I turn and I can’t see my Hilux anymore, can’t see the road. No hazard lights, no headlights, no tarmac. The fog is rolling through on the breeze. It is the breeze. Misty waves stroking my face, dampening my hair. I use my hands to cover my hearing aids and then I yell, ‘I’m coming!’

I walk. I cannot run. I’d fall into a ravine and die. I’d slip on a rock and plunge headfirst into a freezing river. I walk and I focus on where I think the woman is, and let me tell you I am not well qualified for this task. Not in twilight. Not in autumn. Not in fog-riddled woodland.

Sobbing. One of my hearing aids is damp and it’s giving me feedback.

‘Where are you?’ I shout.

‘Over here,’ she says, and I could almost laugh if this situation wasn’t so desperate.

I trudge past stumps and trip over moss-crusted boulders. There are boggy stretches that hunger for my boots and my shins. I try to step on roots. Dry land.

I find a path of sorts and start to jog. My chest feels like it’ll explode; cold mist pumping down into my lungs and out again.

The slimy caps of wet mushrooms glisten in my peripheral vision.

She screams again. Unintelligible. Is she trapped by a bull elk? Held down by a man? Injured in some kind of animal trap?

I have no bearings. I could be anywhere. Nowhere. I turn on my heels and the next scream sounds like it’s from the other way. Is she moving around in this forest? Am I going round in circles?

I almost run face first into the house.

A damp, wooden structure with no windows at all on the ground floor. No door I can see. A painted doll’s house that’s been damaged in a fire rests on a tree stump. It’s sat a little way from the main building. The kennel-size roof is blackened and the tiny furniture inside is singed. I look around at the real house. Lots of windows upstairs but no way in or out. What is this place? Some forest-ranger station? Green pollen and mould rising up from the forest floor, trying to reach up to those high windows. A bronze clock bolted onto the gable end; a clock with no hands to tell the time with.

‘Please,’ says the voice. ‘You have to come.’

The voice is close. Is she inside the house?

I turn a quarter circle and listen to her voice and then I run. To where I think she is. I have my phone and the knife Benny Björnmossen sold me last year. I run.

‘Keep talking,’ I yell, gasping for breath. ‘I can’t see you in the fog.’

And so she does. She whispers continually. Droning. Chanting. Is she injured? Or is this whole thing a trap?