one without a cause of death, nothing seemed to invoke interest. You were following your gut, how reliable could it possibly be? You clicked through page after page as the search results began to fill with spam and unrelated ads now. You were getting into articles that were decades old.

Beginning to give up hope of finding anything of value you let out a disappointing sign. Your thumb went for the red button to exit out when you read one last article that showed up on the screen.

Clark County - Spring Canyon News
August 10th
Traffic collision causes three injuries and leaves one dead due to treacherous weather conditions.

Moving your thumb from the 'exit' button you quickly clicked the article to read further. Unsure why this one seemed to pique your interest, but never the less you were going to 'follow your gut'! The page took another agonizing few seconds to load, in that time giving you a moment to question why this article might seem familiar. The page loaded in slowly, the headline, as well as the articles, date loading in first. You studied the date, August 10th. Though the year was dated back a whopping twenty-six years prior. 

You rest of the website loaded up on the old flip phone and you began to read further into the story. An unexpected thunderstorm rolled into town without much warning. A car containing a family and a large work truck collided in a narrow turn on the rainy road. The work truck carrying supplies for a welding job, it was reported the Bowers family vehicle was pieced by some of the shrapnel. Kasey Bowers being the only causality of the wreck. The end of the article advertised for a photo of the scene of the accident, though suggested caution in clicking. You didn't heed the warning.

Clicking the link provided you waited for the picture to load. A heaviness weighed at your chest, your stomach felt uneasy and your fingers shivered. You could quite put a name to the feeling in your gut now. It wasn't quite nervousness, yet it wasn't necessarily fear either. Unsettling bewilderment for the unknown that left you feeling on edge. The flip phone shook in your hands with unease.

Just as the picture flashed into view your body reacted violently. Without warning, you flung your hands out and tossed the flip phone from you. Hitting the floor it echoed with a crack before sliding across the room. Your fingers retreated to your body as they slapped over your abandonment. A sharp pain shot through your chest and robbed you of your ability to breathe. Your eyes fluttered, rattled by the shock of what was happening. Gasping for breath you tried to use to cool air to soothe you. Repeating to yourself that you weren't physically in pain despite the signals that were being sent to your brain.

The pit in your stomach morphed to a hole that felt like was ripping through you. Doing your best to focus your vision, you could only see the remnants of the photo burned against the back of your eyelids. The crumbled and shattered remains of a grey Buick Century forced off to the side of the road. The doors having been ripped from the hinges by fire-fighters before the picture had been taken, the article explaining how the 'Jaws of Life' was used in attempts to rescue the family inside. A long steal rob was sticking out of the center of the windshield and piercing through the center of the driver and passenger seat, digging deep into the seat just behind the driver. The photo was dark, the cloudy day not leaving for a very vivid shot nor the new reporter's distance from the scene when he snapped the picture in the rain. Never the less you saw the dark grey shadow that seemed to leak from the back seat of the car and wash away in the rainy pavement.

You could imagine the metallic taste that likely hung in the air that night, how thick it must have been. The smothering smell of foliage from the woodland area around, how the rain amplified each scent, including the smell of blood. You could presume how the cold evening air would make the feeling of salty tears in your eyes sting that much more. You could envision the entire scene from just one old grainy picture. Sure you felt empathy for the sorrows of others, but this was entirely different. It was as if you could feel what it was like that very night that eighteen-year-old Kasey Bowers lost her life... It was too wishful to think that there was a scientific explanation for this one, the only logical assumption was that you finally had lost your mind to the madness.