Page 14 of Soul to Possess

The stakes were where the driver said they’d be—tall and orange, poking through the drifts like bones. They guided the eye in a shaky, staggered line down what might’ve once been a road. There were no lights. No buildings. Not even fence posts or barbed wire. Just snow. Endless, blinding snow. It didn’t look like a road so much as a corridor carved through the void.

Every step made my muscles scream. Every gust of wind stole my breath and turned it into something sharp. I kept my eyes on the stakes and told myself this was temporary.That I wasn’t crazy for agreeing to this. That Marvin was trustworthy, and the ranch—wherever the hell it was—was real. That someone was waiting for me. That this wasn’t some stupid horror story opening in real time. I didn’t believe it. Not completely. But I needed to. Because the cold was starting to feel alive. And the further I walked, the more it felt like something was watching.

Just one foot in front of the other. Just keep going. You’ve made it this far. Half a mile isn’t that far. It’s nothing. You can do this. You wanted this.

The words looped in my head, desperate and hollow as the wind. A mantra spoken through chattering teeth. I tried to hype myself up as I dragged my frozen feet through the drifts, but every step felt like it might be my last. My thighs burned. My toes had gone numb hours—or minutes?—ago. Time was warped out here, swallowed by white.

It was supposed to be beautiful. The snow. That’s what I told myself. I had dreamed of it. Romanticized it. Virginia rarely got snow like this—powdered, soft, cinematic. But this wasn’t that. This was weaponized winter. This was survival.

I trudged on. Step. Step. Crunch. Step.

Then—light.

Faint at first. Distant and flickering. But real. And ahead of me. My breath caught. It didn’t feel like hope exactly, but it was something close. Something sharp. Urgent. I picked up the pace, legs nearly giving out beneath me. The cold wasn’t just around me now—it wasinme. In my joints. In my chest. My fingertips burned as the nerves came back to life.

Just a little more. Just a little more. Almost there.As I got closer, the shape of the building came into view. Not a sprawling ranch like I’d imagined. Not some sun-warmed farmhouse with a wraparound porch and lights glowing from every window. No. It was a cabin. Small. Square. Plain.

One story, maybe three or four rooms max. No barn in sight. No stables. No outbuildings. No glow of floodlights marking fencing or pasture or animal shelters. Just this. This… box. My steps slowed. Something wasn’t right. The air shifted. That strange pressure behind my ribs—foreboding, sharp and precise—settled in deeper.

Had I been catfished? Had I just dragged myself through a half-mile of blizzard for this?Thiswas the future? This was the home I was supposed to build a life in? My breath came out in a hard, shaking exhale as I mounted the first step. The porch had no roof. Snow clung to the warped boards. The light I’d seen was coming from a crooked lamp above the door, its bulb blinking just slightly, like it might burn out at any moment.

I scanned the treeline, but there was nothing else. No silhouettes of other buildings. No distant fences. Just black sky and snow. Animals wouldn’t be left in the dark like this… would they? The wind howled behind me, and I raised a trembling fist to knock.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The sound was pitiful—muffled by my cold-reddened knuckles and the roaring in my ears. But it echoed through the door, louder than I expected. I stepped back instinctively, suddenly unsure. The silence that followed dragged out too long, straining my nerves to the breaking point. Then—

“What in the actualfuck.”

The voice on the other side of the door was deep, masculine, and pissed. I stumbled back down the step, slipping a little on the ice. My breath caught in my throat as adrenaline surged—cold and hot all at once.

What the hell did I just walk into?

The door yanked open with such force I flinched. A man filled the frame—broad, shirtless, and barefoot, standing in the swirling snow like he didn’t even feel it. His jeans clung low tohis hips, worn and dusty, like they’d lived an entire life before today. His hair was a mess of auburn waves, long enough to catch in the wind and whip across a face that should’ve belonged to someone carved out of stone. But it was his eyes—sharp, glacial, a kind of cruel green—that held me frozen.

“What in the actual hell is a woman doing on my porch in the middle of a damn blizzard?”

His voice was sandpaper and smoke, rough and cutting, like it had been dragged through too many bad nights and never quite recovered. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I was cold. Wet. Lost. My lips were numb, and my brain felt just as frozen. This wasn’t what I imagined. Not even close. He stepped forward. Just a little. Enough to make the night feel smaller.

“Are you deaf?” he snapped. “Or just stupid?”

That woke something in me. The fear, sure. But also... something else. Something deeper. Unnamed.

“I—I was told this was the ranch,” I stammered. “I’m supposed to—someone was supposed to—Marvin—”

“For the love of God.” He rolled his eyes and slammed the door in my face. The silence that followed was worse than the shouting. Snow bit at my cheeks. My breath came out in ragged little clouds. I blinked at the wooden door like it had personally betrayed me. What the hell just happened? My knuckles cracked against it before I could think better. Once. Twice. Again.

“Marvin!” I shouted, absurdly. “Marvin, open the damn door right now!”

Heavy footsteps pounded inside, and then the door flew open again with a bang that made me stumble backward.

“Who the fuck is Marvin?”

I stared at him, throat dry. “Uh… you are?”

A pause. And then—he laughed. It wasn’t a kind laugh. It wasn’t anything I wanted to be the reason for. It felt like beingundressed and spit-shined in the same breath. His smirk curved slowly across his mouth, wolfish and amused.

“I think I’d remember if my name was Marvin, little girl.”

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