Diana Hartwell had been stuck twenty minutes when she admitted the Lincoln would not rock itself out. The rear tires spun clean holes in the ice. The ditch held the car at a tilt, nose down, the hood already wearing a white cap. Snow came sideways across the windshield in a solid rush. She could not see a fence, a tree line, a mailbox — nothing to walk toward. She had told no one she was driving today. The man she was driving toward, the one who had asked her to marry him three times and gotten yes three times, was expecting her by dark on a road she had left an hour ago, for a smaller road, and a smaller road after that. She shifted into park and climbed out. The wind took the door and slammed it for her. She waded to the trunk. She wanted anything with an edge or a face — a board, a floor mat from the dealer, a bag of sand. The trunk was empty except for the spare and a jack still wired to its bracket. New car. Nothing lived in it yet. She stood in the snow and made herself think. The glove box pamphlet had said chains. She had no chains. It had said a shovel. She had no shovel. It had said carry traction aids. She had carried a purse and a thermos. She got back in and dug through the cabin. Registration. Owner's manual. The unopened pamphlet. Then her knee knocked the driver's floor mat and she looked down. The mat was heavy black rubber, thick, ribbed across the whole face in raised bars. Dealer-issued. Built to hold a boot. She pried it up. The passenger mat came next. She carried both to the rear tires and knelt in the drift piled against the wheel well. Her stockings soaked through at once. She scraped loose snow away with her gloved hands until she reached the glassy ice under the tread. She jammed the driver's mat hard against the back of the right rear tire, ribs up, pressed until it bit. She did the same on the left with the passenger mat. She got behind the wheel. Her hands shook on the column shift. She eased into drive. She did not stomp. She fed the gas the way she fed sugar into coffee, a little, a little more. The tires caught. The rubber gripped the ribs. The Lincoln lurched, climbed an inch, climbed another, and dragged itself up out of the ditch onto the buried road. She braked. She was breathing hard. She was back on the surface, pointed at a wall of white that could have been any direction. Behind her, in the ditch, both floor mats lay chewed and half-buried, already disappearing under new snow. She could not go back for them. She put the car in drive and eased forward into a road she could not see.

The Lincoln crept forward at a walking pace. Diana kept both hands on the wheel and her eyes on the small patch of white the headlights could reach. The road under the tires felt flat, then softer, then flat again. She could not tell shoulder from lane. The wipers threw off snow and the windshield filled again before they returned. She told herself to hold the center. Whatever the center was. She thought about the man waiting for her, the one she had said yes to three times. He would be at the window by now. He would be calling the road she wasn't on. The front end dropped. It was not the ditch again. It was worse. The hood plowed into a bank that had built itself across the road while she wasn't looking, a soft mounded wall the wind had shaped between two unseen banks. The Lincoln shoved into it up to the grille. Snow packed the headlights out. The engine strained, coughed, and settled to an idle. The car stopped. Diana sat still. She pressed the gas. The rear tires spun free and useless behind her. The front was buried past the bumper. No mats left. No shovel. Nothing in the trunk but a jack. She cut the engine to save the fuel and remembered the exhaust. She got out to check the pipe. The wind hit her like a hand. She waded around the back and knelt. The tailpipe was clear. For now. She stood up and that was when she saw it. Something tall stood at the edge of the headlight glow, off to the right, where the road should have had a fence or a field or nothing. It was thin. Too thin. The shape of a man stretched and dried. Antlers branched above its head, pale as old bone. It did not move the way the snow moved. It held. Diana did not breathe. She told herself it was a dead tree. A trick of the light through the storm. She counted to five. The shape was still there. Then the snow closed between them and it was gone. She got back in the Lincoln and locked the door. Her hand shook on the button. She tried the gas once more, gentle, the way she had before. The tires spun. The car did not move. The hood stayed in the drift. She shifted to park. She was not driving out of this one. Not tonight. Not under her own power. She looked at the glove box. She opened it and took out the pamphlet she had never read. She turned on the dome light. Outside, the wind kept working on the car, packing it in. Whatever she had seen at the edge of the light, or had not seen, was on the same road as she was.

Diana read the pamphlet under the dome light. The page on stuck cars said one thing plain: weight the rear. Sandbags. Cinder blocks. Anything heavy over the drive tires. She had none of it. She had a jack and a spare and a purse. She hit the wheel with the heel of her hand. The Lincoln sat nose-first in the drift, the grille packed white, the hood pale under new snow. The wind kept adding to it. She thought about the trunk. A spare tire was heavy. She could pull it out and lay it in the trunk well over the rear axle. It would not be sandbags, but it would be something. She put on her gloves and opened the door. The wind took it and she caught it before it swung wide. She waded to the trunk and got the key in. The lid rose. Inside: the jack, the spare bolted down, a folded blanket. She started on the wing nut. The car moved. Not the wind. A push. The whole rear of the Lincoln shifted an inch on its springs, then rocked back. Diana froze with her hand on the wing nut. She looked up over the raised trunk lid. It stood at the back corner of the car. Close. The antlers branched above the trunk light, pale bone against the snow. The ribs showed through skin drawn tight as canvas. One long hand rested flat on the rear quarter panel. The other hung at its side, black claws curled. It pushed again. The Lincoln rocked. Snow slid off the hood. Diana dropped behind the bumper and crawled. She kept low along the side of the car, one hand on the cold metal, and got the driver's door open and threw herself inside. She locked it. She locked all of them. The thing pushed the car from the back. The Lincoln groaned into the drift, deeper. Diana felt the front end sink another inch. Her breath came fast and loud in the cabin. She started the engine. She put it in reverse and gave it gas. The rear tires spun and screamed on ice. Nothing. The car sank further under the push. She threw it into drive and rocked it. Reverse. Drive. Reverse. The tires whined. The Lincoln did not move. The spare was still bolted in the trunk. The trunk was still open. She could not go back out. She cut the engine. She sat with both hands on the wheel and made herself breathe. The pushing stopped. She waited. It did not start again. She looked in the mirror. The trunk lid stood up, empty and lit. Snow blew across it. Nothing stood behind the car now. She was locked in a car she could not move, with the trunk open to the storm, and the weight she needed was ten feet away in the cold.

Diana sat with the engine off and her hands on the wheel. The pushing had stopped. The trunk stood open behind her, lit and useless. She needed the spare tire in the well over the rear axle, and she could not go back for it until she knew where the car actually sat. She had been guessing. Every time she hit the gas, she guessed. She could not see the rear tires from the driver's seat. She did not know if they sat on ice, on packed snow, on nothing. She did not know how deep the drift held them, or which way the car leaned. She wiped the rear window with her glove. Snow blew across the glass and filled it back in. The mirrors showed her the trunk lid and a strip of white. Nothing useful. She needed to see. That was the whole thing. See the tires, then decide. She pulled the flashlight from the glove box. She checked every window before she moved. The drift rose past the driver's door on her side. She slid across the bench to the passenger side. That door faced open road, or what had been road. She cracked it an inch and listened. Wind. No steps. No breath. She pushed the door wide and dropped out low, staying tight against the car. She crawled along the rocker panel to the rear wheel and put the flashlight on it. The tire sat cocked. The drift held it from the outside, packed hard against the sidewall. Underneath, the tread rested on a slick shelf of ice where the ditch bottom curved up. Every spin she had given it had polished that shelf smoother. The tire was not buried. It was perched. She moved the light forward. The front wheel on this side had sunk to the hub. The car was nose-down and tilted, the rear end lifted so the drive tires barely pressed the ice at all. She understood now. Weight in the trunk would not be enough. She needed to break the ice shelf under the rear tire, and she needed to pack something rough under the tread. Without that, the spare would only sit in the well while the wheels kept polishing glass. She swept the light one more time along the length of the Lincoln. At the front corner, past the buried headlight, the snow was pressed down in a long print. Two prints. Cloven, deep, close to the grille. It had been standing at the front of her car while she looked out the back. She killed the flashlight and pressed flat against the quarter panel. She counted to ten. She heard only wind. She crawled back to the passenger door and pulled herself inside and locked it. Her hands shook on the wheel. She knew what the car needed now. She knew where the thing had been. Both facts sat in the cabin with her, and only one of them helped.

Diana sat with her hands on the wheel and worked the problem forward. She needed rough material under the rear tread. Sand. Gravel. Branches. Anything the tire could bite. The snow around the car was powder, useless. The gravel shoulder was buried somewhere under three feet of drift, and she did not know exactly where. She thought through what she had. The floor mats were gone, left behind on the last stretch of road. The spare sat in the open trunk, still out of reach. That left the cabin. She turned in the seat and looked. The dealer's pamphlet lay in the glove box. Paper. Not enough. The owner's manual, thicker. The rubber liner under the front mat on the driver's side. She pulled it up. Ribbed rubber, stiff in the cold. It would grip better than nothing. She needed more. She popped the seat cushion release and lifted the rear bench. Underneath sat the toolkit in a cardboard sleeve, a jack handle, and a folded canvas. She took the canvas. She took the jack handle for the ice shelf. She was reaching for the toolkit when the car jolted. Not a push. A yank. The whole frame shuddered sideways and dropped an inch. Her shoulder hit the door. The jack handle rang against the floorboard. She froze on her knees behind the front seat. Through the rear window she saw it. The antlered thing stood at the corner of the trunk, one long arm hooked over the open lid. Its skull tipped down toward her. The rack of antlers scraped the trunk edge as it leaned. It pulled again. The Lincoln lurched. Metal groaned where the frame met the drift. The rear end slid deeper. She heard the ice shelf under the tire crack and reset lower. She scrambled forward over the bench and threw herself into the driver's seat. She turned the key. The engine caught. She jammed the shifter into drive and fed the gas. The rear tire spun. She heard it whine against fresh ice. No bite. The car did not move. The creature pulled a third time. The Lincoln swung a foot to the right and dropped. The passenger side tipped up. Her shoulder pressed against the door. The headlights swept across white and lit nothing. She let off the gas. Fighting it with the engine was making it worse. Every spin polished the shelf. Every lurch buried her deeper. She killed the motor. The cabin went quiet except for wind and her own breath. The car sat at a harder angle now. The rear tire hung. She could feel it in the seat, the way the weight had shifted off the drive wheel entirely. Even with rough material, even with the spare, the tire would not touch ground. The canvas lay on the floor by her boot. The jack handle beside it. Both useless until she solved a new problem. The car was no longer stuck. It was hanging.