Tulpa Copyright © 2008 by Sarah Morin. All rights reserved. No part of this work shall be used or reproduced by any means without prior written permission from the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Sunday, December 30
(2:06 p.m.)

The thing Katrina Talbot hated most about long drives was that they gave her too much time to think.

"The End" –
Two words, when said aloud
Strip away illusion's lies
"I love you" –
Favored by the crowds
Is only foolish vanity
One phrase soothes
The other wounds –
Both bleak in their finality
Even "the end"
Can't hide the truth
The starkness of reality –
Nothing is over, but nothing began

Kat had come home to the apartment she shared with her boyfriend, Josh, to find this terse poem on a scrap of paper lying on the kitchen table – the only evidence of him left. He had taken all of his other possessions with him, including the guitar amp she had bought him for Christmas. Josh had given her no present in return, though he was kind enough to leave $500 toward January's rent. It would have been a lovely gesture – if he had paid his share for December.

So instead of going to Myrtle Beach for winter break, she was en route from Storrs, Connecticut to Dunbarton, New Hampshire. Driving alone to a place she'd never been, to babysit children she'd never met, just so she could afford the rent until she found another roommate.

And Josh's words kept running through her head: Nothing is over, but nothing began.

Two years is a hell of a lot of nothing, she thought, gripping the steering wheel and blinking away the sting in her eyes.

(3:56 p.m.)

The sun was low on the horizon when Kat got off interstate 89. While she was filling up her car at the gas station just off the ramp, her cell phone rang.

A loud burst of static, then a woman's voice – "Katrina? Where are you?"

She hid her disappointment. "At the Bow Mobil, Mrs. McIntosh."

"Good, you're only about twenty minutes away" – more static intervened – "getting worried! It's not safe to drive on these roads after dark."

"I understand. I'll call you if I get lost."

"We don't have cell phone reception. Didn't Andrea mention that? You're at the edge of it now. I'm leaving now, I'll be at –"

The phone went dead.

(4:17 p.m.)

If Mrs. McIntosh hadn't been standing at the edge of Granger Road, Kat would have missed the turn. She slammed on her brakes and, after veering her car around, rolled down her window to greet the pink-cheeked woman.

"You just follow my car, all right? The driveway's very icy this time of year."

Kat nodded, repressing a groan. The badly paved roads had been tough enough on her '96 Hyundai Accent. A half mile of unpaved driveway would be murder.

Mrs. McIntosh got into her Subaru. Kat envied the woman's four-wheel drive as her own car bounced and skidded down the steep, narrow road bordered by thick forest.

When the trees thinned briefly to reveal a large power line, backlit by the mauve light of the sunset-brushed sky, the startling reality of the situation hit her.

Kat would be alone in the deep woods.