“Stop it,” Annemarie muttered incoherently. A loud knocking sound had been getting on her nerves. She woke up in the middle of the night.  

     A moment ago, she had been playing in the marketplace. Then the school bell rang, and her teacher walked up to her and dragged her to school. Annemarie frowned. Now she remembered differently. Her teacher had not dragged her. Annemarie had gone to class by herself. She had been minutes early. Then the school bell rang.   

     Annemarie woke up. She stood up and looked around. She saw a white stone fireplace. She was at home and remembered what she had dreamt. She hadn’t slept well.  

     The school bell rang with nagging persistence. But Annemarie knew she was at home. It wasn’t the school bell.  

     She needed to examine what it was. Annemarie wiggled out the lump of blankets. She stretched her arms and legs and yawned loudly. She had to stop the sound if she wanted to sleep. She needed to rest. She wanted a distraction. Annemarie decided to find the origin of the noise. It had come from upstairs. She hoped there wasn’t a mess in her room.   

     As Annemarie slowly wandered upstairs she felt shivers. She hadn’t put new coals into the fireplace. The house should have kept the warmth easily, but her feet touched cold stair steps. Annemarie guesses that somebody must have opened a window in her sleep. Maybe even multiple were open. A slight draft blew through the house, and a cold shiver ran through her body. She decided that the central heating should have kept the building warm. It wasn’t as easy as that, but Annemarie hoped it was. To her, the red centre radiated like the sun. She realised her parents hadn’t come home. It would have woken her up. The hairs on her back stood up.  

     The stairs creaked slightly as she walked up. Shadows seemed to leak in from the gaps between the steps. Although the building was made of brick, the stairs weren’t. To her, things lived under the old wood stairs. To Annemarie, the old humid cellar was deep and otherworldly. She laughed hastily and hurried up to the first floor. The air was nipping. She only wore her nightgown, but no more should have been needed in the house.  

     A window had been open for the entire time. It must have continuously banged against the wall as the wind blew into the room.   

     Annemarie scuddled towards the banging sound. She went to investigate it. She didn’t want to think of anything else. She repeated to herself that knowing which window was open, and what had opened it was her only goal. Against her words, she thought of when her parents would come home. She wondered what was keeping them up for so long.   

     She found the window quickly; the sound had been coming from her room. Her wide bed and tiny desk stood close to the walls of the room. A heater was struggling against the incoming cold. The nightly winds were colder than Annemarie was used to. She felt embarrassed, then confused. She hadn’t been upstairs today, and her mother couldn’t have forgotten to close it after letting some air in. She didn’t want to shift blame. It was impolite, and everybody had to improve themselves. But it couldn’t have been a third party. Annemarie decided that her mother must have been very distracted. “But then something horrible must have happened at work,” she exclaimed mentally. “Couldn’t you just have told me?" She mumbled accusatorily.  

     Then Annemarie had noticed something else. She saw a pile of snow in her room under the faint shine of the streetlights. It looked as if somebody had just emptied buckets of snow in her room. Not all of it could have been from the storm.   

     Just as she wondered the peculiarity of it, she was hit by a snowball. “What? Who throws snowballs in the middle of the night?” Annemarie thought. Something she didn't understand was happening and she didn’t like it.   

     But she acted quickly and closed the window before she would be hit by another snowball.   

     Her teeth clattered as she had rushed over the pile of snow. It was uncomfortable, but an awakening shock. Annemarie knew that she wanted to solve this uncanny mystery. 

     Beneath her skin, she grumbled at her bad luck. She was shocked physically and mentally. Annemarie was not one to back off. She had told herself many times to push through everything. She had pushed herself to the top of her class. She had skipped a year and ended up underneath again, but she had pushed on. She was in the middle again. Her parents told her to rest sometimes, her teacher too. She should have played outside more often, but her teacher always beamed with light when she studied so hard. Her parents had the same reaction. “Stupid, dumb girl,” she murmured to herself repeatedly until deciding on “now the snow.” Annemarie tiptoed back through her room over the snow. She jumped to her wardrobe and picked the next best clothes to wear.   

     Then another snowball hit the closed window.   

     Annemarie was surprised, but she shouldn’t have. She should have expected the strangeness to continue but was too tired to think properly. She distracted herself. Although this entire situation seemed stupid, she wanted to find the underlying cause.  

     Whoever was doing this had to be crazy or was holding a horrible grudge against her. She contemplated the later idea and dismissed this train of thought shortly after. She didn’t like the result. Either way, it was a bizarre occurrence and Annemarie forced her attention on that. She wondered whether gods of winter were playing a prank on her or if it was a natural occurrence. She would rather have it be a trick of the light. She felt that even a ghost or creature would be better than her first train of thought.   

     Annemarie wanted to confirm her musings and disprove her first idea. Annemarie hurdled back to her room’s window. This time she wore thick wool socks and a coat and made a big circle around the pile of snow. She didn’t want to catch a cold. The view was good from her room, but snow still fell from the sky. Now and then it blocked out part of her view. She knew where the streets were heated. She saw where the snow was less heavy. She saw where it should continue and where it fizzled out. She had been right multiple houses would be heating with their heating ovens.   

     There was something.   

     Then, there it was again!   

     She saw somebody walking around down there and kept circling back to her housefront. Annemarie could not see who it was through the snow. The dim light of the streetlamps provided little help. Neither did much light come from the buildings across the street. Most families lived here, and the children, like Annemarie, should be sleeping. Her curiosity was peaked, but she also felt hazier and hazier.  

     Yet somebody was walking through the street. Somebody was circling around her building block throwing snowballs at her window, sometimes somewhere else, but mostly her window. Each time the figure passed a street light Annemarie could catch another glimpse of it. Annemarie bit down on her lip. She would have liked the mystery to be resolved in another direction. She hoped that she was mistaken.   

     Annemarie closed her eyes and let her mind drift for a while. She was hesitant to continue this search. It would be easy to just go back to bed. But at the same time, she felt that this would've been too easy. She wasn’t a quitter. She had told herself this more than enough. She believed that being alone had to be worth something. “I’m such a baby,” she spoke into her room dispelling her doubts. She was going to do something else than giving up today.   

     She opened her eyes again. She had to rub her face. Her face had gotten a little cold from touching the window. Her vision had been a little blurry, but now she was ready. She was going to catch the perpetrator red-handed. She marched down the stairs, not fearing the dark underneath this time. She had made up her mind. She was going to catch the offender and satisfy her curiosity.   

     Annemarie waited near the living room fireplace after she had put new coals into it. She was waiting to warm up again. Her heart went quiet. Boredom swelled in her chest. She would rather get some more sleep, but that would defeat her purpose. She thought if she was going to learn all day, she was going to have fun at night. Curiosity, fear and ambition kept her awake.   

     She wondered if it would be better if she was a little duller, a little less attentive. It wouldn’t make a difference now; she was too awake to sleep at the current time. She thought of time and asked what time it was. She wouldn’t want to wait for too long. A grandfather clock ticked in the living room and Annemarie looked at it. It was an old clock with whimsical carvings depicting adventures of the old. It was five in the morning and her parents hadn’t come back. For the residents, it was still night. The sun wouldn’t come up in some time. One wouldn’t go outside now unless it was for something urgent. For Annemarie her decision was urgent.   

     Outside shadows unseen splashed across the brick walls. Wintery winds wheezed through the cracks, but coldness would be replaced with excited heat soon.   

     Outside night slowly crept onwards while inside Annemarie watched the clock intently. Boredom and curiosity turned to annoyance. Annemarie wanted to do something now. Worries about the future, her sleep and her peers billowed through her mind. Unease at the unresolved mystery nagged her. With growing impatience, Annemarie began to prepare.   

     She knew what she was doing. She had been warned more than enough. But Annemarie was sure she wouldn’t need to cover. Right now, she was sure of herself. She would rush outside the same way her parents did. She thought that if nothing happened to her parents, she didn’t need to fear the winter night. She feared something else, but she had already resolved herself to meet this other thing.  

     The lights outside danced as the actors moved into place. Annemarie was ready. She had put on jackets, mittens, multiple scarfs, and a fuzzy hat. Annemarie thought of herself prepared for everything. She even put some hot coals into her, now, many pockets. She trusted this to keep her warm for longer than she would ever need.  

     Anxiety and anger, passion and ignorance, joint and set lose the last parts of her conscience. Annemarie stood still until she heard her start signal. Somebody had thrown another snowball at her window again. Annemarie swung the thick oak door open. A slight wind hit her face, but she had already set her goal. She rushed outside and ran over a snow-covered road.  She and her unseen assailant met.   

     Annemarie had caught the figure red-handed in the act of throwing more snowballs at her window a floor above. She didn't know yet that she was part of a game. The culprit ran away the moment she ran outside, and Annemarie chased after the fleeing figure with temperament. The thick oak door fell shut with a strong wind blowing through the entrance room.  

     She nearly caught up, as snowballs began flying in her direction. She was surprised and slipped on an unfortunate spot of ice. The road heating had melted a line of snow, but the cold night had won eventually and froze patches solid.   

     “Now that’s a fun face your making,” the figure gloated and jumped around Annemarie impishly. Annemarie frowned at the sky as she rolled herself back up.   

     “Gosh, say for how long you have been cooped up at home? Say, let's have some fun,” the figure told her and threw more snow at her. It wasn’t here for a fair snowball fight. Annemarie finally looked at the assailant. She was already having second doubts deep below, but she wouldn’t admit them to herself now.   

     “The snow is cold, isn’t it? Well, fight back, wouldn’t you? It’s not fun playing alone all night, you know?" the character said. Annemarie recognised the person. It was someone she knew all too well.