The gas station at the edge of the national forest looks like it lost a fight with time sometime in the eighties. Fluorescent light hums over shelves of beef jerky and motor oil. Zane is inside arguing about ice, Lamar is buying snacks he absolutely cannot afford, and Rebecca is taking a mirror selfie next to the ice machine.

Mika stands by the open trunk of the SUV with {{user}}, supervising the important work: rearranging bags so the cooler fits. She pushes her glasses up her nose and grins, that grin she only gets around people she trusts.

"Okay, serious question. How many movies start exactly like this? Six kids, remote cabin, no cell service?" She holds up her phone with one sad bar of signal. "We're literally speedrunning a slasher right now. I call survivor. Zane dies first, he's too cocky."

From the porch, the attendant watches them. Old, sunburned, forearms like rope. He's been staring since they pulled in, and when Zane comes out with the ice, the old man finally speaks.

"Y'all headin' to the Hollis cabin?" He spits tobacco into a rusted coffee can. "My daddy hauled lumber up that mountain in '79. Family of five went up there for a winter. Four came down." He lets that hang. "Ain't been right up there since. Make sure y'all lock the doors. All of 'em. And don't go wanderin' after dark."

Zane laughs it off with a middle finger as they pull out. Twenty minutes of winding gravel road later, the cabin appears between the pines: big, beautiful, and utterly alone under a sky already bruising purple. No neighbors. No lights. No signal at all now.

Mika steps out into the cold quiet, hugging her arms, and looks back at {{user}} with a nervous, thrilled smile. "He was messing with us... right?"

The cabin swallows all six of you at once, everyone talking over each other about who gets which room, who brought the good cooler, whose fault it is that the aux cord is already fighting.

Zane claims the master bedroom for him and Rebecca before his sneakers hit the welcome mat. Rebecca claims the kitchen and starts raiding the fridge with cheerful disrespect for property, hollering "your dad's got a full bar, babe!" down the hall. Lamar takes the couch, the joint behind his ear, and delivers his opening remarks to the room: "One road in, no signal, all white people everywhere I look. If I go missing, check the basement first. It's always white folks with a basement."

Amelia is the only one doing actual work, hauling grocery bags, corralling the alcohol into one corner, and tossing Zane a dish towel. "If you trash this kitchen I'm praying on your downfall. Real prayers. Out loud."

And Mika stands in the middle of it with her overnight bag hugged to her chest, glasses slipping down her nose, taking it all in like she still can't believe she got invited to this part of her life. She catches {{user}} looking and lights up, that grin she only lets out around people she trusts.

"Okay, first official cabin business." She counts on her fingers. "One: we pick rooms before Zane claims them all. Two: Lamar said something unhinged the entire drive up and I want to hear it again with witnesses. Three—" she drops her voice, conspiratorial, leaning toward {{user}} like the two of you are already a team, "there's a lake out back and I packed a swimsuit for no defensible reason. So. Introductions first. Who are you, and what's your deal? Best answer gets the room that isn't next to Zane and Rebecca's."

From down the hall comes a thud, Rebecca's voice ("it's fine, it's fine, the shelf was already like that"), and everyone starts laughing, and the night hasn't even really begun yet.

The party died three hours ago, the way things do slowly and then all at once.

It started with the lights. Then with Zane going out to check the generator and coming back white-faced, saying the shed was open, saying they should all just stay inside. Rebecca laughed at him until Amelia went to walk Lamar's third joint out to him, because he'd slipped out to the shed to smoke "in peace, away from y'all's drama."

Amelia hasn't come back either.

Now the living room is lit by one camping lantern. Rebecca is wrapped in a blanket shaking. Zane holds a fireplace poker like it's a snake that might bite him. Mika sits pressed against {{user}} on the couch, knee to knee, whispering counts of the group under her breath. "Six. Six of us. Just... six."

Then the back door creaks, and Lamar comes through it sideways like a man backing out of water. His eyes are enormous. There is blood on his hands, on his jacket, wiped in streaks where he tried to clean them on his jeans. His voice comes out tiny.

"Amelia's in the shed." A sound comes out of him that isn't quite a laugh. "She's... man, she's opened up. Like somebody... I stepped in..."

He slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor. Rebecca's blanket starts heaving with a scream building inside it.

And then, out past the dark windows, at the tree line, something is standing there. Tall. Too tall. The porch light catches the edge of a black mask and the gleam of a long, sharpened piece of metal hanging from one hand.

It doesn't move. It just watches the cabin. Like it's counting too.