My cries holler into the blizzard, settling against the wall of trees, against the iced lid of the lake deep in the valley. She’s down there, below the surface. Jesus Christ, the poor woman is in it. I didn’t help her, just like I didn’t help Elisabeth, in fact. I might as well have shoved her into the icy, black water. I haven’t cried like this in years. Like a trapped animal. Like a hurricane gathering wild speed, screeching through the night. I scream until my voice bleeds dry, until I start to cough and splutter. I take a few stumbling steps away from the cabin and turn around to look at it, but already it is almost swallowed up by the snowstorm, only a dim haze from one forgotten oil lamp still lit on the windowsill discernible through columns of whirling snowflakes. I’ve left it burning – will it catch fire and raze the cabin to the ground? I decide I don’t care, I just keep stumbling through the snowstorm. I need to get away from this place more than I have needed anything in my life. Now.

I try to remember the direction I came from but my mind is in overdrive, throwing random thoughts and images at me, and my heart is pounding. Which way? I scream the words out loud, but this time my voice doesn’t carry; instead it peters out mid-holler to a pitiful squawk. The cabin lay to my left as I approached, on the edge of a rocky promontory overlooking the lake. No. It lay to my right. Or did it? The air is murky gray, with particles of pure white rushing at me on a bitter wind like confetti, and there is just no way of making out the path that leads back down the hill to my car.

I’m shaking with cold and sheer dread, and I spin around on my heels, rubbing at my arms; I’m not dressed for a dash through deserted, mountainous woods in a blizzard.