Makayla stood in snow up to her knees and stared at the place her boyfriend had been standing one minute ago. His footprints stopped mid-stride. There was no second set beside them. There was no blood. The wind had not even had time to soften the edges of his boot marks before he was gone. She had felt it when they pulled up to the cabin that morning. The crooked porch. The yellow squares of light in windows nobody had lit. Her hand had been on the car door, and her whole body had told her to stay in the seat and drive away. He laughed and said it would be fun. She got out. She always got out. Later he would say, see, I knew you'd love it, the way he always did. Now he was gone and she was alone in a field of snow that went on until the trees, and past the trees she could not guess. She called his name once. The sound died fast, like the air ate it. She did not call again. Whatever had lifted him out of his own footprints was still out here, and she did not want it to know where she was. She turned back toward the cabin. Her hands were shaking inside her sleeves. She had nothing. No knife, no phone signal, no plan. Her boots were wrong for the snow. Her cardigan was wrong for the cold. She thought about the tree line, about how fast something could cross open ground, and she started to run. Inside the cabin she bolted the door and pressed her back against it. The rooms smelled like old smoke. She checked the kitchen drawers first. Butter knives. A bent fork. Nothing that would keep her alive for a full minute against whatever had taken him. She went upstairs and came back down. She looked under the couch. She lifted the rug by the hearth. Empty, empty, empty. Her breath came faster. She was going to have to go back out there with her bare hands, and she was going to die too, and it was going to be because she had stayed in the car door moment one more time. She made herself stop. She thought about what he had said in the car, about a shed out back where the owner kept his tools. She had not been listening then. She was listening now. Makayla pulled a coat from the hook by the door, not hers, too big, and stepped back into the snow. The shed sat forty yards from the porch, sagging under its own roof. She waded to it and pulled the door. The hinges gave. Inside, half-buried under a tarp, sat a heavy wooden chest. She lifted the lid. Steel caught the gray light. She was not going out there empty-handed anymore.