The Cold Stove

The onions were browning nicely, their sweet tang filling my small kitchen. I was making my grandmother’s Sunday gravy, a ritual that demanded patience and a watchful eye. My girlfriend, Lena, was due any minute, and I had everything under control. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of movement through the archway that led to the hallway. It was a figure, unmistakably feminine, with the same dark hair and easy stride as Lena. She’d let herself in, I figured, and was heading to the bathroom to freshen up. ‘Hey, babe!’ I called out, not looking up from the pot. A quiet shuffle of feet answered. I glanced up and saw the figure pause in the hallway, its back to me. It then slowly turned its head, but its face was a blank, pale oval, like a mannequin’s. It stared at me for a beat too long before continuing toward the bathroom and disappearing through the door. A chill skittered up my spine. That wasn’t Lena. Lena had freckles, a contagious laugh, and always called back a cheerful greeting. I shrugged it off, convincing myself it was the light, or my overactive imagination. I turned back to the onions, but the feeling of being watched clung to me like a damp shirt.

I decided to check on Lena, a knot tightening in my stomach. The bathroom door was ajar, the light off. I pushed it open. Empty. My bedroom, which was across the hall, was also empty. The apartment, suddenly feeling cavernous, seemed to hold its breath. I walked towards the living room, my steps echoing on the hardwood. As I passed my son’s room, a rush of arctic air blasted through the doorway, so cold it felt like needles on my skin. I froze. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees in an instant. A primal fear, ancient and irrational, seized me. I didn’t want to look inside. My son, a grown man now, lived across town, but the room still held his boyhood furniture and a lingering scent of pine and old books. I turned on my heel, a coward’s retreat, and hurried back to the kitchen, my heart hammering against my ribs.

The kitchen felt oppressively warm after that hallway, but the fear didn’t subside. I wanted to abandon the apartment, to run down the stairs and into the cool evening air, and never come back. But my legs felt heavy, weighted by a dread I couldn’t name. I grabbed my phone to text Lena, to tell her to meet me at the café down the block, but her message was already there: ‘Running late, babe! Should be there in 15!’ Fifteen minutes. I stared at the words, the absurdity of the situation crashing over me. She’d be here in fifteen minutes, and I was trembling in my own kitchen, a pot of gravy simmering like a cauldron.

This wasn’t the first time I’d seen something. There was the time a shadow had loomed over my bed, a cloying darkness that lifted with the morning light. There was the evening I heard a child’s laughter echoing from the hallway, only to find no one. But this was different. This wasn’t a shadow; it was a solid, human form. It had taken Lena’s shape, worn her clothes, mimicked her walk. The thought twisted my stomach. What did it want? Why now?

I turned off the stove, the burner clicking into silence. The gravy bubbled, a final gurgle like a swallowed scream. I stared at the pot, my grandmother’s recipe, a symbol of comfort and love, now feeling like a mockery. I knew I should sage the apartment, cleanse it, but I feared what the ritual might stir up. As I stood there, the cold from the hallway began to seep into the kitchen, creeping along the floorboards like a tide. I felt it on my ankles, rising. I looked towards the hallway. The bathroom door was now closed. It hadn’t been closed a moment ago.

My phone buzzed again. Lena: ‘Almost there!’ I didn’t reply. I just stood there, listening to the silence, to the soft hiss of the last steam from the pot. The cold was up to my knees now. The apartment felt less like a home and more like a trap. And I realized, with a sickening clarity, that I wasn’t alone. And whatever it was, it was patient. It had learned my patterns, my rituals. It was waiting. I don’t know how long I stood there, but the next thing I remember, the doorbell rang. I blinked, the cold receding as if it had never been. I went to the door, my hand hovering over the handle. Through the peephole, I saw Lena, her face slightly flushed, a bottle of wine in her hand. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding and opened the door. ‘Sorry I’m late!’ she chirped, stepping inside. ‘Smells amazing!’ She leaned in to kiss me, and as her lips brushed mine, I felt a sudden, distinct chill against the small of my back, like a finger tracing a line. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want to see who was standing behind me in the hallway. I just pulled Lena close, wrapping my arms around her, praying that the warmth of her body would be enough to keep the cold at bay. But even as I held her, I could feel the shifting air, the subtle displacement of the shadows in the corner of my eye. The stove was off, but the cold was still there, patient, waiting in the spaces between the light and the dark, between the tick of the clock and the beat of my heart. And I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that this was far from over.