From the third floor I was afforded the luxury of a constant breeze—or at least a stirring of the placid New Orleans air—as it wound above the exotic tops of the spiny and drooping plants, and was accompanied, by day, with the shrieks and chants of children at play in the schoolyard nearby. Between the other homes I could glimpse a remote, peaceful section of the Audobon Park, across the streetcar tracks that ran down the center of St. Charles Avenue. I decided immediately that the park was where I would spend whatever time I had (not engaged in business), wandering amongst the stalwart, graceful arms of the live oaks trimmed with the lace of Spanish moss. I had not intended to spend a lot of waking time in my rented rooms—though they were quite nice, and with the added benefit of a small kitchenette—but as is so often the case, plans sometimes change.

It was a door that stood silently—almost nonchalantly—in the passageway from kitchen to dining area that brought about my staying inside, and also my hasty departure before my rented time had expired.

The door was one that could easily go unnoticed, and had gone so by me my first few days there. Being nestled in a short hallway, I never had any reason to stop and look around on my way to or from the kitchen, so I simply walked right past it without a conscious glance, as I’m sure countless others had done through the years. It wasn’t until my fourth day in the rooms that, as I stood by the kitchen sink rinsing my breakfast dishes, I got an image of a door. More precisely, the image of a worn oval knob that haunted me with the impact of recent observation. Slightly miffed as to why I would suddenly think of a door, I back-tracked to the sitting room, taking careful note of my surroundings, and in the passageway my eyes lit upon the old, silent door whose very presence instantly intrigued me as to what lay behind it.

I imagine there is some parable about opening strange doors, but even if I had known it, I would have ignored it as readily as I do most old wives’ sayings. Besides, when a person has no pressing issues on hand, any detour from the ordinary is welcome. Having wrapped up my business two days early, and having explored most of the park in the previous half-week, my trip, albeit short, had become almost mundane. I had intended to travel to the French Quarter for coffee and beignets, and to search through the many used bookstores, but the door offered me a more adventurous way to spend my morning. As my heart filled with the thrill of discovery I grinned at myself, fully expecting to be let down with the appearance of a normal broom closet within.

I opened the door slowly, waiting for the lock, with its rustic keyhole situated beneath the knob, to hold it closed. The mechanism tiredly rotated in its fitting, shuddering with years of disuse as I turned it, but the gap slowly widened as I pulled the door toward me. Beyond the dust layer at the threshold was the thick black of a cave—the kind of darkness that pushes you back. A puff of stony, dank air disturbed the layer of age at my feet, bringing with it a musty, foetid smell of ancient, accumulated rot. I gasped at the sudden stench, waving a hand uselessly before my nose, and gladly turned away to find a light switch and disclose what thing had crawled into the space and died. There was no light switch on the wall near me, however, which brought me to the conclusion that it was a room beyond the door, not simply a closet.

I reached a tentative hand into the room and felt up and down, along both walls, discovering that the space was apparently unfinished, as the walls not only held no light switch, but were also bare of any covering, the studs and joists of the builder still fully exposed. So thwarted, but all the more intrigued, I ran to the sitting room to retrieve one of the candles I had seen on the mantelpiece. I suppose I had visions of ancient trunks filled with treasures of a bygone era stacked all around an incomplete room that had been shut away from the world for God knew how many years.

I had just grasped the candle and found some matches—which the landlady had provided should the power fail (as it often did, I was told)—when a knock came at my front door. My business associate knew where I was staying, but that she would come all the way up St. Charles Avenue from the French Quarter without calling seemed unlikely. I put the candle and matches back down and went to answer the summons.

“Good morning, Mr. Abernathy,” my landlady said jovially. “The mailman just delivered this for you.” She held up a letter, smiling, and seemed ready to leave me in privacy.

“Thank you,” I replied, taking the letter, then added unexpectedly, “Do you know anything about that door in the passageway?”

Her brow furrowed momentarily and she cocked her head curiously, “Door?” Then her face cleared and she beamed brightly. “Oh, that door! Yes, as far as I know the previous owner was putting an elevator in.”

“An elevator?” I replied incredulously.

“Yes. She had a very sick boy, confined to a wheelchair. But he loved birds. When getting his chair up and down the stairs—to take him to the park—became too much for the old woman to handle, she decided to have an elevator put in.”

“Oh,” I answered thoughtfully. “Why didn’t she just keep him on the ground floor?”

“Because he wanted to be near the birds,” the dear woman replied with a smile. “He didn’t have all his marbles, sir, if you know what I mean,” she added discreetly, and I nodded back with understanding.

“So what became of them?” I asked.

She shook her head dourly. “She passed on, unfortunately, and the boy was taken to a home. That was several years ago. I rented the second floor from her then, and she unexpectedly left the whole house to me in her will. I applied to keep the boy here, but the court wouldn’t let me, since I wasn’t family.”

“Well, thank you, Miss Fennley. I’m sorry to have taken up your time.”

“Not at all!” she replied honestly, then her face turned dark. “But don’t open that door expecting to see anything, sir, because they never finished the job. Just an open hole I imagine—I never checked, myself—but it would be a very nasty fall.”

“Of course,” I replied with a smile. We bade each other good-day, my thoughts having been more tweaked, instead of lessened, with the news.

I returned to the opening, having rigged the candle into an empty Coke can, in the absence of any proper holders, and struck a match, bending down to light the flame. A musty wind stirred from the opening and blew the match out before the wick had caught, and for the first time I glanced into that blackness with a touch of apprehension. What breeze so strong could be stirring in a long-forgotten elevator shaft where the absence of light proved the absence of any openings? And what of the foetid odor that underlay the musky breath of old attics in stately mansions? Had someone indeed fallen down the shaft, left to die alone and undiscovered?

I moved the candle over, away from the door, and shielded it with my hand, this time managing to catch the wick. I picked up the can and slowly swung the light back to the door. There was no floor, as I had been warned, and I was glad I had not foolishly taken a tentative step through the door before looking inside with a light. Closer inspection through the churning shadows of the candle’s orange glow revealed the jagged remnants of floorboards along the edges of the gaping wound, like the heartless teeth of some hybrid horror’s mouth as it sat yawning; open; waiting.

I actually stumbled back in mild shock. The door should not just be closed, but bolted—boarded up—removed! My flame flickered on another breath of rotten air. I cringed, but lent forward, carefully peering over the edge of the pit, past the jagged teeth-boards, to see if I could spy the carcass of what lay below.

The feeble light revealed similar jagged boards on the second floor, and then the shadows became too long and clustered for me to see any further. As I kept my balance with a hand on the edge of the threshold, my fingers happened upon some construct against the wall. I put the can down on the floor to inspect what I had found and saw the top rung of a ladder even with the level of the floor. Apparently it had been put there by the men installing the elevator, and I imagined it reached to the ground floor. Surely it reached no further because basements, as we know them in the North, do not exist in New Orleans, the city having no real land available above sea-level into which to build such a foundation, at least without the continuous threat of flooding. The odd thing was, as I sat there I became increasingly certain that the abyss before me did just that, and my curiosity to see if I was right was peaked. Not to mention I felt some sense of debt to discover the source of the deathly odor that emanated from the hole with the drafts of air. If indeed a body was to be discovered, I was sure many people would like to know of it.

Before I began my descent I dug a penny out of my pocket and flung it into the gaping mouth to see if any water existed below. Seconds later I heard a strange tick and bounce as the penny struck something mostly solid, followed by a scuttling noise, as of an animal burrowing through shells or small pieces of dried wood. If it turned out that rats were living in the debris below, I knew my search would end several safe feet from the bottom of the shaft. Clearly, though, there was some form of solid, dry ground below.

I moved the candle to one side and turned around, swinging my leg down onto the makeshift ladder. With a shiver I wondered if something would suddenly grab my ankle and pull me down into its mouth—then I swallowed my stupidity and grabbed the candle to begin my downward journey.

Thankfully, my descent kept me against the wall, forcing into my nose with every breath a dank, wood-rot smell that helped obliterate the pervading stench of—I feared—rotting flesh. I cannot imagine what possessed me to continue down after ascertaining that some form of death lay below my feet—I suppose boredom, curiosity, and a sense of purpose served as the necessary fuel to carry me further down into that pit of hollowed-out rooms.

Once I was in the shaft proper, I paused to look around myself. The walls were not so much mid-renovation as simply unfinished, the bones of their studs crammed with wet, clinging insulation that conjured images of tattered meat clinging between the ribs of some great beast. As I slowly clambered down the rungs I could see above me the white, silent light of the doorway I had come through. I glanced down and saw a jagged rim of wood where the floorboards on the second floor, too, had been violently removed after the building’s completion, yet there were no signs of there ever having been a door to the room on the second floor. But then, it made sense that the other floors would have had their doors sealed up to make way for the elevator, since they were rented out to people who the landlady didn’t want to have access to her apartment.

I carefully continued my descent, soon reaching another rim of destroyed flooring at what had to be the ground level. There was still the same inky stillness below me, however, and I saw that the pit must extend into an unlikely underground floor. A quick scan of my surroundings showed that a door no longer existed here either, meaning the elevator’s egress must have been intended for somewhere else. The foetid stink was much stronger now, but mercifully only came in puffs on whatever air stirred to cause my candle to flicker and bow, threatening to wink out.

Finally, I looked down to see how much further my journey extended and was greeted with a shimmer of dim white light as if it was reflecting off thousands upon thousands of bleached sea-shells piled beneath me. The pile filled the entire area of the shaft, and I guessed it to be at least a foot in depth, judging by the length of studs extending beneath the ground floor and into it. The glow petered off to my left as it entered what could only be a tunnel burrowing off under St. Charles Avenue. In my excitement at this odd find, I hurried down the last few rungs, carefully bringing my feet down onto the massive pile of bleached debris until I was sure it would hold me. Standing there, finally at the bottom of this strange shaft, I looked back up to where I had come from, the open door a faint, filtered glow four floors above me, the layered rims of board-teeth looking ready to gnash at whatever was foolish enough to venture between them.

The air was thick around me with the pervading stench of unhealthy rot. I shifted my weight to light the tunnel in front of me. As I moved, the shells didn’t crunch as shells ought to do. The sound was more hollow, as of clay tubes rubbing together. Timidly, I looked at my feet again, just as another palpable wave of the rot-odor assailed me, and I felt the color drain entirely from my face.

My mouth unconsciously gaped open at the sight of the millions of tiny bones upon which I stood.

I scrambled to regain the ladder, envisioning some vast rat haven I had stumbled upon, and in my haste I dropped the makeshift candle, the wick breaking off in a tiny shower of sparks that extinguished the flame. I stood perfectly still, one foot on the ladder and the other still standing on the bones, my eyes wide to the encroaching blackness, listening intently for sounds of rodent life. My eyes began to adjust to the soft glow from above and I knew I could easily ascend without aid of the candle. A glance to where I imagined it lay brought to my eyes another, fainter glow at the far end of the tunnel, opening to somewhere outside.

Slowly I brought my foot back off the ladder and stood waiting to hear any animal scrapings in the pile. Still I heard nothing, but was once more hit by a waft of nauseating air that, I realized now, came not from the bones all around me, but from still further down the tunnel.

I could just make out the glint of the Coke can that had held my candle. Covering my nose and mouth against the foul air, I crouched and carefully picked it up, relieved to find that the candle had miraculously stayed in place. Balancing the can on one of the rungs, I fumbled my matches from my pocket, then covered my nose and mouth until the breeze stopped once more.

I managed to relight the flame in one try and took a repulsive closer look at the bones upon which I stood, checking foremost for any human remains, the thought of which had been my impetus for the descent in the first place. Judging by the various minuscule skulls that stared emptily around me, they were all, in fact, avian remains—the light, hollow bones of birds.

With a sigh of relief, I looked at the faint glow at the end of the tunnel. Apparently this elevator project, in the years since its abandonment, had become an inadvertent death-trap for birds, and I decided to explore all the way down the tunnel to see where the poor creatures came from, and if there was some way to block the portal to their demise. I took a slow, cautious step forward, ducking instinctively as I passed into the maw of the tunnel, the pile of bones thinning as I left the elevator shaft behind.

Constant flooding was immediately evident. As I splashed through a thin layer of saturated mud I was quite glad I had thought to put on my old leather shoes. The bone pile diminished quickly as I entered the tunnel, but as I went deeper toward the exit I tried not to notice how, though sparsely, bigger bones seemed to be the new norm; the bones, I gathered, of felines and canines, as well as vast numbers of the rodent family, with a few birds still scattered here and there. I was about halfway down the tunnel before I considered that alligators, not accident, may actually be responsible for the carnage, and I froze instantly in place to listen for the slow slither of pursuit around me. If the tunnel had not been in a state of constant water-log, I could have scanned the ground for the tell-tale signs of tracks or other physical evidence, but as it was, with bones half-submerged in moist grime, I had to rely entirely upon my ears. Fortunately, I heard nothing, save a steady drip from the ceiling somewhere up ahead. I decided to move on, squelching toward the light.

Soon the moist earthy, rotten smell of the tunnel gave way to a fresh breath of air from the world outside. The end of the line was about twenty feet ahead, and though the bones had ceased for the last forty feet or so, I could see now one last pile not too far from where the tunnel opened into sunlight. With the fresh air from outside beckoning me, I hurried on the last few feet to be forever from the unpleasant tomb.

I quickly passed by the last pile of bones with just a glance, revealing to me the skull and outline a large dog, along with the skull and outline of what had to be a small ape that had clearly escaped from the nearby zoo, both still with the dark remnants of rotting flesh clinging to their otherwise bleached bones. As I emerged from the tunnel, the sun hurting my eyes, I took in great gulps of fresh, lively air, trying to disregard what I had seen near the ape; trying to forget what looked to be the tattered, muddy remains of a light blue T-shirt.

“Alligators,” I whispered to myself, shuddering heavily and blowing out my candle. I stepping away from the tunnel, the one thought that obliterated all others being how all the bones had been so white; so very clean and bleached, with nary a scrap of flesh anywhere, except near the last pile, which had obviously been the freshest, and the source of the rotten odor about the place.

Across from me I saw a grassy bank beside a lake with a great, sentient live oak upon it, and it was beneath those flowing, stately arms that I stumbled to find refuge in the wide safety of its massive, dipping boughs. I lay down and tried to think of nothing, covering my eyes with my arm to try and extinguish the vision of that last pile of bones.

After a moment’s rest, in which I was able to partially convince myself I had imagined the last part of my journey, I sat up to get a bearing on where I was. I looked across to the mouth of the tunnel, now almost invisible behind tall grass, shrubs, and trees, and then beyond it, to a distant streetcar on St. Charles Avenue and, ultimately, the house in which I was staying. I had ended up in some remote section of the park and stood and brushed myself off to walk back to the bed-and-breakfast—this time aboveground—and report my findings.

As I took a step toward the small hill that concealed the tunnel, I heard a strangely beautiful singing and cooing that I at first thought was coming from within the maw itself, then I spied the head of an old woman on the path over the tunnel. She was hunched over, tossing seeds and singing to a multitude of birds that squawked and chirped around her bony legs.

For no good reason whatsoever, I chose to duck behind the trunk of the mighty live oak to spy further on the aged lady, the lake behind me lapping serenely at its banks as her ghostly song drifted to me, lulling me to near-mesmerization. Several other birds drifted or fluttered out of the sky to her feet as I watched, to take some of the seeds flung to them by her frail hands. She was walking slowly backwards, singing and cooing and talking to the birds that bobbed along after her, following the trail of food. As she reached the other side of the hill I saw that she had taken up the thin thread of a trail that led gradually down to the yawning mouth of the tunnel covered by the greenery. With widening eyes, I began to add things up, and hunched down some more behind the grand trunk, lest I should be caught spying on the figure coming toward me.

The strange old lady bobbed along backwards, leading the birds after her, toward the entrance to that long cavern of bones that led ultimately to the shaft I had found behind a mysterious door in my rooms. With a start I realized that I had left that self-same door wide open, bidding entrance to anyone who dared climb up the ladder on the wall, and I considered stopping the old lady then, before she entered the tunnel, but the soft, oddly childish sound of her singing brought to mind the ape-like skull I had seen at the last, and that shadowy recollection was enough to have me hunch down even further, my heartbeat and breathing becoming more shallow and rapid.

As I watched, wide-eyed with inevitable panic, the lady stopped singing as she reached the mouth of the tunnel, concentrating instead on working her way through the shrubs and grass to enter the darkness beyond, careful not to shake the bushes and trees and thus frighten off the birds that still followed her in a thin, hypnotized stream.

As soon as she had been enveloped entirely by the darkness I rose and bolted back to the bed-and-breakfast so I could shut and wedge that accursed door against any possible ingress. I had just dashed up the rise, scaring only a handful of the birds that had gathered to eat the trail of seeds she had left in her wake, when I heard the horrendous squawk and flutter of multiple surprised birds. I froze as a disheveled, confused cloud of avians erupted from the tunnel below, battering their wings madly as they cried out in high, ear-shattering shrieks, and then I, too, ran frantically, in a wild panic of my own.

I didn’t care who saw me in my wild flight. I had only self-preservation in mind as I imagined what had become of the last witness to her spectacle, and his dog, lying just in the mouth of that abhorrent tunnel. I bolted through the park and across the streetcar tracks to the house beyond, straight up the stairs in twos to my door, fumbling my keys from my pocket and bursting into the apartment, dashing directly to the door and slamming it tight, panting breathlessly as I rested my weight against it.

There were no sounds from below, but as I stood with my back against the door my eyes lit upon the tiny body of a bird below the window in front of me, not three feet from my shoes. As I watched, horrified, it wobbled up, having managed to escape the lady’s death by heading for the light beyond the then-open door, only to have flown straight into the window with full, terrified force, stunning itself at so close a proximity to freedom.

The bird wobble-hopped a few steps, then collapsed again onto its back. I saw its small frame hitch with a convulsion and a thin, crimson jet of blood fountained from its tiny beak, splattering the wall and floor around it. Aghast, I shuntered toward the kitchen, my eyes never leaving the terrible sight.

The presence of a bird in the rooms reminded me of what Miss Fennley had said, about how the deceased former-owner’s boy had loved birds.

I walked up to the front door of the mausoleum and ran my fingers slowly over the carved surface, glancing above the door at the rose-shaped window cut into the stone there, wondering why we went to so much trouble for the dead.

Thrusting my hand back into my pocket, I walked a quick circumference around my room for the night. The wall opposite the ivied wall had, like its counterpart, two small windows that were purely decorative, not being in any way functional, especially since they had been placed in a mausoleum.

Vandals had relieved the windows of their glass panes, probably trying to get a peek at the sarcophagus inside. I took a peek now myself, putting my arm through the hole so I could more easily shine my light around. My angle was bad, and I could see nothing, save the other wall and a small wedge of the dirt floor.

Leaving the window, I continued my journey. Against the back wall of the building a few old, cracked gravestones had been leant. I looked them over, but they were far too weathered to reveal any names. Soon enough I was back in front of the door, once again contemplating the rose carved above it.

Hoping for the best, I tried the door before fishing in my pocket for the key, but found it was either locked, or stuck fast. I dug up the long, old-fashioned gray key, complete with the skull base and double-cross teeth. It slipped into the lock easily, as my friend had assured me it would, and turned much more smoothly than I would have imagined. It came to a stop with a solid click, the sound dampened by the heavy wood door. This time the it moved under my push, and soon I found myself standing on the threshold, gazing questioningly into the room.

The smell of the aged dirt hit me like a soft caress, being much less offensive than stories had made it sound. The windows, as I supposed, were less than functional, allowing only a trivial amount of the late afternoon sunlight to squirm into the building. I switched my light on again and flicked the beam around to get my bearings.

The stone walls and wood-shingled roof hung from a thick, worn-wood structure of massive beams that looked as if entire trees had been used for them. Half the roof space had been modified to hold the curator’s tools, a rickety ladder leading up to them. A few more rotted headstones were dotted around the walls, lessening the mystery of the tomb since living human activity was so obvious. Finally, I let the beam of light fall on the center of the floor—on the sarcophagus.

The stone coffin stood on a plain base, decorated with reliefs of the same rose as was above the door. I walked to it and knelt, touching the carved flowers, marveling at the craftsmanship. Standing again, I looked at the top of the box where the four-letter explanation of the inhabitant greeted me; all it said, simply, was “Rose.”

I glanced back over my shoulder, at the stencil above the door, and a breath caught in my throat at the sight of the flower with the sunlight streaming through its petals, lighting the dusty motes within the tomb. I wondered passingly who could have been so important to have such a mausoleum built to them, but then only be immortalized as Rose. I hadn’t thought to research the owner of the plot; all I had done was satisfy myself that no ghost stories came connected to the place. My friend said he had chosen the location simply by how easily he could acquire a key. The sole fact that it housed a deceased person had then been warranted enough for my spending a night there to be considered daring.

I turned and flicked my light over the floor, searching for a place to settle down. Although the sun was still strong, I knew that at this latitude, in less than an hour, it would be dipping into the darkness beyond the western horizon, the speckling of clouds serving as the perfect canvas for its blaze of oranges and reds. So considering, I opened my pack and produced a lantern, so I could cease juggling my flashlight.

The light it produced was ample, yet it still had a difficult time lighting the small room. With its glow I could discern more details: walls that were as wet inside as they were without; the criss-crossing footprints of the caretaker in the soft earth; delicate cobwebs floating in an unnoticeable breeze.

I went back into my pack and came out with two heavy blankets—one for the floor, and the other to cover me—and spread them out beside the sarcophagus. removing my coat and stuffing it into the empty pack, I created a makeshift pillow, but not before I removed the last item: a tattered paperback that would serve as my night’s entertainment. So set, I returned to the outside to catch the sunset; the orb was already diminishing considerably, but I left the building to walk through the stones, hoping to find a good place to witness its final descent.

I wandered about, looking at all the graves, reading the names of people who meant as much to me as an ancient, rotted phone directory. Still, I was moved by the commitment their relatives had had, and felt a quiet sense of emotional awe settle over me at the concerns we take to mark our dead. The night was starting to chill considerably and long shadows began to follow me around the cemetery. Finally I found a rise that looked west, and there I sat, among the shadows, the only life in earshot, watching the sun, too, die in a brilliant gush of color that slowly bruised the sky until it was black and the stars had winked on like strange immobile lightning bugs.

The mausoleum door was open, as I had left it, and I ducked straight in upon my return, closing it behind me. There was no handle or lock function from the inside, which gave me start since, if the caretaker came by for some reason, he may well lock me within. My friend claimed to have “obtained” the only key from the curator—but what if he’d been mistaken? As I settled down with my book, my back leaning against the stone of Rose’s coffin, I decided to keep an alert ear open for any movement on the other side of the door.

I must have done more than simply doze off, for when I awoke shivering, I discovered it was two a.m. My lantern had since gone out, and the room was so black I felt as if I was being smothered by velvet. The smell of rooting wood and foetid dirt had turned offensive now—due to over-exposure, no doubt—and I hastily realized I needed a breath of fresh air. I felt about on the floor for a few panicked seconds before my fingers stumbled upon my flashlight; once I had it turned on I took one of the blankets and wrapped it around myself, rather than dig my coat back out of my pack.

I came to a full stand, my knees popping as I put my weight on stiff, weak ankles. I stood motionless for a moment, until I was sure I could move without falling, then stumbled toward the door, steadying myself on the sarcophagus. To my relief, the wooden aperture opened as easily as before, releasing me of my fears of being locked in, and I stood on the threshold of the building taking in great gulps of the sweet night air. It was cold outside, but with the blanket I was quite comfortable. I’m not sure how long I stood thus, gazing at the winking stars, before a movement caught my eye. I turned to see a woman cutting through the cemetery, inadvertently heading straight for me.

She looked to be about twenty-five, with a rounded doll’s face and beautiful creamy skin that brought out the light of the moon. She peered at me with large, brown eyes from beneath her full, dark hair; her lips, the color of the dying sun, were smiling. She moved gracefully, slowly, every motion seeming calculated to some sensual formula; the ends of her full-length black coat flapped as she pushed them with her legs. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her, but she didn’t appear to be shivering.

“Hello,” she smiled. Even though it was a simple, uninspiring syllable, she somehow made sweet nectar drip from it. She came to a halt a few feet away, and I could smell the delicate scent of her tulip perfume.

“Hi,” I answered, trying to hold the nerves from my voice. “What are you doing here, at this hour?”

She smiled more broadly and gave her head a light toss, to move her hair back over her shoulders.

“I’m Anthony,” I added, waiting politely for her to extend a hand to me in introduction. Instead, she smirked and raised her eyebrows, her silken voice responding to my first question.

“I could ask you what you’re doing coming out of that mausoleum at this hour?”

“I’m here on a dare,” I replied quickly, not wanting her first impression to be one of some derangement in me. “My friend bet I’d be too scared to spend the night alone in this tomb,” I explained further, her eyes glimmering in the moonlight. “Did he send you?”

“No,” she mouthed more than whispered. “I am here of my own volition.” She paused, then added as an after-thought, “I was just passing through and thought I might see what you were up to.”

“You’re very brave, coming up to a strange man like that.”

She smirked again. “Oh, I don’t have to worry.”

She rubbed her arms unconsciously, trying to warm herself now that she had stopped her exercise.

“Are you cold?” I asked.

She shook her head hesitantly, her eyes never leaving mine. She had the guise of a shy little girl, the way she looked up at me from a lowered face, only her lips had on a smile that said she knew what she was doing.

“Here,” I said from my mesmerization. “Take my blanket.” I took the covering off and moved closer to her, flapping the fabric around her, over her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she smiled, her breath massaging my face. I was transfixed by her eyes, and moved back before I ruined the moment by trying to kiss her. She smiled again, knowingly, and my instincts begged me to try anyway; to taste those unassuming red lips; to feel her warmth against me as I pressed my mouth to hers; to feel my fingers running through her thick hair.

I took another step back, and with a shock she seemed to realize what was going through my mind, and she, too, took a step away.

“I better get going,” she said. “And you have a dare to finish.”

“Yes,” I agreed breathlessly, backing up until I stumbled against the doorway. I turned to go in, judging she wouldn’t move until she was sure I was back inside. I stopped halfway, but didn’t turn to face her again.

I said quietly, “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow…?”

“Perhaps,” she acknowledged. When she spoke, her voice drifted to me like chimes playing in the wind. “And if you do, call me Rose.”

I whipped back around to face her, making an impossible connection, but she was, of course, gone. I took two steps back to where she had been standing, and found my blanket crumpled on the path as if whatever had been holding it up had instantly disappeared from under it. I stepped over the cloth and looked all around.

But there was no woman to be seen, and when I called, simply, “Rose,” only the wind came to answer.

“Val, what do you want to do tonight?”

That’s Maggie, my girlfriend. She calls me Val, just like everyone else, but my mom named me Value. Value Kraymer. She told me it was so I would never forget that I had value. These are the memories she left me—names and numbers that would make me question her sanity if I didn’t know now how right she was.

“It’s your birthday,” Maggie says, coming out of the bathroom as she clips in an earring. “We should do something special.”

“It’s no big deal,” I lie, because this is the big one and I know it. Maggie sets her face in a smile that tells me she’s pretending to understand but is really just humoring me.

“Okay, then.” She bends over the bed and kisses me on the forehead. “You just stay home and play your video games. I suppose your don’t magically change your ways just because you’re 27.”

She doesn’t see me wince.

After she’s left for work I sit and stare at the wall for an hour, watching the shapes and forms that could just be my genetically bad eyes.

Or they could be those other things, the things Mom told me about when we turn 27. The things she said would come to wish me happy birthday.

* * *

I lie in bed waiting for the footsteps to stop. I can hear them downstairs, pacing, or marching, or—more likely—searching. It’s not the neighborhood kids, I know that. Ten years ago, it would have been, but Maggie has a good job and I moved in to her house, out in the suburbs, finally away from what my dad called White Hell (the city planners called it White Hall). Back in White Hell, boundaries were only dimly recognized things that just clarified whose stuff you could take, to make sure you weren’t stealing from yourself.

After an hour or so, the footsteps stop. There’s no door slamming, no whoops of success out in the front yard as they run off.

“They don’t leave, they just stop for a while,” Mom told me that night, when she turned 27. “Do you hear them?”

I shook my head “no,” my eyes wide with childish innocence and awe.

“Of course you don’t,” she agreed, hugging me tightly. “But you will, Value.”

“Who are they?” As a child, when your parents tell you something, no matter how crazy it seems, you believe them, especially when it’s your mother—the one soft, kind heart in all of White Hell, always ready to wipe away the tears and bandage the scrapes.

“It’s the Wraich,” she says quietly. I only ever heard her say the word that once. I never asked her to repeat it and I never forgot it. It has a certain sound to it—perhaps in the way Mom had said it, her eyes gazing off into nothing, distant and calculating, trying to figure out where she went wrong—that sticks with you.

“They’re here to help,” she finally said, wiping away the handful of tears that had oozed down her cheeks. She tried to smile and looked at me, kneeling before me, her eyes level with mine. In the half light of her curtained bedroom her eyes looked yellow.

I remember recoiling from her, but she pulled me in and hugged me tighter.

* * *

Maggie gets home early, her usual smiles and laughter, telling me stories about things from her day that would upset most folks—but Maggie, she just laughs at them. Her friends call her “light and airy,” usually in the same breath they call me “dark and brooding” when they think I’m not listening.

“He’s an artist,” she always defends me. “It comes with the territory. Besides, when you get to know him… He’s just as light and airy as me.”

What they’re really saying, beneath the surface, is that I’m some tattooed street survivor from White Hell and they’re afraid I’m going to hurt her, which only proves that they have no idea.

“Did you have fun on your day off?” she asks, tossing her keys and purse on the kitchen table as I walk in. I try to sound chipper.

“Sure—I just played games all day.”

“Which one?” she checks with honest curiosity. “The alien one in space or that other one, the futuristic one with the totalitarian cops?”

“Actually, I just did the puzzle one. I didn’t feel like…”

I trail off. I’m afraid if I tell her I didn’t feel like anything violent she’d asked why, and then I’d have to tell her: Because I’ve heard the Wraich all day, first downstairs when I was in bed, then down in the basement when I was sitting on the couch, and my gut told me to stay away from blood imagery.

She meets my eyes anyway as I trail off, asking me without words to finish the thought, and she recoils a little when she sees me.

“Val—Jesus!—are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.” I try to play it off and look away from her.

“Your eyes look kind of yellow, Val.”

“I’m okay.”

“That could be your liver, Vally,” she soothes, rubbing my arm and trying to look into my eyes again. Finally I let let her. Her light and airy face is streaked with a real dark concern. “You should go to the doctor.”

“I don’t have health insurance.”

“I can pay for it, Val—it’s got to be jaundice, which is a sign of liver fail—”

“It’s not jaundice,” I say with the biggest smile I can muster. “I think it’s my allergies.”

She mulls this over and finally lets go of my arm, trying to return my smile. She’s a paralegal, not a doctor, but I know the excuse won’t put her off for long. Allergies clear up, but I know my eyes won’t. Mom’s never did, not even the last time I looked in to them.

It’s my first gift from the Wraich, and these are gifts you can’t give back. That’s what Mom said, and I believe her.

“Do you want to go to Archie’s? Get a burger?” she asks with uncertainty.

I smile widely again and it seems to put her at ease. “You know I do. Can I get one of the birthday hats, too?”

She giggles and it makes me feel good to hear that sound. “Sure, Vally—it’s your birthday. You can do what you want.”

* * *

On a whim I order a steak instead of a burger. And maybe because it’s my birthday, or maybe it’s because I’ve been listening the soft drumming of footsteps downstairs all day, I send it back to the kitchen for being too well done.

“Really?” Maggie checks. “I mean, I know you like ‘em rare, but that was bloody as hell already.”

I just smile. Her eyes linger on mine and I read the worry in hers. Beyond her a man is sitting in a booth alone, a brimmed hat pulled down so all I can see is one thin wedge of silvery jawline. At first I think it’s his beard, gray and reflecting in the garish light of Archie’s, but then I realize I can see bone and skin and that the wedge of his jaw jutting out beneath that brim is silvery white skin, not hair.

“Vally? Are you listening?”

I look back at her and she smiles at me.

“That guy back there has weird skin,” I say, leaning in conspiratorily. She shakes her head and twists her lips into a wry grin.

“Just go the doctor tomorrow, okay? What time do you have to be at work?”

I shrug. Work doesn’t exactly make me punch a clock: The only people paying for my artwork these days are the freaks and wannabes who need something etched into their skin forever. Apparently I’ve earned quite a reputation for creating the most realistic dragon tattoos—as if that makes any sense. Everybody knows dragons aren’t real.

“I’ll go in late,” I agree, to appease her. Now that I’m out of the house I feel a creeping annoyance coming in: What if it is jaundice? Liver failure? What if that was Mom’s problem?

She smiles and pats my hand. “I’ll call them first thing. It’ll all be taken care of.”

“Maybe we should get married first?” I quip.

“What?” she snaps hopefully. I nod.

“Well, I mean, if it is liver failure and we get married after the diagnosis, they’ll deny me coverage.”

She shakes her head slowly and sits back, smirking. “That’s not exactly the proposal I’d hoped for, Value Kraymer.”

“Sorry, love.” I really am, too. “Say, can liver disease make you crazy?”

“What do you mean?”

For no reason, the man with the silvery jaw occurs to me again and I look over Maggie’s shoulder at him, but he’s gone. I look around, but don’t see him anywhere, though those shadows I’ve been chasing out the corner of my eye for the last week are there again, dancing along like shapeless schoolchildren running home. I meet Maggie’s eyes. She looks politely concerned because she knows my question is sincere.

“Can cataracts make your eyes yellow?”

Now she’s starting to look concerned; confused.

“No, honey, those form on the lens, which is inside your eye. Just go see the doctor tomorrow, okay?” She laughs through her nose and grins at me again. “And despite the fact that I would marry you, I don’t think health insurance is a good enough reason to do it. You’ll have to come up with a better reason than that.”

“You’re the only thing keeping me sane, Maggie,” I blurt. Her smile falters, but she catches it and puts on a brave face. She thinks she knows what this is all about, and maybe she’s right.

“This is really about your mom, isn’t it?” she whispers sympathetically. “I mean, she was 27, wasn’t she, when…?”

“I don’t think Mom had liver disease.”

“Okay. But I don’t think it has to be hereditary.”

“But she did have yellow eyes,” I finish. Maggie looks startled. I nod. “I remember. It happened when she turned 27.”

Maggie looks guilty, but purposeful. “Maybe this isn’t the place to discuss this. Look, let’s not bother waiting for the food—”

“No, I want that steak, Mags. I’m okay. We can talk about it at home. Maybe it was liver disease. Maybe it makes you crazy.”

I offer her a weak smile, but she’s not convinced. At that moment she knows as well as I do that the doctor isn’t going to find a thing wrong with me, except a yellow discoloration in my eyes.

“You’re not crazy,” she says emphatically in a low breath, her eyes darting to the sides to catch any eavesdroppers. “It can’t just come on like that.”

“All artists are crazy,” I counter, offering her my most winning grin. She melts a little and sits back straight in her chair shaking her head. “Haven’t you heard?”

“You’re lots of things, Val, but crazy isn’t one of them.”

“What did you get me for my birthday, Mags?”

“I’m wearing it,” she mouths so softly I barely hear her.

When we get home, we don’t end up talking about my mother.

* * *

The nights are the worst. That’s when the footsteps get loud, though Maggie sleeps through the whole thing. Had I been my mom, I’d have gone down the hall to my nine-year-old son for comfort.

Dad wasn’t home that night. He was working second shift—that’s what Mom always called it. She said that meant he was either at the factory or at the bar, making money or spending it, but whatever the case, he wouldn’t be home before two. I think she saw it coming—or heard it—and she tried to come clean that night. I saw it in her yellow eyes, and it frightened me more than I’d ever been frightened before.

Until I turned 27 myself. Until I heard the Wraich on the stairs, skittering up and down; rattling my doorknob.

At first I try to ignore them, but I can’t. The sounds call to me like a flashing blue light on the wall, and I have to go see what the fuss is; see who called the cops.

“Do you see them?” Mom whispered that night, when she told me about her numbers and her age. “Just on the fuzzy edges of reality, like they’re only halfway here?”

The doorknob rattles again, breaking the memory. My heart pounds somewhere through my whole body: My chest, my feet, my hands, my fingers—it feels like my heart is everywhere at once. My throat clicks and I glance at the glass of water on my beside table in the moonlight. Maggie stirs, but doesn’t wake.

“Drink more water,” I mumble to myself. That’s what the doctor said, just as I’d known, just as Maggie had feared: There’s nothing wrong with me.

“An imbalance of some kind,” he put it kindly. “You need to go on a strict diet and drink more water—see if we can clear it up.”

It’s a flimsy prescription, and he knew it. He had no idea what’s happening to me.

But I think Mom knew.

“Value!”

A sharp whisper from the other side of the door. It’s the tone of voice Mom used when I was doing something she thought was dangerous. I start to cry and try to wake Maggie for comfort, but she won’t budge. I set my hand gently above her left breast to feel her breathing, to feel her heartbeat. She still has both.

“Value!”

No, I realize, it’s the tone Mom used that night. Instead of knocking on my door or just coming in, she stood at doorway and called to me in a whisper. She wanted me in the hallway. She wanted me to see if I could hear them or see them. She took me back to her room with her and she tried to explain.

“Who are they?”

“It’s the Wraich. They’re here to help.”

There’s a dull thud against the door and I realize I’ve sat up and swung my legs off the bed, ready to open the door and let her in. Instead I regain my senses and whisk silently over to the door, resting my fingertips ever so slightly on its surface.

“What do you want?” I whisper.

“Don’t fight the rage, Value,” the voice whispers back. It sends a long chill over my body until my arms bristle with freezing straight hairs and pinpricks of fear. I rest my forehead against the cold door, trying to remember what else Mom said to me that night 18 years ago.

“You’re not helping,” I reply tightly.

“Yes we are, Value.”

I reach slowly for the doorknob, watching my hand move toward it as if watching a movie of someone else. I was scared then, hearing Mom talk about it and seeing her yellow eyes for the first time, and I’m scared now, living it, and in that moment I realize that these memories—buried so long in the repressed recesses of my soul—are mine, not hers. I was afraid that night so I assumed she was afraid, too.

My hand closes on the doorknob. The cold metal seems to bend under the pressure as I squeeze it. There’s another memory trying to creep out, but this one hurts. This is one I don’t want to think about, not at all, but it comes anyway: Mom wasn’t afraid. She wanted to share her excitement with me.

“Reality is divided by birthdays, Value,” she said as she hugged me that night. “Nine, 18, and 27. When we turn 27, we change. And when we change, they come to wish you happy birthday.”

The door catch snicks as I turn the knob. I hear the feet outside jostling with anticipation, waiting for me to swing it open.

How long after her birthday had that been? Not long, because she was dead a week a later—

“No!” I admonish them. The footfalls vanish and Maggie gasps awake in bed.

“Value!” she cries, shocked to see me standing with my head against the door. “Val, baby, what is it?”

She stands up and walks over to me, touching my back tentatively, afraid to wake me.

“I’m not sleepwalking,” I say quietly. “I had a nightmare.”

She holds me as I cry, not asking any questions or offering me any hollow sympathetic sentiments. She knows better. She knows about the nightmares that I’ve long since stopped trying to describe. I just can’t tell her yet that this time I was awake during the dream.

“It’s my mom,” I finally offer, pulling away from her. In the moonlight she can’t see the color in my eyes. She puts her hands on my cheek and smiles, all light and airy.

“I know, Vally.”

“She died a week after her birthday.”

I see her fighting back tears of empathy. She has such a big heart—so much compassion and joy. It’s what attracted me to her in the first place. I know it cuts her up to think about any child, especially me, losing his mother, and I don’t want to do that to her.

“I think I want to visit my dad,” I say softly. She snuffles in a big breath and wipes her eyes, shaking her head.

“Why, Vally? Why now, after eighteen years?”

She knows it’s not a good idea, and she’s right. But at the same time, she knows exactly why I have to see him.

I tell her my reason anyway: “I have to know why he killed my mother.”

* * *

I’ve been wearing sunglasses all the time for two days now. This is day three and at least I can finally answer the question of who those people are who wear sunglasses all time: People like me. People with something to hide. The yellow eyes freaked me out, but as I pull on motorcycle gloves, I know it’s not over.

“You painted your nails black again!” Maggie said this morning. She looked surprised, but happy, like she thought it showed I was my old self again.

“Yeah,” I agreed with a shrug. “Just trying to freak my dad out.” She laughed nervously. What I can’t tell her yet is that I hadn’t painted my nails at all. Last night, they turned black. Solid black. And they thickened, too—this morning when I tried to trim them with the clippers, it was like trying to trim a bone. I think they changed when I heard the Wraich at my bedroom door.

“They bring you gifts,” Mom said, as if they were Santa Claus. I should have known then there was something up: She never told me what the gifts were or how they brought them.

“Do you really think you should go and see your dad?” Maggie asked again before she left for work. She sort of cocked her head and looked at me in the way she does when she’s trying to be really serious. A smile flickered across her lips. God, she looked so beautiful. I just moved over and kissed her, a good kiss, a long kiss, the kind of kiss she had to break off.

“I have to go to work,” she reminded me, running her finger across my lips and down my chin. “We’ll finish this when I get home.”

“Be careful, Mags,” I said, like always.

“You, too,” she quipped back with a tinge of seriousness again. “Do you still want me to dig up his case file?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I have a feeling he’s not going to tell me the truth.”

She nodded slowly and left. Now I sit here, in front of the jail, covering up the nails I told her I painted to piss off my dad.

Truth is, I don’t know what I’m hoping to find out from him. He’s either going to be overjoyed to see me and want to spend all the time catching up, or he’s not even going to talk to me. Or he’ll lie. He’ll proclaim his innocence, beg me for help. He’ll play the father card, even though it was his brother who raised me and my mother who gave me values.

Inside the jail, the cops checking me are polite enough, but I can tell they’re surprised to see me.

“He kept telling us he had a kid,” one of them says—an old guy who’s probably been there with him the whole 18 years. “We figured it was just more of his B.S.—no offense.”

“None taken,” I agree. “Does he lie a lot?”

“You’ll see, kid,” he says. “He should be excited, at least. The only visitor he’s had in years is some priest from his parish.”

“Yeah?” My surprise is genuine. I never knew Dad to go to church, and I can’t imagine why a priest would give a crap about some guy who killed his wife and orphaned his only son almost two decades ago.

“Through here,” the cop says as he nods, opening the door to the visitor’s room. “Last window on the end there.”

It strikes how much I don’t look like my father, assuming I sit down at the right spot. He looks old, like a man who’s sick of fighting the same battles over and over but knows there’s no other way. I don’t see any prison tattoos, which I take as a good sign. His hair is graying and he’s losing it, but what’s there is slicked back. It could be hair gel, it could be sweat—I can’t say for sure. He looks a lot older than he is and I feel my heart turn for just a second: This is him, the guy who gave me my first and only runner sled; the guy who gave me rides on his back, when he was home, and played me his old records; the guy who took it all away again that night he sent me to Uncle Joey’s, so he and Mom could go out to see a movie.

I don’t want to make the first move. He eyes me cautiously then stubs out his cigarette and snatches up the phone. I unhook mine and put it to my ear.

“Take off the glasses, kid,” he says smoothly. My heart turns again: I recognize that voice. He probably doesn’t even know how many times I was awake when he got home. I always knew he’d come in and check on me, and I looked forward to it. Most days, it was the only time I saw him. He’d come in and stand looking at me for a few seconds, then that same smooth voice would say, “Love ya, kid. Maybe I’ll see ya tomorrow.”

“I can’t, Dad,” I lie. “I went to the doctor today—he put those drops in. They hurt.”

I can’t tell if he knows I’m lying, but he doesn’t pressure me.

“So you finally came to see me, huh?” he wonders. I feel my lip quivering. Seeing and hearing him reminds me strongly of Mom, and I badly want to see her again, but I can’t. In the reflection of the glass between us I see a shape flit past—one of the fuzzy edges of reality—and I hear someone whispering. I manage to ignore it.

“I’m not here for you,” I reply evenly.

“No?”

“No.” I suck in a breath and hold it, trying to regain my nerves. I hadn’t expected so many good memories of him. Maybe deep down I knew they were there. Maybe that’s why I stayed away. Certainly that’s why Maggie told me not to come, not after all these years. The last time I saw him or heard his voice I was nine—a boy who didn’t understand the whys and wherefores of a world that seems, at times, mostly bad.

“I just want to hear you say it,” I finish.

“Say what, kid? Sorry? You want me to tell ya I love ya?”

I shake my head and suck in another deep breath, blowing it out like smoke from a cigarette.

“I just want to know why you killed her.”

“No one ever told you about it?”

I shake my head again. It’s getting easier, probably because he doesn’t deny it. I know if he had, I might have believed him.

“I know you killed her. Uncle Joey told me that much.”

“Damn—Joey? He never visited me once. He still alive?”

“He had a heart attack last year.”

He does the math in his head and narrows his eyes, “At 52? Joey died at 52?”

I nod once.

“Was he good to you?” he checks.

“He was fine, I guess. He fed me, clothed me, and he didn’t beat me, so compared to a lot of the other kids, I had it real good.”

“I never beat you,” he offers.

“Yeah,” I agree before he can go any further. “You were a banner dad. Father of the God fucking year.”

“Hey—watch your language.”

I snuff a single laugh through my nose and shake my head in disbelief.

“Seriously,” he says. “Take off the glasses, just for a second—I want to see you again, kid.” He stops for a second, weighing his words, then finally adds, “I missed ya.”

“Shoulda thought of that before you killed Mom,” I reply, ignoring his request. “Just tell me why you did it, so I can go home.”

“You married? Got a girlfriend?”

I shake my head. Another lie.

“You’re a good lookin’ man,” he says, shocked. “You need to find yourself a good woman.”

“Like Mom?”

“Look, I’m not sure what you want,” he admits. “I loved your mother, I really did. And you, too.”

“That why you went out drinking so much?”

“Is that what she said?” He looks genuinely hurt, and I know he’s going to have a lot to think about in his cot tonight. “No, kid—I was working. I was always working so we could get outta White Hell—swear to God.”

I don’t respond. Hearing him call it “White Hell” makes my heart turn again. I’m starting to feel a bit queasy. I think back to all those nights when I waited for him to come in and check on me and it occurs to me that I don’t ever remember the smell of beer or smoke on him. At least, not the smoke like you get from a bar. Maybe he’s telling the truth, but the old cop’s words are still fresh in my ears.

“Maybe so,” I allow, sitting back and crossing my arms as best I can while holding the phone up to my ear. “Look, are you going to tell me why you did it or not?”

“Why the sudden interest?”

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I think the stress is affecting me badly.”

It’s the first truthful thing I’ve said. I’ve begun to think that the voices and the shapes and the Wraich are nothing more than me trying to go back to that night with my mother, to feel her hugging me again. So I have to believe the imbalance Maggie’s doctor talked about is all in my head, and if that’s true, then maybe I just need to put this last nail in Mom’s coffin and finally let her go.

“I see,” he says, calculating again. “You must be 27.”

“Yup.”

He considers this profoundly, biting his lip and rubbing his nose and scratching his stubbly cheeks. Finally he sighs and looks me right in the eyes—well, in the sunglasses, anyway.

“Look, it’ll sound crazy,” he begins. “That’s what they’ve been telling me for years, anyway.”

“Try me.”

He shrugs and states it simply, as if he has no other option than to finally come clean: “She was a demon.”

“What?” I sit forward, inches from the glass and his simple told-you-so visage. “You are a liar!”

“She turned,” he tries to explain, and there are actually tears welling in his eyes. “I loved her, kid, I really did, but she turned. I couldn’t let her hurt anyone else—”

“Anyone else?” I shriek. The cop standing guard moves over a few steps toward me. “You killed her, you crazy God fucking bat!”

He shakes his head, crying for real now. “You remember little Joey Martin? You remember how he got mauled by those dogs?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer; he knows I know what he’s talking about. “Those weren’t dogs, kid. I saw it all. That was your mother—”

“Screw you!” I scream, standing up and slamming down the phone. He’s stood up, too, so he can push his face right up against the small circle of holes they cut in the glass. I know why they installed the phones now— even that close, his voice is muffled, but it’s clear enough: “You saw it in her eyes, too!” he yells. “I know you did! You told me! You told me about that night! I didn’t want her to hurt you, kid! I was trying to protect you! And me! And everyone!”

I’ve stopped listening. The cop is standing behind me, putting a calming hand on my shoulder, urging me to leave. I’m dimly aware that two other cops have joined him, as well as a couple of cops on my dad’s side of the glass.

I don’t remember telling him anything, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to think how scared I must have seemed, and I don’t want to think about a man trying to protect his son from a woman who has turned, as he put it. Instead, I try to prove him wrong. I rip off my sunglasses and stick my face up to the glass, an inch between our noses, slamming my hands against the window to make a point.

“You mean this, Dad? Is this what you saw in her eyes?”

He recoils so powerfully he knocks one of the cops off balance, the chair he was sitting on skittering across the six-foot wide room and slamming into the wall. In a second both cops are on him, subduing him.

“Sir?” the cop behind me says. “I really think you should leave now.”

I slip the glasses back on and straighten up.

“Yeah. I think you’re right.”

The older cop comes into the room, shaking his head dismally.

“I told you,” he says, clicking his tongue. “I was afraid he’d start with that demon crap again—don’t let him get to you, son.”

I try to remain calm, but I’m shaking pretty badly. The old cop nods and winks to the other cops and takes me by the elbow, taking me back into the other room so he can sign me out.

“We’ve tried to have him committed,” he says as I sign the paperwork with a quivering hand that’s too weak to fully grip the pen. “But the experts tell us he’s not crazy.” He chuckles amiably and offers his assessment: “If that ain’t crazy, though, I don’t know what is!”

“Yeah,” is all I can think to say. “Thanks.” My voice sounds strange, even to me. Deeper, like a low-purring engine.

“Hey, I mean no offense—”

“You said there was a priest who visits him?” I interrupt. I can’t tell if he’s happy to change the subject or upset that he didn’t get to finish his apology.

“Right—yeah. Father Jacobs, down at the Assumption in White Hall. It’s over—”

“I know it,” I reply. “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry, kid,” he says, looking honestly hurt and regretful. “I wish it woulda been a better visit.”

“It wasn’t bad,” I offer. “But I don’t know if I’ll be back.”

* * *

I sit in my car for a good 15 minutes, waiting for the shakes to die down. Dad really got to me. I can feel this rage in me that seems so purposeful and indirect, all at once. I want to rip off my father’s head, but I know that any head will do. It was all I could muster to get back behind the wheel of my car without doing something dumb to one of the guards

Eventually I pull out my phone and call Maggie at work.

“Val? What is it?” she answers. I can tell by her tone that she really doesn’t have the time to chat, which is why I never call her at work, and she knows that. “Did you see your dad?”

“Yeah,” I manage to breath. It sounds like a growl, coming out of my throat low and guttural.

“Are you okay? You sound… You don’t sound good.”

“I fell like crap, Mags,” I sputter in a hoarse whisper. “He made me feel like crap.”

“Jesus, Val, I told you not to go.”

“It’s not that,” I blurt. The growl is gone from my voice now and I take a deep breath. Just imagining her there, taking the time to talk to me, makes me feel better. I close my yellow eyes and rest my head against the headrest, sighing heavily

“What happened, Val?” she asks, her voice so sweet, so full of genuine concern. If she was busy before, she suddenly doesn’t care.

“I just found out… he told me… I think what’s happening to me happened to my mom.”

“What do you mean? What’s happening to you?”

“The eyes and the…” I trail off, remembering that I didn’t tell her about the nails yet. She waits a second for me to finish, then prods me.

“The…?”

“The nails, Mags. I didn’t paint my nails black.”

“What? What does that mean? You mean they turned black?”

“Yeah.”

“That can’t be good, Val. God, you have to go to a hospital. I’m coming home—”

“No, Maggie, really—I feel fine.”

“Fine?” She sounds scared; terrified for my well being. Ironically, I feel better again. My hands have stopped shaking, my voice sounds normal.

“Yeah. I know it sounds crazy. I’ll try and explain tonight. I just have to go and see some priest that always visits my dad, see what he knows.”

“A priest?” she stresses, trying to keep her voice down. “No, Val, really—just go home. I’ll meet you there.”

“I shouldn’t have called you at work,” I admit.

“No, no—I’m glad you did. Meet me at home?” Her voice has softened now. She’s trying to sweet talk me, and it usually works.

“After I see this priest.”

She sighs heavily. She can’t deny that I sound better now. She also understands that I drove to the jail and talked to my dad, and none of the cops between my car and him (and back) saw anything wrong with me.

“It just seems weird, Val,” she finally decides. “I mean, if I woke up with yellow eyes and black nails—”

“I think the priest will explain that,” I say for no good reason, but it sounds right.

“That just makes it weirder,” she says dryly. Good—the fear and panic has left her voice. We’re both back to normal now

“He’s over at the Assumption in White Hall.”

“Did your dad go to church?” she wonders.

“No. That’s why I want to see this priest.”

She ponders this for a few moments then sighs like a good mother.

“Okay, Val, maybe you’re right. Maybe this is all about, you know, the stress, with your birthday and your, you know…”

“I know, Maggie. Don’t worry.”

“But then go straight home,” she admonishes. “I’ll try and leave early. Okay?”

“Okay. And thanks.”

“Thanks for what, Val?”

I pause, mulling it over. Finally I shrug, then add for her benefit: “I don’t know. You just always make me feel better.

“Take care, Val, okay? I love you, you know that?”

“I love you, too, Mags.”

I hang up the phone and glance up the street through the windshield. There’s a man in a black coat and hat standing at the corner. I swear he’s looking at me, but that’s not what catches my eye. What makes me stare is his skin—how it reflects the sunlight like brushed chrome. How it stretches into shadow around his grin.

“It’s that guy from the restaurant,” I mumbled to myself and dig the key into the ignition, starting my car and jerking it into gear almost before it’s ready. It dies from the strain, so I dig the key again and wait to make sure it’s caught. The man turns the corner and disappears behind the massive wall of the jail.

By the time I get there he’s gone—or well hidden. I don’t have time to figure him out, though, so I keep going, back toward my old stomping grounds.

* * *

The Church of the Assumption isn’t easy to miss. It stands like a stubborn relic between two highrises, determined to puff up its chest even though the other buildings are each at least ten floors taller than the church’s tallest steeple.

I park across the street—it’s not hard to find street parking in White Hall—and jog over to it, hoping no one from the old neighborhood recognizes me. I haven’t been back for almost ten years—I finished high school because my uncle talked me into it, but I wasn’t going to stick around when I didn’t have to.

I stop at the top of the stairs to the door and look both ways. Ten years, and everything seems to still be in the same static state of disrepair: No better, no worse, just endless urban decay. Only the graffiti has changed. I see someone walking down the sidewalk toward me and break the spell of memories, pushing open the door and stepping into the church.

It’s cool and seems a lot bigger inside than it looked from the street, but I suppose that’s just the illusion of the wide open floor plan. In 18 years moping around White Hall, this is the first time I’ve ever set foot in the neighborhood church, and I have to believe my dad has never set foot in here, despite how it would appear.

Because something this beautiful he would have shared with me, I realize, then throw the thought away. I’m here to find out what the bastard told this priest about my mother, not to get all soft and fall asleep on the memory train.

I step into the congregation hall and a breath catches in my throat. I whip around, sure that someone is behind me, meaning to do me harm, but there’s no one there. It occurs to me that the Wraich won’t be able to come in here after me, and I wonder why such a thought would even occur to me. The stink of incense is giving me a headache. I stumble a step, back into the foyer, and the world comes swimming back. Maybe Maggie was right. Maybe I should have gone straight home.

“I thought I heard someone come in,” a man’s voice says softly in a kind tone. “Can I help you, son?”

“I’m looking for Father Jacobs,” I mumble, turning to look at the guy. He’s older—maybe 65, almost 70—but he looks like he could still bounce any thugs who tried to bust up a service.

“Well that’s me,” he replies happily, smiling a wide smile. He seems genuinely pleased. “Who sent you?”

“The jail.” My tone is clipped; I can hear in my own ears that it doesn’t sound like me. I feel my heart racing and the blood pounding in my head. For no reason, I imagine what it would be like to grab this guy’s head and pull—

“Oh. Did you just get out, then?”

“No,” I growl. “I was visiting my dad. You’ve been visiting him, too, and I want to know why.”

His smile falters a bit and his eyes waver from the main door to the congregation hall. He’s weighing his odds; planning his escape. I imagine I’m not the first pissed off relative to look him up.

He chuckles amiably. “Well, I do a lot of work out at the jail,” he admits. “Especially if it’s someone… well, someone from the neighborhood. Did you or your dad grow up in White Hall?”

I nod. My throat seems to be constricting and my hands are quivering again.

“Who’s your dad, then, son?” He either won’t step toward me or he doesn’t want to, but the look on his face says he’s registered that something’s going on with me. “Are you okay?”

“Larry Kraymer,” I blurt. My head is spinning now; dark circles are blossoming and shrinking around me like flowers of darkness.

“Kraymer?” he says, and now his tone is clipped. “Then you must be Value? Value Kraymer?”

“Yes,” I manage to force through my constricting throat. He moves a step to the side, into the congregation hall, and crosses himself. His face has paled and his eyes are wide. He looks shocked and confused, and I just want to see if my nails could cut into his flesh, maybe along the collar of his priestly shirt…

As I step toward him he says something in Latin and holds up his right hand, his fingers bent oddly, as if blessing me. But the words hurt—that’s all I can think. Each one is like a punch to my gut, and a wide nausea starts to overcome me. He’s still saying something in Latin and when I look at him the color has come back to his face. Suddenly the sight of him repulses me. I have never seen anyone so ugly, so malformed, so frightening in all my life: His stick-like arms and quivering jowls bobbing under wisps of white hair, a fire in his eyes full of malice and discontent.

I have to get away from him—every fiber of my being tells me so. I have to get away from him before he lunges at me and rips me limb from limb.

My heart pounding, I slam back through the main doors and into the street, sprinting over to my car. I dry heave as I dig my keys out of my pocket but I don’t throw up.

“Baker!” I realize he’s yelling. As I open the car door and slide behind the wheel I glance back and see him standing at the top of the steps, his hands cupped around his lips. “Alistair Baker!” he shouts. “You need to find Alistair Baker!”

The black blossoms have faded and the nausea is gone, but my hands are still shaking.

“God, I hope Maggie’s home,” I whisper to no one as I slip the car into drive and leave White Hall behind.

Again.

* * *

Maggie’s sitting at the kitchen table when I get home, her face drawn and her eyes on the verge of tears. As soon as she sees me she jumps up and rushes over, throwing her arms around me and giving me a hug with a tiny kiss on the cheek.

“I was worried,” she whispers, then adds incidentally. “You look awful.”

“I’m tired,” I admit. “I’ve had a long day.”

She leads me over to the kitchen table and urges me to sit. My eyes linger on her hair, her shoulders, her back as she gets me a coffee cup. She catches me looking when she turns around and smiles shyly, pulling a stray bang back over her ear

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks because she wants to hear me say it out loud. She knows what I’m thinking.

“You’re beautiful,” I breath. She tries to suppress a grin and turns back to the counter, pouring me a cup of coffee.

“Look, do you want to hear about… you know?” she asks the coffee cup, then turns back to me and brings the coffee with her to the kitchen table, setting the cup in front of me before she sits down.

“Yeah, I do.”

She sucks in a deep breath and lets out a sigh.

“Why?”

“I have a suspicion,” I explain. She nods once.

“Well, okay… It’s true that he always claimed your mother was a demon, and I think he really believes it. The only reason he hasn’t been institutionalized is because of Father Jacobs.”

I nod. It’s making sense so far.

“He turned himself in—he never denied killing her—and you know the rest.”

This time I shake my head. “I don’t know how he did it. Did you look that up, too?”

“Val, you can’t really want to—”

“It’s important.”

She sucks in another long breath and lets out the sigh. “He burned her body—that’s why your house burned down. He killed her in the basement, then he burned her body.”

She meets my eyes and I can tell she doesn’t understand why I’m grinning. “What else? He cut her head off, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” she gasps. She looks shocked, like I shouldn’t have known. “Did he tell you? Is that why–?”

“He didn’t tell me,” I cut in. “That’s just what you do to a demon to stop it from rising again: You cut off its head and burn the body.”

She still looks confused, so I change the subject. “What about Joey Martin?”

She shakes her head stiltedly, trying to keep up with the sudden change of conversation, then takes a big sip of her own coffee. “He was mauled by your neighbor’s dogs. The dogs were put down and everything, though your neighbor denied it–”

“Joey Martin used to pick on me,” I intone slowly. “Mom knew it. She was always telling me to stand up to him, but I couldn’t. The day he died he’d come over to pick on me because he thought it’d make him look tough in front of my neighbor, Susie Watkins. Everybody liked Susie, but Susie liked me, and when Joey found out, he ramped up his efforts to beat me down.”

I pause long enough to sip my coffee. She’s listening to every word, fearing the punchline, her hands clasped under her chin.

“He called us both out, then he marched right up on to Susie’s porch and started kissing at her and groping her, trying to put his hand up her skirt and under her shirt.”

“Christ,” she whispers. “How old were you?”

“He was 12, I guess. She was ten and I was nine. I knew I had to go over there and stop him, so I did. Only he punched me until until I passed out. When I came to, my mother was carrying me back into the house. I remember thinking her eyes looked especially yellow in the sunlight, and her skin seemed to sparkle.”

“You were pretty badly beaten, I’d say,” Maggie manages to fit in. I shrug.

“Susie told me later he didn’t even touch her after that—he just beat me up, then left. Later he wound up mauled in her front yard, and everyone blamed her dogs.”

“You say that like it’s not true,” Maggie offers, reaching out and touching my hand.

I look her right in the eyes: “Dad didn’t think it was the dogs. Dad told me it was my mom.”

“What?” She’s stunned, and she should be. “Are you kidding me? Your dad thinks your mom mauled a kid? I looked it up, Val—there’s no way a human did that.”

I nod slowly. “I know, Mags. But Dad was right: Mom wasn’t human.”

“What?”

“She was a demon, Maggie—and so am I.”

* * *

Maggie didn’t take too well to my theory. She said it was guilt at having finally visited my dad. It was natural, she said—I was siding with him because he was all I had left, but I really missed my mom. I wasn’t so sure any more, but I didn’t tell her that.

That night the Wraich came back. I heard them whispering before I heard them moving this time, and the breathy little wisps of sound made me cold with fear. I knew now what Mom had meant: They were there to help me along in my transformation. The gifts they brought were different aspects of my new self: Yellow eyes, black claws for nails, and that night, thicker teeth and sharpened canines, like a dog’s.

The difference between me and Mom is that I don’t want the gifts. I stood in the darkened living room and cursed at the shapes as they swirled around me, denying the whispered, gleeful claims of how they had me. Finally, I turned my back on them and went back upstairs. They followed me in a hurry, feeling me pulling away, but I ignored them as they tugged at my boxers and pinched at the hairs on my arms and legs. One thing I’d figured out is that they couldn’t stand to be near Maggie. If she was in the room, they’d only come up to the doorway and push their ghastly white faces into the opening, their glowing eyes wide with fear and a certain sense of betrayal.

“Don’t fight the rage,” they kept repeating.

In the morning I begged Maggie not to leave me. I got down on my knees and held her hand and stared at her through tear-blurred yellow eyes, my voice deeper and my lips looking slightly swollen over my larger teeth. She couldn’t deny it any more, not really, and she looked at me like I was a dog she knew she should be afraid of.

“They stay away when I’m with you,” I begged. “I need you, Mags, more than you’ll ever know.”

“Is this another idea you had for a proposal?” she asks after what seemed like a lifetime of silence. I look up into her eyes and she’s smiling through her own tears.

“No,” I answer truthfully.

She pulls me back to my feet and hugs me. “We’ll get through this, Val,” she promises.

“My mom wanted this,” I try to explain. “But I don’t.”

“I know.”

“Hey,” I state simply. “At least it’s not kidney failure.”

She chuckles and cries at the same time. “I’m glad you still have your sense of humor.”

“I love you, Maggie.”

She pulls away and holds my face in her hands—Christ, how difficult it must have been for her to look into my eyes then, knowing how impossible and true my dad’s claims were, and how my parents’ relationship had ended.

“I love you, too, Value Kraymer,” she replies and kisses me firmly on the lips.

I make sure not to open them, not even when I smile as she leaves for work.

* * *

The worst part about this whole thing has been how it continually forces the past back upon me. White Hall stinks in my memory not because my Uncle Joey didn’t do the very best he could to make it good for me, but because I spent my whole life there not letting any emotions come out. I knew what would happen if they did: I knew I’d miss my dad, despite everything, and I feared I’d find out something about my mom I’d rather not know.

Like how she didn’t get a few days at the tanning booth for her birthday at all: Her skin changed, just like the rest of her. Just like her eyes and her nails and what was behind the puffy lips she said looked odd because dad had hit her.

The last thing you want to learn is that your mother lied to you. That your mother took you in her arms in her room and told you joyfully about things you couldn’t see that were bringing her gifts, but that she left out large patches of fabric that would have made the quilt whole.

The night she told me she didn’t think she could fight the rage. The night before I skipped school so I could meet dad on his way to the bus stop and tell him everything.

The tears come unbidden now. I pound on my steering wheel and try to and make it go away.

“No! No! God damn it! No!”

It’s all unraveling, I can feel it flittering away like a sheaf of loose paper in the wind. And the fear returns, the essence of that night that has been buried under 18 years of hatred for my father: That I was always more afraid of my mother than of him.

“Value?” a voice asks kindly near my ear.

“Go away!” I scream at them, the fucking Wraich, now out in broad daylight, prowling around my car.

“Value,” the voice demands. “Mind the rage, Value. Think of Maggie.”

It seems an odd thing for the Wraich to say. Usually I can feel them trying to stir me up… but the voice. It has the same cadence as the whispers and the same forceful attitude. I look over slowly and see him there, standing on the sidewalk several feet from my car: The man with the silvery skin, smiling at me, his eyes hidden behind yellowed sunglasses.

“Good morning, Value,” he says in the same smooth tone. “I believe you’ve come to see me?”

I feel the anger begin to burn again: A low visceral sensation that can only be quenched with blood. I clench my teeth and actually growl.

“Maggie,” is all he says, quietly. I take a deep breath and picture her as she left for work, the expression on her face pleading with me that it wouldn’t be the last time she saw me.

“If the priest told you to find this Alistair Baker, go and find him,” was the last advice she’d given me, though I could tell she didn’t want me out and about again. “Maybe he can help.”

“Father Jacobs said you’d be by,” the man on the sidewalk says in the same smiling tone. He bends over just enough to catch a glimpse of my eyes before I turn away. “I’m Alistair Baker.”

“Then who are the Wraich?” I growl. It sounds like a test question, like I’m trying to trip him up, but it’s really the only thing I want to know: Who are they and how can I keep them away.

“Well, that’s an odd question,” he replies thoughtfully with a sigh, then answers slowly, “We are the Wraich, Value. You and me and your mother…”

“Screw you,” I mumble, but I don’t really mean it, and he knows it.

“Half demon, half human, ” he states simply in response. “The Wraich.”

I sit and let this soak in for several minutes, and he does nothing to interrupt me. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t lean down to look at me, he doesn’t tap his foot or jiggle the coins in his pocket, he just waits.

With the patience of a saint, I remember my dad always saying in the echoes of some faraway memories.

“Then who’s been doing this to me?” I finally ask. “Who’s been running around in my house and driving me nuts? Mom said that was the Wraich.”

“No, no,” he soothes. “Those are full demons, Value, trying to take away your humanity. Your mother was confused.”

“Did you know her?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t. I knew of her.”

“What did you know?”

He doesn’t answer immediately and eventually bends down a bit again so he can look into the car at me. “Look, would you like to go inside my office? We can speak more freely there.”

I think about it for a few seconds then forcefully snatch the keys from the ignition and get out of the car. Now that I’m standing, walking toward him, I see that he’s a touch shorter than me—the height is in his hat. That was another one Dad always used to say. I shake my head to clear the thought and arrive beside him on the sidewalk. He sticks out a gloved hand.

“It’s nice you meet, Value Kraymer.”

I extend my own gloved hand and we shake. “Likewise.”

He leads me into his office—through one of the many nondescript doors at the top of five steps in the row of offices along the street—and once the door is closed behind us, he slips off the hat, sunglasses, and gloves. In the half light poking around the drawn heavy curtains he skin is still shimmering slightly, like brushed chrome or that plastic they use when they want something to look like brushed chrome. He looks over at me and I see that his eyes, too, are yellow.

“Do we all have yellow eyes?” I wonder. He motions for me to sit on a leather sofa situated on the other side of a coffee table from his desk. The office is very well decorated, with rich red carpeting and beautifully crafted woodwork filigrees all along the walls and ceiling. The walls on either side are nothing more than giant bookcases holding row after row of books, many of which look older and more valuable than the office building itself.

“All of the Wraich do, yes,” he replies, removing his jacket and slinging it over the back of his desk chair. I expect him to sit at the desk, but he doesn’t. He moves over and sits on the couch beside me, crossing his legs and considering me with rapt curiosity. “That’s why you need to buy some yellowed glasses—it cancels the color so people can’t tell what your eyes look like. Besides, they’re easier to see through indoors.”

“So how did you know of my mother?” I wonder, not willing to let the thread of our former conversation break so easily.

“She was somewhat famous,” he admits wistfully. “She ran away from home when she was eighteen. Said she was going to be human. She ended up here, in White Hall, pregnant almost the day she arrived. Your father married her and I was sent to keep an eye on things.”

“She knew?” I demand. “She knew her whole life what she was?”

“Most of us do,” he agreed.

“So why didn’t anyone tell me?”

He considers this for a moment, twisting his lips and nibbling at his inner cheek. “I might have handled that badly,” he finally decides. “She should have told you when you were nine. I assumed she did, but in hindsight, I think she truly believed you wouldn’t turn, so she didn’t see the point.”

“She told me the Wraich were bring her gifts,” I said slowly. “She tried to tell me, the week she turned.”

I lapse into silence and he lets me. Mom knew what would happen and she couldn’t fight it. She had me before she turned because she was hoping the demon seed wouldn’t be there yet, and she named me Value so I’d never forget I had worth—human worth. Before she embraced it, she fought it, not in any big ways, but in the subtle ways that make deep impressions. I’ve never even seen a picture of her parents.

“Why didn’t it work?” I ask him. He squints at me, waiting for me to finish my thought. “If she was only half demon, wouldn’t I only be a quarter demon?”

He chuckles apologetically. “Humanity is a recessive gene,” he explains. “A very recessive gene—just one drop of demon is enough to make a Wraich. The demon never gets more diluted than that, no matter how much you try to breed it out.”

I wonder if she realized that, too. If something I said or did, or the way I looked at her, clued her in to the fact that I was never quite normal. I wonder if that’s why she tried to tell me, and why she tried to make it seem so great. She was covering for herself, trying to convince me of the promise and wonder in something she herself had tried so hard to get rid of. In that way, I suppose, I was her final failure: She’d run away for nothing because she’d still turned and she’d still passed it on to me.

I feel tears welling in my eyes and wipe them away. For some reason the thought of this man seeing me cry is too much to bear. I turn away from him as I speak.

“Is that why she did that to Joey Martin? Sure, he was a jerk, but I can’t say he deserved it.”

He chuckles again, but this time he sounds happy. I look back at him and he’s smiling proudly.

“That’s your humanity talking,” he says. “And that’s what the full demons want to take away, leaving only your… other side. A side more easily swayed to the inhuman urges, such as revenge and jealousy and anger.”

“The rage,” I whisper.

“It’s a good job you have Maggie,” he states unequivocally.

I shoot him a look and snap, “Why?”

“She brings out your human side, Value. I saw how you changed—calmed—just at the mention of her name. Demons feed off hate; humans feed off love.”

I snicker condescendingly. “You sound like you’re making a wedding toast, Mr. Baker.”

“Alistair,” he corrects me, chuckling at himself. “And I suppose I do. But it’s true, Value—your mother knew it.”

“But my mom had my dad…” I start, my brow furrowing in confusion. “He loved her.”

“He did,” he agrees. “But I don’t think she loved your father as much as he loved her.”

I let it sink in for a few moments, eying him warily as it does. I don’t like how this week has rewritten my past and redefined my future, all emanating from a single woman who was murdered 18 years ago. A woman who, in my eyes, could do no wrong but had great wrong done to her, by the man I had also thought could do no wrong and never meant anyone harm.

“So what now?” I wonder, trying to deflect the conversation.

Alistair Baker sucks in a deep breath and leans in to me, locking my gaze with his eyes. I can’t look away.

“Value, you can hide your eyes behind yellow glasses and never show your teeth when you smile. You can wear black gloves and use a belt sander to file your nails every night. You can make up a rare skin condition to explain why it looks so strange—”

I raise my eyebrows, and he continues.

“Oh yes, Value, your skin will change tonight. But the one thing you can never hide—the one thing that makes the transformation complete—is the rage.”

I think about how much I wanted to punch my father senseless back at the jail, and even the cops who had nothing to do with it; how I’d wanted to rip the arms off Father Jacobs, and even Alistair Baker when he was standing watching me. He nods slowly at me now.

“Yes, Value—eventually it will get the better of you if you don’t stop it.”

“Did you… stop it?”

He nods slowly again and smiles with a twinge of pride.

“How?”

“I had a theory. I thought that if a demon can be bound to a human—which it can be—then perhaps I could bind the demon side of a Wraich to the human side. That way, the human would control the demon and, in theory, prevent the rage.”

“So you’ve done this?”

“Once or twice,” he admits, his pride deflating somewhat. “It’s very hard to get there in time. We Wraich are very drawn to our demonic side, Value, and we’re very untrusting.”

“My mother…?”

He shakes his head apologetically. “I did try, but she wanted nothing to do with me. She thought it was a trick; that I wanted to do to her what the demons haunting her did instead. It’s a very complex ritual, and it hurts. And the pain brings the rage…”

“So who did you do it to? Where are they?”

He smiles again and opens his arms wide.

“You?” I gasp in disbelief. “But how did you do it to yourself?”

“I didn’t,” he grins. “Father Jacobs performed the ritual.”

“What? The priest?”

He shrugs.

“But he kicked me out of his church!”

“You are unbound, Value. But you are also different. You’ve been fighting the rage all by yourself—your humanity is strong. Value, would you like to be number three?”

“It’s not my humanity,” I mumble thoughtfully, staring out the window. “I have to get back to Maggie—she’ll be worried.”

I stand and Alistair Baker grabs my arm, his face long and pleading. “Value? Please!”

I pull my arm free. “I need to talk to Maggie first.”

* * *

Maggie listens to the whole story, her hand clasping mine the entire time. She looks strangely complacent, considering everything she suddenly has to accept and rethink. Humans are amazingly resilient when they have to be. I feel bad for her. This whole week it’s all been about me and she’s been suffering just as much.

“So that’s it?” she finally whispers. “You’re done changing now?”

She looks at my hand and arm. True to Alistair’s word, my skin changed overnight. It’s impossible now to tell if patches of my skin darkened while the rest remained light, or if my skin just lightened in patches to be without pigmentation. Alistair was overjoyed—apparently piebald is a rare turning.

“There’s still the rage,” I tell Maggie. “Although the full demons didn’t even show up last night. I think they know it’s no use, not with you here.”

“What’s no use?”

“Trying to make me lose my humanity. Trying to make me give in to the rage.”

“How could I stop a demon?” she whispers, tears welling in her eyes at the very thought of invisible forces being held at bay by her, even though she can’t see them and doesn’t know how she affects them.

“Because I love you, Maggie,” I reply with a wry grin. “You are my humanity.”

She sighs and touches my cheek with her other hand.

“I know this is tough for you, Mags—impossible even. But I’m serious. You really do make me human, Maggie. And Alistair Baker has this theory—”

She bristles at the name—I can tell she doesn’t entirely trust him, which is ironic, all things considered.

“Can you think of anyone more qualified?” I wonder.

She shakes her head and rolls her eyes with acceptance. “Okay, so he has a theory…?”

“He has this theory that if you bind a Wraich to its human side, the transformation will never be complete, because once a demon is bound to a human, it has to do the human’s bidding. It becomes a demon possessed by a human.”

“So he wants to do this to you?” she asks suspiciously.

“Yes, and I want him to. But Maggie, I don’t know if my humanity is strong enough—”

“You could die?” she spits, shaking her head emphatically.

“No, no, no,” I assure her. “I just think you’re a better person than me, Maggie. I want to be bound to you. To be sure that if nothing else, I can never harm you.”

She mulls this over, but I can see a grin flitting across her lips already. Finally her eyes narrow and she can no longer suppress the smile.

“Value Kraymer—is this another attempt at a marriage proposal?”

“I think it is, Maggie,” I reply.

She barely shakes her head, as if she knows better but doesn’t care.

“Then yes, Value. Of course I agree.”

Milo Jackson let the man’s head down gently, resting it in the snow. His own breath was heavy; volumous thunderheads that shrouded his face. He shook his head once, trying to clear the dream, but the body wouldn’t go away. He wiped apple-size tears from his cheeks and looked up into the dark night. The wind had cleared away the clouds and the stars winked like tiny, studded eyes waiting for him to move.

Milo dragged in a deep breath and scooped up the body. With an unlikely finesse, he managed to open the door to the back seat of his car and slide the man in. He hesitated half a second, then went around to the trunk and opened it, digging around for every blanket he could find. These he methodically placed over and around the body, telling himself over and over that he was a first-string running back for the Cleveland Browns, not a doctor, and he wouldn’t know a dead body if it –

“If it ran out of the woods and collapsed in front of me,” he mumbled aloud. He slammed the car door and walked off a few paces, pulling his phone out of his pants pocket as he did so. He glanced over his shoulder at the car, then turned back to the woods and dialed the police. He told them all he knew: How the man had stumbled out of the woods and collapsed, and how he’d mentioned a cabin and his little girl. Milo told them the body was in the car, wrapped in blankets, and that he was going to follow the man’s tracks back to the cabin.

“No, sir, stay with your car until we — ”

“There’s no time,” Milo had said simply. “Get a medic out here, too — he might be alive for all I know. I’m going to find that little girl.”

“We have your cell phone number, sir,” the dispatcher said evenly.

“Good,” Milo agreed. “Then you’ll know where to find me.”

Milo Jackson flipped the phone shut and slid it back into his pocket. He moved over to the man’s tracks and followed their line with his gaze, off into the darkness of the woods.

“I never should have gone to see what it was,” the man had said. “Don’t let them get my little girl. My daughter. My little girl.”

Milo tried not to think too much about it. Like Coach said: “Keep your head in the game, Milo. The action’s in front of you — just keep moving forward.” Milo put his head down and trotted into woods.

* * *

Milo didn’t like the woods much in daylight, but the crisp darkness around him now seemed edged like a knife and full of the sounds of things that meant him harm. He was breathing heavily from the exertion, but he wasn’t cold. He looked around himself as he walked, the moon and the snow lighting the woods in relief: Dark, leafless shapes like the bones of supernal beasts littering an ancient giant’s graveyard. He could see his tracks snaking away behind him, and the fuzzy outlines of the indentations he was following ahead.

A noise suddenly cut through the stillness: A knocking sound, like a rock flung into the trees, bouncing off branches as it fell back to the ground. Milo stopped, his eyes wide and his condensed breath puffing in front of him like a storm front. He heard it again, then a sharp electronic tune drowned it out; Milo jumped and snatched at his pocket to find his phone. He didn’t recognize the number, but he answered anyway.

“This is the police, Mr. Jackson. Where are you?”

“Just follow my tracks — I’m in the woods, heading for the cabin, like I said. Are you at my car?”

“Yes, sir.”

Milo stopped short of asking another question and rubbed his jaw with his massive hand. He was dimly aware of the knocking sound again and half turned in the direction it had come from — ahead and just to the right — then the cop was talking again.

“He’s alright, Mr. Jackson.”

“What?”

“The man in your car — he’s fine. A little hypothermic, but they just took him to the hospital.”

Milo let out a huge sigh. “Thank God.”

“We’ve got a K9 unit with us, Mr. Jackson. Why don’t you wait for us to catch up?”

“No way,” he decided adamantly. “That man, he was crazy with fear — I could tell. He was afraid for his little girl out here alone.” Milo glanced around himself again, at the black trees against the white snow; at the black span of sky cut across the horizon. “He must’ve run for miles. I’ve been walking ever since I called you.”

“It’s only been about 10 minutes,” the cop said with a touch of humor. “We aren’t that slow. Look, we’re starting off now: Why not head back toward us? You’ll only lose about five minutes — ”

Milo turned and looked around, back the way he’d come. He saw dark, fuzzy bumps against the snow not too far away; dog-sized bumps he knew he should remember passing, but didn’t. Five of them, loosely grouped, as if someone had tossed a handful of them down and walked off. The one nearest to him moved: Slowly — inconsequentially — like an animal getting used to moving in the snow.

Milo let out a short yelp, snapped his phone shut, and took off running in the other direction, deeper into the woods.

* * *

Jiffy sat in the kitchen sink staring out the window into the woods. Her dad had gone out by the front door, but the furballs seemed to have moved to back of the house and she wanted to keep her eye on them. She’d seen what they could do and it didn’t seem wise to leave them unobserved.

For one thing, they’d chased her dad away. The last she’d seen of him, he was running and screaming into the woods, three furballs giving chase with uncanny speed, pulled forward by a single, pink, fleshy arm and a three-fingered hand that shot out of the hump and recoiled like a frog’s tongue, the fingers grasping the ground before it and pulling… pulling… pulling…

She shuddered and looked way from the window for a moment, at her feet in the sink, then back again. It was full dark now, but she’d turned on the yard lights. The furballs — maybe 15 of them — were milling slowly around the trees, their single, fleshy hands shooting evenly in and out as they moved. It looked like they were trying to climb, but with only one hand, it wasn’t possible.

Another movement caught her eye and she saw a raccoon shuffle into the light. In a moment, they were on it: The sinewy pink hand of the closest one grabbed the hapless animal around the middle and crushed it. She saw just a flash of realization on the raccoon’s face, that it was in danger. It’s eyes widened and it’s mouth open to yelp a warning cry, then the hand closed like a vice and the animal simply split in two. A few other furballs hurried over, and before Jiffy gasped the raccoon had been torn apart as if five men had grabbed and pulled the same piece of tissue paper simultaneously.

And what if one of them had managed to grab her dad’s ankle as he ran away…?

She looked away again as a tear slid down her cheek, but any tears that might have followed were stemmed immediately by a loud thud on the front porch. Her eyes widened wildly and she stared at the front door — had one of them finally figured out how to clamber up the porch steps with one hand?

The door rattled as something slammed against it. Jiffy screamed and leaped from the sink, heading for the loft. This had always been her plan if they made it to the porch: Climb up to the loft and kick the ladder away. She’d already loosened the bolts.

The door rattled again just as her foot hit the bottom rung. She heard a grunt, maybe even a strangled cry.

“Dad?” she screamed. “Dad!” She froze, halfway up the steps.

The door was solid. She heard another muffled cry, but it didn’t sound like anyone saying her name. She started back down the ladder, but froze again when the door weathered another hinge-rattling blow. Why would her dad be pounding like that? Wouldn’t he call out her name? Wouldn’t he go to the window so she could see him?

Jiffy moaned with indecision and bounced lightly on the ladder. It could be a neighbor or a hiker or a hunter — or her dad, half mad with running for so long.

The door shuddered and the lock splintered. Jiffy squeaked and ran up the ladder to the loft, but she didn’t kick away the ladder. Not yet.

“Dad!” she screamed again, crying now and slipping into hysterics. Why wouldn’t he answer her?

“Lemme in!” she finally heard a voice bellow through the wood. It was a man’s voice, but it was not her father’s, and by the continued blows, he wasn’t waiting for her to reply.

That door could keep a bear out, she dimly recalled her dad saying, once upon time — then the door cracked with a piercing groan and burst open, showered splinters into the room. A massive figure fell into the cabin and lay motionless.

Jiffy pulled her legs into the loft and tried not to cry. She could see the furballs beyond the door, beyond the porch — they hadn’t figured out the stairs, then.

The figure moaned and started to get up.

“Shut the door, mister,” Jiffy squeaked.

“Huh?” the man said.

“Shut the door.”

Jiffy kicked the ladder away and scooted into the back of the loft.

* * *

Officer Tom Scott glanced over at his partner and let out a long breath, only then realizing he’d been holding it. Just ahead of them stood a third officer who was barely able to hold back a wildly barking police dog.

“What is it?” Officer Scott called out.

“No clue,” the K9 officer called back. “It just moved again, and I think there’s another one off in the woods. Heel, Jessie!” he added in a growl to the dog, to no avail.

“It’s a raccoon,” the other officer said quietly, but he wasn’t sure he even believed himself.

“Jesus,” Officer Scott sighed, letting out another long breath. “I hate the fucking woods. Let her at it!” he called out to the dog handler. “We can’t stand her all fucking night cuz of a coupla damn raccoons!”

“I don’t think — ” the cop replied, but Officer Scott cut him off.

“Release the damn dog, Al! Christ!”

What happened next was later expunged from the official police report for fears of generating the “widespread panic” that officials always seem to think will be ignited if the truth is made public. Officer Al Chiffon dropped the leash and drew his gun in one well-practiced move as Jessie darted forward with a vicious snarl. The dog headed directly for the nearest animal in the path, but instead of turning and scampering off, it stayed put. In fact, the other critter they’d seen came bolting out of the woods toward the charging dog and its counterpart in the path.

The three police officers barely had time to register the fleshy, pink hand the critter used to pull itself along with before the other critter’s hand shot out of the furball and caught Jessie squarely around the neck. The dog didn’t so much as yelp before an ugly crunching preceded its body slumping heavily to the ground, independent of its head, which rolled off the fleshy fist and thudded to the ground itself. Then the second critter was on it, and the dog’s body was deftly relieved of a back leg in one squeeze of the inhuman hand.

Al Chiffon screamed and opened fire. He squeezed off eight rounds, but the first two hit their marks: The creatures stopped moving with just one bullet each, parts of the dismembered Jessie falling loosely from three-fingered hands.

Al screamed again — a potent voice of rage, fear, and confusion — but didn’t fire his last round. “What the fuck!” he managed to bellow. Behind him the other two officers stood motionless and pale, gaping judiciously. Officer Scott had his hand on the butt of his gun, but that was as far as he reflexes had got him before it was all over.

“What the hell was that, Phil?” Al asked, turning and looking at them. “You’re the wildlife expert.”

“There may be more,” Officer Scott replied cautiously for his partner, pulling out his gun. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

Al turned back to the trailhead. The only part of the carnage that still looked like Jessie was a large mass of meat that contained her tail. “Jessie,” he whispered, sucking in a ragged breath.

Officer Scott moved forward a few steps, his gun trained on the nearest furry bump. “I better call that Milo guy,” he said distantly. “Make sure he’s… okay.” He slowly holstered his gun.

“Cover me, Phil,” he said over his shoulder as he pulled out his cellphone and dialed Milo’s number.

* * *

Milo pushed against the door to test its resistance. He’d shut it and moved the couch over to hold it shut and it seemed like it would hold.

“It’s okay,” he said, more to himself than the girl who was still huddled in the loft. “What are those things out there?”

Jiffy didn’t respond so he turned and looked up at her. Milo guessed her to be about eight or nine, her young face writ with defiance and resolve fueled by fear.

“Your daddy’s okay,” Milo said kindly, smiling. “He asked me to come and get you, make sure you — ”

Jiffy started to cry, though she was trying to hold in the tears, her face still rigid with that defiance. She was not only rightly afraid of this stranger who had burst into her cabin, Milo could tell there was no way she was going anywhere without a fight.

“Hey, I know how that sounds. My name’s — ”

“Why isn’t he with you?” Jiffy cut in curtly, the sound of her own voice boosting her confidence. She sat up straight and sniffed back the tears that had never fully emerged.

“Pardon me?”

“If my dad’s okay, why isn’t he with you?”

“He fainted,” Milo replied. “He was exhausted and he was too cold. He had to go to the hospital…” Milo trailed off as Jiffy’s tears finally spilled onto her cheeks.

“I don’t believe you,” she managed to sputter.

“I know, honey,” Milo replied, trying to sound as kind as possible. Maybe I sound too kind, he considered. So kind, it sounds fake. Milo had heard from his father the same stories about strangers and their lies that Jiffy had undoubtedly heard from hers.

“Look,” he added with a sudden realization. He dug in his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “Call the police — they know I’m here and they’re already on their way. Ask them about me. My name’s Milo Jackson.”

“Like the football player?” Jiffy asked incredulously, her small brow wrinkling.

“That’s right, honey. I am the football player.”

She eyed him curiously, looking him up and down and sniffing in a few ragged breaths. The tears had stopped again. Milo figured any girl who spent time on winter camp-outs with her dad probably regained her composure pretty quickly.

“I know, I look different than on TV. No helmet, no pads.”

She still didn’t respond, but she visibly relaxed, uncurling her legs and sitting up straight.

“I’m going to throw you my phone, honey,” he said. As an afterthought, he pulled his wallet out of his pocket, too. “And my wallet. Call the police — really. And check my ID. I don’t want to frighten you. I just want to get you out of here.”

He glanced at the door, but kept the smile on his face and offered the girl a small, encouraging nod. She didn’t nod back, but some subtle shift in her posture said she was ready to catch. He pitched the phone up to her and she caught it, then he flung his wallet, which opened in the air and flapped down closed beside her.

Jiffy grabbed the wallet and opened it, focusing immediately on Milo’s driver’s license. She tilted the wallet just right to catch the light and cut off the glare from the plastic sleeve that held the license, and her heart fluttered a little. He was Milo Jackson alright. She was in the same room as Milo Jackson!

Well, he’s a Milo Jackson, she added to herself, hoping her brief excitement hadn’t been obvious.

“Behind my license is my team ID,” he said, as if reading her mind. “You know, to get in the weight room and stuff.” He pantomimed the motion required to find the team ID and she mimicked him, slipping her finger behind the license. She pulled out the card behind the license and gasped, forgetting for the moment that she was trying to play it cool.

There it was: A very official-looking Cleveland Browns ID card, with hologram logos and everything, and Milo’s picture with his name, number, and position under it. Jiffy glanced over at a crumpled pile of clothes in the corner of the loft — her team jersey with Milo Jackson’s name and number on it was in that pile. If it wasn’t dirty, she was wearing it.

Jiffy snapped back to the moment and looked down at Milo, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. It would be hard to fake that team ID, but she still had to be cautious. Focus on the moment, her dad’s voice echoed in her head. If you’re ever stuck, just focus on the moment and take it bit by bit.

“This still doesn’t mean you’re not going to hurt me,” she pointed out.

“I know, honey. Lots of famous people are screw-ups — so call the police. Please. We have to get — ”

At which moment Milo’s cell phone rang. She looked down at the phone’s display, which read “incomplete data,” so she threw it back down to him without a word, a stern look of something close to anger on her face. He managed to catch it — Like a pro football player, Jiffy thought — and flip it open. He eyed her warily, well aware the wrong caller at the wrong time could blow whatever tentative ground he’d gained.

“Hello?” His face washed with relief. “Yes, officer — I’m at the cabin.” He smiled at Jiffy and gave her a thumbs-up. “Yes, she’s fine.” His face darkened and he unconsciously turned aside as if to hide the conversation from the girl. “Yeah, I saw them. They chased me.” Milo slowly took the phone from his ear, looking at it with wide eyes. Jiffy could just hear the tinny scream coming out of the earpiece — a small voice, out there in the woods, yelling “Shoot it! Shoot it! Shoot it!” over and over, the pitch rising with hysteria as the sound dimmed to a small buzz.

Milo glanced up at Jiffy and saw the panic on her face. He snapped the phone closed and tossed it back to her.

“Call 9-1-1,” he said urgently. “Tell them to send more help. And don’t forget to ask about me.”

Jiffy nodded and swallowed slowly. Her hands were shaking but she held back the tears — Cry later, Jiffy-bear, she heard her dad telling her — and opened the phone. She pressed the 9. In response something thudded against the barricaded door. Milo moved over to the window and looked out. There was one of the furballs on the porch trying, it appeared, to grasp the flat of the door with its fleshy protuberance. Behind it another one was just gaining the top of the porch steps.

“Jesus,” Milo breathed, glancing at the door knob as the thing thudded harmlessly against the flat of the door again. “They figured out the steps.”

When he turned back to Jiffy she was crying, but softly, holding her breath to hold back tears, the phone pressed to her ear. In a dreamlike state Milo heard her trying to explain what was going on while the thing on the porch continued to pound at the door. The thuds seemed louder than anything, like the slow beating heart of a massive creature that may or may not be sleeping. All Milo could imagine was one of those tendril-thin fingers hooking the knob…

“She says to stay on the line,” Jiffy’s voice finally quivered, managing to break through the pounding.

“Good,” Milo agreed, glad to have that obstacle out of the way. He glanced around the room, truly taking it all in for the first time. “Do you have a back door?”

“She also said you recently reported that my dad was hurt,” Jiffy intoned slowly.

“That’s right, honey,” Milo agreed, not too concerned with his alibi any more. “Did she tell you he’s okay?”

Jiffy shook her head. Milo caught the movement out of the corner of his eye as he scanned the room and he sighed heavily, looking her in the eyes and holding her gaze.

“Well he is, I promise. That man who called… you know, before? He told me the ambulance has taken your dad — ”

“You told me that,” Jiffy whispered, but he could tell by her tone that she believed him now. On top of that, her eyes begged him to help her, to save her, to get out of this cabin alive. To be more than a man or a sports hero. The door thudded again and Milo peeked out the window.

“Christ,” he gasped. “There must be fifteen of them — is there a back door, honey?” he asked with more urgency. He glanced up at her, but she was shaking her head again.

“She says to stay put,” the girl replied distantly, emitting a small squeak as the door thudded again. She looked confused and so, so small. She knew the person on the phone was a cop, and cops always knew how to keep people safe, but in her heart of hearts, in the place her Daddy said she should always trust, she knew they couldn’t stay put. Not a chance.

“I don’t think we can stay here,” Milo said evenly, holding up his massive hands to her in a posture of surrender. “I think we’re going to have to make a run for it.”

“Well, I’m not going to jump down,” she replied curtly, drying up her tears with a sense of purpose now that her mind was made up and this man — Milo Jackson, the football star! — appeared to be in agreement.

Milo dropped his hands and allowed himself a slight smile, then slowly bent down and picked up the ladder, standing it back in place against the loft.

“Why don’t you come up here?” she wondered, just so she could hear again how they really only had one choice.

“They figured out the stairs, honey,” Milo said. “And there’s… so many of them. If we stay here, I don’t think it will take them long to — ”

Jiffy slid the phone from her ear and snapped it shut, then grabbed Milo’s wallet and climbed down the ladder to the cabin floor.

* * *

Officer Scott hit the last of the fuzzballs with the first shot, and he was quite proud of that statistic. Not that he’d been keeping a careful tally, but of the 20 or so fuzzballs they’d just wiped out, he was pretty sure he’d landed the only first-kill shot on a moving target. And move they did, at first in a one-mind pack like a school of fish that bows and twirls at the same moment, then after they’d started to pick them off (while he shrieked, “Shoot it! Shoot it! Shoot it”), they broke into small clumps of hunters trying to surround their prey.

Trying to surround them.

After the low fear returned and left the hysterical rage as nothing but a few shakes and a sweaty brow, Officer Scott looked sheepishly at the other two.

“Five in a row,” he whispered, a proud curl running along his lips. “Three more shots, then we’ll see how you do, Phil.”

“Shit, Tom, I won’t waste a single bullet.”

It was small talk designed to keep their minds off whatever the hell was happening. They’d been moving forward picking them off as they saw them, trying to clear a path back to the cabin in Milo Jackson’s footprints, when the pack had come out of nowhere in front of them.

“Maybe I should call Milo again,” Tom said. “Let him know we’re okay.”

“No,” Al Chiffon stated simply. He’d been walking in between the other two, picking off fuzzballs left and right without a single word. He hadn’t spoken since they’d set off again, after the fuzzballs had got to his dog. Phil glanced at Tom across Al’s back and shrugged.

“We keep moving,” Al concluded. “We get the girl and we go home.”

* * *

“I’ve been watching them,” Jiffy said as Milo leaned a bookcase against the door then shoved the couch up against it to block the door.

“Yeah?” he prompted. Jiffy nodded vigorously.

“They seem to form little herds or packs — whatever — but eventually they break up again and spread out. But if something moves — like a rabbit? — then they all run back together into a big clump and…”

She trailed off and Milo raised his eyebrows questioningly. This girl was sharp. Now that she was talking to him, he actually felt a certain relief. He knew he wouldn’t have to get them out of this alone.

“And?” Milo prodded.

“They tear it apart,” she finished simply.

“You said they weren’t on the porch until I got here, right?” Milo checked.

Jiffy nodded. “So they aren’t too smart,” she concluded. “They just followed you up the steps. Lucky for us, that took them a while.”

Milo stepped swiftly across the cabin and looked out the little window above the kitchen sink. He scanned the area illuminated by the outdoor lighting.

“I think you’re right — there aren’t any back there now. They all went around to the front. Is there a back door?” he asked, his mind blurring as he considered all their options. This was just like reading a blitz on the offensive line: The pieces may all have minds of their own, but they moved in a predictable fashion, if you could read them right.

“There’s just the front door,” she said softly. As if sensing what this meant, the creatures redoubled their efforts, pounding again and shuddering the wood. Ten minutes earlier Milo was sure she would have broken into tears again, but now her face was set. She was much more determined since talking to the police. Now she just wanted this to be over, to be back with her dad, and it showed in the dark set of her eyes and her grim expression.

Milo scanned the cabin and his gaze came to rest on the books he tossed off the bookcase before he’d moved it. “I’ll throw a book out the kitchen window,” he decided as he moved over and picked one up. “You watch and see if they move around to see what the noise is.”

Jiffy nodded and stepped toward the front window. She suddenly looked so very small again — just a little girl out for a night or two in the woods with her old man. Brave beyond her years — and wily — but still so small, so easily broken.

“Wait!” Milo cried out, envisioning the creatures popping through the window in a spray of shattered glass. She wouldn’t stand a chance. “Don’t get too close! Don’t let them see you move.”

Jiffy froze, took a deep breath, then crept up to the window by the door and peeked out. There they were: Three on the porch — now just scratching at the door, after realizing their attacks were useless — two on the steps, and at least ten still out in the yard, milling around within the arc of light from the porch. And God knew how many more there were, off in the darkness.

Jiffy glanced back at Milo as he opened the kitchen window. The scratching at the door stopped almost instantly — they’d heard even so slight a noise as that. Milo snapped the window closed and turned to Jiffy.

“Where are they?” he whispered.

“Moving back off the porch,” she whispered back. “Some of them should be back there by now.”

Milo looked out his window and saw that a handful had indeed already come around to investigate. That worried Milo. They’d sent a scouting party to see what was going on, and if these creatures out-foxed him, it wasn’t the quarterback who’d get sacked, it was a little girl who’d be torn limb-from-limb.

“They’ve stopped,” Jiffy whispered so quietly Milo almost didn’t hear her. “If we make any noise, they’ll come back.”

Milo didn’t think. He did what the coach always said he should do: He turned on his game-brain and used muscle memory. His eyes narrowed as he flung the kitchen window open again and hurled a book out into the circle of light at the edge of the darkness. The handful of creatures pounced over to it with terrifying speed, pulled along by that vaguely human appendage. Milo slammed the window, then open it and slammed it again.

“They’re all going back there!” Jiffy whispered excitedly. “And Jesus, mister, they can move!”

“Sh!” Milo hissed curtly, dashing over and pulling the couch away from the bookcase across the door. “Next time I move the bookcase and we run.” He said it quietly, but sternly, and Jiffy recognized the focused look in his eyes. It was the same look that came through the face guard of his helmet when they did close-ups on TV. It was what her daddy called a game face, and she knew he couldn’t see anything but the plan he had in mind.

“I’m going to carry you,” he continued in the same low, stern voice. “I’m going to grab you like a 40-pound football and run, okay?”

Jiffy nodded slowly, the tears welling up in her eyes again. Before, when they’d just been thinking about it, it hadn’t seemed so bad, but now that Milo was serious — now that she knew the danger was so very, very real — she was scared all over again.

“Turn on your game-brain,” he intoned, his eyes flickering across her face for barely an instant.

“Maybe we should wait?” she squeaked. Milo glanced past her out the front window: Shapes were beginning to mill around out there again. They either got bored or come back because of the sound of the couch being moved. Either way, they’d only gain a few seconds’ head start. He turned and looked back at the loft again and considered it — but no. Even with the ladder removed the rustic walls left far too many footholds — or handholds, as the case may be.

“We can’t risk it,” he said. “If we run, we’ll be heading toward the police — ”

“But the police man was screaming,” Jiffy reminded him weakly.

“He was also shooting his gun,” Milo said. “It’s our best hope.” He turned his gaze back to her and his face softened. “And your daddy outran them, Jiffy, so I’m pretty sure I can, too.”

“Put on my game face,” Jiffy said breathlessly, sponging tears from her eyes with her palms. Milo actually smiled, then nodded dourly.

“Use your muscle memory,” he agreed.

* * *

They moved on in silence, slowly inching forward as they kept a careful watch for any movement that even hinted at one of the fuzzballs. Al’s gaze wandered up as they walked, taking in all the angles that could contain a threat — and Christ Almighty, in the woods there were a shit-ton of them. He watched the leafless treetops scratching the starlit sky and considered the squirrel nests dotted here and there in the limbs — then he stopped cold.

“Shit,” he breathed, bringing the other two officers to a stand-still. They both turned and looked at him to see where he was looking.

“What?’ Tom asked nervously, afraid to look up.

“That squirrel nest up there just moved.” All pulled out his flashlight and trained its beam on the nest. From their distance it was just a dark bump near the top of a tree.

“Christ, is that one of those things?” Tom wondered, finally looking up to see what Al meant. He hadn’t seen it move, but it looked to be about the size of one of the fuzzballs. He shuddered to think of the strange, fleshy hand grasping the branch it was perched on.

Al moved his light around the dark canopy, outlining several more of the clumps in the trees. “They’re just nests, right?” he asked in a panicked tone. “That’s what my dad always said.”

Tom looked around the woods again. It seemed pretty quiet all of sudden; Phil shrugged when he caught his eye. There certainly seemed to be a lot more of those things up there than he figured there were squirrels that would need them.

“What if the wind brought some of them down last night?” Al wondered out loud. “What if they live up there and they don’t normally ever come down?”

“I was quite a windstorm,” Phil agreed, trying to be helpful. Al snapped off his light and looked at him. “But what if they do come down, to feed?” Phil asked.

“Then we’re surrounded,” Tom stated simply, sharing a wide-eyed realization with the others.

Then they heard the sticks and branches start breaking, off in the distance, but getting closer. All three of them smoothly drew their guns and stood facing the noise.

* * *

“Shall we practice?” Milo asked her. Jiffy nodded, trying her best to keep her game face on. The massive man reached out tentatively and scooped her up like a large rag doll. He grabbed her around the waist with his left hand and tucked her in to his hip, then slid his right hand under her arm, her head tucked in the crook of his right elbow. He squeezed her tightly against himself and jogged in place a few paces.

“Then I’ll run,” he said out loud to himself and put her back down. “Was I hurting you?” She shook her head slowly. “Okay. Then go back to your window and tell me — quietly — when they’re all gone. Okay?”

He moved over and grabbed a stack of books then went back to the kitchen window. One of the creatures was still milling around expectantly, waiting for another noise. He looked over at Jiffy and mouthed “O-K?” She nodded slowly, dreamily, and turned resolutely to her window. Milo threw his window open and tossed out the first book. The thing pounced on it faster than Milo had expected, then like a shot another one scuttled around the cabin and tore into it. Together, they tore the book in half. Milo considered that for a second — what it meant about not only their strength, but their grip — then tossed out another book. Now the creatures were herding, as Jiffy had put it, three of them pouncing on the second book while the first two continued to shred and assess their prize.

Milo tossed out another and another, trying to get them further and further away from the cabin and hoping they wouldn’t figure out that books weren’t good food. The back yard was quickly teeming with them, but the books seemed to be keeping them busy — they either didn’t notice him in the window or didn’t care. He tossed the last book out the window and dashed over to Jiffy.

“I haven’t seen anything move since you tossed the second book,” she whispered. Milo nodded curtly. His eyes had that distant behind-the-faceguard look again. He picked up the end of the bookcase and carefully moved it aside.

“Anything?” he asked as he put it down.

“Nothing.”

“No movement?” He glanced out the window himself for a few seconds, well aware of how slim their headstart would be already. Milo saw for himself the expanse of unblemished snow fading into the moonlit blue of the woods.

“Ready?” he growled, turning her to him.

“My coat!” she gasped, but Milo didn’t hesitate a second in picking her up, just like they’d practiced.

“We won’t be in the woods long enough to need one,” he said evenly, tucking her in as he opened the door. The air was crisp and there was a strange sound echoing off the trees — the sound of books being shredded, he realized, and loud enough to cover the sound of them leaving. He stepped onto the porch and took in a deep breath, jostling Jiffy once to make sure she was wedged in well. Then Milo hopped off the porch and ran, ran like he’d never run before, only vaguely aware that this football was so much heavier than all the others and that it was gripping his shirt with tight little fists.

* * *

“It’s too late it’s too late it’s too late…” Al Chiffon repeated like a mantra as the noise crashed toward them. It sounded like it must be at least a hundred of the fuzzballs, pounding along on their fleshy hands and tearing apart whatever got in their way.

“Put your gun away,” Tom suddenly said softly, but sternly.

“It’s too late…”

The sound grew louder and louder.

“It’s too late…”

“Al!” Tom cried. “You’re in shock! Let me and Phil — ”

“Holy Christ!” Phil shrieked as a massive shape faded out of the darkness between the trees, heading straight toward them. “It’s huge!” He leveled his gun, his finger tightening on the trigger.

“No!” Tom yelled. In one fluid motion, the likes of which would not need to be exaggerated when he told of the miracle at parties thereafter, he knocked Al’s gun out of his hand as Al squeezed off a round and kicked Phil in the shin before he could pull his trigger.

The form kept coming, then Phil heard it, too: A voice as big as the form yelling, “Run!”

“It’s Milo!” Tom cried. He looked at Al and saw panic-stricken eyes that were wide and unseeing. He didn’t wait for confirmation. Defenseless and afraid, Al Chiffon turned and bolted away from whatever or whoever it was coming toward him.

“Run!” Milo shouted more clearly, barreling headlong toward them. Phil and Tom turned in tandem and sprinted after Al, Milo bearing down on them in a mist of kicked-up snow.

* * *

“Daddy! It’s on!” Jiffy called into the kitchen. Her dad straightened up with a beer in his hand and closed the fridge door.

“Coming!” he called back, popping the top and tossing the bottle cap onto the kitchen table. He slumped down on the couch and put his arm around his daughter as she snuggled up to him.

“Where’s mom?”

“Still at the store.”

They watched the TV as the camera panned over the faces of the starting lineup, and whether or not it paused longer on Milo Jackson, Jiffy couldn’t say for sure, but she thought it did.

“That’s his game face, Daddy,” she said. “He looks mean, doesn’t he? But it’s just his game-brain working — that’s what he called it. He said it uses muscle memory.”

Her dad chuckled lightly and sighed, hoping his daughter wouldn’t see the tears of relief as he tried to wipe them from his eyes without putting down his beer.

* * *

“Did we get ‘em all?” the game warden asked the hunting party. He looked down at the hump of fuzzy balls in the clearing they’d made, the strange pink hands and arms lolling at lifeless angles.

“All the ones down here, yeah,” one of the hunters replied. “We’ve been through this stretch of woods twice, front to back.”

The warden looked up into the treetops and watched the branches swaying under the weight of the dark clumps in the uppermost branches. “How many are up there, though?” he thought out loud.

“God knows,” was the terse reply.

Henry Edgewater purchased it because he enjoyed the crisp lines of the barren room it depicted; the jagged edges of the uneven wood used for the makeshift table and chairs; the detail in the shadows and grain of the walls.

Just the walls, that’s all it showed. Two rough-wood walls coarse enough to create a handful of splinters, if you tripped trip on the uneven floor and put out a hand to stop from falling. Two walls, one on the left and the other behind a table — possibly a kitchen table, with two ramshackle chairs. Or, quite viably, this was the single abandoned room in a shack off in the woods somewhere.

Two walls, one table, two chairs, and a window. One window in the back wall, behind the table. Through the nine-paned glass you could see leafless trees, a section of lifeless lawn, a wedge of blue autumnal sky, and the careful brick side of a chimney.

That’s why Henry had bought the painting, because of the evident life outside the apparently dead room that served as subject. He liked the juxtaposition. He liked that the placement of the chimney bespoke another room beyond an unseen door in the left wall.

Henry was thrilled with the possibilities the work left to the imagination, so he bought it and he put it on his bedroom wall across from his own window, and he smiled every time he looked at it, like a schoolboy first witnessing something beautiful before he understands that magic is not real.

Henry would smile, and a subtle change in the angle of the shadows would lead him to believe that the painting had smiled back.

* * *

Henry Edgewater felt a certain debt to the artist who had produced his new joy and attempted to delve into the history of his acquisition. The signature said, plainly enough, “Reginald Arburton,” but Henry knew nothing of art history and went to the library to thank the man by reading up on his biography.

Marginalized, it turned out, had been the career of Reginald Arburton, who had operated out of his mountaintop cabin in Virginia in the late nineteenth century. Not only had he been American, but it was also discordantly pointed out that he had effected his only known work with the help of a camera obscura projected onto the back wall of his shack.

With no family to vouch for him, his biography was little more than a blurb in book of art history; a blurb that pit his brief career as somewhere between a fraud of art and the shadowy beginnings of modern photography.

Marginalized. One of a kind. It only made Henry love his painting even more.

* * *

After Henry first glimpsed the girl dash past the window in his painting, he took to eating dinner in his bed so as to watch the action on the canvas as most people watch a TV — even a blank TV, if the conversation has died and no one has bothered to turn it on. Henry would methodically cut his steak and potatoes and carrots into manageable cubes such that he could, without taking his eyes from the image of the room, eat by simply stabbing at the plate with his fork, then chewing up whatever the utensil delivered. While the preparation made his meals more efficient, it actually began to take him longer and longer to eat.

Staring at the image, his mind naturally began to wander, and his eyes would follow. And it was invariably at these moments, when his gaze was not fully on the image’s window, that he glimpsed between the trees a splash of color that had not been there previously.

Sometimes, when he snapped his attention back to the autumnal, wooden lawn, Henry would catch the foot of a girl — white sock and black sandals — frozen for a second at the bottom left corner of the window frame, dodging behind the chimney, as if Reginald Arburton had painted it there to begin with.

Or rather, his camera obscura had captured the light of an image of fleeting life and had burned it onto the canvas, and the artist had painted over it. But upon closer inspection — Henry’s knife and fork abandoned on a plate of half-eaten dinner — the sandaled foot would be gone; the yard beyond the window empty; the trees not even swaying under the forceful push of an October wind.

Sometimes, as he returned to his meal, Henry would glimpse movement again just as he brought his head back up to concentrate. Sometimes he even caught the foot again, and would put his knife and fork back down and rise, only to discover he had been right the first time, and that no such foot existed in the yard glimpsed through the painted glass. Sometimes Henry Edgewater would yo-yo up and down like this five, six, seven times in a row.

Finally, he caught sight of her leg from the knee down and saw that the foot was not clad in a white sock, but in the white, knee-high hose of a young girl dressed up for church. Yet when he would return to the painting and more closely examine it, his nose millimeters from the surface of the canvas, he would find no appendage as evidence of a girl having dashed past the window.

Once, he was sure, as he pressed his nose against the oil-made window to find her leg, he saw a slight blurring of the image as if his hot breath had condensed ever so slightly on a cool pane of glass.

* * *

At one point, Henry’s eyes managed to capture the girl’s back as she disappeared behind the chimney. Mid-run, her stocking leg stuck out behind her, bent at the knee beneath a fine white dress with blue frills. Her left elbow, too, was caught for a second as she brought it back to keep her balance, the skin of her arm pale and radiant in the autumn sun. At the top of the back of her dress, above the powder-blue frill of a collar, Henry saw the very back of her head where her blond hair was tied in a ponytail with a shiny blue ribbon. The blond hair floated above the blue-frill collar without so much as a wedge of neck connecting the two, though surely the young girl had such a natural alignment of anatomy — but that’s just how thin a sliver of her body had appeared in the empty yard beyond the glass.

Pleased with himself, despite the frustration of not having seen her in full as more than a blur through the window, Henry would sit back down and return to stabbing the food on his plate with his fork.

Soon, he didn’t even bother to get up, letting the sight of her leg and elbow and her back and her disembodied hair disappear back into the canvas in its own time, like the slow fade of an after image burned temporarily onto the retina. He just smiled — fork poised and frozen midway to his mouth — and blessed his good fortune for even a passing glimpse at the life beyond the barren room.

And, as usual, he was sure Reginald Arburton smiled back with a subtle shift of the shadows that didn’t last long enough for Henry to even consider whether or not he had seen it.

* * *

It was two weeks later, to the day, when Henry managed to watch the entire event of the girl’s progress across the yard. He watched as just one white dot that was the tip of her nose first broke past the right window frame, and then sat in gape-mouthed joy as the girl dashed past the window, her foot eventually disappearing behind the chimney after her bobbing blond ponytail with the blue ribbon, and the balancing bent left elbow with the powder-blue trim inched out of sight behind the brick.

At first, Henry couldn’t elucidate what he had seen. He set his knife and fork down slowly without taking his eyes off the painting, hoping it would play through the scene again, because what he had witnessed made no sense.

Little girls with ponytails and blue-trimmed dresses ran past windows giggling, after all, not grimacing intently and carrying a shotgun.

Little girls didn’t carry guns. The joy of finally seeing the blond-haired girl had been in the belief that she would be smiling and free and dewy eyed — the perfect juxtaposition to the resolute lifelessness of the subject room, which had first drawn Henry to the painting and the window. In his vision, her elbow disappearing behind the chimney had been pert and soft and alive, not weighted at the wrist by the shank of a longarm. The black sandal had been clean, not the footwear of a gun wielder.

It made no sense and Henry sat and stared in stunted disbelief at the solitary work of Reginald Arburton, crafted in 1883 on a mountaintop in Virginia with the aid of a camera obscura. It made little sense that the virginal life glimpsed outside the nine-pained window would have appeared so dire and intent.

He did finally see the girl’s brief passage played out again, several hours later, his meat and vegetables stone cold and his knees cramped: The slight backward curl of lips in profile beneath an open, staring eye, not looking for the next frolic across the way, but concentrating on some purpose that, for the time being, only played out in her mind, beneath a bobbing blond ponytail tied back with a blue ribbon.

Only this time, the girl hadn’t been carrying a shotgun at all. A glint of light or a certain stretch of shadow had surely before created the illusion of a young girl running with a cargo she could certainly not heft, and this time Henry concentrated and felt certain her load had been a stout walking stick instead.

Rubbing his tired eyes, Henry finally stood and cleaned away his uneaten dinner, all the while replaying the image in his mind.

Definitely not a gun. Girls didn’t run with shotguns. So it had to have been a stout walking stick with which she had been entrusted until it was properly delivered, causing her the consternated look. By the time he had finished the dishes, Henry was quite pleased with this assessment. A young girl on some Sunday afternoon chore, delivering a new walking stick, carved by her father, to her neighbor, after church.

It wasn’t quite the freedom and whimsy Henry had envisioned beyond the window when he had first purchased Reginald Arburton’s only work, but it made much more sense than the deception his eyes had perceived when he first saw the little girl dash past that window.

It made sense in a realistic way that said the world had no time for the whimsy of little girls.

And with that, Henry was able to get some sleep.

* * *

Henry awoke with a start at first light and looked straight at the painting. The little girl with the blond hair and the problematic expression was there now, in the room, blocking Henry’s view of the window. She stood in the foreground, her form cut off by the picture frame at the hemline of her dress. Her blue eyes were steely and cold, the stare causing eerie shadows to have formed above her cheeks and around her curled lips. She was not at all happy. In her young, frail arms she cradled a shotgun, the double barrels pointed to the ceiling, her small right forefinger resting neatly on the trigger.

She didn’t move. She didn’t dash back out of the room or hand the gun over or turn to the window. She stood motionless and stared, the trim collar of her dress suddenly neat and blue in a military fashion.

Henry rose nervously from his bed and moved over to the picture, glancing away to see if the image would change; if the walking stick would reappear in her clutches; if the girl would vanish as before and leave the peaceful yard beyond the window untouched. But this time she held her ground. No fading afterglow image. No rubbing the eyes and making it go away.

The girl stayed and stared out at Henry, cradling her shotgun, until Henry was forced by a greater will to leave his own bedroom. And though he could feel her eyes following him as he turned his back and walked through the door, Henry did not glance over his shoulder to see if it was true; to watch her eyes actually moving.

When he did glance in again, some hours later, on his way out of the bathroom, the girl was still there. She hadn’t moved an inch.

But her eyes had met and held his own.

* * *

Henry found the art history book again and looked up the plate of Reginald Arburton’s defacto masterpiece. There was the rough-hewn furniture in the ramshackle cabin. And there was the nine-paned window and the quiet, autumnal yard beyond. There was no little girl with a shotgun to break the scene. Henry stared at the black and white plate for a good hour and caught no glimpse of anything beyond the window — no foot, no stocking, no blue-ribboned ponytail. All he surmised was that a black and white reproduction did no justice to the delicate balance of color and shadow and light in the original. The plate was not alive. It just didn’t have the same vivid consequence as the original, which had captured the light of that moment in some combination of oils and photographic reality.

Henry finally looked away from the image on plate F, closed the book, and went home.

The little girl, of course, had been anticipating his return and looked over when he poked his head into his bedroom.

Henry retreated and spent the night on the couch.

* * *

Henry stayed away from his bedroom with the same vigilance he had first displayed upon catching a glimpse of the girl’s movement. He no longer cut his food neatly into cubes, nor did he stare longingly at one spot on the wall waiting for something to happen. Instead, he sat quietly at the kitchen table and ate slowly, with great precision, hoping above all that nothing would happen. His ears were tensed to not hear the soft shimmer of a dress ruffling as a little girl stepped over a picture frame and entered Henry’s bedroom.

There were lots of things Henry didn’t want to hear, and for this reason he took to completely silent meals, with plastic utensils on plastic plates to help deaden the noise, all the while listening to make sure he couldn’t hear the sound he did not want to hear.

Then, one night, he heard voices. The high tinkling lilt of a young girl, answered by the large rolling thunder of a grown man. The sounds were too indistinct for him to make out words, and since they weren’t the sounds he hadn’t wanted to hear, Henry put down his plastic knife and plastic fork and crept over to the door of his bedroom.

The voices stopped. Henry slumped down and sat with his back against the wall, his head tilted to capture the slightest vibration of air that could be deciphered as language.

Surely, if the girl was speaking, she meant him no harm? Henry sat wide-eyed and listened, his ears almost aching from the lack of noise, just as his eyes in the encroaching darkness began to ache at the lack of light. He listened for one word to rise above the dark folds of air in his home and give his thoughts some direction. He needed only to hear a brief salutation — or even a threat.

Finally, frustrated at the lack of sound from within, Henry reached up and slowly turned the cold metal knob, pushing the door open far enough for him to stick his head in. He could see his bed, bathed in moonlight, left as unkempt as when he had last set foot in the room. Dirty socks still littered the carpet and a stray pair of pants decorated the bed’s footboard.

Henry poked his head in and held his breath, allowing his eyes to adjust to the pale blue light from the moon. His bed took on more shape, less form; he could pick out pillows over cushions, bedspread over sheets.

With only half a thought, he glanced up at the painting of the coarse room, fully expecting the scene to be back to the way he had bought it. But, of course, she was there. At first, she didn’t seem to notice he was spying on her, then suddenly her eyes flicked down and met his — still the only part of her brushed-in body Henry had seen move for days.

He withdrew his head evenly and shut the door firmly behind it.

* * *

Henry’s couch became so ordinary he almost wondered why he had bought a bed. Sometimes, when he was outside watering the flowers, he would glance in through his bedroom windows, not so much to check on her — for he knew she would be there, shotgun in immovable arms, below the same immovable expression that should never have been on the face of a pretty, young girl — but to remind himself what a bed looked like. The pillows began to look alien; the sheets unreal; the mattress a waste of space.

Then his eyes would drift again to hers, and he would move on, hoping that she would speak again soon so he could hear what she had to say.

At exactly the moment when Henry forgot why his bedroom was off-limits, he heard the voice of a young girl within say very clearly, “My daddy said you needed this.” He had been on his way to the bathroom when the words had been spoken, but he stopped in his tracks, half-turned to the bathroom, and concentrated for more words to follow.

But there were no more sounds. No rustle of a dress or spoken reply. No twitch of a trigger finger or the click of a cocking gun. Afraid he would miss something, Henry sat down outside the bedroom door, but after a few minutes the call of nature became too great and he quickly went about his business. Afterward, he even prepared himself a quick meal. Then, with his back against the wall between bedroom and bathroom, Henry sat cross-legged with his dinner, his plastic utensils making a dull tap his ears managed to avoid in favor of hearing a voice.

“My daddy said you needed this” he heard again not too long after, ending all semblance of a meal. He tried to interpret the voice; the stretch of syllables and curl of vowels valuable clues to what had been intended between the twinkling of words.

“My daddy said you needed this.”

Then, before Henry could fully consider the tone, a man replied: “You’re blocking my light, Fiona. The window — you’re blocking the window.” It was the hollow sound of a man in a small room not paying any attention to the one with whom he was speaking.

Then silence. The few seconds of non-sound left Henry afraid to breathe; afraid of missing the next words.

“Fiona? Shall we do another picture of you now?”

It was a question laden with irregular sympathies.

“You never paint my picture.”

And the single shotgun blast roused Henry from whatever daydream he had envisioned; the pastoral scene he’d imagined unfolding within his abandoned chamber suddenly a mute and naive testament in the face of stinking reality.

The silence which followed became too much for him to bear, so Henry scurried back to his couch and tried to get some sleep.

* * *

When next Henry watered his flowers he felt his eyes drawn to his bedroom window and to the room beyond that contained a picture of a room with two walls and a nine-paned window much like his own. At first, placing the painting opposite his bedroom window had seemed natural — somehow extending his room and turning the rest of his house into that quiet autumnal yard beyond — but now he wasn’t so sure.

It meant Henry could, if he wanted to, peek in at any moment and see what was there. He had done a fine job of continuing to ignore his bedroom and the secret world it now contained, but still his eyes were drawn to the window above his flowerbed like a moth caught in prismatic triangles of light.

Carefully, he crept closer, telling himself he was not going to look for the little girl with the white dress and powder-blue lace trim. He was not going to see if she still clutched her shotgun. He was just going to see what his bedroom looked like — remind himself of its presence.

He put down his watering can and grasped the edge of the window sill, peering surreptitiously into the room. His eyes adjusted slowly to the light and he glanced to the wall.

The little girl was gone.

Henry Edgewater shifted his weight to see better, looked away briefly, then back at the image. It was just a painting of a rough, ramshackle room, empty except for a woodsman’s table and two chairs. On the back wall he could just make out a nine-pained window that gave onto a sunny, autumnal yard beyond.

No little girl. No blue ribbons or blur of movement or black-sandaled foot disappearing behind the chimney.

The yard beyond was empty, save for a few trees, and Henry had no idea how to feel about that.

So he backed thoughtfully away from the window and thought of nothing at all.

* * *

Henry assumed the thing had run its course, but soon he found himself again taking dinner in his bedroom, his meat cut into neat cubes he could easily stab without having to take his eyes form the window.

Only this time, it was not the painted window of Reginald Arburton that kept him entranced, it was his own nine-pained window, that looked out upon his own pristine garden and airy spring yard, because one afternoon, not long after reclaiming his bedroom, Henry had seen a little girl run across his property. A little girl in a white dress with powder-blue trim and black sandals, carrying something that could have been a walking stick — or a shotgun.

He hadn’t seen her clearly. He had been changing the sheets on his bed, his clothes already picked up and put away, when he noticed the lingering scent — very soft and mostly imperceptible — of spent gunpowder. When he moved to his window to open it, he had seen a blur move across the frame; a blur he had registered as a form he thought he recognized.

A quick look at the painting had revealed no such anomaly in the yard depicted there. No rush of movement or glimpse of a ponytail held fast by a blue ribbon. No stockinged leg or black-sandaled foot disappearing behind the chimney. But when Henry turned back and considered his own yard, he saw it again: A girlish blur of white with blue trim, with a bobbing blond ponytail, set face, and strange cargo.

Henry dashed into his yard and scoured the ground where the girl had passed. There was no sign of her having come or gone. No careless footprint or flattened grass. No broken twigs or torn leaves. And definitely no dislodged blue ribbon.

So Henry watched the window and waited, to no avail. His cubes of meat, potato, and carrots were eaten soundlessly, his concentration on his garden and the yard beyond, but the little girl form the painting did not run past again.

When the sun finally set, Henry gave up and took his dinnerware into the kitchen. As he left his bedroom he glanced once more at the image of the rough-hewn room and spectral nine-pained window.

No blur of motion. No shoe. No ponytail. No girl.

* * *

At three in the morning, Henry Edgewater awoke to the sensation of eyes watching, though not watching him. He sat up in bed to clear the dream, but when he surfaced, the feeling was still there.

And there, back lit by silvery blue moonlight, was a little girl, standing sideways at the foot of his bed, staring at the painting by Reginald Arburton. Her white dress maintained a phantasmal glow in the moonlight, the powder-blue trim washed out by the silvery blue light. Her hair shone, pulled back in a ponytail held by a washed-out blue ribbon. Her gaze was firm, unaffected by Henry’s motion or voice; her neat hands clutched tightly her lethal weapon.

Gasping for breath, Henry got out of bed and stood right in front of her. Her eyes neither moved nor blinked; her grimly set mouth never faltered. She didn’t seem to notice Henry’s faint, polite questions.

Henry could not bring himself to touch her round shoulder or the cold metal of the gun. He trusted that his eyes knew well enough what he was seeing, and that what he was seeing was real.

The little girl holding the shotgun didn’t care either way. She stood immobile, unblinking, staring at the painting, until finally Henry left the room and slept once more on his couch.

* * *

If Henry had not recalled the ghostly conversation of the little girl when she was still only a painted image, he never would have thought to rediscover the canvas and easel after a two-year hiatus.

“You never paint my picture,” she had said before the conclusion had rung out as a single shotgun blast.

After gathering the necessary equipment, including new oils from the art supply store, Henry piled his wares at his bedroom door and fully expected her to be gone — nothing more than the product of an overburdened mind lacking inspiration. But she was still there, standing in the same position, staring at the same spot on the wall, her face as grim as ever. Her eyes did not move to focus on Henry, so he hurriedly shuffled into the room and set up his easel beneath Reginald Arburton’s painting of a coarse, simple room looking out onto an autumnal yard.

The girl was as unfazed as ever by Henry’s movements, though when he was finally settled and looked out at his subject, he could swear there was the glimmer of a smile near the corners of her grimace.

But he didn’t ponder the occurrence for too long. Henry knew he had work to do before the girl followed her words with action and leveled her shotgun at him, the bullets undoubtedly every bit as real as the little girl in a blue-trimmed white dress looked.

Henry painted feverishly right through lunch and dinner, the brush strokes coming back to him like rainfall after a drought. His critically-acclaimed ability to mix colors had not been lost over time, and the image of his bedroom with the nine-pained window took form easily beneath his brush. The girl stood motionless and waited her turn, not seeming the least bit interested in Henry’s choice of brush or knife or the amount of paint he daubed onto the canvas.

Called an impressionist by some and a sloppy realist by others, Henry’s new work unfolded true to form, but with a distinctly new angle not heretofore seen in his paintings. The lighting was more solid, the lines less blurry, the shadows less overpowering than his earlier periods.

And the little girl, she came out so crisp and clean that when Henry put the final dot of white at the end of her nose and looked up, only to find she had vanished from his room, he felt no sense of loss that he would never see her again.

He turned the easel toward his bedroom door and backed out into the hallway to look upon what would be called the first and last real work of Henry Edgewater’s photo-realistic period.

The sheen of the shotgun looked real enough to touch; the girl’s ribbon, seen just over the top of her head, real enough to untie; her white dress seemed almost to quiver under the strain of her arms, reflected in the grimace on her face.

And in the lower left pane of the window the girl stood in front of, Henry had painted the top of his own head, his eyes peering silently into the room where the little girl stood.

It had been the only way he could think of to ensure he was not actually in the room with her when he looked at the image. He almost named the painting after his subject, but at the last minute changed his mind, imagining it would be overkill in light of the crisply defined image itself.

But whatever it had all been, the painting, at least, made it stop.

Miles came fully awake in a rush, sitting up quickly to determine where he was, that his nightstand was no longer beside his bed. He hadn’t risen more than a few inches before he cracked his head heavily on something very firm, but obviously padded. He opened his eyes more widely, only to discover they had been open already, and was greeted still by a choking darkness that not one ray of light penetrated.

Somewhere he could still hear the music, and he realized that if it was indeed a procession, it wasn’t going anywhere.

Must have reached the cemetery, he concluded, and stretched out his hand to explore his surroundings.

It took Miles brief moments to deduce that he had been kidnapped and entrapped, apparently as the bartering chip for a common thief’s prosperity. In fact, Miles rather thought he had it all figured out: He had been kidnapped by a grave-digger (and probable grave-robber, as well), taken to this man’s place of employment, then cunningly concealed in a coffin to await the arrival of the ransom.

Brilliant, thought Miles, Except—

He listened intently for a moment. The music had stopped, but now he could hear—he was sure of it—the low tones of a solemn voice talking. He couldn’t distinguish specific words, but the sound of a voice speaking slowly and quietly, just out of earshot, was unmistakable. His captors, no doubt, discussing their plans. Miles strained his ears to hear them.

This darkness really is thick, he considered as he settled his head back down on the pillow, Quite inspiring.

Again his thoughts were interrupted, now by the sound of beautiful, feminine voices singing a requiem. Whoever’s funeral was going on—across the street from where he was trapped, no doubt—they must have been very important. He tried to think of the other prominent members of his society, and couldn’t recall a single one who had appeared to be ailing.

Those damn cars, Miles decided, Must’ve claimed one of them.

And then it struck him; a thing so obvious that he felt a perfect fool for not having thought of it first: If there were mourners nearby, all he had to do was bang and make a lot of racket. Surely some one—the chauffeurs huddled together smoking, for instance—would hear his cries and come to his rescue.

He knocked lightly on the wood above his head, testing the sound, and found that although the satin trim would allow him to knock quite heavily, the wood was admittedly much thicker than he had imagined. The sound that returned to him was not the hollow ring of the top of a box, but rather the dull, embedded thump of a cellar wall. Frowning, he tried again, this time a little bit harder. Again, he was greeted by a dull pounding that even he could barely hear. Panicking, he pounded both hands on the coffin, and even raised his knees to swing his legs up and give it a series of good kicks, too. He stopped when he heard a splintering sound…

I’m through! I’ve rescued myself!

But it was just a small crack, barely discernible with his fingertips through the satin interior.

Very nice coffin, he considered, to put a snatched-person in…

For reasons unknown to him, other than he was now piloting himself on some survival-instinct, Miles began to feel around again, presumably for the hammer the foolish grave-robbers (and kidnappers) must have left in the coffin with him. And his fingers did indeed find something, but it was not a hammer. It was the smooth, cold neck of a bottle. A heavy bottle, Miles discovered as he hefted it.

Like a fifth of whiskey, in fact—

Miles froze, bottle mid-heft, a look of dawning horror creeping across his face in the impenetrable blackness of the coffin. The bottle was most assuredly a fifth of whiskey, just like the kind he’d always joked he wanted to be buried with.

“Panic” is hardly the word for the instinct that consumed Miles’ body and mind at this point of discovery. He dropped the bottle—quickly forgotten—and pounded, kicked, and screamed for all he was worth, even banging his head on the coffin lid, for that extra ounce of noise. All was to no avail. When he was finished—worn out—the stillness was as pressing as the darkness. The funeral had clearly dispersed, leaving Miles six feet from the rest of his life.

Miles Abernathy was cool. He’d always taken pride in how well he kept himself, even under the direst of circumstances, and this calm he maintained until the last breath left his body.

Miles considered the situation carefully and came to the only logical conclusion he could: He was stuck. Even if he managed to fester the crack above him enough to dig a hole, it would only bring six feet of earth down upon him. (He had, in fact, tested this theory after discovering that he had made quite a dent in the coffin lid, by his previous panic. He had cut through the satin with his favorite pocket knife—at least they’d buried him according to his wishes—and managed to poke the blade through the crack, rotating it to slightly widen the gap. He had been rewarded with a tiny dusting of dirt, most of which had fallen in his mouth.) And certainly no one would hear his cries, since an entire funeral had missed them before. They had unfortunately stopped burying people close to the surface, with little silver bells, since the end of the plague had supposedly also ended the occurrence of people being buried alive. In short, Miles knew damn well that he was truly, in every sense of the word, stuck.

There are two options here, he explained to himself. Well, no, actually three. I could slit my throat or wrists with my knife. I could wait until I suffocate. Or…

And a smile crept across his lips …

I could crack open this bottle of Jack and have myself one last party. If I’m lucky, he mused, I can drink myself to death!

Seeing as Miles hated the thought of pain, and had always been paranoid of suffocation, he settled on the last option.

* * *

Miles could hear music again, but this time, when he opened his eyes, he could see people. Lots of people. A gala ball, by the looks of it. He smiled broadly and raised the bottle to his lips, taking another swig, most of which spilled down his shirt-front.

“Miles, old boy!” a voice said as a hand clapped him on the back. “You’ve had too much to drink, I’d say!”

“S’okay, Rojjer, rilly, ’m fine…” He hiccoughed and emitted a low-key belch, looking sheepishly around himself like a small boy.

“Well, well, Miles,” Roger replied with amusement. “Just don’t drink yourself to death, old boy—!”

Everything went black, and with a start Miles cried out, his fuzzy mind taking a moment to connect the blackness with where he was: Lying on his back in a stain-pillowed bed, a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s finest standing dutifully at his hip with one, weakening hand grasping its neck.

He giggled weakly, as a cornered man often does, and sent a message to his hand to bring the bottle closer to his lips. His arm twitched, but his hand ignored him for the time being.

“Jus sit raht thar, Misser Hand. Jus fine…”

He burped softly and giggled again. “That o-fenn you, Miz Walkens?”

“Not at all, Miles,” she replied haughtily, and Miles eyelids once more fluttered open.

“Mary!” he exclaimed, entirely sober again. “I was looking everywhere for you!”

“And why’s that, Mr. Abernathy? Do you have less moral things in mind?”

Mary Walkens feigned a blush and hid behind her fan, her come-hither eyes the only thing Miles could see of her face. They were in the farthest reaches of his garden, as usual, and Miles sat down on the bench next to her.

“Why, Miss Mary,” he breathed. “I’ve never known a lady to be quite so forward!” He scooted closer to her on the bench, taking in a deep breath of her delectable fragrance. Peaches, he thought. Mary Walkens always smelled good enough to eat. He put an arm around her waist, and she dropped the fan to her lap and brought her face closer to his.

“What would my husband think?” she whispered, not entirely joking.

“How lucky I was, I imagine…” and before she could say another word, he closed off her mouth with a kiss.

“Mary…” he whispered.

“This isn’t wrong,” she smiled, reaching out and pulling his face back to hers. “We married for security, didn’t we? And then we found…love.”

“Mary,” he smiled. “I do love my wife. I would never hurt her, in a million years—”

“There’s love, Miles, as I’ve said a thousand times, and then there’s something… deeper, isn’t there?”

“More animal?”

“If you say so.”

“Undeniable?”

“We only have one chance, Miles. We have our security—”

“NO!” Miles cried out, pounding on the lid of the coffin again. “NO! PAMELA! I’s zorry. I’s zorry…” The tears came more strongly as he relaxed back into the coffin and found the neck of the bottle—miraculously still standing—beside him. “I di luv oo, Pamela. I di…I di…”

There was just about a quarter of the fifth left when Miles woke from his delirium with more lucidity. He scratched his nose—or tried to, anyway—and wiped a floppy hand over his mouth, realizing that after all the parties he’d attended, he’d never been this drunk in his life.

“Bez time now, s’pose…”

He raised the bottle again and poured a swig over his face, coughing as a few drops managed to slide down his throat. He thrashed his head a little for no good reason, and settled the bottle back down beside his left hip, his hand still on it, only now holding it up at a precarious angle.

“Waz ah dreamin?” he asked, fully expecting his wife to reply. “Pam’la? Waz ah? I ’member drinkin from a boddle… Die fall a’zleep? Hadda ah-vul dream…”

The fine lines between dream, hallucination, and reality are sometimes indistinguishable, one from the other. It is only through one’s surroundings that a safe assumption as to the cause of a particular vision can be attributed. Miles found himself in a dangerous position, indeed. Here he was no longer sure if he was asleep and dreaming, awake and dreaming, or had already awoken from a terrible nightmare to discover what the conventional would label “reality.”

Miles was watching his mother from his crib, but with all the clarity and consciousness of an adult. He squirmed again as he heard her voice, unable, it seemed, to control his body himself.

“Mother?” he queried, but it of course came out, “Ma-ma.”

“Hush, Miles, darling. Mama has some work to finish.”

“Ma-ma.”

The oedipal side of Miles’ mind realized for the first time how very beautiful his mother was—or had been, since, to his knowledge, the dear lady was long dead. He wondering fleetingly if this was the cause of his sometimes-debilitating attraction to women, then shook his head to clear the thought. Only a Freudian thinker would be purile enough to blame every adult action on some latent, childhood sexual experience, be it real or imagined.

“Mama!” he declared again, and felt an uneasy pull in his groin as the beautiful woman turned from what she was doing and lent over the crib.

“Are you hungry, Miles, dear?” she asked sweetly, smiling and standing straight. She brushed her hair casually over her shoulder and unhitched the left-hand strap of her dress, then slowly began to undo the buttons on the blouse beneath. Miles squirmed uncomfortably, unable to prevent the smile from forming on his baby-lips. His mother had by now all but fully-exposed her left breast, and she bent down and grasped Miles under his chubby arms, the man inside trying to let himself go over fully to either excitement or revulsion, but not the sickening weight of both that he now felt.

“Stop fidgeting, Miles,” she demanded, settling the child on her left hip and using her right hand to adjust her clothing, exposing her nipple to her son. “Go on then, Miles,” she soothed. “I really have to finish my ironing.” She bounced him softly on her hip, using her left arm to move his small mouth closer to her. “Go on…”

Miles jumped back in horror, stumbling and falling from the end of the bench, landing solidly on his bottom.

“What on earth are you doing!” Mary Walkens exclaimed, hurriedly covering herself, then scooting down the bench to look at him.

“I—I’m sorry, Mary,” he stammered. “I don’t know! I just had a sudden urge to…well, throw up, if you must know—”

“You’ve had too much to drink again, haven’t you?” Mary asked slyly. She straightened her back and ran a sultry hand up her front and over her breasts. “Or does my body offend thee?”

Miles stood and shook his head, clearing the nausea from his throat. “No, Mary, quite assuredly not!” He smiled at her. “I can’t explain…I just felt sick, for absolutely no reason…”

He sat down again beside her as she refastened the buttons on her dress.

“Well, it can’t be the guilt,” she decided, almost talking to herself. “Not by now.”

“Maybe it is,” he sighed. Miles turned to look at her, but she had turned away from him and was gazing serenely down the garden path.

“Mary?” he asked. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes, Miles, I heard you,” his mother replied, turning back to face him. “But I don’t see why you should feel guilty about your father—”

Miles shot up, his eyes flying open, and cracked his head—hard—on the lid of his coffin. He was vaguely aware that the bottle had fallen over, but by this time it didn’t matter. All the precious whiskey that was left lay in the side of the bottle, in no danger of spilling out the neck.

He moaned and rubbed his head, the world still spinning, even though some deeper, untouched part of him knew that was quite impossible.

“Juz a dream…” he stated quietly, scratching his scalp and burping softly. “Gotta stop drinkin like iss…”

He dropped his head back down on the satin pillow and sighed heavily. He sighed heavily again, his lungs still unsatisfied for air.

“Oh god…” he breathed, pulling in another ragged sigh. His fingers found the bottle again and he brought it to his lips, amazingly managing to down one more tiny swallow. “Waz happun da me? Very tard…”

His arm flopped down, leaving the bottle resting against his neck as his head lolled in the other direction, his chest rising and falling slowly; heavily.

Miles walked up the road to his house, his legs dull and throbbing stalks below him. The carriage had flipped over just down the road, but his head felt ready to explode from this short jaunt up the way. He could see his gate now, but there was a strange man standing at it. As he got closer—and managed to pull his vision into focus—he discerned a beard, and wise, old eyes.

“Mister Miles Abernathy,” the man said, smiling broadly. “Had a nasty tip down there, eh? How’s the horse?”

“Dead,” he croaked. “I managed to crawl up the embankment…” His legs gave way and the old man hopped around the half-closed gate to help steady him.

“Are you a friend of Pamela’s?” Miles asked as he felt the surprisingly strong man hoist him back to his feet.

“No, no. Not really.”

“Then just help me up the walk to the house, if you don’t mind—”

“Oh, I can’t do that!” the man exclaimed, pleasant in his denial.

“Very well, then I’ll do it myself,” Miles decided, trying to take a step through his gate. The man’s strong hold stopped him.

“Can’t do that, either, I’m afraid.”

“Why not?” Miles asked, confused, but too weak to offer any physical resistance.

“Miles, you lived your whole life in that garden—” Miles shot the man a look to see what he meant, but the face was stony and silent. “—and now you want to go back into your house.”

“But it was my mother’s fault!” he exclaimed. “I was far too old to have feedings!”

“Now listen to you, Miles! You sound like a blasted Freudian!” the man admonished. “It doesn’t matter who’s to blame, does it? You had the choice set before you, and you decided which road to take.”

Miles stirred on his satin pillow, raising the bottle one last time and pouring the remaining whisky over his face. He coughed once, but that was all.

“I zee i’ now!” he breathed in his slumber. “My mama…”

“Sit down here a moment, Miles,” the old man offered, leading him to a bench that sat tucked into the hedge at the front of Miles’ property.

“I was too old,” Miles whispered. “Now I see it… It never occurred to me before…”

“It really doesn’t matter, anyway,” the old man sighed. “That was quite a nasty bump you took. They probably think you’re dead.”

“NO!” he wailed. “I’m not dead! I want to see my Pamela…”

“What about Mary? Perhaps you should go into the garden and wait for her?”

“No,” Miles whined, beginning to cry. “I think I’ll just wait here… Explain to Pamela. She’ll understand, won’t she…?”

The man shrugged and stood up, walking away down the road. “You could be waiting forever, Miles,” he called over his shoulder.

“Forever.”

I don’t recall when I first became aware that a dog appeared to be following me. I was out and about one day, doing errands, when I noticed the soft clink of the tags around its neck; a sound that I had seemed to have been hearing for some time, but hadn’t fully registered as following me until that moment. It sounded quite close, so I looked down with a smile to greet my new companion, but I saw nothing there; nothing behind me, either. Shaking my head, I continued on.

The sound continued as well, sporadically, like windchimes blown by an unfelt breeze. It was almost as if the dog—if indeed it was a dog—would only make itself known when I had fully dismissed, and nearly forgotten, it. Every time I heard the tags I would stop and look around myself; every time I would see nothing but my own foolish shadow mocking my movements.

My errands took me on a foot-journey of about forty-five minutes, but it wasn’t until I neared my home that I fancied I heard the precise click of claws on the sidewalk behind me, along with the quiver of the tags. I stopped once more, this time turning to the sound and bending over as if to greet an actual dog.

“Here, boy,” I offered, holding out my hand for the animal to smell. I heard the scuttle-click of its claws and could well-imagine the dog doing a nervous dance before me, unsure of whether or not to approach. I got the distinct impression that it was a mid-sized dog, even going so far as to envision a black Labrador. It was quite gentle, even harmless, and I barely jumped when something cold and wet brushed against the thumb of my dangling hand.

“That’s it,” I said, recovering from my mild shock. “What do you want, boy?” Most people ask dogs serious questions which, of course, go unanswered, but seeing as this dog had already displayed itself to be anything but an average dog, I allowed that it may break some aural, as well as visual, norms and respond to my question. In a way, I suppose it did.

Just below the knee, where pants hang out in a straight line, I felt a tug on the fabric. A playful, but insistent, growl accompanied this ghostly pull on my pant-leg, so I instinctively straightened back up, ready to move.

“Where to?” I asked in the tone reserved for animals and small children, and I heard a small bark in response and the excited back-tracking of claws away from me.

“Well don’t run off!” I cautioned, glancing around for any spies. “I won’t be able to keep up!”

The possibility of insanity flitted across my mind like the sudden dart of a spring bird, and I considered that acquiring a ghost-dog was surely the least harmful form of the disease. Then the dog barked lightly again and began to click slowly away, stopping every so often to, I imagine, cast a glance over its shoulder at my progress. I quickly followed the now-constant click and jangle back down the street the way I had just come. I tried my hardest not to look as if I was following something that wasn’t there, but the only person I met began to wave, then seemed to think the better of it, giving me instead a curious look. I just smiled politely and hurried after the ghost-dog.

I was led right back into town to a house in the midst of businesses. It is an old structure with a grand porch and wood siding, and may well be the last remnant of the town before the city. I had often admired the building as I passed it from time to time; the wood carvings hanging from the gutters and around the gable windows are an artistry the new, material world seems to have forgotten. Only twice before had I actually been inside the house, save for coffee in the back room: The lower floor now housed an art gallery, and the upper floors, as I understood it, served as the curator’s apartment and storage areas.

Inside it was cool and dark and, as I had expected, between shows. Various covered paintings were leaning against the walls, waiting to be attached to their respective positions; I could hear the curator in the back somewhere, perhaps hanging some of the pieces for the new show. The dog, however, had no interest in the back, trotting instead up the stairs to the second floor. The staircase itself is a work of art, sweeping up out of the small foyer in a graceful, winding arch, giving the space the illusion of grand size, but never had I entertained the thought of going up them. They were not roped off, but to ascend them seemed a violation of some unspoken rule, since neither did they have any notices inviting the public up.

I followed the sound of the dog with my eyes, along the curve of the stairway, until my gaze caught the room at the head of the stairs—a room bleeding an odd red glow that was the only light seeping into the upper floor. The effect was at once disturbing and calming, and I found myself entirely unsure of what to do. As if to solve my dilemma, the dog barked again from directly in front of the room, and the light seemed to momentarily intensify in response to the noise. I wet my lips nervously and cast an ear into the gallery: The curator was still hanging paintings and I could hear no one conversing or moving about in the coffee room. I looked up the stairs again, at that darkness sliced through only by the red glow, and ran my tongue once more over my lips. Placing a steadying hand on the banister and swallowing my nervous guilt, I began my ascent.

The risers creaked casually under my weight, telling tales of time-wear to all who cared to listen; I rose slowly, not wanting them to talk too loudly. Ahead of me I heard the dog’s excited, honest patter; in fact, I may have been repelled from continuing up because of the red luminescence, but with the dog skitting about, it somehow lost its sinister edge and I managed to fully ascend the staircase.

The door was open, allowing the light to spill forth, and I could see that the sign on it read. “storage;” within I could hear the dog clicking on the wooden floor and I took a bashful, curious peek in. I could see a black Labrador plain as day dancing excitedly around an old woman with a cane who was teasing the animal with a treat. I turned to sneak back down the stairs, filled with a strange mixture of guilt, serenity, and foreboding, but then the woman looked up at me, smiling, and allowed the dog to finally snap the treat from her fingers.

“I saw you walking by earlier,” she explained. “So I sent Nicholas after you.” The dog barked proudly at the mention of its name and wagged its tail, gazing at me.

I moved cautiously such that I was fully in the doorway. The red light made it impossible for me to clearly discern color, but it appeared as if the woman had on a light blue housecoat decorated with dark blue flowers. She shifted her position and tapped her cane once on the floor, smiling again. Her short, white hair reflected the red light, much as her soft, white, wrinkled skin did, and the eyes behind her glasses shone happily.

“Come in, won’t you?” she asked. I silently obliged. A brief look around showed me that the room was bare—no source for the red light that I could see—save the two of us and Nicholas, the dog. The only window had a heavy curtain drawn across it, and a glance at the overhead fixture proved that the usual light source—though red, as a preservation technique for stored works— was turned off. When I looked back down to the woman I noticed that, where it had been bare seconds before, there now stood an easel set up with canvas and paints.

“I need your help,” the woman said, drawing my attention back to her. “I am Irene Burgman; that’s my show the curator is setting up.”

“Oh,” I said, my voice sounding odd and hollow in the room.

“I’m too old,” she continued. “I need you to hold the brushes, because I never painted Nicholas…”

“I’m no painter!” I replied, slightly confused; my voice sounded too loud, too full in the red room, but the woman didn’t seem fazed by what I had said, or how loudly I had said it. Nicholas sat down, panting, his eyes still carefully watching me.

“I don’t need a painter,” Irene said nicely with a bright smile. “I just need someone to hold the brushes—I’ll tell you exactly what to do.” Her smile broke when I didn’t respond and her expression dropped. “Please, young man, let me finish my work…I just have to paint Nicholas.”

I sighed and smiled, shrugging and moving quickly to the old woman. What harm could there be in appeasing an aging artist who was probably too arthritic to hold her own brushes? All my suspicions, all my cares about the odd lighting and the former ghost-dog—all the things any person in that situation would normally think of—fled from my mind as if the woman’s grandmotherly smile had hypnotized me in some way. I was so consumed with pleasing the old lady that I hastily sat down and prepared the palate, as per her careful instructions, as she stood sideways to me, pointing with her gnarled old finger, but never touching anything. She quietly told me exactly what to do—all her secrets, I imagine. How to hold which brush or knife, how much color to mix, where to put it and how heavily. She gave explicit directions on every detail of the piece, but never once did she touch me or any of the tools. When I would glance at her from time to time she would be smiling proudly and reassuringly, and Nicholas would add an excited little bark and patter in place beside Irene Burgman. After about a half hour I began to see his form appearing out of the dark background of the canvas: Nicholas was lying, head on paws, face gazing alertly at the viewer. Only twice did Irene find cause to shriek a horrified “No! No! Not there!” and then set about flusteredly telling me how to fix my mistake. Yet even in this frustrated state, she touched nothing.

Within an hour the painting of Nicholas was complete, and I could tell that the color and detail were exceptional. I felt no pride of creation, however, as I fully understood that I had merely been a tool of Irene Burgman’s, no more worthy of credit than the very brush I held. As I stood and backed away from the work—which I had signed with her signature. “Burgie,” flubbing the “B” slightly—I began to feel a deep admiration for the piece, and I knew that it was as much the work of Irene Burgman as any of the other pieces downstairs.

“Thank you,” I heard her say from behind me, with tears in her voice. I turned to offer my thanks to her for allowing me to be privy to her artistry, but the room was empty; neither she nor Nicholas were anywhere to be seen or heard. Confused, I looked back to the painting, but the easel and tools, too, had vanished, leaving in their place a canvas covered with a cheesecloth, leaning against the wall. A corner, bearing the signature of the artist, was exposed, and it was only by seeing the signature’s smeared “B” that I knew it to be the piece I had seconds ago completed. I instinctually went to remove the cloth from the canvas, lest it destroy the wet oils, but all at once the hypnosis—if such there had been—was broken, and as I backed up several steps, toward the door, I began shaking my head, convinced that I had entered some realm of insanity so deep as to seem real, yet knowing just as surely that I was not insane at all.

I turned and bolted out of the room, bounding back down the stairs, almost tripping up on the pile of folded cheese cloths at the foot. I saw that the show was now completely hung, and from the back room I could hear the curator talking to somebody. I walked unsteadily toward the voices and found him conversing with a young brunette girl who looked to be in the process of leaving; neither noticed me at first, which was just as well, as I was trying my best to erase a look of horrified realization from my face. Their conversation ended at that moment with loud “so longs,” as if to indicate that I could safely enter without disrupting them.

“You look lost, friend,” the curator said as the girl brushed past me with a shy glance and smile. “Coffee?”

“No—thanks,” I replied, wanting to ask my questions and leave. “Umm…Who’s show is that you’ve just hung?”

“Oh…Irene Burgman’s her name,” he answered, motioning for me to sit with him at the window table. I followed him over, but I did not sit, my mind trying to whir through what I needed to know.

“And…she’s…here?” I guessed, trying not to sound too distraught. He narrowed his eyes at me and sipped his coffee, his head twitching with mild disbelief.

“Nooo…I’m afraid she’ll miss her own show… But surely you’ve heard?” He waved at the girl, who had been inside before, as she walked past the window, back up the alley, signifying to us that she had no clue what she’d been thinking to go out the front way.

“Heard what?” I asked, trying to sound curious, not afraid. The curator turned his attention back to me and sighed, his expression a tad suspicious.

“She died last week, you know… Strangest thing really, because her dog died not two hours later. She was famous for loving that dog.” He smiled affectionately, but I just gaped and took a step back, covering my mouth slowly, my eyes wild with impossibility.

“Oh, that’s very sad,” I gasped, catching my breath and managing to marginally recompose myself. The curator cocked his head with concern.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Yes, yes—fine,” I stammered. “I—uhh—I have to go now, I think.” And then I very rudely turned and dashed down the hall to the front door, casting a glance over my shoulder as I left, to the room upstairs; it was completely dark, and the door was shut tight.

“Enjoy your walk?” he asked, and I could swear he winked. I separated myself from Elizabeth and took my full weight on my own feet, wandering slowly over to the deskman.

“Yes,” I said slowly. “Say, were you knocking on my door last night?”

“No, sir,” he denied categorically, nervously rubbing the back of his neck.

“Well, do you know what’s going on around here, Mr. Makesmith?”

“Going on, sir?”

“Yes — is this town haunted?”

Elizabeth grabbed my arm at that point and pulled me away from the desk with an apologetic smile at the crooked old man.

“Honey,” she said. “why don’t we go and relax by the fire for a minute or two?” Then she whispered under her breath. “You sound like a madman, Reggie.”

I let her pull me away, over to the fireplace, which was thankfully ablaze. We sat down on the couch across from it, and I felt truly winded, as if from a great exertion.

“Sir?” Arnold said quietly, having snuck up behind us. “Mr. Ainsworth? Missus? Would you care for a drink — tea, perhaps?”

Elizabeth glanced at me over his choice of beverage, then we shared a briefly mirthful grin.

“Yes,” I said quietly, settling my head back on the couch. “Tea will be fine, thank you.”

“Me, too,” Elizabeth agreed, and Arnold Makesmith smiled warmly, then scurried off to the dining room with our orders.

“It was beautiful,” I whispered distantly, my eyes closed and remembering.

“What was?” Elizabeth asked, slowly stroking my hair.

“Kittens’ Hollow…in its day. It was beautiful…”

Elizabeth said nothing in response, but I could tell she, too, was smiling.

* * *

When I crawled into bed that night, nothing could have felt better than letting my body’s weight float free on the cushioning of the mattress and pillows. Indeed, though the day had been lackadaisical after the events of the haunted morning, I discovered upon lying down that my frame had been carrying the full stress of my mind over the affair the whole time. Trying to forget something so grand and inexplicable had apparently been taxing work; Elizabeth, too, sighed deeply as she lay down and drew the covers over herself.

“Odd day,” I summed up. She grunted assent and rolled onto her side, curling up next to me as I lay on my back, staring at the darkness above. I glanced toward her through the murk, but could tell by her body’s state that she was relaxed and falling asleep already.

“We’ll leave tomorrow,” I decided quietly, more to myself than anything.

“Will we be back?” she asked sleepily, her voice muffled by my shoulder.

“I’m not sure…” I admitted, falling silent as my mind cleared, until finally I was aware of nothing. Not too long later, it seemed, a firm hand roused me from my slumber, shaking my shoulder lightly.

“Mr. Ainsworth?” a man’s voice said near my ear, and until that point I had assumed the hand belonged to Elizabeth. My eyes shot open and I jolted to wakefulness, sure that dear Mr. Makesmith was in our room, waking me, for only one reason: The hotel was on fire.

“Makesmith!” I demanded. I could see a form that had backed off a few steps, but the darkness allowed for no details; the figure, however, did not have the decrepit, hunched form of the hotel’s deskclerk.

“Mr. Ainsworth,” the voice said again, calmly. “I want to show you something.”

“Who are you?” I cried, throwing back the covers and sitting on the edge of the bed. I checked Elizabeth quickly, but she still lay quietly curled up and sleeping.

“She won’t wake…” the man explained.

“What have you done to her!” I shrieked, leaping to my feet and reaching for the light. The man shot across the room and stopped my hand on the switch before I could turn it; the weak light from the curtained window illuminated a vague outline of his face that seemed, oddly, familiar.

“It’s me, Mr. Ainsworth…Arthur McMurdouc.”

“Wha — ?” I gasped, pulling my hand away from his. “Mr. McMurdouc?”

“Yes — from the tearoom?”

“Oh God,” I breathed. “Why are you haunting me?”

The apparition laughed softly. “I’m not here to scare you, sir. I’m here for your help.”

“Help?”

“Come with me, please. Let me show you something?”

Grudgingly, and with a glance at still-peaceful Elizabeth, I followed him to the door of the room, which, though I saw it was still locked, he deftly opened, motioning for me to follow him out into the hall. I sighed heavily, shaking my head at the odd visions.

As soon as I stepped over the threshold I realized I was no longer in the hotel at Kittens’ Hollow. In front of me, the movement of the muddy Muskingham lapped against McMurdouc’s shoes in the moonlight. The delicate tinkle of the liquid at his feet served in perfect contrast to the peeper-frogs and crickets that thrummed and chirped in the dark woods around us. The moon, like a tired glass eye, beaded down in crystalline simplicity; a low wisp of cloud flitted across its surface as a barely-glimpsed shadow. When I looked over my shoulder I saw not the open doorway to my room, but simply more woods, breathing in a thick summer night heavy with humidity. I sighed and turned back to the enigmatic ghost before me, and fully accepted that he was guiding my present dream.

“Yes,” he toned to the peeper-frogs, his wide eyes scanning the dark thickness of trees. Save for the moon above, and its silver-threaded reflection in the slow-churning Muskingham, McMurdouc was encapsulated in a darkness that rivaled a mother’s womb. The heat, too, was almost as oppressive; one could veritably see the moisture hanging in the air, waiting only to fall.

The apparition adjusted his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow in one fell swoop, then stood still, eyes wide, shoes flexing in the dry grass and dust of the cracked earth at the river’s edge, producing a soft, crinkled whisper of noise. He glanced at the water momentarily, with a wistful expression, then snapped his head around and met my eyes.

“Green Lake is a scared place,” he said pointedly. “I built in the Hollow so as not disturb its shores. Eventually, I hoped to have enough to buy up the choice land so that it could not be developed. But the Resort beat me to it.”

“Sacred?” I queried. “In what way?”

“In the way that certain areas are, Mr. Ainsworth. Maybe its only sacred in the way the sunrise, at the summer solstice, peeks right between the walls of Kittens’ Hollow and along the river, here, to Green Lake. Maybe its the wildlife. Maybe its the energy,” he finally stressed with inference, “of the place.”

He motioned to the expanse before me, drawing my attention to the east, where I could now see the distant black valley walls of Kittens’ Hollow heaved up against the horizon as the first rays of sun shot like a beacon from the mouth of the sound, expanding over us toward Green Lake in a massive orange blanket, while the clear sky above displayed the splendor of the universe, unimpeded by the lights of the city. If the faithful were searching for evidence of their God, I realized in my dream of Green Lake, they were covering it up with their churches, and instead searching for it, fruitlessly, inside.

McMurdouc turned back to face the river, now suddenly dark again and out of the moon’s path. Slowly, he made his way to its bank and plodded west along its peaceful side, humming, it appeared, to the natural music of the peeper-frogs and insects. Gradually, I followed his darkening form, my bare feet padding softly over the cracked, dusty bank; the warm dirt beneath my souls was a strange comfort I could never hope to match again.

I had learned long ago that sometimes — such as this — it was better to simply follow and learn, rather than hamper the teacher with questions. All would be told to those who cared to listen; all questions would be answered before the final turning of night, asking them merely fills the silence of discovery with ungraceful clatter in the hopes of an early finish. There was much I did not understand, and to be sure, many questions I held, but I also understood the grand difference between wonder and questioning. So often the journey is more experience than any question could ever betray. Faith, I suppose, and the knowledge that some questions are unimportant.

McMurdouc stopped near a crude footbridge that spanned a thin point of the river and gazed up in the space above the waters, at the stars themselves. I followed his gaze with my own and noticed that the Milky Way echoed the course of the ol’ Muskingham as it ran across the ‘scape to fall silently into the waters that would, eventually, make up Green Lake, still miles away.

He stepped forward and walked the rest of the way over the bridge. My eyes had adjusted to the near-complete gloom of the forest by the time he struck off on the other side, along an old path that had many years of footprints over it. He wound through the trees, steadying himself now and again on a tree trunk, or by momentarily grasping a branch that hung in his way, and soon enough we emerged from the woods and looked up through a natural clearing to the stars and moon that gazed down from above.

With a certain sense of trepidation, McMurdouc motioned at the moon, which was sinking quickly, almost lost by its angle over the trees. Hurriedly, he paced to the center of the clearing where stood a single, white statue of Sophia, her left arm clutching a massive tome while her right arm held her hand out-stretched, its palm facing up to just above the western horizon. By the glow of the moon, the statue’s finely crafted body and flowing robes shone with eerie iridescence; I walked a slow circle around it, smiling in spite of myself.

I could hear a low music, like a soft cherub’s voice whispering in tones beyond recognition; a casual, glowing lilt that flowed with the energy of its own resonance.

Arthur McMurdouc stopped and bent over near the statue’s out-stretched palm, careful not to cast it into shadow, his expression dropping with concentration. Slowly, he relaxed and closed his eyes, his earlobe momentarily brushing the stone surface, and I realized the sound was the music of the moon singing in Sophia’s hand.

“Some places are just scared,” I heard him whisper. He put his fingers on my elbow, pulling for me to move closer; his touch made me aware that I, too, had closed my eyes and had been in a trance of the peaceful smells and sounds of the world around me. When I opened them slowly to smile at him, I found myself back in bed with Elizabeth fully dressed, standing over me like a mother, with her hands on her hips.

The last remnant of the dream that buzzed in my head was of McMurdouc as he walked off toward the head of the trail that lead back to the river. Stopping several feet from the opening, he turned back and looked over his shoulder, smiling a thank-you to me, then returned to his course, leaving me to memorize the revelations of the moon.

* * *

Elizabeth threw open the curtains, revealing a sunlit view of the trees on the imposingly-close valley wall; the scene looked almost unreal in the odd lighting of a sun whose rays were barely able to penetrate the hollow at such an early hour.

“It’s beautiful!” she smiled gleefully. Somehow she had managed to get up and dress, all without me knowing about it.

“What time is it?” I asked rhetorically, glancing at the clock.

“Little after eight,” my wife replied anyway, moving over to my side and throwing the covers from me. I sighed heavily and sat up, knowing it was useless to argue.

“We’ll miss breakfast,” she explained, then turned and looked out the window again. I rose and snuck up behind her, putting my hands on her hips and lightly kissing her neck.

“You like it?” I wondered, hypnotized myself by the tree-enshrouded slope of the valley’s hill; the branches were rustling mysteriously, the leaves ready to turn color and fall, especially, I figured, after last night’s chill.

“I love it,” she replied, resting her head back on my shoulder; her perfume assailed me softly, and I moved my hands around her, clasping them over her stomach.

“Think we can run a business here, though?”

She shrugged. “Obviously some people still come here. It’s quiet…”

“Yes,” I agreed. “It’d have to be a quiet business, too.”

She turned on me, her face with a playful expression. “And what other kind of business were you thinking of opening? A nightclub with topless dancers?”

This time I shrugged, grinning at her. “Why not…?”

She hit my shoulder with her open palm and shook her head. “Go get ready for breakfast,” then she chased me into the bathroom and left me to dress while she took comfort in one of the chairs, gazing wistfully out the window.

* * *

Elizabeth was at the counter settling the bill with Mr. Makesmith while I stood by the fireplace looking over pictures of Kittens’ Hollow in its heyday. My dream would not let me go, and I wondered if it really was possible to revive the town, and also what I had learned was McMurdouc’s vision of a privately-owned park system. I could well-imagine pilgrimages to see the sunrise on the summer solstice every year, and perhaps that’s all the advertisement I would need to get the plan underway. Once you attach something so significant — even sacred — to it, people tended to rally around preservation.

“Reggie?” Elizabeth asked, walking up behind me and breaking my reverie. “Ready to go?”

“Sure,” I replied thoughtfully.

“Will we be back?” she wondered hopefully as my eyes fell on the last picture. It was from a historic edition of a Kittens’ Hollow newspaper and showed Mr. Arthur McMurdouc posing with “an unknown investor” on the busy promenade of the former Kittens’ Hollow. I smiled broadly, with only a brief shiver, as my eyes locked onto the eyes of a picture of myself, standing beside McMurdouc.

As we left the hotel and headed for our waiting taxi, out the corner of my eye I caught Mr. Makesmith watching us. I turned to him and smiled as we passed through the door, and he winked, his face carrying the same esoteric expression that had previously seemed so out of place.

“Yes,” I finally answered Elizabeth. “We’re going to buy the whole damn town.”

“Mrph…” I mumbled and opened my eyes; the glowing hands of the travel alarm we’d brought were cocked at a picture-perfect right angle. It was three a.m.

There was another soft clicking at the door, three short bursts of three clicks, and I realized unmistakably that someone was knocking, and actually using the decorative brass door-knocker.

“What?” I choked out gruffly, then coughed and threw back the covers. The chill air instantly nibbled at any exposed skin and I shivered dramatically. Elizabeth stirred and said something, but did not wake.

I padded over to the door and grasped the knob, then thought the better of it and smashed my face against the door to peek through the peephole. The hallway beyond was empty, bending off in fish-eye fashion to either side, with a long, black bar of windows running the length of my sight. As if to dispute what my eyes told me, however, three short clicks came again and I leapt back, my heart now racing in my throat.

“Who is it?” Elizabeth asked groggily, her whisper frightening me in the height of the moment; I spun on her, ready to pounce, and she recoiled slightly, then smiled and rubbed her eyes.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, rephrasing her question.

“You hear it, don’t you?” I shrieked madly, causing Elizabeth’s face to drop; she grinned curiously.

“Yes — the knocking? — so who is it?”

“There’s no one there,” I replied gauntly, rushing to her side and clutching her hands where she was clutching the sheets to her chest. She started to shake her head to say that I was lying, then narrowed her eyes.

“Maybe we just heard something else?”

I turned and watched the door for several seconds, daring it to knock again, and wondered if, perhaps, there was a person on the other side too short for the peephole to see. But no, I concluded quickly, why would anyone that short strain themselves to use a decorative knocker? Surely they would just knock the door at their own, more comfortable, level?

There was no more sound from the hallway, however, and the chill of the dark night started to seep into my bones. I turned back and smiled warmly at Elizabeth, squeezing her hands once decisively before letting them go, then stood and moved back around to my side of the bed, sitting down on the soft mattress and swinging my legs in, under the covers.

“You’re probably right,” I said to her. The radiator across the room began to tick and hiss as it filled with hot water, as if to prove my wife’s conclusion. I pulled the sheets back up, over my ear, and buried my head down in the pillow to go back to sleep.

At three-fifteen exactly, according to our clock, the clicking of the door-knocker sounded again. This time I shot into action, leaping from the bed and hurrying across the room, smashing my face against the over-polished surface of the door to get a look at the hallway. As I had expected, it was apparently empty. This time I was unwilling to accept any tom-foolery, though, so I took a step back and undid the lock, then flung the door open. Still, there was no one — short or tall — standing there. I stuck my head out of the room and looked either way, but saw no prankster scurrying off; the hallway was colder than our room, however, and as a large puff of exceptionally cool air brushed past me, I quickly turned back and shut the door, slipping the lock into place thoughtfully.

“Anyone?” Elizabeth wondered.

“No,” I mused.

“Go back to sleep,” she replied tiredly, and this time I managed to do just that.

* * *

The moment Arnold saw us appear at the top of the stairs the next morning, he bounded from behind the counter to greet us, a broad, arcane smile on his face.

“Mr. Makesmith!” I called happily as Elizabeth and I traversed the last few stairs; the odd little man shifted his weight and nodded, like a grinning dog.

“I didn’t think you’d be joining us, sir,” he explained, taking my elbow momentarily and guiding us toward the dining room. “Your table’s waiting.”

“Oh,” I replied with a certain degree of shock, especially when I saw that there were several other people having breakfast already, none of whom seemed to be receiving the service we now acquired.

“Mrs. Ainsworth… Sir,” Arnold said with a tone of announcement. “If you’ll have a seat here.” And a waiter materialized behind each of us, pulling out our chairs and seating us in a very professional manner.

“Do you treat all your guests with such distinction?” I asked with a sly grin, and Mr. Makesmith winked back, patting the waiter, who had stayed to take our order, on the arm; the waiter grinned, too, as if sharing the joke I had just made. I glanced at Elizabeth, but she seemed as in-the-dark as I.

“I understand you’re here to see about the McMurdouc estate,” the hunched old man replied. “That makes you very dear to us.”

“Estate?” I wondered, trying to fathom what rumor had been circulated about our visit.

“Kittens’ Hollow, sir? You wish to buy some property?” he explained.

“Ah!” I agreed with dawning realization; it had probably been years since any serious investor had ventured down the dilapidated old road with the intent of sprucing the place up. To them I must have been as precious as gold, for many of the same reasons. The last thing they wanted to do was scare us away.

“Well,” I acquiesced. “I came to look around, yes…”

“Very nice,” Arnold Makesmith nodded with a nimble bow. “And we wish to make that look as comfortable as possible.”

“Really, it’s not necessary — ” Elizabeth voiced for both of us.

“Coffee, ma’am?” the waiter blurted, springing into action as if realizing he had fallen asleep while standing over us.

“Yes, please…or no. Tea, please,” Elizabeth responded.

“I’ll have coffee, thank you,” I said, and the waiter scurried off toward the kitchen.

“Enjoy your breakfast,” Arnold said softly, taking his que. He was still half-bowed, and backed away a few steps before he turned on his heel and disappeared into the lobby.

“I think they see us as a renewal of Kittens’ Hollow,” I whispered once he was out of earshot. “But I suppose if we come and make a success, others are bound to follow, and then Kittens’ Hollow will be back to normal — “

I cut myself off as I saw the waiter returning with a teapot and coffeepot, and smiled nicely back at him.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said quietly, to which he bowed slightly after he’d unloaded the pots to the table.

“Have you decided on breakfast?” he wondered casually as he poured our first cups, and only then did I see the menus before us.

“Oh, no, not quite,” I answered, so the waiter bowed lightly again, then silently turned and left us to our decisions.

We stepped onto the porch and the view took my breath away. A slow mist rolled off the sound in front of us, lit by an early-morning sun that peeked over the hill to the east, just off from rising directly over the “V” of the hollow. The water that broke through the mist lapped in a golden flow, fed by the sun’s rays, moving slowly toward Green Lake in the distance; if I squinted, I could just make out the trestle-bridge that spanned the sound at the entrance to its cousin.

But if the sound and hollow was beautiful in the light of day, the rest of Kittens’ Hollow, in stark contrast, veritably shunned being looked upon. The cobblestoned road that ran along the bank of the sound for the length of Kittens’ Hollow was pot-holed and crumbling, and in places nothing but dirt covered with makeshift gravel. The buildings that ran in a row along this avenue, facing the sound, were rundown; the timber that showed through the peeling paint was gray and tired, and in places broken windows attested to the fact that most of the stores were empty, and had been for some time.

One continuous verandah led further east, until naked eyesight could no longer distinguish if it ended or just kept going endlessly; to the west, toward Green Lake, it didn’t extend nearly as far, with maybe five more storefronts before the porch-walk ended suddenly in what looked to be a small dump. For all intents and purposes, the whole of Kittens’ Hollow was one long building that ran a good length of the sound, some stores extending into two stories, like the hotel, while others had just the one.

“Where do people live?” Elizabeth wondered, and I squinted across the sound at the hillside, scanning for homes, but not seeing any.

“I don’t know…” I mused. “I’m sure there are apartments above some of the stores…and maybe further back, toward Green Lake, there are houses? Or around Lake Harper? We know there are houses there.”

“I suppose,” she nodded, but seemed uncertain, as if resigning herself to having to live in the present poverty, if we indeed decided to open a store in Kittens’ Hollow.

“Let’s look around,” I offered, extending my arm for her to take. “Maybe it’s not so bad.” She took my arm and smiled to brighten her spirits as we moved east, toward the distant, unseen end of the verandah.

I don’t think the hour of day accounted sufficiently for the stillness of the town; our footsteps echoed hollowly along the boards, rattling loose dust from the eaves overhead and scaring the odd bird or scurrying animal. The first three storefronts were completely empty, the last two devoid even of whole panes of glass in the windows. At one time, I could tell, they had been grand and beautiful — bay windows that looked out on windowpots of plants and pedestrians resting for a moment on rustic benches, while still more people wandered past. Now those people all walked the halls of the Green Lake resort, I assumed, and the empty windows stared blankly across the road to the sound, like the eyes of a child left alone, wanting only to be brought back into the fold and hugged.

“It’s depressing,” Elizabeth mumbled, glancing at me apologetically.

I nodded. “Yes…but there’s an air to it all. Ancient grandeur, or something — “

“You’re so romantic!” she chided, sliding her arm suddenly from my elbow and stopping at a window.

“What is it?”

I turned and walked up beside her, peering through the window, and saw a small group of people sitting before a fire, drinking tea.

“Well — see? — there’s life on this planet, after all!” I declared, moving instantly for the door, but Elizabeth hurriedly grasped my hand and pulled me softly away.

“No — Reggie…”

“What, dear? Don’t you want to see what these people want in their town?”

She shrugged, her lips twitching a quick grin. “What if they don’t want anything? What if they just want to be left alone to…die?”

“Bah!” I declared with a laugh. “If I’m too romantic, then you are most assuredly far too dramatic, dear! They’re people — they must want to see Kittens’ Hollow thrive again?”

She nodded her acquiescence and allowed me to tug her to the door. The knob squeaked painfully beneath my hand, and if I had been hoping for a stealthy entry, that plan was quickly demolished by the noise. All heads — maybe six of them — stopped talking and turned to face us. A chill crept inexplicably up my spine, as if I were a solider in the conquering army trying to fraternize with the defeated natives.

“Hello!” I called, waving as Elizabeth slipped behind me, grasping my coat for dear life. “My wife and I were just passing by…”

I stopped and lowered my hand, hoping someone would say something in response. No one moved, then finally a man rose and smiled widely. “Are you that Mr. Ainsworth, from the city?”

“That’s right!” I declared, moving across the room with my hand extended. Elizabeth had let go of my garb and was now standing near the door looking quite nervous. The place was apparently a tearoom, and as I moved further in I saw a deli-bar situated with its back to the road. The main room, where the door and bay window were, was empty of furniture, and the six patrons were all huddled sensibly in a dug-out seating area that surrounded a fireplace. The man traversed the few steps to meet me on the bare boards of the entrance room.

“Glad to meet you!” he said, taking my hand. “Arthur McMurdouc.”

“McMur — ?” I began to wonder, but his face held an expression that said it would be rude to question him over his veracity. His clothing indeed decried wealth, as did that of all the patrons — albeit fading, soon-to-be-moth-eaten wealth. I tried to smile amidst my confusion, then let go of his hand and motioned to Elizabeth.

“My wife, Elizabeth.”

She smiled quickly and offered a slight curtsy, but never took her eyes from the man before me.

“Won’t you join my friends,” Mr. McMurdouc said to her. “while I show Mr. Ainsworth what Kittens’ Hollow has to offer?”

“Uhh…no, thank you,” she replied graciously, backing up a step. “Reggie, I’ll just go back to the hotel and wait for you, okay? I feel light-headed….”

“Yes, all right,” I agreed with concern, moving toward her.

“I’m all right, dear, honestly. I just want to lie down. And you know how business talk bores me?”

“Yes…” I agreed again, my hands still held out to comfort her as she backed through the door with a weak smile. I watched as she hurried past the bay window, with another weak smile as she glanced in, on her way to the hotel.

“I apologize — ” I said, turning back to my host; my breath caught in my throat. He stood smiling at me in a room that blazed with life. The once-grayed walls now held all the rich detail of the original wood, and the area around the fireplace was packed with people drinking tea, smoking, and talking in uproarious tones. The seating — that wasn’t taken — was a plush red, and the barman looked haggard with having to deal with all the business. Indeed, the floor I stood upon was now filled with tables and chairs, and still more patrons, eating tea cakes, laughing, and carrying-on. Mr. McMurdouc slid up beside me and put an arm around my shoulder, turning me back to the door Elizabeth had just walked through, motioning for me to join him as he went outside.

“No apologies, Mr. Ainsworth,” he replied jovially, holding the door open and allowing me to pass through it, back onto the street. I glanced over my shoulder as he joined me, closing the door behind him, and through the dusty, crusted window I saw a completely empty store, as gray and rundown as I had expected, but then he had his arm around my shoulder again, and was leading me down the promenade, further from the hotel.

I felt dizzy for a moment, and surreptitiously closed my eyes, rubbing them slightly before reopening them; when I did I had another jolt, as I saw the street before me was now busy with horse-and-carriage traffic, and the promenade bustling with people we had to weave between as we made our way along. Everywhere was resplendent with fresh paint and decorative wood accents; the boards sounded firmly as the footfalls padded along them. A barge of some kind was slipping past the whole scene on the sound, and in the distance I heard a noise that, by its sounding, alerted me to its former absence; that of a train whistle blowing as it moved along the high rim of the hollow far above us, bringing more people to Kittens’ Hollow.

“As you can see,” Mr. McMurdouc almost shouted above the din. “we are capable of bringing quite a crowd to Kittens’ Hollow. I think any business you might open would do very well indeed!”

“Yes,” I agreed distractedly, trying to take in the sights, sounds, and smells that suddenly assailed me in this previously-barren town. I saw mothers, dressed in great, hooped dresses, shuffling children before them while their husbands marched pompously behind, puffing on grand cigars or loping pipes. The roadway was completely cobblestoned and the horses’ hooves and carriages’ wheels made their familiar click and rumble over the surface as taxi drivers called out to careless pedestrians who were in danger of being trampled. And the tiny bells of countless stores jingled carelessly as the doors were continually opened and closed, their tiny jangle echoing over the water, describing the commerce of the town.

“It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it, Mr. Ainsworth?” my host declared, stopping and sweeping his arm grandly to denote the expanse before us.

“It is,” was all I could think to respond. We were about to move forward again when through the bustle a young boy moved purposefully toward us, carrying a large, old box-camera.

“Your picture, Mr. McMurdouc?” the boy asked rhetorically. “For the paper?”

“Of course!” the jovial man cried, planting his arm firmly around my shoulders once more. I tried to smile as broadly as he while we waited for the flash, which detonated quite suddenly and explosively before our eyes, blinding me for an instant. I felt dizzy again, and my knees buckled slightly; I grabbed at McMurdouc for support, but my flailing hands couldn’t find purchase, and I fell with embarrassment to the planks of the verandah beneath me. From behind, I heard heeled footsteps hurrying to me, then felt a strong grip take me under my arms; Elizabeth’s soft perfume met my senses, and I opened my eyes to her concerned face, crouching down before me, her delicate hand on my forehead. All around her, Kittens’ Hollow was silent as a corpse, its graying timbers and peeling paint again describing a scene of slow rot, not affluence.

“Reggie?” Elizabeth cried, helping me back to my feet. “Oh, God! Are you all right?”

“Yes…I…you saw him, right?”

“Who?”

“The man — McMurdouc?”

Her face looked horrified for an instant as she fought back confused tears. “I saw them all, Reggie, that’s why I left. But then…well…I just came back out for a moment to see if I could spot you — to see if he’d been real — and you were weaving like a drunkard…”

“Alone?” I assumed.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Reggie, they were never there.”

Kittens’ Hollow runs about five miles in an east-west direction, and the train we were riding on plugged morosely along the northern lip of the valley, looking forward to the descent toward Green Lake and the bridge which marked the end of the sudden rises that created the valley, where the segment of the river called Kittens’ Hollow Sound once more became the Muskingham proper. There we would be taken back east, along the edge of the sound on the floor of the valley, into the station at Kittens’ Hollow. The rails then continued on from the valley, back to Lake Harper. A course along the northern rim was necessary to make a loop the train could corner comfortably; nevertheless, the view alone was spectacular enough to warrant such a dangerous trip.

My wife, Elizabeth, did not necessarily agree, as with one glance out her window over the depths of the hollow, she hurriedly turned her face away and buried it in my shoulder, clutching my arm dramatically.

“I can’t look,” her muffled voice explained from within my coat.

“Well don’t, then,” I agreed, straightening in my seat to get a better view over her head. The sun, setting in the west over Green Lake, cast long orange rays into the sound, lighting the waters with their fiery glow; a distinct ribbon of color cutting through the emerald blackness of the valley walls.

“It’s really quiet beautiful,” I breathed, moving my arm in an attempt to unbury Elizabeth’s face, but she wouldn’t have it, tightening her grip and shaking her head in negation.

“Don’t care,” she replied resolutely.

As the train came down off the rim the gloaming over distant Green Lake seemed unreal, as if only the echo of some ancient past humans had never witnessed. The engine carried us around a left-hand bend, toward the bridge at the mouth of the sound, cutting off my view but lighting the compartments across the aisle, much to the joy of those passengers, judging by the clamor of excited cries and whispers.

Elizabeth finally resurfaced, her curiosity aroused by the others’ excitement, and glanced hesitantly out the window. We were crossing the bridge now, and the train’s reflection ran over the surface of the water; a black line cutting across the red-tipped waves. The wheels began to screech as the vibrations of the track slowed, and I noticed that the train had turned right, to continue on along the river to Green Lake, as opposed to heading east through Kittens’ Hollow.

“I thought the train went into Kittens’ Hollow?” Elizabeth said, turning to me as if it was my fault that this apparently was not the case.

“It did,” I declared, pointing to the dull silver-glint of tracks disappearing back into the darkness along the valley floor. A brief knock came at our cabin-door, and the conductor stuck his head in with a bright smile and a brief nod.

“Folks heading into Kittens’ Hollow?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, standing expectantly.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to get off here, then,” he said jovially, straightening and opening the door for us. “There’s a taxi waiting, only the train doesn’t go down there any more.”

“Really?” Elizabeth wondered. “Why not?” We collected our suitcase and bags and moved to the door, the conductor taking Elizabeth’s wares and nodding for us to lead the way down the aisle.

“Not worth it,” he replied loudly, so we could hear him as we walked to the door at the end of the carriage. “Kittens’ Hollow all but shut down a few years back, when the new resort opened out at Green Lake. Go out to the left there,” he indicated as we reached the end of the carriage. “Watch your step.”

We disembarked into the hands of a taxi driver only too happy to see a living fare being handed to him. He was old, and would have been more at home on a fishing boat, I imagine. He smiled a toothless grin and rubbed the stubble on his chin, helping Elizabeth off the train and onto the road below, then he took my bags and quickly loaded them into the taxi, turning and taking the rest from the conductor.

“Heya,” the taxi driver nodded to me as I stood watching him, then he waved to the conductor, who nodded back politely and took off his hat, then shut the door. I watched as he moved to the other side of the carriage and waved his hat out the door for the engineer to see, and the train, with a jolt, began to move again toward Green Lake.

“Whe’re ya staying?” the taxi driver shouted as the engine picked up steam behind us.

“Do we have a choice?” I asked, and he winked with a shallow shake of his head.

“Not really. If ya don’t wanna stay in the hotel, ya can always sleep in the street!” He laughed at his own joke and winked at Elizabeth, then turned and opened the cab’s door for us, ushering us into the back seat. He closed the door without slamming it, then got into the front and started the motor; I turned in the seat and watched as the caboose of the train made the graceful bend off the bridge and disappeared into the encroaching night over Green Lake; the sun’s orb had vanished now, leaving enough light to bruise the sky, but not much else. When I turned back as the taxi started to move, I was slightly shocked at how dark the road along the river’s edge was. Our driver was hunched slightly forward in his seat, his attentive gaze hopefully saving us from going off the road and into the sound.

“So what’re you folks doin’ in Kittens’ Hollow, anyway?” he wondered, his eyes never leaving the road.

“Oh, I heard there were some good business opportunities out here,” I replied. “My wife and I are thinking of opening a shop.”

“Gettin’ away from the city?” he guessed, his eyes flicking briefly to the rearview mirror.

“I s’pose,” I sighed, putting my arm happily around Elizabeth and giving her a squeeze. “Not any place to raise a family.”

“Sure ‘nuf,” the driver agreed. “And there sure is a lot a businesses up for grabs…” He trailed off and considered us momentarily in the mirror, then nodded as if whatever question he’d thought of had been answered. “I guess you’re independently wealthy?”

“Yes…” I replied slowly. The cab took a few lurches over some rough road, and our driver clutched the wheel more tightly, cutting the conversation off for the time.

“‘Bout another mile,” he said absently, as if he could sense our unrest. “Sorry I gotta drive so slow…”

“Quiet all right,” I replied. “Better than going for a swim, I’d say.”

He chuckled lightly, but said nothing as we hit another few bumps in the road, the cobblestones obviously deteriorating the closer we got to Kittens’ Hollow.

“How did it get its name?” Elizabeth wondered after a few seconds. She glanced at me with a look that said she was trying to relax the driver by keeping him talking.

“Kittens’ Hollow?” he asked rhetorically. “Or Kittens’ Hollow Sound, or Kittens’ Sound,” he mumbled on, almost waiting for us to argue with him. When we didn’t, he spoke up again. “Mr. Arthur McMurdouc founded the place, and not too long after he’d put the tracks in up on the north rim — to get the building materials to his town, of course — a freight company asked to use the line. Back then the Kittens’ Hollow line just came down from the main line and then back over again, but for whatever reason the main line was blocked and the only way to get the freight through was to use McMurdouc’s by-pass — they still call it that, even though it’s a real line now, going down beyond Green Lake — “

He paused and brought the cab to a stop in front of the only building with any lights on — our hotel — then turned and looked back at us as he finished his tale.

“Anyway, seems some kids had put a whole box of kittens on the tracks up there, either as a prank or because they’d been told to get rid of ‘em. S’pose it don’t matter too much, cuz when that freighter hit it, they say all you could hear was them kittens yelling and screaming…”

He stopped with the grisly details when he caught sight of Elizabeth’s — and my own — horrified gaze.

“Yeah, well, Mr. McMurdouc changed the name right then and there from McMurdouc’s Hollow to Kittens’ Hollow…” He nodded once to put an end to the tale, then turned and opened his door, leaping from the cab to then open our own and usher us out into the cool night over the sound. His face was smiling broadly, as if his expression could wipe the horrible tale from our minds.

I looked around at the run-down buildings and pot-holed streets before me, barely visible under the weak glow of the hotel’s lights, and instantly understood why the property was so cheap: No one in their right mind would think of opening a business in such an obviously unused area, unless, of course, they enjoyed bankruptcy.

“Not much left, is there?” I asked out loud; Elizabeth put her arm around me consolingly and gave me a light squeeze.

“Not since Green Lake was developed,” the driver agreed, unloading our bags.

“‘Fraid there’s no porter at the hotel….”

“Yes…well that’s all right,” I replied, jolted out of my reverie and reaching for my pocketbook. “What do I owe you?”

“Train company paid it,” he said with a shrug, so I gave him a bill anyway.

“Well, here’s something for your trouble, then.”

“Thank you,” he said with a light bow, taking the bill and stuffing it into his shirt pocket.

“Guess you must be from Green Lake?” I suddenly realized with another glance around at the deserted streets.

“Yes, sir,” he agreed, turning back to his cab. “Not many people come here, and those that do don’t really need a cab. Call us when you’re ready to leave…” he added as an afterthought, handing me a business card. Then he climbed back into his cab and started the engine, driving in a slow circle around us to head back the way we’d come, leaving my wife and I standing in the middle of the road with our luggage.

“Do you think that story was true?” Elizabeth asked as we carried our wares to the hotel’s verandah. She dropped her over-laden bag the second we stepped foot onto the porch, the vibration causing a small sifting of dust to rain down from the slat-boards overhead. I brushed my shoulder and smiled at her whimsically, then shrugged.

“Maybe…don’t see why not.”

“Howdy, folks!” an amiable voice piped up suddenly from within, the door flying open a second later. A hunched old man stood grinning at us, nodding his head slightly every so often as if agreeing with his own remark, since we had made no response.

“Hello,” I replied, extending my hand, which he gripped loosely with arthritic joints. “Reggie Ainsworth, from upstate?”

“Yes,” he winked, grinning over at Elizabeth. “I’ve been waiting for you…this the wife?”

“Right — Elizabeth…”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he suddenly deferred with a slight bow. “I am Arnold Makesmith, proprietor of Kittens’ Hollow’s finest hotel…” He swept his arm wide with the announcement, then glanced around himself, his smile slowly dropping. “Well, anyway, Kittens’ Hollow’s only hotel, really…”

“It looks very nice,” Elizabeth intervened hurriedly, lighting Arnold’s face with a renewed vigor.

He glanced around again nostalgically. “Well, it’s gone down hill a bit since we first opened, but it’s still the only place to find a comfortable bed.”

“And that’s exactly what we need,” I replied. Arnold made as if to grab our suitcase, but I politely waved him off, for fear of causing his crooked form more suffering, and picked it up myself, following the man into the foyer of what had clearly once been quite a grand establishment. It was only two floors, and the main staircase greeted us the instant we walked inside, sweeping up out of the hardwood floor of the lobby with all the grace of a ballerina. Immediately to our left was the check-in desk; to our right lay the dining room. Flanking the grand stairway were two sitting areas, the one to the left being about twice the size of the right-hand one, due to the placement of the dining room. The larger one boasted not only sofas as well as chairs, but also a large fireplace which was surprisingly ablaze. The decor was mostly rich woodwork and fine tapestries, but time and the elements had caused the hotel to lose its glimmer; the wood was grayed and brittle, the tapestries faded and nubby, and I glanced at the fire again, nervously, considering how quickly a stray spark could consume the entire building.

“Here she is,” Arnold Makesmith said proudly of the hotel, then he turned and scurried behind the desk to check us in. He winked at Elizabeth again then opened a crusty ledger and ran a yellowed finger down the column, until he presumably reached our name.

“Ainsworth,” he announced. “You’ll be in room 27, up the stairs to the left.”

I saw that ours was not the only name written in the ledger, and asked inconspicuously. “So we are not the only guests?”

“Oh no, sir!” he exclaimed happily. “We usually have about ten or so guests at any one time.” I raised my eyebrows curiously, and he added. “They come to get away from it all, don’t they? And that Green Lake Lodge is very loud….”

“Well this is lovely,” Elizabeth marveled sincerely. “I can’t imagine why anyone would choose one of those sterile old lodges over this.”

Arnold shrugged and slid a paper over the desk to me. “S’pose they don’t really want to get away, do they? They just want to change the names and faces for a spell.”

“I suppose,” Elizabeth agreed as I filled out the indicated lines on the paper, then signed the bottom.

“Would you like to pay for the room now or start a tab and pay when you check out?” he asked professionally.

“We’ll start a tab,” I decided, and Elizabeth nodded her agreement, though we both glanced into the empty dining room. “Assuming there is reason to…?”

“Oh, yes,” Arnold said, handing us a pamphlet. “That’s the dining menu. Breakfast starts at 7, lunch at 11, and dinner at 5 o’ clock sharp. We also have a small pub,” he indicated a door tucked neatly in the corner, immediately to the right of the staircase. “that opens at 2 in the afternoon and closes some time after midnight, usually.”

“Superb,” I announced, then bent down for my bags as he scurried back around to us, the key in his gnarled hand.

“I’ll show you to the room,” he explained. “since the staff is kind of thin now.”

We followed Arnold up the creaky staircase, the banister worn and smooth from hands and the small square of carpet on each riser faded and yellowed from its original royal maroon. At the top we followed him to the left; the first few rooms in either direction faced onto a landing over the foyer, but then the rest disappeared either way down a musty corridor that smelled of age, but not, thankfully, rot, and although the left-hand wall held many windows, with a view of the sound through the darkness, I didn’t imagine the dingy hallway to be much brighter even in full daylight.

We reached our room soon enough; it was almost the last room in the hallway. Arnold ceremoniously unlocked the door and pushed it open, holding his arm out to usher us in.

“Your room,” he declared as if suddenly recalling some ancient training-wisdom, then smiled and nodded affirmatively, leaving me in the odd position of wondering if a tip was expected, or would be an offense, since he wasn’t really a bellhop.

“No tip,” Arnold suddenly said, holding up a hand to stop my protests, should I voice any. Clearly, he was used to the dilemma, and turned his cautionary hand into a slight wave, then handed me the key.

“Breakfast at 7,” he concluded, then winked knowingly and shut the door, leaving us to our own devices.