CHAPTER 3

It was more a winding mountain trail than a proper road. Barely wide enough for a single vehicle, with ruts so narrow and deep they might have been made by horse-drawn carriages, not cars. Branches scraped my Camry, and I kept having to steer around large rocks exposed by flooding. Old-growth forest, unmaintained road—it didn’t look like anyone lived up here.

But I was wrong. After a few miles, the road made a forty-five-degree turn, so unexpectedly that I nearly lost control of the car before I straightened out. After that, the road widened. To my right, the forest had been cleared, the ground graded and leveled. A single-wide mobile home sat surrounded by weedy undergrowth, dotted with clumps of hostas and goldenrod, purple asters, Queen Anne’s lace. White birch trees reared protectively around a battered Subaru, and curls of their bark fetched up at the base of the trailer like old newspaper. Something darted out from beneath the Subaru—a cat, I thought.

I slowed, worried it might run across the road, and realized it wasn’t a cat but an enormous rabbit. Much too big for a cottontail, bigger even than the white snowshoe hare I’d once glimpsed while skiing in Vermont. But it wasn’t a snowshoe hare—it wasn’t brown or white but glossy black, with ears long and pointed as garden shears, and copper-colored eyes. For a few seconds we gazed at each other, before it bounded into the trees. I’d started once more to drive, when I realized someone was watching me.

A woman stood in front of the trailer. I hadn’t seen the door open—she must have come from out back. In her late fifties or early sixties, long ash-brown hair flecked with gray. Strongly built, with that weathered skin you get from a lifetime outdoors. She wore beat-up jeans and a too-big plaid flannel shirt beneath a dark blue hoodie.

I lifted a finger in a wave and smiled tentatively. The woman opened her mouth, too, only she was baring her teeth like a dog. She raised her hand, which held a knife with a long blade. Not a kitchen knife but a hunting knife. Without a sound, she began to run toward my car, her eyes wide with fury.

Shocked, I hit the gas and the car lurched forward. What the hell? I veered around another sharp curve, and for a terrifying moment thought I’d drive straight into the trees. But I sped on, the Camry heaving over rocks and potholes. In the rearview mirror, the clearing disappeared behind me, though not before I caught a last glimpse of the woman standing in the road, face contorted, shouting something I couldn’t hear.

“Jesus,” I whispered. The locals really didn’t like outsiders.

A safe distance up the road, still shaken, I noticed movement in the bushes. I slowed the car again to peer out the side window. Another black hare crouched in the undergrowth. Or was it the same one I’d just seen? I couldn’t be sure, but as I stared, the hare raised itself onto its hind legs. And then it kept rising. Its body extended, growing longer and longer and thinner and thinner, as though made of some substance other than flesh and fur and bone, until it seemed like it might snap like a piece of Silly Putty stretched too far. If it had stood beside me, the tips of its ears would have brushed my chin. It gazed back at me with unblinking eyes the color of a new penny, and then it sprang into the forest.