Family Saga Short Stories

The Peril of Prairie Delays

By Jamie F. Bell

The Winnipeg train station, usually a bustling hub of departures and hurried greetings, was now a purgatory of delayed Christmas hopes. Fluorescent lights hummed with a weary indifference above a scattered congregation of stranded travellers. Outside, the world was a blur of snow-whipped grey, a true prairie white-out, pressing against the vast windows like a ghostly hand. Inside, the air was thick with the faint, metallic tang of an old building, overlaid with the less pleasant smell of too many bodies in too small a space, the persistent whine of a toddler, and the faint, sweet decay of forgotten festive cheer.

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The Pallid Ink

By Jamie F. Bell

A biting autumn chill permeates the ancient, dusty attic of the Blackwood estate. Jared, driven by an unsettling premonition, searches through generations of forgotten relics, his torch beam a lone probe against the oppressive darkness, as a sense of urgency and unseen eyes press down upon him.

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Iron Taste on the Tongue

By Jamie F. Bell

The Silverwood estate lay under a thick, unyielding blanket of winter. The sky was a vast, bruised grey, threatening more snow. Wind whistled through the skeletal branches of ancient oaks, carrying the scent of pine and something else – something cold and metallic. Two teenagers, bundled against the unforgiving chill, navigated the frozen landscape, their boots leaving temporary indentations in the pristine white.

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A Congealed Winter

By Jamie F. Bell

The wind howled a sustained, predatory sound, rattling every pane in the old Devereaux manor. Outside, the world was a study in stark white and grey, an endless canvas of falling snow that had already swallowed the distant treeline and was working its way up the ancient stone walls of the house. Inside, the air hung heavy and still, smelling faintly of old woodsmoke and damp earth, a scent that clung to everything despite Cynthia’s relentless efforts. Every creak of the floorboards, every groan of the stressed timber, felt amplified in the suffocating quiet.

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Summer's Sinking Breath

By Eva Suluk

The oppressive heat of a late summer afternoon draped itself over Blackwood Grange like a shroud. Ivy, thick and ravenous, throttled the ancient stone, its tendrils reaching into fractured window panes, drawing shadows across rooms that had known little light for decades. A silence, heavy and humid, clung to the air, broken only by the distant, lethargic hum of unseen insects and the occasional, mournful creak of settling timber. Jeff's arrival was not heralded by fanfare, merely the crunch of his tyres on the loose gravel drive, a sound absorbed almost entirely by the suffocating density of the overgrown grounds.

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