The Ghost in the Heater's Hum

The rink’s ancient heater was running full blast again, a sign someone was secretly living in our locker room.

The cold in Northwood isn't just a temperature; it's a presence. It seeps through the weather-stripping of your car door, it finds the one loose thread in your gloves, it makes the simple act of breathing a conscious effort. Our rink, the Northwood Municipal, is the heart of that cold. It's a fifty-year-old concrete box that was probably state-of-the-art during the Cold War, a place where the chill is supposed to be a constant, a given. You're supposed to feel it on your cheeks the second you walk through the door. You're supposed to see your breath. But not tonight.

Tonight, the air was thick. Heavy. It hit me like a physical thing the moment I shoved open the groaning metal door. It was warm. Not comfortable-warm, like my house after Mom has the oven on all day, but a stuffy, oppressive heat that smelled of scorched dust and overworked machinery. The source was obvious: the ancient, finned heater unit bolted to the wall above the entrance to the locker room was rattling like a box of bolts, a shimmering wave of heat distorting the air around it. It was a sound I hadn't heard in years. Coach Tanner always said the thing used enough electricity to power a small country, and with the school board watching every dime we spent, turning it on was basically treason.

I stood there for a long moment, my gear bag slung over my shoulder, its weight a familiar anchor. My truck was the only vehicle in the lot besides Coach’s rusty Suburban. I was always the first one here. Captain’s prerogative, or maybe just captain’s anxiety. I liked the quiet before the chaos, the empty ice waiting under the flat, industrial lights. But this warmth, this noise… it was wrong. It was an intrusion.

This was the third time in two weeks. The first time, I’d assumed one of the freshmen, probably Miller, had messed with it as a prank. I’d shut it off, griped at them before practice, and thought nothing of it. The second time, last Friday, a knot of unease had formed in my gut. Pranks didn't usually repeat with such precision. Now, seeing it again, feeling that dry, suffocating heat on my face, I knew this wasn't a joke.

My skates, laced together and slung over my other shoulder, banged against the doorframe as I walked into the locker room. Our room. The Wolves’ den. It was a symphony of concrete and chipped paint. The floor was gray, scarred with a million skate blade cuts. The benches were splintered wood, carved with the initials and numbers of players who came long before me. My stall was the one right by the door to the showers, the one with the hook that was bent at a weird angle so your jersey always slid off. It was home. But lately, it felt… occupied. Haunted.

I dropped my bag on the bench with a heavy thud that echoed in the empty room. The heater’s roar was even louder in here. I didn't turn on the main lights. The dim glow from the safety lights in the hallway was enough. I wasn’t ready for the full, buzzing glare. I needed the shadows. I walked the length of the room, my boots silent on the rubber mats that covered the concrete path to the ice. I ran my hand along the row of metal lockers, their doors dented and covered in peeling wolf-head decals. Everything seemed normal. Miller’s locker was, as usual, hanging slightly ajar, a sock threatening to escape. Sanderson had left his shin guards out again, smelling like a dead animal. Business as usual.

Except for the heat. And the feeling. The feeling of a space being used when it shouldn't be. I stopped at the far end of the room, near the old equipment closet that nobody used anymore. It was darker back here, a pocket of shadow that the hallway light couldn't quite reach. And that's where I saw it.

It was subtle. Behind the last bench, tucked into the corner, was a pile of our old practice jerseys—the faded, ripped ones we used for scrimmages. They weren't just tossed there. They were arranged. Folded, layered. A makeshift mattress. On top of them was a dark blue parka, one I didn't recognize, rolled up tightly to form a pillow. It was a bed. A pathetic, desperate little nest. The first time I'd found it, I’d just assumed the equipment manager had piled the old jerseys there to be thrown out. The second time, I’d noticed the parka and a cold dread, entirely separate from the rink's usual chill, had settled over me. I’d carefully put everything back in the lost-and-found bin, my hands feeling clumsy and intrusive. I’d told myself it was just some weird clutter.

But seeing it again, identical to last time, confirmed it. Someone was sleeping here. Someone was breaking into our rink, our locker room, turning on the forbidden heater, and curling up behind the benches to escape the Northwood winter. My first instinct was anger. A hot, territorial flash. This was our sanctuary. The one place where the mess of high school—the grades, the gossip, the uncertain future of our town—was supposed to fall away, leaving only the ice. To have it violated by some squatter… it felt personal. Who had the nerve?

I took a step closer. The air was thick with the smell of damp wool and… something else. Not the usual locker room funk of sweat and gear, but the faint, close scent of a person. It was the smell of unwashed hair and stale sleep. I knelt, my knee cracking in the silence, and reached out a hand, hesitating just before I touched the parka. The fabric was cheap nylon, worn smooth in places. It was cold now, but I could almost feel the phantom warmth of a body. I thought about the school board meeting last month. Mr. Henderson, with his sad eyes and his carefully prepared spreadsheets, laying it all out. The rink’s operating costs. The price of insurance. The bus fees. The numbers were stacked against us. “One more season in the red,” he’d said, his voice flat, “and the program is gone.”

Gone. Not just for us, the seniors who would be graduating anyway, but for the freshmen, the peewees, for a town that didn't have much else to rally around besides a perpetually losing high school hockey team. We all knew what he was saying. We needed to win. We needed to sell tickets. We needed to make it to playoffs to justify our existence. The weight of that ultimatum had been pressing down on all of us, on me especially. Being captain this year wasn’t about wearing the ‘C’; it was about being the guy who had to keep the ship from sinking. And for the first half of the season, we were taking on water fast.

Then Marc showed up.

His family moved to town a month ago. Nobody knew from where. He just appeared in chemistry class one day, quiet and intense, with dark eyes that seemed to see right through you. When he tried out for the team, it was like watching something from a different planet. The rest of us were Northwood kids. We learned to skate on frozen ponds, our dads teaching us how to hold a stick. We were scrappy, we worked hard, but we were clumsy. We were built from spare parts. Marc… he was engineered. His skating was effortless, a smooth, powerful glide that seemed to generate speed out of nowhere. His shot was a nightmare for goalies. He could stickhandle in a phone booth. He was, without a doubt, the most gifted player to ever wear a Wolves jersey.

He was the answer to our prayers. He was our miracle. And I couldn't stand him.

It wasn’t jealousy. Not exactly. I was glad he was here, for the team’s sake. We’d won our last two games because of him. He’d scored five of our seven goals. The guys looked at him with awe. Coach Tanner, a man whose emotional range usually ran from ‘gruff’ to ‘disappointed,’ practically vibrated with something that looked suspiciously like hope whenever Marc touched the puck. But there was a distance to him, a wall I couldn't get past. He was on the team, but he wasn’t *of* the team. He showed up a minute before practice started, already half-dressed. He left the second it was over, showering in record time, his head down, never joining in the post-practice banter. He played like an individual, a brilliant one, but an individual nonetheless. He’d take the puck coast-to-coast, dangling through three defenders to score, instead of making the simple pass to an open winger. It worked, so nobody complained. But I saw it. I felt it. Hockey is a team game. It’s about trust, about knowing where your linemate is going to be without even looking. It’s about the pass. With Marc, there was no trust. There was only the puck on his stick.

I stood up, backing away from the makeshift bed. My anger had cooled, replaced by a thick, complicated feeling I couldn't name. Pity? Frustration? The two things were tangled together. I walked over to the humming heater and, with a loud clank, flipped the heavy-duty switch to OFF. The roaring stopped, and the sudden silence of the rink rushed in to fill the space. All I could hear now was the low hum of the ice plant and the frantic beat of my own heart. Who was this person? This ghost who needed our heat, our old jerseys? Were they dangerous? Were they just some kid who’d run away from home? My mind raced through the possibilities, each one more unsettling than the last. But no matter which scenario I imagined, one thought kept circling back, persistent and unwelcome. It was the image of Marc. His quiet intensity. His isolation. The way he never talked about where he lived or what his parents did. The way he always looked hungry.

No. It couldn’t be. It was too much. It was too novelistic, too dramatic for a place like Northwood. I was just letting my imagination run away with me because I couldn’t figure the guy out. I shook my head, trying to clear it. I had a practice to get ready for. I had a team to lead. I grabbed the parka and the jerseys, my movements stiff and angry again, and shoved them deep into the bottom of the lost-and-found bin. Out of sight, out of mind. But even as I did it, I knew it was a lie. This thing, this secret, wasn't going away.

The rest of the guys started to trickle in, their loud voices and laughter shattering the quiet I’d been stewing in. They complained about the cold, rubbing their hands together, a few of them shooting me questioning looks. “Heater’s busted again,” I said, my voice coming out rougher than I intended. Nobody questioned it. The rink was always breaking.

Marc was the last to arrive, as usual. He slipped in quietly while Coach Tanner was drawing up a drill on the whiteboard, his gear already on except for his helmet and skates. He moved with an economy of motion, no wasted energy. He sat at his stall at the far end of the room, the one closest to the secret bed, and started lacing up his skates, his dark hair falling over his eyes. He didn’t say a word to anyone. And nobody said a word to him. It was like he was surrounded by a force field. We all orbited him, but no one ever got close.

Coach Tanner turned from the board, his whistle in his mouth. “Alright, Wolves, listen up! On the ice in two! We’re starting with passing. Crisp. Tape to tape. Sanderson, that means you actually have to look where you’re passing. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

We all clattered out of the room, a herd of plastic and steel. I took one last look back at the corner where the bed had been. It was just an empty, shadowy space now. But I could still feel the ghost of it. A cold spot in a room that was finally, blessedly, starting to get cold again.

The ice was a clean, white sheet, the air sharp and pure. This was where I was most comfortable. The rules here were simple. Skate hard, shoot the puck, play your position. I took a few laps, feeling the familiar burn in my thighs, the cold air stinging my lungs. I felt the tension in my shoulders start to ease. Out here, I was just a hockey player. I wasn't the captain of a sinking ship. I wasn't the keeper of some weird locker room secret.

Coach blew his whistle, a shrill blast that echoed off the rafters. “Line ‘em up! Two lines, facing each other. Let’s move some rubber!”

I ended up in the line opposite Marc. Of course. It always seemed to work out that way. He stood across the blue line from me, stick on the ice, his expression unreadable behind the cage of his helmet. He looked bored, like this was all beneath him. The drill was simple. Pass back and forth, moving up the ice together. It was about rhythm, communication. It was about becoming a single unit.

The first pass was from me. I snapped it off my stick, a hard, clean pass right on the tape of his blade. He didn't have to move an inch. He took it without looking, his head up, already scanning the imaginary ice ahead. His return pass was a rocket. It hit my stick with a loud crack that vibrated up my arms. It was too hard, unnecessarily so. A show-off pass. I fought to control it, the puck wobbling for a second before I got it back on my tape. My jaw tightened. Fine. He wanted to play that way.

My next pass was just as hard as his. I put everything into it, a low, screaming pass aimed right at his skates. A lesser player would have fumbled it, but Marc, damn him, adjusted in a fraction of a second. He cushioned the puck with his blade, killing its momentum instantly, as if it were a softball tossed by a child. He didn't even look at me. He just sent another bullet back my way. This one I was ready for. I absorbed it, my knees bent, my top hand loose on my stick. We continued up the ice, a silent war being waged with a six-ounce piece of vulcanized rubber. The passes got harder, faster, more precise. It was a game of chicken. Who would be the one to miss? Who would be the one to admit they couldn't handle it? Other players were starting to notice, their own drills slowing as they watched us. Crack. Crack. Crack. The sound of the puck hitting our sticks was like gunfire in the cavernous rink.

“Roger! Marc!” Coach Tanner’s voice cut through my concentration. “What do you two think you’re doing? It’s a passing drill, not a tryout for the NHL All-Star Skills Competition! Soften it up. The idea is to make it easy for your teammate.”

I felt a hot flush of embarrassment creep up my neck. I looked at Marc, expecting to see some reaction, a smirk or a nod of acknowledgment. Nothing. He just stared straight ahead, his posture unchanged. It was like shouting at a brick wall.

We finished the drill, our passes now ridiculously, exaggeratedly soft. Little floating saucers that a toddler could handle. It was mocking, and we both knew it. The tension between us was a living thing now, a third player on the ice with us.

It only got worse during the scrimmage. Coach put us on the same line, which he’d been doing more and more lately. “You’re my two best players,” he’d said yesterday, pulling us aside. “You need to figure out how to work together. The team’s fate depends on it.” No pressure.

The puck came to me behind our own net. I looked up and saw Marc breaking through the neutral zone, a step ahead of his defender. It was the perfect breakout pass. I just had to lead him. I wound up and fired the puck up the boards. But I put too much on it. Or maybe not enough. It was just a little too far ahead of him. He reached for it, his body stretched out, but it glanced off the tip of his stick and slid harmlessly into the corner. A turnover. He shot me a look over his shoulder. It was a quick, fleeting thing, but it was filled with pure, unadulterated disgust. As if I’d done it on purpose. As if I wasn't good enough to even share the ice with him.

My blood boiled. Who the hell was he to look at me like that? I’d been wearing this jersey since I was a freshman. I’d bled on this ice. He’d been here a month.

A few minutes later, the roles were reversed. Marc had the puck, circling in the offensive zone. He was a shark, weaving through defenders, the puck seeming to be glued to his stick. I got myself open in the slot, right in front of the net. I tapped my stick on the ice, the universal signal. *I’m open! Right here! Easy goal!* I was so open I could have built a house and moved my family in. He saw me. I know he saw me. Our eyes met for a split second. But he held onto it. He held it, and held it, trying to deke one last defender. The guy read it, though, and poked the puck away. The opportunity was gone.

I skated past him on my way to the bench, my shift over. I couldn't help myself. “I was open, man,” I said, my voice low and tight.

He didn't even look at me. He just took a gulp of water from his bottle and said, “I had a lane.”

“You had a guy on you. I had an empty net.”

He shrugged, a barely perceptible movement of his shoulders. “Next time.”

There it was again. The dismissal. The absolute certainty that he was right and everyone else was just scenery. I wanted to grab him by the front of his jersey. I wanted to scream at him, to tell him that ‘next time’ might not exist for us, that the entire program was hanging by a thread and his one-man show wasn't going to be enough to save it. But I didn't. I just skated to the bench, my jaw aching from clenching it so hard, and sat down.

Coach Tanner came over, leaning on the boards in front of me. “What’s going on with you two?” he asked, his voice low so the other players couldn't hear.

“Nothing, Coach,” I mumbled, staring at the ice.

“Don’t give me that, Roger. I see it. You’re playing angry. You’re trying to one-up each other instead of working together. He’s the most talent we’ve had in this program in a decade. Maybe ever. And you’re the captain. You’re the heart of this team. If you two can’t find a way to get on the same page, we’re done. You understand me? We are done.”

“I’m trying, Coach,” I said, and the pathetic thing was, it was true. “He just… he doesn’t want to be part of the team. He just wants to do his own thing.”

Coach sighed, the sound heavy with the weight of the season. “Maybe he doesn’t know how. Some kids, they play with so much pressure on them, they think they have to do it all themselves. He’s carrying something, kid. I don’t know what it is. But it’s your job as captain to help him carry it. Find a way. That’s what leaders do.” He tapped the boards with his knuckles and moved on, yelling at someone to backcheck harder.

I watched Marc on the ice. He scored, of course. A blistering snapshot from the top of the circle that the goalie never even saw. He didn't celebrate. He just turned and skated back to center ice, his face a blank mask. He was carrying something, alright. But what?

The rest of practice was a blur of controlled rage and frustration. I laid a check on Marc in the corner that was probably a little harder than necessary. He got up, didn't say a word, and a few seconds later, threaded a pass through my skates to a guy backdoor for a tap-in goal. It was a silent, brutal conversation, and he was winning.

When the final whistle blew, I was exhausted. Not just physically, but emotionally. The locker room was quiet on the drive back. The usual energy was gone, replaced by the tension that had been radiating off me and Marc. As I was pulling off my gear, I saw him again. Quick shower, dressed in seconds. Jeans, a threadbare hoodie, and the same thin parka I’d found behind the bench. He was out the door before most of us had our skates off.

And that’s when the decision formed in my mind. It wasn’t even a conscious thought at first, more of a gut instinct. Coach’s words were ringing in my ears. *Find a way. That’s what leaders do.* Maybe leadership meant crossing lines. Maybe it meant finding out what he was carrying. I pulled my clothes on over my damp skin, not even bothering to shower. “Hey, Sanderson,” I said, grabbing my keys. “Can you make sure the pucks get put away? I gotta run.”

He grunted in acknowledgment, too busy trying to untie a knot in his skate lace to look up. I was out the door thirty seconds after Marc.

The cold was a shock after the relative warmth of the rink. The sun was setting, painting the dirty snow in the parking lot in shades of orange and purple. I saw him. He was walking, not towards the student lot where the few of us who had cars parked, but in the opposite direction, towards the main road. His shoulders were hunched against the wind, his gear bag slung over his shoulder.

I got in my truck, the old engine turning over with a pained groan. I waited a minute, letting him get a hundred yards ahead, then pulled out of the lot, my headlights off. I felt like a creep. A stalker. My hands were clammy on the steering wheel. This was a terrible idea. I should just go home. Forget the stupid heater, forget Marc’s attitude. Just go home. But I kept driving.

He walked with a purpose, his head down. He passed the turnoff for the residential streets where most of the kids from our school lived. He walked past the small cluster of shops on Main Street, most of which were dark. He kept going, heading towards the industrial outskirts of town, where the old mill used to be. The part of town nobody goes to unless they have to.

My stomach was in knots. Where was he going? He was on foot, carrying a heavy hockey bag, and it had to be at least a twenty-minute walk from the rink. He turned into the parking lot of the old, defunct ValueMart. It had been closed for five years, a massive, windowless box sitting in a crumbling sea of asphalt. It was a place kids went to drink or mess around, but it was deserted now, too cold for that. He walked around the side of the building, out of my line of sight.

I pulled my truck into the entrance of the lot, parking behind a snowbank where I wouldn't be easily seen. I killed the engine. The sudden silence was deafening. What was I doing here? This felt wrong on a dozen different levels. I was about to put the truck in reverse and just leave when I saw him again.

He came back around the corner of the building, but he wasn’t alone. He was walking with a woman—his mom, I guessed—who was bundled in a coat that looked too big for her. Behind them was a younger kid, a girl, maybe ten years old, dragging her feet. Marc had passed his gear bag to his mom, and instead, he was carrying two plastic grocery bags that looked heavy. They weren't walking to a house. They were walking towards the far corner of the parking lot, to a single car parked under one of the flickering, yellow security lights.

It was an old sedan, maybe a late-nineties Toyota, the color some indeterminate shade of beige or gray. Rust bloomed around the wheel wells. But the thing that made my breath catch in my throat was the windows. They were completely fogged over. Not with frost from the outside, but with condensation from the inside. The kind of condensation that comes from people breathing in a cold, enclosed space for a long time. The back window had a small section wiped clear, and I could see piles of blankets and clothes stacked on the back dash.

I watched as Marc opened the back door for his mom and sister. They climbed in. He put the grocery bags in the front seat, then got into the driver’s side. The car didn't start. He just sat there. After a minute, the interior lights, which had come on when he opened the door, flickered off, plunging the car back into near darkness. A tiny, faint plume of exhaust started puffing from the tailpipe. He was running the engine. For the heater.

My heart felt like it had dropped into my feet. It all clicked into place, every single piece of the puzzle. The isolation. The intensity. The thin parka. The reason he arrived right before practice and left right after—he had nowhere else to be, nowhere to go. And the locker room. The heater cranked to high. The makeshift bed behind the benches. It wasn't some random transient. It was him. He had been sneaking back into the rink after everyone was gone, seeking the one thing his family's car couldn't provide: real, sustained warmth. A place to uncurl. A place to sleep without shivering.

I felt a wave of shame so profound it made me physically sick. My stupid on-ice rivalry, my anger over a missed pass, my frustration with his attitude. How ridiculously small it all seemed now. I had a warm bed to go home to. I had a mom who would have a hot meal waiting for me. I had the luxury of my problems being about a game. He was playing a different game entirely, one for survival. And he was doing it completely alone.

Coach was right. He was carrying something. He was carrying his whole family. I sat there in my cold truck, watching the little plume of exhaust from his car, for what felt like an hour. I didn’t know what to do. Confront him? Offer help? The thought of it made me cringe. The humiliation he would feel… he had so little, and the one thing he seemed to have in abundance was pride. Ripping that away from him would be cruel. It would break him. And it would break whatever fragile hope we had for the team.

Finally, I put my truck in gear and pulled away, my movements slow and careful. I drove home on autopilot, the streets of my town looking alien and unfamiliar. My own house, with its glowing windows and the smoke curling from its chimney, looked like a palace. I walked in the door, and the smell of beef stew hit me. My mom was at the stove, humming along to the radio.

“Hey, sweetie,” she said, not turning around. “Tough practice? You’re late.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice thick. “Tough practice.” I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell anyone. This wasn't my secret to share.

I ate dinner in a daze, the food tasteless in my mouth. I went up to my room and tried to do my chemistry homework, but the numbers and symbols just swam in front of my eyes. All I could see was that fogged-up car in the dark parking lot. I thought about Marc and his sister huddled in the back seat, trying to stay warm while their brother, their hero, tried to figure it all out.

I couldn't just do nothing. Captains don’t do nothing.

An idea started to form. It was small, and maybe it was stupid, but it was something. I went back downstairs. The stew was still warm on the stove. I found the old steel thermos I take when I go ice fishing with my dad. I rinsed it out with hot water, then filled it to the brim with the thick stew, making sure to get plenty of beef and potatoes in there. The smell filled the kitchen, a smell of home, of comfort.

Then I went to my dresser. In the bottom drawer, still in their cardboard wrapper, were two pairs of thick, gray wool socks. My grandma had sent them for Christmas. ‘For those cold rink floors,’ the note had said. I never wore them. I preferred my thinner athletic socks. But they were warm. Probably the warmest things I owned.

I grabbed my truck keys. My mom looked up from the TV as I headed for the door. “Where are you going? It’s almost ten.”

“Forgot some of my gear at the rink,” I lied. It slid out easily. I was getting good at secrets.

The drive back to the rink was different. The anger and suspicion were gone, replaced by a nervous, humming energy. This felt right. It felt like the only thing to do. The parking lot was empty and silent, bathed in the cold, white light of the moon. I used my captain’s key to let myself in. The building was dead quiet. My footsteps echoed on the concrete as I walked back to the locker room. The air was frigid now, the way it was supposed to be.

I went to Marc’s stall. His gear was gone, of course. His space was completely empty, anonymous. There wasn't a single personal item, nothing to suggest who he was. I gently placed the thermos on the wooden bench. Next to it, I laid the new, folded socks. No note. No explanation. It had to be anonymous. It had to be a ghost.

As I turned to leave, I heard it. The groan of the heavy front door. My blood froze. Footsteps. Slow, tired footsteps coming down the hall. It was him. He was coming back. For his bed. Panicked, I looked around for a place to hide. The equipment manager's closet. I ducked inside, pulling the heavy door almost shut, leaving it open just a crack. My heart was a drum against my ribs.

I watched through the tiny sliver of open space as Marc walked into the locker room. He moved like a shadow, not bothering with the lights. The faint moonlight filtering through the high, grimy windows was all the illumination there was. He didn't have his gear bag this time. He just walked to the back of the room, to the corner. I saw his shoulders slump slightly when he saw the empty space where his jerseys had been. He must have thought someone had found him out, that his sanctuary was gone.

He stood there for a long moment, then turned and walked slowly back towards his locker, maybe to just sit for a minute before heading back out into the cold. He stopped at his stall. He saw the items on the bench. He froze. Even from across the room, in the near-darkness, I could see the tension snap through his body. He stood perfectly still, his back to me. He didn't move for what felt like an eternity. He just stared at the thermos and the socks. What was he thinking? Was he scared? Confused? Angry that someone knew his secret? Or was it something else? Relief? Was it possible that in that moment, he felt just a little bit less alone?

He slowly reached out a hand, not to pick the items up, but just to touch the side of the thermos, as if to see if it was real. His shoulders tensed, or maybe they slumped in relief; from here, in the shadows, I couldn't tell.