As soon as it did, he pulled his arm in and my weight – still against the door – forced it back into the frame. The door clattered into place and clicked shut.

I reached down, picked up the rifle and pointed it towards the door, gripping hard – and then the wind came again, rigid as bone, and I realized how cold I was. I couldn’t feel my feet at all now, could hardly feel the ends of my fingers. My skin was starting to turn blue and my head was swimming: I was hungry and tired, confused, still unbalanced by weeks and weeks of darkness. Keep it together, I told myself, keep it together, keep it together, but it didn’t matter how many times I repeated it, I could barely clear the fog. Every limb felt heavy, every muscle arthritic. I was so frightened I could barely even breathe.

The wind picked up again, the chant of voices, the crackle and scratch of pine needles on top of the house, and as it did, I looked down at the rifle: I hadn’t held a gun like this for decades – not since my dad had taught me how to shoot as a kid on our farm.

Keep it together, I thought again, keep it together, keep it –

I could hear his voice.

I stepped closer to the door, to the warped slats through which I could see nothing except darkness, but now it was quiet again.

Reaching down, I grabbed the handle.

My fingers were trembling.

I stepped back, arching my body slightly, desperately trying to calm myself but nothing worked. The cold and the fear were too deeply embedded. I didn’t know what other weapons he had. I didn’t even know where he was.

I’m going to die out here.

I forced the thought down, forced everything else down with it, and gripped the handle as tightly as I could. Bringing the rifle across my chest, I quietly sucked in a breath and looked down at my hands.

Do it.

I yanked the door open, instantly raised the rifle and jammed the butt into my shoulder. But Vale didn’t rush me. As I looked along the scope, through it, either side of it, the house remained utterly still. Ahead of me, a hallway branched off into three rooms. A bathroom on the left. A kitchen on the right. A living room straight ahead. I’d been wrong: there was no bedroom. Instead, in the living room, I could see a sofa bed, pulled out and set up, the sheets untidy on top. There were some books on a stand next to it, some candles too. There didn’t seem to be electricity here, but if there were surveillance cameras, the house wasn’t without power: there was probably a generator somewhere.