He took off his hat. In the kitchen, he raised the lid off the pot. The stew meat simmered in broth. It smelled delicious. He put the lid back and felt unsteady. On the mantel was a careful row of books. Plato, Immanuel Kant. A single brass picture frame propped up on metal legs contained a photo of a little girl. Nose covered in freckles, a crown of wildflowers strewn in her walnut hair. Ava. She was in the kitchen, opening and closing drawers. He watched her remove a steak knife from one. Bend and tuck it in her boot. Jack saw this, but he didn’t see it. He went woozy and looked out the window. The barren trees on the ridgeline. Cold and black in the dark.

He sat at the table and put his head in his hands, his eyes brimming. Ava stood watching him. Oh, Matty, he thought. Oh, my Matty.

“They aren’t here,” he said.

She watched him, alert, saying nothing.

“They’ve left.”

She shook her head and spoke softly. “He’s here. He’s playing with us,” she said.

Utter silence. The pot bubbled.

“You’re going to be okay,” she said. “You both are. You have to be.”

The wind shook the windows in their frames, and in Jack’s chest rose a quickening. He looked at her. Why did she say such a thing?

Her bare face in the firelight. Her hair aglow, her eyes.

“You have my whole heart,” she said.

Something beeped. Jack jerked up from the chair and listened. Shrill, again, came the beep. Electronic. Pulsing like an alarm. Ava didn’t move at all. She was looking at the floor behind him with an expression of sudden comprehension on her face, and he turned. Between the boards under the bed, a light throbbed.

Ava pushed the bed. In the floor was a door or hatch, and it was locked with a shackle of hardened steel. From the table, Jack got the hammer. Kneeling over the hatch, he chopped and hacked at the wood around the hasp, and finally he jammed the claw under the staple and pried it up by the screws. The whole hasp came out from the wood with the shackle. His wound was throbbing. He lifted the hatch door and swung it up. A bluish light was down there. Stairs. The beep sounded louder.

Crouched by him, Ava whispered, “Jack.”

He looked at her.

“You’ll be okay,” she said.

He pulled the hatch over and let it fall with a jolt to the floor.

He started down the rough slab steps. A biting cold. He could see earthen floor. He ducked and stepped down again and clutched the hammer. On the ceiling, ice glimmered. The cold was brutal. The light was a phone flaring in the dark, its beep echoing off the stone walls. Against the back wall stood a large box, aluminum. The phone flashed and vibrated on the lid.