Chapter 1
Teaser
Snowmen aren’t supposed to bleed. That’s, like, biology 101 for inanimate objects.
But the thing standing on my deck, pressed uncomfortably close to the sliding glass door, didn't get the memo. It was staring at me with hollowed-out sockets, and thick, viscous black sludge was weeping from its eyes. It wasn't oil. It wasn't dirt. I knew that texture. I knew that sheen.
It was India ink. The expensive kind. The kind I used to draw nightmares with until the nightmares started drawing themselves.
I blinked, waiting for the glitch to reset, waiting for my broken brain to buffer and delete the image. But when I opened my eyes, the thing was still there. And it wasn't just crying anymore.
It was raising its hand. And in that hand, gripped tight in a fist of packed ice, was a six-inch chef’s knife.
***
Chapter 1
My therapist calls them "intrusive visual disturbances." I call them "glitches in the matrix."
Honestly, I’d prefer a blue screen of death at this point.
It was 6:00 AM in the armpit of nowhere—otherwise known as a rental cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains. The vibe was supposed to be "rustic healing retreat," but currently, it was giving "isolated murder scene." Outside, a blizzard was raging like it had a personal vendetta against the concept of visibility. The world was just white noise. Static.
I stood in the kitchen, gripping a mug of lukewarm coffee like it was a lifeline. My hands were shaking. That’s the withdrawal for you. Or maybe it was just the cold. The heating system in this place sounded like a dying lung, wheezing and rattling without actually doing much work.
"Okay, Elias," I muttered to the empty room. "Status report."
Pulse? Racing.
Meds? Taken.
Daughter? Sleeping.
I glanced toward the hallway. Lily was passed out in the guest room, probably dreaming about unicorns or Minecraft or whatever six-year-olds doomscrolled in their heads these days. She was the only reason I was here. After Sarah… after the funeral… I needed to step up. I needed to be Dad of the Year, or at least Dad of the Week. Not the frantic, hollow-eyed artist who screamed at empty corners.
This trip was the reset button. No internet. No work. No ink. Just me, the kid, and enough snow to bury a sedan.
I took a sip of coffee. It tasted like battery acid and regret.
I walked over to the sliding glass door that led to the back deck. The glass was frosted over at the corners, creating a jagged frame around the storm outside. I rubbed a circle in the condensation with my sleeve, expecting to see the usual: trees, snowdrifts, the unending void of white.
Instead, I saw a face.
My heart did a kick-flip into my throat. I stumbled back, nearly dropping the mug. Coffee sloshed over my hand, burning my skin, but I didn't look down. I couldn't.
There was a snowman on the deck.
And when I say "on the deck," I don't mean out in the yard. I mean it was right there. Two inches from the glass. If the door hadn't been there, we would have been nose-to-carrot.
"It's not real," I whispered. My voice sounded thin, pathetic. "It’s a render error. Just a glitch."
I squeezed my eyes shut. This was standard procedure. Count to five. Reboot the system. When you open your eyes, the monster will be gone, replaced by a coat rack or a bush.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
I opened my eyes.
The snowman was still there.
It was a hulking, ugly thing. Not the three-perfect-spheres kind you see in cartoons. This looked like it had been packed together with violence. The torso was lumpy and wide, like a linebacker in body armor. The head was slightly too large, tilting to the left like a confused dog.
But the face… that was the problem.
Whoever—or whatever—made this thing hadn't used coal for eyes. They had gouged deep, angry holes into the ice. And leaking from those holes, trailing down the pristine white cheeks like mascara on a crying prom queen, was black liquid.
It hit the snow at the base of the torso, staining it. *Drip. Drip. Drip.*
My stomach twisted. I knew that black. I spent fifteen years of my life with that exact shade of darkness under my fingernails. It was waterproof, archival-quality ink. The smell of it—formaldehyde and soot—ghosted through my memory.
"Okay," I said, my breath fogging in the cold room. "Okay, very funny. Some local kids are messing with the crazy artist."
I tried to laugh, but it came out as a dry choke.
I stepped closer, my survival instinct warring with my curiosity. That’s when I saw the arm. The right branch—no, it wasn't a branch. It was a thick limb of packed snow, hard as concrete. And stuck into the end of it wasn't a broomstick or a sign.
It was a knife. A chef's knife with a black handle and a stainless steel bolster.
A Global G-2.
A chill that had nothing to do with the blizzard shot down my spine. I knew that knife. I paid a hundred and twenty bucks for that knife. It was the only thing I cooked with.
I spun around, ignoring the vertigo that swirled in my head, and ran to the kitchen island. The knife block sat there, wooden and heavy.
I counted the handles.
Paring knife. Check.
Bread knife. Check.
Utility knife. Check.
Chef's knife…
Empty. The slot was a dark, gaping mouth.
"No," I hissed. "No, no, no."
This wasn't a hallucination. Hallucinations don't steal kitchenware.
I grabbed the paring knife—a pathetic three-inch blade that wouldn't scare a squirrel, let alone a man-sized snow-beast—and whipped back around to the glass door.
The snowman hadn't moved. It was just standing there, holding my knife, crying my ink.
***
"Daddy?"
The small voice cut through the tension like a razor. I jumped, spinning around to put my back to the glass door, trying to hide the horror show behind me.
Lily stood in the hallway entrance. She was wearing her yellow puffer jacket over her pajamas, clutching a sketchbook to her chest. Her hair was a bird's nest of static. She looked so small, so breakable.
"Lily," I said, forcing a smile that felt like I was baring my teeth. "Hey, bug. Why are you up? It's super early."
"It's cold," she said. She walked past me, completely ignoring my attempt to block the view, and went straight to the glass door.
"Lily, wait—" I reached for her, but I was too slow.
She pressed her nose against the glass, right where the snowman's stomach would be. She didn't scream. She didn't recoil. She just tilted her head, mirroring the monster outside.
"He's sad," she said matter-of-factly.
My blood ran cold. "You… you see him?"
She looked at me like I was the slow kid in class. "Yeah, Daddy. He's right there. He’s crying black tears. Like in your old pictures."
Validation washed over me, followed immediately by a tidal wave of terror. If Lily saw it, it was real. Physical. A solid object existing in 3D space.
And it had a weapon.
"Lily, get away from the door," I said, my voice dropping into that serious-dad register that usually meant *stop hitting your brother* or *don't eat the glue*. "Now."
"Why?" she asked, tracing the path of the ink on the glass with her finger. "Is he playing?"
"He's not playing," I snapped. I grabbed her arm—maybe a little too hard—and pulled her behind me. "Go to the couch. Wrap yourself in the blanket. Do not move."
Lily frowned, rubbing her arm, but she sensed the shift in the air. The vibe in the room had gone from 'awkward morning' to 'imminent threat.' She shuffled to the couch, clutching her sketchbook like a shield.
I turned back to the door.
The wind howled outside, slapping a fresh sheet of snow against the glass, momentarily obscuring the figure. But when the gust cleared, the snowman was still there.
I had to check the lock. I knew I locked it last night. I was obsessive about locks. It was part of the anxiety package. But the knife was gone, which meant someone had been inside.
I stepped up to the glass. My reflection ghosted over the snowman’s face—my gaunt cheeks superimposed over its icy, bleeding eyes.
My hand hovered over the latch. It was flipped down. Locked.
"Okay," I whispered. "It's locked. We're safe. We're cool."
I looked at the snowman’s face, searching for... I don't know. A sign that this was a prank? A hidden camera?
And then, it happened.
The snowman didn't melt. It didn't crumble.
The head *snapped*.
It wasn't a smooth rotation. It was a sharp, mechanical jerk. *Crack.* The head turned two inches to the right. The black, bleeding eye sockets were no longer staring into the house in general.
They were looking directly at me.
It wasn't gravity. It wasn't the wind. That was a controlled movement.
"Nope," I said.
I slammed the secondary deadbolt home with a clang that echoed through the silent cabin.
Behind me, Lily whispered, "Daddy? Why is the snowman angry?"
I stared at the black ink pooling on the white snow, defying the laws of freezing temperatures. I tightened my grip on the tiny paring knife until my knuckles turned white.
"He's not angry, baby," I lied, watching the black tears thicken. "He's just... lost."
But I knew the truth. That thing wasn't lost. It knew exactly where it was.
And it wanted in.
