Chapter 1

"Can't you read a map?"

"Yes! It's part of the guy code. Of course I can read a map!"

"So how are we suddenly in the middle of nowhere? You read it wrong."

He did not read the map wrong. He has excellent map-reading skills. He never gets lost. Not geographically, anyway. Something about Kate Beckett means that he's permanently psychologically lost in her head. Her mind is not susceptible to being mapped.

"I did not. Look."

"I'm driving. I can't look."

"So pull over."

He's irritated now. He hasn't read the map wrongly and Beckett has no right to snip and snipe and sneer. It really doesn't help that the rain is belting down on this cold, dark night and that he would rather be nearly anywhere than in the middle of nowhere (the unconscious repetition of Beckett's words doesn't improve his mood) in an uncomfortable cruiser with an angry Beckett.

Not that he's any less angry. Their so-called witness was a total waste of space and gas. Claimed to have important information, but turned out to be a ghoulish attention-seeker who, faced with Beckett's rapidly rising intimidation levels, caved in and admitted he hadn't seen a thing. All lies. Castle had thought Beckett would shoot him. He's come to the conclusion that she only didn't arrest the idiot because she couldn't bear to share car space with him for the two hours plus it will take them to get back to the precinct.

Castle isn't really sure that Beckett can bear to share space with him, but she doesn't get a choice about that. They're not on great terms right now. Not that this is anything new. They haven't been on great terms since the summer, really, and they both know why that is. He should never have looked into it, but… well, he'd wanted to help… but it had totally backfired. Now they're walking warily around each other and never saying what they – he – should. He doesn't dare, because Kate-bloody-Beckett's impenetrably impervious shell doesn't and hasn't given him a single clue about what she thinks of him for six weeks. He's back, but they – whatever they they'd never quite reached – certainly are not.

And now they're pulled over on the verge of a back road in the dark and the driving rain and they are not where they should be at all. Not geographically, not temporally, and especially not romantically.

"I've pulled over," she snaps. "Show me the map."

He slaps it open into her lap and illuminates it with the torch on his phone. "See? These are the directions we took. We should be back on the Palisades Interstate and halfway to the New Jersey Turnpike by now."

"You must have got it wrong. This isn't the right road."

"I can see that!" he snaps back. "So you tell me how we took all the right turns and we're in the middle of the woods? You must have gone the wrong way at one of them. Typical," he mutters. "You never listen to me anyway."

"I did so listen. You steered me wrong." There's an almost indistinguishable mutter after that. If Castle was really listening, he might think it was just like before the summer. "Anyway, we got another problem."

"What?"

"We're running out of gas."

"What? How come? Didn't you check it?"

"Yes, I freaking checked it. It was three-quarters full when we left that useless dumbass. Now it's on the line."

"Beckett, that's just not possible," Castle says, angry now. First she gets them lost, then she hasn't got gas. Is she ill? Really ill, not just a cold or the flu? Something that would affect her brain? If she is, she shouldn't be out of her apartment. "We've only been going for an hour. If it was three quarters full, even if you'd been doing ninety – which you weren't – you'd still have half a tank."

"Well, we don't. See?"

He leans over. Sure enough, the needle's on the red line. More pertinently, he can smell the cherry scent from her skin and hair. Unfortunately, he can feel the icy glare from her eyes, which is very off-putting.

"So we're in the middle of the deep dark woods with almost no gas, in the pouring rain."

"Yeah."

"Isn't this a cliché?"

"Yeah. But right now it seems to be a real cliché." She doesn't sound impressed. "I don't know about you, but I don't see a light over at the Frankenstein place either."

"Nope," he answers automatically – and then snickers. "Well, well, Detective Beckett. Bad cult B-movies?" She doesn't answer that. The chill irritation in the lightless car persists.

"Doesn't your phone have GPS?" she suddenly realises.

"Doesn't yours?"

"It's dead." She sounds horrified.

"Forget to charge that along with forgetting the gas?" he bites.

"It was fully charged when I left. Now it's dead. You've got power, 'cause you used the torch. So use the GPS."

Castle taps. "No signal. No GPS."

"So we're lost."

At that point his phone dies too.

"Now who forgot to charge their phone?" she bites right back at him, in the same acid tone.

"I didn't."

"You were quick enough to assume I did. So now you did too you're trying to weasel out of it?"

"I had full charge when we left. Anyway, I got a powerpack. And that's always charged."

He attaches the powerpack, huffing – and then stares at it.

"It's empty. It can't be empty. I haven't used it since I charged it last night, and it holds eight full charges. It can't be empty." He moves his wide-eyed stare to Beckett's irritated face. "Beckett, this isn't right. One mistake, maybe. But not both of us, not for everything. We're lost, we got no gas, we got no signal, power, nothing. It's like a bad horror movie."

"I'm not sleeping in the car," she says, ignoring everything he's just said. "The red line means I've still got 30 miles. We're going to keep going till we get out of the woods or find somewhere with a phone."

She starts the car again and moves off. Castle, completely flummoxed by the turn events have taken, stares sightlessly out of the window.

Behind them, the wind sounds sharply, and the rain gleams. Those of a credulous and superstitious disposition might have thought it sounded like a laugh, and the gleams might have been of light catching eyes. Of course, that would be ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as the thought that the brief glint of the cold, white crescent moon through a break in the clouds, tips upturned, might be chill amusement at the predicament below.

"We're not getting anywhere," Castle points out, ten minutes of empty, black and steadily worsening track later. If anything, they're deeper in the woods than they had been. Beckett ignores him, just as she has for the last ten minutes. She's glaring at the dark, which – Castle shivers – is crowding close around them. It's unpleasantly thick darkness, here in the forest, with no streetlights or ambient light, in the now heavy cloud and driving rain and wind. The trees around them bend with the force of the wind, and his overwrought imagination thinks that the branches are reaching down. Too much late night movie-watching and reading, he reminds himself, and forces himself not to shudder at the wind's malicious whine.

A further five unpleasant moments later, the headlights illuminate a wooden structure. It seems to be a cabin.

"A house. Maybe it'll have a phone. If nothing else, we can ask to stay for the night and call for help in the morning."

"Morning?"

"Castle, it's after nine, and we are lost without gas."

He hadn't noticed the time. Beckett pulls up to the building and, leaving the headlights on, steps out of the car. Castle barely stops himself hauling her back in. He does notice that her hand is on her gun and her shield blatantly on view. She pushes the door – and it opens.

Another horror movie cliché.

"Beckett," he falters, but she doesn't hear him. A light goes on, and that's when he realises that there's nobody in the house except her. If anyone had been home, there would have been a light. Over at the Frankenstein place. Except there's no shlock in this horror.

"Beckett, this is a bad plan," he whimpers. Since she's twenty feet away, she doesn't hear it. Every particle of his writer's DNA is telling him that this is going to go horribly, horribly wrong. It's all the components of every scary movie he's ever seen, and the worst thing is that his imagination is in overdrive. Every writer knows that their imagination will always, always come up with worse ideas than they can put on paper or on screen.

Beckett appears, silhouetted in the faint light of the doorway. She bends down to wedge the door open, and returns to the car.

"C'mon. There's no-one here, so we can borrow it for the night."

He whimpers very quietly to himself again, and jumps a mile high when Beckett switches the headlights off and then slams the car door shut. He scuttles inside.

Much to his astonishment, the house is well-kept, in a countrified fashion: chintz and rag rugs, unstylish wooden furniture. Strangely, it has kerosene lamps, not electric light. That's any hope of charging up gone. The way things had been panning out, though, he'd expected cobwebs and corpses, if not snakes and skeletons as well. Instead, it's cosy and comfortable, with a wooden settle with cushions. He notices most particularly that the settle is the only sitting place except for a dining table. Hard upon that thought, he notices that this is a very small dwelling, and that the bench settle is also quite small, to fit the space. While Beckett is chewing her lip and muttering crossly at her dead phone, he spots the staircase and, taking a stray lamp, sneaks upstairs.

Oh. Oh shit. Oh, this is the cliché to end all clichés, and possibly to end Castle as well. No. This is just not happening to him. It's not fair.

The wind whistles round the window, and Castle's oversensitised and half-spooked ears are sure it's laughing nastily at him. He stares glumly at the solitary queen size bed. It has four posters, and thin voile curtains, currently tied back. It has bolster pillows, from which a few feathers are floating, sheets and blankets. It looks about a hundred years old, if it weren't clean, but very comfortable.

It also looks far too small for the two of them to preserve a decent distance. Four-poster beds are supposed to be large. It dawns on Castle that people in those days were generally much smaller than Beckett and he are.

He is so dead. But what a way to spend his last night: lost in the woods and closeted in a log cabin with Beckett and only one bed.

"Castle!" arrows up the stairs, in said person's sharp-cut tones. He clatters down. Beckett is regarding the space with a distinctly displeased eye. "There's no modern equipment at all. Just a wood stove, old cooking equipment and a cast iron kettle." She peers out of the window. "There's an outhouse back there. If I hunt around for something to light the fire with, can you go out and see if there's some firewood and kindling? It's getting chilly in here." She thinks swiftly. "And more kerosene? I don't want it to be totally dark."

That had sounded a tiny touch nervous, which Castle doesn't point out. He takes his lamp, and trepidatiously makes his way to the outhouse. The rain batters at his unprotected head, the gale whips at him, and there are strange noises out in the blackness around him. When he flicks his head to look, there's nothing there, but from the corners of his eyes he's sure he can see small lights. Will-o-the-wisps, he tells himself, and even so steps faster. He never used to be scared of the dark.

The outhouse proves to have three things of which Castle is very glad. One is a pile of firewood and, next to it, kindling, with a basket in which he can carry a goodly amount. The second is a jerry-can of kerosene. The last is a primitive bathroom, walled off. This is less pleasant than more modern plumbing, but very welcome. He can hear water running underneath the facility, and concludes that there is a stream or river to clean matters up.

He goes back to the main house as quickly and nervously as he came, carrying with him as much wood and kindling as he can lift, plus the kerosene. He doesn't want to go out in the dark again unless he really, really needs to. The rain is letting up, but the wind is high and the trees are creaking ominously: the branches sweeping towards him, clutching on empty air; he's sure he can see small lights and movement in his peripheral vision but when he turns his head there's nothing there. He is infinitely glad to attain the house.

In the interim, Beckett has hunted through the kitchen area and set the kettle on the top of the stove.

"I've got wood," Castle says. She startles.

"Oh, it's you." She sounds relieved. "I can't find a bathroom." Her eyes are flickering around the room. "The wind really makes weird noises out here."

"Yeah," Castle agrees, fervently. "Um… about the bathroom. Um… that outhouse?"

Beckett acquires an expression of considerable disgust. "Ugh."

"Um… take a light. And Kleenex."

"Ugh."

"Shall I set the fire?" he asks hurriedly, and buries his face in the open door of the stove, grabbing for kindling and wood. Behind him, he can hear Beckett clicking out to the outhouse. He finds some matches – also strangely old-fashioned – and a long, thin wooden spill, and sets the fire alight.

Five minutes later she clicks back, considerably faster than she went, looking downright scared and rather bedraggled. The scared expression is wiped off her face as soon as she notices him looking at her, but it still makes him feel a lot better. He's pretty scared too.

"It's better with the stove going," she notes. "Let's put the kettle on and see if there's anything to drink."

"Scotch would be good," Castle mutters balefully. "Where's the fridge?"

"There isn't a fridge."

"Is there any food or drink?"

"I don't know."

They look through all the cupboards, and finally find a crock of flour, some butter, and some salt.

"It won't be great," Castle says, "but I can try to make some biscuits. At least it's food."

Beckett pokes into a tin, and yelps. "Tea! No coffee – Philistines – but tea. Hot drink. Okay. You try to make biscuits and I'll get the kettle boiling."

"Beckett, there's no faucet at the sink."

She looks blankly at him. "No faucet? What is this place? A History Home?"

"I guess there's a well, or a pump outside."

There is an unpleasant pause, in which the unpleasant noise of the storm – they hope it's just the storm – outside is very clear. Suddenly there's a loud bang, and both of them jump. The thick blackness outside the windows menaces them.

"It's only a branch falling," Beckett says bravely.

"Yep."

"We need water."

"Yep."

"A lot of water."

Castle thinks he knows where this is going already.

"Let's both find buckets and bring in enough for the whole night," she adds. It's not quite quavering.

He was right. He now knows that Beckett doesn't want to go out in the dark alone, and won't admit it. Just like he doesn't want to go out, or admit it.

"Okay." He hunts around and spots buckets by the door. "Four buckets. That should do."

"It'll have to." It's very soft, but Castle hears it.

"Let's prop the door open, and take a light."

They peer out into the night, neither keen to leave the safety of the house. The thin, weak light from the kerosene lamp discloses a gleam which might be the metal of a pump. It's only a few yards from the door.

"I'll go first," Beckett volunteers. There is an unusual shake underlying her firm words. "You make sure the door doesn't close."

He puts a manly arm around her shoulder, briefly, patting her. "I won't let it close. Promise when it's my turn you won't either?"

"Promise. Let's do this."

She detaches from him, rather more slowly than she might have, her irritation – with him, anyway – dissipated, then strides out to the pump and rapidly fills her two buckets, as Castle holds the light as high as he can. She's glancing around in all directions as she pumps, tense and ready, her gun on her hip. If the buckets weren't full, she'd surely run back to the house. The buckets are placed in the kitchen, and she returns to take the light from Castle. His arm slips back around her, and retreats before she can object.

As Beckett had done, he pumps the buckets full as quickly as he can and retreats. The rain has ceased for now, and thin, high cloud ghosts across the sky. The stars are very bright: the new moon a narrow crescent above him. The trees bend and creak, and he is very pleased to be back inside with the door firmly shut against the night noises.

Thank you to all readers and reviewers.

For the 2017 Hallowe'en Bash, in 4 chapters. Tue/Thu/Sun/Tue posting.