❄️ December 18, 2025

They never should have taken the mountain road.

Five strangers, all trying to outrun something—a ruined marriage, a prison term, a failing business, a bad decision, or just themselves—wound up together in a rust-scratched airport shuttle bus bound for nowhere in particular. The driver, a quiet man with a thousand-yard stare and a thermos that steamed like a locomotive, said nothing when the storm warnings came over the radio.

“Just a little snow,” someone scoffed.

By nightfall, the snow was so thick it seemed the world was being buried alive. The shuttle stalled halfway through Coldwater Pass—yes, that Coldwater Pass—and the engine sputtered into silence. No signal. No help. Just white.

The wind moaned like something grieving.

At 11:17 PM, they saw the first one.

It looked like a person, at first—except its face was black with frostbite and rimmed with hoarfrost. Its teeth, exposed in a rictus grin, glinted with ice. The eyes weren’t human anymore. Just glassy shards of something long dead and very cold.

It watched from the tree line.

Then it moved.

They barricaded the shuttle doors. They burned what they could: a seat cushion, a Bible, a leather satchel. Anything to keep the flame going. But the cold had teeth. It chewed at their fingers, their ears, their thoughts.

One by one, they started hearing things.

Their names, whispered just outside the windows. The voice of a loved one long dead. The smell of old perfume. Laughter in the snow.

And then the knocking started.

Three soft taps. Then silence. Then five. Then ten.

It never came from the same place twice.

One man ran. He didn’t make it to the trees.

When they found what was left of him—because of course someone eventually came, a snowplow weeks later—they found a body half-covered in snow, frozen in mid-crawl.

His eyes had shattered.

His mouth was smiling.

Local legend says the Frostbitten were once travelers who died in the snow and were too angry to lie still. Every winter, they come for company. They don’t want warmth.

They want you to join them.

And the frost knows how to make you listen.

They say if you’re driving through the Pass and the storm comes down fast, and your engine coughs like it’s catching its death, and the wind starts whispering names you haven’t heard in years…

You’d better start burning something quick.

Before the knocking starts.