After I sign off, the garage feels even quieter than before. Just me and the storm and the steady tick of the wall clock counting down the hours until Christmas. The kind of silence that makes you notice every creak of the building, every gust of wind against the metal siding.
The kind of silence that makes you wonder what else might be listening.
I should probably pack it in, head upstairs to my apartment above the garage, maybe crack open that bottle of wine Tom mentioned. Watch some old movie and pretend I don’t notice how empty the couch feels with just me on it. Pretend that independence isn’t sometimes just another word for lonely.
Instead, I turn up the radio and get back to work. Because here’s the thing about being alone on Christmas Eve—it’s easier to stay busy than to think about what you’re missing.
The local station is playing Christmas classics, and despite myself, I find my voice humming along to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Which is ironic, since I am home. This garage, with its familiar smells of motor oil and coffee, its tools worn smooth by my hands, its space heater that kicks on every fifteen minutes like clockwork—this is home. Has been since I was seventeen and realized that sometimes the only person you can count on is yourself.
The song shifts to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” and something in my chest tightens. The male voice is smooth, persuasive, promising warmth and protection from the storm raging beyond safe walls. The kind of voice that makes you want to surrender, to let someone else be strong for a while.
The kind of voice I’ve never heard directed at me.
But lately, I’ve been wondering if this is all there is. Twenty-nine years old, and my most meaningful relationship is with a 1987 Chevy that only starts when I whisper sweet nothings to its carburetor. I fix other people’s problems, send them back to their families, their Christmas dinners, their warm houses full of people who actually want to be there.
And I stay here, in my garage, pretending that independence is the same thing as contentment.
My fingers trace the worn spine of the romance novel, and heat creeps up my neck. What would it be like to be wanted like that? To have someone look at you and decide you’re worth fighting for, worth claiming, worth the risk of everything they’ve ever known?
To have someone see you not as a problem to be fixed, but as a treasure to be protected.
The radio crackles again, interrupting my pity party. “—weather service has issued a blizzard warning for the entire region. Wind speeds up to sixty miles per hour, visibility near zero. Authorities are asking everyone to remain indoors until the storm passes—”
I glance out the window again and curse under my breath. The storm has turned vicious while I wasn’t paying attention, transforming from ordinary winter weather into something primal and hungry. Snow drives horizontal across the parking area, and the wind howls like something alive and angry. This is the kind of weather that kills people. The kind that turns routine drives into death traps and leaves families waiting by phones that never ring.
The kind that brings out whatever’s been lurking in these mountains for the past three years. Whatever the locals have been calling Jack Frost, as if giving it a familiar name makes it less impossible, less dangerous. Less beautiful.
My hand instinctively moves to the .38 my father insisted I carry, the weight of it a familiar comfort against my hip. “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it,” he’d said, teaching me to shoot tin cans behind the garage when I was barely tall enough to hold the gun steady.
He’d been preparing me for a world that might be dangerous. He just hadn’t prepared me for how empty it could be.
I’m reaching for the radio to check in with dispatch when the lights flicker. Once. Twice. Then they die completely, leaving me in darkness broken only by the cheerful glow of my small Christmas tree in the corner.
The Christmas lights cast strange shadows across the garage, making familiar tools look foreign and threatening. In the sudden quiet, I hear the storm with new intensity—the shriek of wind through the eaves, the rattle of the metal siding, the drumbeat of ice against glass.
“Perfect,” I mutter, feeling around for my flashlight. The backup generator should kick in any second now, but of course it chooses tonight to be temperamental. Because that’s exactly what this Christmas Eve needed—a power outage during a blizzard.
The emergency lighting flickers to life, casting everything in an eerie red glow. Warning lights, I realize. Like the garage itself is trying to tell me something’s wrong.
I’m halfway to the electrical panel when I hear it.
Footsteps.
Heavy, deliberate, crunching through the snow outside. Which should be impossible, because nobody’s stupid enough to be walking around in weather like this. The wind alone would knock a normal person flat, and visibility is zero.
But there they are again. Closer now.
Each step is precise, purposeful, as if the storm is nothing more than a minor inconvenience. As if whoever—or whatever—is out there belongs in this chaos, was made for it.
I grab the flashlight and move to the window, trying to peer through the frost and blowing snow. The beam cuts through the darkness, revealing nothing but swirling white. But the footsteps continue, circling my garage like a predator sizing up prey.
Or like something that’s been watching, waiting for the right moment to approach.
For a moment, there’s nothing but white chaos. Then something moves at the edge of my vision—too tall to be human, too fluid to be a tree branch swaying in the wind. The shadow seems to absorb the light rather than reflect it, darker than the storm itself.
My hand finds the grip of the .38, though I’m not sure what good it’ll do against something that might not even be real. But the weight of it is comforting, a solid anchor in a world that’s suddenly gone strange. The metal is warm from my body heat, familiar in a way that steadies my nerves.
The footsteps stop directly outside my garage door.
