The car had broken down ages ago, and she'd left it behind in a slump of snow at the road's shoulder. No sense freezing her ass off in a dead car, might as well freeze it off while looking for help. There was no help. Mick put her head down into the curling gusts, feeling the brick that was once her functioning phone icy and dead in her pocket.

She'd been tromping down this road for half an hour, maybe. She was going to lose her fingers, maybe. The mittens her brother had knitted her were stiff with snow crystals, her face was like cardboard, and her jeans were soaked through. No one else was out here. Why would they be? And yet, every time Mick squinted around, peering into the wind over her shoulder, there was a thing. A drifting darkness, a cut of night like a silhouette between the snow drifts. But every time she tried to pin it down in her sights, it peeled away, flaking off and whirling with the wind, dissipating to lonely howls.

So that was the truth of it. She was the only one out here, but she wasn't alone.

The woods pressed close on her right hand side, trees buried monsters hulking with crooked limbs and rustling needles under the weight of white. Mick mostly tried to keep looking forward, reminding herself she was on a main road and had to stumble across a house sooner or later.

In a dizzying coincidence born of a numb mind or just freakish luck, a dim light burst like a distant fireball through the curtains of snowflakes. Mick warded her face with her arm, struggling through the hostile gales. They buffeted her, slapping her cheeks and digging through her coat. She ignored them, mindlessly and yet single-mindedly blazing a trail to that light.

It was a house, just as she'd hoped, as she'd silently desired with the whole will of her terribly cold body. The light on the porch was on, braving the colorless maelstrom. Mick looked back and there was the figure. A splotch of black, raggedy and cape-like, still and watching at the end of the driveway. Mick's heart stuttered, a sensation of the world slipping sideways, like looking at a picture on the wall that's crooked, but every time you adjust it, the frame swings right back to just below level.

Mick knocked on the door and it pushed open beneath the motion, tantalizingly warm air puffing in her face. She blundered inside, dropping clumps of snow from her crusted boots. Buttery illumination washed over her, hugging her with warmth and the cozy smell of a fire. It flickered somewhere beyond the stairs. They led up to a kitchen, everything on either side walled off so there was only the one option. Mick took it, dragging her deadened and weary body into the brick enclosure.

A round table with two chairs, serene and homely on top of a cocoa-brown throw rug. Matte cabinets ran around three of the walls, mirroring the length of the countertop beneath. Everything was clean and oddly unused, the only dirt was the ashes in the fireplace, hearty flames spitting soot onto the vinyl floor whenever they leaned too far out.

Somebody else already sat in front of the fire. Indiscernible gender, short black hair peeking out from under a pom-pom hat, they had their arms around their knees, rocking back and forth, eyes closed, lips blue.

"Hey," said Mick, disturbed but not inhumane. "You okay?"

They continued to rock, eyes shut tight, and in the firelight, Mick saw the glitter of tears on skin, water squeezing between eyelashes. "So cold inside," they said, "so cold."

"It's not so bad in here," said Mick, actually feeling quite warm now that the wind wasn't kneeling in every corner of her bones. She sat down beside the other visitor, turning her hands to the heat. The fire hiccuped and settled into a dull purr, pleased at her presence.

"So cold inside." The house creaked, grunting under the wrath of the blizzard. The visitor turned their streaky face towards Mick and opened their eyes. In a slow dawning of horror, Mick watched the tear trails on their face freeze over, watched those trembling, veiny lids go up over glassy, transparent eyes, felt the piercing stare of cold on her own face, at the root of her own ocular nerves, before her instincts kicked in, throwing her back to her feet and slamming her eyes shut.

Mick whirled for the stairs, blinking flecks of ice from her lashes as the house roared with wind, and the single window above the countertop clattered and slammed. Glass screeched and a vibration shook the walls. She staggered, certain she was about to plummet down the stairs and crack her neck, but the stairs weren't there any more, the exit had sealed over with more brick. Mick put her back to it. The other visitor hadn't moved, continued rocking and moaning, "So cold inside, so cold."

Something swarmed at the window, a flurry of black, a featureless face, oblong mouth, dark phantom in the wind. That thing from outside, waiting for her, wanting her. Not her, her warmth. But then the shadows shifted and branches cracked against the window, their shadow-shapes bending and warping.

Nothing is out there, Mick told herself, feeling the solid brick behind her. But the frightened pulse-jumping of her heart told her the truth. It didn't matter what was out there. Because whatever it was had already gotten inside. She'd seen it deep in the other visitor's eyes, and the tears that slipped, shocked and quiet, down her own face had already become ice.