PART 1: The Arrival

It was supposed to be the perfect romantic getaway. Just me, my girlfriend Charlotte, and the silence of the woods. We were burnt out from city life and desperate for a break, so we booked this super cozy-looking Airbnb up in the Poconos, Pennsylvania. You know the vibe—log cabin style, tucked away in the trees, total isolation. It was December 2022, and with a massive snowstorm in the forecast, we thought being snowed in would be romantic.

We hit the road early to beat the weather. The drive from the city took about four hours, and by the time we turned onto the gravel road leading up to the property, the sky was already that heavy, ominous grey that screams “blizzard coming.”

The house looked incredible at first glance. It was surrounded by dense woods, sitting on a large property with a big deck and a hot tub. The owner, Mike, had gone all out with the decorations. There were light-up reindeer, a massive snowman, and those big plastic candy canes lining the walkway. It felt like walking into a Christmas movie.

We unloaded the car, shivering as the wind picked up. Inside, the place smelled like pine and old wood—that classic cabin scent. The living room had a massive stone fireplace with a stack of logs ready to go, and stockings hung on the walls. It was charming, but it was also… quiet. Too quiet.

After we unpacked in the second bedroom, I did my usual “dad” routine of checking the place out. I tested the locks, checked the fridge, and wandered around. There was a loft upstairs with a pool table, which looked fun. But then I found the door to the basement.

For the h*ll of it, I went down there. It felt completely disconnected from the rest of the warm, cozy house. It was unfinished, freezing cold, and dark. Just a concrete box with some laundry machines and a workbench. It gave me the creeps immediately, so I ran back upstairs, locking the door behind me. I shook it off, telling myself I was just being paranoid.

We were settling in, about to start dinner, when it happened.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

My stomach dropped. We were miles from the nearest town. It was pitch black outside. Who could possibly be knocking on our door?

I walked to the door, peering through the peephole, but I couldn’t see much through the frost. I opened it just a crack. Standing there was a man who looked to be in his late 40s. He wasn’t dressed for the weather at all—just grey sweatpants and a ripped-up, yellowish-brown jacket that looked like it hadn’t been washed in years. He was shivering slightly, but he flashed me a wide, toothy smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“How are you folks doing?” he asked. His voice was raspy.

“Good,” I said, keeping the door tight. “Can I help you?”

“Just checking in,” he said, shifting his weight. “I’m Tom. I run this place with my brother.”

I relaxed a little. “Oh, you’re Mike’s brother?”

“Yeah,” he nodded eagerly. “I live just up the road, next door. If you or your girl need anything, just holler.”

He gestured vaguely toward the dark woods. I thanked him, and he turned and walked away into the darkness. I closed the door and locked it, letting out a breath.

“Who was it?” Charlotte called from the kitchen.

“Just the host’s brother, Tom,” I said. “He says he lives next door.”

But as I walked back to the kitchen, a weird feeling settled in my gut. I hadn’t mentioned Charlotte to him. I hadn’t mentioned anyone was with me. Maybe Mike, the host, had told him? Or maybe… he had been watching us unload the car.

I tried to push the thought away. It was Christmas. We were safe. Or so I thought.

Part 2: The Rising Terror

We tried to shake off that weird encounter at the door. I mean, logic—or at least the desperate need for this vacation to be perfect—kept telling me I was overreacting. It’s the woods, right? People are different out here. Maybe “Tom” was just a quirky local, a guy who didn’t understand social boundaries or appropriate winter fashion. I told Charlotte, “Look, the guy is the host’s brother. He’s probably just making sure we don’t trash the place. It’s fine.”

She didn’t look convinced, but she nodded. We were both exhausted from the drive and the stress of city life. We didn’t want to be scared; we wanted to be cozy.

We decided to distract ourselves with food. The kitchen was beautiful—granite countertops, rustic wooden cabinets—but as the sun fully set, the large windows turned into black mirrors. That’s the thing about these remote cabins that they don’t show you on Instagram: when it’s dark outside and bright inside, you are on display. You can’t see anything out there, just your own reflection staring back at you, but anyone standing in the tree line could see everything you’re doing in 4K resolution.

I found myself closing the blinds, double-checking that they were flush against the sill.

“You okay?” Charlotte asked, stirring the cornbread mix.

“Yeah, just… drafty,” I lied.

We cooked our grab-bag dinner—chicken thighs seasoned with whatever spices we could find in the pantry, steamed broccoli, and that boxed cornbread. The smell of baking bread started to fill the cabin, and for a moment, the tension melted away. We plated the food and moved to the living room.

I lit the fireplace. The dry logs caught quickly, crackling and popping, casting dancing shadows against the high vaulted ceiling. We curled up on the oversized leather couch, turning on the TV. The only thing we could find on the streaming apps that fit the mood was The Polar Express.

“Classic,” Charlotte smiled, leaning her head on my shoulder.

We ate in the glow of the Christmas tree lights. It was exactly what we had paid for. The snow was falling harder outside now, visible only when the wind whipped it into the path of the porch light. It looked like static on an old TV screen.

But as the movie played—that scene where the train is sliding uncontrollably on the ice—my mind kept drifting back to the basement door. I had locked it, hadn’t I? I remembered turning the little thumb-turn lock. But was it a deadbolt? Or just a flimsy privacy lock?

I stood up.

“Where are you going?” Charlotte asked, pausing a forkful of chicken.

“Just… forgot to grab a napkin,” I said.

I walked into the kitchen, grabbing a paper towel, but my eyes darted to the basement door. It was still shut. I walked over, pretending to examine the thermostat next to it, and subtly tried the handle. Locked.

Okay. Good. I was losing my mind. I sat back down.

By 9:00 PM, the dinner was gone, and the movie was over. The cabin was warm, almost too warm with the fire roaring.

“Hot tub?” I suggested.

Charlotte hesitated, looking at the sliding glass door that led to the deck. “It’s freezing out there.”

“That’s the best part,” I grinned, trying to inject some enthusiasm back into the night. “Come on. The snow is falling, the steam is rising. It’ll be romantic.”

She smiled, finally relenting. “Okay. But if I freeze to death, I’m haunting you.”

We changed into our swimsuits. The transition from the overheated living room to the biting cold of the deck was a shock to the system. The wind had picked up, howling through the pines like a distant siren. We practically sprinted across the frozen wooden planks, our bare feet stinging on the ice, and jumped into the hot tub.

“Oh my god,” Charlotte groaned as the hot water enveloped us. “Okay, you were right. This is amazing.”

For twenty minutes, it was perfect. The steam created a thick fog around us, acting like a shield from the rest of the world. The jets were powerful, massaging away the tension of the drive. The colored LED lights under the water cycled through blues, greens, and reds, illuminating the steam. We leaned back, watching the snowflakes melt before they even hit the water.

We were talking about our plans for the next day—maybe driving into the village, maybe hiking if the snow wasn’t too deep—when it happened.

It wasn’t a gradual fade. It was instant.

Click.

The loud, rhythmic hum of the hot tub jets cut out completely. The bubbling water went still. The underwater lights flickered once and died.

We were plunged into sudden, ringing silence and pitch darkness.

“Did you hit the button?” Charlotte whispered, her voice trembling slightly.

“No,” I said, my heart jumping into my throat. “My hands are above the water.”

We sat there, frozen. Without the noise of the jets, the woods suddenly felt incredibly loud. The wind rustling the dead leaves. The creak of the house settling.

Then, we heard it.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Footsteps. Heavy, deliberate footsteps crunching through the crust of snow.

Charlotte gripped my arm underwater, her nails digging into my skin. Her eyes were wide, reflecting the faint light coming from the living room windows.

“Is that a deer?” she breathed, barely audible.

I strained my ears. I grew up in the suburbs, but I know what animals sound like. Deer possess a chaotic, skittish rhythm. Four legs. Scampering.

This was a two-legged cadence. Thud… pause… thud… pause.

The sound was coming from the side of the house, near the corner where the darkness was absolute. And it was getting closer to the deck.

I felt a primal surge of adrenaline. I wanted to shout, “Who’s there?” to assert dominance, to scare off whoever was lurking. But a deeper instinct, the one that keeps prey alive, told me to shut up. If we stayed quiet, maybe they wouldn’t know we were out here. Maybe the steam hid us.

The footsteps stopped.

They didn’t fade away. They just… stopped.

It felt like someone was standing right at the edge of the deck railing, just beyond the reach of the faint light, watching us. I stared into the black void of the woods, my eyes watering from the cold and the fear. I hallucinated shapes in the shadows—a torso, a face—but I couldn’t be sure.

“We need to go inside,” I whispered, my teeth starting to chatter, not from the cold, but from the adrenaline dump. “On the count of three. We run.”

“Okay,” Charlotte squeaked.

“One. Two. Three.”

We exploded out of the water. The freezing air hit our wet skin like a thousand needles. We didn’t look back. We scrambled over the slippery deck, fumbling with the handle of the sliding door. For a terrifying second, my wet hand slipped on the latch, and I thought, This is it. This is where he grabs me.

But the door slid open. We tumbled inside, slamming it shut and throwing the lock. I immediately pulled the heavy curtains closed, blocking out the view of the deck.

We stood there in the living room, dripping wet, shivering violently, chests heaving.

“Did you see anyone?” Charlotte asked, her voice high and panicked.

“No,” I said, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around her. “I didn’t see anything. It was probably just… snow falling off the roof. Or a bear. Bears sound heavy.”

I was lying. I knew it wasn’t a bear. Bears don’t cut the power to hot tubs.

“The power went out,” I reasoned, trying to sound rational for her sake. “The breaker probably tripped. That’s why the lights died.”

“And the footsteps?”

“Ice shifting,” I said, though I didn’t believe a word of it. “Let’s just… let’s get warm. We’re freezing.”

We needed to raise our body temperatures. The chill had settled deep into our bones. The cabin felt different now. The cozy shadows from the fire now looked like hiding spots.

“I’m taking a shower,” Charlotte said. “I need to get this chlorine off and warm up.”

“I’ll come in with you,” I said. “I don’t want to be alone out here.”

We went into the bathroom. It was a nice setup—a walk-in shower with stone tiling. We turned the handle all the way to the left, waiting for the steam. The water came out hot, thank God. We stepped in, letting the heat rush over us.

For a moment, we felt safe again. The sound of the water drowned out the wind and our own thoughts. I washed my hair, trying to scrub away the paranoia.

Then, the water pressure dropped.

Just slightly at first. Then, the temperature plummeted.

It went from scalding hot to ice cold in the span of three seconds.

“Ah!” Charlotte screamed, jumping back against the wall.

It wasn’t just lukewarm. It was freezing, like snowmelt.

“What the hell?” I shouted, turning the handle back and forth. Nothing changed. Just relentless, freezing water.

We scrambled out, grabbing our towels again. This was too much. First the hot tub, now this?

“This place is a dump,” I muttered, anger starting to mask my fear. “I’m texting Mike.”

I grabbed my phone. It was 10:15 PM.

Me: “Hey Mike. We’re having issues. The hot tub power just died on us completely, and now the hot water in the shower only lasts about two minutes before turning freezing. Can you help?”

We waited. The silence in the cabin was heavy. Every time the refrigerator hummed or a log settled in the fireplace, we both jumped.

Twenty minutes passed. No reply.

“Maybe he’s asleep,” Charlotte said, huddled under a blanket on the couch. She was wearing two hoodies now.

“It’s 10:30 on a Friday,” I said, staring at the phone. “He’s a host. He should be available.”

Finally, a bubble appeared.

Mike: “That is really odd. The hot tub was serviced last week. The water heater is brand new. I’m really sorry about that. I’ll call my maintenance guy first thing in the morning to come take a look. Try to reset the breaker in the basement if you can.”

The basement.

I looked at the basement door. There was no way in hell I was going down there. Not tonight. Not after the footsteps.

Me: “I’ll wait for the maintenance guy. Thanks.”

I didn’t tell him about the footsteps. I didn’t want to sound like the crazy city people scared of nature. I figured I’d handle it.

We decided to go to bed early. Mostly because being awake and listening to the house was becoming torture. We checked every window. We checked the front door lock. We put a chair under the doorknob of the front door—a trick I learned from movies, but it made me feel slightly better.

We went into the bedroom and locked that door too.

“Do you think ‘Tom’ came back?” Charlotte whispered as we lay in the dark. The wind was whipping against the bedroom window now, rattling the pane.

“No,” I said, pulling the duvet up to my chin. “Tom is sleeping in his house next door. The hot tub was a breaker. The footsteps were a deer. The shower is just a crappy water heater. It’s just a run of bad luck, Char.”

She didn’t answer, but she squeezed my hand.

I lay there for what felt like hours. I couldn’t shut my brain off. I kept replaying the image of Tom’s smile—that wide, toothy grin that didn’t look friendly. It looked hungry. I kept thinking about his jacket, how thin it was. Why wasn’t he freezing?

Eventually, exhaustion took over. I drifted into a fitful, shallow sleep, the kind where you’re technically dreaming but still aware of the room around you.

I don’t know what time it was when I woke up. You know that feeling when you wake up suddenly, not groggy, but instantly alert? Like your body sensed danger before your brain did.

The room was pitch black. The wind had died down. The silence was absolute.

I lay there, holding my breath, listening. What woke me?

Then it happened.

BANG!

The sound was explosive. It came from the front door, just down the short hallway from our bedroom. It wasn’t a knock. It was a slam. Like someone had taken a sledgehammer or a shoulder and thrown their entire body weight against the wood.

Charlotte shot up in bed, gasping. “What was that?!”

BANG!

The second one was louder. The whole cabin seemed to vibrate.

“Oh my god,” Charlotte whimpered, scrambling backward against the headboard. “Someone’s trying to get in.”

My heart was hammering against my ribs so hard it hurt. I rolled out of bed, crouching low. “Stay here,” I hissed.

“Don’t go out there!” she cried, grabbing my t-shirt. “Please, just call the police!”

I fumbled for my phone on the nightstand. 3:14 AM. No service.

One bar of LTE. It flickered to ‘No Service’ and back. We were too deep in the valley.

BANG!

A third hit. This one sounded different—metallic. Like they were kicking the deadbolt or hitting the handle with something hard.

“Who’s there?!” I screamed. My voice cracked. It sounded pathetic in the dark house. “I have a gun!”

I didn’t have a gun. I had a bottle of wine and a heavy flashlight in the kitchen. But I prayed the lie would work.

Silence followed my scream.

We waited. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. A minute.

The silence was worse than the noise. Were they gone? Were they picking the lock? Were they walking around to the back to try the sliding glass door?

“Are they gone?” Charlotte whispered, tears streaming down her face.

“I don’t know.”

I crept to the bedroom door. I knew I had locked it, but the wood was thin. If they got through the front door, this bedroom door wouldn’t stop a toddler, let alone a grown man.

I pressed my ear against the wood. I held my breath until my lungs burned.

I heard breathing.

Not from Charlotte. From the other side of the bedroom door.

It was faint, raspy. A wet, rattling inhale. Hhhhuuuuh.

My blood ran cold. They were already in the house? No, that was impossible. I would have heard the front door give way. I would have heard the chair scraping across the floor.

I pulled back, realizing with a sick jolt that the sound might be coming from the floor vents. The heating ducts connected the rooms. Was the sound coming from outside, carrying through the vents? Or… was it coming from the basement?

We sat huddled in that bed for the next hour. Every creak of the house settling sounded like a footstep. I grabbed a heavy brass lamp from the bedside table, gripping it like a baseball bat.

“If that door opens,” I told Charlotte, looking her in the eyes, “you run into the bathroom and lock it. You don’t look back. You understand?”

She nodded, terrifyingly silent.

At around 4:30 AM, the adrenaline finally started to crash, leaving us shaking and nauseous. There had been no more banging. No more breathing sounds. Just the oppressive winter silence.

“Maybe it was the wind?” Charlotte suggested, though her voice lacked conviction. “Like a branch hitting the door?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Maybe.”

But wind doesn’t hit three times and then stop. Wind doesn’t breathe.

As the first gray light of dawn started to bleed through the curtains, I knew we had to move. We couldn’t stay in this room forever. I needed to see what was out there.

“I’m going to check the door,” I said, standing up.

“I’m coming with you,” she said. She wasn’t letting me out of her sight.

We moved like ghosts down the hallway, the brass lamp raised high. The living room was empty. The Christmas tree lights were off. The embers in the fireplace were dead cold.

I looked at the front door.

The chair I had wedged under the knob was still there. The door was still locked.

But as I got closer, I saw it.

The door frame.

On the inside, everything looked fine. But I unlocked the deadbolt, moved the chair, and slowly, terrifyingly, cracked the door open to look at the exterior face of the wood.

There were three massive indentations in the wood, right near the lock. Muddy smudges.

And in the snow on the porch… nothing.

The wind had blown fresh snow over the porch overnight, covering whatever tracks had been there. It was a blank slate.

“See?” I exhaled, trying to lower my heart rate. “Snow’s clear. Maybe… maybe it was just ice falling from the gutter hitting the deck?”

I was grasping at straws. I was gaslighting myself because the alternative—that someone was out here, toying with us—was too terrifying to accept.

“I want to go home,” Charlotte said, staring at the dents in the door.

“We will,” I promised. “Let me just check the perimeter. If everything looks okay, maybe we just… pack up and leave early. But let’s get some coffee in us first. I can’t drive like this.”

That was my mistake. I should have thrown our bags in the car right then and there. But the daylight gives you a false sense of bravery. You think the monsters disappear when the sun comes up.

I walked out to the car to grab my scraper. The air was crisp and cold. The woods looked beautiful, harmless even.

I started scraping the ice off the windshield of my Jeep. Scrape, scrape, scrape. The repetitive motion was calming.

Then, I looked down.

The wind had covered the porch, sure. But the wind hadn’t reached the side of the house where the Jeep was parked, sheltered by the overhang of the roof.

There were footprints.

Not just one or two. A chaotic mess of them.

They circled the entire car. They went up to the windows, as if someone had been cuping their hands and peering inside.

And then, I saw where the trail led.

The footprints looped around the side of the house, directly under the bathroom window. Then they went to the back deck, right where the hot tub was. And finally, they led to a small, ground-level window that I hadn’t noticed before.

The basement window.

The snow around the basement window was disturbed. Trampled.

“Morning!”

My heart stopped. I spun around, dropping the scraper.

Tom was standing there.

He was right at the edge of the driveway, emerging from the tree line like he had materialized out of the mist. He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday—the ripped yellow jacket, the grey sweatpants. He wasn’t wearing gloves. His hands were raw and red.

“Sleep well?” he asked.

The smile was back. That same, wide, empty smile.

“Not really,” I managed to choke out. I positioned myself between him and the front door of the cabin. “Someone was banging on our door last night.”

Tom didn’t look surprised. He didn’t look concerned. He just tilted his head, like a dog listening to a high-pitched noise.

“Is that right?” he said softly. “Must be the wind. The wind plays tricks out here.”

“It wasn’t the wind, Tom,” I said, my voice hardening. “Look at these footprints.”

I pointed to the ground.

He didn’t look down. He kept his eyes locked on mine.

“Yeah,” he said, stepping closer. “Lot of strange folk out here. You gotta be careful.”

“I messaged Mike,” I said, dropping the name like a shield. “He said he’s sending maintenance.”

“Did he?” Tom’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Well, that’s why I’m here. To fix the heater. Mike sent me.”

I froze.

“You… you just said you were the brother yesterday. Now you’re maintenance?”

“Same thing,” Tom shrugged. He took another step. He was only ten feet away now. “Let me inside. I need to get to the basement.”

Something in his tone had changed. It wasn’t a request anymore. It was a command.

“I need to check with Mike first,” I said, backing up toward the house.

Tom stopped. His smile dropped. For the first time, his face went completely slack. It was more terrifying than the smile.

“Open the door,” he said.

“One second,” I said.

I turned and bolted for the front door, slamming it shut behind me and locking it.

“Charlotte!” I screamed. “Get the bags! Now!”

“What?” she yelled from the kitchen, dropping a mug. It shattered on the floor.

“It’s him! It’s Tom! We have to go, right now!”

I pulled out my phone. My hands were shaking so badly I dropped it twice. I finally opened the text thread with Mike.

Me: “Tom is here. He says he’s here to fix the heater.”

I waited, staring at the screen, praying for those three dots.

Outside, the doorknob jiggled.

Rattle. Rattle.

Then, a heavy thud. He was throwing his weight against it again.

Mike: “Is Tom the name of the plumber?”

Me: “NO! Your brother! The guy next door!”

Mike: “What do you mean? I don’t have a brother. I don’t have a neighbor named Tom. The nearest house is three miles away. Who is in my house?”

I read the text twice. The words swam before my eyes.

I don’t have a brother.

I looked up at Charlotte. She was standing there, holding our duffel bag, her face pale as a sheet.

“He’s not the brother,” I whispered, the horror finally fully realized. “He’s not a neighbor.”

The doorknob rattled violently.

“He’s been watching us,” I said. “He’s been here the whole time.”

And then, from beneath our feet, right below the floorboards where we stood, we heard it.

The sound of the basement door unlatching.

We had locked the door to the basement from the kitchen. But we hadn’t checked the door from the outside.

He wasn’t just outside anymore. He was coming up the stairs.

Part 3: The Trap

The sound of a wooden latch lifting is quiet. It’s a subtle, mechanical click, followed by the groan of a hinge that hasn’t been oiled in years. In any other context—a horror movie, a haunted house attraction—you wait for that sound with popcorn in your hand. But when you hear it coming from beneath the floorboards of the house you are standing in, knowing that the only person down there is a stranger who lied about his identity, it is the loudest sound in the world.

I looked at Charlotte. The color had drained from her face so completely that her skin looked translucent, like wax. She was staring at the floor, right at the spot where the kitchen hardwood met the hallway carpet. We both knew the layout. The basement stairs led up to a thin, hollow-core door that opened directly into the kitchen.

And we were standing five feet away from it.

“He’s inside,” Charlotte whispered. The air left her lungs in a jagged wheeze. “Oh my god, he’s inside.”

“The keys,” I gasped. My hands slapped my pockets. Empty.

My mind short-circuited. Where are the keys? The panic wasn’t just fear; it was a blinding, static white noise that erased my short-term memory. I patted my jeans again. Nothing. The jacket. I wasn’t wearing my jacket.

I looked at the kitchen island. There, sitting on the granite countertop, right next to the bowl of fruit we hadn’t touched, was my key fob.

The problem? The island was directly next to the basement door.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Heavy boots were ascending the wooden stairs. They weren’t rushing. That was the detail that nearly made me vomit. He wasn’t running up the stairs to catch us; he was walking up with the heavy, deliberate cadence of a man who knows he has cornered his prey. He knew the front door was locked. He knew the sliding doors had security bars on them. He thought he had time.

“Get to the front door,” I ordered Charlotte, my voice sounding unrecognizable to my own ears—guttural and shaking. “Unlock it. Do not open it until I’m there. Go!”

She didn’t argue. She spun around, her socks slipping on the hardwood, and scrambled toward the entryway.

I stared at the keys. I stared at the basement door handle. It was a cheap, round brass knob. I saw it begin to turn.

Slowly.

I lunged.

It wasn’t a heroic dive. It was a desperate, clumsy stumble. I threw my body weight against the island, snatching the keys off the granite just as the basement doorknob hit the limit of its rotation.

CLICK.

The latch disengaged.

I was three feet away from the door. I could hear him breathing on the other side. A wet, heavy rasp.

I didn’t wait to see him. I didn’t wait to see if he had a weapon. I turned and sprinted toward the hallway, my feet digging into the rug for traction.

“He’s coming up!” I screamed at Charlotte.

She was fumbling with the deadbolt. Her hands were shaking so violently she couldn’t get the thumb-turn to twist. It was stuck. The humidity, the cold, the cheap hardware—I don’t know what it was, but the lock was jammed.

“It won’t turn!” she shrieked, tears streaming down her face.

Behind me, the kitchen door slammed open.

BANG!

It hit the wall with enough force to crack the plaster. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. I knew if I looked back and saw him standing in my living room, the terror would paralyze me. I could hear his boots hitting the hardwood floor now. He was in the main house.

I reached Charlotte and slammed my hand over hers on the deadbolt. “Together!” I yelled. “Turn!”

We wrenched the lock with all our combined strength. With a sickening crack, the metal gave way. I tore the door open, the cold winter air hitting us like a physical blow.

“Go! Go! Go!”

We exploded onto the porch. The world outside was blindingly white. The snow glare was intense, stinging my eyes. We didn’t bother closing the door behind us. We leaped off the porch steps, bypassing the stairs entirely and landing in the deep snow of the walkway.

The cold was instantaneous. We weren’t dressed for this. I was in jeans and a flannel shirt; Charlotte was in leggings and a hoodie. No coats. No gloves. Our boots were unlaced, hastily shoved on.

“The car!” I pointed toward the Jeep.

It was parked about thirty yards away, near the gravel turnaround. It looked like a mile. The snow was shin-deep, heavy and wet. It sucked at our boots with every step, turning a sprint into a nightmare slow-motion slog.

I pressed the unlock button on the fob. Beep-beep.

The sound of the car unlocking was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.

But then, Charlotte screamed.

I spun around, slipping on a patch of ice beneath the snow.

Tom was in the doorway.

He stood on the threshold of the cabin, framed by the warm light of the interior we had just fled. He looked massive. The yellow jacket was open now, revealing a dirty grey thermal shirt underneath. He wasn’t rushing. He was just standing there, watching us struggle through the snow.

And then, he reached behind his back.

My brain screamed GUN.

“Get down!” I roared, grabbing Charlotte’s arm and practically throwing her toward the side of the Jeep.

But he didn’t pull out a gun. He pulled out a crowbar. It was rusted, jagged, about two feet long.

He stepped off the porch.

He didn’t take the stairs. He jumped, landing heavily in the snow with a grunt, and started walking toward us. He wasn’t running. He didn’t need to run. He moved with a terrifying, predatory confidence, swinging the crowbar loosely at his side.

“Get in the car! Get in the car!” I was shoving Charlotte into the passenger seat before the door was even fully open.

She scrambled inside, climbing over the center console because she was too panicked to sit. I slammed the passenger door shut and ran around the hood to the driver’s side.

My footing was gone. The gravel driveway was a sheet of ice under the fresh powder. I grabbed the door handle, ripped it open, and threw myself into the driver’s seat.

I jammed my foot on the brake and hit the Start button.

Chug… chug… chug…

The engine sputtered.

“No, no, no, please,” I begged, slamming my hand against the steering wheel. “Don’t do this.”

The cold. The battery was cold.

Chug… chug… VROOOM.

The engine roared to life. I almost cried with relief.

I looked out the driver’s side window.

Tom was ten feet away.

He was close enough that I could see the cracks in his lips. I could see the bloodshot veins in his eyes. He wasn’t smiling anymore. His face was a mask of pure, unadulterated rage.

He raised the crowbar.

“Lock the doors!” Charlotte screamed.

I hit the lock button just as Tom lunged.

THWACK!

The crowbar slammed into the driver’s side window.

The glass didn’t shatter—thank god for modern safety glass—but it spiderwebbed instantly. A million tiny cracks obscured my view of him, turning him into a fractured, distorted monster.

He drew his arm back for a second swing.

I didn’t wait. I shifted the Jeep into reverse and floored it.

The tires spun.

Whirrrrrrrrr.

We weren’t moving. We were on ice. The four-wheel drive hadn’t engaged yet. The wheels were just screaming, digging deeper into the slush, polishing the ice beneath us.

“We’re stuck!” Charlotte wailed, curling into a ball in the passenger seat.

Through the shattered window, I saw the shadow of the crowbar coming down again.

CRACK!

A hole punched through the center of the web. Shards of glass sprayed onto my lap. A blast of freezing air and the smell of unwashed body odor filled the car.

He reached through the hole.

His hand—rough, calloused, fingers tipped with black dirt—clawed at the inside of the door, fumbling for the lock.

“Let me in,” he grunted. It wasn’t a shout. It was a guttural demand, spoken right into my ear. “Open the door.”

I screamed, a sound of pure primal fear, and punched his hand. It felt like punching a brick wall. He didn’t even flinch. His fingers found the lock switch.

I grabbed the gear shift. I slammed it into Drive, then back to Reverse, trying to rock the car.

“Come on!” I yelled at the Jeep.

Tom’s fingers popped the lock up.

He grabbed the door handle.

I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed the steering wheel with my left hand, and with my right, I grabbed the collar of his jacket through the broken window.

I didn’t pull him in. I pushed. I shoved the heel of my hand into his face, right into that broken nose and smiling mouth.

He howled—a sound of shock more than pain—and recoiled just an inch.

At that exact moment, the tires found purchase on a patch of gravel.

The Jeep lurched backward with a violent jerk.

The open door handle was ripped out of Tom’s grip. The sudden momentum knocked him off balance. The side mirror clipped his hip, sending him spinning into the snowbank.

We were moving. We were flying backward.

I couldn’t see where I was going. The rear window was covered in snow, and the backup camera was blurred with slush. I was driving blind, guided only by terror.

I slammed on the brakes, slewing the front end around. I shifted into Drive.

Through the broken window, I saw him rising from the snow. He wasn’t done. He was getting up. He still had the crowbar.

I floored it.

The Jeep fishtailed, the rear end swinging wildly toward the trees, before the traction control kicked in and straightened us out. We shot down the driveway, gravel spraying like bullets behind us.

I looked in the rearview mirror.

Tom was standing in the middle of the driveway. He wasn’t chasing us anymore. He just stood there, watching us leave. He raised the crowbar in a mock salute, then let it drop to his side.

We hit the main road without stopping. I blew through the stop sign at the end of the gravel drive, fishtailing onto the asphalt.

“Is he following?” Charlotte asked. She was twisted around in her seat, staring out the back window. “Is he in a car?”

“I don’t know,” I shouted over the wind rushing through the broken window. “I don’t see anything!”

I drove like a maniac. I did eighty on a forty-mile-per-hour winding mountain road. Every pair of headlights in the rearview mirror made my heart stop. Was that him? Did he have a truck? Did he know a shortcut?

The wind was deafening inside the car. The heater was blasting, but it couldn’t compete with the hole in the window. My face was numb. My hands were frozen to the steering wheel in a death grip.

“Call 911,” I yelled. “Try it again! Now!”

Charlotte fumbled with her phone. “I… I have one bar!”

“Call!”

She dialed. I listened to the silence, praying.

“911, what is your emergency?”

The operator’s voice was faint, breaking up with static, but it was there.

“We’re being chased!” Charlotte screamed into the phone. “We’re on Route 447, heading south! A man… a man at an Airbnb tried to kill us!”

“Okay, ma’am, slow down. What is your location?”

“I don’t know!” she cried. “We’re in the Poconos! Near the… near the High Bridge!”

“Okay, stay on the line. Are you safe right now?”

“No! He smashed our window! He has a crowbar!”

I kept driving. I didn’t slow down until we saw the lights of a gas station about fifteen miles down the road. It was a Wawa. I had never been so happy to see a Wawa in my life.

I pulled into the lot, right under the bright LED canopy, directly in front of the main entrance where there were cameras.

I put the car in park and killed the engine.

For a moment, neither of us moved. The adrenaline crash hit me like a physical weight. My hands were shaking so bad I couldn’t unbuckle my seatbelt. The silence in the car was broken only by the wind whistling through the shattered glass and Charlotte’s sobbing.

I looked at her. She was curled up, hugging her knees, glass fragments glittering in her hair.

“We’re out,” I whispered. “Char, we’re out.”

She looked at me, her eyes huge and hollow. “He was inside,” she said, her voice trembling. “He was inside the house with us.”

I nodded, feeling the bile rise in my throat.

I opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement. My knees buckled, and I had to grab the door frame to stay upright. People at the gas pumps were staring at us—a Jeep with a smashed window, two people shivering in hoodies with no coats, looking like they had just seen a ghost.

I walked around to the passenger side and pulled Charlotte out. I hugged her right there in the gas station parking lot, burying my face in her shoulder. We held onto each other like we were the only two things left on earth.

A state trooper pulled into the lot five minutes later, lights flashing.

As I gave my statement to the officer, sitting in the back of his warm cruiser while Charlotte drank hot chocolate the manager had brought out, the reality of what had happened started to piece itself together.

The officer asked for the address. I gave it to him.

“We have a unit heading there now,” he said. “Did you know the individual?”

“No,” I said. “He said his name was Tom. He said he was the brother.”

The officer frowned, tapping on his computer. “The owner of that property is a Michael Reynolds. No brother listed on the deed or local records.”

“I know,” I said. “Mike told me.”

Then the radio on the officer’s shoulder crackled.

“Dispatch to Unit 4.”

“Go ahead,” the officer said.

“Unit 2 is on scene at the residence. House is clear. Suspect is GOA (Gone on Arrival). But… uh… you’re gonna want to hear this.”

My stomach tightened. “What?” I asked.

The officer held up a hand to silence me. “Go ahead, Unit 2.”

“We found access point in the basement. Bulkhead doors were forced open from the outside. Looks like he’s been living down there for a while. Sleeping bag, food wrappers. And… uh… there’s a monitor down here.”

“A monitor?” the officer asked.

“Yeah. Hardwired into the house security system. But it’s not looking outside. It’s looking inside. He had cameras rigged up in the living room vents and… Jesus… the bedroom.”

The blood drained from my face. The world tilted on its axis.

“The bedroom?” I whispered.

The officer looked at me in the rearview mirror. His expression had shifted from professional detachment to genuine horror.

“Copy that, Unit 2,” he said quietly, turning off the radio.

He turned around to face me. “Son, we’re going to get you a hotel room for the night. We need to process your car for prints.”

I didn’t hear him. All I could hear was the silence of that bedroom the night before. The feeling of being watched.

He wasn’t just a squatter. He wasn’t just a thief.

He was a voyeur.

We had slept in that bed. We had changed our clothes. We had talked and laughed and lived our lives, thinking we were alone. And all the while, beneath the floorboards, in the cold dark of the basement, Tom sat in front of a glowing monitor, watching us.

The knocking. The hot tub. It was all a game. He was toying with us. He wanted us to be scared. He wanted the panic to heighten the experience for him.

And when we tried to leave… the game was over. He wasn’t going to let his entertainment walk away.

I looked out the window at the dark highway leading back toward the woods. Somewhere out there, Tom was walking through the snow, crowbar in hand, looking for the next house with the lights on. Looking for the next “perfect Christmas getaway.”

I squeezed Charlotte’s hand until my knuckles turned white. We survived. But as I closed my eyes, I could still see the static of the snow, and the smile of the man who lived beneath the floor.

Part 4: The Ghost of Christmas Past

The fluorescent lights of the Pennsylvania State Police barracks buzzed with a sound that felt like it was drilling directly into my skull. It was a stark, sterile contrast to the dark woods we had just fled, but I couldn’t find comfort in it. I sat on a hard plastic chair, wrapped in a scratchy gray wool blanket, watching the clock on the wall tick.

5:48 AM.

Charlotte was asleep—or pretending to be—with her head on my lap. Her breathing was shallow, hitched with the occasional involuntary sob that shuddered through her body even in rest. Every time a door slammed down the hall or a radio squawked, she flinched, her fingers digging into my thigh.

We had given our statements. We had surrendered our clothes for evidence, changing into cheap sweatpants and t-shirts the officers had grabbed from a donation bin. We had been photographed, questioned, and comforted. But we hadn’t been told the full story yet.

A detective, a heavy-set man named Miller with tired eyes and a coffee stain on his tie, came out of an office. He held a manila folder. He didn’t look at me immediately. He looked at the floor, then at the coffee machine, then finally, reluctantly, at us.

“Mr. Reynolds—the owner—is here,” Miller said softly. “He’s in the other interview room. He’s… well, he’s in shock. I just wanted to let you know he’s cooperating fully.”

“I don’t care about Mike,” I said, my voice sounding like gravel. “I want to know about the man in the basement. Did you catch him?”

Miller pulled a chair over and sat opposite me. The plastic creaked under his weight.

“We have a K-9 unit tracking him,” Miller said, choosing his words carefully. “But the snow is heavy, and the terrain out there is unforgiving. He had a head start. And from what we found in the basement… he knows those woods better than we do.”

“What did you find?” I asked. Charlotte stirred, sitting up, rubbing her swollen eyes.

Miller hesitated. “We identified him. His fingerprints were all over the basement equipment. His real name isn’t Tom. It’s Patrick Weaver. He’s a drifter. He used to work as a contractor in the area about five years ago. He did the HVAC installation for a lot of the new builds in that development.”

The realization hit me like a physical punch. “HVAC,” I whispered. “The vents.”

Miller nodded grimly. “That’s right. He didn’t just break in, son. He knew the layout because he helped build it. The access panel in the basement? He installed it. The ductwork? He routed it.”

He opened the folder and slid a grainy printed photo across the low table. It was a mugshot, probably a decade old. The face was younger, cleaner, but the eyes were the same. Cold. Dead. And that smile—that wide, unsettling smile—was there even in the booking photo.

“Weaver has a record,” Miller continued. “Peeping Tom charges. Stalking. Burglary. He did time in Ohio, then fell off the grid three years ago. We think he’s been living in the Poconos, moving from empty rental to empty rental. He targets Airbnbs because the turnover is high. New people every few days. No one stays long enough to notice the quirks of the house.”

“The quirks,” Charlotte whispered, her voice trembling. “The hot water. The power.”

“Control,” Miller said. “He likes control. He cuts the water to make you react. He cuts the power to see what you do. It’s a game to him. He wants to see the panic.”

“And the cameras?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Miller sighed, rubbing his temples. “We found a hard drive. It was connected to a rig he set up in the utility closet behind the washer and dryer. He had snake cameras—endoscopes—threaded through the vents into the living room and the master bedroom. He… he recorded everything.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. I thought about us changing clothes. I thought about us sleeping. I thought about the intimate moments, the arguments, the vulnerability. He had stolen it all.

“Where is the footage?” I demanded. “I want it destroyed.”

“It’s evidence now,” Miller said gently. “But I promise you, no one is going to see it but the investigators. And once the trial is over—if we catch him—it will be sealed.”

If. That was the word that hung in the air. If we catch him.

We didn’t go back to the cabin to get our things. We couldn’t. The police gathered our luggage and brought it to the station later that afternoon. When they handed me my duffel bag, I almost threw it in the trash. It felt contaminated. I felt like if I opened it, I would smell his body odor, that mixture of sweat and mildew that had filled the car when his hand punched through the window.

We drove back to the city in silence. The wind whipped through the plastic sheeting the police had taped over the driver’s side window. The heater blasted, but I couldn’t get warm. Every car that pulled up behind us on the highway made me check the rearview mirror. Every time a truck passed, I flinched.

When we finally unlocked the door to our apartment—our safe, fourth-floor walk-up in a busy city neighborhood—we didn’t feel relief. We felt exposed.

I locked the door. Then I engaged the deadbolt. Then I wedged a chair under the handle.

Charlotte walked straight to the bedroom. I heard her rummaging around, and then she came out holding a roll of duct tape.

Without saying a word, she walked to the laptop on the desk and taped over the webcam. Then she went to the smart TV and taped over the sensor. Then she dragged the stepladder into the hallway and taped over the smoke detector light.

“Char,” I said softly.

“I can’t,” she sobbed, collapsing onto the floor. “I can’t stop thinking about the vents. I can’t stop thinking that he’s watching.”

I sat on the floor with her, holding her as she shook. We slept in the living room that night, with all the lights on. We didn’t sleep in our bed for three months.

The weeks that followed were a blur of legal paperwork and therapy.

Mike, the host, was devastated. He wasn’t malicious, just negligent. He had never checked the basement properly; he paid a cleaning crew to do the turnover, and they only cleaned the living areas. He refunded our money, paid for the damage to my car, and offered a substantial settlement to avoid a lawsuit. We took it. We didn’t want a court battle. We just wanted it to be over.

But the investigation stalled.

The snowstorm that hit the night we escaped turned into a blizzard. It covered Weaver’s tracks. The K-9 units lost his scent at a service road about two miles from the cabin. They found a stolen truck abandoned three towns over, but Weaver was gone. He had vanished into the vast, rural landscape of Pennsylvania.

Every time my phone rang and I saw a “Unknown Caller” ID, my heart stopped, hoping it was Detective Miller telling me they got him. But it never was. It was just spam calls, or work, or life trying to move on when we were stuck in the past.

We tried to return to normal. I went back to accounting. Charlotte went back to her marketing job. But we were different people now. We were the people who checked the closets when we came home. We were the people who couldn’t have the curtains open at night.

The relationship strained under the weight of the trauma. We loved each other, but we were constant reminders of the worst night of our lives. When she looked at me, she saw the man who almost got her killed. When I looked at her, I saw the terror in her eyes as she screamed in the passenger seat.

Intimacy was difficult. The idea of being vulnerable, of taking off clothes, felt dangerous. We stopped going out. We stopped traveling. The world had shrunk to the size of our apartment, the only place we could control.

It was exactly one year later. December 2023.

Christmas was approaching, and the city was decked out in lights. Usually, this was our favorite time of year. We would go ice skating, drink mulled wine, walk through the holiday markets. This year, we hadn’t put up a tree. The box of ornaments sat in the closet, untouched. The idea of “festive” felt mocking.

I came home from work on a Tuesday, shaking the snow off my coat. The mailbox in the lobby was stuffed with holiday cards from friends and family, happy photos of babies and dogs and vacations.

I went upstairs, sorting through the mail on the kitchen counter.

Bill. Flyer. Card from my mom. Bill.

And then, a plain white envelope.

There was no return address. Just my name and address, printed on a label. The postmark was from Ohio.

My hands went cold. Ohio. That’s where Miller said Weaver had done time. That’s where he was from.

“What is it?” Charlotte asked, walking into the kitchen. She saw my face and froze.

“Don’t come closer,” I said.

I grabbed a pair of scissors. My hands were shaking so bad I almost cut myself. I sliced the top of the envelope open.

There was no letter. No threats written in magazine cutouts.

Just a single photograph.

It was a Polaroid. The colors were slightly washed out, vintage-looking.

It showed a view from a window. It was looking in through a window.

I squinted at it. It was night in the photo. Through the glass, you could see a living room. A Christmas tree was lit up in the corner. A fire was burning in the fireplace.

And on the couch, two people were sitting. A man and a woman. The woman was laughing, her head thrown back. The man was smiling at her, holding a glass of wine.

It wasn’t us.

I turned the photo over.

On the back, written in black sharpie, were three words:

Merry Christmas, neighbor.

I dropped the photo like it burned me.

Charlotte scrambled to pick it up, then gasped, dropping it again. “That’s… that’s not the cabin.”

“No,” I whispered. “It’s a new one.”

I grabbed my phone and dialed Detective Miller. I hadn’t spoken to him in six months. He picked up on the second ring.

“Miller,” he grunted.

“He’s back,” I said, my voice rising to a panic. “Weaver. He sent me a photo.”

“Whoa, slow down. Sent you a photo of what?”

“Of a couple,” I shouted. “A new couple! He’s watching someone else right now! The postmark is Ohio. You said he was from Ohio!”

There was a silence on the other end, then the sound of rustling paper. “Send me a picture of the photo. Right now.”

I snapped a picture and texted it to him.

Minutes ticked by. The phone rang.

“Okay,” Miller said, his voice all business now. “I see it. We’re contacting the Ohio State Police and the FBI. This crosses state lines now. It’s mail fraud, stalking… this is what we needed. The postmark gives us a hub. The stamp gives us a location.”

“You have to find that couple,” I begged. “He’s outside their window. He took this photo.”

“We’re on it,” Miller promised. “Listen to me. Lock your doors. Stay inside. If he’s reaching out to you, he’s trying to close the loop. He wants you to know he’s still playing the game.”

That night was the longest of our lives. Longer even than the night in the cabin.

We sat in the living room, a hammer on the coffee table, staring at the door. Every creak of the building was a threat.

But around 4:00 AM, Miller called back.

“We found the house,” he said. The exhaustion in his voice was replaced by adrenaline. “Facial recognition on the couple in the photo. They posted a similar selfie on Instagram tagged at a rental in Hocking Hills, Ohio. We got local units there.”

“Did they get him?” I asked, gripping the phone.

“They surrounded the cabin,” Miller said. “They found the couple asleep. Safe. They had no idea anyone was there.”

“And Weaver?”

Miller paused. “They found footprints in the snow. Fresh ones. Leading away from the window. And… they found a car parked down an old logging road. He was in it.”

My heart hammered against my ribs. “And?”

“He’s in custody,” Miller said. “It’s over.”

I dropped the phone. I didn’t hang up. I just dropped it on the rug and put my head in my hands.

“They got him,” I sobbed. “Char, they got him.”

She screamed—a sound of pure, cathartic release—and tackled me in a hug. We cried for an hour. We cried until we were dehydrated.

Epilogue: The New Normal

It’s been two months since Weaver was arrested.

The details that came out were horrifying. He had thousands of hours of footage on hard drives in his car. He had been doing this for years. We weren’t special. We were just part of a collection.

But he made a mistake with us. He got arrogant. He reached out. If he hadn’t sent that card, if he hadn’t needed to brag, he might never have been caught. His need to terrorize us one last time was his undoing.

Charlotte and I are… better. We’re not “fixed.” I don’t think you ever get fully fixed after something like that.

We moved out of the apartment. We bought a small house in the suburbs. A ranch style. No basement.

We have a security system that rivals Fort Knox. Cameras on every corner, motion sensors on every window, glass-break detectors. I check the feed on my phone probably ten times a day. It’s a habit I’m trying to break, but it makes me feel safe.

We put up a Christmas tree this year. It was small, and we didn’t put it near the window. We put it in the center of the room, blinds drawn tight.

Yesterday, I was in the attic—no basement, remember—putting away some boxes. I found the old winter coat I was wearing that night. I had washed it three times, but I hesitated before touching it.

I reached into the pocket.

My fingers brushed against something hard and plastic.

I pulled it out. It was the key fob to my Jeep. I thought I had lost it in the snow that night when we ran. I had been using the spare ever since.

I turned it over in my hand. It was dirty, scratched.

And then I saw it.

Etched into the black plastic of the fob, scratched crudely with a knife tip or maybe a nail, were tiny letters. I had to hold it up to the light to read them.

S E E U S O O N

A chill ran down my spine, hotter and colder than any winter wind.

I stared at the scratches.

I had the coat on after we escaped. I wore it at the gas station. I wore it at the police station.

Weaver didn’t scratch this. He couldn’t have. He never got close enough to me to touch my keys after I dropped them in the snow.

Wait. I didn’t drop them. I had them in my hand when I started the car. I put them in my pocket at the police station.

My mind raced back to that night. The police station. The evidence bags. The “donated” clothes.

We sat in that waiting room for hours. My coat was hung on the back of my chair. I went to the bathroom. I left the coat there.

Who was in the station?

Police officers. Detectives. Other victims?

No.

I remembered the shift change. I remembered a janitor mopping the floor near us. I remembered a delivery guy dropping off pizzas for the late-night shift.

Or…

I thought about the timeline. Miller said Weaver stole a truck and vanished. The police didn’t find him for a year.

What if he didn’t run into the woods immediately? What if he followed us? What if he watched us from the treeline at the gas station? What if he walked right into the station lobby, blending in with the chaos of a busy night, just to touch something of mine one last time?

Or worse.

What if the man they arrested in Ohio… isn’t the only one?

The police said Weaver worked alone. They said he was a loner. But as I stared at the message scratched into my key, a thought blossomed in my mind, dark and poisonous.

Miller said Weaver was an HVAC guy. He installed the systems.

You don’t install HVAC systems in an entire development by yourself. You have a crew. You have a partner.

“Tom” was the one in the basement. Patrick Weaver.

But who was driving the car in Ohio? Was it Weaver? Or was Weaver just the guy who got caught?

I realized then that the photo sent to us in the mail didn’t have fingerprints on it. Miller told us that later. He said Weaver wore gloves.

But Weaver was sloppy. He left prints all over our basement. Why would he be careful with the mail but reckless with the crime scene?

Unless the person who sent the mail wasn’t the person in the basement.

I gripped the key fob tight.

“Honey?” Charlotte called from downstairs. “Are you okay? Dinner’s ready.”

I put the key fob in my pocket. I took a deep breath.

“I’m coming,” I yelled back.

I walked downstairs to our warm, bright, secure home. I smiled at my girlfriend. I ate dinner.

But tonight, after she falls asleep, I’m going to go outside. I’m going to check the HVAC unit on the side of our new house. I’m going to check the screws on the access panel.

Because “Tom” might be in prison. But I have a terrible feeling that his brother is still out there.

And Christmas is coming.

(End of Story)