But Francis was a master at pebble-kicking, and the little black stone bounced in a straight line. He could even make it skip over the roadkill, a skill he was willing to brag about.

Francis had spent the afternoon at the library, an unfortunate waste of a nice day. Rachel, the obnoxious cheerleader who had been assigned as his research partner, made it loud and clear that she wanted his share of the project done by Thursday, since it was due the following Monday. He pulled out his phone to check his notifications. Fourteen unread direct messages from Rachel hovered under the time and date stamp: 5:42 pm, Saturday, April 9.

He tapped on the top notification to open the message thread, various renditions of I’m going to kill you if I fail this assignment scrolling by. He sucked artificial cherry into his mouth and typed, I’ll finish it tonight. Hopefully there’s no viruses.

The message failed to send. No service. He shrugged and returned his phone to his pocket. He didn’t care enough about his own grade, let alone Rachel’s, to try to soothe her rage.

Straw in his mouth, Francis calculated how hard he would have to kick his pebble next to get it over the corpse of a raccoon hanging over the path up ahead. He gave the stone an expert strike with the side of his foot. But somehow, he misjudged the distance, and the stone sailed through the air and landed right on the raccoon’s belly. It bounced off the grey fur and into the ditch.

“Damn raccoon.”

Francis resigned himself to finding a new stone as he continued walking. But his search halted when he drew level with the raccoon. Its head had been thoroughly squashed, in the middle of the road, marked by dried blood and skull matter flattened to the pavement. Francis guessed the driver responsible had dragged the poor creature to the side of the road to avoid further mutilation, for its body was still fat and round. Punctuated by its lack of a head, Francis thought the scene was sad. He’d always wanted a pet raccoon.

He was about to move on when something else caught his eye. Catching the sunlight too perfectly in a careless discarding, a tiny, thin piece of metal reflected in the dirt. Francis crouched to get a better look and identified it as a needle. Not a needle like for a drug addict, though he did look around for a syringe just in case. It was a sewing needle; a snipped strand of embroidery thread tied through the eye. Carefully, he picked it up with the black thread, wondering how it had ended up on the ground. His mother was an avid embroiderer, and she would never allow her supplies to end up in a ditch somewhere. Whoever this belonged to clearly had no respect for the craft.

So close to the needle, Francis noticed there was something stuck to the instrument, a dried, dark liquid of some kind. So close to the raccoon, he noticed that a blunted end of more black thread stuck out from under the little corpse. Unable to help himself, Francis took the end between his finger and thumb and gave it a light tug. It wouldn’t budge, but he didn’t want to touch the raccoon. He tugged a little harder, even when the thread went taut. The raccoon shifted toward him.

Francis jumped and accidentally dropped his slushy, the drink landing on the headless raccoon. He stared at the corpse, heartbeat in his ears, and waited for it to move again. The slushy dripped onto the pavement, sliding down the fur in thick clumps. But it didn’t move again. Slowly, Francis crouched once more and fished the soaked thread end out of the slushy. Holding his breath, he pulled on the thread again as strongly as before. The raccoon followed the tug. Francis lifted the thread, heart pounding, and the raccoon came with it. Before he knew it, he was standing, and the raccoon hung belly-up by the strong thread.

Francis’s eyes widened. Up and down its swollen belly was a row of stitches.

For some reason, unwilling to drop it, Francis lowered the raccoon back to the ground. His hands trembled as he took out his phone. Relief flooded him at the bars of service in the corner. Hastily, he opened the phone app. But he paused with his finger hovering over the numbers. Should he call 911? Or animal control? Who would know how to deal with a headless, stitched-up raccoon?

The road and fields all around were deathly quiet. Finally, Francis went to his contacts and scrolled until he landed on Dad. He put the phone to his ear and listened to the rings, each one seeming longer than the last.

When he was certain the ringing would stop and his dad would miss the call, the line was answered. “Hello.”

“Hey, Dad?”

There was a pause. “Hello?”

Francis looked around. “Dad? It’s me, Francis.”

A sound of shuffling came from the other side of the call. Francis heard his dad mutter something incoherent before his voice came back audible through the phone. “Who is this? Did you dial the wrong number?”

“What?” Frowning, Francis lowered his phone to check the number he’d called. But the contact was correct. “Dad, can you hear me?”

“I’m sorry, there must be something wrong with the line. Call me back if it’s important. Thanks.”

“Dad, wait! Dad!”

But the line went dead. Francis tried to call again. Call failed flashed at him, and he realized the service bars had disappeared. He tried 911, but the same thing happened. He looked up and down the road, hoping a car would drive by, but everything around him was impossibly empty. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen another person, driving or walking, or in any other mode of transportation. From one hazy end of the road to the other, there was nothing to see.

Shaking, Francis broke into a run down the middle of the road along the double yellow line. Intense unease nipped at his heels, but he didn’t know where it was coming from. When had this stretch of road become this long?

Something darted out into the road. The black shape cut right across Francis’s path, too fast for him to get a good look at before it disappeared into the corn on the other side of the road. Startled and trying not to collide with it simultaneously, Francis tripped over his own feet and sprawled on the pavement. He landed hard on his hands and slid, scraping one arm to his elbow and both knees. He lay still for a moment, the unease crawling over him but preventing him from getting up.

Francis couldn’t remember the last time he cried; at the very least, he knew it had been a few years. But he cried now, the yellow lines dividing his prostrate body, torn by confusion and dread.

Something scuffled in the ditch on his left. He looked over in time to see another raccoon, very much alive, peering at him with wide eyes like it was wondering what he was doing there. Francis pushed himself onto his knees, ignoring the sting as he did so. The raccoon’s little head swung left and right, checking for danger. Francis sniffed and wiped his eyes, his previous sense of dread dulling.

“You’re right, lil’ guy,” he said to the raccoon. “I shouldn’t be in the middle of the road, should I?”

In response, the raccoon raised its little hands over its head to show him something it carried. A severed hand, the wrist bone sticking out of the blunted side. Francis blinked, then his face hit the pavement.

When Francis opened his eyes, his face ached and burned with bruises. The road and cornfields were washed in moonlight, and the night swarmed with crickets. Francis rubbed his eyes, his head pounding like it was trying to escape his skull. He wondered if the dead raccoon had felt something similar as its head was crushed.

It hit him then that he was still lying in the middle of the road. He sat up quickly despite how badly it made his head spin. He checked his phone for the time, noting vaguely that he still had no service: 2:59 pm, Saturday, April 9. Had no one driven by in all those hours?

Francis sighed before the anguish crashed over him. The slight movement sent waves of pain bursting through his face and down his neck. Tears blossomed in his eyes, and he screwed them shut, the tears turning quickly into full sobs. But the instant he tried to let the sobs out, the pain exploded tenfold. Beneath the waves, he felt something stuck to his mouth; it was like uneven strips of tape. He reached up to identify what it was, but the moment he touched it, his mouth stung. His fingers came away bloody.

Francis, trying not to move his mouth, scrambled to his feet. The night air strangled him with dizziness and nausea pooling in his stomach, but he took deep breaths through his nose to try to calm himself enough to think rationally. He must have split his lip badly when he hit his head.

A little black shape by the side of the road stole his attention. His skin crawled. It was the raccoon; the hand clutched between its paws as if it were its most prized possession. But the hand no longer bothered Francis. A spool of black thread rested in the palm of the hand, a needle pierced through the first layer of skin on one of the fingers, and the raccoon’s mouth had been sewn shut.