The Coldest Day

The wind was relentless. It howled through the skeletal trees, shaking loose the last stubborn leaves that clung to frozen branches. Each gust rattled the windows of the old cabin where Cristina huddled beneath a pile of blankets. Outside, the world was cloaked in white, the snowfall so thick it blurred the horizon into nothingness. The temperature had plummeted to a record-breaking low, the kind of cold that stung your lungs and froze your eyelashes together if you dared venture out.

Cristina didn’t dare.

The cabin had been her late grandfather’s, perched at the edge of a remote forest that seemed to stretch forever. It was meant to be a retreat, a place to clear her head after a brutal divorce and the chaos of city life. But now, with the storm raging and no electricity for nearly 24 hours, it felt more like a prison.

She reached for the small leather bag on the floor next to her chair. From it, she pulled out a photograph she hadn’t looked at in months — a snapshot of a car, mangled beyond recognition, resting against a tree. Cristina’s chest tightened as she ran her fingers over the image, her stomach knotting as she remembered the night of the crash.

The screech of tires. The sickening crunch of metal. The eerie stillness afterward.

She remembered standing on the roadside in the freezing dark, staring at the wreckage, the distant orange glow of the flames reflected in the glassy eyes of the deer that had darted in front of her. The memory of that moment was clearer than anything that came after. The smell of gasoline. The heat of the fire. The overwhelming urge to run.

She shoved the photo back into the bag and zipped it shut as though she could also lock the memory away. She had told herself, again and again, that it wasn’t her fault. The icy roads, the animal — it had been unavoidable.

But the voice in her head always countered- You should have stopped. You should have checked.

Cristina shook her head, trying to dislodge the thoughts. She focused instead on the wood-burning stove, her lifeline in this frozen wilderness. The pile of logs beside it was dwindling. She had underestimated how much fuel she’d need for her week-long stay. Worse, her cell phone had no signal, and the old landline had been cut years ago. She was alone, utterly and completely.

Her fingers ached from the cold, even through the thick woolen gloves she wore. She considered going outside to gather more firewood from the pile near the shed but immediately dismissed the thought. The wind alone was a killer, and the snow was already waist-deep. Yet a part of her, the part that always whispered self-reproach, wondered if she deserved this — this helplessness, this cold, this solitude.

“You should have stopped,” the voice reminded her.

Cristina stood abruptly and paced the room. She pulled the photo from her bag again, unable to resist, and placed it on the mantle above the stove. It stared back at her, accusing, a silent testament to the night she’d been trying to forget.

She grabbed the last log and fed it into the stove. It would buy her only a few more hours of heat. As she knelt by the fire, she whispered to herself, “You did everything you could. There was nothing else you could do.”

The words didn’t comfort her, not anymore.

As if mocking her despair, a loud crack echoed from the forest. Cristina flinched, her heart racing. It sounded like a tree splitting under the weight of the ice, but the sound was unsettlingly close. She tried to shrug it off, but the oppressive silence that followed made her hyper-aware of every creak and groan of the cabin.

She stood, wrapping a blanket tightly around herself, and peered out the frost-covered window. Nothing moved in the white void. No animals, no people. Just the storm.

“Get a grip, Cristina,” she muttered to herself. But her voice sounded small in the vast emptiness of the cabin.

She turned back to the fire and added another log, the last but one. She'd have to figure something out soon. Maybe she could burn the old chair in the corner or break apart the bookshelf. Her mind raced with options, each more desperate than the last.

The knock came just as she was about to sit down.

Three sharp raps on the cabin door.

Cristina froze. Her first thought was that the wind had thrown something against the door — a branch, maybe. But the sound was deliberate. Too human.

She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Her heart pounded so hard it felt like it might crack her ribs.

Another knock. This time, louder.

“Hello?” a voice called, muffled by the thick wood.

Cristina's throat tightened. No one should be out in this storm. No one could be out in this storm.

She crept to the door, her blanket trailing behind her, and peered through the peephole. The glass was frosted over, obscuring her view, but she could just make out a figure standing there. A man, bundled in a heavy coat and scarf, his face obscured.

“Who is it?” she called, her voice trembling.

“I got lost,” the man replied. “My car broke down. Please, I’m freezing.”

“Please,” the man said again, his voice weak and trembling. “I won’t make it out here.”

Something in his tone cut through her fear. Against her better judgment, Cristina opened the door a little wider, enough to see him clearly. His face was pale, his lips blue, and his eyes darted around nervously. He looked every bit like someone on the brink of freezing to death.

“Step back,” she instructed, and after a moment’s hesitation, he shuffled away from the threshold. Snow crunched underfoot as he obeyed.

Cristina opened the door fully and gestured for him to enter. He stumbled inside, collapsing onto the wooden floor with a thud. She shut the door quickly, locking out the storm.

“Thank you,” he muttered, his shivering making his words tremble. “I didn’t think I’d make it.”

She knelt beside him, helping him out of his snow-crusted coat and scarf. His hands were raw, his cheeks windburned. As she placed his coat by the stove, she noticed something odd — the snow on his boots wasn’t melting. But maybe it was just the bitter cold outside. She dismissed it, for now.

“Where’s your car?” she asked, her voice cautious but not unkind.

“Not far,” he said between chattering teeth. “Ran out of gas just a mile or two back.”

Cristina frowned. “A mile or two? In this storm?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” he said quickly, meeting her gaze for the first time. His eyes, though bloodshot, seemed sharper now. “I saw the smoke from your chimney. It was my only chance.”

Something in his tone seemed off — a little too certain, a little too rehearsed. Cristina shook off the feeling. Maybe he was just in shock. She focused on stoking the fire, hoping the warmth would bring color back to his face.

“Why were you driving out here in the first place?” she asked, keeping her voice light.

The man hesitated, his eyes flicking to the window as if calculating an answer. “I… I was trying to get to the main road. Took a wrong turn, I think. The snow came down faster than I expected.”

Cristina narrowed her eyes. “You think? You don’t remember where you were going?”

He paused, just a fraction of a second too long. “No, I was in a rush. My phone died, and I wasn’t using a map.”

Her unease grew. His story felt vague, full of holes. She glanced at the floor. The snow on his boots was still there, now a fine layer of frost. And there were no wet spots on the floor from melting ice. Her pulse quickened.

“You’re lucky I heard you knock,” she said, trying to keep her tone neutral. “Most people wouldn’t be out here.”

The man smiled faintly, his shivering less pronounced now. “Luck has always been… relative.”

Cristina stiffened. “What does that mean?”

“Just that,” he said, standing a little straighter now, his voice less shaky. “Some people get lucky. Others… don’t.”

She moved toward the corner of the room, her eyes darting to the old fireplace poker. “Your boots,” she said, her voice sharper now. “They’re not wet.”

The man’s expression didn’t falter. If anything, his smile grew, though it never reached his eyes. “Not wet? Hmm. Strange, isn’t it?”

Cristina’s hand closed around the poker. Her heart raced. “Who are you? What do you want?”

His eyes locked onto hers, calm now, unblinking. “What I want doesn’t matter, Cristina. It’s what you owe.”

Her breath hitched. “I don’t owe you anything.”

“Oh, but you do,” he said, taking a slow step forward. “You just don’t know it yet. Do you remember the accident, Cristina? The one you walked away from without a scratch?”

Her breath caught in her throat. “How do you know about that?”

“Because I was there,” he said, his smile growing. “Or rather, I was supposed to be. But you cheated me. You survived.”

Cristina shook her head, her hands trembling. “That’s ridiculous. I—”

“You think it was luck?” he interrupted. “That you walked away from a car wrapped around a tree? No, Cristina. It wasn’t luck. It was a mistake.”

He took another step closer, and the air in the room seemed to grow colder. The fire flickered, dimming as if something unseen was sucking the heat from the room.

“I’ve come to correct that mistake,” he said.

Cristina swung the poker, but the man caught it effortlessly, yanking it from her grasp. He tossed it aside and grabbed her wrist, his grip like iron. She struggled, kicking and clawing, but it was like fighting a statue.

“Let me go!” she screamed, her voice echoing through the cabin.

He leaned in, his breath cold against her ear. “You should’ve stayed in the car, Cristina. This was always meant to be your coldest day.”

As his grip tightened, the fire went out entirely, plunging the cabin into darkness.

“””””””””

When the storm passed two days later, a rescue team found the cabin buried in snow. Inside, the wood-burning stove was cold, its fuel spent. The body of a woman was discovered huddled beneath a pile of blankets, her face frozen in an expression of terror. The official cause of death was hypothermia.

But the searchers found something they couldn’t explain.

Frost-covered footprints circled the cabin in wide, deliberate loops, as if someone had been pacing around the building in the dead of the storm. The tracks never approached the woodpile or wandered toward the trees. They simply spiraled closer and closer to the cabin until they stopped directly at the door.

There was no sign of a return trail. No sign of anyone entering the cabin.

The searchers couldn’t shake the feeling that whoever — or whatever — had made those footprints wasn’t trying to escape the storm.

It had been waiting for it to pass.