The Frosted Window

The new year was creeping in, and I was stuck in my grandmother’s drafty old house in the middle of nowhere. She’d gone to a neighbor’s for a game of bridge, and my parents were at a party in town. I was supposed to be on my way to a friend’s, but the weather had other plans. The roads were a sheet of ice, and the news had warned of more snow. I was seventeen and had been looking forward to a night of loud music and bad decisions, but instead I was here, wrapped in a quilt that smelled of mothballs, watching the snow pile up against the window.

I’d turned off the TV because the constant warnings were getting on my nerves. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the occasional groan of the old house settling. I’d lit a candle, not because the power was out, but because the dim light made me feel less alone. I settled into my grandmother’s ancient armchair with a dog-eared horror novel, but I couldn’t focus. My mind kept drifting to the feeling that I was being watched.

I told myself it was just the wind, or the shadows from the streetlight outside. But then I saw it: a shape in the window. Not the reflection of the room, but something beyond the glass. A face, pale and indistinct, pressed against the window. I froze, my heart hammering. I blinked, and it was gone.

I tried to convince myself it was a tree branch or a trick of the light. But I knew what I’d seen. I got up, my legs shaky, and crept to the window. The glass was cold against my fingers as I wiped away the condensation. The yard was a blanket of white, the trees bare black skeletons. Nothing there.

I laughed nervously and turned back to my book, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. I glanced at the window again, and this time, I saw it more clearly. A figure standing in the snow, staring at me. Tall and thin, dressed in dark clothes that seemed to absorb the light. It didn’t move, just stood there, watching.

I backed away, my mind racing. The nearest neighbor was a mile down the road. My grandmother’s landline was in the kitchen, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from the figure. As I fumbled for the phone, I noticed the figure’s head tilt, as if it knew what I was doing. Then, in a blink, it was closer, right at the edge of the porch.

I slammed the phone down. No dial tone. The line was dead. I switched on all the lights, but the bulbs flickered and dimmed. The house was old, the wiring faulty. I heard a sound, a soft scraping, coming from the direction of the front door. Something was trying to get in.

I ran to the door and checked the lock. It was bolted. The windows were all locked. But the scraping grew louder, more insistent, like fingernails dragging across wood. I grabbed a fireplace poker from the stand, my only weapon, and stood facing the door, my breath coming in ragged gasps.

Then, the scraping stopped. A long, tense silence. I felt the cold air rush against my back. I turned, and the figure was inside, standing in the hallway, its face hidden in shadow. The candle on the tableette guttered and went out.

The voice that came from the figure was like ice, a whisper that seemed to come from inside my own head. ‘You should not have looked.’

I tried to scream, but no sound came out. The figure stepped forward, and I saw its face for the first time: a hollow, eyeless visage, a dark void where features should have been. It reached out a hand, and I felt an icy grip on my wrist, pulling me toward the window. The glass, which had been solid, rippled like water.

I was being dragged into the snow, into the frozen night. My last conscious thought was of the warmth I would never feel again, as the world went white.

The next morning, the snow had stopped, and the sun rose on a pristine landscape. My grandmother found the front door ajar, and the house empty, except for a single set of footprints leading away from the window, disappearing into the woods. The police searched, but they never found me. In the weeks that followed, the townsfolk whispered about a frostbitten figure seen in the windows of empty houses, always just before the first snow of the year. They say that if you look out at the right moment, you’ll see me, standing in the frozen glass, waiting for someone else to see.