He steals another sly glance at the hitchhiker, muffled in fleeces and darkness. “Moose aren’t the only things on these roads.” He’s half-joking, savouring and delaying, knife a promise in his pocket. “Sometimes there’re monsters, too…”

He thinks she smiles.

They’ll blame bears or wolves.

Bury him quickly, without questions.

Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.