“You don’t need to freak out about it.”

“Apparently I do,” I say. “I’m doing you a favor by letting you crash here.”

“You are. Don’t think I don’t know that.”

“And if we’re going to be friends, you need to also know that I don’t talk about Pine Cottage. I’ve moved past it.”

Sam looks down, both hands on the bottle, cradling it between her breasts. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to be such a bitch.”

A moment of sobriety arrives as I stand in the doorway, hand on my throbbing hip, trying my damnedest to not look as drunk as I truly am. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is best if you leave in the morning.”

Having spoken coherently, drunkenness again crashes over me. I sway out of the room, needing multiple attempts to close the door behind me. Then it’s into my own room, where more wrangling with the door ensues.

Jeff is half-awake when I flop into bed, murmuring, “I heard shouting.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” I reply, too exhausted to say more.

Before I freefall completely into sleep, a thought cuts through the fuzz of my brain. It’s a flash of memory—an unwelcome one. Him during the moment we first met. Before the killing started. Before he became Him.

A second thought arrives, one more troublesome than the first.

Sam wanted me to remember.

What I don’t understand is why.

Pine Cottage, 5:03 p.m.

Janelle decided she wanted to explore the woods, knowing full well the group agreed ahead of time to do the birthday girl’s bidding. So off they went, tramping into the trees that practically nudged up against the cabin’s back deck.

Craig, the former Boy Scout, led the way with a determination that was almost silly. He was the only one who brought along proper footwear—hiking boots with heavy-duty socks pulled over his taut calves to guard against ticks. He carried an absurdly long walking stick, which struck the ground in a rhythmic thud.

Quincy and Janelle were right behind him, less serious. Wearing cutoff shorts, striped tank tops and impractical Keds, they kicked their way through the fallen leaves that coated the forest floor. More leaves continued to fall, the late-afternoon sunlight shining through their brittle thinness as they spun, tumbled and whirled. Falling stars speckled red and orange and yellow.

Janelle grabbed a leaf in mid-fall and tucked it behind her ear, its fiery orange glowing against her auburn hair.

“I demand a picture,” she said.

Quincy obliged, snapping off two shots before turning around and taking one of Betz, trudging heavily like she’d done all day. To her, this trip was more burden than gift. A weekend to be endured.

“Smile,” Quincy ordered.

Betz frowned. “I’ll smile when this hike is over.”

Quincy took her picture anyway before moving on to Amy and Rodney, walking as one, their hips all but connected. Since they were never not together, everyone else had taken to calling them Ramdy.

Seeing Quincy, they squeezed tightly together, mugging. Amy wore one of Rodney’s flannel shirts, the too-long sleeves hanging past her fingertips. Beside her, Rodney resembled a Kodiak bear, with his stoner scruff and thatch of chest hair peeking over the collar of his V-neck.

“That’s it,” Quincy said. “Make love to the camera.”

Amy and Rodney kissed. Quincy caught it on camera.

“That’s a great one,” she said. “I’ll email it to you when we get back to school.”

“You guys keeping up back there?” Craig called to them as they all began to scale a slight incline. Downed leaves made the ground slick, and Janelle and Quincy held hands, alternately hauling each other up the hill.

“Seriously, you don’t want to fall behind,” Janelle said with the authority of a tour guide. “These woods are haunted.”

“Bullshit,” Rodney replied.

“It’s true. An Indian tribe used to live here hundreds of years ago. Then the white man came and wiped them out. Their blood is on our hands, guys.”

“I don’t see anything,” Rodney said, turning his hands in mock examination.

“Be nice,” Amy chided.

“Anyhow,” Janelle said, “they say the spirits of these Indians haunt the woods, ready to kill any white man they see. So watch your back, Rodney.”

“Why me?”

“Because Craig is too strong to be defeated by a ghost, Indian or otherwise,” Quincy said.

“What about you?”

“I said the white man killed them,” Janelle said. “We’re women. They’ve got no beef with us.”

“People really did die out here.”

Betz is the one who said it. Quiet, observant Betz. She looked at them all with her too-large, slightly spooky eyes.

“A guy in my world lit class told me about it,” she said. “A pair of campers were killed in the woods last year. A boyfriend and girlfriend. The police found them stabbed to death in their tent.”

“Did they ever catch who did it?” Amy asked, sinking deeper against Rodney.

Betz shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

No one spoke as they climbed the rest of the hill. Even the crunch of their feet on the leaf-strewn ground seemed to quiet down, letting them subconsciously listen for the sound of someone else in the woods. In that soft, new silence, Quincy sensed they weren’t alone. She knew she was being foolish. That it was simply the byproduct of what Betz had told them. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone else was in the woods with them. Not very far at all. Watching.