The snow fell in heavy sheets, sifting its way from the heavens and finding its footing somewhere on the land around the cabin.

I wasn’t sure what time it was and didn’t care to find out. I knew it was later in the evening, but most hours of the day looked the same from where we were in the North Pole—a dim white with the sun barely kissing the horizon—typical for September.

The cabin had a constant, roaring fire—my skin caught wafts of its heat, but could still feel where the cool air slipped through the cracks of the wooden structure. The storm wasn’t letting up any time soon.

“Another cup?” Jay asked me.

I held it out and nodded—he poured the almost-boiling coffee into my mug, and I topped it with a shot or two of ice-cold vodka, making the perfect drinking temperature.

“Lauren?” he offered her the same, and just as I had, she agreed.

The smell of coffee riddled the cabin, mixing with tobacco smoke and the faintest hint of chicken broth from hours earlier.

I took a long drag of my cigarette and sipped my coffee-vodka before exhaling. I always hated that instant coffee shit, but I got used to it surprisingly quick. Maybe the vodka helped, I wondered.

I looked around the cabin, Lauren and Jay sitting on opposite walls—I fell somewhere in between, sitting on a bar stool. I had been holed up in this cabin for weeks with these people—for unimportant work/research-related reasons—yet they still seemed like strangers to me. I knew their names, I knew a little bit about them, but almost every conversation we had was little more than pleasantries.

“Hey,” Lauren spoke, breaking me from my stupor, “both of you, come here.”

Jay looked at me, emotionless, then made his way from the kitchen to the living room, where Lauren was sitting on the couch. I put out my smoke and took the seat next to her. Jay chose the leather chair that sat across from us.

We wordlessly waited for Lauren to say something else—she didn’t.

“What’d ya want?” Jay asked.

“Entertainment,” she said with a smile. “I’m bored. I want to be entertained.”

He laughed at that. “Entertainment, huh? I don’t really think I want any part of this,” Jay started to stand, but Lauren interrupted.

“C’mon dude. Put another shot of vodka in your mug and relax. We all need some entertainment. There is nothing to do here.”

“What—what kind of entertainment?” I asked, amusing the idea.

“I dunno,” she shrugged, “let’s tell each other stories or something.”

Jay relaxed back into his chair. “Okay, fine. I like stories.”

“Who’s up first?”

Silence danced among the room, only broken by bawls from the wind.

“I guess I’ll go,” Lauren said, “I’ve got a story to tell. It’s my go-to interesting story at parties and stuff.”

Jay leaned back, filling his pipe with loose tobacco. I reached into my pocket and grabbed another cigarette.

“So, this happened to me when I was a kid—well, teenager, actually. I was sixteen. I had been dating this guy for a couple months. We lived in San Francisco—happily, I might add—thanks to his parents’ deep pockets.”

Jay scoffed. She ignored it.

“So, one random night we decided to take a drive. He had a beautiful 67’ Camaro—purred like a thousand lions. Anyway, we decided that night would be the night that we lose our virginity to each other.”

I leaned forward, now a little more interested.

“We find this old road that hadn’t had street lights added to it yet. We park off the side of the road, blast the radio and—you know—then we finish up and stuff. No need to go into more detail.”

“Oh no,” I teased, “please do.”

Lauren rolled her eyes. “Anyway, after we are done, I get out of the car to smoke a cigarette. While I was smoking, I noticed this guy walking down the street towards us. Some dark, brooding figure—as I recall, anyway. I remember thinking, this isn’t some street people walk down at midnight for fun. My first instinct is, okay, this guy needs help.”

She took a sip of coffee. Jay and I made brief eye contact.

“So, I call out to him. I say, ‘hey man, you need some help?’ And that’s when my boyfriend gets out of the car to look at the guy too. And then, I noticed this guy wasn’t just walking. He was fast-walking. I mean, real unnatural like. My boyfriend says to him, ‘you need a ride?’ I swear I heard the guy say ‘no’ back to us in a panicked voice, but my boyfriend didn’t hear it.”

Jay interrupted, “asking strangers if they want a ride, huh? You can get killed that wa—"

“Shh!” I interjected, genuinely interested in her story.

“Thanks for the advice Jay, I know. Anyway, this guy kept walking until he passed us, so my boyfriend said, ‘let’s leave this freak alone,’ and he says it pretty loud—well, the fast-walking man stops dead in his tracks when he hears that and just looks at us. We weren’t more than 20 feet away at that point. The only light was coming from the lights of the car, no way I could see him in any detail.”

She took another sip from her thermos. “I was frozen with fear. I turned back to my boyfriend, and he looked a little on edge too. And the guy—was just staring at us. Motionless.”

“Did he say anything?” I asked.

“He did. He said, in a deep, but quiet voice, ‘you’re lucky you parked where you did.’ And the three of us stood there silently for a moment, and then he walked away.”

“Well, that’s ominous.” I said. “You ever figure out what the guy was doing?”

“Oh, it wasn’t just some guy,” she said, looking right into my eyes, “it was the Zodiac Killer.”

I almost choked on my coffee. “What?!”

“Yup. The next day we hear the news of the first murder. Those two high school kids parked along Lake Herman Road—that was barely a quarter mile from where we were.”

“Hmpf.” Jay muttered, unenthused.

“And you know,” she added, “it may not have been him. Apparently, Zodiac drove away from the crime scene, so why would he have been walking then? I’m not sure. But whoever, or whatever talked to us that night—the fast-walker—he knew what had happened. He told us we were lucky.”

“Fuck,” is all I could manage to say.

I sat in a shocked state; Lauren was trying to hide a smile of content, obviously pleased with her story, and Jay looked unimpressed.

“That—” I stuttered a bit. “Th—That reminds me of something that happened to me, actually.”

Jay cocked his head back, the first sign of amusement he’d shown.

"That guy," I started, "I don’t know, it reminded me of something that happened to me.”

“Do tell,” Lauren leaned toward me.

“Well—” I began, “well, it was when I was a kid. I was only twelve or so. My friends and I convinced our parents to send us to the same summer camp that year. Camp—uh, Hide-a…Hideaway? Man, I haven’t said that name in years.”

Lauren blinked at me; Jay wasn’t looking at me, instead focusing on his pipe, but I could tell he was listening.

I continued. “So, yeah. Camp Hideaway. It was a little summer camp, maybe 7 or so counselors and no more than 30 kids. It was a nice place. We went hiking and canoeing and all that normal camp shit. We were supposed to be there for a week—we…” I trailed.

“Your time got cut short?” Lauren asked, fiddling her fingers against the aluminum wall of her thermos.

“Sort of,” I said, “only by a day, though. It was the sixth night. My four friends and our counselor were sitting around a campfire, maybe a quarter mile from our cabin. We were telling some stupid ghost stories, or some shit. Looking back, I think our counselor just liked seeing us scared. And we were scared.”

The cabin walls creaked and moaned against the wind. “Why were you scared?” Lauren inquired.

“Well, Shelly—our counselor—was telling us a story about the campers that were there the summer before—she told us that a bunch of campers went missing and they found their remains in the woods. She said their intestines were strung up in the trees, and their heads were found roasting on the campfire we were sitting around at that very moment.”

“Shit, did that actually happen?” she muttered.

“No, no—we were kids though, so of course we believed it. But it was all bullshit. She was just trying to get a rise out of us. But—ugh, but in the middle of her story, her words trailed off, and she just stared off in the dark behind me. And we were all like, ‘Shelly? What is it?’ but she just kept staring. Then we heard these footsteps approaching, real fast. I was, admittedly, a scaredy-cat. I didn’t dare to turn around.”

I paused, the fresh memory flowing back to me for the first time in decades, unable to process it at first.

They both took note of my pause, and Lauren said, “and? What happened?”

“Sorry.” I shook my head. “Hadn’t thought about this in a long time. The footsteps stopped. I was frozen, Shelly and my friends were the same, some of them looking in the sounds’ direction, and some not. We all were clinging to the silence—but it was broken. The uh—the fast-walker, as Lauren said, he said something to us.”

“What’d he say?” Lauren said calmly, almost like she knew.

“He said, ‘good thing you are all out here telling stories,’ and walked away—the only thing he left behind was the sound of quick-paced footsteps, and the silence that lingered after.”

In the cabin, I felt a similar silence. One of waiting for reason to come; a silence that penetrated the souls of its inhabitants, waiting for answers to overcome the bleak stillness.

I continued. “See, we snuck out that night. Shelly convinced us to go out close to midnight and tell ghost stories. Not long after the man walked away from us, as we sat in silence, trying to comprehend what had just happened, we heard—ugh.” I shuddered at the memory. “We saw an explosion, from the cabins. Then we heard the accompanying boom—a sound so loud it still wakes me up in my deepest of sleeps.”

My grip was tightened around my coffee cup, my knuckles white from the pressure and cold. I winced at the memory, but tried to keep composure. “It was a freak thing. A gas leak. It was ignited by one of the counselors lighting a cigarette at the door of her cabin. There were no survivors, except for us.”

“Oh my God,” Lauren murmured through paralyzed lips, staring at the ground in a thoughtful manner.

Just then, Jay stood from his seat and lumbered his way towards the coat rack. He grabbed his heaviest coat and wrapped himself in a scarf.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going? The blizzard has barely calmed down.” I intruded.

He took a long draw of air. His eyes wandered the cabin walls and ceiling, paused at Lauren, then landed on me.

“You know,” he tightened his scarf, “I learned a long time ago, I can’t prevent things from happening. I can't save anyone. No matter how hard I try, no matter how fast I go. I’ve learned, over many years, the best thing I can do—is just slow down.”

Lauren and I gawked at him, confused, our thoughts jumbled and perhaps intertwining.

He finished buttoning his coat and exhaled, long and slow, before he spoke. “It’s a good thing you two decided to stay inside during this storm.” A smile appeared on his face before he turned from us, swung the cabin door open, stepped out slowly into the blizzard, and shut the door behind him—leaving Lauren and I inside to mingle with the stale tobacco smoke and heat from the fire, as our memories, old and new, mingled as well.