In the shed’s back corner are a rusted old tub, a few sacks of long-dead seeds, a torn sandbag. I move them carefully aside.

The door is beneath them.

It’s almost the size of a door inside a house, the kind of door that could open into any ordinary bedroom. But this door leads down. Into the earth.

I pry it open.

The root cellar, like the rest of the shed, had been unused for years. Decades. Now it’s mine.

The steps are slats, barely broader than a ladder. They groan under me. I climb down into the little bare earth room. It smells like soil. Damp. Deep. If it weren’t for the open door above me and the rickety shed streaked with dusty sunlight, it would be pitch-black. Instead, it’s only gray. Splintering shelves line the walls. I take the full water bottle out of my bag and place it on the shelf, in the row of items I’ve been building, one at a time. Two jars of applesauce. One of peanut butter. Several other old whiskey bottles filled with water. In the corner, a pillow, a few blankets, two coils of strong rope.

I climb back up the steps. The door has three bolts on the outside. I added two of them myself. They were cheap, at the hardware store, the same kind I drilled to the frame outside my bedroom door. I don’t need to lock them yet.

I move the rusty old tub and ancient sacks back into place over the cellar door. When everything looks just like it did before, I leave the shed, circle the house, and climb onto the pale blue bike.

In daylight, the road that leads me to the Thorsons’ house has transformed. The woods are light stunned, lively with birds. Everything else—everything big and dark and terrible—is waiting now, hidden, half asleep. But I feel them there. Patches of prickling darkness. Their deep, thrumming breaths.

I pedal around a curve, through the ditch, onto the pine needle carpet. I climb down from the seat. The bushes swallow my bike.

I lean against the big tree and look out.

A cat pads slowly across the Thorsons’ lawn, his bony shoulders working up and down beneath his dull gray fur. The white car is missing from the driveway. Anders’s bedroom window is dark. This could mean many things, but I know which one it means right now. The room is empty.

Anders isn’t here. I can feel it now that I’m close, as plainly as you can feel an emptiness on the other side of your own bed.

I glance around, checking the woods in every direction. Nothing but singing birds and rustling leaves and creaking limbs.

But I’ll find him. I can always find him.

I pull the bike back out of the bushes and jump on, steering for town. Not by the road. Through the woods.

There’s no one around. No one to see me if I move as fast as I can move.