Lodge 617

I still remember the most horrifying holiday i've ever been to in my life. I was just 6 years old at the time and me and the family were staying in a mountain of snow, called St. Anne's along the Rocky Mountains territory for a couple days. We had intended to ski there, like any other family. I had never gone skiing before and I guess my parents thought the experience would be fun.

So after a long 17 hour drive from our home in Saskatchewan, we had finally arrived at the Elmer's Family Ski Lodge. The lodge was positioned beautifully in an isolated spot on the top of the snowy mountain, and you could see the people swooping down from the hills in the far distance, flipping in the air and enjoying the fresh sight of the evergreen trees. I had never gone skiing before so I was naturally afraid to begin with and I didn't like the place as much as i'd have liked now. Anyways, so we went inside the lodge (which was very, very cold, everyone was wearing coats), and my father introduced us to the receptionist. She gave us a key to lodge 617, which was located on a little steep slope on one of the hills. It was one of the further up lodges, so we were given a snowmobile ride up there whenever we wanted courtesy of the staff working there.

My father opened the door and we looked around at the comforting sight of furniture. It seemed like any old house, and had a living room with a fabric sofa inside and television, a dining room, small kitchen, and upstairs two bedrooms and one storage room. We settled our stuff there and headed outside, eager to spend the rest of the day in the snow hills.

The snow was fantastic, and you could see the huge endless seas of evergreen trees wrap around the hills. The air up high was so fresh with its inspiring cold hue. For the rest of the day we tobogganed and I had even met a little friend that I played with for the rest of that day.

It was soon getting dark and exhausted, we snowmobiled back to our lodge at which time it was completely dark and the stars were shimmering in the beautiful night sky. It took us an effort to shut the door as a blizzard was coming over.

When we were all inside, I remember my suitcase having been opened, although I didn't remember any time that I did. My mom scolded me about the mess I made in the suitcase. My clothes were scattered all along the floor in the living room.

She went upstairs with the suitcase and placed it in my room.

Then she came down and prepared us dinner. The electricity was out thanks to a blizzard and my father said he would be out to ask about it in the morning. We used some old candles my father found in the attic to light up the room, and after some talking my father brought me up to go to sleep. He tucked me in and kissed me goodnight and then he closed the door. I pulled up my blanket over my head as it was really cold and the electric blanket wasn't working and tried going to sleep.

I woke up in the middle of the night from the noise of my door swinging heavily back and forth from the wind. My parents were sleeping, and I hopped out of the bed to shut the door. I looked to my side and I noticed that one of my cabinets was open. The clothes were a mess again, I tucked them in and shut the cabinet.

I went back to my bed and put up my blanket over my body. The door then slowly crept open and I could see an unfamiliar figure standing there in my doorway. He was wearing a ragged fur coat and his face- it looked so unusual. His eyes were like slits that folded on an angle, he had something of a pig's or a deformed nose (which were basically also like slits), and he had U-shaped lips that seemed to be naturally shaped like that way. It was like some sort of monster.

He approached me slowly, and I screamed, but it was flooded by the violent winds of the blizzard outside. He grabbed my face and tried to puncture my eyeballs, but I fell off the bed and escaped his grasp. I quickly scrambled up from the floor and ran to my parents room. I flung the door open and saw that they were still sleeping. I shaked my mom and dad hard, and when they asked me what the matter was, I had pointed over to my room.

They got up and went to investigate, but saw nothing but the cabinet flung open from my wardrobe, some articles of clothing missing.

My mother was furious, and told my dad to go complain about the theft in the morning.

In the morning we went outside to get breakfast (while my dad and mom were arguing about the whole clothing situation) and the rest of the day seemed to be going normally.

When we had gotten back after a long day of skiing, I asked my mom if I could sleep in her room. She said that she wanted to be alone with dad for the night and so she brought me upstairs and tucked me in when it was dark outside.

I couldn't sleep through the whole night, and I just stared towards my door, praying to God that that thing wouldn't bother me again. An hour passed, then two hours, then three, then four, when I heard a "bumpity bump" noise coming from downstairs. I heard the loud creeking of someone slowly heading upstairs. Then there was silence for a couple seconds. I saw the door handle slowly creek sideways and then fling open. The thing was back, and I could see it wearing a piece of my clothing on his wrists. He brought it over with his other hand to reveal a rope of clothing on his wrist. It looked as if he was trying to make gloves but didn't have the necessary fabrics. It came over to me, and reached for my eyes again. He held my face hard and pressed his thumb against my eye. I felt the pain rush to my head and my senses fire up. But I was prepared, and I had brung a kitchen knife with me just in case. I jabbed the knife into his rib-cage, and the monster backed away and slumped on the back of the wall. Before it could get up, I quickly ran downstairs, flung open the door to the lodge, and ran over blindly in the night to the road.

I could see a bright light flashing towards me as I was standing in front of it, and as it got closer it revealed itself to be a man on a snowmobile. He could see that I was holding my eye in pain and that I was crying. He offered me to bring me back to the lodge, but I screamed no to him. Seeing no other option and the blizzard still raging violently, he took me on the snowmobile and drove me downhill to the main receptionist lodge.

He opened the door and led me inside, as many other people in coats began to look towards me. I was still crying and I saw my parents complaining to one of the receptionists. When they turned around and saw me, my palm over my eye, they panicked and asked me what happened. I told them it was the monster, and when they removed my hand they saw it was bruised. I would soon learn from a doctor that had it been a couple seconds more, my eye could have been completely crushed from the inside. Furious, my parents demanded a refund and in the morning, we packed up our things and drove home.

The monster seemed to be gone, and left no blood trace as far as I remembered and saw.

It had turned out that my parents were complaining about missing socks.