Emma
By the time we turned off the main road and onto the last stretch of mountain, my phone had been out of service for nearly an hour and the only light outside the truck came from the high beams reflecting off frost-glazed trees. We’d passed a handful of houses on the way up, each one more fortress-like than the last, with thick stone chimneys and fences sunk deep in the dirt. Now there were just pines, black and glossy, crowding in until even the moon disappeared.
Daniel’s truck grumbled under us as it climbed, all torque and stubbornness. The heater rattled in protest, blowing air that was technically warmer than the outside but did little for my toes. Beth had her feet tucked up under her on the bench seat, wedged between me and the door, and she’d wrapped herself in a pashmina scarf the color of dill. It matched nothing she wore and still managed to suit her.
Daniel drove with both hands, knuckles white on the steering wheel. He looked straight ahead, scanning the road and every empty turnout like he expected a moose or, more likely, something worse to bolt out in front of us. Occasionally he’dreach out to adjust the radio, then drop his hand again, as if even static would be an intrusion up here.
In the rearview, I caught a glimpse of Henry. He hunched in the middle of the backseat, knees up, jacket zipped all the way to his chin. His eyes shifted back and forth, watching the snowfields flicker by. Every so often he’d murmur something to himself, a tiny tremor in the background.
After a while, the road split into a barely paved tongue that curved uphill. Daniel slowed to a crawl, squinting at the mailbox numbers, then glanced over his shoulder. “This is it, right? 448?”
Henry checked a folded sticky note in his palm, then nodded. “It’s a gravel drive. You have to go almost a quarter mile before you can see the house from the road. They built it that way on purpose.” His voice sounded tinny, as if he’d been breathing cold air for too long.
“‘They’ being Alice’s grandmother?” Beth asked, twisting around to look at him. “I thought she was kind of a recluse, but this is some next-level Unabomber action.”
Henry smirked at that, then fidgeted with his zipper. “She doesn’t do people, given the fact that her powers are similar to Alice’s. It makes her sensitive. She says when people come around, it’s like having a migraine but in your chest.” He paused, searching for a better way to say it, then gave up. “I’ve been here before. Alice and I would drive up supplies, or help winterize the place, but we always had to call ahead. Otherwise she’d just ignore us.”
“Sounds like a real delight,” Daniel said, not unkindly. He steered onto the gravel, the tires crunching loudly. “Did Alice say anything about her grandmother being sick? Or in danger?”
“No.” Henry bit his lip, thinking. “I don’t know.” He slumped, sinking into his parka like it might swallow him.
The drive felt even longer than it probably was, every curve the same and every tree a repeating pattern. Daniel hunched forward, squinting at the darkness.
“Let’s take bets,” Beth whispered in my ear. “What’s the creepiest thing we’ll find tonight? I call upside-down crucifix in the master bedroom.”
“Dead moose in the pool,” I whispered back, trying not to smile. “If there’s a pool.”
She grinned, her teeth bright in the gloom. “Haunted pool, then.”
Daniel navigated one last turn, and a shape emerged in the trees ahead. A low-slung log cabin, darker than the surrounding pines, with a single porch lamp throwing a jaundiced glow onto the steps. He pulled the truck as close as possible, killed the engine, and the silence settled in.
The woods made my skin prickle. Even inside the cab, I had the sensation of being watched, though every window reflected only our own faces. Daniel checked the mirrors, then exhaled a long, steam-white breath.
“All right,” he said, turning to Henry. “What do we need to know about the layout?”
Henry blinked, caught off guard. “Um. There’s a mudroom, then the kitchen to the right, bedrooms down a short hall. The livingroom has a big woodstove, but the rest is electric. There’s a basement, but you have to go through a trapdoor in the pantry.”
The porch light flickered as we climbed out. The air stung the inside of my nose and tasted clean, with a bite of cedar and old smoke. I pulled my jacket tighter and peered into the shadowed tree line, half-expecting a face to materialize among the branches.
Daniel unloaded a gear bag from the truck bed, then reached in and produced a set of flashlights. He handed them out, keeping the largest for himself. “Everyone sticks together. Nobody wanders off alone. Got it?”
“Got it,” Henry said, though his jaw clenched and unclenched in a nervous rhythm.
Beth twirled her flashlight, trying to lighten the mood. “Are we the Scooby gang, or the Goonies? I need to know who I’m supposed to be.”
“Velma,” I said, as soon as the question left her lips. “You’re always Velma.”
Beth sniffed, pretending offense, but even she couldn’t keep a straight face for long. “Nerd solidarity.”
The porch steps groaned under our weight. Henry led the way, shoulders hunched, and reached for the knob. Then he hesitated. “She never leaves the door unlocked,” he whispered, as if the house might overhear.
Daniel stepped forward, brushed past Henry, and tested the knob. It turned with almost no resistance. The door itself, however, stuck in the frame until Daniel leaned into it, and whenit finally gave the bang was loud enough to spook a pair of birds from the nearby birches. The interior yawned black and cold.
Daniel swept the entryway with his flashlight, tried the light switch, but nothing happened, then motioned us inside. The air was five degrees colder than outside, with a sticky, chemical note that made me wrinkle my nose. Maybe mothballs. Maybe something worse.
The mudroom was a concrete-floored antechamber with racks of heavy boots and parkas, all in muted earth tones. Nobody had bothered to clean up tracked-in pine needles or the odd dead beetle. There were only three sets of boots by the wall, not counting the ones on our feet.
“Kitchen’s this way,” Henry whispered, and his beam bobbed down a narrow hallway lined with taxidermized fish and landscapes painted in blues and greens. The kitchen opened up at the end, a square of Formica and pine with an ancient, battered table at the center.
