The Bitter Winter of 1944

The cold in 1944 was unnatural—it was a cold that breathed. It moved beneath your skin, coiled in your lungs. Private Ben Mercer had stopped feeling his fingers days ago, but each morning he counted them like rosary beads. Ten. Always ten.

Still there, for now.

They were ghosts by then, the remnants of a decimated squad, swallowed by the trees after the artillery shelling. Lost somewhere behind enemy lines, wandering blind beneath skeletal trees.

The snow came down in ribbons, muffling the world. They marched on in boots that made no sound.

It started with McConnel. He screamed in the night, convulsing, eyes rolling white. When they dragged him awake, he wept like a child.

“Something sat on me,” he gasped. “I saw its eyes. Pale. Long fingers on my throa... I.. I couldn’t breathe! I couldn’t move!”

They said it was a nightmare. “Trench Ghosts.” The guilt of bloodied hands. But then it came again. To the others.

One by one, they began to dread nightfall.

Sleep became its trap. It hunted in dreams. And they were all so very tired. Those who finally surrendered to it woke pale and shaken.

They decided to take shifts, to guard each other. But the thing cared nothing for military discipline.

Ben watched the others fall to madness or vanish into the woods.

Hooper left mid-watch, saying he heard his mother singing. Sergeant Daley shot at shadows. Collins walked into a clearing and began to pray in a language he’d never heard before.

When Ben finally succumbed, the thing came quietly. No teeth, no claws. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t scream. It leaned close. Its eyes were coins sunk in milk with skin as thin as smoke.

When it smiled, he knew he would never escape.

You’re dreaming, it whispered without sound. And you will not survive.

But he did.

He woke in a French hospital, frostbitten but alive. Eventually, he went home, married, had children. Laughed. Cried. Buried his parents. Got older and the war became photographs in a drawer. Ghosts in wool uniforms.

Now, an old man, Ben sits by the fire while his grandchildren play. He tells them ghost stories in his low, steady voice. They laugh, as children do. They beg for more and he obliges.

As the storm outside thickens and the house grows quiet, he rises to close the curtains.

And freezes.

In the reflection of the window, the room is wrong. The wallpaper, the fire, the furniture...all gone.

Ben stares for a long time, his breath misting on the glass.

He touches his shirt.

Not the flannel pajamas he wore moments ago.

Wool. Military issue green.

And bone crushingly cold.

Behind him, in the reflection, are bare trees, a frozen foxhole, and the distant thump of artillery.

And crouched just over his shoulder is a pale figure.

Pale, long-fingered, and smiling with familiarity.

As he locks eyes with the thing, Ben remembers.

He never left the forest.

He only dreamed he did.