The headlights cut through the night as Isabeth cruised the Rover down the bumpy, dirt driveway. She and Dalton left her house at nine a.m. sharp but they still ended up at their destination after the sun sunk down. Once they lost the GPS as they journeyed deeper into the Vermont countryside they had to navigate the old fashion, with a map. The trees that enveloped them finally gave away after a mile, dropping them in front of an old, small box of a cabin.

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Dalton hesitantly leered out the car window. "This looks like the cabin on The Descent."

"You've been messing with my DVDs." Isabeth shifted the gear to park, picking her foot off the pedal.

Dalton unbuckled the seatbelt. "I had to do something when ya'll were at work." He looked at the dark cabin windows. "Isn't it unseemly to show up to someone's house this late without calling."

Isabeth killed the engine and the overhead lights shined upon them as she opened her door, "We're not visitors."

Dalton quietly closed the truck door, "Then, what are we?" He cautiously followed her up the rickety porch, the steps shrilled under his L.L Bean boots.

"We're inquiring parties." Isabeth knocked heavily on the door; the Bvlgari Parentesi ring Alex gave her pulled away chunks of white paint with every strike she made. "Mr. Yellman!" She knocked harder. "Yellman!"

No Answer.

Dalton looked behind them feeling a chill slither up his back. He felt the uneasy itch of eyes burning holes in the back of their heads.

"Mr. Yellman!" Isabeth rattled the door as she knocked again.

Still...no answer.

Dalton let out a relieved breath, something didn't feel right. A strange calm hung in the night air accompanied by a full moon and a blanket of stars. He was ready to head back home. "I guess he's not here." Dalton headed for the stairs.

"Wait." Isabeth flipped over the welcome mat, nothing but rotting wood.

"What are you looking for?" Dalton meandered between the top step and the porch deck. 

Isabeth stood on her tiptoes, the fronts of her navy flats scraped along the wood causing even more damage than last winter's heavy snowstorm. She slid her hand along the doorframe running the risk of getting a splinter, sweeping up dust and awakening a family of termites that setup home in the cabin that she was sure was built by one of the occupants of the Mayflower. A gold key cascaded to the floor, clinking next to her foot.

"You can't just go into someone's house." Dalton popped back on the porch. "That's how people get shot and I've already cheated death."

Isabeth rubbed her hand along the rigged edge of the key. "Where's the thrill-seeking, adrenaline-junkie I know and love." She slid the key in the lock.

"He went to Dawson Prep and survived a psycho." Dalton reached for her hand. Isabeth quickly twisted the key and turned the doorknob.

The hinges wailed as the door inched back. More darkness poured out refusing the dingy, useless lamp in the corner any more territory than the little table it sat on next to the lumpy, ripped drab couch. An eerie tension cloaked the small living room that the corny talking fish on the wall couldn't dismantle.

"Mr. Yellman." Isabeth spoke softly creeping in the cabin as the hairs on her neck stood straight up. A clump grew in her throat that she couldn't swallow away. "Mr. Yellman, we're friends of Fiona."

The man standing in the lackluster living room kept pacing like a guppy trapped in a fishbowl. He didn't acknowledge their presence or the stacks of paper he kept walking around. His mouth kept moving repeating the same thing over and over.

"What's he saying?" Dalton stepped from behind Isabeth. His hands started sweating as his chest started to tighten. His breath quicken as he inched ahead of Isabeth. His eyes opened wide trying to see through the darkness, trying to see the man they came there to question. Dalton turned his ear to the man, trying to decipher the mumblings that spilled from the man's mouth.

"His face— His face what?" Dalton tried to understand.

Isabeth grabbed the back of Dalton's bister Henley shirt, knowing she made a mistake. Her heart convulsed in her chest as her mouth swapped saliva for cotton. Even though her pupils became dimes she couldn't see it. She couldn't see it over the sweat that beaded across her forehead. She couldn't see the thing the man had in his hand.

"We should call someone." Isabeth urged trying to pull Dalton back while digging her cellphone out the pocket of her blue jean jacket. The floorboards squeaked as she rocked her weight on her back foot heeding the commands of her brain to get outside.

The man stopped pacing. He looked at them like he'd seen them before, like an old face from the past, riddled with fond memories and heartbreak. Rivers of red streamed across his sunken eyes. The Gobi Desert was his lips; rocky and dry and his face was a shell of the man he once was. As his mouth opened, the joints of his jaws popped as if they'd never moved before. "My ears...deceive me. My eyes...betray me. My lips...stay sealed as I spill...the sweet nectar for my serenity." The blade in Yellman's steady hand slid across his throat like a hot knife gliding through chilled butter. The gleaming shard of metal released an ocean of crimson teeming out Yellman's veins.

"Stop!" Dalton yelled ripping his shirt out of Isabeth's hand but he was too late. Blood streamed down the Yellman's neck seeping in his dingy gray t-shirt. Yellman limply cascaded into Dalton's arms and they tumbled to the grubby floor. Dalton gripped his hand around the Yellman's slippery neck trying to stop the blood from gushing out his jugular. "Call 911!"

The phone shook in Isabeth's trembling hand. Her mind raced, running down the field of limited options until the friend woke and spoke with a whisper, you know what to do. It was Instinct. "No."

"WHAT?" Dalton pressed his slippery hands down harder on Yellman's leaking neck as his breaths started to slow.

Yellman clinched Dalton's shirt, "Give her to him."

"He slit his throat." Isabeth slipped the phone back in her pocket. "We are hours away from civilization and nowhere near a hospital. Let him go."

"Call 911!" Dalton shouted. "CALL 911! NOW! ISA!"

"You're covered in his blood." Isabeth looked at his hands and so did he.

Dalton felt life seep through his fingers pouring to the floor with its sticky consistency. "You want me to just let him die." Tears burned in the wells of his eyes.

"He's already dead." Isabeth pointed to the man's glazed over eyes focused on the nothingness above.

Dalton jumped back bumping against the couch. His chest raised and fell with swiftness like the waves of a stormy sea. His breaths rushed in and out like a Jockey at the Kentucky Derby zeroed in on the finish line.

Isabeth rushed to him laying her hand on his rapid chest, "Relax. Take a deep breath in." She modeled, breathing in slowly. He copied her as his eyes did the jitterbug. "Now, take a deep breath out." She modeled again and he mimicked her. His chest slowed underneath her firm hand. "Now. We need to get what we came for."

Dalton drowned out her voice as he stared at the motionless man that was walking just minutes ago. Dalton's body started to shake uncontrollably.

Isabeth snapped loudly shaking him from his trance. He looked up at her with wild eyes. "Dalton! Get a grip. Let's get what we came for." He stared at her strangely. "Do you remember what we came for?"

He glided his bloody hands down his khaki pants. "To find who killed Fiona. To find who drugged us." He answered robotically.

"Now, we make one rule." She shook her head consolingly. "Whatever we touch, we take. No one can know we were here."

"I touched his body." Dalton stood unnerved. "Are we taking that too?"

"We're in the woods Dalton and you hear that?" She looked to the blacked out windows.

Dalton perched his ears to the singing in the distance.

"The wolves will get him before anyone else comes."

"That's cold, Isa."

"I'm being real, D. You think it was a coincidence he slit his throat in front of us. For God sakes." She threw her hands up. "He recited a sonnet before he did it and did you hear what his last words were?"

Dalton swiped away the tear rolling down his cheek refusing to look down at the corpse. "Give her to him."

"Which one of us does he want? Faith? Harper?" She swallowed the hard clump in her throat. "Or me?"

Who do you think he wants; Faith, Isabeth or Harper?

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