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HALLOWEEN 6:00 PM

Fifteen years is a long time to run from a graveyard.

Yet here I am, steering my black BMW M3 down the dark, ribbon-thin asphalt of Blackwood Highway, watching the tall pines bleed into the gray twilight like spilled ink.

Every October thirty-first, the air in this county turns bitter and heavy; thick with the scent of damp earth, decaying leaves, and old blood.

Most people in Blackwood look forward to tonight. They drape spiderwebs across their painted porches, carve grotesque grins into orange pumpkins, and gather downtown for the annual Blackwood Autumn Carnival.

They celebrate the artificial terror, safe under the illusion that horror is something you can simply turn off when the streetlights come on.

I know better.

I know what happens on this highway when the sun drops below the tree line. I know how easily a life can be snuffed out in the shadows, leaving behind nothing but a police report that becomes a cold case file gathering dust at the station.

My knuckles tighten against the leather of the steering wheel.

In the backseat, my overnight bag sits quietly, packed for a trip I tell myself I shouldn’t be making.

I shouldn’t have come back here. Every rational instinct in my body warned me to stay far away from Blackwood this year. To stay in my safe, brightly lit apartment three hours north, and pretend that tonight was just another night.

But grief—and guilt—is a tether that never truly snaps. It just stretches until the tension becomes unbearable, jerking you back to the place where your life split in two.

It happened right here on this stretch of road.

October thirty-first, fifteen years ago.

Noah.

He was just a boy then—quiet, awkward, with oversized coats and eyes that always seemed to be looking for everyone else’s secrets.

He should’ve stayed home where he was safe, and he wouldn’t have been on this very road. He should’ve never threatened to spill my secret.

But tragedy doesn’t care about what someone should’ve done.

A passing car, an isolated stretch of road, a body left in the ditch until the morning frost covered his face.

My pulse quickens at the thought of what he must’ve looked like when that patrolman found him.

The police called it a hit-and-run. An awful, tragic accident.

The town moved on eventually.

My friends seemed to have moved on.

I never did.

Michael Jackson’s Thriller accompanies the rising wind outside. As the sky turns a bruised, swollen purple, the final slivers of daylight begin to fade quickly.

Up ahead, the road stretches out, completely empty. No oncoming headlights. No tail lights ahead of me.

As usual, the carnival in town has swallowed up the local traffic, leaving Blackwood Highway utterly deserted.

It’s the kind of emptiness that makes your skin prickle. The kind of silence that feels loaded, like the universe is holding its breath, waiting for something terrible to happen.

Then my headlights catch a shape on the shoulder.

My heart leaps into my throat, my foot instinctively hovering over the brake pedal.