The road out of town seemed like an endless black ribbon, hemmed in on both sides by ancient, dense fir trees. At night, in the fitful light of a moon that kept slipping in and out of cloud, they looked almost sinister, their sharp crowns rising over the road like silent sentinels. Mist crept up from the low ground, settling over the tarmac in ragged, half-transparent shreds, so that my old Hyundai's headlights drowned in a pale, milky haze. I gripped the wheel until my knuckles went white. Six months on the outskirts of Exeter with a fresh licence in my pocket, of which I'd actually driven for maybe a month — not exactly a wealth of experience for night driving out in the sticks. A sleepy city with its empty streets was one thing. This — the wilds on the way up to the top of the hill — was something else entirely. And what possessed you to come out to this godforsaken place, Sasha? my inner voice of reason grumbled half-heartedly, sounding suspiciously like Claire. Claire, like Jess, was another close friend from school — sensible, sound to the bone, a future lawyer who couldn't stand chaos, spontaneous idiocy, or dubious late-night adventures. In our friendship she'd always been the "older, wiser" one, even though we were the same age. Claire genuinely worried about me, still thinking of me as the good girl from the respectable Vance family, and right now her mental avatar in my head was, predictably, delivering a lecture on road safety. But there was no turning back — I was nearly at the long bend leading up to the viewpoint by the big pine. I slowed, peering into the fog, and that was exactly when everything went to hell. A huge grey shape shot…