Pines

as far as he could see.
    Ethan eased out into the road through a gentle left turn and accelerated slowly, heading south.
    He passed the pub, the hotel, the coffee shop.
    After seven blocks, the hospital.
    There were no outskirts.
    The buildings simply ended.
    He accelerated.
    God, it felt good to be going, finally getting out, a palpable weight lifting off his shoulders with every revolution of the crankshaft. He should’ve done this two days ago.
    There were no signs of habitation here, the road on a straight trajectory through a forest of pines so giant they could’ve been first-growth.
    The air rushing into the car was cold, fragrant.
    Mist hovered between the trees, and in places, across the road.
    The headlights blazed through it, visibility dropping.
    The reserve light came on.
    Shit.
    The road south out of town was on a steep and winding grade for several thousand feet up to the pass, and any minute now, the climb would begin. It was going to burn through what little gas remained. He should turn around now, head back into town, siphon enough to ensure he reached Lowman.
    Ethan hit the brake for a long, sharp curve.
    The mist was soup through the heart of the turn, the fog blinding white in the high beams, Ethan slowing down to a crawl with nothing to guide him but the faded double yellow.
    The road straightened, shot out of the mist, out of the trees.
    In the distance: a billboard.
    Still an eighth of a mile back, all he could make out were four painted figures standing arm in arm.
    Big, white-teeth smiles.
    A boy in shorts and a striped shirt.
    Mother and daughter in dresses.
    The father suited, wearing a fedora, waving.
    In block letters, under the perfect smiling family:
    WELCOME TO WAYWARD PINES
WHERE PARADISE IS HOME
    Ethan accelerated past the sign, the road moving parallel to a split-rail fence, the headlights grazing over a pasture and a herd of cattle.
    Lights in the distance.
    The pasture fell away behind him.
    Soon, he was passing houses again.
    The road widened, lost the double yellow divider.
    It had turned into First Avenue.
    He was back in town.
    Ethan pulled over to the curb, stared through the windshield, trying to keep the panic in check. There was a simple explanation: he’d missed the turnoff to the pass. Had shot right past it in that patch of dense fog.
    He whipped the car around and burned back up the road, hitting sixty by the time he reached the pasture.
    Back in the mist and the towering pines, he searched for a sign, for some indication of where the road veered off toward the pass, but there was nothing.
    In the sharpest section of the curve, he pulled off to the side of the road and shifted into park.
    Left the car running, stepped out into the night.
    He crossed to the other side and started walking along the shoulder.
    After a hundred feet, the fog was thick enough to hide his car completely. He could still hear it idling, but the sound grew softer with each step.
    He walked two hundred yards before stopping.
    He’d come to the other side of the curve, where the road straightened out again and ran back into town.
    The rumble of the car engine had died away completely.
    There was no wind and the woods stood tall and silent.
    Mist drifted by all around him, seemed to carry an electric charge, but he knew that hum was only somemicroscopic noise within himself, in
his
head, exposed only in the total absence of sound.
    Impossible.
    The road should not turn here.
    It should barrel on through these pines another half mile and then begin the long series of switchbacks up the side of that mountain to the south.
    He stepped carefully down off the shoulder into the trees.
    The pine needle floor of the forest like walking on cushions.
    The air damp and chill.
    These trees...he’d never seen pines so tall, and with little in the way of undergrowth to contend with, moving between the massive trunks was easy—a forest with breathing room. You could be lost before you knew it.
    He walked out of the mist, and now when he looked up, glimpsed icy points of starlight through the tops of the trees.
    Another fifty yards, and he stopped. He should go back now. There were certainly other roads out of town, and he could already feel the disorientation creeping in. He glanced back over his shoulder, thought he saw the general route he’d taken to arrive at this spot, but you couldn’t be sure. Everything looked the same.
    Out of the woods ahead of him: a scream.
    He became very still.
    There was