I'm sitting alone in my room. Curled up in my bed, I'm shaking.
Goddamn it, why did it have to be tonight?!
By the window, I can hear it. Sounding like it was from a small child, I can hear her soft moaning sobs. I can't sleep. Haven't been able to, in fact, for the past several weeks.
She won't leave me alone...
For just a moment, I hear her moaning break and I hear her soft, babyish voice cry out, "Why won't you let me in, Peter?" This is when my body freezes.
Her sobs start to crescendo as the room drops in temperature. I look at the window to see now that it's started freezing over. Glacial outlines start to spiderweb across the glass. My body's shaking is now so rapid, I almost can't even feel it. In fact, I can't feel anything in the tips of my fingers or toes.
"I'm so cold." I hear her say. "I've been so cold for so long now, Peter."
Her voice now permeates the room around me. Every icy breath from her, I can feel, pricking inside and out of my entire body. It's as though her own hand was burrowing inside my stomach, twisting and rearranging my organs before freezing them solid. My blood's thickening, solidifying, reaching the point where it'll become frozen completely solid.
"P-Please..." I groan, my voice shaking, barely able to anunciate words. The temperature of the room drops again, something I didn't think possible, and further causing the joints and muscles in my body to stiffen. My eyes remain on the window, now engulfed in twinkling glacier. Through this glacier, staring back at me with the most anguished looking pout, is her.
Very vaguely, I can see streams of scarlet ichor streaming down her smooth porcelain cheeks. Her hand presses against the glass in front of her. The tips of her fingers are curled downwards, allowing her to scratch against it. "Are you gonna let me in?" she asks.
I shout at her, "NO!" Her head snaps backward for a moment before leaning in close once more to the glass, letting her eyes pierce straight through me and into my heart. The right corner of her pouting mouth stretches upward ever so slightly. She knows.
I'm growing weaker and weaker, and she knows it. "Why won't you let me in, where it's warm?" My eyes double in size as I watch cracks in the sheet of ice begin spiderwebbing all across it. I can't move, despite how desperately I wish to be able to, to just run like hell out of my bedroom and not stop. I'm stuck, though, with there now being absolutely no feeling in either my limbs or even my face.
My eyelids can't even close anymore. The tears in my eyes, the tears not just of coldness, but of sheer terror, all just freeze the instant they begin welling up. My vision blurs.
"You know, this would all end if you'd just let me in, Peter."
I force my eyes to close. I couldn't listen to her, which meant I needed to not look at her, either. She's right, and that's why I can't listen.
It would be the end-- for me, that is. Permanently.
I know this because of what I saw ten years ago, on this very same night. I was little and one night, just before supper could be served, a knock came at the door. When Ma and Pop opened it, there she stood, sobbing just as she is now. "Oh dear," I remember Ma saying, covering her mouth. They asked her who she was and if she was alright.
To this, she only replied with "I'm lost and cold. C-Can I c-c-come in?"
"Oh, of course, dear!" Ma exclaimed, embracing the little girl. This would serve to be the biggest and last mistake she'd ever make. Well, next to, of course, bringing her inside. The second she stepped over the threshold, the three of us, me, Ma, and Dad, all became crippled with chills. We all knew something was wrong, but said nothing. We'd all thought it was just the fact that it was winter, which, at least at the time, made us feel all the more heartbroken over the little girl we'd just taken in.
I remember how she just wouldn't stop crying. No matter what any of us three said or did to try and comfort her, it did nothing. I remember Ma asking her where her parents were, and she replied, sniffling, "I don't have parents anymore. I'm all alone and it's always so cold..."
That night, the temperature in the entire house dropped so low that, even snoring, fast asleep, I could feel myself shivering. I awoke that night to find that she wasn't in my room, in the sleeping bag on the floor like she had been earlier. The room was so cold that I could see only a sheet of ice in the spot where she'd been laying.
I struggled to get back up and went looking for her. I found her in the living room, coming out of my parents' room. "What're you doing?" I remember asking. Every breath that escaped me while I spoke, I could see. My knees shook while I stood there. She didn't even notice me at first, continuing to turn and head for the front door. It wasn't until my stupid ass went and stopped her that I was in trouble.
Before I could get even a single word further, she looked up at me. Her eyes were a deep scarlet, two red gems embedded in casings of flesh. Her eyes were wide and stoic, deranged, yet cunning. Then, without any warning at all, she lunged for me.
Through nothing short of a miracle, I managed to, despite having difficulty in mobility, dive out of her way and gun it back to my room. There, I slammed and locked the door before throwing myself under the bed. I remember my heart striking furiously against my chest, anticipating her to come and break through the door or something. In the end, fortune would favor me as no, this didn't happen. She didn't try bashing the door down or anything.
I stayed awake all night, watching the door, Finally, the next morning arrived and what do I see, two adults, Ma and Pa. sprawled out across their bed. Both of their skins were whiter than what I knew to be normal and they were motionless. The rest of the house was still freezing.
That afternoon, I called the police and tried telling them of the little girl we'd let in the previous night. I think they searched for her for 3 years, give or take, before the trail went cold-- metaphorically in this sense, sort of. That wasn't the last I'd see of her, though, obviously. For the next four years following, all the way up to now, she's always come to my room, always sobbing, always begging to be let in.
I've tried everything to get rid of her. I'd tried prayer, protection rituals, and even moving out and into another house. None of it made any kind of difference, though. She always came.
The room's gotten so much colder now. I-I can't keep this up. I can't keep turning her away. I can't run, hide, or fight her in any way.
I... I... I have to do it. I... I have to let this little girl in again, so her frozen tears can maybe finally melt...
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