(Found in an abandoned cabin somewhere in Oregon)

If you’re hearing this, it means you found the recorder. Good. That means you’re still human enough to care what happened here.

I don’t know how much time I have left. The cold is getting inside the walls again. Inside me, too.

They said the cold snap was normal for this part of Oregon. They said the outages were just the grid acting up.

They said the noises in the walls were rats, or maybe raccoons. But rats don’t whisper your name. And raccoons don’t stand outside your window without leaving footprints.

The first night, it was just the temperature dropping. Twenty degrees in an hour. The kind of cold that makes the air feel thick, like you’re breathing through cloth.

The second night, the frost came.

Not on the windows — from the windows. Like it was growing inward, reaching for me.

I scraped it off with my sleeve, but it came back in the shape of a handprint. My handprint.

The third night… that’s when it started talking. Not in words at first. More like… echoes. My own footsteps repeating a second too late. My breathing coming from the wrong direction. A soft, thin voice humming a tune I used to hum as a kid, even though I hadn’t made a sound.

I tried to ignore it. I tried to tell myself it was stress, or the wind, or the old cabin settling. But then it knocked.

Three slow taps on the door. Not loud. Not threatening. Just… patient.

When I didn’t answer, it tried the windows. Every one of them. A fingertip dragging across the glass, tracing the same pattern over and over.

A spiral.

Always a spiral.

I covered the windows.

It didn’t matter.

The sound kept going, like it was tracing the pattern on the inside now.

Last night, I finally saw it.

Not clearly — thank God — but enough.

A shape standing at the edge of the treeline.

Tall. Thin. Too many joints. Not enough face.

It tilted its head like it was studying me. Like it was trying to remember how a person is supposed to look. And then it smiled. Not with a mouth. With the cold.

The temperature dropped so fast the air cracked. Frost crawled across the floorboards toward me, slow and deliberate, like fingers.

I ran. I shouldn’t have. Running tells it you’re prey. But staying would have been worse. I don’t know how long I can keep ahead of it.

It’s learning. It’s getting better at sounding like me. Sometimes I hear my own voice calling from the woods, begging me to come back. Sometimes it sounds scared. Sometimes it sounds angry. Sometimes it sounds like it’s already inside.

If you’re hearing this, listen carefully. Don’t follow the voice that sounds like you. Don’t trust the warmth — it’s a trick.

Don’t look directly at it. It notices when you notice. And whatever you do…

Don’t let it learn your name.