Victoria DeLarge wanted one thing this morning: to find Frankie and take back what she said. She had called him useless before he walked out. Now the sun was up over Hidden Falls, and her boyfriend was gone. She wanted them both out of this town alive. That plan started with getting him home. She checked his phone location twice. It sat dark. She grabbed her keys, told herself the fight was small. Then she remembered his face at the door. Frankie didn't slam things. He got quiet and left. Quiet was worse. She drove to the one place he cooled off. The dive bar wrapped around a glass tank, where a swimmer in a mermaid tail drifted behind the glass. Warm light spilled onto the wet boards outside. Frankie came here when his hands shook and he didn't want to talk. His truck wasn't in the lot. Inside, Jon filled a whole barstool. Frankie's best friend was built like a door, bald, with a beard down to his chest. He was Frankie's oldest friend, the one who always knew where he went. He didn't turn when the door opened. He just lifted his beer. "You're late," Jon said. "Late for what?" Victoria stopped behind him. "Was he here?" Jon set the beer down slow. "He was. An hour ago. Drank one, said maybe six words." He finally looked at her. His eyes weren't kind. "He asked me if you'd ever really leave with him. I told him I didn't know." "Where did he go?" Her voice cracked. "He wouldn't say to me." Jon reached into his shirt pocket. He put a folded napkin on the bar. "He left this for you. Said you'd understand." Victoria opened it. Frankie's handwriting slanted hard. Three words. *Going where nobody finds me.* Her stomach dropped. She knew the place he meant. Everyone in Hidden Falls knew it. The cavern at the edge of town, the black mouth in the rock where people went to disappear. Nobody came back from there the same. Some didn't come back. "He didn't mean it like that," she said. "Tell me he didn't." Jon pushed off the stool. The floor creaked under him. "I know that look on him, Victoria. He means to stay gone a while." He grabbed his jacket. "I'm coming with you. He's my friend too." She folded the napkin into her fist. The bar's warm light suddenly felt far away. Frankie was walking toward the worst place in Hidden Falls, alone, because of what she said. She pushed out the door into the daylight. "Then move," she told Jon. "We find him before dark, or we don't find him at all." The bar hadn't held Frankie. But it had told her exactly where he was going. Now the goal wasn't finding him. It was reaching the cavern first.

The maroon SUV lurched to a stop where the road ended. Victoria stared through the windshield. The gravel just quit, swallowed by weeds and broken rock. Beyond it, a rocky path climbed toward the black cavern mouth. She checked the sun. It hung low and orange. "We walk from here," she said. "Now, or we lose the light." Jon didn't argue. He leaned into the back seat and dug through Frankie's gear. His huge hands came out holding two things. A pink double-barrel shotgun, a belt of shells wrapped around it. And a slim curved sword in a wooden sheath. He handed her the sword. "Frankie kept these for a bad day," he said. "Guess this counts." Victoria drew the blade. It caught the dying light. She wasn't sure how she'd use it, but her hand stopped shaking around the grip. They started up the path. Twenty feet in, she heard it. A wet hiss, rising from every side. The rocks were alive with snakes. Dark scaled bodies coiled over the stones, horns jutting from bony skulls. One reared up and spat. A glob hit the rock by Victoria's boot and steamed. "Don't let it touch you," she said, and swung. The sword took a snake clean in half. Jon fired. The blast tore three of them off a boulder. He fired again, then broke the barrels and slid in fresh shells. Victoria hacked her way up the path, boots slipping on wet stone. A snake struck at her leg. She brought the blade down and pinned its skull to the rock. Green rot leaked out. They pushed higher. Jon's shotgun thundered beside her, deafening in the narrow path. Snakes fell in pieces. Victoria's arms burned, but she kept swinging, kept climbing toward the cavern. Vines hung across the last stretch, thick and dark. She cut through them. One more snake dropped from a ledge. Jon blew it apart before it landed. Then the hissing stopped. The path lay wet and littered with dead coils. Victoria stood panting at the top, the cavern mouth just ahead. She'd done it. They'd cleared the way to Dead Man's Cavern before dark. Jon grabbed her arm. "Victoria." She followed his eyes. Not to the cavern. To the tree line on their left. Shapes moved there in the shadow. Not snakes. Bigger. She heard grunting, wet and low, and the crack of branches. A pig stumbled into the last of the light. Its hide hung in strips. One eye was gone, the socket black. Behind it came another. Then a dozen more, snouts dripping, pushing through the brush in a solid wall. The cavern was right there. And now a herd of dead pigs stood between them and one clear step forward. Jon snapped the shotgun shut. "We're not done," he said. Victoria raised the sword again.