Chapter 2 - Echoes in the Cold Fog
The icy grip around my ankle felt less like human fingers and more like a vise forged from winter steel. A surge of pure adrenaline punched through my chest, forcing a harsh gasp from my lungs as I instinctively kicked back. My boot collided with something dense yet yielding, and the cold hand released me with a low, wet hiss that dissolved almost instantly into the swirling fog.
I stumbled forward, nearly falling onto the vibrating cardboard box. The two young girls—twins, I could now see through the haze, with identical messy pigtails and matching faded floral nightgowns—shrieked in terror and shrank back against the front bumper of my idling ambulance.
"Please!" the girl on the left cried out, her voice cracking with sheer exhaustion. "Don't look back at her! If you look at her, she knows you see her!"
My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. "Who is she? Who grabbed me?" I demanded, my flashlight beam swinging wildly across the impenetrable white mist. There was no one there. Just the empty, cracked asphalt of Route 9 and the endless pine trees lining the dark forest edge.
Rrrrriiiip.
The sound was sharp and violent. The thick brown packing tape down the center of the box snapped apart another inch. The cardboard creaked open slightly, and a puff of that sickly-sweet, metallic odor billowed out into the cold night air. It smelled like copper, crushed lilies, and ancient dust.
"She's pushing!" the second girl sobbed, throwing her tiny, barefoot body onto the top of the box. Her sister immediately joined her, both of them using every ounce of their fragile weight to press the cardboard flaps back together. "Help us! You have a big truck—help us lock her away!"
I stood paralyzed for a fraction of a second, the rational EMT side of my brain screaming that this was impossible, that a human couldn't fit in a box that size, that this was some horrific prank or a nightmare brought on by a twenty-four-hour shift. But then the box jolted. Something massive and heavy smashed against the inside walls from within, lifting the girls an inch off the ground.
"Get back!" I yelled, my training finally overriding my panic.
I rushed forward, grabbing the two trembling girls by their thin waists and hauling them away from the box. They kicked and wailed, their tears smearing the grime on their pale cheeks.
"No! No! She'll get out!" the girls screamed in unison.
I dragged them toward the side door of the ambulance, slammed the latch open, and hoisted both of them into the patient compartment. "Stay here! Do not come out!" I commanded, slamming the door shut and locking it from the outside.
I turned back to the road, shining my heavy maglite at the center of the asphalt.
The box was no longer just scratching. It was shuddering violently, side to side, as if whatever was inside was writhing in agony or rage. The black marker words—DO NOT OPEN. SHE IS STILL INSIDE.—were now distorted, split down the middle by the ripping tape.
I stepped closer, my hand hovering over the heavy crowbar I had pulled from the ambulance's side tool compartment. "I'm opening this," I muttered under my breath, mostly to convince myself I had the courage. "If there's a child or a person in there, I have to help."
"Don't..." a voice murmured.
It didn't come from the box. It came from the ambulance cab.
I spun around. The radio, which had been dead static seconds ago, was now humming with a clear, calm, but eerie female voice.
"Unit 14... turn around, Arthur. Leave the box. Bring the girls to the chapel. Do not look inside. If you open it, you take her place."
My name is Arthur. But I hadn't given my name to dispatch when I logged onto the shift.
"Who is this?" I yelled into the foggy darkness, holding the crowbar tight enough to turn my knuckles white. "Is this a joke?"
The radio crackled again. "3:12 a.m. Time is running out, Arthur. Look at the tape."
I slowly turned my eyes back to the road.
The box had stopped moving. The tear in the tape was wider now—about three inches across. Through the gap, in the beam of my flashlight, I saw something moving.
It wasn't a monster. It wasn't a corpse.
It was an eye.
A wide, bright blue, impossibly human eye staring directly at me through the darkness of the box. And as I stared at it, a single tear rolled out from under the eyelid, trailing down past a pale, bloodless cheek visible through the cardboard slit.
Then, a faint, delicate whisper drifted out from the tear in the tape:
"Arthur... please. They trapped me. Don't let them take me back."
The voice sounded identical to the two girls sitting locked inside my ambulance.
My breath caught in my throat. I lowered the crowbar an inch. My mind spun in absolute chaos. Were the girls the victims... or were they the wardens? Was the thing in the box a threat... or a scared little girl left to die in the cold?
Before I could make a decision, a heavy thud sounded from the driver's side window of my ambulance.
May you like
I whipped around. Standing right beside the driver's door, illuminated by the red strobe of the emergency lights, was a tall, shrouded figure wearing a dark coat drenched in river water. Her face was completely obscured by a heavy black veil, but her long, gaunt fingers were pressed flat against the glass.
And behind her, stepping out of the fog on both sides of the road, were dozens of small, shadowed shapes—all standing silently, watching me, waiting to see what I would do with the box.
