FROST - 2026 Bannner THING MOUND v2 610x255 sharp

“The Thing on the Mound”

16 March 1995 – Frosthaven, Wisconsin

I stare at my room’s ceiling fan in the Saint August Center, watching the blades spin colorful whirls and eddies into the dim night air. The bedsheets smell faintly yellow, like bleach. I know the colors aren’t real—air and smells don’t have colors, right?—but they seem real to me, as solid as the oak-framed bed I’m lying on.

But can I trust that’s reality, either?

Am I actually in Saint August, or is this some kind of dream or distorted memory—a recollection of visiting my Aunt Staci here… before she died?

Did they keep her in a room like this, with heavy armchairs upholstered in tough vinyl, a lovely faux-antique bed, and beautifully carved wardrobe (with no-self-harm piano hinges) bolted to the floor?

I feel like they did, but I can’t really recall. It’s been hard to think lately, ever since the night of that party… How long ago was that?

I don’t know.

Something’s wrong. My memory’s gone to shit, and I can’t concentrate. Something’s wrong with me.

It’s like the ghosts Aunt Staci used to talk about when she stayed here, or like the black and white cat I saw the other day. To Aunt Staci, though, the ghosts seemed real, and Saint August could certainly be haunted. But I thought that cat was real, too, until it walked into a wall and vanished.

I’m pretty sure that wall was something I could touch, but…

I gaze at my hands, flexing my stiff fingers. My hands are young and smooth, with the palms of a girl from a wealthy background who’s never had to do manual labor. The hands of a Frost, a family so rich and powerful they named the nearby city after us—or after one of our ancestors, anyway. But there’s something wrong in the way my body looks, too.

My wrists are both tightly bandaged. Why? I try to remember, but all that comes to me is the color red… Gouts of red… Fountains of it… So much…! And with the wash of thick crimson comes a flood of pain.

I know it’s old pain, not something that just happened, but I still can’t stand the crash of half-hidden memories.

I almost scream, but I don’t. Screaming would be bad.

If I scream, someone might come, and they might take me to another room. I don’t want that. I like it here… almost. Everything is so calm. Except for the scratching.

I let my arms slump to the Egyptian cotton bedsheets. The soft mattress sighs beneath me, and I stare at the ceiling again. The colors are gone now, but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

At least my ceiling isn’t padded.

Not anymore.

And I have furniture now. And normal clothes. And a toilet that’s not stainless steel and combined with a sink.

How long have I been in this room?

I’m not sure.

Days, I think. Maybe weeks. It’s hard to keep track, and like I said, my memory’s pretty fucked up right now.

I remember my friend Cassie visiting me, and cousin Tony, too, at least once. I think. It seems like ages ago.

When they came to visit, did they scratch at my door? Is that who’s scratching at the thick oak boards now?

Or is it rats—rats in the walls?

Or something worse.

“Ivy…” whispers a harsh low voice. “Ivy Frost… are you awake?”

I think I know this voice, but it’s not Tony. Not Cassie, either.

Who?

Suddenly, I’m trembling, afraid, and I don’t know why.

The door to my room cracks open with a creak like distant thunder, and a multicolored shaft of brilliance lances across the ceiling before settling back into dimness. I know they keep the corridor lights of Saint August very low at night. I know the bright colors are just my imagination, but for a moment the rainbow cascade seems real—at least as real as the voice calling to me.

“Ivy… It’s me…” whispers the voice.

Again, I don’t scream. I tamp down my fear and, still trembling, prop myself up on one elbow, trying not to accidentally see my bandaged wrists.

A pale face appears in the crack of the doorway, down low, as if the person opening the door is crouching on all fours.

“Linda…” I gasp, relieved. Her stringy black hair and emaciated face might be scary in other circumstances, but I know her, though I can’t remember from where.

“Linda means ‘beautiful,’” she says. She always says this. It’s her way of greeting me.

“Linda means beautiful,” I parrot back, which makes her smile, showing her crooked teeth. Her pale eyes glimmer in the darkness.

She creeps inside my room and closes the door softly, carefully, so that no one else will hear.

If they heard, they wouldn’t like it. Inmates… I mean residents, aren’t supposed to visit each other after lights out.

But no one else staying at Saint August ever visits me, nobody but my attendants anyway. Only Linda. So as unconventional as she might seem, she’s welcome company. And she only visits after dark.

I don’t know how she does it. The doors are all supposed to be locked at night. My door is locked every time I try it, often in the daytime, too.

“For your own protection,” one of the keepers… I mean doctors, told me.

Linda always gets in, though. Maybe it has something to do with the scratching. Maybe that’s her picking the lock somehow. Or maybe it’s just how she announces her arrival. Though it still scares me every time those scrabbling scritches echo through the room. I forget it’s her and not rats.

Why do I forget so much? Why is it so hard for me to think? Am I really insane?

I’m pretty sure that’s what my relatives think. Maybe even Tony.

But I wasn’t always this way… At least I’m pretty sure I wasn’t. Something happened to me… something at that party. But how long ago was that, and what happened?

As usual, I can’t remember, and the colors start swirling around the room once more.

“Ivy, c’mere,” Linda says, shocking me out of my reverie. She beckons with a finger for me to follow and creeps across the hardwood floor to my window. Neither her rail-thin body nor her faded flower-print nightdress make the slightest sound.

The floor is cold on my bare feet, and I pull my pale flannel nightgown tighter around myself to ward off the chill. The scents of oil soap and disinfectant—a sickly green smell—waft to my nostrils as I join Linda at the windowsill.

The window is barred for my own protection, of course, and the glass isn’t really glass but something less breakable. Do they really think…?

My bandaged wrists suddenly ache, and the room spins red for a dizzying moment.

Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what they think.

I shake my head to clear it.

“Ivy, look…” Linda says, pointing out the window toward the quiet landscape beyond.

Saint August is very old, and its hospital grounds are well groomed and beautiful. The wan light of the full moon paints the expansive lawns and flower gardens in pastel shades of blue and white. The tall trees of the surrounding forest cast bony claws of shadow onto the grass at the perimeter.

“Look where?” I ask.

“There!” Linda says, pointing more emphatically, her knobby finger unsteady.

I squint to better see past the reflections on the window’s not-glass. “You want me to look at the mound?”

Saint August was built on Indian lands—I guess everything in Wisconsin was—and the tribes who lived here erected weird spirit mounds as part of their rituals. Maybe out of respect, the builders of Saint August left this one standing when they constructed the sanitarium.

“Yes. Can you see it?”

The mound is the largest feature on the grounds, almost as tall as a single-story building. I’d have to be blind as well as crazy to miss it. I almost laugh. But Linda doesn’t like it when I laugh; it makes her clap her hands to her ears and scream noiselessly. “Yes, of course I see the mound.”

“Not the mound,” she says. “The top—what’s on top.”

“What’s on top?” I ask.

She inches closer to me, so close that I can almost feel her slender body, and whispers in my ear. “The dirt.” Her breath feels chilly in the room’s still night air. “Little piles of dirt. I saw something on the mound last night—and it was digging!”

“A dog?”

She shakes her scraggly head, and her stringy hair brushes my shoulders.

“A wolf, then. It’s supposed to be a wolf mound; isn’t it?” I remember hearing that somewhere, though of course I don’t remember where. And the mound just looks like a small hill to me, not like any kind of animal. “Or maybe you saw one of the groundskeepers.”

“Not a wolf… And not a man, either. Something worse!”

An involuntary shudder runs through me. I clutch my gown tighter. “What do you mean?”

“Not a man, not a wolf… but a little like both. Something dangerous. We’re not safe here.”

I feel cold, and now the room is blue swirled with purple. “But that’s why we’re here: to keep us safe.” I’ve heard the doctors say that, and my Uncle Dan, too.

But were they lying?

I like Linda, but sometimes she seems dangerous to me. Am I dangerous, too?

Did they put us here to protect themselves, not us?

“They won’t keep us safe,” Linda whispers urgently. “Do you see it? Do you see the dirt?”

I nod. “Yes. Yes… I think so.” But I’m trembling so much I can hardly focus my eyes, and every shade of blue in the world is closing in around me.

“I told them about the… thing. I told them about the dirt. But they never listen. We can tell them, but they won’t believe us. Look now!”

She points again as two pinpricks of reddish light appear at the edge of the forest’s dark shadows.

“There it is!” Linda’s gaunt face is almost resting atop my shoulder now, and tiny cold flecks of her saliva spatter against my left ear. “It’s come back! Do you see it?”

I try to force the swirling blue away… I try to focus…

What I see freezes me to the spot, and I almost wet myself.

Not a man, not a wolf, but some horrible combination of both. It skulks out of the darkness on two legs, but those legs have too many joints to be human, and the knees bend backwards.

The thing has a torso like a man, but its muscular body is covered with mangy dark fur. It’s thin in the waist and has long arms with hands that end in claws or talons. I’d almost think it was a trick of the moonlight, just some kind of distorted shadow, but its eyes burn red, like hot coals.

It crouches and digs its inhuman nails into the top of the mound.

We watch it for uncounted minutes, mesmerized. Then…

“It’s looking at us!” Linda hisses.

I shove my fist in my mouth to stifle a scream. The creature’s eyes blaze bright now, burning into me. The world is swirling red, and I don’t know what to do. I want to run, want to hide, but where…?

“We’re not safe here,” Linda mutters, as if reading my mind. “They won’t protect us. They can’t protect us.”

Terror scrapes at my guts. Is she right?

Linda seizes me in her bony arms and twists me around, her pale eyes staring into mine. Her grip is clammy but strong. Somehow that, and the force of her gaze, stops my shuddering.

“We have to kill it, Ivy. We have to, or it will kill us! Follow me!”

Before I can even reply, she flings open my door and darts out into the dimly lit hallway beyond.

“Linda… Wait!” I whisper. But I follow her out into the forbidden night-dark corridors of Saint August.

I can barely keep up. Linda is little more than a shadow in a dappled grayish nightdress ahead of me, always turning a corner before I can catch her. I don’t want to go; I don’t want to help. I want to stop her. I pray that someone else will if I can’t.

But everyone else in the sanitarium must be asleep. Either that, or the place is horribly understaffed considering the amount of money Uncle Dan is paying to stash me here.

Linda races ahead of me, down neo-Victorian staircases, through the richly appointed corridors. Every door we encounter gives way before her. Why are none of them locked? Why is she never caught roaming the building at night?

We reach the kitchens, a swirl of putrid green and pink odors, also eerily quiet and deserted.

“This way!” Linda hisses, beckoning me to a door with a chicken-wire glass panel on the top. Beyond, I can see the moonlit grounds of Saint August, almost the same view as from my second-story window.

She opens the door noiselessly, as always.

“Linda, no!”

My pale, slender friend pauses only a moment. “We have to kill it!” she insists. “Before it kills us!”

I catch her just long enough for her to thrust something cold and hard into my grasp.

And then she’s out, running across the carefully manicured grass, heading for the Indian mound.

I freeze in the doorway and glance down at my hand. Below the bandages on my wrist, my stiff, white fingers clutch the handle of a stout single-bladed knife.

A glint of steel catching the moonlight reveals that Linda has armed herself similarly. Chef’s knives. She must have stolen them from the kitchen supplies before I caught up. Her pallid nightdress whips ghost-like around her frail figure as she runs. She’s nearly reached the mound now, and the thing…

The thing is charging to meet her, sharp teeth bared, eyes blazing, claws extended.

My breath catches in my throat. It feels like someone is squeezing my chest. For a moment, the world spins and the awful kaleidoscope of colors—all of them now pale and moon washed—closes in on me.

But I can’t let my friend fight this thing alone.

Winter is almost over, but it still holds this night in its chilly grip. Goosebumps prickle on my skin. The lawn feels cold and brittle, like tiny needles under my bare feet. I ignore the discomfort and keep running. My breath comes in cloudy gasps.

Linda stabs at the thing with her knife. It growls and swipes at her with its long claws.

She ducks aside, stabs again, this time piercing the dark matted fur of its abdomen. Diseased pustules on its inhuman skin rupture and glisten in the moonlight. The creature doesn’t cry out, merely hisses as steaming saliva falls from its sharp-toothed maw.

The air reeks with the churning black and gray of rotting meat.

Linda twists the knife as she pulls it out, reels her arm back for another blow. “Die! Die! Die!”

But she’s strayed too close, and the thing’s knuckles smash into her cheek with a crushing backhand.

Linda crashes to the frost-covered ground like a rag doll, limp and unmoving.

The thing looms over her.

“No!” I cry, hurling myself at its back.

It turns at the sound, and my knife only grazes its shoulder. The wound the blade traces bleeds steaming molten red.

“No! No! No!” I scream, stabbing with each exclamation.

I won’t let it kill my friend.

My blade pierces black fur and gnarled, decaying flesh. My heart pounds and my muscles ache as I put everything I have into killing the monster.

“No! Goddammit! N—!”

The creature wheels, pounding its elbow into my gut. The world explodes into a night-dark rainbow.

My fragile body hurtles onto the cold hard earth atop the mound.

The knife slips from my numb fingers and spins into the shadows at the edge of my vision.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t think!

I don’t want to die here…

Not alone in the night, like Aunt Staci did…!

The creature looms over me, blotting out the moon.

Its eyes burn red… Red like the horizontal cuts across my wrists, hidden beneath my bandages.

I gasp out: “Please… No…!”

And it all ends.

***

The colors return before my eyes open.

They swirl in the familiar, terrifying kaleidoscope—brighter now than before.

Much brighter.

“Ivy… Can you hear me?”

A voice… Warm, soft, and forest green.

Can colors speak?

“Ivy, it’s me… Tony.”

Tony!

I open my eyes and the whirlpool of colors fades, but only enough to see my favorite cousin’s violet eyes staring down at me. “Where am I? Am I… home?”

He takes a deep breath. Tony’s only a handful of years older than me, and easily the most handsome member of the family, with his dark hair and strong chin. “No, Ivy… You’re here… in Saint August. Do you remember that you’re in Saint August?”

I nod, my throat suddenly too dry to talk.

Saint August… I’m in danger here.

“The doctors tell me you had a little… adventure last night…”

I sit up fast, which makes shards of white light stab into my brain. “I…”

“Don’t worry…” Tony’s voice is calm, reassuring. “You’re okay. Everything is all right.”

Why didn’t the thing kill me?

I blink and my vision clears, though not completely.

I look at my hands, my arms, my sparkling clean skin, the newly changed bandages on my slashed wrists.

Tony’s strong arms wrap around me in a familiar, loving hug. “You’re okay now. You’re in your room. You’re safe.”

I shake my head violently. “But my friend Linda… She got me out… Linda was with me… We fought the thing together. Is she okay?”

He looks perplexed. “I’m sure she is. Nobody got hurt last night. Everything’s fine.”

I slump back into the soft pillows of my asylum bed, relieved.

“Tony… Will I die here… Like Aunt Staci?”

He shakes his head. “No, Ivy… Nothing like that is going to happen to you. Aunt Anastasia was old. You’re young… and strong.”

“But something’s wrong with me. Tony… Am I… crazy?”

He looks sad. “Of course not. You’re… confused. Someone gave you some kind of bad drug at that party. That’s all. The doctors just… need some time… Time to figure it out.”

“And I’m not going to die?”

“No.”

“And Linda… She didn’t die either?”

“No. I’m sure she’s fine. But I’ll check to make sure. Okay?”

I force a smile though it makes my face ache, along with the rest of me. “Thanks, Tony.”

“Sure thing,” he says. “Get some rest now. I’ll come back and sit with you after I talk to the doctors.”

I nod again, already feeling my consciousness slipping away.

They gave me something to make me sleep, probably

But I’m okay now.

I’m safe.

Linda is safe…

***

“How in hell could this happen?” Tony Frost raged, pacing the sanitarium hallway a short distance from Ivy’s room.

The two doctors in charge of her case looked abashed. The slender red-haired woman in a white coat, Dr. Shepherd, dug the toe of her Gucci pump into the hall’s expensive carpet. The man with silver hair and a goatee, wearing a herringbone suit, Dr. Annandale, Ph.D., the head administrator of Saint August, fished a briarwood pipe out of his breast pocket. He put it away again when Tony glared at him.

“How in hell did my cousin get out of her room in the middle of the night without anybody noticing?” These people Tony was facing down might have prestigious certifications framed on their walls, but to him, they felt like nothing more than paid goons, working for his father..

Dr. Annandale loosened his collar. “We’re looking into that,” he said in a British accent that Tony always thought might be fake. “I’ll be questioning all of the night staff—and Ms. Frost’s attendants—personally.”

“And what in hell was she doing outside when the groundskeeper found her unconscious this morning?” Tony continued.

“Er… Digging, apparently,” Dr. Shepherd replied sheepishly. “On the old Indian mound out back.”

“Digging?! With what? Her bare hands?”

Shepherd flushed. “Um… With a knife she stole from the kitchen.” Annandale glared at her; Saint August’s top man had obviously hoped not to reveal that little tidbit to Tony or anyone else.

Tony’s mouth dropped open. “A knife…!”

“I’m looking into that as well,” Annandale put in before Tony could inquire further.

“We assure you that those found responsible will be suitably punished,” added Shepherd.

“Sacked… er… Fired,” Annandale said, correcting himself.

The fake accent was really pissing Tony off now. He stopped pacing and clenched his fists. He felt angry about the incident, of course—even if Ivy seemed no worse off than the last time he’d visited—but a large part of Tony rebelled at firing underlings while the people in charge of this place would likely skate away scot-free. “You people assured us she was getting better.”

“I believe we said that she showed some improvement,” Shepherd replied. “But she’s still hallucinating. And we still don’t know what she was drugged with, or how long that drug’s effects might last…”

“Nor if any damage done might be permanent,” Annandale warned. “As we’ve reported to your father, previously. Though this incident may make us reevaluate Ms. Frost’s chances for recovery in our next report.”

A chill shot down Tony’s spine. The next report…!

“Yes, about that… Why don’t you just report what you want to say about this… incident to me, and I’ll convey that to my father.”

Convey those insights and recommendations in a carefully edited version, of course.

Daniel Frost wasn’t fond of Tony’s favorite cousin, and if “Lord High and Mighty Frost” thought Ivy was a basket case, he might have her confined somewhere even less competent—and less costly—than Saint August, just to save the family embarrassment.

Out of sight, out of Father’s mind, Tony mused.

“If that’s what you’d prefer, Mr. Frost…” Shepherd began.

“…I’m sure that will be entirely satisfactory,” Annandale finished.

Shepherd and Annandale seemed pleased that maybe they would not have to talk to Tony’s father, the powerful head of the family. Tony couldn’t blame them. But it made him squirm to think that he might now be complicit in anything this evasive pair wanted to cover up.

Could he even trust them to tell him the truth about what happened?

Annandale sighed out a long breath, seeming relieved. “Now, about our plan for your cousin’s continuing treatment…” he said.

Tony held up one hand. “We’ll talk about that in a minute. But first, I need to check on something Ivy asked about… What happened to this friend of hers, Linda, the one Ivy said let her out of her room. Is she a patient, or staff, or what? Ivy’s worried that Linda was hurt in… Whatever happened last night.”

The two Saint August doctors glanced at each other, either puzzled or trying to remember some pre-arranged lie. Tony couldn’t tell which.

“There’s no one on our staff named Linda,” Annandale finally said.

“And no patients by that name, either,” added Shepherd. “In the decade I’ve worked here, there’s never been anyone in Saint August by that name at all.”

THE END

ABOUT THE STORY

This Frost Harrow tale has its origins in a legendary “true” story collected by my dear friend Linda Godfrey. If you’ve been following my work for a while, you may know Linda’s name. But even if you don’t, you might remember her as “the werewolf lady,” because she appeared on countless “true supernatural” TV shows, including Monsterquest and the Josh Gates-helmed Expedition X, among others.

Before her death in 2022, I think it’s safe to say that Linda was the world’s foremost expert on all types of werewolves. She gained this distinction by being the reporter who broke the story of the Beast of Bray Road, an alleged werewolf sighting back in 1992 in her hometown of Elkhorn, Wisconsin.

What could have been just a local “police blotter” report in the small paper where Linda worked unexpectedly exploded into a nationwide sensation and a search for a cryptozoological monster that persists to this day. The hullabaloo also gave Linda a new career investigating similar reports from all across the U.S. (and later the world), and she ended up writing numerous well-researched and entertaining books about werewolves/dogmen and other supernatural/weird tales and legends.

If you’ve been paying attention, you might remember my Frost Harrow Halloween tale “The Beast of Bay Road,” which was also inspired by Linda and her investigations. (Bay, not Bray, for a place I used to live—which is also a road in Frosthaven.) And if you’re a real fanatic for the paranormal, you might even know that she and I did 42 episodes of Uncanny Radio together, a local over-the-air radio show about all things unexplained.

Anyway, Linda and I were good friends for years, so it’s not surprising that legends she collected would make their way into my work now and again. My wife and I even had some strange encounters mentioned in one or more of Linda’s books. All her books are great reading, by the way.

According to Linda, in 1936 a night watchman at a private school in Wisconsin spotted a strange, werewolf-like creature digging atop an ancient Indian burial mound on the school’s grounds. The man spotted the monster on two consecutive nights and was chased, too.

So, there you go, the skeletal origin of this, my 2026 Halloween offering, which I’m lovingly dedicating to my late friend Linda. Obviously, she’s also the person for whom “crazy Linda” is named. (Though Ms. Godfrey’s own sanity was rock solid.)

Ivy Frost is the protagonist not only in this tale (and several of my other Halloween stories), but also in my Frost Harrow series. After nearly three decades of publishing struggles, the first four FH books are finally out in print, as of early October 2026.

“The Thing on the Mound” fills in a previously only-hinted-at period of Ivy’s life after she returns to Wisconsin, several years before the car crash that starts the first Frost Harrow novel, Scream Lover. This story also features her cousin Anthony “Tony” Frost and touches on other characters and situations from the ongoing FH series. Check out the books, if you haven’t yet.

Doctors Annandale and Shepherd, the overseers of the Saint August Center, are named for my author friends David Annandale and Jeri “Red” Shepherd. David has written numerous licensed books, including novels for Warhammer 40K and Doctor Doom, as well as his creator-owned horror opus, the super creepy Gethsemane Hall. Red is the publisher of the “Worldly” series of anthologies (including four books with stories by me this year) as well as writing her own fiction and award-winning role-playing game (RPG) work.

As far as other dropped names go, there is no actual Saint August—except possibly as shorthand for the super-famous Saint Augustine. I made up the name because it sounded prestigious and also as a tip of the hat to my paternal grandfather. It’s been mentioned in Frost Harrow stories previously, but this is the first time we’ve been “inside.”

I’ve wanted to write this story for at least a year, ever since I re-encountered Linda’s narrative, which many consider the first sighting of the (future) Beast of Bray Road, in a true-life cryptid movie featuring her work.

“That would make a good scene in a Frost Harrow tale,” I thought at the time.

The image of the wolf-like monster digging on a grave mound also reminded me of the cover I painted for the CHILL expansion, Things, back in1984-5. That cover, in turn, was inspired by the Night Gallery adaptation of “Pickman’s Model” by H.P. Lovecraft. When I was a kid, I got to meet Rod Serling and had him sign a drawing I’d done of that monster. Which brings all of this into some kind of weird circle of my influences, I suppose.

Taking all that as inspiration, I then wove Linda Godfrey’s possible-werewolf-sighting legend into a spooky tale of my own from the time when teenage Ivy was confined to Saint August. The story follows almost immediately after the ending of “The Weeping Ghost,” the first Frost Harrow Halloween story I wrote way back in 2012. (You’ll find that and all my other Halloween offerings linked at the bottom of this page.)

I believe this is the first Frost Harrow tale that I’ve written in the first person since “The Weeping Ghost,” other than the stories narrated by Jimson Edison. His outings are always told in first person, because he’s a surly Kolchak type of author character.

I thought that putting ourselves in Ivy’s drug-fogged mind for this tale would add to the story’s nightmarish quality. I also thought it would be fun to give her a type of synesthesia (seeing and smelling air as colors, etc.) to emphasize her unhinged/paranormal state. Then we get Tony Frost’s more reliable point-of-view in the final segment. Hopefully, the combination of the two provides a nice kick at the end.

What happened that sent Ivy to the asylum and how and when did she get out? That remains to be told another day. (No, I’m not being coy. It’s all in my notes for a future story or two.) Although there may be enough hints in these stories for you to piece together parts.

As always, I want to thank my wife, Kiff, for reading and proofing this tale, and my writers’ group—Christine, Warren, and Steve R.—for their feedback and improvements.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this wild ride through the environs of Saint August.

And I also hope you’ll pick up the whole Frost Harrow series in print or e-book form—or both! It’s been almost 30 years, but FH is finally here.

Happy Halloween!

—Steve Sullivan
September 2026