The wind howled like something feral. Raymond stood at the edge of his yard, staring at the strange, heaving mound half-buried in the snow. It hadn’t been there yesterday. It twitched. Then a sound rose up from it—not a whimper, not a growl. Something in between.
He took a cautious step closer, boots sinking deep into the drift. The shape shifted again. Ice cracked beneath his weight. Then—another sound. This one sharper. Wounded. Wrong. It echoed across the yard like it didn’t belong to any creature he could name.
Raymond stopped cold. He was eighty-two and utterly alone. The storm was picking up. Snow stung his face, blurred the trees. But he couldn’t turn away. Something was down there—under the snow. Something alive. Maybe dying. And no one else was coming.
Raymond Carter had lived alone for twelve long winters in a crooked, ivy-draped house at the edge of a quiet town folded into the countryside. Once a schoolteacher known for his dry wit and iron patience, Raymond had faded into a life of habit and silence after losing his wife, Marlene, more than a decade ago.
At eighty-two, he still mowed his lawn with a rattling push mower and insisted on hauling in his own firewood, even when his joints screamed in protest. He had no children, no close family left. Just a house full of old books, a temperamental radio, and a lifetime of memories that creaked louder in winter.
Most nights were the same—early dinners, slow sips of tea, and the hum of wind outside. Tonight, though, the weather was turning. A storm had been crawling across the region all day, and now it was nearly here.
Raymond had checked the locks twice, sealed the windows, and stoked the fire high in the stove. Everything was ready. He had just sat on the edge of his bed, quilt pulled halfway over his legs, when the doorbell rang.