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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Weird-Suggestion-152 on 2024-10-21 15:56:54+00:00.

The sun had been gone for over a month, swallowed by the night, and with it went any sense of peace in Barrow, Alaska. The darkness was absolute, broken only by the flickering streetlights and the hum of snowmobiles cutting through the stillness. Life continued as normal though, well, as normal as it could for a place where night stretched on for over sixty days. But last year, the darkness brought something else with it. Something worse.

I’m Chief of Police for this town. I’ve been here for fifteen years. Seen everything there is to see in a town like this: a bar fight or two, domestic disputes, the odd tourist getting lost in the tundra. Routine, mostly. My officers, Carl and Dana, and I knew how to handle that sort of thing. We knew our people. Knew the land. But nothing could’ve prepared us for what happened last December.

It began with a call from Hannah Damon. She lived on the edge of town, near the frozen coastline, where the houses were more spread out, isolated by the endless fields of snow. I still remember her phone call, her voice shaky and thin, like she was trying to keep herself from crying.

“Chief… sorry to bother you but…something’s wrong. It’s Charlie. He hasn’t come home.”

Hannah’s husband, Charlie, worked for an Alaska Native corporation, doing maintenance work at the oil facility north of town. It wasn’t unusual for him to get stuck out there overnight during a storm, but this was different. There hadn’t been any storm that day. He should’ve been home hours ago.

Carl and I drove out there, the crunch of snow under the tires the only sound as we pulled up to the Damon house. Hannah was waiting outside, wrapped in a heavy parka, her breath clouding the air. The worry in her eyes was unmistakable.

“Chief, I know something’s wrong,” she said, her voice catching. “He always checks in.”

We tried to reassure her, but a knot had already formed in my stomach. Something was off. We went to the oil facility, found Charlie’s truck abandoned, door open, the inside of his truck covered in a fresh drift. There was no sign of him. Only blood. Dark, frozen, streaked across the ice in a pattern I couldn’t make sense of.

Carl knelt down, running a gloved hand through the red snow. “What the hell…?” he muttered, his breath visible in the frigid air. I crouched beside him, my heart pounding in my chest. The blood wasn’t just a smear, it was a trail. And it led toward the coast.

We followed it, flashlights cutting through the dark, but the farther we went, the less we wanted to. The trail ended abruptly, near the frozen water’s edge, with no body in sight. Just more blood. A lot more. The ice was cracked in places, deep claw marks gouged into the surface. But what kind of animal would be out here? And why hadn’t anyone heard anything?

Hannah begged us to keep looking, but there was nothing else to find. Charlie was just…gone.

Over the next week, more people started disappearing. A hunter, a woman walking her dog, and another one of the oil workers stationed farther north. Each time, the scene was the same: blood, signs of a violent struggle, but no bodies. With the heavy snow and wind, there were no tracks, no sign of what had taken them.

We were no strangers to bears around here. Big ones. Dangerous ones. But this was different. The wreckage looked deliberate, almost intelligent. The way things were torn apart, it was different than anything we had seen before. But I kept that to myself, not wanting to alarm the townsfolk any more than they already were.

Carl, Dana, and I split up the town, checking in on everyone we could, posting warnings about venturing too far outside. The tension was suffocating. People could already be unpredictable during the long night, but this was making people act even more paranoid and on-edge than usual.

I’ll never forget the day I found Sam Walsh.

Sam ran the only general store in Barrow, which doubled as a sort-of social hub for the locals. He was an old-timer, a man who had seen more winters here than anyone else. I’d always liked Sam, despite his tendency to talk your ear off whenever you came in for something as simple as a pack of smokes.

It was Dana who first noticed the store hadn’t opened for two days. Sam was always early, always the first light on when the darkness settled in. But this time, the windows had stayed dark.

I drove down with Carl, just in case Sam had slipped on the ice or fallen ill. The snow crunched under our boots as we approached the house.

The front door was already open, broken in. The old hinges had been ripped clean off, and the door frame had splintered under the force of whatever had crashed into them. The stale air hit us as we stepped inside, flashlights sweeping over the cluttered shelves.

“Sam!” I called out. “Sam, you in here?”

And then we found him.

Sam was in the back room, slumped against the wall. Or what was left of him. His chest had been torn open, ribs visible through the mess of blood and now icy torn flesh. His eyes were wide, staring at the ceiling, frozen in an expression of sheer terror.

The walls around him were painted in blood, streaks reaching all the way to the ceiling. It was everywhere. There were tracks of… something. But between the immense blood and the scene now frozen from the open door, I couldn’t make them out clearly. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

Carl gagged, covering his mouth as he stepped back. “Jesus, what the…”

I couldn’t respond. My hands were shaking. This was calculated, vicious. This wasn’t just an animal hunting for food. This was something killing for sport. This was violent in a way that didn’t make sense.

That night, I called a town meeting at the police station. People were on edge, whispering about what had happened to Sam, what had happened to Charlie and the others. I could feel the fear in the room, thick as the darkness outside.

Dana stood by my side, her face pale. Carl was by the door, rifle slung over his shoulder, scanning the crowd as if waiting for something to burst in at any moment.

“We don’t know what’s happening yet,” I began, my voice steady despite the unease gnawing at me. “But something’s out there. We need everyone to stay inside, lock your doors, and don’t go out alone.”

“What about the bear patrols?” someone asked from the back of the room.

“We haven’t seen any bears near town,” I replied, “But we’re keeping an eye out. Dana, Carl, and I will be doing rounds.”

The meeting broke up quickly, people eager to retreat to the safety of their homes, though we all knew how fragile that safety really was.

It was a week later when things reached their breaking point.

The night was colder than usual, the kind of cold that made the saliva inside your mouth freeze if you dared to open it. The sky was pitch black, no moon. Just the endless, oppressive dark.

I was in my office, going over maps of the coastline, trying to make sense of the disappearances, trying to find a pattern, when the power went out. The hum of the heater died, plunging the station into an eerie silence. I grabbed my flashlight and stepped into the hallway, where Carl and Dana were already waiting.

“Power’s out all over town,” Dana said, her breath visible in the cold air. “We’ve got a report of something moving outside near the northern edge.”

"Alright, well, let’s go check it out” I said.

Carl nodded, his jaw tight. "Hannah Damon has also been calling about Charlie again. Said if we’re not going to find him, she’ll go out and look for him herself.

I cursed under my breath. “Alright, I’ll stop by her place first. Grab your rifles.”

We split up, me heading north while Dana and Carl covered the town. The wind howled, carrying snow across the empty streets in thick, swirling waves. My flashlight flickered in the cold, casting long shadows as I made my way toward the Damon house.

When I arrived, the door was open, swinging gently in the wind. Inside, the house was dark, save for the beam of my flashlight. The kitchen was empty, a half-finished meal still sitting on the table. But the back door had been ripped off its hinges, the wood splintered and jagged. My stomach dropped, knowing what I would find next.

And there it was, in the snow outside, a trail of blood.

I followed the blood trail through the snow, my breath heavy in the cold night air. The wind seemed to carry whispers, like the town itself was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. I could feel the weight of the darkness pressing down on me, and for the first time in my life, I felt small out here. Exposed.

The trail led of blood led me to a small clearing by the coastline, where the frozen sea met the land in jagged sheets of ice. My flashlight flickered, casting eerie shadows across the snow. And then I saw her.

Hannah was lying face down in the snow, her body twisted unnaturally. Her clothes had been ripped to pieces, and blood pooled around her, soaking into the frozen ground. But she was still breathing, barely.

I rushed to her side, turning her over gently. Her face was pale, her lips blue, eyes wide with shock. She tried to speak, but all that came out was a rasp, a gurgling sound as blood bubbled up from a wound in her chest. A chunk of flesh had been ripped from her neck.

“Help…” she gasped, her half-missing hand gripping my arm with a surprising strength. “It…it’s still…here…”

I glanced around, but saw nothing. Just the vast, empty expanse of sno…

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