Seven Years Ago

SEVEN YEARS AGO

Alpine air burned Avery's throat.

She slowed to a stop and leaned against a scruffy pine tree to catch her breath. Silhouettes filled this pocket of the forest; the sun was still approaching the horizon. She squinted until a structure formed where the trees parted up ahead.

Avery released a whimper in relief and jogged toward the building—a cabin she'd never seen before. Maybe a ranger outpost. If someone lived here, they could help her. And if the cabin was empty, she could take shelter and come up with a plan to get out of here.

She jogged to the door and tried the handle. Locked. Her hand left a smear of blood from the injury she sustained in her earlier fall, when she'd failed to save Naomi.

Avery knocked on the door and winced at the sound. Did the thing chasing her hear it, or did it track her in a different way?

Did it track her at all?

"Hello?" she whispered after knocking again, the wood beneath her knuckles flimsy.

The back of her neck prickled. Behind her, maybe twenty or thirty feet, something waited between the trees. She couldn't hear or see it, only sense it, like an intrusive thought .

She took a step back and then lunged forward, kicking the door. It predictably held, but the frame near the handle cracked. She kicked the door again, then repeatedly rammed her shoulder against it until the knob's latch busted through the frame.

She stumbled inside and rebalanced. Musty darkness surrounded her. Avery pressed her back against the door until it swung shut, her ragged breath filling the room.

Now the door was broken. She could have just looked for a window instead of ruining the lock.

A laugh built in her chest, but bubbled from her mouth as a sob. Avery slumped against the wall and jammed her fingers into her eyes.

No one was dead for certain. Simply gone. First, Paige, haunted by a watcher from beyond the perimeter of their camp. She'd claimed they whispered to her at night. Janet had wanted to return to the trailhead, but Avery fought back. Paige was only nervous about the hike.

Then Paige's posture changed. She cowered when she walked. Stopped eating breakfast and lunch and merely picked at her dinner. One morning, she was gone, sleeping bag rolled up inside her tent and stacked next to her bag.

And Avery still wanted to wait. They couldn't leave Paige alone in the wilderness, wherever she was. Tasha, Paige's sister, agreed. So did Naomi. But not Janet. Janet, who'd claimed she heard a recording of one of her own songs on their two-way. Avery had called her a narcissist. What a terrible thing to say.

Janet had disappeared this morning, same way as Paige. Then Naomi, stolen from right in front of Avery. Dragged downward through granite and into the depths of hell by an entity neither tangible nor ethereal. Tasha was the only one left. Or maybe not. She, Avery, and Naomi had scattered from camp when the thin, dark evil showed up.

If they were all dead, it was her fault. She should have canceled the trip; things had felt wrong for months. First, her online career, cracking quicker than she could glue together the broken pieces. Then, the game. That game .

Blinking away tears, she reached up and touched the plastic device on her forehead. Light burst forth as she clicked on her headlamp. The beam shone on a vintage couch and a small kitchen cozied up to the living room. Two wooden benches surrounded the table. She had to find a chair and angle it beneath the knob, or else push the couch in front of the door.

Avery crept down a short hall. Bunk beds crammed the room on the left, so she stepped into the one on the right.

A large window covered the adjacent wall. As she stared through it, terror hijacked her body. She stumbled backward and grasped onto the door frame for balance.

Dawn seeped into the outside world and brightened the forest with color. Behind the window, an amorphous smear of nothingness floated, the void sucking the new light straight from the atmosphere.

It spoke to her. No . . . he spoke to her. And she recognized him.

You're here. Let us play.