Part 1

The cabin sat at the end of a forgotten logging road, half‑collapsed under the weight of years and winter storms. Officer Daniel Rourke stepped out of his cruiser into a cold so sharp it felt like it had teeth. Fog clung to the treeline, swallowing the headlights behind him. The forest loomed on both sides, tall pines leaning inward as if they were listening. Dispatch had logged the call as a possible missing‑person lead, but the moment Rourke saw the cabin, he knew this wasn’t going to be a normal report.

Frost coated the windows in thick white sheets, and the door hung crooked on one hinge. As he approached, his flashlight beam caught a faint pattern in the snow — a spiral, melted into the ground rather than drawn. He crouched, brushing snow aside with a gloved hand, but the pattern was unmistakable. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t accidental. It was deliberate.

Inside, the cabin was colder than the air outside. His breath fogged instantly, hanging in the room like smoke. Frost crawled across the walls in spirals — dozens of them, some small, some stretching from floor to ceiling. The flashlight flickered in his hand, and he muttered under his breath, tapping it until the beam steadied. That was when he saw the recorder sitting on the table, half‑buried in frost, its casing cracked as if something had squeezed it rather than dropped it.

He picked it up. The plastic was so cold it burned through his gloves. He slipped it into an evidence bag and turned to leave, but a soft humming sound drifted through the cabin. A thin, wavering tune. A tune he hadn’t heard since childhood. He froze, breath catching in his throat. The humming stopped. Silence filled the room. Then a whisper brushed the air behind him — his first name, spoken softly, intimately, like someone standing inches from his ear.

He spun around, flashlight slicing through the fog of his own breath. Nothing. Just frost. Just shadows. But for a split second — a heartbeat — he thought he saw something tall standing in the doorway. Something thin. Something that bent at angles that made his stomach twist. A double take. Gone.

He backed out of the cabin, keeping the light ahead of him, and didn’t breathe until he was inside the cruiser with the doors locked. The recorder sat on the passenger seat, frost still clinging to the plastic inside the evidence bag. He stared at it for a long moment before pressing play.

The voice that spilled out was shaky, terrified, and far too calm for the things it described. The man on the recording spoke of cold that grew inward from the windows, frost forming in the shape of handprints, footsteps echoing a second too late, and a tall figure standing at the edge of the treeline. A figure with too many joints and not enough face. A figure that smiled with the cold.

Rourke shut off the recorder and tossed it onto the seat like it had burned him. The fog outside the cruiser shifted, and for a moment, he thought he saw a silhouette standing just beyond the headlights. Tall. Thin. Head tilted. Watching him. He blinked, and it was gone.

He drove back to the station in silence, the fog following him like a living thing.

Part 2

Back at the station, the warmth didn’t feel warm. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like they were chewing on the silence. Rourke dropped the recorder on his desk and rubbed his hands together, trying to shake off the cold that had followed him from the woods. Sergeant Mark Hale leaned against the doorway, coffee in hand, looking like a man carved out of old leather and sleepless nights. “Rough night?” he asked. Rourke didn’t bother sugarcoating it. He told Hale about the cabin, the frost spirals, and the voice on the recorder. Hale listened without interrupting, his expression shifting from skepticism to something heavier — recognition.

When Rourke played the recording, Hale’s jaw tightened. The voice on the tape spoke of frost creeping inward, footsteps echoing late, and a tall figure watching from the treeline. Hale didn’t laugh. He didn’t dismiss it. Instead, he asked where the cabin was. When Rourke told him, Hale nodded slowly, as if confirming something he’d hoped wasn’t true.

“Back in the eighties,” Hale said, “there were stories. Rangers going missing. Hikers found half‑frozen without frostbite. People hearing their own voices in the woods.”

Rourke frowned, thinking it sounded like folklore, but Hale didn’t smile. “Call it whatever you want,” he said. “But the locals had a name for it.”

Before Rourke could ask what that name was, the temperature in the room dipped. Their breath fogged in the air. Hale muttered something under his breath and checked the thermostat, but it was already set to seventy‑two. Rourke tried to shake it off, but the cold felt wrong — not like a draft, but like something alive pressing against the walls.

He left the station after midnight. The fog outside had thickened, swallowing the streetlights until they looked like dying stars. His cruiser sat alone in the lot, frost forming on the windows in delicate spirals. Identical spirals. The same size. The same number of loops. The same pattern he’d seen at the cabin. He wiped one away with his sleeve, but it reappeared instantly, forming beneath his touch like the glass itself was breathing cold.

Inside the cruiser, the air felt heavy. His breath fogged the cabin, and for a moment, he thought he saw another plume of breath beside his own — a second exhale rising from the passenger seat. He turned sharply, but the seat was empty. The recorder, however, was no longer in the evidence bag. It sat on the seat, red light blinking. Recording. Rourke hadn’t touched it.

A soft voice came through the speaker. His voice. “Daniel… let me in.” His blood ran cold. He slammed the recorder off and shoved it into the glove compartment. Outside, the fog shifted, brushing against the cruiser like something tall was moving through it. Something that didn’t care about headlights or distance. Something that followed.

He drove home with the fog clinging to the rear bumper like a shadow.

His house was dark and quiet, the porch light flickering as he approached. Inside, the warmth felt artificial, like the air was pretending to be comfortable. He checked the thermostat — seventy‑two again — but his breath still fogged. A spiral of frost had formed on the living room window, growing outward in slow, deliberate curls. As he watched, the frost melted in the shape of a handprint. His handprint.

A soft humming drifted down the hallway. The same tune from the recorder. The same tune from the cabin. The same tune he hadn’t heard since childhood. He followed the sound, flashlight trembling in his hand. The humming stopped when he reached the end of the hall. Silence pressed in around him. Then a whisper brushed the air behind him — his name, spoken in a voice that sounded like him but thinner, stretched, wrong.

He spun around, but the hallway was empty. Just shadows. Just the coat rack. Just the dark. But one shadow seemed to straighten, as if something tall had been crouching there a moment before. He blinked, and it was gone.

Back in the living room, the recorder sat on the coffee table. He hadn’t brought it inside. He hadn’t touched it. The red light blinked. Recording. Before he could reach for it, his own voice came through the speaker: “Don’t look behind you.” He froze. The room grew colder. Something shifted behind him — a soft scrape across the floor. He didn’t turn. He didn’t breathe. The recorder clicked off.

When he finally turned, the room was empty. But frost spirals were forming again on the window. And he knew, with a sinking certainty, that whatever had been in the cabin wasn’t bound to the woods. It was bound to him.

Part 3

Rourke didn’t sleep that night. He lay on the couch with the television playing low, hoping the noise would drown out the humming he kept hearing in the walls. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt a presence in the house—not in one room, not in one corner, but everywhere at once, like the cold had grown a spine and started walking around. Around three in the morning, the television flickered. The picture warped, colors bleeding into each other before the screen went black. A moment later, the speakers crackled with static, and then a voice—his own—spoke through the dead screen: “Daniel… you’re awake.”

He sat up, heart pounding. The television was unplugged, but the voice continued, thin and stretched, as if someone were pulling his vocal cords like taffy.

“You shouldn’t have left the cabin,” it whispered. “You brought me with you.”

The temperature in the room dropped so sharply that frost formed on the coffee table. Rourke grabbed his jacket and bolted out the door, stepping into a fog so thick it swallowed the streetlights. The fog curled around his legs like smoke, moving with purpose rather than drifting. His cruiser sat at the curb, frost spirals already forming on the windshield. He wiped one away, but it reappeared instantly, blooming beneath his touch.

Inside the cruiser, the fog pressed against the windows as if trying to look in. He drove without thinking, letting instinct guide him. By dawn, he found himself parked outside the Coos Bay Public Library. He didn’t remember deciding to go there, but something in him had known he needed answers. The library was nearly empty, save for a college-aged night clerk who barely looked up as Rourke walked past. He went straight to the local history section and pulled out a binder labeled “Umpqua Forest Incidents — 1960–1990.”

Most of the entries were mundane—missing hikers, bear attacks, winter storms—but then he found a yellowed newspaper clipping titled “Local Ranger Claims ‘Mimic in the Woods’ Before Disappearance.” The article described frost spirals, voices calling from the woods, and a tall figure glimpsed in the fog. A quote from the ranger’s final report made Rourke’s skin crawl: It doesn’t hunt like an animal. It learns like a person. He turned the page and found another article, then another—each describing similar incidents, each ending with a disappearance. The last entry was from 1987: “Ranger Samuel Price — Missing. Cabin found abandoned. Recorder recovered. Final words unintelligible.”

A photograph was clipped to the page: a cabin half-collapsed under snow, frost spirals on the windows, and a blurry shape standing in the treeline. Tall. Thin. Head tilted. Watching. Rourke stared at the photo until he felt a warm breath on the back of his neck. He turned sharply, but the aisle behind him was empty. Outside the library windows, the fog had thickened, and for a moment, he thought he saw a silhouette standing in it. When he blinked, it was gone, but a fresh frost spiral had formed on the glass.

He returned to the station and found Hale in his office. The sergeant listened as Rourke described everything—the fog, the spirals, the voice, the silhouette. Hale didn’t interrupt. When Rourke finished, Hale leaned back and exhaled slowly.

“I was hoping this wouldn’t happen again,” he said. He told Rourke about Samuel Price, the ranger from the article. They had found Price’s cabin covered in frost spirals, with a recorder on the table that refused to play.

“Every time we tried,” Hale said, “the tape jammed or the machine broke. But the last set of footprints we found outside the cabin… those weren’t his.”

Rourke felt the cold settle deeper into his bones. “What did they look like?” he asked. Hale shook his head. “Not like anything I’ve ever seen. Too long. Too thin. Like something was trying to copy a human footprint and getting it wrong.”

Before Rourke could respond, his phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number. One word: Daniel. The temperature in the office dropped. Their breath fogged. Hale’s eyes widened. “Rourke,” he said quietly, “don’t look at the window.”

But Rourke felt it anyway—a presence standing just outside the glass. Tall. Thin. Head tilted. Watching him through the frost.

Part 4

The handprint on the station window didn’t fade. It pressed deeper into the frost, the outline long and thin, the fingers too narrow and too straight to belong to any human. Rourke felt the cold radiating from the glass, even from across the room. Hale stood frozen beside him, his jaw clenched, his eyes fixed on the window as if afraid that looking away would make something worse happen. “It’s right outside,” Hale whispered, barely audible. Rourke didn’t need to look to know he was right. The air in the office felt heavy, like the atmosphere itself was holding its breath.

The lights flickered overhead, buzzing weakly before stabilizing. Hale motioned for Rourke to follow him, and they moved into the hallway, their footsteps echoing too loudly in the silence. The emergency lights cast a dim red glow, stretching their shadows across the walls in long, distorted shapes. Somewhere deeper in the building, a soft humming began—thin, wavering, and unmistakably familiar. It was the same tune from the recorder, the same tune from the cabin, the same tune from Rourke’s childhood. The sound drifted through the vents like a cold breeze.

They reached the corner, and the humming stopped. Hale held up a hand, listening. For a moment, the station was silent. Then a voice—Rourke’s voice—echoed from around the corner: “Daniel… this way.” Hale stiffened. “It’s trying to separate us,” he said. Rourke’s pulse hammered in his ears. They turned the corner together, but the hallway was empty. Only fog seeped under the back door, curling across the floor like smoke. Hale stepped forward cautiously, gun raised. The fog thickened, swirling upward into a vague silhouette—tall, thin, head tilted. The outline flickered like a bad reflection, and then it dissolved back into the fog.

“We need to move,” Hale said. They pushed through the back door into the alley behind the station. The fog was thicker here, clinging to the ground in heavy coils. The cold bit at their skin, sharper than any winter chill. Rourke felt the fog brushing against his legs, curling around his ankles like fingers. A whisper drifted through the air—Hale’s voice this time, calling his own name from somewhere in the fog. Hale’s eyes widened. “That’s not me,” he said. The fog shifted, and a silhouette appeared at the far end of the alley. Tall. Thin. Head tilted. Watching.

They ran. The fog followed, not drifting but moving with purpose, keeping pace with them. They reached the cruiser, and Hale fumbled with the keys, his hands shaking. Frost spirals formed instantly on the windows, blooming outward in delicate white curls. “Hurry!” Rourke shouted. Hale got the door open, and they dove inside, locking the doors. The fog slammed against the glass, rocking the cruiser. The temperature plummeted. Frost crawled across the windshield, spirals converging toward the center like veins.

A handprint appeared on the glass—large, thin, jointed wrong. Hale’s breath hitched. “Don’t look at it,” he said. But Rourke did. And for a split second, he saw a shadow behind the frost. Tall. Thin. Head tilted. Watching him. Learning him. The handprint slid slowly down the glass, tracing a spiral as it moved. The engine sputtered, coughed, and died. The cruiser fell silent. The fog pressed closer, the spirals tightening like a noose.

Hale grabbed Rourke’s arm. “We’re not staying here,” he said. They pushed the doors open and ran again, the fog swirling around them like a living thing. The station door was only a few yards away, but it felt impossibly far. Rourke heard footsteps behind him—soft, slow, deliberate. He didn’t look back. Hale reached the door first and yanked it open. “Rourke, hurry!” he shouted. Rourke sprinted toward him, but the fog surged between them like a curtain dropping. Hale vanished.

“Hale!” Rourke shouted. No answer. Just fog. Just cold. Just the faint outline of a spiral forming in the air itself. He backed away, heart pounding. The fog shifted, and a silhouette emerged. Tall. Thin. Head tilted. Watching him. It stepped closer, its outline flickering like a reflection in broken glass. Rourke stumbled backward until his spine hit the cruiser. The fog wrapped around his legs, his arms, his throat. The silhouette leaned in, its presence pressing against him like a weight.

A voice whispered from everywhere and nowhere, a voice that sounded like him and not like him at the same time.

“Daniel… I know you now.” A long, thin hand reached toward his face, hovering inches from his skin. Rourke couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t scream. The hand lingered there, trembling slightly, as if tasting the warmth radiating from him. Then, in the distance, a siren wailed. The fog recoiled. The silhouette flickered. The hand withdrew. The cold loosened its grip.

The fog thinned just enough for Rourke to see the shape retreating into the treeline—tall, thin, head tilted—watching him as it dissolved into the gray. The siren grew louder, closer, human. Rourke collapsed against the cruiser, gasping. The fog drifted away like nothing had happened, but the frost spirals remained—on the cruiser, on the pavement, on his skin. They weren’t warnings. They were signatures. A trail. A path. Leading deeper into Oregon.

At the edge of the treeline, the fog shifted one last time. A silhouette appeared—tall, thin, head tilted. It raised a long, thin hand and traced a spiral in the air. A promise. A threat. A beginning. The siren lights washed over the street. Rourke blinked. The silhouette vanished. Just fog. Just trees. Just cold. But the spiral hung in the air for a moment longer before fading, leaving only the echo of his own voice whispering in his mind.

“Daniel…”

Part 5

The siren grew louder as Rourke stood trembling beside the cruiser, watching the fog retreat into the treeline like a living tide. The cold loosened its grip on his lungs, but the frost spirals remained etched across the pavement, the cruiser, and even the sleeves of his jacket. They glimmered faintly in the flashing red and blue lights as a patrol car rounded the corner and skidded to a stop. Officer Ramirez stepped out, confusion etched across her face as she took in the scene—the frost, the fog, the shattered calm of the night.

“Rourke?” she called, approaching cautiously. “What happened here?”

He opened his mouth, but no words came. How could he explain the spirals, the voice, the silhouette that moved like a shadow, learning how to stand? Ramirez reached him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You’re freezing,” she said. “Let’s get you inside.” But Rourke barely heard her. His eyes were fixed on the treeline, where the fog still lingered unnaturally thick, as if waiting for the siren to fade.

Inside the station, the warmth felt hollow. Hale was nowhere to be found. His office was empty, his coffee mug still steaming faintly on the desk. Ramirez called his name down the hallway, but the only response was the faint hum of the vents. Rourke’s stomach twisted. He knew that sound. He had heard it in the cabin. In his house. In the fog. The humming grew louder, drifting through the station like a cold breeze. Ramirez froze. “What is that?” she whispered.

Rourke didn’t answer. He followed the sound down the hallway, past the flickering emergency lights, past the frost spirals forming on the walls. The humming led him to the back door—the same door he and Hale had fled through earlier. Frost coated the handle. A single handprint—long, thin, jointed wrong—pressed into the metal. Ramirez stepped back, her breath fogging in the air. “Rourke… what is this?”

He didn’t know how to respond. He reached out and touched the frost. It was warm. The humming stopped. Silence filled the hallway. Then, from somewhere deep in the building, a voice echoed—thin, stretched, familiar. Hale’s voice. “Mark… over here…” Ramirez’s eyes widened. “That’s Hale,” she said. “He’s alive.” But Rourke felt the cold settle into his bones. That wasn’t Hale. Not anymore.

The lights flickered. The fog seeped under the back door, curling across the floor like smoke. Ramirez stepped back, hand on her holster. “Rourke, we need to get out of here.” But Rourke couldn’t move. The fog thickened, rising into a silhouette—tall, thin, head tilted. The outline flickered like a broken reflection. Ramirez drew her weapon, but Rourke grabbed her arm. “Don’t,” he said. “It won’t help.”

The silhouette leaned closer, its presence pressing against the air like a weight. Frost spirals bloomed across the walls, converging toward the figure. A voice whispered from everywhere and nowhere, a voice that sounded like Hale and Rourke and something else entirely. “Daniel…” it murmured. “I know you now.” Ramirez stumbled backward, eyes wide with terror. “What is that thing?” she whispered.

Rourke didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The silhouette stepped forward, its outline sharpening for a single impossible moment. A long, thin hand reached toward him, hovering inches from his face. The air around him froze. His breath caught in his throat. The hand trembled, tasting the warmth radiating from him. Then, as if remembering something, it withdrew. The silhouette stepped back into the fog, dissolving into the gray.

The fog retreated toward the treeline, spirals forming in its wake. Rourke and Ramirez stood frozen in the hallway, listening to the silence that followed. Outside, the siren faded. The fog thinned. The night returned to normal. But the spirals remained—etched into the pavement, the walls, the cruiser, and the air itself. They formed a trail leading away from the station, deeper into Oregon, toward the next town.

Rourke stepped outside and stared at the treeline. The fog shifted one last time, and a silhouette appeared—tall, thin, head tilted. It raised a long, thin hand and traced a spiral in the air. A promise. A threat. A beginning. The silhouette vanished into the fog, leaving only the cold behind.

Rourke exhaled shakily. The spirals glimmered faintly in the moonlight. The creature was gone. But not far. And not finished.

The wind carried a whisper through the trees—soft, thin, familiar.

“Daniel…”