SCENE — “The Girl in the Snow”

  Morning came faint and weak, the kind of light that barely touched the trees before giving up. Anna hadn’t slept. Neither had the twins. They lay wrapped beneath quilts while she sat by the door with the axe across her knees, listening to every sigh of the wind.

  When the first thin rays crept over the ridge, a knock rattled the door.

  Two knocks.

  Anna exhaled shakily. “It’s Dietrich.”

  She opened the door just enough to let the old man inside. His beard was rimed with frost. His cane shook in his hand.

  “There’s something you must see,” he said quietly. “Bring no children.”

  Anna nodded. She stepped outside and followed him down the snow?packed road, past shattered torch stubs and churned footprints, past the place where Jonas had screamed and fallen.

  They walked in silence until they reached the creek—frozen over except for a narrow dark ribbon where the current still fought through.

  Dietrich pointed.

  At first Anna saw nothing. Just snow piled deep against a fallen pine.

  Then she saw a small hand.

  Pale. Still. Fingertips curled gently into the drift as though reaching for something she’d never grasp again.

  Anna’s breath caught.

  The Bauer girl.

  Dietrich knelt, voice breaking. “We hoped she’d run… or hide… but…”

  Anna knelt beside him. The girl’s hair was tangled with ice. Her face was half?buried, but no blood marred the snow around her. She looked like she’d simply lain down to sleep.

  A terrible thought crept up Anna’s spine. “How did she die?”

  “That,” Dietrich whispered, “is the part you must brace yourself for.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He reached with trembling hands and brushed the snow from the girl’s face.

  Her eyes were open.

  Wide. Frozen. Clouded over with a milky film.

  But it was the expression that froze Anna in place.

  Not terror. Not pain. Not confusion.

  Peace.

  “Her pulse is gone. Her body stiff,” Dietrich said. “She froze hours ago.”

  Anna lifted the girl’s small wrist gently, listening to the silence of her skin.

  “But look.”

  Dietrich pulled the child’s coat aside.

  A single bite mark marred her shoulder—jagged, deep, unmistakable.

  Anna felt bile rise in her throat.

  “She was taken,” Dietrich whispered. “Not killed immediately. The bite wasn’t enough to tear her apart.”

  Anna shut her eyes. “She ran.”

  “Yes,” Dietrich said. His voice trembled. “Ran until the cold stopped her. The infection… didn’t have time to finish its work.”

  Anna shook her head slowly. “She wasn’t turning.”

  “Not yet.”

  They were silent a long moment.

  Anna brushed a strand of hair from the girl’s forehead. Out of all the horrors she’d witnessed since winter began, this one struck deepest. Children shouldn’t die alone in the snow. Children shouldn’t know fear like this. Children shouldn’t—

  “Elder.”

  Anna froze.

  The girl’s fingers twitched.

  Very faint. Very slow.

  But unmistakable.

  Dietrich staggered back. “No—God preserve us—she can’t—”

  Anna leaned closer. “Her body is cold—too cold for movement.”

  The girl’s eyelids fluttered, barely parting. Beneath the frost, her eyes rolled upward, pupils pale and wrong.

  Another twitch.

  A breath escaped her lips. Not warm. Not human.

  A rasp of air pulled through a throat that had forgotten how to breathe.

  Anna jumped to her feet. “We have to go.”

  Dietrich backed away, cane trembling violently. “She froze to death… but the sickness—”

  “—doesn’t care if they freeze,” Anna finished.

  The girl’s head jerked, chin dragging against the icy snow. Her mouth opened slowly, stiffly, as if the jaw belonged to someone else.

  A low, rattling moan escaped.

  “Run,” Anna whispered.

  Dietrich didn’t argue.

  They turned and fled up the path, boots cracking ice, breath cutting their lungs. Behind them, faint but distinct, came the sound of small hands scraping against the frozen ground.

  The Bauer girl was rising.

  Not as a child.

  Not anymore.