He told himself not to be crazy. The radio was old. Speakers got weird when they got old. That was all. That was all.

He wrenched his keys free from the ignition and hustled from the car.

Joel let his eyes adjust to the dark. The bed of the gully was thick with dead leaves that crept up his legs. He turned and spotted a little nook in the gully and took up position there. He stuck a hand down his pants to keep it warm.

The cold came rolling down the rock. The temperature was falling fast. With the game over, he estimated it would take Troy fifteen minutes to make it here from the field (though after all of Troy’s imprecations against football, Joel wondered vaguely—jealously—what could have inspired him to go to the game tonight in the first place).

Half an hour passed. Joel couldn’t pretend to be surprised. Troy was always late.

Sounds played funny against the walls of the gully: the whisper of the leaves at his feet echoed with every fresh breeze. He looked at his watch, buried his numb hand back in his underwear, then wrenched it out, sensing suddenly that he wasn’t alone. He squinted at the thicket of brambles and thorns a few yards away. That thicket was as tall as a person and tangled tight as a wall. There was no way anyone could conceal themselves in that overgrowth, Joel told himself. There was no way a person could be down here watching him, whatever the hairs on the back of his arms might say.

He sure was having to tell himself a lot this evening.

With a warm flood of relief, Joel heard the sound of tires creaking over the blacktop above him. But when the light of the car’s headlamps spilled, briefly, down into the gully, all that relief drained out of him. He held in a scream. He felt his knees struggle to hold him upright. He saw in those brambles at the end of the gully something he spent years telling himself he’d never seen.

He saw a pair of glassy black eyes watching him between the thorns and creeper. Saw them shine in the light with the ancient smug intelligence of an iguana, of a creature from the dark deep dreaming its way up to the surface, hungry for a show. Joel would have sworn—if his mind hadn’t teetered right on the absolute edge of oblivion—that those eyes, those big eyes had a smile in their shine.

And then something else registered in his panicking brain. The car above him had come to a stop but the engine hadn’t cut out.

That wasn’t Troy’s engine.

The car door swung open. Footsteps on the gravel. The headlights dimmed as someone passed in front of them. A pause. The person started down the steps.

It wasn’t Troy. The person was wheezy with the effort of the stairs, and by the time they were halfway down the side of the gully Joel was eyeing the sheer walls around him for handholds, sturdy roots, any possible escape.