The reality of cold was harder to take than the idea of it. The shocking chill hit you the instant you climbed out of your oven-hot car.
You almost turned your ankle on the snow. There was over a foot of it covering the ground. You hadn't been able to see the driveway coming in. Then again, you guessed that anywhere not thick with trees was probably road. That assumption hadn't been proven wrong yet.
Maybe you should have worn your boots right from the get-go, rather than your comfy, shearling moccasins. Your reasoning that it would be harder to drive in thick rubber boots still stood, though.
And God knows you had a long drive behind you. It took you four full days of driving to get here. At the end of each day, you wanted to bang your head against the steering wheel. You really should have just taken a flight.
But even if you had flown, you would still have had to do some driving. Only big cities were equipped with airports, after all. So you would have had to rent a car, a liability on four wheels.
No, no, the cross-country trip was obviously the best choice. Plus, now you had a car you could pack up in case your grandmother's house contained some hidden treasures you wanted to save instead of sell.
Speaking of the house...
Once you had steadied yourself, you turned to look at it, while it was still illuminated by your headlights. The snowfall was so heavy and the cloud your breath made so thick that it was like looking through a pane of old glass.
Your mother described it as a log cabin straight out of The Evil Dead, but it looked like more of an innocent ranch house. In another reality, you imagined she may want to rent it out to tourists as a cozy winter lodge.
But this place harbored too many bad memories to even consider keeping in the family. It was your job to go through and then get rid of it.
You were mainly doing this as a favor for your mother, but you stood to profit as well. Every penny --from the sale of the house to everything in it-- was going to you.
You'd be lying if you said the money wasn't your only motivation, however. The holidays were always a tense time of year in your house. Had been ever since your father left...
With that cheery thought, the headlights went off and left you in the darkness. It made you shiver, and not just from the cold.
You fumbled your phone out of your pocket, nearly dropping it twice before you finally managed to switch on the flashlight function. You'd only been outside for a couple of minutes and your fingers were already numb from the cold.
It wouldn't be much use to you. No wifi, no service, nothing! Not all the way out here, anyhow.
Based on your mother's brief before you left, the electricity should still be on. You needed to turn on the water and gas valves before the place would be livable, though.
The front door lock was sticky, but brute strength was persuasive in a way a simple key wasn't.
Nothing could have prepared you for the odor that hit you square in the nose the second you stepped inside. You heard that scents were less perceptible in a colder environment. If that was true, the odor would only get worse as the place warmed up.
The air inside was stale and dank. As much as you wanted to air the place out, that was sort of impossible, given the weather. Hopefully the smell was an indication that the place was well-insulated and wouldn't lose too much heat.
Look on the bright side! At least it didn't have that old person smell.
You didn't have any memories of your maternal grandmother. Hell, you didn't even know she was still alive until, well, she wasn't anymore.
Your mother went no-contact with her after you were born. Apparently she was strict to the point of being controlling. And paranoid. But not paranoid about natural, everyday stuff. Supernatural stuff. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and the like.
Your mother hadn't wanted to elaborate past that point, and, despite your curiosity, you didn't push her.
Once you had your foot inside the door, you spent the next few minutes wandering the house, turning on all the lights to ensure there was no ax murderer lurking in the shadows, ready to cut you down in your youth.
The place looked innocent enough, but it was home to crazy before and crazy attracts more crazy.
It was a single-story house... Well, maybe two stories if you counted the cellar. But that place was only good for storage, so you didn't.
God, speaking of the cellar... That's where your mother told you you'd find the water and gas valves. Specifically, she told you it would be in the darkest, creepiest corner of the basement. Thanks, Mom.
There was no point in putting it off. The sooner you turned those two suckers on, the sooner you'd have heat and running water.
There was no standard door with stairs leading down to the cellar. Instead, there was a trap door in the floor of the living room, hidden under a rug. And a ladder.
God, maybe this was the cabin out of The Evil Dead after all. Note to self! If you find a scary-looking book written in an ancient language, just burn it.
With much trepidation, you climbed down the ladder. You were shaking, not shivering, now. The beam of light shining through the open door was just enough for you to find the string to the overhead bulb. You pulled it.
It was obvious no one had been down here in a while. The rest of the house was a little dusty, to be sure, but everything in the basement was coated in a thick layer of fuzzy muck.
Nevermind the cleaning. It would be impossible to get stuff like the furniture out of here. If the person who bought the house didn't want it, then they'd have no choice but to break everything down and pull it out the hole, like dismantling a ship in a bottle.
You heaved a great big sigh. You really had your work cut out for you. Why were you down here again? Right. The valves.
It took nearly fifteen minutes to find what you were looking for, but you eventually did. Task completed, you turned back off the lights and climbed out of the cellar ten times faster than you climbed in. You know... Just in case there was a demon after you.
Next, you turned the thermostat to a comfortable temperature. It would take some time for the entire place to warm up, however.
What should you do in the meantime? You wondered. You supposed you could wait in your car, but you weren't eager to climb back inside after such a long drive. If temperatures were freezing outside and in, you might as well go outside.
This was quite the change of scenery. The city was all you'd ever known. You'd grown up there, hadn't seen grass until you went away for college, with its big, green quad. Even then, your university was still the farthest thing from rural.
So why not take a walk in the forest? You could use the opportunity to stretch your legs. Plus, Grandmother's nearest neighbor wasn't for miles, so there was no worry about trespassing on someone else's property. The woods promised to be lovely, dark, and deep.
To avoid getting lost, you picked one direction and stuck to it. That way the most you'd have to do to get out is turn around and go in the opposite direction. You didn't know, with the blizzard right now, if the snow would fill up your footprints by the time you decided to return home.
You hadn't been walking for more than five minutes when you heard something deeper in the forest... A scream, echoing through the trees. It sounded like a woman's voice!
You quickly pulled out your phone, checked your bars. None, as usual.
You couldn't just do nothing, though!
Another shriek rang out. Despite being empty-handed, you ran in its direction, intent on helping in any way you could.
What you found was not a person but a fox. It was such a small creature that you wouldn't have noticed it at first, if not for the horrible sound it made and the pool of blood in the snow around it.
It had obviously been attacked, but by what? The bitemarks were so huge that they must have come from a large predator. Were wolves and mountain lions common in these parts?
The injured animal likely would have run from you if it had the strength or the ability. But one of its back legs was all but torn off, the bone and sinew exposed. Instead of fleeing, it just looked at you, beseechingly.
You were at a loss for what to do. Should you pick it up and take it home with you? You weren't a veterinarian, though... Should you look for a large stone with which to end its pain? You were hardly the killing type, even if it was a mercy killing.
You hadn't been at the scene of the crime for long when you suddenly felt new eyes watching you.
There was movement in the shadows to your left, so you slowly turned your head in that direction. Something told you that sudden movements were ill-advised.
It was a massive wolf, the largest you'd ever seen before. Those wolves had been on television and in movies, however. This was your first time seeing such a creature in the flesh. Its fur appeared almost blue in the light of the full moon.
Maybe you were a little delirious with fear, but you could have sworn it had the same curious gleam in its golden eyes that you did. You must have been imagining it, though.
The creature lunged. On instinct alone, you turned and ran. Your lungs started burning almost immediately, unused to taking in freezing cold air in such quick pants. You weren't even sure you were going in the right direction. Fingers crossed. Your life may depend on it.
While you didn't hear anything audibly chasing you, you knew better than to stop and look back.
Your legs were close to giving out on you when the lights of Grandmother's house were just visible through the trees. That's when you got your second wind.
You hit the front door like a bullet. It was still sticky, didn't open right away no matter how you whimpered and pawed at it. By the time you wrestled it open, the wolf could have easily caught up to and eaten you. You didn't know whether or not that thought was a comfort.
Once you were safely inside, you slammed and locked the door behind you before pressing your back to it, breathing hard.
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Mr Wolf, Mr Wolf, what time is it?
One o'clock...
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