The Fifth Winter

The chill began the November I turned sixteen, in the rambling, drafty farmhouse my family had rented for the winter. It was a place of creaking floorboards and huge, rattling windows, and cold that seemed to seep from the very walls. My name is Mara, and I’d always been what they called ‘sensitive’ – I saw things others didn’t, a flicker at the edge of vision, a whisper in a silent room. But this was different. This was a presence that wanted to be known.

It started with my sleep. I’d drift off, and then, in that gray place between waking and dreaming, I’d feel it: a cold, gentle pressure on my leg, just above my knee. Not unpleasant, but strange. I’d open my eyes, but the room was empty. The first time, I chalked it up to a draft. The second time, to my imagination. But by the third night, it had moved. The pressure was now on my inner thigh, a slow, deliberate stroke, like a hand tracing up my skin. My breath hitched, and I lay frozen, heart pounding. I was too scared to move, too scared to speak. I just waited until the sensation faded with the first light of dawn.

Weeks passed, and the touch grew bolder. It would find me during the day, when I sat reading by the fire, or in the quiet of the upstairs hallway. A cold caress on my neck, a tickle across my ribs, a firm hand on my hip. It always happened when I was still, as if it was waiting for me to be alone and vulnerable. I told my mother, but she dismissed it as ‘teenage nerves.’ My father laughed and said the old house had ‘character.’ But I knew better. This was no creaking pipe or drafty corner. This was something with intention, something with a hunger.

One night, in early January, I woke to a weight at the foot of my bed. I couldn’t see anything, but the cold was intense, as if a window had been thrown open. And then, the touch began again, but more urgent. It roamed over my body – my thighs, my stomach, my chest, my neck – with a frantic, sensual energy. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will it away, but it only grew stronger. I felt a whisper of breath against my ear, and a voice, so low it was almost just a vibration, said, ‘You are mine.’

I finally screamed, and the presence vanished. The cold lifted, and I was left shaking in the dark. I didn’t sleep the rest of that night, and the next day I began to research the history of the house. The land, I discovered, had been a gathering place for centuries, a site of pagan rituals and darker ceremonies. In the 1800s, a farmer named Elias had lived here. He was rumored to have been obsessed with a young woman, a servant who died mysteriously. And he was said to have died on January 9th, exactly one hundred years ago to the day.

I should have left that day. I should have packed my bags and walked out into the snow. But I was sixteen, and I was curious, and I thought I could handle it. That night, I set up a camera in my room, hoping to catch something, to understand. But as I lay in bed, the cold returned. The weight was at my feet again, and I felt the familiar stroking. Only this time, it was different. This time, it was gentle, almost tender. And I heard the voice again, no longer a whisper but a cold, clear sound: ‘Elias. My name is Elias. You are the first to see me. And you are the one I have been waiting for.’

He began to speak to me every night. He told me he had been lonely for a hundred years, trapped in this house, unable to touch anyone, unable to be heard. He said I was special, that I could see him and feel him, and that he had chosen me to be his companion. He promised me eternal warmth, a place where the cold of the world could never reach me. His touch became more and more a part of me. I began to look forward to the nights, when the cold would come and I would feel his hands on my skin. I stopped telling my parents, stopped being afraid. I was falling in love with a ghost.

But then, the dreams began. Every night, after his touch, I would dream of the cellar. I saw myself descending the old wooden stairs, the air growing colder and mustier. In the corner, under the heavy beams, I saw a door that I hadn’t noticed before, padlocked and rusted. In the dream, I would always stop in front of it, my hand hovering over the cold metal. And I would hear a woman’s voice, faint and desperate, begging me to turn back. But I never did. I always reached for the lock.

Last night, I woke from the dream, but this time, I was not in my bed. I was in the cellar, in my nightgown, shivering in the dark. The padlock was in my hand, and the door was open. Beyond it, I saw a small, cramped space, and in the center, a woman’s dress, old and moldering. And I heard Elias’s voice, so close, filled with rage and longing: ‘She was the first. But she denied me. You will not.’

I ran. I ran up the stairs, through the kitchen, out the back door, into the blinding white of the snow. I didn’t stop until I reached the road, my bare feet numb and my breath ragged. I looked back at the house, and in the upstairs window, I saw a silhouette, dark and watching. I knew then that I had not escaped. I had only left my body behind, and in my panic, I had left something of myself there too. The cold that had traveled with me was no longer just on my skin. It was in my blood, in my bones.

They found me the next morning, hypothermic, wandering the highway. My parents brought me home, but I refused to go back inside. I told them everything, but they thought the cold had addled my mind. They called in a priest, a doctor, but no one could help. And every night, I feel him waiting, at the edge of my thoughts, his cold hands reaching for me. I know he is not done with me. He said I was his, and he will have me, one way or another. I look at my reflection, and I see the ghost I am becoming. The winter is not over. And I fear it never will be.