“Are you coming home straight after work?” Sam’s voice crackled over the car speakers.

I gritted my teeth. I told her five times before I left the house that morning I had to stop at Kira's on the way home. She wasn’t asking because she couldn’t remember.

“No babe, but I won’t be long.”

“Okay. Will you bring dinner?”

“Yeah. I already grabbed it.”

I had a stack of takeout boxes in the passenger seat of our new minivan. Two were for Kira, one for me, and one for Sam, all from different restaurants. Kira didn't like to eat the same thing twice in a row, Sam was very particular on account of being pregnant, and I was craving sushi. My phone buzzed with a message from my bank, some warning about suspicious activity. I squeezed the power button and shut it off as I always do before I go to Kira’s house. I liked to feel immersed.

The smell of the house greeted me by the time I was halfway up the yard. The breeze was ammonia, burnt hair, and dust, with a note of wet basement. I took a deep breath of the half-clean, half-filthy air. With takeout boxes balanced in one hand, Kira’s milkshake crowning them, I rubbed the lucky-rabbit’s-foot on the keychain she gave me, and unlocked the front door. I gave it a good shove to move whatever was blocking the way, but there was nothing there and the door flew open. I tripped over the threshold and nearly fell to the filthy carpet, but sacrificed the takeout boxes in my place. The milkshake splattered onto the floor, the pale brown slop almost disappearing into the nearest pile.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Kira asked from the couch on the other side of the living room, cigarette in hand. Two identical terriers came sprinting up to the mess. A tiny orange cat attempted to join them, but one of the dogs snapped at it. It leaped to a table groaning under Kira’s literature collection. Vintage nudie magazines, Sunday newspaper comics, and a few hotel bibles wobbled, but didn’t collapse. 

“I could actually open the door for once,” I said, glaring at the abnormally clear entryway.

“Figured I’d clean up a little for you.”

I kicked aside the milkshake and picked up the to-go boxes, scooping a bit of rice back into the one that had busted open. “Yeah, it looks pristine,” I said and glanced around the otherwise unchanged clutter.

“What did you bring me?” she asked, gesturing at the boxes.

“Mexican for tomorrow and a burger for today.”

Kira tamped out her cigarette atop a wet sponge she had sitting on the cracked, dusty glass table beside her. She stopped using ashtrays after nearly burning the house down a few months ago. The room still smelled burnt, something between a campfire and a crematorium.

I watched in awe as she began the careful dance of crossing the room toward me. I always thought she should have been a ballerina or a pole dancer. She had a long, willowy figure and moved with an easy, elegant grace, floating over the broken rocking horse, old instrument cases, and a plastic tub of what appeared to be keychains, vibrators, and Beanie Babies. She made it look effortless, like she was carried on a wind.

“Why can’t I have Mexican today?” she asked, taking the boxes from my hands, and drifting toward the kitchen.

“Because it’s Monday,” I said, trying to see where she put her feet, like following someone else’s footprints in the snow. I miscalculated one of her long strides and crushed the head of a porcelain doll. Its heavily made-up eyes survived in a single oblong piece that stared up at me disapprovingly. “Tomorrow is Taco Tuesday.”

“This is a burrito and rice,” she said flatly. As she went along she snatched up empty plastic containers from the piles. They were all white and faded, with a smear of remaining color to denote what they’d once been, sour cream, cottage cheese, yogurt, dip.

We made it to the kitchen together, the only other victim of my passing was a novelty glass bell from Prague, which I kicked into a Singer sewing machine. The handle cracked in half, but the bell part would still work.

Kira set the to-go box atop a pile of dirty dishes that I had never seen move in the years since she’d first defiled them. She balanced the plastic containers precariously on the lip of the sink and began portioning out Mexican rice by the handful. She dismantled the burrito and did the same until only the tortilla and a smear of sour cream and guac remained. Gingerly, she toed a coiled garden hose aside and set the make-shift bowls in its place on the brown and gray stained linoleum floor.

She whistled and the twin terriers came running, as well as the orange cat.

“Sorry guys. No kibble,” she said, shooting me a look. I refused to bring her pet food. I couldn’t stop her from feeding them her food, but I wouldn’t bring her anything just for them.

Kira leaned down and let one of the dogs lick her fingers as she took a bite of the empty tortilla. Two more cats slunk out from somewhere in the kitchen, materializing from the stacks of pots and pans and empty cardboard food boxes. I made a face of disgust at the animals and hoped Kira could feel my disapproval. The only indication that she noticed was a small, T-shaped wrinkle between her brows. I used to kiss that wrinkle. I don’t think she ever realized how it gave her away.

With the animals fed she made her way to the backdoor, careful not to nudge any of them. A fourth cat appeared, skittishly approaching the food.

“I need you to bury someone for me,” she said unashamedly as she picked up a crate of old computer parts blocking the door. I followed her, stepping in front of the approaching fourth cat and startling it back into the piles. 

The backyard was enclosed by a ten-foot-tall, faded wooden fence, the kind that seemed like it could give you splinters just by looking at it. Each board was straight and fitted close together so no one could see in or out. It felt like another room, and Kira treated it like one. Yard tools lay in a pile in one corner, cracked lawn furniture in another. Some laminated posters were taped up, the periodic table, the solar system, and a diagram of a human skeleton. In front of one section was a rotting couch and the broken remnants of an old projector. We used to fuck like monkeys on that couch, shaky footage of strangers’ home movies flickering in front of us on a blotch of white paint. The paint was peeling, and yellowish flakes fluttered onto a pile of upturned dirt at the base of the fence. There was more upturned dirt in the yard than brown grass these days. Kira untangled a shovel from the pile of rakes and hos near the cracked slab of concrete once known as a patio.

“You get started,” she said, placing the shovel in my hand, “I’ll go get her.”

Kira respected the dead. She didn’t always notice when one of her creatures died, but when she did, she wasn’t content to let it sit and rot. She wanted a proper burial.

Today, it was a kitten. It had the same orange stripes as the one scarfing down beans and rice in the kitchen. I dug a shallow hole for it. I tried to keep the holes in neat rows, for my own sake so I didn’t accidentally unearth an old grave. At the end of this row was by far the largest patch of bare dirt, the final resting spot of a dog called Lenny.

Lenny, Kira had told me, knocked over a stack of barbells in the basement and crushed himself to death. I was fairly certain Lenny had been a coyote, drawn into the house by the utter chaos that marked it as more nature than civilization. His yellow eyes were open and seemed to watch me as I placed him in his grave and shoveled dirt over him. I sometimes worried he’d only been paralyzed and not killed. I told myself he was better off in the clean, simple dirt either way.

I buried the kitten while Kira sat on the couch and loaded a bowl, legs spread to reveal a small tear in the crotch of her gray leggings. A bit of lime green lace peaked out.

“I fixed the upstairs shower,” she said, followed by the sound of her lighter sparking. I knew “fixed” meant she cleared it just enough to make it usable. I flattened the dirt and set the shovel on the ground. She offered me the bowl and I took a puff, the smoke momentarily blocking the taste of putrid air that emanated from the house. 

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” She wore a cheeky smile, and her eyes were hooded, a bit of silver eyeshadow smudged on her lids. She spread her legs further apart and set a hand on her inner thigh. I handed the bowl back to her. I had told her I wouldn’t touch her until she could shower again, my little way of making sure she at least attempted to maintain her hygiene. She never looked clean, couldn’t, on account of her perpetually filthy clothes. She’d left a load of towels in the laundry machine until they dissolved into bundles of pure mildew. Even so, today her hair was clean, and her clothing was free of stains.

“I gotta bring Sam her dinner,” I said coyly. She took a puff and returned the bowl to me, getting on her knees and scooching to where I stood. She looked up at me and pressed her face into the crotch of my pants, rubbing her nose against the zipper.

***

Twilight was dancing on the horizon when I pulled up to my house. I could feel Sam’s anguish from the driveaway, as potent as the smell of Kira’s hoard. Our dog Starks met me at the door, sniffing me in all the usual places. I refused to feel guilty as he nosed my zipper.

“Hey baby,” I said, proudly holding up the takeout boxes. Sam was sitting on the spotless, gray sofa, her feet up on the ottoman, her belly bulging grotesquely. I’d seen plenty of pregnant women on TV, but I could never have guessed how disturbing it would be to live with one. She still liked to have sex, but I usually refused. I hated the way she waddled around, her back in a C shape, her little body swaying awkwardly from side to side.

“Hey,” she said, fiddling with the remote, refusing to look at me.

“I got your salad.” I set it on her lap along with the plastic-wrapped spork it came with.

“Ugh, I hate it when they give you this trash. Can you get me a fork please?”

I obliged, putting the spork aside. I returned with the fork just in time to see her open the box and frown. The lettuce wilted from sitting in my car and turned green as chard from soaking up the dressing. She poked a spongy crouton.

Sam took a deep breath and crinkled her nose, looking up at me. Her eyes were wet and flat like a fish’s. She always gave me that look when she had something she’d been wanting to tell me. Her hair was slicked back fashionably and held in place by a satin-finished pink clip. She wore that clip with every outfit, even when it didn’t match. She only owned the one. I unclipped it and began to play with her hair, it was my only move, but it almost always worked. She stayed stiff this time though.

“You know cats have diseases that can be really dangerous for pregnant women,” she said. She choked down a bite of her soggy salad, chewing slowly so I was forced to either sit in silence or reply.

“Oh yeah?” My attention drifted up to the cooking show on the TV. Sam was constantly watching food shows, which caused her to be constantly hungry and by extension cranky.

“Yeah,” she said. I knew exactly what she was getting at, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. For all she liked to argue she fell for it in earnest when I played dumb.

“Good thing we don’t have a cat.”

“I thought you would have been home earlier,” she said, opting for the more blunt approach. I sighed and dropped her hair.

“We’ve been over this Sam—”

“I know, but I—”

“Hey! Don’t interrupt me, come on. Kira is a sick woman, okay, and she’s my friend. She needs me.”

Her dignity didn’t allow her to say the words that hung unspoken. I was glad for it, because the game was ruined if she came out and said it.

Behind me, Starks’ paws clicked over the perfectly swept and polished wood floors. He smelled me again, no doubt getting whiffs of dead kittens, Kira’s mouth, or the stench of the house. He looked up at me disapprovingly. I hated that our spoiled brat of a dog could be disapproving of me. He didn’t realize how bad his life could be, that he could be the one crushed and buried alive. I gave him a nudge with my foot that was a little harder than necessary. He danced away and circled the sofa, putting his head on the cushion next to Sam. I glared at him over the back of her head as she fed him a piece of wet chicken.  

“I just don’t see why you have to be the person to help her. That’s all.” The one thing I liked about Sam being pregnant was she just didn’t have the energy to argue with me anymore.

I told Sam about Kira on our first date. 

“Agoraphobic and a hoarder?” she’d repeat after me, “where does she get all the stuff?”

I shrugged. I wouldn’t tell her that when Kira had begun her hoard and slowly stopped leaving the house, I was the one who gave her the stuff. I loved trolling thrift shops and garage sales. I loved the way her eyes lit up when I brought her a box of garbage. She actually liked the useless fast-food toys, broken furniture with the “free, please take” signs still attached, and boxes of worn children’s clothes. I loved watching the hoard grow and grow, threatening to swallow her. I loved knowing that I contributed, that I was the only one in her life who would put up with it.

Today, when we were finished, I gave her a box of foam fingers, a carton of plastic eggs, and two board games with missing pieces. A tingle of arousal shot through me imagining her. She would treasure the stuff for the evening. She would pick up each egg and run her fingers along the smooth sides, press her forehead into the foam fingers, turn over all the game pieces in her hand, and memorize their strange shapes. Tonight, they were her greatest possessions, and by tomorrow they would be part of the hoard, fading into the background like unnamed items in a search-and-find book.

“I’m all she’s got, Sam. Don’t be jealous.” I wished I was looking at her face so I could see the indignation at the mere suggestion. The idea that she could be jealous of my hoarding, agoraphobic, ex-girlfriend. I picked up her hair again and played with it.

“Of course not,” she said, defeat weighing down her voice, “I know you care a lot about her, and I’m worried. I just hope she’s doing okay.”

The last time Kira left the house was for my wedding. She wore a metallic-bronze dress covered in black, fabric rosettes, a headband that didn’t quite match, and five-inch heels. Every picture with flash reflected off that dress like she’d been dipped in molten metal. The enigma of Kira was that she could look perfect and trashy at the same time. No matter how tacky her clothes were there she was underneath them, a would-be runway model. 

We sat her next to Sam’s half-sister Ellen who hadn’t been part of the wedding party. Ellen looked so elegant in her smart, navy-blue dress with her subtle eyeshadow and sweep of loose, brown curls. At the time Kira’s hair was a frizzy, yellow permanent, with blotches of grown-out blue dye turned greenish on the ends and she wore Victory Red lipstick and a fake nose ring. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her, this aberration seated among our sensible friends and relatives. 

Sam’s mother threw a fit near the end of the evening when she caught Kira slipping her wine glass and cake plate into her gray sack purse. We calmed her down and assured her she was the one being unreasonable. Sam cried in bed that night.

“What’s wrong baby?” I asked. 

“Nothing,” she insisted, “just the stress of the big day leaving my body, you know. It was perfect. Everything was perfect.”

The whistle of the kettle woke Alsa in the middle of the night. In turn, she woke the entire Unhouse. 

Clara was out of bed in an instant, shuffling across the hall into the fussy baby’s room and picking her up to soothe her. Everyone else stayed put, ignoring her screams with pillows wrapped around their heads. Clara could sense Alsa waking up just before she did, and watched her keenly from across the hall. In the moment her eyes opened, so did Alsa’s mouth and the shrieks began just a moment after. 

It would be dawn before Alsa rested again. If they were lucky. Whenever she cried she shrieked, gasped back in all the lost air, and then shrieked some more. 

Clara thought she was sick when she first arrived. Colicky. Mr. Seir had said. She was just colicky. Clara had been colicky too when she was a baby. Colicky Clara he'd called her. It was another thing she and Alsa shared. 

Alsa’s father, like Clara’s, went on a whaling ship and never made land again. Alsa’s mother, like Clara’s, fell asleep on the birthing bed and awoke in a pauper’s grave. 

Alsa, like Clara, went with Mr. Seir to the Unhouse by the sea. 

Mr. Seir had four children in the Unhouse, none of them his own. Clara was the eldest, charged with looking after the other children, especially Alsa. Her colic wracked the other children’s nerves, but Clara was a bit hard of hearing. Where Alsa’s shrieks pierced everyone else’s ears, they merely reached Clara’s. 

Enoch was the second eldest. He followed Mr. Seir around the Unhouse and took notes on him as though he were a newly discovered beast and everything he did was worthy of documentation. Enoch had mountains of notes and drawings shoved under his bed in the Unhouse attic. 

The second youngest of Mr. Seir’s children was Byron. 

Byron liked to sneak around the Unhouse. He was so soft-footed he got away with all manner of mischief. He often wore a dark veil and hide in dim corners like a shade. He would wait for hours to jump out in front of Clara at the right moment. He even caught Enoch off guard on occasion, though he was careful never to frighten Mr. Seir. 

Other children came and went from the Unhouse, but they never stayed for long. 

Alsa was hiccuping from swallowing so much air while she cried, and the discomfort only made her cry harder. Clara laid on the hard floor of the nursery, Alsa still in her arms. She screamed right in her face, her tears and spittle and snot dribbling down and pooling in the hollow of Clara’s throat. Clara closed her eyes. She felt she was lucky to not be much for hearing. She fell asleep like that, the screaming Alsa on her chest, the hardwood on her back, the kettle still whistling in the kitchen. 

Clara awoke to Enoch standing in the doorway, staring down at them. He had his notebook and was feverishly sketching the two of them. Clara sat up, careful not to jostle the sleeping Alsa too much.

“You look very ugly when you are asleep,” Enoch said, matter-of-factly. He imitated her sleeping face. Mouth open, head turned to the side to reveal her sloping jaw. It was hard for the bony little Enoch to even imitate it.

“Sh,” Clara said, a finger to her lips. She gingerly rose from the floor and returned Alsa to her crib. Byron was waiting outside the door to leap at her when she stepped out. He scared her so often at this point she expected him around every corner, and he always managed to be there. She closed the door silently behind her.

“Was it you that put the kettle on?” she demanded in a raspy whisper. He opened his mouth to answer, but she snatched him by the ear through the layers of chiffon that made up his veil. He squealed. Clara slapped a hand over his mouth and dragged him down all the way downstairs.

Mr. Seir sat in the parlor, an old, pale-leather-bound book in his lap. He frowned at them as Clara shoved Byron forward. He tripped over his veil and fell into a heap on the carpet. 

“Cut his feet off!” She stomped her own foot in emphasis. “Or chain him up at night!”

Mr. Seir slowly set aside his book, sighing dramatically as he did so. Enoch had already taken up a seat on the sofa across from him to begin notetaking. Mr. Seir crouched in front of Byron. Mr. Seir lifted one of his little, soft, feet. 

“No chain would fit around this ankle,” he said, “but cutting through it would be quick work.”

“It wasn’t me!” Bryon cried, squirming to free his foot from Mr. Seir’s grasp.

“Who else could have done it!” Clara demanded, fists on her hips. She had no patience for Byron’s constant mischief. She didn’t mind caring for Alsa, but the boy didn’t have to make it harder for her. 

“Enoch?” Mr. Seir asked, looking over at the boy while he scribbled his notes.

“I was asleep.”

“As was I,” Mr. Seir said, tugging thoughtfully at his mustache.

“Me too!” Byron insisted.

“Don’t lie!” Clara snapped.

Mr. Seir didn’t seem convinced, though to Clara it was obvious. He returned to his chair and picked up his book again. “Could it have been a ghost?"

“Yes!” Byron said, leaping to his feet. “A ghost. Exactly. The ghost of our fathers.”

“Or our mothers,” Enoch offered, not looking up from his notebook. Mr. Seir nodded, satisfied they’d come to a conclusion.

“See, Clara. Byron is innocent.”

Clara glared at all three of them. Tipping up her chin she gave Byron a swift kick to the leg. He yelped and fell down again, wrapping himself tighter in his veil. “Hey!” he cried.

“It was a ghost,” she said and stalked away to the sound of Mr. Seir's laughter.

***

That night Clara took Alsa for a walk on the beach. The sun had long since set, but Alsa had been awake crying all night and sleeping most of the day. It would be hours before she slept again.

The air was very still, Clara thought, as still as it could be with the lapping waves nearby. The churning sea was as calm as she would dare ask it to be. The stars and moon were bright enough to see by, but it was getting darker by the moment.

In the distance, Clara spotted a figure. It was a black shape silhouetted against the open, midnight-blue sky. She stopped dead, her heart thundering and breath held. She hoped Alsa would not notice her sudden tension.

The figure held a bit of fire in his outstretched hand. It glinted off its metal container, and Clara could make out what it was, a small oil lamp. The figure tipped it and poured the oil into the sea, a tail of fire fizzling out as it met the tide. The sudden burst of light was enough for Clara to make out the dark shape.

“Mr. Seir?”

When she’d left the Unhouse everyone but she and Alsa had been in bed. Though she hardly trusted Byron’s ‘sleep' she'd never seen Mr. Seir up at this hour.

He turned and as soon as he spotted the girls he made a mad dash for them. Clara gasped and Alsa, sensing her panic became alert. She gurgled, but thankfully did not begin to cry. 

Mr. Seir ran right up to them and gripped Clara by the shoulder with one hand, and held the oil lamp between them with the other. He looked so strange, all the age in his face smoothed out by the dimness of the lamp. She wondered what her own young face looked like. He removed a strand of hair and dragged his hand down to the end of it, marveling at it. She saw how it shone in the light of the flame, gilded like it were cast in metal. She swallowed. 

“Alsa will cry if you frighten her,” she said, so quietly she could hardly hear her own voice. He turned his eyes from the strand of hair to Clara’s face, scanning it slowly from brow to chin and back again. She dared a step backward. 

“It’s whale oil,” he said, drifting the oil lamp closer to her, she shied away from both the light and the heat, “I always burn whale oil. It burns brightest, look.”

Squinting, she slid her eyes to the flame. 

Just as she dared look away from him, Mr. Seir shoved Clara and fell ontop of her, tossing the lamp aside so the burning oil did not scald them. Even so, Alsa began to cry. 

The oil lit the wet sand nearby on fire. In that faint light, she could see Mr. Seir leap up to his feet and bound back toward the Unhouse. He floated like a little boat even on the loose sand, as though it offered no resistance at all. 

Luckily, Clara landed on her back, and though she was in the throes of shrieking now, Alsa was unharmed. The smell of whale oil and hot, wet air, filled Clara's nose as she stood and backed away from the small fire on the sand. Past it, she saw Enoch, notebook in hand. He didn’t offer help. He turned and followed Mr. Seir back to the Unhouse.

Clara did the same, wet sand sticking to her back and her bare arms. She felt like a woman of sand brought to life. She brushed off layers of her sand skin, unstable and crumbling as she wandered back to the Unhouse.

She entered through the kitchen door. The only light was the lit stove, reflections of the fire flickering against the full kettle over it. She growled, removed the kettle, and put out the stove.

“Clara,” Mr. Seir asked from the darkness behind her. She turned to face him, though she couldn't see much more than shapes in the darkness. She lit the stove again so she could see by it. “Do you have my oil lamp?”

Alsa was still crying. She hoped it woke up Byron.

“Why did you push me down?”

Mr. Seir approached and held his hands out for Alsa. Clara held her closer.

“Come now, Clara,” he said, beckoning for her to hand the baby over. She didn’t move.

“Did I ever tell you girls about Cerulean?” he asked. She shook her head. He never told her about anything. Sometimes she sneaked into Enoch’s room and pulled out his papers. She liked to read them and learn all the secrets about the man in the Unhouse. She guessed the boy made most of it up. Mr. Seir was not a forthcoming man by any means. Clara didn't believe Enoch had accrued so much information just by observing him.

“Were you a Vicar?”

There was no religion in the Unhouse, but Clara had seen drawings of a black cassock and white collar. Mr. Seir smiled and nodded.

“I still am.”

“But we do not pray.”

“I do,” he said and beckoned once more for her to hand the crying Alsa to him. She extended her hesitantly and as soon as she was away from her breast he snatched her. She did not stop crying, but the heavy gasps for air and shrieks subsided somewhat. Or it only seemed so because she was not in Clara’s arms anymore.

“Why did you push us down?” she asked again.

“To see if you would get back up,” he said and turned to walk into the darkness with Alsa. Clara followed close behind him, keeping square with his back as he went from the kitchen to the dining room. He took his place at the head of the table. By the time he sat Alsa had stopped crying.

“How did you soothe her?”

“I was in love with Cerulean,” he said, sighing wistfully and leaning back in his chair.

“Is this a story?” Clara asked, hesitantly taking a seat across from him. Enoch was already sitting there, already scrawling notes even though it was much too dark to see by. Clara knew Byron was somewhere nearby, though she could not see him, and she could not hear the sound of his chiffon veil rustling like everyone else could.

“Start from the beginning, please,” Enoch requested, flipping to a new page in his journal.

Mr. Seir cleared his throat. “Sometimes, children, there are nights with no stars,” he lied, “this was one of them.

“On this starless night, I was called upon to perform last rites on Cerulean’s husband. I had wanted to marry her years before when I first met her at a funeral. She was already married though; her husband was my cousin.

“I was so heartbroken. That is why I joined the church. I could not imagine marrying any other woman, so I devoted myself to loneliness. Imagine how disturbed I was years later when Cerulean’s husband perished at sea.”

Just then the kettle whistled in the kitchen. Clara searched the room for Byron, but still could not make anything out in the dark. Enoch and Mr. Seir both ignored the kettle, even Alsa did not stir.

“She called on me to perform last rites.”

“How did you perform last rites without a body?” Enoch asked, utterly detached from the story, and interested only in the finer details.

“She had his body. It floated ashore with the rest of the flotsam, blue and bloated. Cerulean didn’t care. She held his frozen hand and kissed his cold lips. I have yet to see another woman so in love.” 

“So, you did perform the rites?” Enoch asked, only for the sake of clarification. 

“Yes, but I crossed my fingers and said the words wrong.”

Clara wanted Alsa back. She could not hear if she was whimpering anymore, or even breathing. She could not make out the scratching of Enoch’s quill, or the rustling of Byron’s veil. He must have turned the kettle off, otherwise, she couldn’t hear that anymore either. Mr. Seir’s voice was clear as day though.

“Cerulean was pregnant with his child. I wanted to cut her open, pull it out, and throw it into the sea to perish as its father had.”

“Did you?” Clara asked. Byron was looming, she couldn’t hear him, but she could feel him. He would spring out any second in his horrible veil.

Mr. Seir reached out and lit the candle in the middle of the table. His face was ghastly in the dim light, all shadows, and hollows. His eyes were pitch dark in his sockets. She felt frozen in her chair, staring into those dark holes.

“Where is my oil lamp, Clara?” he asked. He was angry with her. She turned up her chin indignantly.

“Why did you push us down?”

“It wasn’t me,” he said, smiling as he leaned away from the candle, descending into the inky nothing surrounding them. The Unhouse was filled with nothingness. “It was a ghost.”

Just then Byron leaped out from behind the last empty chair at the table and Clara nearly fell out of her own. She gasped and shouted a small, “Ah!” Her exclamation was enough to wake Alsa from her unnaturally peaceful slumber. Again, she began to shriek.

“Now look what you’ve done, Clara,” they all said in unison. The kettle whistled in the kitchen. Clara shot out of her chair and ran to take it off again. 

Byron was already in front of her in his black veil, nearly part of the shadows himself.  She reached to snatch it off him or shove him out of her way, but he darted back, out of her grasp. She lunged for him again. This time he leaped forward and kicked her in the leg. Sprinted off and vanished back into the nothing, giggling all the while. 

From the kitchen window, she could see small flames still bobbing on the beach where the oil lamp had broken.

Clara picked up the kettle and put out the stove again, plunging the room back to blackness. The faint glow from the beach was nothing. The Unhouse swallowed it up.

Clara dumped the scalding water out on the tiles, and she heard Byron cry out as he ran over it with his soft feet, as he slipped and fell in it. His veil soaked in the boiling water and pressed it against his skin, the fabric melting into him.

“Let me guess,” Mr. Seir asked from the doorway over the sound of Byron’s painful yelps and Alsa’s colicky cries. He sounded leagues away like she was deep underwater, and he was above it speaking to her. “The ghosts did it?” 

Ahsan stared down at the ancient copy machine. The screen blinked green and gray. He was afraid to even touch it.

“Using your telekinesis?” Ellen asked from the break room doorway. She had a stack of papers to copy. Ahsan glared at the little screen.

“Whoever used it last must have overloaded it or something. I pressed one button and now I have the blinking screen of death.”

“Just tell Clark,” she said, waving her hand, “he’ll call Louisa.”

Ahsan’s lip curled. Louisa. 

Louisa had taken care of odd jobs in the high-rise for years and she could diagnose a copy-machine’s troubles by the scent of the toner levels alone.  

“Clark will make me tell her what’s wrong,” he said, still staring at the blinking screen. The machine started making a hot, buzzing sound. “I actually have work to get done today.”

Ellen rolled her eyes. “Well so do I and you staring at it isn’t going to fix anything.”

Ahsan groaned and shuffled off to Clark’s office. Twenty minutes later he was leading Louisa back to the break room. Ellen and a few others were just sitting down for lunch. 

Louisa wore blue coveralls that extenuated every sad nook and cranny of her unfortunate figure. She had her faded red hair knotted up in an approximation of a bun and her rutty face was bright red from the hike upstairs. She was huffing and puffing as they stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the copier. 

“I never take the elevator,” she said through her ragged breaths, “I got stuck in it once when I was fixing it. I thought I was gonna die.” She squawked a laugh so loud Ahsan felt all the attention in the room shift to them. “It’s fine now,” Louisa said, trying and failing to reassure him, “but I won’t risk it. I got too much to live for you know?”

Ahsan nodded, “Mhm. So anyway, I came in here to make a few copies and I pressed—”

“Crazy you folks haven’t gone paperless yet. I mean what on earth could you need copies for. A couple of the guys upstairs got rid of their printers. Just got rid of them! The times they are a-changin’.”

“Right,” Ahsan smiled. He pointed to the button he’d pressed that sent him spiraling into his unfortunate situation. “I just pressed this button and then—”

“Gee whiz!” Louisa gasped and jabbed her crooked finger at the watch on Ahsan’s wrist. “What’d that bad-boy cost you? That’s a nice little ticker right there.”

“Oh uh...it was a gift actually,” Ahsan said, which was a lie. He didn’t like to talk about how much he spent on things he couldn’t afford.

“Oooo,” Louisa said and nudged him hard in the ribcage with her sharp elbow, “pretty fancy gift. Was it from a girl?”

“No,” Ahsan said with a grimace, “so I pressed the button here and the screen started flashing. I don’t really know what I did—”

“Not a girl?” she laughed and her voice echoed off the bland, blank walls and tile floor of the break room. “Ah-ha-san!” she chortled, “don’t tell me you’re swinging for your own team.” She pantomimed throwing a baseball up in the air and hitting it with a bat. Ahsan breathed in slowly through his nose.

“It was a gift from my mother actually,” he said quietly. It was embarrassing to even continue the conversation, but he wasn’t sure how to break from it. Conversations with Louisa had a certain inescapable gravity.

“Ain’t your mother a girl?”

“Can you please fix the copy machine Louisa,” he snapped. Her cheeks turned this shade of red that made him think she might cry, but she just dropped her chin and stared intently at the copy machine.

“Yeah,” she said and began pressing buttons at lightning speed, “yeah I can do that.”

***

At the end of the day Ellen knocked on the side of Ahsan’s cubicle. “Clark, Rosa and I are going to grab drinks, you in?”

Ahsan nodded and began cramming papers and cords into his laptop bag. Ellen looked over his head across the room where Louisa stood on a ladder and changed one of the long fluorescent light bulbs over the elevator. She waved it around like a sword, pretending to bonk people on the head with it as they filtered out of the office. “Want to invite your girlfriend?” Ellen teased.

“Ha ha,” Ahsan said dryly. When they passed Louisa on the way out she took the lightbulb up like it was a bat. He and Ellen stepped into the elevator.

“Batter up, right Ahsan?” she said and swung it. It caught the corner of a cubicle and the thin glass shattered into a shower of little white fragments. Louisa swore and dropped the half left in her hand. It hit the floor and turned into confetti as well.

Ellen covered her mouth, but Ahsan heard her snort. He looked at Louisa, then at the mess, then back at her.

“Have a nice weekend, Louisa,” he said as the elevator doors closed.

***

“And then it shattered,” Ellen said through raucous laughter, “it just shattered everywhere.” Rosa and Clark joined her in laughter, Ahsan smiled, but couldn’t bring himself to laugh. He might have even offered to help clean it up if it was anyone but Louisa.

“Poor Louisa,” Rosa said. Her tone was genuinely apologetic. She didn’t just mean about the light bulb. “I feel bad for her, you know? It’s like...some people are so sad.”

“I think I could stand to be around her if she put in a little effort and kept her mouth shut sometimes,” Ellen said.

Clark choked on his drink. “Jeez El, tell us how you really feel.” They all laughed, but Ellen was serious.

“No really. Some people choose to be victims you know. They live their whole lives as the butt of the joke, but they never try to fix it.” 

“She has the prettiest eyes,” Rosa said, “a little mascara, a little concealer...”

“Clothes that she didn’t steal off a garbage man,” Ahsan said. Clark and Ellen snickered.

Rosa frowned, putting her cheek in her hand, “I think she’s probably really lonely.” They all quieted in discomfort. “Maybe we should invite her out sometime.”

Ahsan cringed and he was relieved to see Ellen with her nose turned up. “Look,” Ellen said sharply, “I use these little outings to relax.” 

“Did you hear her conversation with Ahsan in the break room today?” Clark said and they all started laughing again, keeping Louisa’s humanity as far as possible from their conversation. They spent the next couple hours trading Louisa stories, each more embarrassing than the last for poor Louisa. The more cocktails and empathy Ahsan drank the more his own embarrassment ebbed. Before he knew it the lights in the bar had a trail and his limbs were feeling heavy and warm. 

“Think you’ve had enough buddy,” Clark said, patting his shoulder, “I’m giving Rosa a ride home, why don’t you come with us?”

Ahsan looked at Clark and Rosa and then he looked at Ellen, still daintily sipping her martini. “I think I’ll hang back,” he said with what he hoped was a cool, close lipped smile. Clark raised his sparse brows and looked between Ahsan and Ellen.

“Whatever man,” he said, shaking his head. Rosa kissed Ellen on the cheek and squeezed Ahsan’s shoulder before following Clark out of the bar.

“She’ll have another one,” Ahsan said as soon as they were out of earshot, tapping the bar next to Ellen’s drink.

“No, no!” Ellen said through a little laugh, “I gotta go home.”

Ahsan scooched his seat a little closer, “I can get you home,” he said. A stab of shame shot from the top of his skull right through his breastbone at the look Ellen gave him. The flash of pity and disgust mingling on her beautiful face. 

“You can’t even drive yourself,” Ellen said, looking away from him and taking another sip of her drink. Not exactly a denial.

“I’m fine,” he said in a register he knew was not very reassuring, “stay for one more.” He reached out to put a hand on her knee, but she turned away, twisting her body so her face was toward him, but her legs were away.

“Let me call you a car.”

“I don’t need a car, El,” Ahsan said with a little laugh, “I think you’re the one that needs a ride.”

Ellen laughed but it wasn’t with him. She pushed back from the bar, putting her purse on her lap and digging through it. “We both need a ride,” she said, “to our own homes. Come on.”

Ahsan thought if he tried swallowing his disappointment it might eat through the lining of his stomach and devour him from the inside out, but three rejections was a loud enough signal. He faced forward. “Fine. Whatever. Thanks.”

Ellen’s car came first, and she didn’t have anything to say but a swift goodnight as she climbed in. He smiled tightly and waved her off.

A yellow SUV pulled up a few minutes later. Ahsan could barely remember the first couple letters of the license plate Ellen told him to watch for. He climbed in without double checking, figuring she would feel pretty awful if he got kidnapped. He slumped into the back seat like a pouty child.

“Ahsan?” the driver said. He blinked the blurriness from his vision and met her eyes in the rearview mirror. There was no way.

“Louisa?”

She laughed, but it wasn’t the grating sound he was used to. It was kind of warm, almost pleasant even. He sat up a little straighter so he could get a better look at her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing makeup. Her eyes were delicately outlined in black, shadowed in a shimmering, warm brown color that really complimented her.

“Little too much after work fun?”

His head was swimming. “You’re my driver?”

She tapped the stickers on her dashboard. “Uber and Lyft. I’m a bit of a workaholic I guess. Never hurts to pick up a little extra cash, maybe I’ll be able to afford one of them nice watches someday.”

Clark, Rosa, and Ellen were never going to believe this. Ellen. He couldn’t believe she totally blew him off. He felt a pit in his stomach a mile deep. Had she even noticed the name on his ride when she ordered it? He couldn’t help feeling like this was some very strange prank. 

“You look nice,” he said. Her hair was all done up too. The lights of passing traffic made it shine. She tipped her chin to the side to check her blind spot and he noticed the gentle slope of her jaw, and a bit of lip-gloss on her mouth. Was it possible her lips had always been that plump?

“Thanks,” she said, smiling at him in the rearview. It was straighter than the lopsided grin he always thought she had. “You look like you’ve been better.”

He groaned, “I hate leaving my car at the bar. I could totally drive home Ellen is just being a—” he sighed, “never mind.” 

“You struck out?” she giggled, but for some reason with no one there to witness it, he wasn’t even embarrassed.

“You look really beautiful tonight, Louisa” he said again, still mesmerized by her visage in the mirror. It wasn’t just the makeup or the hair or the fitted black shirt she was wearing. It was Louisa, but it wasn’t. “What time is it?”

“Just after midnight.”

“How late do you do this driving thing?”

She laughed. When did her laugh become so lovely? He blinked to make sure he wasn’t drunker than he thought he was. He felt more sober by the second. 

“Why do you ask?” She raised her brows at him in the rearview as she pulled up to another stoplight.

He unbuckled and quickly jumped into the passenger seat, which sent her squealing with laughter. “Should we go to another bar?”

The light turned green, and she hit the gas, reaching over to cancel his ride. “One night off won’t hurt,” she said, patting him on the knee.

The next few hours passed in a blur of shots and beers. It was almost 2 a.m. when Ahsan checked his watch next. He was sitting in a dim dive, staring over the lip of his whiskey glass at a wall of wooden paneling. His vision came into sharp focus, and he found Louisa across from him, laughing at whatever he’d said. She held a martini glass loosely from her knobby, white fingers.

“We gotta get out of here,” Louisa said, throwing back the rest of her martini. Her painted eyelids were drooping, and she was wearing her usual lopsided grin. Most of her lip gloss was on the martini glass.

“Should we...” he stopped to get a deep breath in. His limbs were almost as heavy as his head, “call a car?”

“Uber and Lyft baby!” Louisa said, pounding on her chest. Ahsan’s eyes followed her fist and stayed there even when she dropped it. “Hey Ahsan, my eyes are—”

***

Ahsan awoke wrapped in white sheets. He found this strange because his sheets were the same steel blue ones he’d bought in college. 

These weren’t his sheets.

Louisa was across the room in front of a cracked mirror tussling her hair. She was already dressed in the same clothes she’d worn the night before. Or maybe she’d never taken them off. 

He sat up and looked around. The room was clean, if a little shabby. There weren’t any decorations save a painting of a sunflower in a striped vase. It was impossibly nondescript. To the right of the bed there was a small corridor that led to a white sink and what he’d guessed was a bathroom, judging by the sound of a fan buzzing.

“Oh good,” Louisa said, following his gaze in the mirror, “you’re up. Continental breakfast ends at 10.”

He was glad he hadn’t said anything about the room for the blurry moment he thought this was her house. “Where—”

“The Holiday Inn on Sand Street.”

All the way across town. He groaned and dropped his pounding head back on the pillow.

“Check out is 11 and I put the room on my card, so you better get moving.” She sounded oddly snippy. He’d never really heard Louisa sound anything but cheery. She turned around to face him and he lifted his head to look at her. In the cruel, watery light pouring in from the window her rutty face was bright pink, makeup was smeared in the paper white creases under her eyes, and the black shirt she wore was a little lumpier than he remembered. 

“Don’t you look at me like that,” she said as though reading his mind. He felt a knot of beer, whiskey, and who knew what else tie up in his stomach. Woven in with it was an undeniable chord of shame. “Don’t you ever look at me like that again, Ahsan.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. She looked really hurt. The night before was still a blur, and he wasn’t clear how much of it he was blurring for himself. He felt some relief realizing that while he was shirtless he was still wearing his work pants.

Louisa left to get breakfast and while she was gone Ahsan found his shirt crumpled on the ground. Every piece of clothing he wasn’t wearing, suit jacket, shoes, socks, tie, were tossed haphazardly around the room. After a bit of searching he managed to find everything but his tie clip. More than likely it was in a bar bathroom somewhere. He called it the price of an interesting evening and slipped out, all but running past the breakfast room.

Ahsan was a block down the street when the fresh air jump-started his brain and he began to put together some pieces from the night before. He remembered the rejection from Ellen, he remembered standing next to the tallest guy he’d ever seen at a urinal, he remembered a smoky bar with wood paneling, he remembered getting Louisa’s phone number.

Ahsan stopped dead and did a quick check of his pockets. His stomach roiled again and this time he knew it wasn’t the booze.

When Ahsan got back to the hotel Louisa was out front smoking a cigarette and chatting up a woman with a toddler. When she spotted Ahsan there was hatred in her gaze. What had he done to her?

“Forget something?” she said and dug in her back pocket, producing his phone a long moment later. He swallowed and ran a hand over the back of his head. The lady and her kid silently excused themselves. 

“You wanna ride home?” Louisa asked, turning away from him to ash her cigarette.

“I’ll hike. I think I could use the fresh air,” he said, though he was fully intending to call a car as soon as he made it to the end of the block. Standing in the sun had him sweating alcohol. Not to mention his head felt like a drum set being mercilessly and untalently pounded. 

Louisa didn’t say anything to that. Ahsan muttered a vague thank you and headed back down the street. 

His phone was dead and he ended up walking home.

***

On Monday Louisa was in their office. She’d cornered Ellen by the water cooler, the empty jug at her feet. Her blue coveralls had a huge, dark water stain down the front of it and Ellen’s patent leather shoes had a few shining droplets on them. 

When Ahsan saw the two of them he considered getting back on the elevator and going home. No doubt Louisa was telling Ellen all about their night together, whatever the night had been. She smiled at him and it was the same, lopsided, goofy Louisa smile he’d always found slightly irritating. That hatred she’d had on Saturday morning was nowhere to be seen.

“Happy Monday, Ahsan,” she said, “I was just telling Ellen I was the one that picked you up from the bar.”

“What are the odds?” Ellen said. She gave Ahsan a patronizing little look like adults do when they’re talking to a kid and secretly laughing at them. He couldn’t even bring himself to return the look.

“Oh by the way,” Louisa said and reached into the pocket of her coveralls, “I think you left this in the back of my car.” She produced his watch. His stomach dropped to his feet. He was so worried about his phone and his tie clip he’d completely forgotten about it. “Such a nice little ticker,” Louisa said, “I almost kept it.” 

When he reached for it she took it upon herself to slip it onto his wrist. The metal pinched a few hairs on his wrist as she slid it on and clipped it into place. For a moment he met her eyes and that look appeared. He wasn’t sure anyone had ever looked at him like that. He didn’t even think people in real life could muster a look of hatred like that. It was the extent of an emotion he’d thought was reserved for stage actors and cartoon characters alone. It vanished in an instant. 

“Lucky I knew where to find you,” she chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. He could have sworn his tie clip was between the pens in her breast pocket, but he didn’t get a good look before she wandered off. 

Ahsan swallowed as Louisa left him alone with Ellen. “El I should apologize for—”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, her cheeks reddened with embarrassment. Rosa walked by to fill up her teacup and they shared that same condescending little look Ellen had tried extending to him when Louisa was there. “You had a lot to drink. Make it up to me by copying those reports, sound good?” she said, obviously eager to change the subject.

If Ahsan had any pride left he would have had to swallow it. “You got it.”

Not an hour later Ahsan found himself in front of the copy machine. He pressed a button, the machine made a whirring sound, and the screen started to flash. 

In the dust that settles at the end of the world where the only light is the dimness of dawn, there is a woman sitting on a wooden chair. It is not a throne; she is not a queen. It is not a rocking chair; she is not a crone. It is a wooden chair you might find anywhere in the world, straight-backed and uncomfortable to sit on for long periods of time. She sits on it while she weaves with a cat sleeping lazily at her feet. There is a single flickering flame that lights her workspace, illuminating spools of thread in every imaginable color and a large loom fashioned from the same wood as the chair. She moves the threads with practiced intention, weaving tiny lines and cells into a new tapestry. A scene is playing out on it, a couple of people who are still only feet. Their toes point together and when she reaches their heads they will be face to face.  The weaver can hear the conversation hissing through the dust outside her door. She can see in her mind’s eyes the faces of the two people. Only she is watching, and she is watching it all, weaving it as it happens.  

Long ago she was something else, but she has retired into quiet, comfortable obscurity far from worship and zealotry. She loves the loom. Loves the dim light in her sliver of the world, loves the chair that hurts her back and her lazy cat. It is peaceful to watch scenes play out. When she finishes a tapestry she sets it outside where it joins countless others. The colors will bleed away in time. The fibers of the scene will crumble and join the dust that swirls around her peaceful, lonely little place. Once the cat stretched and watched her work before asking in his small voice, Do you make the scenes happen or as they happen? She paused her work and frowned down at him. Does it matter?

More than anything, he’d argued, but she had to disagree. The pure joy of creating something was worth more than the lives it did or did not impact. She couldn’t help what she wove. Maybe she was merely mirroring what was happening somewhere out in the world, or maybe she was under the control of whoever wove her own tapestry. 

She’d taken up the cat because she desired minimal companionship. When she stopped to feed or pet him it reminded her that time was indeed moving along. Besides that, she couldn’t help feeling kinship for the little beast. She admired him for wandering to the edge of time as she once had. He was brown but had been grey when he arrived, coated thick with dust, hungry, but lively. Even as he lazed around day after day there was a glimmer of fire in his green eyes that never dimmed. He kept small beasts from destroying her work or making nests in her spools of thread. They got into arguments to pass the time and waxed philosophical over meals.

What makes you say that? she asked. He was the only outsider to ever look into her little workshop and thought her ways were very strange. He claimed to recognize some of the figures in her tapestries. From when I was a man, he said, but she doubted he was ever anything but a cat. Why else would he wander so far afield in search of someone to feed him and scratch behind his ears?  

If you are in control of the world then you can change it. Judge those who should have a better or worse picture. She didn’t like that; it made her fingers fumble over the fibers of her creation. It reminded her of the days when she was asked for miracles and punishments. 

I don’t interfere. She’d answered carefully. Not can’t, not won’t. Don’t. 

Sasha awoke with a sudden start. The moonlight streaming through her window glinted off Toblerone’s yellow eyes and he was glowering at her for waking him. She sat up and rubbed her head. It was pounding and her mouth was dry. There were crusties in the corner of her eye that felt suspiciously like dust. She picked up her phone and squinted at the bright screen. Her alarm was set for three and it was two minutes till. Groaning, she threw back her covers much to Toblerone’s dismay. He meowed his disapproval and jumped off the bed. The little bell on his collar jingled as he padded down the hallway and awaited his breakfast.

Sasha packed her hamper into the too-small trunk of her car and headed off for the laundromat. She passed a few other cars and had to wonder what they were doing up at that hour. 

The laundromat wasn’t busy, but it wasn’t completely abandoned either. There were three other cars parked, including a shiny old Mustang right in front of the entrance. A young couple was out front smoking when she walked in. A haggard-looking woman waited beside a drier with her son asleep in her lap. In the back corner by her favorite washer sat a man in an outrageous green silk coat.  She smiled as she walked by to throw her clothes in. 

“Laundry day, huh?” she said with a cheeky nod at his coat. He frowned at her. 

“What?” 

She swallowed, “I like your jacket.” He cracked a smile and straightened the lapels. Around his neck hung three gold chains and he wore about fifteen rings on his fingers. He was at a certain age where he might have been forty-five or he might have been sixty. 

“Fifty-bucks for it." He laughed at that a little harder than she thought was appropriate and he sounded a little nervous too. The neons in the window cast a bluish tint over his skin and she found her own crawling as she turned her back to him. Sasha sat a few seats away and frowned as she looked at the rows of washers in front of her. Hers was the only one running. She pulled out her phone and pretended to scroll. 

“Lovely fingers,” he said quietly, leaning over as if they were sharing a secret. She clenched her hands into fists. 

“Excuse me?” she said, a little loudly though she didn’t expect any help from the mother with her sleeping son. The guy shrugged and pulled back a little. 

“You have nice hands. Do you ever do any knitting or sewing or anything?” His voice was oddly familiar like she’d overheard it on the bus or at a coffee shop. Not someone she really knew, but certainly someone she’d heard before. 

She felt her face turning red. What a creepy attempt at flirting. Not to mention he was at least old enough to be her dad. “What are you talking about?” 

“My nana used to make blankets,” he said, “you know on a big old-timey loom, you know? She had the most beautiful hands. Strong hands and when she moved her fingers it was like magic.” 

“Can you just leave me alone,” she said finally. He frowned at her and nodded, running a hand through his thinning brown hair. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he said and cleared his throat. He looked away, but every once in and while he would start looking at her again. First just stealing glances out of the corner of his eye, but they got longer and longer. She slammed her phone down and turned to look at him. 

“You are making me uncomfortable,” she said slowly. He was looking sheepish now, almost pained. 

“I don’t mean to. Really I don’t.” 

“Well then can you please stop?” 

“It’s just that…” he shook his head and ran his hand through his hair again, “can I ask you one more thing?” 

Sasha glared for a moment and then sighed. “Fine.” 

“Do you make the scenes happen or as they happen?” 

Her blood went ice cold. She knew where she’d heard his voice before. The smile he gave her was utterly feline. “You recognize me?” he asked hopefully. 

“I said you could ask one more question,” Sasha said. Her heart was pounding. Maybe she was still asleep. Maybe she was still dreaming. 

“You can ask me one if you want.” 

“What the hell do you want?” she whispered. She didn’t want anyone to interrupt them now. 

“I’m as freaked out as you are, okay? I’ve never…I thought your brain couldn’t make up faces. That’s a thing people say about dreams, right? You can only dream about people you’ve met.” 

“That isn’t the weirdest part of this,” she snapped. She didn’t know this man, had never seen him or met him or overheard him in a coffee shop. But they’d shared a dream. Such a real-seeming dream. 

“Do you think that makes it real?” 

Sasha scoffed, “I can’t even knit.” 

He’d turned his knees toward her, “I thought it was my nana…like maybe that’s what she looked like when she was younger. But then I saw you when you came in and I–” he laughed giddily. “You gotta admit this is pretty cool!” 

Sasha still felt put-off. There had to be a better explanation. But the dream had been real and this guy was real. At least she hoped he was. Maybe the mom by the driers hadn’t said anything because Sasha was just talking to thin air. 

“I still have it,” he said quietly, but excitedly, “my nana’s loom.” 

“You must think I’m an idiot,” she said. No way she was going anywhere with this guy and besides, she barely knew what a loom was or how it worked. Though the dream had felt so real. In it, she’d known exactly what to do with the loom and what it meant as she wove each thread. She’d held them in her hands, felt the strings slide between her fingers. 

“I know I put you off, but I’m not that kind of guy. Really.” He pointed to one of his bazillion rings and flipped his phone screen toward her. There was a picture of him with his arms around another man of indeterminate age set as the background. The two of them stood smiling in front of a Christmas tree. Sasha nodded back toward the wall of washers. 

“Why don’t you have any clothes?” she asked, eyes still narrowed accusatorily. 

He looked sheepish again. “It was a really strange dream. I just really needed to clear my head. Not much else open at this hour.”

She crossed her arms, still unconvinced. He sighed and took out a business card. The embossed letters read, Arlo J. Karr-Ramirez., Attorney at Law, followed by a number, email, and website. She frowned at him. He just shrugged and stood up. “If you change your mind.”

Sasha was hesitant, but she took the card. With that, he nodded at her and left. Sasha crumpled up the business card but paused before tossing it in the wastebasket. Would it really hurt to hold onto it? At least if something else freaky happened she would have a name and number to give to the police. She tucked it into the pocket of her sweatpants and went back to watching her laundry. 

Sasha stood behind the counter at the convenience store all morning in a daze. She couldn't stop thinking about Arlo and the dream. When it was slow she watched videos of people weaving on her phone, checked out Arlo’s website, and read the Wikipedia page on tapestries. Her fingers didn’t feel like her own anymore by the time she finished her shift at noon. The crumpled-up business card was on the front seat of her car. It must have fallen out of her pocket that morning. Without even realizing what she was doing she dialed the number. 

“Weaver!” Arlo answered excitedly. She almost hung up right there. 

“How did you know it was me?” Sasha demanded. He chuckled. 

“I’m retired. I don’t just hand my card out to anyone. So…” 

She was quiet for a long time. “I want to see the loom.” 

“That’s great!” 

“Can you bring it somewhere?” 

“It’s kind of huge.” When she didn’t say anything else he sighed. “Where do you want to meet?” 

The YMCA parking lot was busy for the middle of a workday, Sasha thought as she pulled in. She parked behind an empty school bus in a far corner of the lot. Arlo’s old Mustang came in hot, the loom poking out of the trunk, a few haphazard bungee cords holding it in place. Her heart sank when she saw it though. Recognized it. 

“It looks…” she shook her head as he set it out in the bright parking lot. In the dream, the workspace had been dim, but it was unmistakable. “They probably all look like that, right? Like if I saw one in a movie it would look just like that one.” 

Arlo had a plastic bag in his hand. “I stopped at the craft store on the way here,” he said and handed her the bag full of tapestry thread in a few bright colors. He went back to the trunk and produced an old wooden chair fashioned from the same wood as the loom. It was straight-backed and looked uncomfortable to sit in for long periods of time. The kind of chair you’d find anywhere in the world. 

“This is ridiculous,” she said as he set the chair in front of the loom. She pulled out a spool of thread and ran it between her fingers. She closed her eyes and saw the workshop at the edge of the world. 

“Maybe it is,” the cat said, “but it’s worth a try, right?” 

Sasha opened her eyes, looking down at the blacktop. Two pairs of feet facing each other.

“What if–” she looked at the loom. The air felt dry and full of dust. She could smell rotting fabric on the faint wind blowing over the parking lot. When she turned back to Arlo he was wearing that feline grin again. 

“Now you’re wondering too, aren’t you?” Would she make things happen or as they happened? She shook her head and began to string the warp with quick, practiced motions like she’d been doing it her entire life. Like she was born weaving and had always done it and known it. 

“Don’t you see I’m right,” the cat said. He was standing behind her, but his voice sounded like he was below her. Speaking up from her feet. “It does matter.” His voice was on a wind telling her what he would say before he said it. She could see them sitting there. It was like she was at another car in the parking lot across from them, or in the school bus looking down at them. She could see them from every angle, the weaver and her cat.

It was a hot and stormy summer day. Heavy gray clouds clung to each other in the sky. Fat raindrops steamed on the burning blacktop soothing it so that Garret Perkins and Brandy Hershaw could run barefoot down to the river. It was their last summer before they knew to feel shame for going around in only their bathing suits. 

Brandy and Garret met the evening prior around a fire pit where their parents stayed up chatting long into the night, drinking wine from plastic cups and cans of beer, cold and wet from their coolers.

Garret had gotten up from the fire and began wandering in the grass. Brandy’s eyes had been drooping from trying to follow her parents’ conversations with their new friends, but she perked up when she spotted Garret just outside the ring of firelight, silhouetted against the dark blue sky. He was searching for something in the yard and kept jabbing a stick into the grass like a fisherman with a spear. She’d slipped away from the fire and started to follow him.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t look up, just kept going, his eyes perfectly trained on the grass. He sucked in an excited breath and lunged out with his stick. Brandy gasped and stumbled away. A snake was flopped over the stick like a scarf on a clothesline. It wriggled, slithering down toward the grass. Garret kept the stick twirling so it could never quite getaway.

“Whoa,” Brandy said, approaching him and the snake hesitantly. “How could you see it?”

Garret grinned, slowly pulling the snake back toward them. “I’m good at catching stuff,” he said, “I’m going to call it Cetus,” he said, slowly moving the branch and the snake toward Brandy. She scurried back, squealing. He kept moving it closer to her and she kept reeling back until he was chasing her around the yard with it, always just outside of the fire’s glow.

As they wandered to the river Garret Perkins carried a fishing pole over his shoulder. He knew it would be safer and more comfortable to hold it ahead of him like a dowsing rod, but he thought he looked cooler and surer of himself holding it against his bare, sunburned shoulder. Brandy Hershaw carried a plastic bucket and swung it while she walked. If she tried to hold it still, she found it would rub against her thigh. As far as she could remember this was not a problem she had the summer before. They hardly spoke a word.

The night before all they’d done was talk and talk. Garret had stopped chasing Brandy and convinced her to hold the snake. Once she’d summoned the courage they spent the rest of the evening passing it back and forth between each other. They sat beneath the stars, a healthy distance from their parents, and traded secrets and stories until they were called in for the night. Now, in the light of day, neither could think of what to say.

The silence broke at last when Garret, frowning pensively, looked down at his dirty feet and admitted shyly, “I don’t have any worms to fish with.”

Brandy didn’t really want to fish. She’d told her parents they were going to so they wouldn’t think they were going to swim without an adult around.

“Why are you wearing your swimming suit then?” her mother had asked.

“In case it rains again,” she said with the arrogance only a lying child could summon.

“You can wade up to your knees and that’s it,” her mother said shrewdly. Brandy only mumbled her agreement, but Mrs. Hershaw took her by her little chin and made her look at her. “What was that?”

“Okay,” Brandy whined.

“Go,” her mother said on a sigh, too hungover from the night before to worry. “Have fun. Be a kid. Don’t drown and don’t get struck by lightning.”

Brandy nudged Garret while they walked along, his sudden dower mood was making her nervous. The day couldn’t be ruined before it began.

“It’s okay,” she assured him, “we can dig for worms. There are bound to be plenty coming up from the ground with all the rain.”

Garrett was soothed. He paused while they walked along and plucked a tiny blue flower from the roadside. It was a common weed, but the blue was bright under the gray sky and rain clung like glass droplets to the petals. He held it out to Brandy. She stared at it.

“For you,” he said, smiling with his big, uneven teeth. Brandy smiled back with her lips pressed tight. She was suddenly self-conscious about her braces.  

“Thanks,” she said and tucked it into her swimsuit strap.

When they reached the river at last Brandy’s eyes lit up as she beheld something unexpected. “A bridge!” she gasped and ran ahead to inspect it. It was an old iron car bridge, no longer in use judging by the fence on the other side that blocked any through traffic. There was a metal sign on the end, peppered with BB gun dents and tagged unintelligibly with neon pink spray paint. Beneath the vandalism was an unmistakable warning.

DANGER! NO JUMPING OFF BRIDGE

The grated iron was cold and painful against their bare feet. Brandy climbed up on the railing to relieve the pressure. Garret frowned at her. “It says no jumping.”

“I’m not jumping,” she said, kicking her legs back and forth. The river looked deep enough they wouldn’t break their legs. She took the flower from her swimsuit strap and tossed it into the water.

“Hey!” Garret said, leaning over the railing. Brandy craned her neck to see how quickly the water pulled the flower under the bridge.

“It’s not moving too fast,” she said, leaning so far, she lost her grip on the slippery metal railing. Garret grabbed her arm.

“Whoa,” he said, nearly pulling her off the railing. “Be careful! You could fall.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, grinning broadly, her braces forgotten. “Let’s jump.”

“The sign says—”

“I know, I know. Think about it this way though, the hill leading down to the bank is so slippery from the rain it’s way more dangerous to try and climb down. We could slip and fall and crack our heads open. This is way safer.”

Garret leaned over to get a better look. The bridge was not so high, but his stomach still leaped up his throat when he looked over the edge. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

“Look,” she said, pointing at the water, “do you see any ghosts?”

Garret looked at the water hesitantly. He was suddenly afraid that if he looked too closely he might accidentally see a ghost. He bit the inside of his mouth nervously. “No,” he conceded.  

“Because I’ll bet you no one has ever gotten so much as hurt jumping off this bridge. They just have to put that sign up for legal purposes or something.”

Garret was starting to warm up to the idea if only because he liked the thought of jumping off with Brandy. “Come on Garret,” she said, leaning toward him a little with her hands clasped up by her face. “Puh-leeease.”

Garret set his fishing pole against the bridge and held out his hand. “Alright,” he said. There was a little flash of lighting enough that he could see a twinkle in Brandy’s eye that made his heart skip like a flat rock on a still pond. They climbed over the railing.

“One,” Brandy said and took hold of his hand, “two…” The thunder from the lightning came a second later. “Three!” They pushed off, the metal of the bridge biting into their bare feet once more before they were falling.

They were falling for much longer than should have been possible, Brandy thought. Certainly, they would have hit the water by now. The world was turning a little slower, slow enough that she could turn her head to look at Garret. He had his eyes clenched so tight she doubted he even noticed anything was wrong at all. The little half-dry, half-wet strands of hair stuck to his forehead were fluttering against the current of air flying up from under them. They never met the water.

When Brandy opened her eyes again the world was suddenly cool and dry. She was lying not at the bottom of a river, nor standing atop an old iron bridge, nor existing in any place she’d ever been before. It was nighttime and there was sand and gravel beneath her.

Garret was lying beside her, and he sat up. The full moon and twinkling stars overhead were bright enough to see by and he scanned the area around him. He looked at Brandy where she was starting to sit up too. The sand under them stuck to their bare, wet skin.

“Garrett?” Brandy whispered and looked right at him.

Before he could answer the sand beneath Brandy began to shift and slip. She was falling again, but this time so quickly by the time she blinked the sand from her eyes she was on solid ground again.

In the distance, there was a boom like a giant clapping his hands. Then another and another. They came quickly one after another like applause. Between them were blinding flashes of light, brighter than any lightning Brandy had ever seen. Something told her to go away from where she was, but she could not make her legs move. There was a lake before her, still as a mirror reflecting the dark sky above. The rain came from the opposite shore and distorted the perfect mirror shine of the water.

Something began to bubble under the surface.

Brandy shifted her feet, but she still couldn’t move her legs.

The bubbles rose more rapidly by the second. Brandy held her breath as something pushed hesitantly against the surface tension. Something big. She stayed still even as sheets of rain came closer and closer until they were soaking her. She couldn’t turn away. Her feet were glued to the cold, soft sand of the shore.

“What are you doing?” someone said from behind her. She didn’t look, couldn’t look. She just kept staring at the thing rising out of the water. It was massive, bigger than should be possible in such a small lake. “Hey, what are you doing?” the person repeated, their voice rapidly approaching her. The lightning flashed again, and the shadow of the creature fell over Brandy and the stranger. Its silhouette filled the sky and blocked out the opposite shore of the lake where the wind was whipping the trees. The loose sand at their base washed away with the downpour until their roots were bare and they plunged helplessly into the water. That wind rose around the entire perimeter of the lake and it pulled violently on Brandy’s hair. No matter how soaked it became in the downpour the wind kept ripping so harshly at her ponytail it felt like someone was pulling it. Her skin was wet and freezing, but she was so frozen with fear she couldn’t even shiver.

Someone’s hand took her wrist and tried to pull her, but the sand had crept up her legs to her knees and hardened like concrete. The owner of the hand, a young man, walked in front of her. His eyes were wide, his uneven teeth too big for his mouth. He wore swim trunks with a little blue flower tucked into the waistband.

“Brandy,” he said. She blinked the water from her eyes.

“I know you,” she said, squinting, “you forgot to bring worms for fishing. We can dig some up with all this rain.” She pointed at things in the lake, bobbing out of the water with its gaping maw hovering over them “Think we can catch that one with a worm?”

The boy turned to see the creature and then suddenly his arms were around her waist and he was pulling her away from the shoreline. The sand around her legs loosened and fell away. The creature dove for them, roaring even louder than the thunderclaps.

  A wave crashed over them both. The flood pulled the boy’s arms apart and dragged Brandy off the shore and into the lake. She swam for the boy, fighting the current until it swept her under the surface. The boy managed to stand firm on the shore as the wave receded, but he waded into the water toward her, shouting her name.

Brandy was making way against the current when she felt a smaller, stronger current wrap around her ankle and pull her toward the center of the lake. With the clouds overhead the water was nearly black, murky, and distorted by her splashing and the downpour so she could not see anything below the surface. When the current pulled her under again she got a final gasp in before she was plunged into the cold darkness. She knew the beast was nearby, could feel the water around her shift with every movement of its too-big body.

Brandy managed to break away from the current and breached the surface of the lake. She flopped the hair out of her face, gasping, and thrashing desperately toward the shore and the boy. He dared to wade deeper, arms outstretched toward her, just barely out of reach.

The water behind her shifted and Brandy felt the currents change, they gripped her harder, clawing at her legs, her hips. She felt water lift over her shoulders and drag her back under. She knew the beast was coming for her, but as hard as she swam she never seemed to get any closer to the shore. The boy was up to his shoulders now and she could feel his hands brush her wrist before the water gave a sharp tug and sent her careening down, down, down, the current swirling around her until she didn’t know what direction the surface was, let alone the shore. From the deep below she could hear the boy calling her name.

His voice was muffled by the water between them, but she followed the sound, setting herself right. She came up under the sky again just in time to see a wave rise and slam the boy back into the shore. Another surge of water engulfed, and she screamed just in time for her mouth to be filled with water, her scream swallowed up by the hungry depths. It was pulling her deeper this time, dragging her down like a weight around her ankles. Overhead lightning illuminated the sky again and the water. The massive, inky shape of the monster was floating on her right side, watching her curiously as she sank and sank. It started toward her, slowly, letting her dread build as if it had a taste not just for her body, but her fear.

She kicked hard against the invisible weight around her, thrashing toward the shore, toward the sound of the boy crying out to her. Another flash of lightning showed her a small, pale hand reaching out to her in the gloom. She reached for it, shocked at the warmth compared to the burning cold of the water. He gripped her hand so hard she thought he’d break her fingers and pulled, dragging her back toward the shore. She gave a final kick and surged up out of the darkness.

Garret pulled Brandy toward the slippery, muddy riverbank under the shadow of the bridge. She wriggled and kicked desperately, coughing, and gasping for air. He managed to drag her up onto the shore and away from the river’s mild current. She rolled onto her tummy and hacked up murky water until she was crying. Garrett sat beside her unsure what to do, his arms wrapped around his knees. When she was no longer spitting up water and bile she began to suck in deep breaths.  

“Are you okay?” Garrett asked meekly. Brandy lifted up on her elbows. Her swimsuit was stained with mud, her eyes shiny and bloodshot. She looked up at Garrett.

“Did I drown?”

Garrett shrugged, “I think you might have hit your head or something.”

She sniffled and flopped over so she was sitting upright. “My mom’s gonna kill me.”

“You don’t have to tell her.”

Brandy nodded thoughtfully, turning her eyes on the river before them. After a moment she hesitantly extended her leg and dipped her foot into the water. Garrett saw her trajectory; a little blue flower was floating down toward them. She grabbed it with her toes and pulled her leg gracelessly back. Brandy gingerly plucked the flower out from between her toes and handed it wordlessly to Garret.

“Thanks,” he said, smiling once again with his big teeth. He tucked the flower into the waistband of his swim trunks and turned his eyes back on the river. When the rain stopped they left the shelter of the bridge and returned to their parents. 

“Pardon me,” Shiloh murmured as he shoved his way through the chilly, crowded city. He had one more delivery. The plant in his arms was heavy and unwieldy; with each step, he could feel it leaning toward the edge of his balance. At last, he arrived at the address, a towering apartment building. The doorman in front stood hunched over but managed to look up at Shiloh with cold, ancient eyes.

“I’m here for a Mrs. Washburn,” Shiloh said from behind the sprawling leaves of the plant. The doorman slowly blinked at him. His wrinkly face peered out from his stiff, emerald suit like a turtle from its shell.

“Friend or family?” he asked in a voice that sounded even older than he looked. Shiloh frowned.

“I have a delivery.”

“No solicitors,” the little old man said in his little old voice. Shiloh readjusted the weight of the pot, almost spilling it in the process. His fingers felt like they might break off against the freezing terracotta.

“No, no. I’m not a solicitor,” Shiloh said, “I have a delivery for Mrs. Washburn.”

“Mrs. Washburn didn’t say she was expecting any sort of delivery today.”

Shiloh gritted his teeth and tried to maintain a level head as the plant continued to weigh down his freezing limbs. “That’s because she didn’t order it,” he said in condescending slowness as his patience ebbed, “someone sent it as a surprise.”

The doorman narrowed his beady little eyes on Shiloh. He was ready to pass judgment when a young woman in a long, gray coat shuffled past them.

“Good afternoon Gary,” she said in passing.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Washburn,” he said and opened the door for her.

Shiloh lunged toward the door. “Hey, wait!” Again, the weight of the plant shifted suddenly toward the edge of his grasp and he quickly straightened and tightened his grip.   Mrs. Washburn turned and looked at Shiloh through the door, her eyes wide and fearful.

“This is for you!” he said loudly. She cracked open the door but stayed safely behind it. A waft of warm air kissed Shiloh’s frozen face.

“What’s that?”

“The plant,” he said, stretching his neck to try and see her over it, “it’s for you.”

Mrs. Washburn smiled brightly, “Oh, oh! How wonderful. Come in, come in,” she said and waved Gary to the side. With her permission, he opened the door for Shiloh, though not wide enough that it kept the leaves of the plant from brushing against it. A shriveled leaf flew down to the lobby’s polished linoleum floor.

“Sorry about Gary,” Mrs. Washburn said once the door closed behind them. Shiloh took a deep breath as he was finally enveloped by warm air. He spotted the elevator and waddled toward it. “Oh,” Mrs. Washburn said sheepishly, “actually the elevator is out of service.” Shiloh nudged a leaf out of his face with his chin so he could get a better look at the slight Mrs. Washburn. No way she was getting a pot that size upstairs. “Sorry,” she said with a wince.

“All part of the job.” The words came out choked. “What floor?”

Her wince deepened into an apologetic frown, “Penthouse.”

Shiloh closed his eyes and nodded, “Welp,” he sighed, “lead the way.” He followed the sound of her heels clicking to the tight door that led to the even tighter stairway. He didn’t dare look down the dark shaft of the stairwell as they ascended, though he could imagine the plant plummeting over the edge of it.

“I can’t express how sorry I am,” Mrs. Washburn said, herself winded. She’d taken off her coat about halfway. Shiloh’s Nora’s Flora windbreaker never seemed to break the wind all that much when he was outside, but his boiling body was turning it into a sauna with every step.

“It’s quite all right, ma’am,” Shiloh said between pants, “it’s all part of the job.”

When they finally reached the penthouse, Mrs. Washburn opened the door and gasped. “Richy!”      

Shiloh strained his neck over the plant to find a man on the couch and a woman tangled up with him. Very tangled. They were about as hot and sweaty as Shiloh was.

“Miranda,” the man said as he shoved the other woman away. She tumbled off the couch and onto the rug with a comical thud. “Oh jeez, Miranda. What are you doing home?”

Shiloh wondered if he could just set the plant down anywhere.

“I’m so sorry, I—” the other woman began, but Miranda threw a finger toward the doorway where Shiloh was still standing. He stumbled out of the way and further into the apartment. The plant tipped a little in his grasp.

“Out!” Miranda shouted. The other woman shook in panic as she struggled to pull her tight jeans up her sweaty legs, threw her shirt on, and collected the rest of her clothes in a random bundle, clutching it to her chest like a baby. She scrambled for the door and shoved past Shiloh where he hovered near the door, hesitant to come further into the apartment than strictly necessary. He swayed as she pushed past and this time the plant went almost wholly sidewise. Shiloh barely pulled it from the cusp of disaster as some of the soil and decorative stones in the pot clinked onto the floor.

The door swung shut behind Shiloh and he flinched as it sealed him in the apartment with Richy and Miranda.

“Miranda listen,” Richy said, still naked. Shiloh hoped that one of them would notice him so he could be dismissed, but also feared they might turn their raw emotion on him. “It’s not what you think.”

“I don’t have to think Richy, I saw plenty!”

“Come on Miranda, that was just—it was just—” Richy stuttered. Shiloh considered just setting the plant on the ground and slipping out unnoticed, but it was too late. Richy noticed him. “Well, Miranda, who the fuck is this?”

Miranda looked over her shoulder at Shiloh, still hidden behind the plant. “It’s the flower delivery guy!”

Richy’s sweaty, red face scrunched up, “I didn’t send you any flowers. Who the fuck is sending you flowers?”

Miranda huffed and began searching the plant for a tag. Shiloh tried to slowly rotate the plant to give her an easier time, but the more he moved the more unsure his grip became. Finally, Miranda found the tag.

“Oh dear,” she said sheepishly.

“What? Is it from your secret lover?” Richy said, standing up to see for himself. Shiloh leaned back so he could take the whole weight of the plant against his chest and spine.

“This is for Mrs. Washburne.”

“Right,” Shiloh said, his voice strained, “That’s you.”

“No. Mrs. Washburne with an e. We’re Washburn W-a-s-h-b-u-r-n with no E. Mrs. Washburne with an E used to live on the second floor, but she just moved away.”

“Mrs. Washburne on the second floor died,” Richy corrected.

“No, she—” Miranda rolled her eyes at the ceiling, “whatever the case, Mrs. Washburne with an E isn’t around here anymore. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Shiloh said, beads of sweat dripping down his forehead.

“And you walked all the way up here.”

“Really it’s all right,” his shoulders were tight. If he could set the plant down for just a moment to catch his breath he could make it back down the stairs. More than anything he wanted to be out of the apartment. He began to pivot back toward the door.

“Let me get that for you son,” Richy said and leaped for the door. He jumped too fast and bumped Shiloh on the shoulder. The muscles in his arms seized to keep his feet balanced, but the plant was beyond saving.

Shiloh watched it in slow motion. It slid from his grasp into the cruel hands of gravity and they sent it plummeting down, down, down to the penthouse’s expensive marble floors. The terracotta never stood a chance. It shattered, turned into a rain of burnt-orange fragments. For just a moment the dirt held its shape and then it too collapsed into a mushy pile of black earth, the decorative rocks along with it. The worst part, worse by far, was the beautiful plant. As much as Shiloh despised it when the wide leaves were in his face, tickling his nose and obstructing his vision, seeing those leaves fall into lifelessness on the cold floor was almost more than he could take. His knees buckled and he feigned as though he intended to catch it, but it was far too late. He fell to his knees before the destroyed plant, fragments of dirt and leaves piled up around them like the sea against a shore. The sound of the pot shattering rang in his ears like funeral bells.

“Oh shit,” Richy said, “oh man, I am so sorry.” Richy and Miranda stared down at Shiloh. Shiloh stared down at what was once the plant. “Really I am so—”

Shiloh put a hand up. “It’s all right, sir,” he said lifelessly, the words tasting like poison, “happens all the time. Just part of the job.”

Richy picked his pants up from where he and the other women had left them pooled unceremoniously beside the couch. He began to dig for his wallet.

“Let me pay for it.”

“No,” Shiloh said hollowly, “it was my bad.”        

Slowly, Shiloh stood up. “Do you folks have a broom and dustpan I can use to clean this mess up?”

Shiloh mournfully swept up the remnants of the plant. The only sounds were Richy finally shuffling to get dressed and the plastic on plastic thunk of Shiloh emptying the dustpan into the garbage bin. When he finished, the floor was spotless, as though there had never been a plant in the first place. 

“Guess I’ll be going then,” Shiloh said through a groan as he stood up.      

“Have a nice day,” Miranda said with a tight smile.

“Stay warm,” Richy added. Shiloh nodded to both of them and left the apartment. He would have to call Nora’s Flora and tell the boss what happened. The old crone would be furious. It really was a lovely plant.

The other woman was sitting in the stairwell, half of her clothing balled in her lap. She was crying softly.

"Are you all right?” Shiloh asked, standing above her.

“I’m a homewrecker,” she said. Dark lines of mascara ran down her face and met at her chin. She sniffled and looked up at him. “I should have known he was married. Their home was so nicely decorated.

“Eh.” Shiloh shrugged and sat beside her, “I think it could have used a plant.”

Sometimes the days feel shorter than they are long, and I am in the unfortunate position of having to determine for myself and my family which it is. A short day or a long day. Calvin encourages me not to worry so much about this, but it’s difficult not to worry about something as important as the length of a day.

When I was a girl, I liked to go to the theater. So, when I was a woman, I became an actress. I could play anything. The directors told me I had the perfect face, the perfect voice to be anyone. I could metamorphose; I could become whatever I wished to be. I met Calvin in the theater. I was eighteen and he was twenty-five, the director of a small play his friend wrote. I didn’t believe he was twenty-five when he told me he was, and he didn’t believe me when I told him I was eighteen.

“It’s a short one,” I told him sadly, sitting in front of the bay window and watching the birds outside on the feeders. He hummed, setting down his newspaper.

“Every day is long,” he said. He sounded grumpy like he was upset with me. I started to cry, and he didn’t like this. He stood up and began to shout at me, but I was already in the throes of it. Each tear made the day last a bit longer.

My last day on stage was when I was twenty-three. I was pregnant and Calvin and I were soon to be married and I couldn’t very well be trouncing around on stage every day with a baby on my hip. Those last days in the theater were woefully short. Calvin and I were married, and he got a job at the cannery in town with other men. These men had rough hands when I shook them at company parties. These men had known nothing but work since they could tie their shoes. Calvin hated real work. Every day dragged on for him, longer and longer than the one before. 

“Tomorrow is going to be—”

“Enough,” Calvin said and pounded a fist on the table. His hands were rough now, not like they were when we were married. Years in the cannery made him strong, carved him into one of those hardworking men. “Enough about the days Pamela! Enough. The next time you talk about the days—”

I stopped paying attention to him right about then and started to focus on the tablecloth. Margaret Marie was the baby’s name, or it would have been, but she was stillborn. That day was the longest of them all. We painted her room that same shade of mint green as the tablecloth. I think she was stillborn, or maybe a woman I played in a play had a stillborn baby. Maybe she was alive and well with children of her own now. Maybe I’d wanted her to be stillborn.

I sat in my nightdress all day that day because I knew it was supposed to be a short one. Calvin asked me to please get dressed, but I told him a mother in mourning needs to do what she needs to do. It takes time to collect herself after such a tragedy. Who knew a bike accident could be so tragic? Margie was only six when she crashed her bike off a rail bridge and into a pond. She hit her head on a stone and floated down the river, never to be seen again. My costume for that show was a night dress made of crisp white fabric that smelled like it had been in some old lady’s closet for months or years before the costume designer left it hanging in my dressing room.

I was working on a little painting of a green bicycle in the drawing-room later that afternoon. I was a far better actress than I was a painter and my hands ached with the small strokes. My hands were strange these days. They looked stippled with makeup, dark spots and wrinkles lining them, bones shadowed to look gaunter and more apparent for the audience. The phone rang. “Calvin dear, can you answer that please? I’m not feeling well,” I called out to him as if he were in another room, but he was standing by the window, lost in thought. On the stage, you call out to someone even if they are only feet away to show the audience there is space between the two of you. Calvin sighed and took the phone off the hook.

“Hello Mags,” he said. He kept his voice low like he didn’t want me to hear him, but I heard him very well. “No, she isn’t. I don’t think you should bring the boys over today.”

I couldn’t hear the woman on the other end, but that name was familiar. I wondered if she was from the acting guild. I didn’t like the idea of playing an old woman, but if I didn’t have to audition it might be fun. The theater was so distant. I missed it terribly.

“Tell her I’ll do it,” I said, waving my paintbrush at Calvin. “But don’t make me sound desperate.” He sighed.

“We’ll talk later, Mags. Alright, we love you. Tell the boys we love them too. Say hi to Bill.” Calvin’s lips curled in distaste at that name, and I wondered who he was. A stubborn actor, no doubt—directors hate stubborn actors. Calvin never did get along well with his actors, except me of course.

I didn’t wear black to Maggie’s funeral because I knew she would have wanted everyone to be wearing happy colors. We held black umbrellas even though it wasn’t raining. We wanted everyone to look and think that it was raining because that made the whole affair so much sadder. The pastel green of my dress made my blue eyes bright, even from the back row. I tried not to look sad like a mother in mourning, but happy like a woman in love. People gave me looks, but they didn’t understand I was only doing what Margie would have wanted. They gave me nasty looks because I was a star and they weren’t.

Eventually, that long day came to an end. While we were lying in bed, I rolled over to watch Calvin. He was still awake, staring up at the ceiling. “Calvin?”

“Yes, dear?” he said. He sounded tired. Why wasn’t he sleeping?

“When I die,” I said, my voice so quiet I almost couldn’t hear it, “bury me next to Maggie, will you?”

He opened his mouth like he had a lot of things he wanted to say to that, like he was just boiling over with words for me, but then he closed it again. Resigned. Defeated. “Okay, dear.” He rolled over so I couldn’t see him anymore.

I sniffled and whimpered all night wishing for my baby, wondering vaguely at the pretty woman in the picture on my nightstand. She looked a bit like me, but she wasn’t. She had two little boys at her side and a man that was not handsome enough for her. So unfortunate when a leading man cannot meet the quality of the leading lady. I stared at the photo for hours, even minutes, and hoped that lady never knew what it was like to lose a child.

There came a family with a fat white dog, and we thought it might be a wolf at first, because none of us had ever seen a dog quite like that, but it wasn’t a wolf at all. Its eyes were rounder, gentler, and its paws much smaller. Husky, we heard the little girl tell a visiting friend. We kept an eye mostly on the little girl as she was home during the day. Sometimes she rode the husky around like a horse. None of us agreed on how we felt about this, whether it was charming or cruel.

The family was small and quiet. A mother, a father, an older brother, and a little sister. They walked around in silence, read books, and did work in silence. The mother drew pictures of buildings. The father would leave during the day and come back at night. When he came back, he spent long hours in front of a computer. Sometimes he would type, but mostly he would read or watch. Screens were difficult for us. There was a space between us and it that distorted the writing, though we speculated about it. Every member of the home had headphones. When they watched television, it was on a low volume. The dog only barked or whined in moments of extreme duress, like when he hadn’t been let outside in too long. He began to whine when he noticed us and once or twice, he growled or even barked. This was of primary concern for the quiet family.

“Maybe it’s a ghost.” The older brother suggested. The little sister quickly fell into line with the assessment. The mother and father rolled their eyes and said nothing. We sat at the extra seats around the dining table left for guests and did not weigh in. No one asked for our opinion. That night we followed them to bed. The dog was confined downstairs and watched from the bottom of the stairs, whining helplessly.

Each evening we observed a different room of the house. Sometimes, we found the older child sitting intently before a computer screen. After our first encounter with this practice, we moved on—there was not much to see beyond the brightness of the screen. The mother and father slept on far ends of their large bed and did nothing but sleep soundlessly, without even a whisper of a stir. The little girl slept fitfully under our watch, often tossing and turning and mumbling in her sleep. Sometimes she would wake up crying quietly, but we had no means to console her. Once she woke up and screamed, disrupting the quiet of the home so violently that her mother took her out of the house the next morning. When they returned that afternoon, the little girl was off-kilter, and exhaustion lined her little face. We wondered collectively—as we did all things—if this could have something to do with us. Our observation of the little girl let up.            

Not so many days later, an old woman came by and took the little girl out. We feared she might not come back, but at the end of the day, she was returned. The old woman had eyes the same shade of blue as the father and a nose that was shared by him and both children. She shared only terse words with the mother. The little girl left happily with her each day for a week.            

On the fourth day of that week, with nothing better to do, we watched the mother sketch her building pictures for hours. Our interest waned until at last something unexpected happened. A car pulled into the driveway. An unfamiliar man stepped out. He wore no uniform and his vehicle was nondescript. We waited anxiously by the door for him to come inside. From the sidewalk leading to the house, he paused and looked at us, eyes widening for a moment before he blinked and looked away. The husky waited anxiously at the door.            

The mother let him inside and almost immediately, they were in the throes with one another. He wrapped his long arms around her small body, and they kissed. This was a development that shocked and titillated us, and we continued to watch excitedly as she led him up the stairs. We did not follow into the bedroom. We were not so voyeuristic. The mother of the quiet children and wife of the quiet father was not so quiet for some time after this. The man left as quickly as he arrived and well before the old woman and the little girl returned from their outings or the brother from school or the father from work.            

For the rest of the week, the little girl and the old woman would leave in the morning and the mother and the new man would tussle around in the afternoon. It was in the midst of this one day that the phone rang. We waited anxiously beside it for the mother to come down and answer. She came in a bathrobe, her hair disturbed and cheeks flushed.    

“Suspended?” She hissed into the receiver. Suspended where? We wondered. Somewhere high up no doubt. No, the older child had done something bad at school. She needed to go get him immediately. The new man left in a hurry when given the news. So quickly, in fact, he forgot his jacket and left it crumpled unceremoniously by the door where the mother had pulled it off him. We stayed by the jacket, awaiting its discovery.            

The mother returned with her son and the two of them were, as usual, quiet. She told him calmly they would discuss things when his father came home from work, but he ought to go upstairs and wait for him. Around his eye was purplish, and he had a red stain beneath his nose. He shuffled toward the stairs but paused near the front door. We were all huddled around where the jacket lay, watching him with bated breath as he approached it. The mother kept the house quite immaculate. Who would leave a piece of clothing just lying around? He picked up the jacket. 

The only person in the house it might belong to was the father, but we processed both problems with this theory alongside him. Firstly, the father was a small man and this jacket was quite large. Secondly, the jacket was leather, worn, fashionable, and much too cool to belong to his father, who was impartial to business attire and sweaters and didn’t own anything that might be described as cool. The boy slipped his bruise-knuckled hand into the jacket pocket and slid out a wallet. We encircled him, hovering so close it was a shock he did not notice us there. As he opened the wallet and examined the face on the identification card, we jittered with intrigue. At first he looked confused, but then his face turned pale and his brows furrowed. Recognition alighted on his young, marred face. Recognition and disgust.  

Our excitement piqued as the mother came storming in, her stomps near-silent despite her face painted red with anger. She hadn’t heard him climb the stairs as she’d commanded. When she rounded the corner into the foyer she stopped, staring at the jacket and wallet in his hands. The two of them, per the tradition of the house, were utterly silent. Anything said between them was said in the twisting of their faces and neither could nor wanted to, wrap their mouths around words. After a few moments of this stand-off, the older child ran up the stairs, clutching the jacket and wallet in his hands. The sound of his bedroom door slamming and a lock clicking shut echoed through the house. The mother stood at the base of the stairs and stared after that sound for a long while. 

That night, the quiet house was not very quiet at all and we, the quietest of all, fed happily on the noise.

The record would not stop skipping. Eliza changed the song first then tried changing the vinyl. She’d tried both sides of three others, and every one of them skipped, skipped, skipped! She slammed the case closed. The quiet was unbearable. She tried the radio, but it played static on every station. She shut it off and stood in the silence. Even the birds outside were quiet, but there was the softest rustle of leaves in the garden. Faint as it was, nothing could be worse than the horrible silence. Eliza pulled on a hat and stormed out of the silent, empty house. 

She took a seat in the garden beneath a shady tree and listened for any sounds. The leaves rustled in the gentle breeze, but it was not enough to make it hard to think or hard to recall the last time she’d been in that spot. 

Eliza started as a shape emerged suddenly from the brush. Fear gripped her for a moment before she could make out what it was: the ugly old tomcat. Eliza’s nose crinkled as she took him in. He was big and ugly with thick, filthy, matted fur, a pinkish scar over one of his leering green eyes, and crooked whiskers. Each of his traits told of alley fights he either won or narrowly escaped. She’d seen him milling around the house now and again for the past few months, but even on the days she didn’t see him, she knew he’d been around. Friends relayed stories of their cats leaving them little “gifts” (dead or nearly dead animals). This creature was absolutely not her pet, but he still partook in the practice of gift-giving. They felt less like gifts and more like threats. 

“What do you want?” Eliza said to him, just so she could hear someone say something. He padded over to her seat, and she pulled her legs up onto the chair. The skirt of her long, dark dress bunched up under her feet. She was about to yell at him to get back when he stopped and sat before her. His tail wrapped itself around his feet as he made himself comfortable, looked up at her, and meowed. What a horrible sound! She might have preferred the quiet. 

“Well meow to you too,” she said, turning up her nose at him.

“Shouldn’t you be weeping?” 

Her brow crinkled, and she turned her head down to look at the tom again. He had his head cocked to the side a little, awaiting an answer. She wondered if maybe she’d finally reached her breaking point. “Meow,” she attempted, hoping to remind him of what he was supposed to sound like. “Me-ow.” 

He meowed again. Much better. 

“You look terribly unaffected for a widow.” This time she saw his little cat mouth move and watched the words slide out between pointed, yellow teeth. 

“How do you know I’m a widow?” It was only polite to continue the conversation. The cat just offered a large, knowing smile. “I don’t care for your company,” she said, wrapping her arms around her knees. 

“Should I be worried?” he purred. 

“And what does that mean?” she snapped back and narrowed her eyes on him. If a cat could shrug, he might have, but a twitch of his ears sufficed. 

“Well, anyway, that isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, standing and flicking his tail this way and that. “I was wondering if you’ve seen a bird around here. She and I have an engagement.” The grin returned, this time accompanied by a bloodthirsty glint in his good eye. 

“Even if I saw a bird, I wouldn’t tell you about it!” Eliza cried. She sat up straight, so her legs were over the edge of the chair again. “Now get out of here!” She stamped the ground, her skirts swishing in the grass. “Shoo!”  

His pupils narrowed, and he hissed and ran back into the bushes without another word. 

Another few moments of silence passed while Eliza tried to collect her thoughts. Surely she imagined that encounter. Perhaps the grief and stress of the funeral were finally getting to her. 

“Thank you,” crooned a voice from above. For a moment she fought the urge, but it didn’t last long; Eliza tipped her head back to look for the source of the voice. In the tree, just above her, a little blackbird hopped from branch to branch. “Thank you for not telling him where I am.” 

“I didn’t know you were there,” she admitted a bit sheepishly. 

“That’s okay,” she said and flitted down to land on the arm of her seat. “I know you wouldn’t have told him. It’s our secret.” 

“What is?” 

“That I was in the tree the whole time.” 

“Oh,” she chewed her lip, glancing into the brush. She worried the cat would pounce out right then. “Are you in that tree often?” 

The blackbird gave her best attempt at a nod, but the bobbing motion was so birdlike that it was hard to say if it was an answer or not. Seeing the woman’s confusion, she answered, “Yes, all the time. It’s a good hiding spot from him.” 

“It can’t be that good; it’s in his garden.” 

“Your garden,” she chirped, “You’re the one that tends to it.” 

“That’s true,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “If you are here often, you must have seen what happened the other night.” 

Again, the blackbird nodded her little head. “I did… it was a terrible accident.”

Accident. The word hung in the air between the two of them for a few long moments before Eliza spoke again at last. “Right. Positively dreadful.” 

“Do you think he will come back?” the bird asked, watching the bushes. Eliza’s stomach turned as she considered the question until the blackbird added quickly, “The cat?” 

“I hope not,” the woman answered, leaning back in her chair. 

“Me too,” the bird agreed. She flew back into her tree and began chirping the way a proper bird should.

Eliza listened to her singing, letting the sound drown out the deafening silence that weighed on her so heavily. This was her garden, and for once it felt like it. She waited awhile just to make sure the cat didn’t come back, and only when the sun began to dip beneath the horizon and the bird had long since stopped singing, she returned to the house. 

Maybe she’d see about getting a trap for the tom. 

When Horse Killer was young he chased a foal from a caravan. It rushed into the ocean to escape him. It swam out in a panic and was dragged, screaming beneath the waves. The smell of blood overcame the stench of the ocean. A Boy from the caravan burst from the woods and hurled rocks, howling and chasing him off. One stone struck him on the back of the head. 

Hours later, Horse Killer found a Woman wailing  and wandering the forest. He followed her, always staying just out of sight. She walked for hours in no direction. When they were well away from the caravan she sat in the dirt and wrapped herself in her cloak. At last, he dared approach her. 

“Why are you weeping?” he asked, peering at her from behind a tree. She jumped to her feet and picked up a stone to throw. He remained still. She dropped the stone and sat back down. 

“Have you come to eat me?” It was a question and a plea.

“No,” he said and laid down before her, looking up into her eyes. “Will you tell me why you are crying?” 

While the sun set she told him the story of her husband. He was a great warrior who had fallen in battle alongside his steed. Before they went to fight his stallion sired a single foal.

 “She was all they left me.” She glared down at him. “Chased into the sea by a wolf.” 

He lowered his head onto his paws and pinned back his ears. She laid her hand on his head and dug her fingers into the wound where the Boy’s stone had struck. 

“I did not kill her,” he whined in defense. She leaned down and bared her teeth at him. 

“What would you have done to her?”

The foal would have made a fine meal for Horse Killer. Better than one of the grown, broken horses, or a dog, or even the children in the caravan. The stallion must have been something to behold if his progeny was so swift. A fine meal indeed. 

The Woman released Horse Killer’s head and he ran back into the forest. 

Months later, Horse Killer found an old battlefield. Rotted, unburied bodies lay broken in the clearing. A pair of ravens were perched at the edge of the hollow. 

He sat beneath their branches. They looked down their beaks at him. 

“Haven’t we met before?” one of them asked. Horse Killer ignored her question. 

“Did you see this battle?” 

They bobbed their heads. He inquired about a great man atop a great stallion. They assured him they saw no such things. The men dying there were only boys, all of them frightened and timid. None of them mounted. Horse Killer moved to the next battlefield. 

It was a small scuffle, barely any fallen soldiers and among them the only cavalry belonged to the enemy. Well, to the caravan’s enemy. Horse Killer had no enemies yet. 

The final battlefield was sprawling. So many broken bodies lay before him and not just men. Horses. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. Horse Killer spent days in search of the mightiest man and beast. 

When he found them they were surrounded by the bodies of their slain enemies. He knew he’d found the Woman’s husband by the bones of a massive warhorse. Even picked apart and rotted away, he could see they belonged to a great beast. He believed that the man was no less than the beast, but his skeleton looked just like all the others. Horse Killer pulled the helmet from his rotted skull and the sword from his disintegrated hands. 

He searched for the caravan for years. He returned to the seaside where he'd first seen them and followed their trail. All the while he carried the sword in his jaws and the helmet on his head. All the little villages and great cities he passed told tales of a wolf in a man’s armor. One day a little Girl found him lapping water from a silver stream. 

“What shall the world call you?” the Girl asked. She was not afraid of him. He was no longer a predator. He was a myth and she was unafraid. 

“My name is Leofric.” 

“So it is, but what shall the world call you?” 

Weeks later, Horse Killer found the Boy from the beach. He sat before a wagon puffed smoke from an old, ivory pipe. Horse Killer released the sword from his jaws and bowed his head so the helmet tumbled off. 

“For Her.” 

The Boy picked up the sword. Horse Killer kept his head bowed. “Would she be pleased to take my head?”

“No. She has taken a new lover and our mare is pregnant again.” He picked up the helmet and set it on the step of his wagon. He offered Horse Killer the pipe. Horse Killer shook his head.  

“Are you hungry?”

They went into the wagon together and shared a bowl of bubbling stew. Horse Killer ate greedily. He had not eaten the food of man since he was one. 

“How did you come to speak?” The Boy asked as he fixed Horse Killer a bowl of wine.

“The same as you. I learned from my mother.” 

Hours later, Horse Killer stumbled out of the wagon and found the Woman holding the sword and helmet. He looked around for her new lover but they were alone. She faced him with sword out and eyes glowing.

“The Boy told me you would not want my head.” 

“He does not speak for me.” 

“Will you take it then?” It was a question and a plea. 

The Woman raised the sword and struck the dirt beside him and collapsed beside it. Horse Killer laid his head in her lap. 

“I would have killed her.”

 She pet his head over the scarred spot where the stone had struck.

We learned later his name had been Taylor when he was alive. 

Alina and I were in the living room, basking in the setting sun. I was coloring a picture of a jack-o-lantern for mom to put on the fridge so she would finally take down the beach painting I’d done in August. Alina was practicing braids on an old doll. Mom was in the kitchen washing dishes. The running water and her old radio drowned out the sound of the front door creaking open. Taylor walked in and took a seat on the couch. 

I put down my crayons and stared at him even though I knew it was rude. Alina’s jaw hung loose. 

“Hello?” I said. 

Taylor turned his head toward us. With no eyes in his sockets I’m not sure what he was looking at. He moved his shoulders in time with mom’s radio. 

“It’s more than a feeling,” he mumbled along with Boston. He managed to sing alright even without lips or a tongue or a throat. I couldn’t begrudge him for being a little off key. I went into the kitchen and tapped mom on the hip. She jumped. 

“Dammit Hillary!” She said through a breathless laugh. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!” 

“I wasn’t sneaking.” 

“What do you want?” 

“When is Halloween?” 

She sighed and turned back to the dishes. “Next Wednesday. It’s right on the calendar, Hil. Come on.” 

I returned to the living room. Alina was sitting on Taylor's lap—if you could call it a lap–and contemplating his hands. She practiced counting each segment of his fingers and every time she miscounted he tapped her on the nose. I grabbed her arm and pulled her away. 

“What are you doing here?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips. Taylor couldn’t frown without a face, but he turned his head down. In the kitchen Boston turned to Jefferson Starship and Taylor stood up to groove along. 

“If only you believed in miracles like I believe.” 

Alina started to dance a little too, but I made her stop. He clicked and clacked his bones together in a disjointed little dance. Eventually, he sat back on the couch and put his face in his hands. His shoulders bunched and shook. He didn’t say anything, just kept mumbling along with the song. 

I picked up my jack-o-lantern picture and flipped it over, offering him a green crayon. It looked so dark in his white fingerbones. 

Dance? It said in a jagged scrawl. 

“What does it say?” Alina demanded. She was still learning her letters. 

“It says he’s tired and wants to go home.” Taylor turned his head and this time I knew he was looking right at me. I looked back. 

“Do you sleep in a graveyard?” Alina asked, grabbing his arm. Her little hands wrapped all the way around the bone. He nodded, but I didn’t think it was true. 

“If you had hair would you let me braid it?” she asked, not letting go of his arm even as he headed back for the front door. He nodded again. 

“Will you ever come back?” 

Taylor stopped in the foyer and shook his head. Mom still hadn’t noticed us. Jefferson Airplane was fading into Pink Floyd. 

Later we found out his name was Taylor when he was alive. Sometimes Alina and I would joke and giggle and whisper about our afternoon with Taylor. It was especially funny to remember whenever mom tried to say she wasn’t hard of hearing. 

“You can’t hear a thing, ma,” I said at the bar after my uncle’s funeral. She wouldn’t stop complaining that she couldn’t hear the eulogies. 

“Why does everyone have to mumble?” 

“They weren’t mumbling. You don’t hear well.”

“You couldn’t hear a skeleton dancing in your own living room,” Alina said, swirling her gin and tonic. Her hair was in two, perfect fishtails. 

“That’s the silliest aphorism I have ever heard, Alina. What does that even mean?” 

“Is it an aphorism or an idiom?” Alina asked.

“Or an adage?” I suggested. 

“Whatever it is, it’s just stupid. Don’t be going on about skeletons anyway. We’re at a funeral.” 

Actually, we were at a dive bar.

My aunt lives on the edge of the forest I died in. 

Sometimes at dusk, she will come and sit on the edge of the woods. She will watch the shadows of the trees grow long and fill in the world and when she peers into the darkness she will see me. We talk. No one else knows I’m here. She knows my parents would come in to look for me. 

Sometimes she’ll leave me an apple or some sunflower seeds. I can only eat what is offered to me. On my birthday, she bakes me a pie. 

It is easy to keep people out of the woods in the winter because the forest is so dense. No hunting is allowed. The hiking trails are always iced over. She puts up signs about trespassing and warnings about the ice. When the weather is warm she sits at the trailhead with a BB gun and threatens tourists. Usually, a little ping is enough to scare them off. Sometimes they call the police. Locals know not to come near the woods. They talk gently to the tourists and tell them about better trails. More scenic routes. Nothing much to see in those woods. They tell them. I always knew that wasn’t true. 

One morning a woman with an ancient golden retriever stood in her pale blue hiking pants and sunflower yellow tank top and pointed into the forest. She pointed like she was spotting something incredible and impossible and absolutely unacceptable. 

“If no one is allowed in, what is he doing in there?” she demanded, a hand pointing, the other balled into a fist at her side. Her face was all red and twisted and fussy. I just smiled at her. I wished she would come in. 

My aunt shot off a BB. It plinked against a dented old sign. The dog emitted a high-pitched whine and tried to run in the other direction. He tugged with all his old, frail strength against his candy-striped harness. It wasn’t the BB that spooked him. 

I can only go as far as the shadows of the trees extend. When my Aunt comes to see me at dusk she is careful to always return to her cabin before night falls. Sometimes, once it is dark, I will follow her inside and we will sit at her table. She will offer me a cup of tea and I will accept. I don’t drink it, but I like the hot steam on my fingertips. I am weak there, even so close to the forest. 

“Do you remember anything?” 

My aunt has been curious about the woods for as long as I can remember. I know the secrets now, but I will never tell her. It wouldn’t be fair. If she wants to know so badly she has to find out the same way I did.