The Cold Man

The first snowflake materialized in mid-August, drifting past the neon sign of Eddie’s Bar & Grill like a lost feather. Vincent Graves watched it descend, his steel-gray eyes tracking its lazy spiral until it dissolved on the scorching pavement. His breath clouded in front of him – a physical impossibility in ninety-degree heat.

A woman hurried past, her sandals slapping against the concrete. As she crossed Vincent’s path, she wrapped her arms around herself, shuddering violently. Her pace quickened, but she never looked up, never acknowledged the man in the charcoal suit who cast no shadow on the sun-bleached sidewalk.

Vincent pulled out his phone, checking the time. 3:47 PM. The screen flickered, numbers distorting before the device went dark. Dead. He’d charged it fully before arriving, but technology had a way of failing around him lately. He’d learned to rely on the old-fashioned methods – his wristwatch, paper maps, written instructions.

The fog rolled in without warning, thick tendrils of gray mist that seemed to reach for him with ghostly fingers. Streetlights sputtered to life hours before dusk, their yellow glow diffused and sickly in the unnatural haze. Ice crystals formed in delicate patterns on store windows, spreading like silver veins across the glass.

Vincent’s footsteps made no sound as he moved down the emptying street. Each step left a trace of frost that vanished moments later, like memories too painful to hold. The few remaining pedestrians unconsciously shifted away from his path, creating a bubble of isolation that moved with him through the growing gloom.

The paper in his pocket crinkled – the only sound that seemed to emanate from his person. He withdrew it, studying the address again: 1247 Marlowe Avenue, Apartment 5B. Evelyn Gray. The name stirred something in the back of his mind, like an itch he couldn’t quite reach. He’d done his research, as always. Single woman, lived alone, worked from home. An easy mark. But something felt different about this contract.

A child’s ball bounced past him, followed by a little boy who skidded to a stop three feet from Vincent. The boy’s eyes widened, his small mouth forming an ‘O’ of surprise. Unlike the adults, he stared directly at Vincent, his gaze fixed on something about Vincent’s face that made his lower lip tremble.

“Tommy!” a mother’s voice called. “Come inside, right now! It’s getting cold!”

The boy backed away slowly, then turned and ran, leaving his ball behind. It lay there on the sidewalk, collecting a thin layer of frost where Vincent’s shadow should have fallen.

For the first time in his career, Vincent felt something stir in his chest – an emotion he couldn’t name. The fog thickened around him, and in the distance, thunder rolled across a cloudless sky.

***

The apartment complex on Marlowe Avenue loomed before him, a decaying monument of brick and rusted fire escapes. Vincent’s presence seemed to drain the color from the building; red bricks faded to ash gray, green ivy withered and blackened against the walls. The security door hung open, its electronic lock dark and silent.

The lobby mirror caught his attention – or rather, the absence that caught his attention. Where his reflection should have been, there was only an odd distortion, like heat waves rising from summer asphalt, except these waves carried frost instead of warmth. Vincent blinked, and for a moment, he thought he saw something else in the mirror: blood-stained snow, a dark figure standing over him, the flash of a gun barrel.

The memory slipped away like water through his fingers.

The elevator doors opened at his approach, though he hadn’t pressed the call button. Inside, the temperature dropped so dramatically that the metal handrail crackled with forming ice. As he ascended, the fluorescent lights flickered in sequence, creating a strobe effect that made the small space feel like a cage in motion. The digital floor display malfunctioned, showing impossible numbers before settling on a dim “5.”

The fifth-floor hallway stretched before him, empty except for the strange shadows that seemed to dance at the edges of his vision. Each door he passed bore signs of life – welcome mats, decorative wreaths, the smell of cooking – but no sounds emerged from behind them. The silence was absolute, as if the entire building was holding its breath.

Apartment 5B waited at the end of the hall. Vincent reached for his gun, an automatic gesture born from years of practice, but his hand froze halfway. Something was wrong. The weapon felt foreign, almost theoretical, like trying to grasp a dream upon waking.

A woman’s voice drifted through the door, so faint he might have imagined it: “I knew you’d come back.”

The words triggered another flash: headlights in darkness, the crack of a gunshot, Evelyn Gray’s face illuminated by muzzle flash. But that was impossible – he’d never met his target before. The contract had come through his usual channels, everything professional, everything normal. Except nothing about this job felt normal.

The door to 5B swung open at his touch, hinges groaning like something in pain. Arctic air rushed past him into the apartment, carrying with it the scent of old snow and buried secrets. The fog followed him in, curling around his ankles like a loyal pet, spreading across the floor in searching tendrils.

In the center of the living room, a woman sat in a threadbare armchair, her silver hair catching the weak light from a single lamp. She didn’t look up as Vincent entered, but a sad smile played across her lips.

“You still don’t remember, do you, Vincent?” Evelyn Gray’s voice was barely a whisper, but it echoed in his mind like a shout. “That night in the snow? The contract you weren’t supposed to survive?”

The fog thickened, and somewhere in the distance, a clock struck midnight in the middle of the afternoon.

***

Vincent’s head throbbed with increasing intensity as fragments of memory burst behind his eyes like frozen stars. The apartment walls seemed to pulse, expanding and contracting with each flash of recollection. Ice crept up the windows in jagged patterns, sealing them in a crystalline tomb.

“You were different from the others,” Evelyn continued, still not meeting his gaze. Her fingers traced patterns on the armchair’s fabric, leaving trails of frost in their wake. “You hesitated. Just for a moment, but it was enough.”

Another memory exploded: a manila envelope sliding across a restaurant table, Evelyn’s face younger but harder, her eyes burning with determination. “Take the contract,” she had said. “Make it look like a professional hit.” But that wasn’t right – she was his target, not his client. Wasn’t she?

The room temperature plummeted further. Water pipes groaned in the walls, ice expanding within them like veins carrying frozen blood. A mirror on the far wall shattered spontaneously, the crack spreading in a pattern that looked disturbingly like a bullet hole.

“I was a loose end,” Vincent heard himself say, the words emerging without conscious thought. His voice sounded strange, distant, as if it were traveling across a vast frozen wasteland to reach his ears. “But whose?”

Evelyn finally looked up, and Vincent staggered back. Her eyes reflected not the room around them, but a different scene: a snow-covered parking lot, a black SUV with tinted windows, three men in suits watching from a distance as Vincent approached his supposed target.

“Your employers needed to tie up loose ends,” she said, rising from the chair. Her movements were fluid, unaffected by the cold that had turned the apartment into an arctic chamber. “You knew too much about the organization, about the politicians they controlled. I was hired to hire you. To bring you to that parking lot.”

The fog swirled more violently now, and in its eddies, Vincent saw faces: judges he’d helped blackmail, witnesses he’d eliminated, corrupt officials he’d protected. He saw the moment he’d begun to question his orders, the evidence he’d gathered in secret. He saw the decision to turn state’s witness.

And he saw the bullet that had ensured he never would.

“The contract was never on me,” Evelyn said, moving closer. Frost spread from Vincent’s feet across the floor, reaching for her like hungry fingers. “I was the bait. You were the target. And now you’re still hunting, still trying to complete a contract that never existed, because it’s the only way your spirit knows how to move through this world.”

The walls of the apartment began to fade, revealing the true scene behind them: a snow-covered parking lot, police tape fluttering in a winter wind, evidence markers surrounding a dark stain in the snow.

The apartment dissolved completely, reality shifting like ice breaking apart on a frozen lake. Vincent stood in the exact spot where he had died, snow swirling around him in an endless loop. The parking lot was both empty and full – empty in the present, but overlaid with echoes of that fatal night. He watched his own murder play out like a grainy film: the approach, the conversation, the sudden movement, the flash.

“Three months,” Evelyn said, her form flickering between past and present, young and old, solid and transparent. “Three months you’ve been wandering this city, bringing winter to summer, seeking a target that never was. The cold isn’t following you, Vincent. You are the cold. You’re what happens when a violent death meets an unfinished purpose.”

Vincent looked down at his hands. Frost covered them like a second skin, and through his palms, he could see the pavement below. The gun he’d been reaching for earlier had never been there – just a phantom memory, like everything else about him.

“Why help me understand now?” he asked, his voice carrying the hollow sound of wind through empty buildings. “Why not let me continue searching?”

Evelyn’s expression softened. “Because I’ve carried this guilt for three months. Because you weren’t the only one who wanted to expose them. I’ve spent every day since then gathering evidence, finishing what you started. Tomorrow morning, it all comes out. The organization, the murders, the corruption – everything.”

The snow falling around them began to slow, individual flakes suspending in the air like stars in a private universe. Vincent felt a pull, subtle but insistent, like a tide drawing him toward some distant shore.

“The cold can stop now,” Evelyn whispered. “You can stop.”

Vincent looked at the spot where his blood had stained the snow. The evidence marker was numbered thirteen – an unlucky number for an unlucky man. But as he watched, the marker faded, and in its place, a single flower pushed through the frost, its petals unfurling in defiance of the perpetual winter he had created.

“They’ll come for you,” he said, feeling himself growing fainter, the edges of his being softening like ice returning to water.

Evelyn smiled, and for a moment, she looked like the woman who had sat across from him in that restaurant, full of fire and determination. “Let them come. Some things are worth dying for. You taught me that.”

The parking lot grew dimmer, the snow slower, the cold less intense. Vincent felt warmth for the first time since the bullet had torn through him. As his consciousness began to dissolve, he saw one final scene play out: Evelyn walking away from his body, clutching a USB drive that had fallen from his pocket, determination replacing grief on her face.

He had never failed a contract in life. But perhaps, he thought as the last of him faded away, this failure had been his greatest success.

The snow stopped.

The cold lifted.

And somewhere in the city, summer returned.