THE FOOD WE'D ordered lay untouched on the glass end table as we sat silently on the porch. My hands shaking, I lit a cigarette. I wanted desperately for Jeremey to roll a joint or a spliff or something—because I had a feeling just the nicotine wouldn't be enough to calm me down—but he didn't make a move. He just sat there, running his hands up and down his jeans again and again like he was trying to wipe sweat off his palms.

I finished my cigarette and put it out on the ashtray. I reached to light another one, but a shrill buzz froze me where I sat. My breath skipped, and my heart pounded in my chest. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, and the screen lit up. Just a text message. Exhaling heavily in an attempt to calm my nerves, I opened it.

Lydia: Hey Harper, do you want to come over for dinner tonight?

She knew I wasn't scheduled to work on Fridays. Before I could type anything in response, the phone buzzed again.

Lydia: My parents are out of town

At twenty-two, Lydia still lived with her mom and dad. But then again, all of the friends I'd gone to school with that were still in Millstone lived with their parents. Well, with the exception of Jeremey. He still lived in his parents' house, but both his mom and dad were dead, so I didn't count him. The house had been in his family for generations, the mortgage paid off long ago, so I didn't feel too bad about crashing there without paying anything in rent.

My hand shook as I typed my response to Lydia, the nerves still not worn off from the drive.

Me: Sure, dinner sounds good. What time?

Lydia: 7

I looked at the clock on my phone. It was already past three. I forced myself to my feet.

"Who was that?" Jeremey asked. It was the first thing either of us had said since we sped away from the farmhouse.

"Lydia." I opened the door to the house. "She wants me to come over for dinner. Says her parents are out. I think I'm going to do some laundry and grab a shower."

"Cool." His voice sounded detached, like a wind had picked it up and carried it away. I watched him for a minute as he stared off into the distance at the dogwood tree in the yard across the street before finally turning and heading inside.

• • •

The drive to Lydia's was unnaturally silent. At seven in the evening on a Friday, the town was dead. The streets were empty and dark. I stopped at a vacant corner, waiting for the light to turn green.

The wind whistled outside of the car, surrounding me as though it were closing in. I shrunk in my seat, trying to keep my eyes focused ahead of myself. I wasn't sure why, but I feared if I looked out the side window—at the woods bordering the road—something would leap out of them and attack me.

Joshua's face kept flashing through my mind. His haunting gaze absorbed everything in its presence like a sponge in an oil-slick.

As if from nowhere, light flooded my car. My breath caught in my throat, and I froze. My hands shook as I grasped the wheel tighter.

A horn blasted behind me, and I jumped in my seat. Two menacing headlights glared at me in the rear view mirror. My heart raced in my chest. It was Joshua. He had followed me. He had come for me.

The horn blared again, and a red car pulled out around me, its wheels squealing as it sped by. Not a truck. Not Joshua. Just a car. I exhaled heavily, trying to calm myself. The stoplight had turned green, and I hadn't noticed. That was all.

My hands shook as I continued driving. I was being silly, thinking about men with eyes like black holes and monsters lurking in forests. It was stupid. I turned on the radio and listened to a country song I only knew half of the lyrics to.

The porch light was on at Lydia's house when I finally parked my Camry in the vacant asphalt driveway. Years of scorching summers and arctic winters had cracked the blacktop finish like an eggshell.

I pulled the car visor down and checked myself out in the mirror. My dark blue eyes were bloodshot because they always were, but other than that I looked all right. I grabbed my pack of cigarettes from where I'd placed it in the center console and shoved it into the back pocket of my jeans as I got out of the car.

I rang the doorbell and crossed my arms tightly in front of my chest, trying to keep warm as the icy wind barreled into me. I'd worn my nicest grey sweater because I knew Lydia liked it, but I wished I'd had a hood to put up to cover my head.

The sound of shuffling feet and the high pitched yipping of Lydia's parents' dog echoed on the other side of the wall. The animal was some sort of poodle hybrid—half poodle, half rat, I think. I didn't like the thing too much, that was for sure.

The door swung open.

"Hey, Harper," Lydia greeted me, holding the dog back with her foot. She was wearing a pair of tight blue jeans that hugged her narrow hips and a peach colored blouse that fit her loosely. The fabric was almost sheer.

"Hey," I replied.

"Quit barking, Noodle," she addressed the dog. "Get out of here, you know Harper hates you, yes he does, yes he does, go on, get." She gave the dog a bit of a shove in the butt with her foot and it darted off into the other room. "Sorry about that," she told me. "You know Noodle doesn't like the doorbell."

"It's fine." I stepped inside and kissed Lydia gently on the lips. She blushed and smiled, the little dimples showing on her cheeks. I tried to push thoughts from the drive and earlier that day out of my mind, but my heart pounded against my chest loudly enough I was certain Lydia could hear it.

"Come in," she said, gesturing for me to follow her further into the house. I closed the door behind me, knocking the sound of the infinite raging windstorm down to a hungry moan.

"I made dinner," Lydia said as she walked off into the kitchen.

I paused in the foyer. A faded piece of construction paper artwork hung from the wall. Lydia had made it in the third grade, and her parents had never taken it down. Her art had gotten significantly better since then, of course, but it'd always been her hobby and her talent. I'd once told her that the only thing she was missing to becoming a famous artist was an enormous unibrow.

She didn't like that idea.

"Harper?" her voice called from the kitchen.

I took a few quick steps to catch up.

"I got a bottle of wine, too," she said when I entered the room.

"That sounds great. You look nice, Lydia."

"Thank you." She leaned her delicate hands on the laminate countertop and blushed again. Her fine, blonde hair framed her features perfectly, and her bright, blue eyes lit up her entire face. "You look good too, Harper."

"Thank you."

We both paused, neither one of us knowing what to say next. I wondered when we'd become strangers.

"I already set the table." Lydia finally broke the silence. "Are you ready to eat now?"

"Sure." I followed her into the dining room where she'd set two places. I was pretty sure what looked like spaghetti was actually some sort of shredded up zucchini impostor, but I hadn't eaten at lunch. I was starving and would have eaten dog food if that's what Lydia had been serving.

We sat down across from each other, and Lydia poured us each a glass of red wine. We toasted. It tasted terrible, but then again I don't like wine so it might have actually been really nice stuff. I just couldn't tell.

"Harper, I wanted to talk to you about something." Lydia twirled some of the faux-pasta around the end of her fork.

My stomach lurched.

"What's up?" I asked, trying to play cool. I took another sip of the terrible wine and poked at the zucchini with mystery sauce, trying to avoid any sort of eye contact. I'd suddenly lost my appetite.

"Harper." She was asking me to look at her, so I turned my eyes up to meet hers. "I'm serious about moving to New York."

"I met this strange guy at the gas station the other night..." my mouth started to change the subject without input from my brain—like if I avoided the conversation long enough, the whole thing would go away.

"Harper, I want to talk about this. Please don't change the subject again."

I clutched my fork tighter in my hand, my knuckles turning white. "When are you leaving?"

"I've already started looking at apartments, looking at jobs. I accepted an offer for a position as a waitress."

"When?"

"I'm thinking of leaving next week."

Lydia paused here for almost a minute, staring at me for an uncomfortably long time. She was waiting for me to offer to go with her. I know that now—that's exactly what she was waiting for me to say. She didn't want to ask me because she wanted me to want to go. She wanted me to decide on my own.

But I didn't offer to go with her. The idea that I could leave too didn't seem to exist in my head at the time. It was out of the realm of possibility. Instead of offering to go, I said this: "Will you visit?"

She paused again here. "Harper, I'm not coming back." Her voice was practically a whisper.

My whole body started to shake. I'd known this was coming. I'd known she was going to leave, but somehow, it actually happening had a greater effect on me than I'd anticipated. My eyes burned hot, like tears were building behind them.

"So that's it then?" I finally asked. "We're done?"

Lydia bit her bottom lip and nodded.

I got up from the table, the chair screeching as I pushed it out behind me, and I made for the door.

"Harper, wait!" she called, getting up and going after me. "I'm sorry, can we just talk about this for a second?" She grabbed me by the arm.

"There's nothing to talk about, Lydia. What's there to talk about? We're done." I removed her hand from my arm and headed towards the door.

She called my name again and again, but I ignored her, blinking back tears. As soon as I stepped out of the house, an icy blast of wind shot through me. I rushed to my car, yanked the door open and got in. I could see her coming towards me. Her blonde hair swirled around her head as the wind tore at it. I started the engine and pulled onto the street before she could reach me. The wheels squealed as I pressed down on the gas, and then the car screeched forward.

I gripped the steering wheel tighter and tighter as I drove, listening to the engine rev and roar. The trees on either side of the road closed in around me, like I was driving through a tunnel. They surged in the wind, and the road grew darker and darker, the only light being my headlights cutting through the night.

I took a tight turn, and the car screeched to stay in the lane. It was over. Everything was over. In seconds, my life had slipped away from me. Everything I knew had been turned upside down.

I ground my teeth, staring out the front windshield. The wind screamed past the car, pulling at its frame and dragging me toward the edge. I was driving to the end of the earth. The road would reach a cliff where the woods finally died, and I would fly off into the abyss.

The yellow lines banked towards another turn. I turned the wheel, and the tires screamed.

Suddenly, a dark silhouette leaped out from the woods and into the center of the road. A phantom-halo of fur lit up around its pale body. It turned its head, and two eyes flashed, reflecting white in my headlights.

I screamed. I slammed my foot onto the brake, and the car wheels screeched. I clutched the steering wheel and ground my teeth as the car skidded towards the ghostly form. Twisted spears extruded from its skull, reaching towards the windshield of my car. In a half-breath, I turned the wheel. The car jerked and spun towards the side of the road. Towards the trees.

With a gut-wrenching thud, the wheels leaped off the pavement, and the car crashed to a stop. My body flew forward, and my face slammed into the steering wheel.

For a second, everything went black. Pain pulsed through my head. A high pitched screech rang in my ears.

I opened my eyes.

A tangle of needles and branches clawed at the windshield of the car. I'd been caught by the limbs of an enormous pine. If I had been going just a few miles per hour faster... I shuddered.

I glanced behind me out the rear window as my head pounded. The road was empty. The creature was gone—disappeared off into the forest.

It must have just been a deer.

I let out an icy breath that hung in front of my face like fog.

A deer.

I clenched my hands into fists.

A stupid, stupid deer.

Grinding my teeth, I put the car into reverse and slammed my foot on the gas. The tires spun beneath me, and the engine roared. I pressed the gas harder, and the car dug itself deeper and deeper into the ditch.

"Fuck!" I slammed my hand into the side of the steering wheel. I clenched my fists until my knuckles turned white, and then I punched the steering wheel again.

"Fuck!" I yelled at the dashboard.

I yelled at the wind.

I yelled until my voice was hoarse.

As I panted in exhaustion, my head throbbed. Something wet and warm slithered down the side of my forehead. I wiped blood onto the back of my hand. My eyes burned with tears.

I opened the door to my car and stepped out. Wind surged past me, tearing at my clothes and hair. Shivering, I bent over and looked at the tires. They were suctioned into an inch of mud.

My heart skipped a beat. I wasn't getting the car out.

As I stood up, my vision went dark for a second. My head pulsed as fireflies burst in my mind like tiny fireworks. When my eyes finally cleared and my head stopped spinning, I took my phone out of my pocket and pressed the home button. The low battery light flashed once, and then the screen went completely black.

No.

I breathed heavily. I pressed the home button again and again, but I knew it was useless.

I was stranded. Jeremey's house was five miles away. It was only a mile and a half back to Lydia's, but I was not going there.

Trees moaned and murmured in the woods around me as the freezing wind blasted through them. The dense mint of cold pine trees mixed with the sickening, rubber smell of the overheated car. Dark shapes twisted and turned as they darted through the forest. A chill rushed down my spine, and I shuddered. My head pulsed in pain, and splotches of black danced in the corners of my vision. Another trickle of blood dripped from my hairline. The sound of a tree limb snapping echoed from off in the distance.

Jefferson Road saw almost no traffic at night. The chance that another car would come by within an hour or two was slim to none.

I had only one other option. Crossing my arms tightly in front of myself in an attempt to keep warm, I set out down the road.

It was only a mile to the Cat Shack... the only bar in town.