The Thawing Glass

In a house frozen by snow and silence, siblings Elaine and Casey find a shivering girl at their door.

“Do you think they remember we’re here?”

Casey’s voice was a small, thin thing in the vast cathedral of the kitchen. It didn't echo. The cold ate the sound before it could travel, swallowing it whole the way the snow outside was swallowing the world. His words hung between them, a cloud of vapor that condensed almost instantly on the frigid air, a ghost of a question. He didn't look at Elaine when he said it. His gaze was fixed on the pantry door, which stood slightly ajar, a dark, accusing slit in the pale wash of the room.

Elaine watched the puff of his breath dissolve. She was sitting at the heavy oak table, her hands wrapped around a mug that had gone cold hours ago. The ceramic was a heat-leech, pulling the last dregs of warmth from her fingertips, but she didn't let go. The pressure was a reminder of something solid in a world that felt increasingly porous. She had been tracing the looping patterns of frost on the windowpane, the intricate ferns of ice that had bloomed overnight, sealing them in. Each one was a tiny, perfect universe of cold. The world outside was just a suggestion of blue-white light beyond the crystalline formations.

“They know where we are, Casey,” she said. Her own voice was lower, rougher than she intended. It scraped her throat. She hadn't used it much in the last day. Or was it two days? The time had begun to blur, marked only by the shifting quality of the light through the ice-caked glass and the growing, gnawing emptiness in her stomach.

He finally turned to look at her, his face pale in the gloom. He was younger by two years, but in the last few days, a new, sharp tension had carved unfamiliar angles into his cheeks. The faint dusting of freckles across his nose stood out like flecks of rust. “Knowing where we are and remembering we’re here are different things.” He nudged the pantry door with his toe, a soft thud that was startlingly loud in the quiet. “They wouldn’t have left it like this if they remembered.”

Elaine didn’t have an answer for that. She had been trying not to think about it, trying to build a wall of mundane thoughts against the rising tide of that exact question. *They got held up. The storm is worse than the forecast said. The lines are down.* She had recited these platitudes to herself, a rosary of rationalizations. But the pantry door, gaping like a mouth in a silent scream, refuted them all.

She forced herself to stand. Her joints protested with a series of small, stiff cracks. The cold had worked its way deep into her bones. She was wearing three layers—a thermal, a flannel shirt of her dad’s, and a thick wool sweater—but it wasn’t enough. The house was losing its fight against the winter. The furnace had sputtered out yesterday morning with a sigh of finality, and since then, the cold had been a physical presence, an invisible guest claiming every room, inch by inch. They had sealed off the upstairs, stuffing towels under the doors, but the chill seeped through the floorboards, a relentless, creeping tide.

She walked over to the pantry, her socked feet making no sound on the icy linoleum. Casey stepped aside, watching her with an unnerving stillness. She pulled the door open. The familiar, comforting scent of dried herbs and grains was gone, replaced by the same sterile cold that filled the rest of the house. The shelves, usually a chaotic jumble of cans and boxes, were a study in emptiness. A single bag of flour, mostly empty, slumped against the back wall. A box of salt. A few hardened lumps of brown sugar in a glass jar. And there, on the middle shelf, sitting in perfect, solitary isolation, was the can.

Tomato soup. The label was bright, garish red, a stark slash of color in the monochrome landscape of their world. It seemed obscene, somehow. Too cheerful. A relic from another time, a time of warmth and stocked shelves and the low hum of a working furnace. A time when their parents’ cars were in the driveway.

Elaine reached for it, her fingers brushing against the cold metal. It was their last real thing. Not a component, not an ingredient that required other things they no longer had, but a complete meal. A small, inadequate, perfect meal for two. She held it in her hands. It felt heavy, like a stone. A gravestone for hope.

“We should wait,” Casey said, his voice barely a whisper. “Just a little longer. What if they get back tonight?”

Elaine turned the can over in her hands. The metal was so cold it burned. “And what if they don’t?” she countered, her voice just as quiet. The question hung between them, more solid than his breath this time. It was the question they had been avoiding for forty-eight hours, the beast that lurked in the echoing hallways and stared back from the frosted windows.

She didn't want to be the one to say it. She was the older sister. She was supposed to be the one with the answers, the one who could make things okay. But all her reassurances had worn thin, like the knees of old jeans. She could see in Casey’s eyes that he no longer believed them anyway. He was just pretending for her benefit. Or maybe she was pretending for his. Their whole existence had become a fragile, unspoken agreement to pretend.

She placed the can on the counter with a decisive click that broke the spell. “We eat,” she said. “We can’t think if we’re hungry.” It was a lie. Hunger was all she could think about. It was a dull, constant ache that sharpened every other sensation: the biting cold, the oppressive silence, the weight of the endless, swirling snow outside.

Before Casey could argue, a sound cut through the stillness. It was faint at first, a soft, rhythmic thudding, so out of place that Elaine thought she had imagined it. A branch, maybe, weighed down with snow, knocking against the side of the house.

Casey’s head snapped up, his eyes wide. “Did you hear that?”

Elaine held her breath, straining to listen past the whisper of the wind in the chimney. There it was again. *Thump. Thump. Thump.* It wasn't a branch. It was methodical. Human. It was coming from the front door.

They stared at each other. The same thought, the same impossible, desperate hope, flared in both their faces. *Them.*

Casey moved first, a sudden explosion of motion, stumbling over a kitchen chair in his haste. He scrambled for the hallway, his face transformed, the pinched lines of anxiety erased by a brilliant, fragile joy. “Mom? Dad?”

Elaine’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, painful rhythm. She didn't move. A cold dread, colder than the air in the room, coiled in her gut. It was too soon. The roads were impassable; the news had said so before the TV went dead. No one was getting through this. The sound was wrong, too. Not the confident, key-in-the-lock sound of her parents returning home. It was a weak, desperate sound. A pleading sound.

“Casey, wait!” she called out, her voice cracking. But he was already gone, his footsteps echoing down the hall. She grabbed the heaviest thing she could find on the counter—a cast-iron skillet, cold and dense—and followed him, her bare feet numb against the polished wood floors. The hallway was a tunnel of shadows, the light from the windows on either side of the front door choked by thick layers of ice, casting a diffuse, underwater glow.

Casey was at the door, his hands fumbling with the deadbolt. “It’s stuck,” he grunted, pulling at it with all his might. The knocking came again, louder this time, more insistent. *Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.* It sounded like a fist wrapped in cloth, muffled and heavy.

“Stop,” Elaine said, her voice sharp. She reached him, grabbing his arm. The skillet felt absurdly heavy in her other hand. “Who is it?”

“It’s them! Who else could it be?” he insisted, his eyes still shining with that terrifying, unfounded hope. He twisted away from her, wrenching at the frozen lock. Through the frosted glass of the sidelight, she could see a shape. A dark, wavering silhouette, indistinct and featureless against the blinding white of the snow.

“It’s not them,” she whispered, the certainty of it a block of ice in her chest. “Their car isn’t there. We would have heard it.” The silence of the driveway was as profound as the silence in the house.

The lock gave way with a loud, grating crack that seemed to tear the silence in two. Casey stumbled back as the heavy door, pushed by the wind, swung inward with a mournful groan. A blast of arctic air and a flurry of fine, crystalline snow rushed into the hall, swirling around their ankles. And in the doorway, framed by a landscape of impossible, unending white, stood a girl.

She was their age, maybe. It was hard to tell. She was coated in a thick layer of snow, as if she’d been rolled in it. It clung to her dark hair, her eyelashes, the thin fabric of her jacket, which was completely inadequate for the weather. Her face was a shocking, waxy blue, her lips nearly black. She didn’t look at them. Her eyes, a pale, washed-out gray, were fixed on something in the middle distance of the hall, something only she could see. She swayed on her feet, a fragile column of ice and misery.

For a long moment, nobody moved. The wind howled through the open door, a hungry, living thing. Casey stared, the hope on his face collapsing into bewilderment and fear. Elaine tightened her grip on the skillet, every muscle in her body screaming at her to slam the door, to lock it, to pretend this wasn't happening.

Then the girl took a single, shuffling step forward, and collapsed.

She didn't fall so much as fold, crumpling onto the welcome mat in a silent heap of snow and damp cloth. Casey yelped, jumping back as if she were on fire. Elaine reacted without thinking. The survival instinct that had told her to arm herself and fear the stranger was suddenly overwhelmed by a different, more powerful impulse. She dropped the skillet—it clanged against the floorboards with a deafening crash—and rushed forward, kneeling beside the crumpled figure.

“Hey,” she said, her voice soft. “Hey, are you okay?” She reached out and touched the girl's shoulder. The cold that radiated through the thin jacket was shocking, a dead, absolute cold that felt less like chilled flesh and more like frozen stone. Snow flaked away under her touch. The girl didn’t respond. A faint, shuddering breath escaped her blue lips, misting in the air.

“Elaine, what are you doing?” Casey’s voice was high with panic. “Close the door! Who is she?”

“Help me,” Elaine snapped, not looking at him. “We can’t just leave her here.” She hooked her arms under the girl's shoulders, trying to lift her. She was surprisingly light, a bird-boned fragility beneath the wet layers. A wave of dizziness washed over Elaine from the exertion and the hunger.

Casey hesitated for another second, his face a mask of indecision. The wind tore at the curtains in the living room, whipping them into a frenzy. Finally, he seemed to make a choice. He kicked the door shut, the sound booming through the house, and then knelt on the other side of the girl. “Grab her legs.”

Together, they managed to lift her. It was an awkward, clumsy process. She was a dead weight, her head lolling back, strands of dark, wet hair sticking to her frozen cheeks. They carried her out of the hallway, leaving a trail of melting snow and displaced bits of the outside world on the polished floor. They took her into the living room, the coldest room in the house, but the one with the thickest rug and the sofa. They laid her down on the sofa, her limbs arranging themselves at unnatural angles.

Elaine stood back, breathing heavily, her heart pounding. The girl lay there, utterly still, a piece of the storm brought inside. Her skin had a terrifying, translucent quality. Elaine could see the faint blue network of veins beneath the surface of her temples. Her clothes—a thin hoodie, worn jeans, and canvas sneakers—were soaked through and already beginning to stiffen as they froze in the frigid air.

“We have to get these clothes off her,” Elaine said, the words feeling strange and clinical in her mouth. “She’ll freeze to death.”

Casey looked horrified. “I’m not—I’m not touching her.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Elaine said, though her own hands were trembling. “Go get the blankets from the chest. The wool ones. And a towel. And that.” She pointed to the kitchen. “Bring the soup.”

For once, Casey didn’t argue. He fled, his footsteps quick and loud. Elaine turned back to the girl. She looked so young, so incredibly vulnerable. There was no purse, no phone, no sign of where she had come from. She was just… here. A mystery delivered by the storm. Elaine gently took hold of the zipper on the girl’s hoodie. The metal tab was frozen solid. She had to wrap the end of her sweater around her fingers to get a grip, her own body heat slowly, painfully thawing it enough to pull. As she worked, she noticed a small, dark mole just below the girl’s left eye, shaped almost like a teardrop.

She managed to get the wet hoodie off, then the soaked t-shirt underneath. The girl's skin was icy to the touch, mottled with patches of red and white. Elaine averted her eyes, working quickly, a strange sense of propriety warring with the urgent necessity of the task. She wrapped the girl in the towel Casey brought back, rubbing her limbs briskly, trying to create some friction, some semblance of warmth. The girl moaned, a low, animal sound, and her eyelids fluttered.

“She’s waking up,” Casey said, his voice hushed. He stood a few feet away, clutching a stack of heavy wool blankets, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else in the universe. In his other hand, he held the can of tomato soup.

Elaine took the blankets and began to swaddle the girl, wrapping her tightly, layer upon layer, until she was a cocoon of gray and plaid wool. Only her face, still alarmingly pale, was visible. Her breathing was shallow, but it was there. A small, persistent flag of life. Her eyelashes, no longer caked with snow, were long and dark against her skin.

“Go heat that up,” Elaine ordered, her voice more steady now that she had a purpose. “Not too hot. Just warm.”

Casey nodded and retreated to the kitchen. Elaine could hear the scrape of the can opener, the clatter of a pot on the gas stove. They had a few propane canisters for emergencies. This, she supposed, qualified. She sat on the edge of the sofa, watching the girl’s face. The house was silent again, save for the hiss of the stove and the eternal moan of the wind. The intrusion was complete. The outside had come in. And now, the last of their food was being prepared for a stranger.

The girl’s eyes slowly opened. They weren’t pale gray, as Elaine had first thought. They were a deep, startling green, the color of moss in a forest after it rains. They were cloudy with confusion, unfocused. She stared up at the ceiling, at the ornate plasterwork that their mother had always loved.

“Where…” Her voice was a dry, rasping whisper, barely audible. Her lips were cracked and pale, no longer blue.

“You’re safe,” Elaine said, leaning closer. “You were outside. In the snow. Do you remember?”

The girl’s eyes shifted, finding Elaine’s face. There was no recognition in them, just a vast, empty landscape of disorientation. She shook her head, a tiny, slow movement against the cushions. “Cold,” she whispered.

“I know. We’re trying to warm you up.”

Casey returned, holding a steaming mug in both hands, using a dish towel to protect them from the heat. The rich, savory smell of the tomato soup filled the air, and Elaine’s stomach contracted with a sharp, painful pang of hunger. It smelled like salvation. It smelled like everything they didn’t have.

He stopped a safe distance from the sofa, holding the mug out to Elaine. “Here.”

Elaine took it. The warmth seeped into her frozen hands, a blissful, shocking sensation. She had to fight the primal urge to lift it to her own lips. Instead, she turned back to the girl. “Can you sit up?”

Slowly, with Elaine’s help, the girl managed to push herself into a half-sitting position, propped up against the arm of the sofa. She was still shivering, tremors running through her body in violent waves, but some of the waxiness had left her skin. Elaine held the mug to her lips. “Small sips,” she instructed.

The girl obeyed, her hands still wrapped uselessly in the blankets. She drank, a small, desperate sound. A little bit of color began to creep back into her cheeks. She drank half the mug before pulling away, her breathing a little deeper. Her eyes seemed clearer now. She looked from Elaine to Casey, who was still hovering by the doorway, and then around the room.

A flicker of something passed through her expression. It wasn’t confusion anymore. It was something else, something Elaine couldn’t quite name. It looked unnervingly like recognition.

“Thank you,” the girl whispered, her gaze settling back on Elaine. Her voice was still weak, but it was gaining strength. “My name is Ivy.”

“I’m Elaine. That’s my brother, Casey.”

Ivy gave Casey a small, hesitant smile. He just stared back, his expression unreadable. Ivy’s gaze drifted away again, sweeping across the living room—the fireplace with its cold ashes, the tall bookshelves filled with their father’s history books, the baby grand piano in the corner that no one had played in years.

“It’s a nice house,” Ivy said softly. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact, spoken with a strange, quiet familiarity, as if she were commenting on a place she had been to before.

A prickle of unease traced its way up Elaine’s spine. “Where did you come from, Ivy? How did you get here?”

Ivy’s eyes met hers again. The mossy green was deep, and for a second, Elaine felt like she was looking into a well. “I was lost,” Ivy said simply. “The snow… it’s everywhere. I saw the light.”

Elaine frowned. “What light? The power’s out.”

Ivy’s smile was faint. “There was a light in the window.” She didn’t elaborate. She just huddled deeper into the blankets and closed her eyes, as if the conversation had exhausted her. Within a minute, her breathing evened out into the slow, steady rhythm of sleep.

Elaine stood up and walked over to Casey. He was staring at the empty mug in her hand, his jaw tight. “She drank it all,” he said, his voice flat.

“She needed it more,” Elaine replied, though the words tasted like ash in her mouth. Her own hunger was a physical weight, pressing down on her.

“And what do we eat?” he demanded, his voice rising. “What do we eat tomorrow, Elaine? Or the day after that? Did you think about that before you decided to play rescuer?”

“What was I supposed to do, Casey? Let her die on our doorstep?”

“Maybe! People don’t just appear out of thin air in the middle of a blizzard! Where are her parents? Where’s her car? Why is she dressed for spring? It’s not right.” He gestured wildly at the sleeping girl on the sofa. “She’s not right.”

“She was freezing to death,” Elaine said, her voice dropping to a fierce whisper. “Nothing else matters.”

But even as she said it, she knew he was right. None of it made sense. The light Ivy claimed to have seen. The way she looked at the room. It was all wrong. She felt a growing sense of dread, a feeling that by opening the door to a person in need, they had inadvertently let something else in, too. Something as cold and as relentless as the storm outside.

She walked back to the kitchen, the empty mug still in her hand. The can opener lay on the counter next to the discarded lid of the soup can. She rinsed the mug, the freezing water stinging her skin. When she turned off the tap, the silence that descended was different. It was no longer empty. It was a listening silence. The house was aware, holding its breath. There were three of them now.

She went back to the pantry and stared at the desolate shelves. Flour and salt. They could make a crude, tasteless paste. It would keep them alive. For a little while. As she stood there, contemplating the grim reality of their situation, she felt a sudden, sharp need for something familiar, something that belonged to her parents. A talisman against the encroaching strangeness.

She left the kitchen and walked down the hall, past the living room where Ivy slept, a woolen chrysalis on their sofa. She headed for her parents’ bedroom at the end of the hall. The door was closed. It was always closed. Her father was a private man. He kept his study in there, and they were only allowed in when invited. After they’d left on their trip—what was supposed to have been a weekend getaway to a quaint bed and breakfast upstate—the door had remained shut, a silent monument to their absence.

There was a small, ornate brass hook on the wall next to the doorframe. The spare key had hung there for as long as Elaine could remember. Her mother had put it there, laughing, saying it was in case their father ever locked himself out of his own life. Elaine would sometimes run her fingers over it as she passed, the cool, ridged metal a familiar touchstone.

She reached for it now, needing that small, solid piece of normalcy. Her fingers met the cold, flocked wallpaper. She frowned, patting the area again, her heart beginning to beat a little faster. Nothing. She leaned closer. The hook was there, a glint of dull brass in the gloom. But it was empty.

Beneath the hook, on the pale wallpaper, was a faint, clean rectangle, a ghost of the key that had shielded that small patch from years of accumulated dust. The key was gone.

Elaine stared at the empty hook. It couldn't be. No one ever touched that key. It was part of the house, as permanent as the floorboards. She and Casey hadn't been down this end of the hall. They had been huddled in the kitchen for warmth, for the illusion of life that the stove provided. They hadn’t touched it.

Her blood ran cold. She slowly turned and looked back down the long, shadowed hallway toward the living room. From this angle, she could just see a sliver of the sofa, a mound of gray wool. It was impossible. Ivy hadn’t been able to walk. She hadn’t left the sofa since they’d placed her there.

It had to have been missing before. Maybe her mother took it with her. Maybe her father had finally put it somewhere more secure. There were a hundred logical explanations. But logic felt like a foreign language in the frozen, silent house. All she felt was a deep, instinctual wrongness, a sense of violation. A lock without a key. A door that could not be opened. Another barrier between her and her parents.

She backed away from the door, her hand still hovering over the empty hook. She felt watched. The feeling was so intense, so palpable, that she spun around, expecting to see someone standing in the shadows behind her. But there was nothing. Just the long, empty hall, the dust motes dancing in the faint light from the frosted windows, and the oppressive, listening silence.

A low sound drifted from the living room, pulling her from her paralysis. It was a soft, melodic sound. A humming. It was tuneless at first, just a gentle, soothing drone. But then, it began to coalesce into a melody. A simple, looping tune, familiar and strange at the same time.

Elaine walked slowly, quietly, back toward the living room, her feet making no noise on the thick runner that covered the hallway floor. She stopped in the doorway, hidden in the shadows, and looked at the girl on the sofa. Ivy was still asleep, or seemed to be. Her eyes were closed, her face relaxed in slumber. But her lips were slightly parted, and from them issued the soft, clear humming.

Elaine listened, her body rigid. She knew this tune. It wasn't from the radio. It wasn't from a movie. It was a lullaby. A strange, slightly off-key little song that her mother had made up when they were children. She used to hum it while she worked in her garden, or while she tucked them into bed at night. It was a secret melody, a piece of their family’s private language. No one else knew it. No one.

But Ivy knew it. She hummed it with a perfect, absentminded familiarity, as if she had been humming it her entire life. The sound filled the cold air, a thread of impossible memory weaving itself into the fabric of their surreal present. It was a gentle, loving sound. And it was the most terrifying thing Elaine had ever heard.

She backed away from the doorway, her breath catching in her throat. She retreated down the hall until her back hit the cold wall beside the locked bedroom door. She slid down to the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees, trying to make herself smaller. The humming continued, a sweet, horrifying counterpoint to the howling of the wind. Casey was right. The girl on the sofa was not right. She was a key gone from its hook. She was a song that didn't belong to her. She was a piece of the outside, of the storm, that had gotten in, and Elaine had a sudden, chilling certainty that she was not there by accident.

The house no longer felt empty. It felt occupied. And for the first time since her parents had been late, Elaine was afraid of something other than being alone.

Hours passed. The blue-white light of day began to fade, turning to a deep, bruised purple. The humming from the living room had long since stopped, replaced by the soft, rhythmic sound of breathing. Ivy slept on. Casey had retreated to his own room, closing the door firmly behind him, a retreat into his own small, defensible space. Elaine had not moved from her spot on the floor in the hallway. The cold from the polished wood had seeped through her jeans, numbing her completely. She felt detached, a spectator to the slow, unfolding horror of her own life.

Eventually, the gnawing hunger forced her to her feet. She moved like an automaton, her limbs stiff and uncooperative. She went to the kitchen, avoiding looking into the living room as she passed. In the pantry, she found the flour. She scooped a cupful into a bowl, added a pinch of salt, and then let the tap run, waiting for the water to lose its initial, shocking cold. She mixed it all together with her hands, the resulting paste a sticky, unappetizing gray sludge. She didn't have the energy to try and cook it. She just ate a small piece of it raw, the gritty, salty taste coating her tongue. It was sustenance, nothing more. She made a second, larger lump and left it on the counter for Casey, a silent offering.

She couldn't stay in the kitchen. It was too open, too full of the ghost-smell of tomato soup. She needed to see the sky, or what passed for it. She wandered to the large bay window in the dining room, a room they rarely used. It felt even colder here, the air completely still, undisturbed. The window was a masterpiece of frost, thicker here than anywhere else in the house. The ice was opaque, a solid sheet of white, etched with bizarre, alien patterns.

She pressed her forehead against the glass. The cold was a shock, a sharp, clean pain that cut through the fog in her mind. She stayed there, letting the cold sink into her, a strange form of penance. Her breath created a small, clear circle on the pane, a temporary window into the frozen world. She peered through it. The snow was still falling, thick and heavy, a relentless white curtain that erased the horizon, the trees, the road. The world she knew was gone, buried under a soft, suffocating blanket. There was nothing out there. Nothing at all.

She pulled back, and the small circle of clear glass immediately began to fog over, the frost creeping back in from the edges to reclaim it. She watched her own reflection appear in the misted surface, a pale, ghostly image of her face. Her hair was a mess, dark smudges of exhaustion lay under her eyes. She looked like a stranger.

She stared at her reflection, at the frightened girl trapped in the glass. The house was silent. The wind had died down for a moment, and in the sudden, profound stillness, the only sound was the frantic beating of her own heart. She watched the distorted image of her face, the features wavering as the last of the mist turned to ice. And then, for a single, heart-stopping moment, the reflection changed.

It wasn’t her face anymore. The exhausted, terrified eyes were gone. In their place were eyes the color of moss, deep and serene. The pale, thin lips curved into a gentle, knowing smile. The dark mole, shaped like a teardrop, was there, just below the left eye. It was Ivy’s face, clear as day, smiling back at her from inside the glass, from inside her own reflection.

Elaine gasped, stumbling backward, her hand flying to her mouth. She blinked, her heart seizing in her chest. She looked again. It was just her. Only her. A pale, wide-eyed girl staring back at her from the frosted pane, her expression one of pure terror. The other face was gone, if it had ever been there at all.

But the image was burned into her mind. The serene smile. The knowing eyes. She looked from the window to the darkened doorway of the living room, and a chilling, absolute certainty settled in her bones, a cold more profound than any winter storm. They hadn't saved a victim from the snow. They had invited the storm itself inside. And in its quiet, smiling reflection, Elaine felt herself beginning to disappear.