Who is there? My eyes are old and dim; come out of the shadows. Ah, but I see now that you are my nephew Kirill’s stepchildren. I suppose Ilya or Vasily told you to go pester Crazy Old Ivan for his ghost story. Well, I can see you three are brave little children, so I suppose I can tell you my story. First, you boys go put more wood on the fire. Little Tasha, fetch Poppa Vanya the vodka from the snow outside.

There; that’s much better. Now I can properly tell you my story. Before I begin, you must know that what I’m about to tell you truly happened. I fought for the Soviets in the battle for Stalingrad against the Nazis. After that I spent five years in the gulag camps, accused of being a spy. Every day I expected to be shot, never to see my family again. So now you understand that I have never been more afraid then when I met those people out on the steppes.

This happened when I was a young man, in the winter of my eighteenth year. I was out hunting wolves with Pyotr, Alexei and the two Yelchin boys, Pavel and Misha. Something had whipped the wolf packs into a frenzy that year. They were attacking people, livestock and game more often than they had before, sometimes without eating them. We would find carcasses and corpses ripped open and frozen stiff, but there would be no blood. Other times we would find only skeletons, picked clean with not a scrap of flesh behind. Always there would be no blood, not even frozen in chunks where it should have fallen and pooled on the ground. It was as if the wolves had lapped up the blood before it had a chance to leave the body. All we would ever find were the tracks. No fur, no droppings, no piss; just tracks that disappeared in the snow a little way away from the kill.

We had camped at the old Czarist lodge two days walk outside of the village. For two weeks we ranged the forest and the frozen steppes finding no sign of the wolves. At night we sometimes heard a woman singing from far away in the tundra. Sometimes we also heard something the size of a bear sniffing and scratching at the walls. One by one, my comrades left, their courage having failed them. I was a proud man in my youth, confident that we could handle what I thought a small problem, and so I derided them for wanting to return to their families. Soon enough only Pyotr and I were left.

The first of the winter snows began to blow and Pyotr returned home, not wanting to winter in the wilds with a bear lurking about. I was left alone, but I did not mind. On clear days I hunted for the wolves and also for food. Before long I was well provisioned, the snows began in earnest, and so I settled in for a lonely winter. There was plenty of food and vodka to last me several months. Besides, I had my hunting rifle and a decent supply of bullets. My only regret was that I could not go hunting for the wolves.

After the first week, I had all but forgotten about what had brought me out to the lodge in the first place. Alexei had left his concertina and I had brought my chess pieces, so I did not grow too bored. If I hadn’t thought to carve a notch in the door frame each morning, I would have lost track of what day it was.

One morning, I awoke to the sound of several wolves howling, but it was unlike any wolf noise I had ever heard before. I grabbed my rifle and hat then ran outside. Following the sound, I ran straight into the forest. The howling stopped just before I blundered into a clearing. To call the scene in that clearing an abattoir would be an understatement. Nothing was left alive. It was then that I realized that we were wrong about what had been preying upon our village.

It began to snow heavily again and I barely made it back to the lodge before it was falling so thick that you couldn’t see two steps in front of you. The wind howled loudly and found every tiny gap in the walls, biting mercilessly. I built up the fire and made up my pallet in front of the hearth so I wouldn’t freeze during the night. Every time I closed my eyes and started dozing, the image of the slaughter in the clearing would come into my head and shock me back to wakefulness.

In order to calm myself, I sang our family’s lullaby, the one I sing to you three when Kirill brings you to stay the night, feeling silly for needing that comfort. I was just on the edge of sleep when I heard the woman’s voice singing the same song. At the time, I thought nothing of it; my mind was playing tricks on me by giving the wind a human voice. Even now I can recall how sweet and angelic her voice was.

Just as I was about to fall asleep someone knocked three times on the door, startling me awake. As shocked as I was, I still thought it odd that the person knocking was not doing so as a normal person caught outside during a blizzard. No, this person knocked slowly as a friend might do coming over for a cup of tea after supper in the summer.

Needless to say, I was hesitant to open the door, but open the door I did. On the other side was a woman in a thin dress. Taken aback by her lack of winter clothing, I bade her enter quickly, momentarily forgetting my fear. Once inside, I could see that she was untouched by even a single snowflake. I bade her make herself comfortable and she did by draping herself across a chair. She was humming the same tune as I had been singing earlier and I realized that her’s was the voice we had heard at nights and I heard on the wind.

I was enraptured by this strange woman. She was like a frozen angel. Her hair was long and black like yours, little Tasha. Her skin was ghostly pale and almost blue with cold. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have sworn that she was another poor traveler frozen to death on the steppes. As a matter of fact, little Tasha, you remind me very strongly of her. Strange…

Sorry, children. Sometimes Poppa Vanya loses himself in the past. Where was I? Oh yes, the woman come in from the night. Yes, I was too busy staring at the woman to notice anything else. I offered her tea, and she said she would be grateful for it. So I set myself to making tea. As I did so, I asked her how she had come to be caught in a blizzard with so little clothing.

“Oh, we do not mind the cold so much, Ivan Anatolivich Zeitzev,” she replied.

I spun around and asked her how she knew my name. The woman began laughing and I realized that I was shaking all over. She must have been able to smell my fear.

“Do not be afraid, Vanya. I won’t harm you. It wouldn’t be polite,” she said, “besides, as you saw earlier, we have already eaten.”

“Who…who are you?” I managed to stammer out.

She said, “I am Postoronnij, The Outsider. But that is beside the point. I came to tell you that my companion is annoyed with you for disturbing his meal today.”

“Do you mean the wolves? I saw no one…” I said.

The Woman laughed again at my naïveté, “You humans; I often forget how bound to your physical senses you are. My companion warned me of your refusal to see what is plainly in front of you, but I never thought you were so…limited. He is also Postoronnij; humans rarely see us unless we make an effort to be seen.”

She hadn’t moved from her chair, but I still felt the goose walk over my grave. The kettle whistled shrilly, making me jump. My hands were still shaking as I poured the tea and handed her a mug. We drank our tea in silence. All that time, I felt the cold come from the woman in waves despite the warm fire. When she finished her first cup, she held out her mug for more. Always there was a rime of frost around the outside of the mug as if she had been out of doors the whole winter and just now came in to warm herself. It seemed like an eternity before the pot was empty.

After she finished her tea, the woman kissed me, sapping all the warmth out of my body. She asked me to convey her apologies for leaving their messes around the village. It seemed as if she were waiting for something, but she just kept staring at me with those cold blue eyes; much the same as yours, little Tasha.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a splintering, scratching sound at the door. For a moment, I thought it might be a bear trying to get in, but I remembered my visitor and shook with fear. The woman stood up and headed for the door. I pleaded with her to leave the door shut. She laughed at me and then opened the door. On the other side stood a looming shadow with glowing red eyes and white, shining teeth, grinning at me hungrily.

The woman turned to me and said, “Oh, dear. My companion is hungry again. Since you were so hospitable, I will tell him to wait. At least for tonight.”

Then she simply walked out into the night walking hand in hand with the shadow, not a single snowflake settling on her. I stood frozen for a while before I managed to shut the door. I made it three steps towards the fire before I fainted.

When I woke up, the sky was clear and the sun shone brightly. I ran outside, not caring that I had neither coat nor hat. I saw that a message was written in deep scratches on the door. It said, “Ivan Anatolivich Zeitzev. I am Posoronnij, and you will leave this place before nightfall or I shall gnaw the flesh from your bones.” I wanted to get as far away as I could. I ran blindly for hours before I was found by Pyotr in his sled. He brought me back to my house and helped me warm up. For days after I raved like a mad man about demons in the night. When the snows thawed, my comrades searched the lodge. They said that nothing had been touched since I made my mad dash. There were no scratches on the door and no sign that anyone other than myself had even been inside since the others left.

Now, you may not believe this, but every now and then, I hear that woman’s voice. She always sings my song, and nobody ever hears her but me. It is always when I am alone and the wind is blowing at night. Maybe I really am crazy.

I hope my story doesn’t give you nightmares. Kirill doesn’t like me to tell this story. But as long as your mother says differently, I suppose it’s fine to tell. Strange, your mother and Kirill have been married for how long and I still haven’t met her? I wonder why that is?

Wait. I hear her again, only this time she is calling someone. You children hear her too? Perhaps I’m not so crazy after all. What’s that? You say it's your mother calling you?