She tugged on his sleeve, but he didn’t budge. He stood there, frozen, waiting, barely breathing.

“Andrew!”

This time she wasn’t taking no for an answer. She pulled Andrew with all her might back into the living room. The force of her yank on his shirt seemed to snap him out of the strange spell that had come over him. Slipping one arm around her waist, he slid the door shut so hard, she was afraid the glass would shatter. The lock snapped back in place with a satisfying click.

Feeling naked and exposed, Kate pulled the chain to close the blinds on the door.

Kate’s heart hurt. The pain radiated to her shoulders, stabbing her temples with pincers. She had to calm down.

The thing out there had stopped when Andrew spoke.

Like it understood him.

Which meant it wasn’t an it, but a who.

“Did you see anything?” she asked Andrew breathlessly.

“No. The flashlight on this thing sucks.”

He helped her sit in the chair and moved it, and her, away from the doors.

Kate felt as if she were going to shake apart. It was hard to catch her breath. “What do we do?”

Andrew’s eyes darted around the cottage. He ran to the kitchen and yanked the window closed. He then double-checked the lock on the front door before disappearing into the bedroom, where she heard another window bang shut.

When he came back to the living room, he was holding an ax handle.

“Where did you find that?”

“In the supply closet. It’s missing the most important part, but it’s the best we have.”

He was about to sit on the bed next to her when there was a tremendous crash, the impact on the house so brutal that the framed picture of a bowl of fruit sailed off the wall in the dining room.

They both jumped, yowling. Kate instinctively grabbed him, pulling him closer. Andrew gripped the ax handle so hard, the tops of his knuckles were a deathly white.

Buttons scampered to the dining room and began to howl, a long, wistful note that chilled Kate to her core. He’d never made a noise even remotely like it before. He should have been barking, wanting to get at whatever was outside the cottage.

Instead, he almost sounded…mournful.

“Fuck,” Andrew hissed.

She knew he wanted to run out into the dark and confront their unseen stalker. But he also wasn’t going to leave her side. He never did.

“What did they do, hurl a goddamn boulder at the house?” he said, the cords on his neck standing out.

Kate tried to settle him down, though she felt she’d need five Valium to calm down herself. “Maybe…maybe they’re leaving. That was their last attempt at freaking us out.”

“Well, it worked.”