The sign for Halesford flashes by in my headlights like a warning I’m too tired to heed.
Population 4,211.
Liars, the lot of them.
The steering wheel is slick under my palms. Somewhere between mile two hundred and three hundred, my coffee went cold and my spine welded itself to the driver’s seat. I should feel relief crossing the county line, like coming home, like the prodigal daughter returning.
Instead, my skin crawls.
The town sleeps under a bowl of cloud-thick sky. No stars, no moon. Just the orange haze of streetlamps and the long, dark smudge of the forest that wraps around Halesford like a possessive hand.
I tell myself I don’t remember why that hand scares me.
I’m lying.
When Mom called last week, her voice was thin and breathless through the phone. “Emmy, I need you.”
I already had a suitcase half-packed before she added, casually, “The doctors say it’s nothing, but… it would be nice to have you here if it turns out to be something.”
Manipulative, even on low oxygen.
“Just a week,” I whisper now, rolling through the deserted main street. The bakery, the diner, the faded movie theater—it’s all exactly as I left it and somehow smaller. “You stay alive for seven days, Grace Ross, and I’m gone again. Deal?”
The forest answers with a low murmur of wind through branches, a sound that prickles the back of my neck.
I shouldn’t have taken the back road.
But the highway was closed for construction, and the GPS insisted this winding ribbon through the pines is the fastest way to our crumbling little bungalow on the far edge of town. My nervous system, on the other hand, is screaming that fast and safe are not the same thing.
Something moves at the edge of the headlights. A flicker of gray. Then nothing.
“Just a deer,” I tell myself.
I don’t believe that, either.
By the time I make the turn onto Old Quarry Road, my shoulders are up around my ears. The pavement narrows, gobbled on both sides by trees. My high beams catch their trunks in harsh slices—white bark, black shadows, the occasional flash of what looks like eyes and probably isn’t.
I roll the window a crack. Cool night air knifes in, sharp with pine and damp earth and something metallic underneath, like a nosebleed waiting to happen.
My wrist stings.
I flex my fingers, shake out my hand on the steering wheel. I’ve had this weird phantom itch there all week, right over the pulse. Stress rash, I decided. Subconscious protest at coming back here.
The sensation spikes, a sudden jab of heat beneath the skin.
“What the—”
Headlights flare in my rearview mirror.
They’re too high, too bright, bearing down on me fast. I squint, blinking against the wash of light. Gravel crunches under my tires as I edge closer to the shoulder.
The engine behind me growls.
“Okay, okay, pass me, asshole.” I lift a hand, palm out, the universal go-around gesture. The road snakes ahead, pitched on a hill. My little hatchback whines in second gear, protesting.
The truck—if it is a truck—doesn’t pass. It sits on my bumper, light pouring into my car, searing my eyes, turning everything ahead of me into an overexposed wash.
Adrenaline hits like a shot of ice water. My breathing goes shallow.
