Free Axis of Aaron by Johnny B. Truant and Sean Platt

these non-winterized summer homes, and answered instead?  
    What was he supposed to do if nobody answered, because every cottage was empty?
    Sense descended like a hammer. Of course she’d slipped into one of the cottages, and of course she wouldn’t answer now. There was a perfectly sensible reason — and, come to think of it, a sensible reason for her not responding to his shouts and the way she managed to stay ahead: she’d been running away from the deranged stranger behind her.  
    “Shit,” he said aloud.
    He backed up a step.  
    “Shit. Shit, shit.”  
    Ebon almost wanted to run out the way he’d come, but running suddenly felt like folly. He’d done nothing wrong. Did people who’d done nothing wrong run? No. Of course not. They walked, like sensible people — like the kind of people who would never chase a woman from the center of town into the cottage maze along the canal.  
    He retraced his last turn, then the one before it. But still, he couldn’t help but look back, feeling rebuked. His compulsion to catch the woman had felt red hot with anticipation, and he realized now he’d been very eager to at least exchange a few words.  
    It was a familiar feeling: one he’d had for a girl in college, before he’d met Holly. That girl (her name had been Kirsty) hadn’t been interested in Ebon’s affections, but he’d felt compelled to keep trying anyway. Every time he found ways to bump into her, he thought she’d finally find him interesting. Her face always twisted, clearly finding issue with his refusal to take a hint. But Ebon could never leave things on a bad note, so he’d always try again. If she was going to reject him, fine. But their last encounter couldn’t leave him feeling like an annoyance … but, of course, it always had.
    He blinked the feeling away, both summoning thoughts of Kirsty and pushing them back. That wasn’t what had happened here. And even if it was, the woman in red hadn’t had the chance to truly reject him, right?  
    Ebon shook his head. Why did he care about the red-haired woman?  
    His feet stopped, and he looked at the rows of summer cottages around him, most of which were already boarded for the off-season.
    And where the hell was he anyway?

CHAPTER FOUR
    Lost

    EBON FOUND HIMSELF THINKING OF KUBRICK’S version of The Shining, where Jack is chasing Danny through the hedge maze, wielding an axe. Where Danny, to elude his homicidal father, retraces his footprints in the snow, following his own prints back and out, while Jack freezes to death.  
      Ebon had traced his last turn, then had taken what he was pretty sure had been the previous turn. Even after only two turns, he felt unsure that he was on the right street, or the proper path back out and into the main part of town. Nothing looked familiar — while, at the same time, everything did.  
    The cookie-cutter cottages were, save minor details, too similar to tell apart.
    He didn’t remember the green door on the cottage behind him, but he’d been watching the woman coming in, barely paying attention. He didn’t recall seeing the three enormous terracotta pots on the porch ahead, but he’d been in a sprint, frantic as if trying to catch the last bus out of town.
    Even if he’d remembered those details, though, Ebon suspected he’d be lost. The canal area — including everything on the slivered-off mini-island beyond it — had been purchased wholesale in the '60s by a developer and made into a kind of island subdivision. The company hadn’t paved the streets, but it had laid the place out in curved dirt roads that formed cul-de-sacs and dead ends. The area was called Canal River (a redundant name if Ebon had ever heard one), and all of the streets were a variant: Canal River Place, Canal River Court, Canal River Majestic, Canal River Magnolia. Within a few minutes of trying to extricate himself, the place had begun to feel like a Chinese finger trap: the more Ebon struggled to free himself,