Jani woke up with a start and lay on the bed trying to comprehend what woke her up. She stared at the ceiling for sometime. Had she heard a scream? There was no one else in the house and even the nearest neighbour was about a miles distance from the cottage she had rented for a week.

She felt a chill run down her spine. Suddenly feeling very cold she looked around for any additional blankets in the bedroom. It was summers for god sake. When she reached here last afternoon the temprature was well above 25 deg. Though drop in temprature at night, in this valley town of Solan in the foothills of the Himalayas would be common but close to freezing that too in the month of May was definately not normal.

Getting up from the bed, she opened the small wardrobe in the room and found a thin blanket. Wrapping it tightly around her, she walked towards the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea in the hopes of warming herself up a bit. The lamp gave a soft light in the open kitchen so she did not switch on the light. Switching on the kettle she slowly walked to the window at the back of the house. She looked outside at the forest adjoining the cottage she was staying in.

It was a full moon night and there was enough visibilty to make out the outline of the trees in the forest.

What she saw made her freeze in her place. There was lush greenery everywhere, flowers bloomed, branches swayed, it seemed like a clear summer night, everything seemed normal outside.

But from her cottage roof outside, she saw water dripping and freezing into icicles before falling to the ground. There were thin and long sticks of icicles all along the roof. And the she saw a dark silhoutte standing between two tall trees.

She peered outside through the window to catch a better glimpse but suddenly felt a drop of icy water fall on her. She slowly looked up. The icicles were not outside the cabin but inside from the roof of the cabin. It was the reflection in the window. So what about the dark shadow? She slowly turned around and gave a blood curdling scream.