Part of some building, her mind hazarded, a pre-fab. But no one built Quonset huts out in the woods – why drag all that metal in when three men could throw up a cutter's lean-to with saws, axs, and a two-handed buck-saw in six hours? Not a car, either, or the protruding metal would have been flaked with rust. An engine-block seemed slightly more likely, but why?

And now, with dark drawing down, that memory of vibration returned with unarguable certainty. It must have been a psychic vibration, if she had felt it at all. It

Suddenly a cold and terrible certainty rose in her: someone was buried there. Maybe she had uncovered the leading edge of a car or an old refrigerator or even some sort of steel trunk, but whatever it had been in its aboveground life, it was now a coffin. A murder victim? Who else would be buried in such a way, in such a box? Guys who happened to wander into the woods during hunting season and got lost there and died there didn't carry along metal caskets to pop themselves into when they died … and even given such an idiotic idea, who would shovel the dirt back in? Cut me a break, folks, as we used to say back in the glorious days of our youth.

The vibration. It had been the call of human bones.

Come on, Bobbi – don't be so fucking stupid.

A shudder worked through her nevertheless. The idea had a certain weird persuasiveness, like a Victorian ghost story that had no business working as the world hurtled down Microchip Alley toward the unknown wonders and horrors of the twenty-first century – but somehow produced the gooseflesh just the same. She could hear Anne laughing and saying You're getting as funny in the head as Uncle Frank, Bobbi, and it's just what you deserve, living out there alone with your smelly dog. Sure. Cabin fever. The hermit complex. Call the doctor, call the nurse, Bobbi's bad … and getting worse.