Chapter 2: The Winter Man

Chapter 2: The Winter Man

The first night in the cabin was a symphony of alien sounds. The generator's drone was a weak counterpoint to the chirps, clicks, and rustles that seeped through the thin walls. Alex lay awake, staring at the slanted ceiling of his attic room, the image of the crumbling asylum seared onto the back of his eyelids. He had tried to show his father the picture on his phone again, but a strange, pixelated static had corrupted the image, leaving only a meaningless smear of gray and brown. It was as if the woods themselves had reached into his device and stolen the proof.

"See? Glitch in the phone," Mark had said, clapping him on the shoulder with a dismissive finality. "Probably the low battery."

Now, sleep was impossible. Every creak of the old logs sounded like a footstep. Every gust of wind through the pines sounded like a whisper. He felt a primal, gut-deep certainty that they were being watched. The impossible hike wasn't just a spatial anomaly; it was a warning. The forest had shown them its teeth, and his parents had mistaken it for a smile.

The next morning, the bright, unforgiving sunlight did little to dispel the dread. It only served to illuminate the dust motes dancing in the air and the faint, dark stains on the floorboards. The forced cheerfulness at the breakfast table was almost as unsettling as the woods.

"We're almost out of milk," Sarah announced, her voice a little too bright. "And we'll need more supplies if we're going to make this place a real home for the summer. Let's all take a trip into town."

"Great," Mark agreed, wiping his mouth. "A little civilization. See, Alex? Not so bad."

Alex said nothing, the uneaten eggs on his plate feeling like a lump of lead in his stomach. A trip to town meant driving back down Whisper Creek Road. Back through that suffocating green tunnel.

The drive was even worse than he’d imagined. The canopy of trees seemed darker, the shadows deeper. Maya was glued to the window, but her usual bubbly curiosity had been replaced by a tense silence. Even she could feel it. The air was heavy, charged with a silent, waiting energy.

They were about halfway to the main highway when Sarah gasped. "Mark, stop."

Up ahead, walking along the shoulder of the narrow dirt track, was a man. Even from a distance, he was profoundly wrong. The afternoon was sweltering, the air thick with humidity that left a sheen of sweat on everything, yet the man was dressed for a blizzard. He wore a heavy, dark parka with the fur-lined hood pulled up, thick canvas trousers, and what looked like snow boots. His movements were slow and plodding, his head bowed against a nonexistent wind.

"What in God's name…?" Mark slowed the SUV to a crawl. "He's going to have a heatstroke dressed like that."

"Maybe his car broke down," Sarah suggested, her brow furrowed with concern. "We should ask if he needs help."

"No," Alex said, the word coming out sharp and sudden. "Don't stop, Dad. Just keep driving."

A cold, electric fear was prickling its way up his spine. It was the same feeling he’d had in the woods, the sense of a fundamental rule being broken. This man didn't belong here. He was an error in the code of reality.

"Don't be ridiculous, Alex. We can't just leave him," Mark grumbled, but he didn't stop the car completely. He let it roll forward until they were alongside the figure. "Hey, buddy! You need a hand?"

The man didn't respond. He just kept walking, his face obscured by the deep shadow of his hood.

"Sir?" Sarah called out, leaning across Mark. "Are you alright?"

Slowly, deliberately, the man stopped. He turned his head, the movement stiff and unnatural, like a puppet on a string. The hood still hid his features, but Alex could feel a gaze—an intense, penetrating focus—lock onto him through the windshield, right through the glass and into his soul.

For a heartbeat, the world was utterly silent. No birds, no insects, no engine hum.

Then the man opened his mouth.

The sound that came out was not human. It was a shriek that ripped through the peaceful afternoon, a sound of tearing metal and animal agony, a high-frequency scream that vibrated in Alex’s teeth and made his vision swim. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated wrongness.

Maya screamed, burying her face in Alex’s side. Mark slammed his foot on the accelerator without thinking, the tires spinning in the dirt, kicking up a cloud of dust as the SUV fishtailed and shot forward. Sarah was pressed back against her seat, her face pale, one hand covering her mouth.

Alex twisted in his seat, looking back through the rear window. The Winter Man stood motionless in the swirling dust, a dark, hulking shape. The scream had stopped as abruptly as it began, but the ringing in Alex's ears remained. He watched until the figure was swallowed by a bend in the road.

The rest of the drive into town was a blur. They bought their groceries in a state of shared shock. No one mentioned the man in the parka. To speak of him would be to make him real, and they all desperately wanted him to be a figment, a bizarre but explainable hiccup. A local eccentric. A prank. Anything but what Alex knew he was: a piece of the same wrongness that had shown him the asylum.

The drive back to the cabin was even more fraught with tension. Every shadow looked like a figure in a coat. Every snap of a twig sounded like the prelude to that soul-shattering scream. When they finally pulled into the clearing, the sight of the cabin offered a fleeting sense of relief. It was a box. Four walls, a roof, locks on the doors. Safety.

That evening, a fragile, unspoken truce settled over the family. Mark cleaned his rifle on the porch. Sarah busied herself in the kitchen, the clatter of pots and pans a frantic attempt at normalcy. Maya refused to leave Alex’s side.

"He was scary," she whispered, her voice trembling.

"I know," Alex said, his arm wrapped around her. "But we're inside now. We're safe." He wasn't sure who he was trying to convince.

Later that night, Alex was in his attic room, the highest point in the cabin. He couldn't shake the feeling of that cold, focused stare from the road. He felt hunted. He stood by the room's single window, which overlooked the dark sea of trees at the back of the property. Below, the porch light cast a weak, yellow circle, a tiny island of safety in an ocean of darkness.

He scanned the treeline, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He expected to see something moving between the trunks, a pair of eyes reflecting the light. But there was nothing. Just the impenetrable black of the forest.

He let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, his shoulders slumping. Maybe it was over. Maybe the thing on the road was just that—a thing on the road.

A faint scratching sound made him freeze.

Scrape. Scrape.

It was close. Very close. It sounded like fingernails dragging on wood. On the siding of the house.

He held his breath, listening. The sound was moving. Upwards.

His blood turned to ice. It couldn't be. He was on the second floor. There was no ladder, no tree close enough to the wall. It was impossible.

But he had already learned that impossible didn't mean anything out here.

With a tremor in his hand, Alex forced himself to look down, to peer out the window at the wall directly below his room. There was nothing there. He leaned closer, pressing his forehead against the cool glass, his gaze drawn upwards, towards the edge of the roof.

And then he saw it.

A head, shrouded in a fur-lined hood, rose slowly into view, appearing just outside his window. It was the Winter Man. He was clinging to the side of the house like an insect, his ascent defying gravity itself. The figure lifted its head, and the deep shadow of the hood fell away in the faint moonlight.

The face was pale, waxy, and inhumanly smooth. And where the eyes should have been, there was nothing. No sockets, no scars, just an unnerving, unbroken expanse of skin.

Alex fell back, a strangled cry caught in his throat. He scrambled away from the window, his back hitting the opposite wall as he stared in pure, uncomprehending terror. The eyeless thing didn't move. It just hovered there, outside his second-story window, its blank face aimed at him, a silent sentinel of a nightmare that had followed him home. The flimsy pane of glass between them felt as fragile as his sanity.