The Stalking Hour was entered in round one of NYC Midnight’s Short Story Contest, 2022. It placed 1st in its group.

It wasn’t Meital’s grave, but Tavi pretended it was. He brushed snow from mounded earth as if it were a shrine instead of the humble resting place of a stranger. He pulled a silver coat button from his pocket. It was cold, even through his worn gloves.

This little button was all he had left of Meital.

“They didn’t even let me bury you.” He breathed a little warmth into his hands, thankful he’d been wearing his hat and coat when he fled his village.

Last week he couldn’t have imagined his little girl gunned down by soldiers. She wasn’t his blood, but that had never mattered. She was his sweet Meital, his reminder the world still possessed a few good things.

Tavi couldn’t give his stepdaughter a proper memorial, but he could leave this stranger’s resting place less lonely. Meital would have wanted that.

He laid the button atop the frozen sod.

Snow veiled the road in both directions, so Tavi crouched beside the unmarked grave in a white world of silence. If it hadn’t been for his dark coat and shoes, he might have forgotten himself altogether.

When the wind moaned past, eating through his coat, Tavi stood to go.

Four days, and still he’d passed no one on the road, not even those thrice cursed Cossacks. He might make Ovruch in three more days, if his thin supplies held. Early yesterday evening he’d passed the remains of an iron fence and found a pack abandoned by the roadside. Its contents seemed well preserved by the snow and ice—a small mercy, since he’d not been able to gather supplies before fleeing his home in the wake of the Cossacks’ raid.

He headed North.

Two steps, and something caught his trouser leg, sending him face first to the ground.

He brushed off and dug through the snow with one shoe, uncovering an iron gate adorned with worn Slavic script—a prayer for the dead.

Tavi said a quick word to thwart bad luck before hurrying away from the gate and toward Ovruch.

Half an hour before sunset Tavi camped between two waist high boulders. He made a fire and fanned the tiny flame to life before thawing frozen fingers. He sat on a bed of evergreen boughs and gnawed dried fish as darkness closed in, severing him from everything except his little fire and tattered provision bag.

Meital would have liked the dried fish, or at least pretended it was latkes instead. She had always been good at make-believe—a skill he envied now. If only he could conjure up his little girl again, imagine her sitting across from him tonight.

He jabbed a stick into the coals, sending a shower of sparks.

On the other side of the fire a face peered back at him.

Tavi yelped, dropped the stick, and scrambled back, stuttering spirit wards he hadn’t heard since boyhood.

The face vanished.

Tavi circled the fire from a distance until he was satisfied no one was in camp with him.

He righted his bed and settled beside the fire, holding unsteady hands to the warmth. Stories of spirits and ghosts were his favorites as a child—to his orthodox father’s chagrin. Perhaps that, coupled with frequent thoughts of Meital these past few days, had made him susceptible to hallucinations.

No more fanciful notions tonight. He was over half-way to Ovruch, and he needed his rest if he was to reach his destination before the weather worsened.

Tavi placed fire-warmed stones around his feet and rolled up in the blanket he’d found in his pack.

Today’s walk drained more than his energy. Finding the stranger’s grave had driven home Meital’s absence. He should have had her mittened hand in his—should have carried her when she wearied of the journey—should have assured her they would love living in a new place where the soldiers wouldn’t target them.

But Meital was gone, and the only way he would see her again was in daydreams and night visions.

Tears snaked into his beard, but he had already wrapped a thick scarf around his neck and face, so he didn’t bother to dry them.

At first light, last night’s specter almost forgotten, Tavi foraged a walking stick and hastened toward his destination. If he made good time, he would only have two more days’ travel.

He trudged through the morning and stopped for a midday meal of more fish and a few pieces of dried fruit. Upon finishing his food, a brisk wind shivered past. It was so cold he lost feeling in his nose and had to rub sensation back with his scarf.

Stomach full, Tavi’s eyelids drooped, and the urge to sit and rest intruded on his desire to reach Ovruch. But if he delayed, heavy clouds threatened more snow. He’d already come through three days of it and didn’t relish wading through more unnecessarily. If a blizzard kicked up, he might become the owner of the next unmarked grave.

To stave off drowsiness, he counted each step as he planted his walking stick in the snow over and over until the muffled thwump of wood on frozen earth lulled him into a slow but steady rhythm.

It was colder today, and merciless wind numbed his extremities until he wished for a blazing hearth, or at least the warm rocks he’d rolled into his blanket last night. Despite his scarf, icy blasts bit the exposed skin around his eyes. Another gust ripped past, and if he listened closely, Meital’s sweet voice whispered, “Take a rest, Papa. You’ve walked enough today. Isn’t it too cold to be out?”

“Walked enough… today…” he muttered as he sat on an old log beside the road. The only indications of a road were his lonely shoeprints stretching back the way he’d come. No animal tracks dotted across the path, no wagon ruts, and no other footprints. Snow probably buried them. He was alone out here, the only one without the sense to find some place else to be.

“Rest, Papa,” Meital whispered on the wind. “It’ll be dark soon, anyway.”

His eyes slipped closed.

When he jerked awake, the sun was gone, and he was so cold and stiff he could barely move. Snow piled around his shoes, atop his legs, shoulders, and hat. Bits of snow had invaded his scarf and lodged in his beard, leaving it wet and cold.

Tavi sloughed off the built-up snow and ice. His footprints were gone, leaving the road invisible.

Beneath a thick-needled evergreen, he built a snow-packed tree wall and shook clean half a dozen boughs to make a bed. Outside his shelter, he lit a fire, glad for any fraction of warmth. He avoided stoking the blaze.

Tavi fed the fire until he reached for another stick and found his store spent. He could weather the night inside his tree wall without a fire, but the cold had seeped into his bones, and no matter how long he absorbed heat, he couldn’t get warm. Just one trip to gather wood was all he needed. Once he burned through what he gathered, he’d settle in.

He spent the better part of an hour searching beneath evergreens for dry kindling and dead branches. Every few minutes he made sure of the direction of his little refuge—and scanned for ghostly eyes staring from the darkness.

A clump of snow blocked his path to one last tree that promised a healthy supply of kindling. He kicked the clump out of the way, expecting a shower of cold chunks. Instead, his shoe thunked against something hard, and the object rolled beneath the low evergreen boughs.

Tavi crouched and pulled the object from under the tree, glad for moonlight reflecting off the snow. The object was rounded, like a soup bowl.

He turned it around.

Empty eye sockets stared back at him. Half a broken jawbone hung off a row of crooked teeth. Tavi let loose a scream that could have woken not just the dead, but every spirit in the afterlife. He dropped the skull and sprinted for camp. A prayer for forgiveness accompanied every stride.

Upon reaching the tree wall, Tavi didn’t bother with the fire. He dropped the wood, darted into his shelter, and rolled into his blanket, scarf covering all of his face except for clamped eyes, which he opened every few minutes to peer toward the violated remains.

He imagined the owner of the bones, furious over the desecration of his grave. Tavi hoped he would be forgiven for such a serious breach, no matter how accidental. As guilt piled on him, a vision of the voided eyes, the smashed jaw, the grotesquely chipped nose, invaded his imagination. Shadows of trees and shrubs seemed to creep toward him, railing at him for disturbing the slumber of the dead.

He forced both eyes shut.

Meital would have invented something else to think about—something brimming with unrealistic optimism, but it would have warmed his heart.

What would she have said?

“The man forgives you, Papa. He’s in a better place, and he doesn’t care about his bones anymore. You didn’t mean to hurt them.” Tavi imagined Meital’s little voice.

“No, I didn’t mean to,” he whispered back.

Breaths steadier, he turned away from the refuge’s opening and used his half-filled pack as a pillow, thoughts of Meital battling his horror.

Something poked his arm, prodding through both blanket and coat.

Tavi swatted, sure it was stray needles jabbing from the shelter roof.         

His hand met empty air, and he chided himself for imagining things too often.

He settled into his blanket.

Another poke.

He swatted again, and this time his hand passed through a patch of cold air that speared through his glove and made the wind on the road feel like mid-summer. He cried out and jerked the icy hand into his coat, rubbing warmth into it.

From the back of the shelter, two unblinking, ghostly eyes set in a grinning face peered at him, and one hand, small, like a child’s, reached for him.

Tavi tried to speak, to ward off the spirit, but his voice betrayed him, and all that tumbled from his lips was a muted gasp.

To his relief, the apparition vanished, leaving him to wonder again if he’d imagined it, but his hand still stung from exposure to severe cold.

“It’s okay, Papa. The ghost won’t hurt you.” He imagined Meital’s sweet voice again and tried very hard to tell himself what he’d seen was the result of travel fatigue and the grief of losing his little girl.

Throughout the night, he kept watch on the spot where the apparition appeared. He didn’t dare shut his eyes, not even once. If he had truly seen a spirit, what had he done to upset it enough to be trailed for two days?

Tavi spent the next torturous hours hoping to make up lost time the coming day, but the sky never lightened. Dark clouds obscured the sun, portending heavy snow. Nerves taut, he grabbed his walking stick, shouldered his pack, and hurried toward Ovruch. Fifty kilometers left between him and a real fire, a hot meal, and a sturdy bed.

As he passed a stand of trees many hours later, a snowburst rolled over him, stealing all visibility. He had to find shelter, wait out the blast, but when he searched for the trees, only a gale of white surrounded him.

He imagined himself buried alive in the snow, unable to dig out—slowly dying of exposure and starvation—not found for months after he’d breathed his last.

His shoes sank into the softer snow beside the road, and he tumbled into a snowbank. Coated in powder and disoriented, he pulled himself out. Ahead was nothing but white. The same behind him.

“Papa, follow me!” Meital’s voice cut through the wind and snow.

Maybe it was his imagination, but that was more than he’d had a moment ago.

“Where are you?” Tavi called into the storm.

“I’m here, Papa.” The voice seemed to come from somewhere ahead.

He shielded his eyes from the wind and waded through gathering drifts until he ran into evergreen boughs. They slapped his knees and face, shedding snow only to be immediately smothered.

“Meital?” Tavi called. “Meital!” He walked until he found a rock outcropping that kept him from being engulfed by the snow, and still the source of his little girl’s voice never showed itself. Not that he expected it to.

Tavi huddled behind the rocks until the blast abated.

Stars shone down on him in the eerie quiet that fell over everything in the wake of the snowburst. No birds. No deer. No other travelers. Just Tavi.

He shivered in the cold, teeth chattering behind his scarf as he wished he’d taken another route to Ovruch.

“Papa?” The voice again. “Papa, where are you?”

Tavi sprang to his feet. “I’m here, Meital.”

“Oh, Papa, I was afraid you’d gotten lost.” The voice was right behind him.

Tavi whirled. It wasn’t Meital who stared at him out of the darkness. It was the apparition from the past two nights.

He shrank from the spirit. “What do you want? Go away. Please, don’t hurt me!”

“Why would I hurt you, Papa?” The voice was Meital’s, but the face was not. The dull, dead eyes didn’t blink, and the specter’s body was thin as thawed ice. “I’m lonely without you.” It extended a hand toward him—the same hand that touched him last night. Its fingers swiped through his coat, sending ice through Tavi and stealing air from his lungs before he could speak to banish the ghost.

He stumbled backward, tripping over something hard.

A skull, one cheekbone shattered, grinned at him from the snow.

Tavi wanted to scream, but he couldn’t catch his breath.

“It’s okay, Papa. He won’t hurt you. He’s my friend.” The ghost extended an ethereal finger toward the base of a gigantic evergreen. “My other friends are asleep over there.”

Around the base of the tree, in three concentric circles, lay two dozen more skulls.

“Do you like them, Papa?” said the ghost. “They were all very nice friends. Just like you.”

A whoosh of icy air circled him, and Tavi would have shrieked if he could.

“They were afraid at first too, before they realized how nice it is to be my friend.” The ghost circled Tavi. “But you’re the nicest friend of all, Papa. You came through my gate and left a pretty button for me.”

The unmarked grave. The torn fence!

“Then you fell asleep beside my path, just like I wanted.”

Terror froze Tavi’s feet, and his chest burned to take a full breath.

“Such a pretty, pretty button. So shiny. Nobody’s ever left me a nice button before.” The spirit leaned close. “We’ll have lots of fun playing make-believe, and maybe, one day, someone will leave you a pretty button too.”