Then the hair on my neck stands up, because I know that I’m not alone out here. I sense something coming toward me. Moving slow and silent through the fog. My heart stops, and I go rigid with fear. Something is there. Breathing. Just a few feet away. I feel its presence, even if I can’t see it or hear it.

Sudden bright light. So blinding that I have to shield my eyes.

Just like on the cabin steps with Lex.

Like the night my mother died.

The night I died.

I scream and stumble backward into nothing. But I trip. There’s something buried in the sand. Something wide and flat just under the surface. I land hard, and it knocks the wind out of me.

“Avril?” There’s a voice behind the light. “It’s okay. It’s me.”

“Lex?” It doesn’t sound like him, but I don’t know who else would be out here in the night, looking for me. An outstretched hand emerges from the fog. Disembodied and strange. I still can’t see a face.

“It’s Cole.” He squats down low beside me. Our faces are inches apart, but all I see is the glow of his eyes. “Nice night, huh?” I’m so confused. And so cold. He slips off his jacket and drapes it around my shoulders, then takes my hand and pulls me to my feet. “Are you hurt?” he asks. But I can’t answer. Because I don’t know. “Come on.”

Cole leads me through the fog. The beam of his flashlight barely makes any difference at all. It can’t cut through the gray that walls us in. But his grip is strong, and I almost cry out in relief when I feel the wooden planks of the boardwalk under my bare feet.

We feel our way through the emptiness together. Board by board. Step by step. Inch by inch. Over the dunes and across the marsh. I know it by that sickly sweet smell. The scent of rot. And eventually we come to the thick, soft grass of the great lawn.

“You okay?” Cole asks me again. But my teeth are chattering too hard to speak.

He stops to pull his jacket tighter around me. Then he leads me on up the hill toward the farmhouse. When we get close, I see lights burning in some of the windows, and I’ve never been so grateful to see anything in my life.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get you warm.” He leads me on through the fog, and I think he’s taking me back to my cabin. But then I hear the jingle of keys and the squeaky hinge of the old barn door. “I thought you might want to clean up,” he tells me. “Maybe dry out a little. Before I walk you back to your place.”