Cameron didn’t think she lost consciousness. Rather, she lost her headlights, which pitched her into inky darkness unlike anything she’d ever experienced. In the city that never sleeps, it didn’t ever get totally dark. Not like this anyway. With the headlights went the heater, and within minutes she was trembling from the cold and the fear of being alone in the middle of nowhere with something blocking her path. And smacking her face on the airbag hadn’t helped. Her nose hurt, and her eyes were watering.

She reached for her phone and managed to drop it. Rooting around on the floor, she finally found it, but when she turned it on she had no service. “Ugh! You gotta be kidding me!”

Squinting, she tried to make out what was blocking her path, but it just looked like a huge black wall. She pushed the airbag aside and turned the key. The engine clicked in response but didn’t turn over.

“Fantastic.” Who did one even call out here? Did the auto club send tow trucks into the middle of nowhere? She was powering up the phone to try again when the flash of headlights coming toward her caught her attention.

With fumbling hands, she managed to get the door open. Her legs didn’t want to cooperate as she forced herself out of the car, sinking ankle deep in something cold and wet. Thinking of the five-hundred-dollar cinnamon suede boots she had lusted after for months and finally bought with a gift card from her dad, she whimpered.

On the other side of the big black wall, which was now partially lit, she heard a voice.

“Are you okay, Fred? Does anything hurt?”

The wall let out the deepest “moo” she’d ever heard and began to move.

If her feet hadn’t been encased in something nasty, Cameron would’ve taken a step back when she realized “the wall” was alive. “What the . . .”

Ambling slowly into the woods, the animal’s departure allowed Cameron to see a large man standing in the silhouette of headlights, his truck running behind him. At well over six feet tall, his shoulders were broad and his posture menacing—or so it seemed to her. All he needed was a chain saw to complete the Texas Chainsaw Massacre image that was forming in her overly active imagination.

She wondered if they had chain saw or axe murderers in Vermont. Judging from the number of trees she’d seen on the way up here, they had plenty of use for both tools. Glancing down to her right, she gasped at the smashed-in front of her new car, illuminated by the truck’s headlights. “Oh no! My car!”

“You hit Fred,” the would-be axe murderer said.

Without taking her eyes off the front end of her once-pristine car, she said, “Who’s Fred?”

“The town moose.”

She stared at him, agog. “The town has a moose?”