Nick woke up with his face on something hard and gritty. There were a dozen tiny specks of sandy dirt pressed into his cheek, and his mouth felt coated in gravel. He heard himself moan. He pushed himself up onto his right elbow and with his hand brushed off the grit that stuck to his cheek. He felt tiny pockmarks dug into the flesh, and worked his jaw.

He was in the cabin. It was dark, but as his eyes adjusted, he saw the dim shapes of the couch, the pile of logs by the fireplace, the low dorm-room refrigerator of the kitchen.

The pain in his left side was spreading along his arm. He remembered his hand.

He tried to get up. He tried again. He admitted that he couldn’t. “I guess I’m just going to die here,” he said out loud, coughing.

And then with a cold sensation he realized that it might be true.

This was a first. The first time he seriously considered the possibility of his own death. Was this one of the steps?

He imagined Lindsey coming up to the cabin and finding him, his body rotted away, just a thighbone in the closet. Ha ha, he thought, and coughed again. He imagined her coming tomorrow. His mother calling her, Nick took the car, it’s been days, and Lindsey knowing he was up here, the way she always knew—she knew him! She knew him so well!

He wanted to cry, thinking about her. He thought about how he had seen her crying in her car. Why hadn’t he gone to her? He would go back. This was why he had come to the cabin. Where he really wanted to be was with her.

He would go back to her. He would show Lindsey that he could be a good man. He would make her understand.

He tried to get up again and this time he succeeded a little bit. He made it onto one knee. With a Herculean effort he wrenched his other leg over and flipped his body around and then pushed with his right hand and found himself standing, a low crouch, in the dark. Progress!

He leaned over and held on to the back of the couch and steadied himself. Then he looked up and saw a face in the window. He froze. There was a man right outside the window, standing at the end of the porch, looking in. Then he looked and saw another man standing in the next window over. Nick spun around and saw another face looking in the side. There were dozens of them, looking in from all the windows. They were holding shovels by their faces, like pitchforks.

“Wait a second,” Nick said. But the door handle was rattling.

The men were opening the door, they were coming into the cabin.

“Wait,” Nick said, but his vision was swimming and narrowing, a roar swelling up in his ears, and he turned and threw himself toward the mudroom. He hit the wall and pulled himself in, then lurched to one side, knocking over the case of tools, screwdrivers flying. He lurched to the other side and grabbed the handle of the side door. He wrenched it open, took two steps into the yard, and then froze.

The yard surrounding the cabin was filled with graves.

Nick’s brain clicked several times over the fact. He saw irregular rows of graves winging out like seats in an auditorium. He heard banging sounds coming from the cabin behind him, the men with shovels coming for him. This must be a dream, this must be a dream. He could feel the grit in his cheek, the pain in his left hand, he felt real. This was real. He was going to die.

And then for the first time he realized he wanted to live.

He put his hand over his heart and he thought about Lindsey. I love you, he thought. I’m coming.

He imagined himself running. He focused his mind, and then he counted down, One two three go, and then he really was running. He traced the narrow gangplank between the graves, he dodged from side to side like he was playing lacrosse again, and then he realized that if he closed his eyes he could go even faster, his feet were barely touching the ground, the trees were whizzing by on either side and it was