A bitter, cold wind whipped around and made Charlotte gasp and shiver at the briskness. Being inside all day had made her forget the cold weather surrounding them. Without the sun overhead, it was frigid, and Charlotte pulled her thin wool coat tighter around her. She glanced around, trying to figure out where exactly she was and what direction she needed to go to find the path back to the village.

She would have killed for the luxury of an Uber in that moment.

She’d passed the front door, so she started to turn back the opposite direction, knowing she could make her way back to the path from there. But a moan to her left caught her attention. She tensed, listening and hearing it again, faint but nearby. With the flashlight on her phone, she scanned the area, but she didn’t see anyone or anything around.

Scowling, Charlotte shook her head. She couldn’t afford to lose her mind    now. She’d managed to gather her cool as a façade around the others. She could fool herself into believing everything was normal for her own sanity.

She took a step in the direction she’d determined would lead her back to the front of the building, but the moan came again, this time stronger and without the blast of wind behind it. She whirled, shining the light in the opposite direction, and she caught a vague movement in the distance. And then another, like someone crawling at an incredibly slow pace.

Billy!

Charlotte hesitated only a moment. She wanted to leave, but if Billy was still alive, she could get him help. Or maybe even manage to take him with her. She held as much blame for all this as he did, and she couldn’t just leave him here.

Making up her mind, she strode determinedly in that direction, using the light to guide her through the overgrowth. A small cry froze her in place, and she cast the glow forward. The figure she’d seen was nearer, but as she watched in horror, it tumbled downward, out of sight. A hole in the ground? A trap?

Now, Charlotte moved faster, all sorts of dark, demented images floating through her mind. Billy, having fallen into a pit, full of spears, impaled on one of them. Or tumbling into a cavernous hole and lying broken, three stories deep at the bottom. He’d seemed so weak, there was no way he could survive either situation, or anything else she could conjure up.

Nearly at a run now, she approached the area, slowing down cautiously as she realized she’d entered a graveyard. Charlotte swallowed hard against a lump of fear in her throat. She hadn’t noticed before because there were no headstones standing, only small wooden plaques with what she assumed were names carved into them in strange characters that she could read.

She knew better than to walk over a grave, but she didn’t want to take too long getting to Billy. He had to be close by now. She flashed the light around, looking for what she now assumed had to be a freshly dug grave. It gave her hope that the fall wouldn’t have caused too much damage, and there wouldn’t be anything in the open ground to hurt Billy.

But she didn’t see any openings and wondered how far she could have veered off track, considering she hadn’t kept sight of him and had used her phone to light the ground in front of her. For all Charlotte knew, her trajectory had been way off, and Billy could be yards to her left or right. Fighting a wave of panic, she stood still and turned a complete circle, scouring the area for any sign of him.

When she still couldn’t find anything disturbed, even the ground, she chanced calling out. “Billy? Are you out there?” No answer came. She waited a moment and tried again. “Billy! Can you hear me?”

A moan came from somewhere to her left, and she stilled, listening carefully. Another one, followed by the lightest scratching sound. Was he trying to climb out?