The woods had never scared her until that day. Amy had been jogging, as she always did on Sunday mornings, down the mountain road. In the summer months, the road was lively and active, and often she’d pass fellow joggers or cyclists all enjoying the rugged scenery. Through the trees were the rental cabins that always radiated the smell of barbecue and the sounds of people reveling in their summer getaway. That day was different, however. The air was not balmy and fresh, but rather biting and frigid. There were no tourists to wave and smile in passing at her. The rental cabins were abandoned. The road’s lush wall of green trees was now a barren screen of naked, skinny branches and bleak, grayish brown trunks.
She was all alone.
The deafening silence settled into her bones and accelerated her speed. Up the road Amy sprinted, until sweat poured down her cheeks in waterfalls and her breath puffed from her mouth in great silver clouds. Soon, her chest began to constrict with the harsh air and her legs began to quiver with weakness. It was then that she began to slow, and then that she realized that she’d reached the peak of the mountain road.
And the final rental cabin.
The place had always sparked a chill down her spine. Even under the sizzling July sun, when the trees were lush and the grass was green, the house had always given her an unsettling vibe. No one ever rented there. No one ever jogged there. And with reason.
It was the one rental house that was not designed like the rest of the cabins, small and quaint and just the right size for a family planning a summer retreat. It was the oldest structure on the mountain, odd with its vintage Victorian style, and downright chilling with the darkness that emanated from it.
The house probably hadn’t been touched since the arrival of the first settlers of North Carolina. With its black-molded door, weed-choked porch and vine-twisted railing, scarred and dirt-caked windows, it looked as though it had been designed by some psychopathic architect.
Intrigued, since she had never stared so directly into the face of the house before, she began to walk forward, the frozen gray earth crunching beneath her boots. She walked with dainty, hesitant steps, moving until her feet brought her face to face with the shadowed front door.
And then it opened.
With a horrified gasp, Amy leapt backward, her head swiveling all around her for a form of life she must have missed. Was it an animal? A breeze she hadn’t noticed? Surely it could not have been a person! No human being could be surviving within the black confines of such a hovel.
But when she squinted through the foggy window, she saw a blurry face glaring back at her.
Heaving for air, she stumbled backward down the steps, but the door only swung open wider, and with it came a hand. It shot outward, latching onto the front of her jacket like a crane’s hook and hauling her back up the porch. Screaming, she was dragged through the door, swung around so that her back was crushed against the rock-solidness of what was unmistakably a human chest.
The door was kicked shut with a resounding bang that swallowed her in darkness. 
A dark voice rumbled against her ear. “You have two seconds to tell me what you’re doing here and why you’ve been spying on me.” The voice was followed by an echoing, distinctive clicking sound. “Or your brains are gonna be all over this floor.”
She did not know what was more painful: the gun lodged into her temple or the hammering of her heart against her ribs. She never got to a conclusion, for the pistol c***ed and the iron-like arm only tightened around her chest, crushing the bone until it felt like her lungs were seconds from bursting.
“Answer me!”
Her mouth opened, and for several seconds nothing but ragged air escaped. Then she gasped, “I wasn’t spying on you.”
Before he could respond, she plowed her elbow backward, so that the bone connected solidly with his ribs. At the same time, she stomped on his foot with the force of a jackhammer. With an explosive curse, he released her, the gun clattering to the floor at their feet.
She leapt for it. So did he. In the scramble the gun skidded only farther across the dusty floor. She dropped onto her stomach and army-crawled toward the weapon. He followed her down, caught her by the ankle and dragged her, kicking and screaming, back to him.
He flipped her onto her back, and then fell so heavily atop her that the air wheezed from her lungs and she was crushed immobile under his lumbering weight. For the first time, she got a good look at his face. Eyes like the blue part of a flame sizzled into her skull. He was young, though he had a face as weathered as the hull of a ship. Lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and streaks of gray threaded through hair as black as the mold on the front door.
The terror in her face vanished into a look of pure chagrin.
Then, the harshness of his gaze melted, replaced by a ghost smile that curled his lips just so.
“I told you not to follow, Amy.”