Date: 2024-07-19 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: When he was a little boy, there was a house behind Alex Lowry's house. Except he was the only one who could see it. Only he could hear the woman singing from within. Decades later, after the pandemic costs Alex his corporate job, he picks up work delivering specialty items to homebound clientele and, against all odds, he realizes he enjoys his new life. His world is simpler. Quieter. Until he once more hears the tuneless, wordless song of the woman from the house behind. Until the cracks in the facade of his simple, quiet life begin to yawn, and a past he thought he had outrun begins to gain o

BEHIND

Bentley Little

Cemetery Dance Publications

Baltimore
ϖ 2024 ϖ

Copyright © 2024 by Bentley Little

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Cemetery Dance Publications

132-B Industry Lane, Unit #7

Forest Hill, MD 21050
http://www.cemeterydance.com

The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN-13: 978-1-58767-971-1

Front Cover Artwork © 2024 by Elder Lemon Design

Digital Design by Dan Hocker

ONE

1

When he was a little boy, there was a house behind their house.

Except he was the only one who could see it.

2

Would things have turned out differently if he had not taken the meeting with the buyers from Target?

Alex Lowry would never know.

Because he did take the Target meeting, which, at the time, seemed a logical thing to do. He was aware that he was on a fast track for promotion, and, as far as he was concerned, showing this sort of initiative not only exhibited out-of-the-box thinking, something the company claimed it prized, but also demonstrated the sort of decisive decision making that was required of a leader. How was he to know that Thompson had already secured a meeting with representatives from Nordstrom’s—and that Thompson’s approach had been fully sanctioned from above?

Alex returned from his nearly two-hour meeting feeling good, with the bones of a very lucrative agreement in his back pocket, only to be told after reporting in that their new line of sneakers was going to be marketed to more upscale clientele as part of a long-term strategy for the company’s transition to high-end sports apparel. The sneakers were not going to be sold at places like Target, Walmart or The Store, but at chic, fashionable and more expensive retailers. Unfortunately, no one had bothered to share the new approach with him, and the result was that what he thought would be perceived as a bold move came across as attempted undermining.

“Thompson set you up,” Britta told him when he got back to their shared office and told her what had happened.

He waved her off.

“You don’t think he’d do something like that? He’s always been jealous of you.”

“I don’t think he’s smart enough to do something like that. This was just a fluke, a series of miscommunications.”

Britta pointed a finger at him across her desk. “Keep thinking that, if you want. But ask yourself: why did Thompson know about this next step while you didn’t? Why’d Greer tell him and not you? Ask yourself that.”

She had a point, and it gnawed at him for the rest of the afternoon. Jennifer, when he got home, turned out to have had a hard day at work herself, so he didn’t bother her with the details of his office politics, but the situation remained on his mind as they ate dinner. She could tell he was distracted, and halfway through a diatribe about a boy who’d disrupted her class during social studies by stabbing his hand with a pencil and then screaming that he had lead poisoning, she stopped short and said, “What is it?”

“What is what?”

“You haven’t been here all night. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that. Spill it.”

So he did. He told her about his solo attempt to corral Target for the new shoe line, and his discovery afterward that the company had decided to move in a different direction—with Thompson out front. Alex sighed, discouraged. “There goes my promotion.”

“You’re reading too much into this,” Jennifer assured him.

“I don’t think I am.”

After dinner, Alex broke out his laptop to do a little research, and Jennifer scrolled through messages on her phone, while a cable channel’s Law and Order marathon played in the background. Early in their relationship, satisfying sex would have balanced out the crappiness of both their days, but tonight she would not have been wet, he would have taken too long to get hard, and they both would have ended up blaming each other, so by unspoken agreement, they stayed on their own sides of the mattress when they went to bed, she reading a book, he falling asleep to a rerun of The Office.

3

As expected, Alex did not get the promotion. Thompson did, speeding past him on that fast track while Alex was shunted into the slow lane.

“I warned you,” Britta said when the announcement was made. “The moment they hired him, the first time I laid eyes on that sneaky bastard, I knew he was going to stab you in the back. That Mr. Nice Guy routine didn’t fool me for a second.”

“Well, it’s too late to do anything about it now.”

“And the better man lost.”

Alex smiled. “You think I’m the better man?”

“Comparatively.”

He’d been counting on the salary increase the promotion would have brought. Jennifer had, too. As a result, they were not only forced to once again postpone plans for having the house painted, but their Santa Fe Christmas vacation became a Southern California staycation, where they took day trips to local places of interest as though they were tourists. At the L.A. County Arboretum, a gaggle of boys and girls ran past them on a trail into a bamboo forest, laughing and screaming, and Alex was afraid that the subject of children was going to come up again, but though the thought was clearly on her mind, Jennifer did not voice it, and for that he was grateful. She was aggressively sexual when they got home, however, pretending she was so overcome with passion that she couldn’t wait until they got to the bed but had to have it there and then on the living room floor. He could tell the urgency was just a ruse to prevent him from pausing to put on a condom, and though he knew she didn’t like it, he pulled out at the last minute and spurted on her stomach, his semen pooling thickly in her belly button. Grabbing her panties from the carpet next to her, she angrily used them to wipe up the mess and then stalked off to the bathroom, slamming the door.

Alex stared up at the ceiling, and for the first time in memory found himself wondering where their relationship was headed. Losing out on that promotion seemed to have thrown him off track, and now even things in his life that he had previously taken for granted felt transitory and unstable.

So where did he go from here?

Returning to work the day after New Year’s, Alex sensed a subtle change in attitude from his coworkers, particularly those like Winters and Greer in senior management positions. It was a junior high school vibe he was getting, as though they’d been talking behind his back while he was off and had decided that he was no longer part of their clique. Ordinarily not a paranoid person, Alex could not help but think that Thompson had been poisoning the waters during his absence, and Britta, when he asked, confirmed that she’d heard a rumor he had not really been on vacation over the holidays but was taking the opportunity to scout around for a job with some other company. She suggested that he quickly and publicly make a big show of his loyalty, and, if possible, trash Thompson.

Over the next few weeks, he actually seemed to make some headway following her advice, and during a collegial conversation with Winters, after an “accidental” meeting in the lunchroom that he’d surreptitiously arranged, Alex happened to remind the vice president that two months ago Thompson had inadvertently allowed a massive consignment of flip-flops to be sent to Big 5’s Midwest procurement center instead of the cleats that had been ordered, resulting in a substantial amount of unnecessary shipping fees. “It could have happened to anyone, of course,” he said, feigning sympathy. “But when you don’t keep your eye on the details…”

Things were improving on the home front as well, and he wondered if that was connected to the situation at work. A lot of men’s identities were wrapped up in their jobs. When that was taken away from them, they felt useless, emasculated, and often lashed out. Had he fallen into the same sort of trap after not getting his promotion? Could the root of his troubles with Jennifer be something as simple and stupid as that?

It didn’t matter. Things were back on track, and when he heard through the office grapevine that Thompson had been called into Winters’ office for a closed-door “talk” and had not come out smiling, Alex felt so good that, when he got home, he suggested to Jennifer that they go out for dinner. “How about Amelia’s? Someplace nice and quiet and intimate. Romantic.”

She shifted her feet uncomfortably. “Why don’t we just get a pizza and stay home?”

He frowned. “What’s all this about?”

“We talked about it last night. I don’t like that virus.”

“It’s not here. Besides, it’s just a stronger version of the flu. There’s nothing for us to worry about.”

“They quarantined a whole city in China. And those people on that cruise ship are all infected. They won’t even let them dock.”

“We’ll be fine,” he told her.

“Still…”

“You’d rather not eat out.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He leaned forward, kissing her forehead. “Pizza it is.”

TWO

1

Alex had never considered himself a “company man,” at least not in the traditional sense, but he always worked hard, did his best and wanted the company to succeed, because he knew that if the business did well, he would do well. He had to confess to feeling a little bit of satisfaction and schadenfreude, however, when he learned that, despite Thompson’s best efforts, the new sneaker line was not going to be sold at Nordstrom’s. At least not this quarter. A temporary new normal was being shaped by the coronavirus, and the retailer was projecting slower sales in the upcoming months, which meant that this was not a time to expand inventory in different directions.

“Overtaken by events,” was Thompson’s lame excuse for the failure, and Alex did his best to let it be known that if he had been handling those initial negotiations, he would have nailed down a contractual guarantee making it impossible for Nordstrom’s to back out no matter what the circumstances.

It was after lunch, and he was attempting to come up with a new description for an older line of jogging shoes, when his desk phone rang. An inter-office call. Alex stared for a second at the blinking light. Business at the company was conducted almost entirely by email these days in order to leave what was still colloquially called a “paper trail,” and he could not remember the last time someone here had called him. He picked up the phone. “Hello?”

He was being summoned by Frank Osbourne, Vice President in Charge of Advertising, for a meeting in the man’s office, and Alex had no idea what to make of that. Osbourne was not in the direct chain of command above him, and he could not think of any reason the VP would need or even want to have a face-to-face discussion.

“Good luck with that,” Britta said when he told her. “If you’re not back in an hour, do you want me to round up a search party?”

“Very funny,” Alex said.

The meeting actually lasted a half-hour, and when he returned to their shared office, Alex walked past Britta’s desk, arms raised in triumph. “I’m back, baby!”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Osbourne put me in charge of getting a spokesperson for the new line. Thompson fucked it up, so he’s been sidelined. I have here the name and contact information of a very respected, very famous, very popular actor who might be interested in endorsing our product. To top it off, he’s an actual GETO winner.”

“A ghetto winner? What’s that?”

“You know. G-E-T-O. Grammy, Emmy, Tony, Oscar. He’s won them all.”

“That’s EGOT.”

“EGOT?”

“That’s what everyone calls it.”

“Since when?”

“I don’t know. I heard it years ago on 30 Rock. The word’s been around for a while.”

“The word? Not only isn’t EGOT a word, but Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony? That order’s totally random. GETO’s in order of importance: Grammy, Emmy, Tony, Oscar.”

She sighed. “Let’s agree to disagree. Go on with your story.”

“Well, with Nordstrom’s falling through, they thought it might be better to build up demand before focusing on supply. So instead of just putting the shoes in stores and hoping people will buy them simply because they’re there, we’re going to get people to want them, demand them, which will cause the stores to fall in line and place orders. Thus, the campaign.”

Britta shook her head. “They’re setting you up. It’s a no-win situation.”

“What do you mean?”

“Athletes sell shoes. Not actors. How is your GETO winner going to convince some teenage boy to buy our sneakers?”

He held up a finger. “That’s where you’re wrong. We’re after the high-end crowd. These sneakers aren’t for adolescent playground players. These can be worn in the office or the gym, the boardroom or the basketball court. Which means we need a classier sort of spokesperson.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing. Because from where I’m sitting, they’re setting you up to fail. Check and mate.”

“Oh, ye of little faith.”

“We’ll see,” Britta said.

As usual, Britta was right. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that no one was going to buy sneakers because they were told to do so by an actor, particularly an actor who was not known for action-y or particularly athletic roles. Not that it mattered. The actor wasn’t interested anyway. He’d done a Bulova watch commercial in Europe and one for some sort of carbonated beverage in Japan, but those were with the stipulation that they would never be shown in the United States. Domestically, he wanted to maintain his artistic credibility by not appearing in any commercials. So he turned them down flat.

When Alex reported his lack of results to Osbourne, the VP did not discuss with him an alternate strategy but simply said, “I find that disappointing.” He gestured for Alex to leave his office. “Dismissed.”

“Told you,” Britta said when he returned. “No-win.”

He sat down at his desk and turned on his computer, staring silently at the screen as it booted up.

Britta cleared her throat, and when she spoke, her voice was uncharacteristically serious. “You know, the governor’s talking about a lockdown. Like they’re doing in Europe. I heard it on the news last night.”

“That’s for, what, fourteen days? It’s probably a good idea. Nip it in the bud so it doesn’t spread.” He looked up at her. “You have a lot of vacation saved up. Even if it’s unpaid leave, you should be fine. Just use your hours.”

“Vivian in Finance says it might be more than fourteen days. She heard two months.”

“So we telecommute, work from home. That’s what they’re talking about, right?”

“They’re talking about more than that. Sales are down. Way down.”

“It’s temporary. Don’t worry about it.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear.”

Despite his blithe reassurances, Alex was concerned as well, particularly after the curt meeting with Osbourne. It didn’t help that when he got home Jennifer told him the district was thinking of closing all the schools for a month.

“How’s that going to work?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to have to make it up in the summer?”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“You’ll still be getting paid, though, right?”

“As far as I’m aware. I mean, they’ve budgeted for the whole school year, including salaries, and I’m pretty sure our contract still applies.” There was a pregnant pause. “Any news about what the company’s going to do?”

“News? No. Rumors? Plenty. Britta seems to think that we might shut down temporarily. But even if we do, I should be able to work from home. Most of my work is done on the computer anyway—the computer or over the phone. There’s no reason I can’t do that from here.”

“The question is,” Jennifer said, “if everything shuts down, if everyone’s temporarily furloughed or whatever, are people going to have enough disposable income to buy fancy high-end tennis shoes? Or are they going to be saving their money, just in case?”

“People are always going to need shoes.”

“They might decide to wear the ones they have a little while longer.”

She had a point, and Alex did some quick calculations in his head. Could they survive on Jennifer’s salary if it came to that? He didn’t think so. Even with both of their incomes, once the mortgage and other monthly bills were paid, as well as intermittent expenses like dental visits and car insurance, and unforeseen expenditures like car problems or last month’s water heater replacement, the amount they had left for discretionary spending was practically nil. There was no way they could maintain their lifestyle on only one salary.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.

But for the first time, he was a little worried.

****

The school did shut down. Or at least the physical campus did. But the decision was made to teach remotely, after a weeklong transition period, and laptops and hot spots were issued to all students who did not already have internet access at home. Jennifer set up a makeshift classroom in the den, and began conducting lessons through Zoom. While she saved at least an hour a day by not having to commute, that was more than offset by the amount of time she had to spend revising her lesson plans for this new medium and tracking down students who did not show up for the virtual class.

His job situation was not so clear cut. Rumors continued to fly, and any questions to management about the immediate future were met with vague and not very encouraging assurances that everything was fine.

Then, suddenly, everything wasn’t fine.

It was a Friday, and when he walked into their shared office and saw Britta’s red eyes, he knew immediately what had happened. Alex’s stomach dropped. She nodded a confirmation, though he hadn’t said anything. “Twenty percent of the staff. Check your email,” she told him.

Feeling numb, he plopped into the chair behind his desk and turned on his computer, bringing up his account. Sure enough, a global message had been sent to all employees explaining that, as a result of substantially decreased orders caused by the pandemic, the company was forced to cut costs and was doing so by initiating layoffs. Another email, addressed specifically to him, informed Alex that he was one of the employees being let go.

“The good news,” Britta said when he looked up, “is that they’re keeping Thompson.”

“You’re joking.”

“I wish I was.”

If he had gotten that promotion, Alex thought, he’d still have a job.

But he hadn’t, and he didn’t. Now he and Britta were both unemployed. “Who else has been let go? Do you know?”

“Mei just texted me. She’s out. And Lucille called me right before you got in. She said her whole department’s gone.”

Alex couldn’t believe it. “Even Steve?”

“Everyone.”

“Holy shit. How are they making these decisions? Just picking people at random?”

Britta shrugged. “Who knows. All I know is: me and you? We’re out of here. We’re gone. We’re history. We’re toast.”

“I guess we’d better schedule our exit interviews.”

“The hell with that,” Britta said. “They fire me and then want me to tell them how great they are?”

“I think you have to or they withhold the benefits you’re owed. You might not even be able to collect unemployment. Besides, you don’t have to tell them how great they are. They’re asking for your opinion. You can trash them. Which I’m pretty sure is what all of us are going to do.”

Britta blew her nose. “It’s not exactly a great time to be job hunting.”

“It definitely isn’t.”

“So what’s your plan?”

Alex sighed. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll put together a resume, blanket the world with it and see what happens.”

2

For the first time in his life, Alex did something he never thought he would have to do: file for unemployment. Because of coronavirus restrictions, he was required to fill out an application online rather than submit it in person, and while that should have made things easier, traffic on the EDD site was so great that it took him fifty-six tries before he could even access the proper form. A generated message informed him that he would be notified by email once his claim had been processed.

Meanwhile, he looked for work, and that in itself was a full-time job. All day long, he was on the computer. He applied for everything available, whether he was qualified for the position or not, but to his increasing frustration did not get a single response.

Days passed.

Weeks.

He still had not received confirmation that his unemployment claim had been approved—there was a massive backlog, Alex was told in a form email when he inquired, and the system was overwhelmed—and he was reduced to checking his email twenty times a day in hopes of learning some news. He had no idea when he could expect to receive his first unemployment check.

Since they were both home, he and Jennifer now ate lunch together, and she inevitably asked him how the morning had gone—a question he’d come to dread.

“The problem is,” he said one day in answer, “no one’s hiring. Plenty of people are firing—I don’t know a single company in the industry that isn’t laying people off right now—but it’s almost impossible to find any open positions. I mean, these are Depression-era numbers.”

“Why don’t we ask my dad?” she suggested. “Maybe he can help. He’s still pretty well-connected, you know.”

Alex grimaced. The last thing he wanted was to go crawling to her father and beg for a job, but he saw the look on her face and reluctantly said, “I guess you can give him a call.”

“I was thinking we could go over there this weekend. We haven’t seen them since all this started.”

“Yeah, but they’re saying you shouldn’t meet with anyone outside of your immediate household.”

“It’s my parents!”

“So what? That means they can’t get sick? Just because you like someone doesn’t mean they’re not infected.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll social distance.”

“They’re saying maybe we should be wearing surgical masks now, too.”

“Those don’t help.”

“Then why do doctors wear them?”

She turned on him. “If you don’t want to see my parents, just say so.”

He didn’t want to see her parents, at least not her dad, but this was one of those situations where it was better to take one for the team, and he backed off. Jennifer immediately got up from the table and went over to the phone to make arrangements.

Alex sat there, listening to his wife’s side of the conversation, which, judging from her casual tone of voice, was with her mom. Jennifer was close to both of her parents, but there was an added element of hero worship in her relationship with her father. It was not entirely undeserved. Her dad was, indeed, a very accomplished man. Aide and then advisor to a slew of prominent Republicans, he’d parlayed his experience into positions with lobbying firms and eventually an influential think tank. During his retirement, he’d acted as a consultant to several politicians and had been a guest lecturer at both USC and UCLA.

He and Alex had never seen eye to eye on politics, but beyond that, the two of them simply disliked each other on a personal level. Her father thought Alex was a lightweight flake, and Alex thought her father was an egotistical bully. The only thing they had in common was Jennifer.

Hanging up the phone, Jennifer smiled. “We’re invited over Saturday for a barbecue. I didn’t mention anything about your job situation. I figure we’ll tell them when we get there.”

“Great,” Alex muttered.

“It’ll be fine.” She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Oops. I’d better get back to work.” She touched his cheek as she passed by. “Don’t worry. Daddy’ll help you find something.”

Saturday morning, they were on the freeway before ten, because it was at least an hour’s drive to her parents’ house in Simi Valley, even when traffic was light, and not only did his in-laws eat early, but her father was a stickler for punctuality. The two of them didn’t speak much on the ride over, and Alex had plenty of time not only to think about what he was going to say, but to imagine all of the ways it could and probably would go wrong—as his interactions with her father usually did. Jennifer, always able to read his mood, seemed to resent his lack of enthusiasm for the visit, and the silence in the car was heavy and tense. Alex attempted to lighten the atmosphere as they pulled onto her parents’ street. “I’ll behave,” he said.

She softened a little. “That’s all I ask.”

“Maybe your dad will be able to find me something.”

Jennifer smiled. “I think he might.”

The barbecue was already on, and they walked around the side of the garage directly to the back yard.

Lighter fluid and charcoal.

It was a smell from his childhood, one Alex recognized instantly, though he had not encountered it in decades, at least since he and most of the world had started using a chimney to light their barbecues. While the acrid tang might not have been pleasant on its own, its sensory association with memories of his youth gave the distinctive scent a nostalgic appeal. Lighter fluid was bad for the environment, of course, and he assumed that was why her father used it.

Rounding the corner of the garage, Alex saw Jim Price, white-haired, overdressed and as arrogant as ever, squirt extra lighter fluid on already-hot coals. A whoosh of flames exploded upward from the barbecue. He put the rectangular Kingsford can down on the ground, then glanced up as he spotted them.

Jennifer immediately ran over to him, throwing her arms around his ample midsection. “Daddy! It’s so good to see you!”

“How’s my little girl?” He kissed her on the forehead, and she laughed and said, “You two catch up,” running over to the patio to hug her mother.

The men greeted each other cordially.

“Jim,” Alex said, nodding hello.

“Alex,” her father acknowledged. “Glad you two could make it.”

Jennifer and her mother had already gone into the house. Alex wished he could go in there with them, but his in-laws were old school: women remained with women, usually inside the house, while the “menfolk” were expected to hang out together outdoors.

Jim moved away from the barbecue and sat down at the redwood picnic table in front of an already-opened beer can. Alex pulled out a bench on the table’s opposite side. After spending the past few weeks at home and going out only to buy groceries, where store shelves were inexplicably empty of toilet paper and bottled water, he felt strange being here. It made him think of a science fiction movie where a small enclave of elites remained protected from the dystopia of the outside world. Because here, in this bubble, it seemed as though the pandemic wasn’t even happening.

“Want a beer?” Jim asked.

Alex nodded. “Sure.”

His father-in-law reached down into an unseen cooler and brought out a can.

“Thanks,” Alex said, popping it open.

Jim took a sip from his own can. “So did Jennifer tell you about her cousin Terry? Calls herself ‘they’ now, instead of ‘she?’”

“Yeah.”

The older man shook his head. “I know we don’t agree on much, but you have to admit that it’s pretty narcissistic to think you’re so important that the rules of the English language don’t apply to you. I mean, I don’t care if you’re a ‘he’ or a ‘she’ or an ‘it.’ You’re still one person. Singular, not plural. This whole ‘they’ thing is just idiotic.”

“Apparently some people don’t consider themselves male or female, so they need a new way to identify themselves.”

“That’s stupid. You might be gay, bisexual, transexual or whatever, but you’re still a man or a woman.”

“Well, Terry considers herself—theirselves—non-binary. That’s the politically correct term.”

Jim put down his beer. “That was us, you know.”

“What?”

“‘Politically correct.’ We came up with that. We invented the phrase.”

Alex sighed. “No, you didn’t.”

“We did. During the Reagan administration. We were tasked with finding a way to make what some people considered racist policies more palatable, to make racism more…socially acceptable.” His hand motion was reminiscent of a gesture made by Marlon Brando in The Godfather, and Alex could not help thinking that the movement was both intentional and well-practiced. “It was a PR problem, really, and we realized that in order to do what they wanted us to do, we had to fracture and marginalize the left.

“I have to admit, our plan was genius. We framed it as a free speech issue. Basically, we persuaded the First Amendment crowd that criticizing hate speech was contrary to the Constitution. It wasn’t, of course. And it didn’t matter that the First Amendment only prohibits government censorship, we convinced them that anyone who condemned racist jokes or bigoted opinions was trampling on Constitutional rights. So…” He spread his hands. “We got the left to fight itself. Free speech advocates against minority activists.”

He smiled, leaning forward. “All we needed was a hook. And that’s where we came up with the term. At that time, being liberal, or what these days they call ‘progressive,’ meant that you thought of yourself as a rebel, in opposition to the establishment. The last thing people like that wanted to be associated with was the political power structure they were supposed to be fighting. So that’s exactly what we did—tied them to the establishment with the term ‘politically correct.’” He chuckled. “It was funny as hell. The phrase itself made no real sense, just sort of implied that their views were in line with the status quo. And the truth was that Reagan was ascendant, so being liberal was actually about as incorrect as you could get, from a political standpoint. But no one caught the contradiction, and the phrase stuck. Hell, it got so much traction that comedians started showing how iconoclastic and intellectually daring they were by proudly referring to themselves as ‘politically incorrect’ and using it as a badge of honor. Our little ploy got them to defend racists, and denounce the people who were denouncing racism. We set up the paradigm that racists had unlimited free speech, while any attempt to condemn racism was the first step toward tyranny. And they bought it! Oh, they were smug, superior and righteously rebellious as they criticized their liberal comrades—not realizing that they were just parroting our conservative party line.” He leaned back. “Worked like a charm. And it’s still paying dividends today.”

“You’re saying that political correctness is all about protecting racists?”

“One hundred percent. Not that I’m racist myself, mind you.” He grinned. “I’m just racist adjacent.”

“So people of color—”

The older man laughed. “That was us, too. ‘People of color.’”

“Now you’re just making things up.”

“I’m not! It was another assignment. Back then, most of the old-timers in the party still called black people ‘colored.’ It was a natural part of their vocabulary. But ‘colored people’ wasn’t acceptable anymore in polite company, and the truth was that minorities had shifted the language away from skin shade anyway. Blacks were ‘African-American’ now. And there were Latinos and Native Americans and Asians. We needed to shift things back, so we sold the idea that any hyphenated American was divisive: African-American, Italian-American, Mexican-American, what have you. We were all just Americans. The problem then is, how do you differentiate? And how do you refer to those sub-groups? So…we reinserted color! Blacks were black again, Latinos were brown. Of course, that still left the red man and the yellow man, and red and yellow remained verboten. So we lumped all minorities together with the phrase ‘people of color,’ our little tweak to ‘colored people.’ Caught on like wildfire, and the old-timers loved it.” He smiled proudly. “Language is a wonderful thing.”

“Like using ‘they’ instead of ‘he’ or ‘she?’”

Jim frowned. “It is not wonderful when it’s misused.” He finished off his beer and threw the can at an open trash barrel on the back side of the garage, missing it entirely. “So how are you two doing?”

It was time to bring it up, and Alex cleared his throat. “This pandemic’s hitting the economy pretty hard—”

“You lost your job.”

It was a statement, not a question, and the implication was that this was what Jim had expected all along, that it would have happened sooner or later because his daughter was married to a mooching ne’er-do-well.

“As a matter of fact,” Alex said with as much dignity as he could muster, “the company has had to cut jobs, and I was laid off.”

Jim shifted his position on the bench. “You putting out your resume?”

“Of course. And I’m on LinkedIn and HandShake and…”

“Are you giving a real resume to real people at real companies?”

“I’m doing it all,” Alex said levelly.

His father-in-law gave him a smug smile. “Then I’m sure everything’s gonna be fine.”

Jennifer and her mother emerged from the house at that moment, Jennifer carrying paper plates and a sack of potato chips, her mom with a platter of chicken drumsticks ready to be grilled. Alex swallowed his snarky response, one sure to have led to an argument that would have probably ended with him storming out and he and Jennifer leaving. Instead, he stood and helped set the table, opening the bag of chips and putting out plates, while Jennifer returned to the house for a pitcher of lemonade. Jim picked up a long pair of tongs and began placing drumsticks on the barbecue, as his wife went off to get cups and napkins.

The presence of the women calmed things down, and the four of them enjoyed a somewhat normal meal, although when the talk moved away from family gossip and turned to the pandemic, it quickly became clear that the two households held diametrically opposed positions on…almost everything. His in-laws agreed with the president’s dismissive attitude that the virus was no worse than the flu and would soon be gone, while he and Jennifer believed the experts and epidemiologists who were saying that things would get worse before they got better.

Jennifer shot him a look, but Alex couldn’t resist getting in a little dig. “You’re probably right,” he said. “I’m sure all those doctors and scientists who’ve spent their entire lives studying infectious diseases don’t know anywhere near as much as a pathologically lying former game-show host.”

“Our son-in-law’s unemployed,” Jim announced to his wife.

“Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes.”

Anticipating Alex’s reaction, Jennifer jumped in. “I thought you might have some ideas, Daddy. For a job. People aren’t really hiring right now, and I know you have a lot of contacts.”

“Well…”

“Daddy.”

Her father met Alex’s eyes and favored him with that smug smile, then turned to his daughter. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Alex casually glanced away, idly looking around the back yard, as though the conversation had nothing to do with him and he had no interest in it. Jim stood and went into the house, possibly to go to the bathroom. Watching him walk away, Alex thought of his own dad…

And immediately pushed the thought away.

As always, they left soon after dessert—a store-bought apple pie—and though Jennifer offered to stay and help with the dishes, her mother told her to go, she’d take care of it.

“I think that went well,” Jennifer said on the way home. “It was nice to see them again.”

“They’d better start being more careful. I’m not sure they understand how serious this thing is.”

“I’ll talk to my mom,” she promised. “Once she’s away from my dad, she’s a lot more…amenable.”

“For the five minutes she’s talking to you. As soon as she hangs up, she’ll be under his spell again.”

“He’s not that bad,” Jennifer said defensively.

“Did you know they were this wacky? As much as I disagree with your dad, I never pegged him for an anti-science guy.”

“I don’t know what’s going on there,” she admitted. “I should probably call them more, keep them tethered to the modern world.” She brightened. “But Daddy should be able to help you find a job.”

“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure he hates me more than he loves you.”

“That’s not fair!”

“He’s also old. His ‘contacts’ aren’t what they once were.”

Alex regretted the words the instant they came out of his mouth, but to his surprise, Jennifer didn’t take offense and immediately lash into him. Instead, she said, “I was thinking you could start looking into temp jobs while you’re waiting. There’s a lot of work-from-home positions out there, and there’s no reason you couldn’t be earning extra money doing something online.”

“Like what?” For some reason, he felt defensive.

“I don’t know. That’s something you’d have to research. But I’m sure there are companies cutting costs right now and giving piecework to independent contractors. You’re good on the computer. There are probably plenty of places who could use someone like you, with your skills and experience. And, who knows, maybe it would lead to something permanent.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” he conceded.

“Better than asking my dad for help you mean.” She smiled teasingly.

“You said it, not me.”

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thanks for going there today. I owe you.”

The silence this time, as they listened to the radio on their way home, was pleasant, not tense.

It was mid-afternoon by the time they returned. Jennifer had assignments to grade, but he was at loose ends, and after getting a bottle of water out of the refrigerator (that chicken had been really salty) Alex found himself wandering into the back yard. There were a couple of bushes that needed to be trimmed, and he should definitely re-stain the back fence, but he was feeling lazy and wasn’t really in the mood to do yard work.

His eyes alighted on their seldom-used Weber in the center of the overgrown lawn, and recalling that fond, familiar smell of lighter fluid and charcoal triggered memories of another barbecue on a long-ago summer day when he was a kid living in Baltimore. He must have been eight or nine, and his cousins from Colorado had come to visit. There were two of them, Sylvie and Josh, and he hadn’t liked either. Josh was older than he was and a bully, and Sylvie was younger than he was and a brat. The adults were all outside, sitting around the picnic table, and though he’d been ordered to play with Sylvie and Josh, his cousins were currently snooping through the desk in his dad’s den, and he wanted to make sure he had an alibi in case they stole something or caused some other problem. They had already broken two of his favorite toys, and Alex wanted to make sure his parents knew he had nothing to do with whatever they were up to right now.

He walked over to the picnic table, grabbed a handful of Doritos and asked if he could have some punch.

Aunt Joan picked a red plastic cup off the stack and ladled out the punch, handing it to him.

“Where’s Sylvie and Josh?” his mom asked.

Alex shrugged.

“Don’t worry,” Uncle Henry said, laughing. “They always find something to keep them busy.”

“Why don’t you go play with them?” his mom suggested.

Alex nodded, but made no effort to do any such thing. Instead, he wandered off on his own, away from the house and further into the lot, past his mom’s roses and the peach tree and the apple tree.

And there it was.

He turned around to glance back at his parents, aunt and uncle for reassurance, but while he could hear them talking and laughing, the picnic table was hidden behind the trees and bushes, and he could not see anyone. Only a sliver of lawn was visible from where he stood.

Feeling cold, he faced forward again, staring at it.

The house behind their house.

He had never been this close before, and standing so near the building left him feeling alone and frightened. Unlike their own single-level residence, the other house was two stories, and its front yard was apparently their back yard, since the façade faced him directly. It was an old-fashioned sort of structure, white with green trim, a red brick chimney in the center of the roof, green shutters on the sides of the windows and a little protruding gable over the raised porch. The kind of house you might see in an old movie or in reading books at school. Sunlight reflected off the windows, turning them into mirrors, and the door remained tightly shut.

A woman lived in the house, although Alex was not sure how he knew that. He had never seen her, could see no one even now, but knowledge of the woman’s existence was a certainty in his mind rather than a conjecture, and that frightened him even more.

Rooted in place, unwilling to move forward but unable to turn back, he realized that he could no longer hear his family. In fact, he heard no voices, no birds, no bugs, no cars driving down the road, not even the airplane he could see passing by overhead. The only sound audible was the voice of a woman, the woman in the house, singing an odd wordless, tuneless song, her voice eerily high and clear.

Who was she singing to?

Him.

Alex shivered. She was singing to him, but not just to him. She was singing to something else, too. Something that lived in the house with her.

Finally finding the strength to break free from his paralysis, Alex fled, running back through the yard, past the trees, past the bushes, to where his cousins were sitting at the picnic table next to their parents, eating the hamburgers his dad had barbecued.

“Where have you been?” his mom asked. “We’ve been calling and calling you.”

“We told them you were in the bathroom,” Josh said.

Sylvie grinned. “Pooping.”

How long had he been gone?

“I didn’t hear you,” he muttered, and sat down next to his mom. His dad, frowning disapprovingly, dropped a burger onto the paper plate in front of him.

“I think he was pooping on the grass,” Sylvie said in her bratty voice. “Like an animal.”

He remained near his mom for the rest of the afternoon, afraid to be by himself, and he was grateful when they cleaned everything off the table and went indoors. He even agreed to play a game of Monopoly with Sylvie and Josh.

And though that summer night was sweltering hot and they had no air conditioning, he’d closed his bedroom window before going to sleep, hiding under the covers to protect himself from whatever was in the other house.

3

Jennifer was in the den, door closed, teaching her class online, and Alex was on the couch in the living room, scrolling through job search websites, when Britta called. “So how’re you holding up?” she asked after they’d exchanged greetings.

“Zooming along,” he said wryly.

“Have you found anything yet?”

“No. You?”

“Actually,” Britta said, “that’s why I’m calling. Don’t laugh, but I’m planning to start a new business, and I’m looking for a partner. I could really use someone with your skill set. And your van. You still have a van, right?”

“I do.”

“Excellent. Now, just hear me out. Right now, everyone’s locked down and staying home. A lot of those people could use someone to buy and deliver their groceries and other household items. It’s a legitimate need that’s not being met, and a big opportunity. My business—our business—would provide this service. I’m thinking of calling it Strait To You.” He could almost hear her blushing over the phone. “You know, because my last name’s Strait. But I’m open to suggestions,” she added quickly.

“Jesus, you’ve been busy.” Alex looked around. “I haven’t even put away the crap from my desk that I took home.”

“You snooze, you lose.”

“So how is this supposed to work, exactly? Explain it to me.”

“Well, there’s Amazon, of course. And a lot of retailers like Target or whatever are offering free delivery or curbside service these days, if you order online. But what about people who don’t want to buy online? Or old people who might not have internet access? Or people who just want stuff from a specific store, like a local boutique or something, and don’t want to buy from the big retailers? They email us, or call us up and give us their list over the phone, or we can even pick up a written list, and then we go out and get it for them. I’ve done the research, and there’s a real demand for this right now.”

“So I’d be a delivery boy.”

“No. Well…maybe. Initially. Just until we get set up. In fact, we’d both be doing it. And don’t worry; it’s safer than it sounds. Contactless for the most part. We’re going full PPE: masks, gloves, face shields, everything. We’ll advertise online, through social media. Then, once we’re established, we can start hiring other people…”

“I don’t know,” Alex said doubtfully. “Delivery boy?”

“You can’t think of it that way. This is a new business startup, and, yes, at the beginning, like all businesses, we’ll be doing almost everything ourselves. But if this grows the way I think it will—and there’s no reason it shouldn’t, given the pandemic—we’ll be…wait for it…management!”

“What about after the pandemic’s over?”

“We’ll see. Maybe people will permanently change their buying habits. Rich people have shoppers, people who buy stuff for them. Maybe regular people will want something like that, too. Maybe they’ll find it more convenient to not waste so much time going to stores when we’re there to do it for them. Or maybe we’ll have to transition to something else. Who knows?”

“But do you actually think you’ll be able to make enough money to pay your expenses? You can’t charge too much, or people won’t want to do it. And if you charge too little, you won’t make a profit.”

“I told you, I’ve researched this. And I’m thinking along the lines of the credit card model. You know how businesses pay a fee to the credit card company to be able to accept their cards and process transactions? Well, I’m thinking we approach different stores, have them pay us either a flat fee or a percentage of each sale we bring them. We’ll be providing them a service by supplying them with customers and delivering their goods. We would also charge the customers for buying and transporting their purchases. Both amounts would be small but together would allow us to turn a profit.”

“You really have thought this through.”

“Yes, I have. And I’m letting you in on the ground floor.”

Alex considered the offer. “Can I get back to you? I want to think about it.”

“Don’t think too long—”

“I know,” he said. “You snooze, you lose.”

“Exactly.”

Over the next few days, he grew more enthusiastic about the project. As Britta emailed over detailed plans, and the two of them discussed specifics, he began to think that this might actually work. He also had no other prospects. Combined with the fact that the only capital outlays were for PPEs, and Britta was footing the bill for that, all he had left to lose was time. And possibly gas money. Jennifer was not quite as optimistic, but her dad had not come through with anything, so she wasn’t really in a position to object.

Britta’s entrepreneurial initiative was something of a surprise to him. They’d been officemates and work friends for nearly four years, and she’d always been smart and hardworking, but he’d never gotten the sense that she was itching to start her own business. She’d always seemed, like him, someone happy to have a stable, well-paying job. But he was impressed with the new Britta and excited to be partnering with her in this venture.

A week later, they were ready to roll. He’d done his part, creating a website using free online tools and putting the word out over every social media platform he could find, but it was still another day before they had their first client. Two clients, actually. Britta had just texted him excitedly that she’d been alerted to an email from a woman who wanted someone to pick up specific kitten food from a specific pet store, when another request for service came in, this one an actual in-person call, a man who needed what he called “sundries” purchased and delivered to his home.

Dispensing with texts, Alex quickly phoned Britta. “How are we going to work this?” he asked her.

“You take the man, I take the woman?”

“Fine by me. What about payment? What do we do about that?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Britta’s initial plan of having merchants foot some of the bill had not really panned out. A small few had agreed to participate, but many others had turned them down. He wasn’t sure this pet store had even been approached—and he didn’t know yet where the man wanted his “sundries” purchased. “We can’t do credit or debit,” she said, “but we do have the PayPal and Venmo accounts set up. They can even pay cash, I suppose, although you should probably get a plastic bag or something to put the bills in—just in case. We’ll sanitize them afterward.”

“No, I mean, what do we charge? These probably aren’t participating stores.”

“I knew what you were asking. I just don’t…” Britta sighed. “For now, why don’t we just charge the customer. The same amount we agreed on. We won’t make anything at first, but once we get established, get some loyal customers, we can raise the rates. And, hopefully, bring in the merchants.”

“Do you think—”

“I don’t know.” He could sense her annoyance. “But we finally have two people interested. Let’s take the win. As far as I’m concerned, this is the beginning of a surge.”

“Maybe not the best word to use right now.”

She laughed, stress relieved. “Point taken.”

“Let’s do this,” Alex said.

The man’s name was David Bostock, and he lived in Whittier, a good fifteen minutes from Alex’s home in Pasadena. Clearly, Britta had not identified circumscribed boundaries or specified for customers the areas they would be serving, and while Whittier might be a financial wash in terms of gas expenses, future forays into Orange County or Long Beach or places further afield could potentially lead to losses. Her planning had been pretty thorough, but this was definitely something they needed to talk about before things started picking up and they found themselves in the weeds.

For now, though, Alex was happy that jobs were starting to come in. Not wanting to disturb her class, he texted Jennifer that he was leaving, even though she was in the next room, and drove to Whittier.

David Bostock lived in a well-maintained older house in a nice neighborhood close to Whittier College and the historic downtown. Alex had called him before driving over, hoping to get the types and brands of all requested “sundries” texted, emailed or at least described to him over the phone, but Bostock had insisted on giving him a written list. Now that he was in front of the man’s house, Alex called again to inform Bostock that he was here, then put on his mask, face shield and latex gloves. It was a good thing he did, because the man who came to the door was wearing no protection whatsoever.

Tall, thin and unhealthily pale, the man opened his screen door and held out a piece of yellow paper folded into a neat square. He attempted a smile. “Here is the list of articles I wish you to obtain for me,” he said. The voice was unnaturally high, but childish rather than feminine, and it came to Alex that the person who stood before him was a castrato.

Did castrati still exist?

Such a question had never occurred to him before, as it had probably not occurred to anyone else this century, but he was pretty sure that just such a person was standing in front of him now. Glad to be wearing gloves, he accepted the list and looked it over: one pound of salt peter, a black candle, a knife sharpener, a gallon of distilled water, one medium-sized bag of bone meal, and a Fuji apple. The man was so strange and the things he was requesting so disparate that Alex couldn’t help but wonder what they were going to be used for. He’d been expecting a typical grocery list, with maybe a couple of small-repair hardware items thrown in, and this bizarre hodgepodge threw him for a loop. It also made him question whether Strait To You would be making any money off this, given the inexpensiveness of the products and the amount of time it would take to hunt down what the man needed.

Helpfully, Bostock had listed the stores that carried each item, so Alex didn’t have to figure out himself where to shop. Still, it took him well over an hour to track everything down, especially since the black candle had to be purchased from a man who made and sold them from the garage of his house in Pico Rivera.

Returning to Bostock’s home, Alex presented the man with his “sundries” and a bill. On the off chance that a customer would want a printed rather than electronic receipt, Britta had ordered old-fashioned receipt books from Office Depot. Of course, Bostock did, and Alex wrote out a receipt, tearing off the top copy and keeping the yellow carbon underneath. Unsurprisingly, the man paid in cash, and Alex was grateful to be wearing gloves as he accepted the grimy bills handed to him. He immediately placed the money in an envelope before awkwardly thanking Bostock for calling Strait To You.

He met up with Britta later over Zoom. Between them, they had cleared ten dollars for nearly half a day’s work, after expenses. It was obvious that changes needed to be made. There were plenty of companies willing to deliver groceries or pick up restaurant orders. If they were to survive, they needed to find their own niche.

It was Bostock and his black candle that showed them the way ahead.

“We’ll only buy and deliver things that are unique,” Britta decided. “Things that you can’t get everywhere. Preferably things that are expensive.”

As the week went on and more customers came on board, they adjusted their business plan. They changed their website, their social media accounts and even their automated phone message. Britta turned down three jobs that would have been quick and easy but would have netted them almost nothing, waiting instead until more suitable customers came along.

Which they did.

And fairly quickly.

By the following Monday, they had twelve clients scheduled for the week, and by the next day three more. Alex’s first job, post-restructuring, was buying artisanal chia-infused dandelion sugar for a couple in Covina. Instructions were texted, which saved time, and Alex set out early for a farm in the City of Commerce, several acres of pasture incongruously situated in an industrial area. It was hidden and difficult to find, obviously one of those properties that had remained in the hands of the original owners’ family as the city grew up around it, and he turned from a major boulevard onto a side street lined with warehouses and shuttered factories. Another turn onto a street where a yellow sign announced NO THROUGH TRAFFIC, and then he was driving down an alley flanked by graffitied concrete walls that opened onto a green field, whose wooden sign identified it as “O’Keefe Farms.”

Alex had called ahead for contactless pickup, and had electronically sent out payment (although he was not sure of the proper etiquette for that. Should he have waited until after he’d picked up the goods before transferring the money?). The containers of sugar, three in all and made to look like small wooden barrels, were on a picnic table from which hung a banner announcing PICKUP. Alex got out of his car, put the three barrels in a cardboard box in his trunk, then waved his thanks in case anyone was watching, before taking off.

It was mid-morning, past rush hour, but an accident on the Pomona Freeway had slowed traffic to a crawl, and he got off after a few miles and took side streets the rest of the way. He’d hoped to be finished with this and on to his next job by ten, but it was ten-thirty before he pulled up in front of the client couple’s rundown tract home. The nature of the purchase had led him to believe he was delivering for individuals more upscale, or at least trendier, but the man who answered the door was decisively middle-aged and had a beefy red face with rolls of forehead folds like a Shar-Pei. His wife, visible in the dim room beyond, was so grotesquely overweight that Alex was not sure she could get up from the loveseat in which she was lounging. Neither wore masks.

Alex put the box down on the porch and stepped back.

“I can use PayPal, right?” the man asked, taking out his phone.

“Sure.” Alex took out his own phone, sending the bill, which was quickly paid.

The man picked up the box. “Thanks. Appreciate it.”

“Call us again if you need anything,” Alex said. “We’re just starting out, so if you feel like giving us a positive review on Yelp…”

“Will do.”

“A quick question,” Alex said. “Dandelion sugar. I’ve never heard of such a thing. What do you use it for? If I may ask.”

The man laughed. “What I do is I mix it with cocoa, milk, salt and pepper, with a few squeezes of orange or lemon. Sounds crazy, but it’s the best hangover cure ever. Delicious, too.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Sometimes I drink it even if I don’t have a hangover. Honestly, it’s the best damn thing I ever tasted. You should give it a shot.” He chuckled. “So to speak. Hold on a sec.” He put down the box and disappeared into the house, turning a corner so that Alex could no longer see him. The woman on the couch gave a slight wave, and Alex waved back.

The man returned with a small sealed baggie. Several spoonfuls of yellowish powder flecked with black lay at the bottom. “Here. Take it home and try some.”

“That’s okay.”

The man must have sensed Alex’s hesitation. “Untouched by human hands. Honestly.” He held out the sealed plastic bag, and against his better judgment, Alex took it.

“Thanks,” he said. He was only accepting it so as not to alienate a potential repeat customer, fully intending to throw the dandelion sugar away at the first chance he got, but after wiping the baggie down with a Wet One and tossing it onto the passenger seat beside him, Alex promptly forgot about it.

His next two clients both lived in Santa Fe Springs. He drove to Monterey Park to pick up some medicinal Chinese herbs for one, then to an off-the-books pet store in Lakewood to get a rare poisonous tropical fish for the other, delivering both in one trip. He’d brought along a sandwich and Snapple for lunch, and he ate in his car by a park, before spending the rest of the afternoon procuring items for customers in the downtown L.A. and Hollywood areas.

He checked in with Britta before heading home. By his calculations, he’d earned over $500 of pure profit for his day’s work, including a healthy $50 tip from one particularly generous customer. She’d done equally well today, and for the first time, Alex thought that Strait To You might eventually be as successful as Britta had been predicting.

It was not until he arrived home that he remembered the plastic bag with the dandelion sugar. In the kitchen, he knew he had milk and cocoa, salt and pepper, oranges and lemons. Everything he needed for the miracle drink. Although it sounded absolutely wretched, he had to admit that he was curious. That dandelion sugar—chia-infused dandelion sugar—was also expensive, and assuming the man was right and it had not been touched by human hands, had been poured or spooned into the plastic bag, it was probably safe to try.

Without making a conscious decision, Alex took the baggie inside, and, not telling Jennifer, hid it on a top shelf in the kitchen. Later that evening, after dinner, while she was taking a shower, he took it down and prepared the hangover cure, using all of the dandelion sugar. Damn if it wasn’t good. He took one sip, then another, then another, and in a few seconds, the entire glass was empty.

Maybe it was connected, maybe it wasn’t, but the dreams he had that night were more vivid and detailed than any he could remember having before. In one, he was a child, but living in California rather than Maryland, and his parents were Jennifer’s parents, not his own. They were at Huntington Beach, and Alex was complaining because the soles of his bare feet were sticky with tar. His left heel was also burned because he had stepped on a still-smoldering piece of wood left over from a bonfire the night before that had only been lightly covered with sand. “Suck it up,” Jennifer’s dad, who was his dad, said, and, weighted down with blankets, towels, umbrellas and ice chests, they walked across the long, hot expanse of sand toward the parking lot. An adult Jennifer, wearing a green string bikini, was standing beneath the outside shower on the side of the cinderblock restroom building, washing sand off her body. Bostock, the castrato, emerged from the men’s room naked. He had no testicles, but his long, thin penis was fully erect, and when Jennifer saw him, she turned off the shower water and lowered herself to her knees, smiling up at Bostock as he approached her.

Then he was an adult again, only he was back in Baltimore, in his childhood back yard, standing alone in front of the house behind their house. It was twilight, and shadows from surrounding trees made strange shifting shapes on the white clapboard. The wind was blowing softly, and in the darkness behind one of the upstairs windows, something shifted. He didn’t know what it was, didn’t want to know what it was, wanted more than anything to run away, but he was rooted in place. There was no noise save the wind, and he could see nothing inside the house, but he knew that the thing on the second floor, the thing in the window, was now coming down the stairs, and after that would walk across the front room—and open the door. He kept his eyes on the door as the seconds passed, his mind calculating where the thing probably was, and as his gaze shifted to the doorknob, the knob slowly turned…

He awoke in the morning with the taste of rich cocoa, tart lemon and sweet dandelion sugar in his mouth, vowing never to drink that infernal concoction ever again.

4

Connie Kawasi, one of Jennifer’s best friends and a fellow teacher, got the virus and had to be intubated—a term Alex had never heard before the pandemic. She was in the hospital for nearly a month, and was eventually released, although she continued to have breathing issues for which she was still being treated. He heard through the grapevine that Thompson had tested positive as well, but true to form, he was asymptomatic and continued to work remotely from home without a problem.

“Figures,” Britta said.

Jennifer was decidedly unimpressed with his new occupation. Alex assured her that after the stress of quotas, deadlines and inter-office politics that had been his daily diet for the past half-decade, he found this job a welcome respite—even with all of the restrictions required amidst a pandemic.

But she wasn’t buying it.

“I’m calling Daddy again,” she informed him. “He should be able to dig you up something.”

“Don’t,” he told her.

“What do you mean? You can’t really be happy doing…this.”

“Actually,” he said, “I am.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I know it doesn’t make sense, but it’s fun. I enjoy it.”

“Temporarily, though. Once things open up again, you’re going back to your real job.”

“I’m not sure I am,” he admitted. “Besides, this is a real job.”

“I mean one with a guaranteed salary or maybe, who knows, defined benefits?”

“We’re starting to do well,” he countered. “Plus, I’m one of the two partners.”

“And one of the two employees.”

“Every business has to start somewhere.”

She looked at him with a mixture of annoyance and forbearance. “We’ll see how long this lasts.”

The pandemic was definitely putting stress on relationships, theirs only somewhat but others far more, and on his rounds Alex occasionally saw things that he probably shouldn’t, private moments between husbands and wives, parents and children. One of the most disturbing was a confrontation between a bullying older man and a young boy in the driveway of a San Marino mansion. The boy had obviously committed some sort of minor transgression relating to the Porsche that the two of them were washing together, and the man was berating the boy unmercifully, calling him a “retard” and a “loser” and a “moron.” Seeing Alex, the man looked over disdainfully, and in a voice dripping with condescension said, “Who are you?”

Alex turned and walked away. He hadn’t been emailed or texted the list of items to be procured—apparently they were so hush-hush that they could only be revealed in person—and he was grateful that he had not yet purchased anything. He could leave with a clear conscience and not be out any upfront money, although Strait To You would definitely lose whatever they would have earned from this job—and judging by the house, that would have been a chunk of change.

Over Zoom that evening, he told Britta what he’d done, and she commended him for it. “I’d like to think I would’ve done the same, but…” She sighed. “It’s possible I wouldn’t’ve been able to resist the potential payout. Do you have any idea what the man wanted you to buy?”

“No clue.”

“C’est la vie.”

Although nothing had happened to her today, Britta admitted that since they’d launched their business, there were more than a few uncomfortable moments she had witnessed as well. She smiled. “Did you ever see anything intimate?”

“Can’t say that I have. I assume you did?”

“It was through a screen door, but yeah. A man and a woman, both naked, and she was sitting on his face. Actually sitting on it. I mean, I’ve heard that phrase before, but to really see it…” Britta giggled. “It looked like he was trying to push her off, like he was being waterboarded or something and having a hard time breathing. I announced myself, and the woman shouted, ‘Just leave it on the porch!’ So I did and left. Hopefully, he didn’t suffocate.”

They both laughed. Watching her through his computer screen, it occurred to Alex that even though he and Britta were out and about in the middle of this lockdown, they hadn’t seen each other in person since the day they were laid off, save for the few minutes when she had come over to drop off his PPE. Despite the fact that they were in business together, their only contact was virtual.

What surprised him was that he had neither noticed nor thought about it until now.

And what did it say about him that he had adjusted so easily to this new normal?

As always, they went over their next day’s itineraries. It was getting to the point where each of them almost had a standardized weekly route. Of course, not every customer required their services often or even regularly. Some wanted monthly deliveries, others were more erratic, requesting items at odd times, so there were always fluctuations. Tomorrow, a new client had pre-ordered a customized crossbow with a supply of twelve titanium-tipped arrows. The crossbow had to be picked up all the way in Orange County at a small company close to Disneyland, which wasn’t convenient for either of them, but since the recipient’s address was closer to Alex’s usual route, he was elected to do the delivery.

“This thing costs five thousand dollars,” Britta said. “Can you believe it? Since he pre-paid and we don’t actually have to do the buying, I quoted him a flat-fee cost of one hundred, with a guarantee that it would be there before noon.”

“No problem,” Alex told her.

It actually turned out to be a bit of a problem. The company did not open until ten and would not allow him to pick up the crossbow earlier, which threw off the timing for two of his other clients. He had no receipt, which necessitated calling Colin Cooper, the customer, for confirmation that Strait To You was authorized to pick up the item on his behalf. To top it off, there was construction on the northbound Santa Ana Freeway, so it was very nearly noon by the time he pulled up in front of Cooper’s upscale ranch-style house in Alhambra.

Parking in the driveway, Alex adjusted his mask and put on his face shield, then took out the wooden box containing the crossbow and arrows. Moving quickly, he went up to the front door and rang the bell, glancing at his watch as he did so. Eight minutes to go.

The tall, well-dressed, blond man who opened the door was looking at his watch as well. “Just in time,” he said cheerfully from behind his black mask. “I was getting worried.”

Alex put down the box and accepted electronic payment for the delivery.

Cooper’s eyes smiled. Alex had no doubt that, behind the man’s mask, his teeth were white and perfect. “I have been waiting for this,” he said. He opened the box and pulled out the crossbow, sighting along its edge. “The engineering on this is amazing. Precision,” he said. “Precision.”

Alex looked at his watch again. “Well, I’ve gotta go. A lot more deliveries to make. If you ever need anything else, you know where to find us.”

“Will do!” Cooper waved his goodbye as he put the crossbow back into the box and brought the whole thing into the house.

Alex skipped lunch, so he wasn’t as behind as he could have been, but it was not until his last job of the day—purchasing and dropping off a trio of anatomically correct male mannequins for an elderly woman in an expensive condo—that he finally caught up completely.

Still, the old lady’s condo was in Glendale and it was rush hour, so he didn’t get home until well after six. In normal times, this would have been the type of day that he’d pick up a pizza on his way home, but they were leery now even of takeout, so Jennifer did all the cooking (although he bought the groceries). Tonight, she was making some sort of shrimp pasta dish that she’d learned about on a Food Network show, and, as the timing was delicate, she didn’t want to start cooking until he was back, even though the ingredients were all prepped and ready to go.

The meal was delicious, and afterward he cleaned up and did the dishes. They’d recorded a bunch of shows that they still hadn’t gotten around to watching, and spent the rest of the evening catching up.

Jennifer had gone into the bathroom to take a shower, and Alex was in the kitchen getting a drink of water, when there was a call from Britta. Ordinarily, he was the one who made actual phone calls. She typically texted. It was also after hours, which was even more unusual. He picked up in the middle of the second ring.

“Turn on Channel 7 news!” she said. “Right now!”

The urgency in her voice startled him, and he quickly ran into the living room, picked up the remote and turned on the TV, switching it to Channel 7.

A female reporter was standing in front of Colin Cooper’s ranch-style house.

“Holy shit,” he breathed.

He was still holding the phone to his ear, and Britta said, “That was your guy, right?”

Alex’s eyes were glued to the screen. In the darkness, illuminated by red and blue flashing lights, paramedics were pushing a covered gurney down the driveway toward an ambulance. “Yeah.”

“He used the crossbow you delivered to kill his mother.”

The reporter provided no additional information, although by morning they’d probably know much more. Alex thought of the cheerful, well-dressed man who’d taken the crossbow out of the box and remarked on its precision. Even then, he’d probably been imagining shooting an arrow into his mother.

“Alex?” Britta said worriedly.

“Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer immediately. He remembered Cooper’s smiling eyes, and how the man said he’d been waiting for this.

How had he done it? Alex wondered. In his mind, he saw an old woman wearing a nightgown and sitting up in bed, with Cooper opening the door, walking in with his crossbow, then aiming and shooting a razor-sharp arrow straight into her chest.

“I’m fine,” he told Britta. “I’m just…shocked. I never would’ve thought this in a million years. He seemed so normal.”

“That’s what people always say afterward.”

“Should we change our policy? Stop delivering things that can be used as weapons? I mean, if I hadn’t brought that crossbow…”

“Is that how you actually feel?”

Alex thought for a moment. “Not really,” he admitted.

“And you shouldn’t. It’s not your fault. If you hadn’t brought the bow, he would’ve killed her some other way. Crazy people are crazy, and we aren’t responsible for what they do with the things we bring. Anything can be a weapon depending on how you use it. I don’t think we should be in the business of telling people what they can and cannot buy.”

He was thinking of the rich guy bullying his son as they washed the Porsche, and Britta somehow knew, because she said, “Just because we’re not going to pass judgment on what people buy doesn’t mean we can’t pass judgment on who does the buying. If someone seems weird or suspicious or we just don’t want to work with them, we don’t have to. Anyone raises a red flag for you? Shine him on.”

Alex smiled, despite the circumstances. “Shine him on?”

“Maybe my slang’s not as up to date as it should be, but you get my drift.”

“Britta?” he said seriously. “I haven’t told you this, but I want you to know how impressed I am with you. What you’ve done here, creating this business, bringing me in, all of it.” He paused. “You’ve got a hell of a lot more on the ball than I do, even more than I thought you did back in our office—and I was pretty impressed with you then. I’m proud to be working with you, and I just thought I should tell you.”

He could tell from the silence on the other end of the line that she was touched, but her voice when she spoke betrayed not a hint of it. “Right back atcha, pardner.”

“Talk to you in the morning?”

“Talk to you in the morning.”

The newscast had moved on to an anti-mask rally at one of the Orange County beach cities, and Alex shut off the television, turned off the lights and walked down the hall to the bedroom, debating whether or not to tell Jennifer. She was already unhappy with his job, believing it far beneath him, and this would just provide more ammunition. In the end, he decided to say nothing.

She emerged from the bathroom naked and freshly shaved, which meant she was in the mood. He wasn’t, but he went along with the program, and to his surprise the lovemaking was not only spectacularly successful, but far more intense than usual, and they both finished at the same time, she screaming with pleasure as he thrust as deep and hard as he could, emptying himself into the condom.

They fell asleep, still entwined.

And he dreamed of shooting her in the forehead with an arrow fired from a crossbow.

THREE

1

For the rest of the tumultuous year, through protests and surges and lockdowns and tentative temporary reopenings, Strait To You continued to do well, well enough to hire two additional delivery people—although he and Britta also kept doing runs themselves, as opposed to merely coordinating and supervising as originally planned. The vaccine rollout began early the following spring, and both Alex and Jennifer got Pfizer shots, Britta Moderna. With more and more people becoming vaccinated, summer approaching and restrictions beginning to lift, he worried that their business would suffer as people returned to their pre-pandemic habits. But to his surprise, there was very little drop-off. Britta was in contact with the owners of three Southern California food and grocery delivery services, all of whom were reporting significant downturns in business over the past several weeks, and she attributed their good fortune to the fact that they were so specialized.

A little too specialized, perhaps.

From his point of view, there seemed to be a bit of mission creep going on. Recreational pot use was legal now in California, and there was one couple who’d contracted with them for delivery of marijuana on a monthly basis—in quantities that had grown increasingly sizeable of late. He hadn’t looked up the specifics of the law, but Alex had a vague feeling that there were restrictions on amounts, and he wondered if he could be arrested for conveying pot in such volume. Beyond that, there was a man for whom Britta had been buying “edibles” from a sketchy street cart in East L.A. Only she had a suspicion that the edibles were not made from marijuana but from something far stronger and quite possibly not legal.

“I’m not asking, though,” she said. “I don’t want to know. See no evil, hear no evil, right?”

He didn’t really agree with that, and it bothered him that they were delivering such things. Not enough to bring it up with Britta. But it was there, in the back of his mind, and he was worried that they stood at the top of a slippery slope.

Still, despite his initial hesitance about being a deliveryman and his minor concerns about the direction in which the business was heading, he’d grown to like the job (as he’d had to remind Jennifer more than once), and what surprised Alex was that the thing he enjoyed most was the glimpse it gave him into other people’s lives. He’d never been much of a gossip or a snoop—in fact, one of Jennifer’s chief complaints about him had always been that he showed too little interest in other people—but he found that he liked learning about individuals’ hidden habits and hobbies. He knew things about people that even their friends might not know. Driving down one street in Pasadena, a street he’d driven down every day for the past ten years, now a street where he’d made purchases and deliveries for a number of clients, he saw not only a block of houses followed by a block of strip malls and gas stations, but, behind those façades, the office of a dowdy female chiropractor who bought sex toys by the gross, the home of a man who had a backyard pool stocked with piranhas to whom he fed weekly shipments of farmed squirrels, and a happy, wholesome family who had an unhealthily large and expanding collection of extraordinarily lethal hunting knives.

He and Britta were meeting three times a week now, in person, and while they still didn’t have an actual office, just a table at a coffeeshop near Britta’s house, these morning confabs definitely made Strait To You seem more like a real business. Once a week, they met also with Lonnie and Rodrigo, their new employees, to pass out paychecks and get the lay of the land, to find out how things were going from their point of view.

After giving their two employees assignments at a Monday morning meeting in late May, Britta waited for them to leave, then looked at him over her coffee. “How’s your social life these days?”

He laughed. “What social life?”

“Right?” She smiled sadly. “I just realized that, aside from you, Lonnie and Rodrigo, I don’t really see anyone other than clients. I mean, I text a few friends. Sometimes I call one of them or they call me. But I’ve gotten out of the habit of going places, you know? I don’t really do anything anymore. Not that I was a big party animal to begin with.”

“Join the club,” Alex said. “Jennifer’s gone out to lunch with one of her friends a couple of times, but we’re pretty much still hibernating.”

“Turns out most of my social life revolved around work.”

“Mine, too.”

“The modern dilemma.” Britta was silent for a moment. “I hear they’re hiring again. Natika sent me a text. She heard it from Kim.”

“Are they asking old employees back? Because, if so, I haven’t gotten the call.”

“Me, either,” she admitted. There was a long pause. “Would you be…interested in going back? I mean, if it was offered?”

He looked at her. “Would you?”

“Not really,” she admitted. “I like where I am right now. Where we are right now.”

“Me, too,” he told her.

Britta smiled, and he could hear the relief and gratitude in her voice. “Good.”

****

Jennifer’s parents had not been vaccinated (of course), and the fact that no one they knew personally had died or even gotten sick made them feel that the severity of the virus had been exaggerated and over-hyped. Alex overheard numerous phone conversations in which Jennifer tried to appeal to their sense of reason, reminding them of the hospitals so overflowing with critical patients that triage tents had to be set up in their parking lots, but feelings and beliefs outweighed intellectual arguments, and both her mom and dad were fully down the rabbit hole with dogmatic and conspiratorial anti-science attitudes.

It was why Jennifer had not seen her parents in person since the barbecue over a year ago, despite all the guilt trips they’d tried to lay on her. He was proud of her for staying strong, but now that both of them were vaccinated, she had promised her mom that the two of them would come over.

They decided to go on a Sunday, since it was his day off and, theoretically at least, the day with the least amount of traffic. As soon as Alex awoke, however, there seemed something wrong with the morning. The sounds, the sunlight, none of it connected the way it was supposed to. It was as though the visuals of one movie had been incorrectly synced to the soundtrack of another. There were no clouds, but the sky was darker than it should be, and all of a sudden, he didn’t want to go to his in-laws’ house today.

Or, rather, wanted to go even less than he had before.

But there was no way to explain to Jennifer his feeling that the day was somehow…off. Hell, it sounded stupid even to himself—so he kept quiet and said nothing.

There was indeed very little traffic, and it was still mid-morning by the time they reached her parents’ house. The moment they pulled into the driveway, her mom came running out, overjoyed to see Jennifer again in person. She hugged her daughter, sobbing. The two men held back, nodding to each other from afar. Her dad seemed even more smug and self-satisfied than ever. Alex didn’t care to know why, so he focused his attention on the new car in the driveway that his in-laws had purchased sometime during the pandemic.

Jennifer gave her dad as big a hug as she’d given her mom, with fewer tears, and all four of them walked inside.

Her dad fixed him with a look of supercilious condescension. “Jennifer tells us you still haven’t found a job. It’s been, what, over a year?”

Her mom elbowed him sharply.

“You heard wrong. I’m actually a partner in a very successful startup.”

“You mean your part-time delivery job?”

Alex smiled thinly. “Coming from government work and living off the public trough all those years, it’s probably hard for you to understand what it’s like being an entrepreneur.”

That hit him where he lived. Jim’s face turned red, and he looked like he was about to explode, but Jennifer quickly headed off any conflict by saying, “Excuse us,” and ushering Alex into the kitchen.

That felt good. He’d never been as confrontational with her dad as he’d wanted to be, and he had to admit, it was liberating to finally respond in kind to her old man’s insults instead of pretending to ignore them.

Jennifer cornered him by the refrigerator. “You be nice,” she whispered, but she wasn’t mad. She was so happy to see her parents again that he doubted if anything could ruin her mood today, and he gave her a quick kiss and promised to behave.

Her father must have gotten his own lecture while they were out, because when they returned to the living room, glasses of water in hand as proof that they’d gone into the kitchen for a reason, the old man was silent and subdued. Jennifer’s mom took the conversational lead, asking the neutral question of what plans the district had for the next school year, whether it was going to be in-person, virtual or a hybrid of the two, and the talk gradually widened to include not only Jennifer and her mother but all four of them.

There was no barbecue this time—Jennifer’s mom made spaghetti for lunch, with a bundt cake for dessert—but after eating, they all went outside to sit on the patio. The weather was pleasant, and everyone made an effort to get along, but when Jennifer’s mom went inside to clean up and wash dishes, and Jennifer followed, leaving him alone on the porch with her dad, Alex stood and said he was going to stretch his legs and walk around the back yard.

Her father lit a cigar and looked away, disinterested. “Knock yourself out.”

Alex stepped off the porch. His father-in-law was still pissed, which meant that Alex had really gotten to him, and that made him feel good as he strolled slowly across the grass. He walked by the tree Jennifer had grown from an avocado pit when she was little that had never yielded a single avocado, and the dwarf lemon tree that was so productive it gave them more fruit than they could use. Past the trees—
was a house.

A house behind her parents’ house.

Alex’s heart started pounding.

This wasn’t possible. Their back yard might have been bigger than Alex and Jennifer’s, but it wasn’t that big, and he knew that beyond the two trees was only another small section of lawn, a couple of bushes, and a wooden fence marking the boundary of the property.

Yet here was a house.

He stood rooted in place. It was a single-story structure, like her parents’ residence, but there was something off about it. Just as he had sensed something wrong in the makeup of the morning when he awoke, looking at the house now made Alex feel ill-at-ease. There weren’t as many windows as there should have been, the door was off-center, the roof was pitched a little too sharply and everything was just slightly…askew.

The not-quite-right house frightened him, and he wanted to turn away but instead found himself moving toward it. He thought of the house behind their house in Baltimore and the woman who lived inside, and he paused for a moment, listening for something—
a wordless, tuneless song

—but no sound came from within.

Slowly, carefully, keeping an eye on it the entire time, Alex walked around the structure, surprised that he was able to do so. In his mind, the house had not been a real building but a false front, and he had not expected it to have three dimensions. The solidity of it all did not lessen his unease, however, and he found himself beginning to hurry as soon as he was at the rear of the house and could no longer see his in-laws’ yard. His gaze focused on one particular window, located in a spot where a back door should have been, a window too dark to see through but behind which he felt someone—something—watching him. Speeding up, Alex went from a rushed walk to a full-fledged run, and he did not slow down until he could again see Jennifer’s parents’ patio past the lemon and avocado trees.

Not daring to glance back, keeping his eyes on the yard ahead of him, Alex strode quickly past the trees, past his father-in-law still smoking in his patio chair, and into the house, where Jennifer was helping her mother put plates into the dishwasher. He was breathing heavily. “Come here,” he said. “Quick. I have something to show you.” He turned to her mom. “Can I borrow your daughter for a second?”

She waved him away. “Go ahead. I’ve got this.”

The house was still there.

He pulled Jennifer with him across the back yard, between the trees, and stopped, pointing. “You see this, don’t you? It’s not just me?”

“What?” She looked at him.

“That house!”

“Oh, that. Yeah, of course.” She said it as though there were nothing unusual going on.

“How can it even be there? This is your parents’ yard. There’s supposed to be a fence right there. And then the alley. How can there be a whole house?”

“There just is.”

“It wasn’t there before!” he insisted.

Jennifer seemed confused. “It had to be.” But she was frowning, and he knew that some part of her was finally starting to understand, finally realizing that it wasn’t normal to have another house behind her parents’ home, finally sensing the discrepancy in size between what the back yard was supposed to be and what it currently was.

“Do you remember it being there when you were little?”

“We didn’t live here when I was little.” He heard the relief in her voice, as though the fact that she’d lived elsewhere meant that the mystery of the house was no longer something that concerned her.

Alex looked behind him. He hesitated bringing her father into this, but the man wasn’t doing anything except sitting on the patio smoking his stupid cigar, and Alex clearly wasn’t getting anywhere with Jennifer, so he said, “Can you ask your dad to come here? I want to show him, too.”

He expected her to run back to the patio, but instead she yelled, “Daddy!”

“Coming!” he called, and a moment later, he was walking across the grass toward them. He’d left his cigar behind (probably because he knew Jennifer didn’t like it), and he stood next to her, on the side opposite from Alex. “What, hon?”

“That house,” Alex answered. He didn’t bother trying to explain all the things that were wrong with the building. Its very existence was wrong, and he was hoping her father could see that, but, as with Jennifer, he was unmoved by the sight.

“What about it?”

“It’s another house. In your back yard. Your ordinary-sized back yard.”

“Yes?”

Fear had turned to frustration. Neither of them seemed able to recognize what was happening. Alex’s gaze settled on the improperly placed front door, and he was suddenly overcome with a certainty that the person—
woman

—inside the house was lurking behind that door, waiting for him.

“Stay here,” he told Jennifer and her dad. “Don’t move.”

He rushed back to get her mom, his overwrought manner convincing her to accompany him. He brought her mother outside to where Jennifer and her dad were standing…and the house wasn’t there. It was gone, and the yard had returned to its regular dimensions. There was only the fence now, and the alley behind it.

“What happened?” Alex demanded. “Where did it go?”

“What?” Jennifer asked.

“The house! The other house!”

“I’m not sure,” she said, frowning.

She glanced over at her father, who shrugged his shoulders. “I think it used to be there,” he said, pointing in front of him.

They were forgetting already. Alex hadn’t forgotten a thing, and he reminded them that just a few minutes ago, the back yard had extended much further and there had been another house at the spot where they were looking.

“Was it white?” Jennifer asked uncertainly.

“Yes!” Alex said.

But the memory was fading, and by the time they returned to the patio, it had vanished completely, and he was the only one who remembered any of it. Her mother was completely confused.

They left soon after, an awkward departure that had Jennifer feeling irritated with him. She drove home, maintaining a cone of silence around her, and periodically he would glance in her direction.

How come she didn’t remember seeing the house? he wondered.

And how come he did?

2

Thought you might want to take this one yourself.

Alex read Britta’s text, as well as the name, number and address of their newest client: Hugh Winters.

Illustrious Footwear’s vice president.

The man who had decided to keep Thompson and let him go.

He showed the text to Jennifer, who said, “What do you expect? It was only a matter of time before someone you knew hired you to be their delivery boy.”

In a metropolitan area of…what, ten million people?…that was certainly not the case, but she’d said it to shame him, and, not for the first time, he thought there was more than a little of her father in her. While Alex did feel some embarrassment about working in such a menial capacity for one of his former bosses—and knew he could pawn off the job to Lonnie or Rodrigo if he wanted—this was a chance to see Winters in his real life, catch a glimpse of him in his natural habitat. Maybe Strait To You was going to be picking up a cache of German pedophile magazines for him. Or a testicle-crushing chastity belt. Or some type of exotic penis extension cream.

There was no way Alex was going to pass up this opportunity.

Using the company’s name and not his own (thank God he had a blocked number), he texted Winters to see what was needed. To his disappointment, the man was only requesting some rare Asian flowering plants. His usual nursery had no idea how or where to find them, and Strait To You had come recommended as a business able to acquire and deliver almost anything.

It was a two-day job. Finding the plants was not particularly difficult, but they were grown in a private greenhouse in Arcadia that was owned by a retired horticulturist. Alex paid for the plants ahead of time and sent Rodrigo to pick them up. He could have had the other man deliver them as well, but he wanted to do that himself, so he arranged to stop by Rodrigo’s house late in the afternoon to pick them up, and the next day drove them to Winters’ place.

The vice president lived on the outskirts of Brentwood, with a house bigger and a yard smaller than Alex was expecting. There were two luxury cars taking up most of the driveway, and signs posted every twenty feet or so informed him that no parking was allowed on the street. He pulled up the driveway ramp as far as he could, which blocked the sidewalk but was probably the best option if he wasn’t going to stay too long.

He texted Winters that he had arrived before getting out of the van, then walked around the back of the vehicle and opened the rear doors. There were four plants in two boxes: two tall stalks with green branches and purple buds spiraling up the sides, and two flowering shrubs with neon blue blooms. He picked up the first box and was carrying it up the driveway, along the side of Winters’ two cars, when the vice president emerged from the house.

He’d gained weight over the past year and a half and was sporting the by-now familiar pandemic belly. Alex had actually lost weight, so that made him feel good, but delivering plants to this expensive house out of his crappy van embarrassed him more than he’d thought it would, and he wondered whether he should have let Rodrigo do the job.

If this had been a delivery to a client he did not know, Alex would have said, “Here’s your order, sir.” But there was no way he was going to call Winters sir, so he simply placed the first box at the man’s feet, and said, “I’ll be back with the other plants.”

Winters was looking at him oddly. “Oh my God,” he said. “Lowry?”

“Yes,” Alex acknowledged.

“I didn’t recognize you with the mask. You work for the delivery company now?”

“I’m one of the owners. Britta Strait and I started this business when you let us go.”

Winters nodded, chuckling. “Strait To You. I get it now. So how’s it going?”

The man was acting like they were bosom buddies, which Alex found extremely irritating. They had never chatted back at Illustrious Footwear. They hadn’t even liked each other. And it was Winters’ fault that he no longer had that job. The last thing he wanted to do was stand here now and pretend they were pals. “That’ll be four hundred dollars,” he said. “One sixty-five for the two Vietnamese plants, one eighty-five for the Thai plants, fifty for purchasing and delivery. How would you like to pay?”

“Check,” Winters said. “Come inside for a sec and I’ll write one out.” He leaned down and picked up the box closest to him. “Grab that other one there and help me bring it in, would you?”

Alex did so, noting how opulent the foyer was. Winters had already placed his box on the tiled floor in front of a decorative table, and he closed the door as Alex put down the plants he was carrying.

“Let me get my checkbook,” Winters said. He walked around the corner, while Alex remained in place. Peering deeper into the house, he saw a beautiful dark-skinned, black-haired woman lounging on an expensive couch, looking at her phone. Winters’ wife? She almost had to be, but she was at least thirty years younger than he was, and even from this far away, Alex could tell that she was far out of Winters’ league. Did men like him ever recognize things like that? he wondered. Or had privilege so blinded them that they accepted anything good that came their way as their just due?

Winters returned and handed him a check, having added an extra ten for a tip. As much as he hated to do so, Alex thanked the man. “Do you need a receipt?” he asked.

Winters waved him away. “Email it to me when you get a chance. No hurry.”

The two of them walked back outside.

“Can I ask you something?” Winters said, closing the door behind him. “Off the record?”

“There’s no record,” Alex said. “I’m not a journalist. And you can ask me anything.”

“I was just wondering. If I asked you to pick up something private for me, would you be able to do it?”

“That’s all we do,” Alex told him. “Everything’s private.”

“I mean just you, not Britta or anyone else. Kind of an off-the-books thing. There’s something I’d rather my lady not know about and I’d prefer you not to share with anyone on your end.”

This was what he’d come for.

Alex nodded. “What is it?”

“Nothing at the moment. But if I text you, you’d be able to get things and deliver them, and no one else would see the texts?”

“That’s right. It’s completely confidential. But if you want something—”

“Don’t worry, it’s not illegal,” Winters said, anticipating where he was going.

“Just…embarrassing?” Please, Alex thought. Let it be so.

“Not even that. It’s merely private.”

Disappointed, Alex nodded. “I can do that.”

Winters walked him to his van. “I always liked you, Lowry, and I’m glad to see you’re doing well. I knew you’d land on your feet.”

Bullshit, Alex thought. And if you liked me so much, why did you lay me off? But he nodded in acknowledgment and, before getting into the front seat, said, “Just let me know if you need something.”

What that something could be, he had no idea, but possibilities continued to occur to Alex throughout the day, some ordinary, some exotic, some appealing to his sense of fairness more than others.

By now, he had his routes down to a routine. He even knew his regular clients by name. Today was the first Tuesday of the month, so he delivered a month’s supply of a mysterious anti-aging cream that he was pretty sure was not FDA approved to Kristen Kamata, a weekend anchor on Channel 5, before dropping off a crate of dried herbs available only from a single vendor in Chinatown to the back door of a mansion in Beverly Hills owned by tech mogul Sakerchen Patel. Yesterday, he’d called several private dog breeders, as well as Joe Morello at the county animal shelter, and found two young Pomeranians and a French poodle, so today, he picked up the puppies and brought them to the large Tudor-style house of John Pinkner, a veterinarian in Burbank. His assumption was that the man was reselling the dogs through some sort of private pet adoption business, which was probably illegal, but it wasn’t Alex’s place to judge.

Still unhappy that he showed no interest in upgrading to a “better” job, like the one he used to have, Jennifer had been lately (and rather too obviously) attempting to convince him that he was going to get tired of doing such tedious, uninteresting, monotonous work. She started in on him again when he arrived home and described his day. “Helpful hint,” she said. “If your job involves a route, it’s not going to end up being satisfying.”

But it was, he told her. And the fact was that even his most predictable days had interesting parts to them.

“There’s a hell of a lot more variety than there was at Illustrious,” he said.

Jennifer tried a different tack. “I clicked on your website yesterday. It was pretty impressive. You could probably get work designing other companies’ websites.”

“We have our own company.”

“I mean a real company, not just you and Britta driving around to stores and making deliveries.”

“We have two other employees.”

“Still.”

“And we’re not just delivering items. A lot of the time now we’re sourcing them as well. People tell us what they need and we find it.”

“I’m just saying, it’s a good website—”

He cut her off. “Thank you.”

She gave up after that, but he knew it was one battle and not the war, and he had no doubt that she would bring it up again.

In the morning, Alex met with Britta at the coffeeshop and gave her the rundown on his encounter with Winters.

“So what do you think he wants you to get for him?” she asked. “And why’s it so hush-hush?”

“I have no idea,” he admitted.

“I always hated that guy.”

“Who didn’t?”

“He say anything about Thompson?”

“No. And I didn’t ask.”

“He recognized you, though.”

“Yep.”

“Did he say anything about me?”

“Nope.”

“I always hated that guy.” Britta finished the last of her coffee. “Keep me up on what happens.”

“You know I will.”

His first stop that morning was the home of a new client. It was the rear unit of a duplex located in an arroyo-adjacent neighborhood in South Pasadena that Alex had never noticed before, although he’d driven past it many times on his way to work at Illustrious when the freeway was crowded and he was forced to take side streets. The person requesting their services had not provided a first name, only a last name and an initial—B. Eames—so he didn’t know if he was dealing with a man or a woman. He also had no idea what he would be delivering, since the person wanted to give him instructions in person.

The duplex was nicely maintained and looked like something out of an old movie, the type of place where Laurel and Hardy might show up to do work as repairmen in a comedy or a doomed aspiring actress might live with her roommate in a film noir. He walked down the short sidewalk to the rear unit, and was about to knock, when the door opened, revealing a short hobgoblin of a man.

Alex gave a small involuntary start. He’d gotten used to seeing some odd people on the job, but this dark, misshapen figure was another level of strange. Looking away from the twisted face, he wondered if some of their customers hired Strait To You in order to keep from going out in public.

It caused him to imagine a secret, hidden world existing behind the façade of ordinary society.

Like the house behind their house

He pushed that thought away.

Maintaining his professionalism, Alex introduced himself. The man—Mr. Eames, he wanted to be called—had several questions about Strait To You, questions which were answered on their website, but Alex politely responded anyway. The conversation between them was perfectly normal, but something about the man made him feel uneasy, and he was glad not to be invited inside the duplex.

When all was said and done, Mr. Eames wanted Alex to buy and deliver an antique toy train set he had seen in a Colorado Boulevard collectibles shop over a year ago, before the start of the pandemic. The problem was that the man didn’t know the name of the shop and had only a vague idea of where it was.

Making an executive decision, Alex determined that it would be best to charge Mr. Eames fifty dollars ahead of time for his work, since even if Alex could find the store and if it hadn’t gone out of business, there was no guarantee that the train set would still be there. The money could be applied to the total purchase and delivery charges, and, if he found nothing, at least he would still get paid for his time.

As it turned out, the shop was still there, as was the train set. Both were fairly easy to find, and forty-five minutes later, Alex was back at the duplex, the big box in his hands. The person who answered the door this time was completely different from the man he had initially encountered. Tall and blond, he looked like an Aryan bodybuilder. Alex frowned, putting the box down. “Excuse me,” he said, “I’m looking for Mr. Eames.”

“It’s me.” The man crouched down to read the lettering on the front of the box. “That’s the one! You found it!”

Behind the man, Alex saw a room that was completely empty save for a single metal folding chair and, next to the chair, a dead potted ficus.

“So what’s the damage? You said the fifty would be deducted from the total, so what do I owe you?”

Alex was confused. The man was behaving as though he was the same Mr. Eames encountered earlier, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Who was this guy? A brother? A roommate? A lover?

It wasn’t his place to ask, so Alex just quoted the price, handed over a receipt, and took the cash that “Mr. Eames” paid him. Thanking him again, the man carried the box into the empty duplex and closed the door.

It was these one-off jobs, Alex thought, more than the regular customers, that were often the weirdest and most interesting.

On the street, his van wouldn’t start. He turned the key in the ignition and heard only a short dead click. The radio was on, so it probably wasn’t the battery. It could be the starter, but he was only guessing, since he knew almost nothing about cars. The only thing to do was call AAA, but before he did that, he called Britta to let her know what had happened. He had no idea how long he would be out or when he would have a working vehicle, so he forwarded her a list of all of today’s clients, and she said that between her, Lonnie and Rodrigo, they’d take care of it. The only problem was that he had a shipment of rare African spices in the back of the van that he’d picked up yesterday from an importer in Little Ethiopia and which needed to be delivered this morning to a celebrity chef’s restaurant in the mid-Wilshire district. Alex told her that as soon as he was towed to his usual mechanic’s garage, he’d text her and let her know she could come and pick it up.

As it happened, the problem with his van was a low battery. It had enough juice in it to play the radio but not to start the engine. A jump from the AAA guy, however, and everything was working again. He texted Britta that he’d be able to deliver the spices himself before getting the vehicle looked at, and he did so, leaving the engine on as he made the delivery in case the van died again. Afterward, he drove to his mechanic’s and had a new battery put in. That took a whole ten minutes, and suddenly he had the rest of the day free.

He could contact Britta, Lonnie and Rodrigo and take back some of his work, which was exactly what he planned to do, but before that, he decided to surprise Jennifer with lunch and stopped off at Whole Foods to pick up some corn chowder. They did not ordinarily shop at the store—the prices were way too expensive—but Jennifer loved the chowder, and Alex thought it would be nice to give her a treat.

Inside, he went directly to the self-service section of the grocer’s eatery, where he scooped up some of the hot, thick soup and ladled it into two pint containers. He paid at the counter, and the cashier put the containers in a brown paper bag with stiff twine handles. Walking toward the front of the store, he encountered an unfriendly woman standing with her basket in the middle of an aisle, eying her fellow customers with an expression of undisguised hostility. Her gaze landed on Alex. The muscles around her mouth tightened. “Why are you still wearing a mask?” she demanded.

“It’s a free country,” he replied calmly. “I can wear what I want.”

“You don’t have to wear a mask anymore!”

“And you don’t have to wear that ugly blouse. Yet for some reason you do.”

The woman’s wide, crazy eyes got even wider and crazier, and he instantly regretted engaging with her. She started yelling at him, and her mouth opened so wide he could see that one of her back teeth was missing. “Who do you think you are with that mask? What are you trying to prove?”

“Are you trying to cancel me?” he goaded her. “That’s the problem with you people. Cancel culture.”

“Y-you’re the one who wants to cancel me!” she sputtered.

He smiled at her. “Have a nice day.”

He knew it was cruel, but Alex felt good as he walked away. He’d infuriated her while she hadn’t rattled him at all, so he was pretty sure he’d won the fight. He braced himself for more yelling, an attack from behind, but there was nothing, and he walked through the doorway outside.

How had things gotten to this point? Alex wondered. Ten years ago, five years ago even, there was no way he’d be arguing with a woman in a store over public health measures. Or over anything, really. He’d have simply bought what he came to buy, and, save for maybe a polite exchange about the weather as they stood in line, the two of them would have had no contact at all. But political differences had seeped so far into everyday life that even a trip to the store now involved confrontations with belligerent strangers.

Jennifer was happy with the corn chowder but not with the car problems. “A new battery? That costs—what?—a day’s worth of work? Two?”

“Not quite,” he said, but her estimate was actually pretty close. “Besides, the battery would’ve died no matter what.”

“Not if you weren’t driving so much.”

She had a point, and he made a mental note to talk to Britta about working in some type of vehicle allowance to compensate for all the wear and tear on their vehicles.

Jennifer pulled the cardboard lid off her soup container and took a plastic spoon out of the bag. “Daddy says he can set you up with a job interview for an investment firm. One of his friends is on the board.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I asked him to.”

“Why?”

“Someone around here has to show initiative.”

“I told you, I’m not interested. And an investment firm? What makes me qualified for that? Working in the promotion and distribution of athletic footwear? Oh, I know: my current job as delivery boy.”

She glared at him. “I was trying to do you a favor. We both were.”

Alex put his unopened container back in the sack and stood.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Jennifer demanded.

“I gotta go back to work,” he said, and walked away.

3

It had been a horrible summer, with wildfires all over the west thanks to the heat and drought. But Alex woke up one Wednesday to actual rain, and while the presence of precipitation should have been cause for celebration, the only thing he could think about was how difficult it was going to be to drive and deliver in the downpour.

He and Britta were supposed to meet this morning, but he texted her instead. She, too, was uncertain how the rain would affect operations—this was their first test—and suggested that they meet after work rather than before. Alex readily agreed.

He was supposed to pick up an abandoned black Labrador for Jeff Pinkner, the Burbank vet, but that seemed awkward and inconvenient on a day like today, so he called Joe Morello at the county animal shelter, asked Joe to hold the animal until tomorrow, then called Pinkner and told him the animal would be delivered a day late. The vet wasn’t happy, but Alex said that it was the fault of the rain and there was nothing he could do about it.

His first client that morning was a weird one. Several days ago, he had been emailed directions to a small business in an unincorporated area of the county between two foothill cities, a company that produced oleander oil. Alex had never heard of such a thing—in fact, he’d always thought that oleanders were poisonous—and he wondered what such a substance might be used for.

To kill someone?

He assumed not, but he’d been charged with picking up a gallon of the stuff. The order had been prepaid. All he had to do was bring it back to the client, who for some reason was offering to pay Strait To You twice their quote.

That too seemed suspicious, but Alex had no concrete proof that anything out of the ordinary was going on, and in his mind he put down the offer of extra pay to the eccentricities of a wealthy oddball.

He’d certainly met a number of people who fit that description over the past year.

There was no signage on the tan building, just as there was no name for the company listed in the email. But there was an address painted on the upper right corner of the building’s façade, and it matched the one he had been given. He parked in front, next to a beat-up Mercedes and a new Dodge pickup. The rain had stopped, for the moment at least, and he left his umbrella in the van as he got out. The metal door was the same color as the concrete wall, and as there was no buzzer and no handle, Alex simply knocked loudly.

He waited for several moments, and was about to knock again, when he heard the metallic sound of a bolt sliding. The door was pulled inward, and in the opening appeared a short, well-muscled man in a stained gray uniform. The man was wearing a scratched and cloudy face shield, but Alex did not think it was a coronavirus precaution. He was pretty sure it was for protection against hazardous materials inside the plant, as through the open door wafted a harsh chemical odor unlike anything he had ever encountered, a stench so strong he felt as though he might get cancer just from smelling it.

“What’s your name?” the man asked before he could introduce himself.

“Alex Lowry. I’m here to pick up a gallon of oleander oil for Dennis Johns.”

“Are you?” the man said.

He wasn’t even sure how to answer such a response. “Yes, I am.”

“For Dennis Johns?”

“That’s right.”

The man seemed disinclined to trust him, and after several seconds of staring at each other, Alex said, “Maybe I could speak to the owner?”

“You are.”

After another round of staring, Alex broke out his phone and shared the email from Johns. That seemed to finally do the trick, and Alex watched the man disappear behind a series of metal tanks with a promise to be back. There seemed something hard and slightly shady about the business owner, and once more Alex wondered about the purpose and provenance of oleander oil. He heard people shouting to each other somewhere within the plant’s interior, followed by the sound of coarse laughter, and several minutes later, the owner returned without his face shield, carrying a white plastic bottle that looked like a repurposed milk container.

“Here you go.”

Alex accepted the bottle. Even through his mask, he could smell the man’s breath, and there seemed something rancid in it, as though the man’s body was rotting from the inside. Cancer breath, he thought, and wondered if that really was the case. Judging by the smell coming from within the building, it seemed highly likely. The place was probably a carcinogen carnivale.

“Thanks,” he said, backing away. He headed toward the van as the metal door was closed and bolted shut.

The rain began again while he was on the freeway, but it was more drizzle than downpour, and for that he was grateful.

Following instructions, he texted Dennis Johns, who directed him to a narrow building on a crowded, ungentrified block of Broadway in downtown L.A. There was no parking, and he was forced to find a spot two blocks away on an unsafe side street. It was still raining, so he took out his umbrella and opened it. Making sure the van was locked, Alex walked quickly up to Broadway, turning left. The gallon of oil was surprisingly heavy, and he switched the umbrella to his left hand so he could carry the container with his right. There were few people on the sidewalk, and those he saw did not look like upstanding citizens, so he kept his focus on the middle distance, not making eye contact.

Johns was standing in the open doorway of the deco building, waiting. He looked to be about Alex’s age, but there was the look of a spoiled rich kid about him, a haughtiness in his manner that immediately rubbed Alex the wrong way. Instead of proffering payment and taking the bottle of oleander oil, as expected, the man beckoned and turned, walking into the building. “This way,” he said imperiously.

Alex had no choice but to follow.

Inside, a short, darkly paneled vestibule led into a long, dimly lit hallway that stretched surprisingly far back. Alex assumed their destination was one of the rooms off to the side, but Johns strode past all of the hallway doors, turning left into another corridor at the very end. This one sloped slightly upward, like a wheelchair-accessible ramp to the second story, but then they turned a corner and the passageway slanted down steeply. Not only were they not moving up to the next floor—they seemed to be descending into a basement. One lonely light fixture dimly illuminated the narrow passage.

Another turn into another hallway, and Johns stopped and took out a key, unlocking and opening a door on the right. The two of them walked into a large empty chamber. Johns flipped on a light, and Alex followed the man across the bare room to another door on the opposite side. Using a second key, he unlocked this door. Behind it was an enclosed space, small and boxlike with a very tall ceiling. In its center was a high-backed chair so ornate it could only be described as a throne. A milky skylight high above the throne shone a diffused light on the seat’s occupant.

A mummified corpse.

Alex stood in the doorway, staring. He had never seen an actual mummy before, but while this looked nothing like the creatures in monster movies, he knew instantly what it was. There were no rotting bandages, not even any clothes, only a shriveled human form tightly covered with brown desiccated skin. Somehow, the body had been placed in a sitting position on the throne: arms on side rests, parallel legs bent at the knee. Within the skull-like face, hollow eye sockets stared blankly in his direction.

For the first time since entering the building, Dennis Johns acknowledged Alex and what he was carrying. “Give me that oil,” he said, holding out his hand.

He didn’t snap his fingers, but the attitude was the same, and Alex said, “As soon as you pay.”

“Already done,” the man said, still holding out his hand.

Alex passed him the plastic bottle so he could check his phone. Sure enough, the delivery amount, plus an impressive tip, had been credited to Strait To You.

Johns was already kneeling before the seated mummy. In his right hand was a folded cloth, and he opened the bottle, poured some of the oleander oil onto the cloth and began lovingly rubbing it onto the skin of the corpse’s left leg. Was the oil’s purpose to protect and preserve the mummy? Alex supposed so. The skin to which the oil had been applied was definitely shinier, but he had no idea if that would actually safeguard the condition of the body. He probably would have asked, just out of curiosity, but without turning around, Johns, now rubbing oil into the figure’s thigh, said, “You’re dismissed.”

He was so irritated by the man that he almost asked if it was legal to keep a dead body in a downtown building—oh, and by the way, exactly who was this person and how did he die? But he owed it to Britta to remain professional, and Alex turned away silently, finding his own way out through the mazelike corridors.

That evening at dinner, he described his day to Jennifer, hoping to convey to her a little of what his job was like and why he enjoyed it. They were so far in their own corners on this issue that they’d been avoiding it lately, sticking to generic conversation topics they could agree on, like television, politics and current events, and he thought this might be an opportunity to break through and perhaps find some common ground.

She listened to his account, smiled at the right places, expressed an interest in the unfolding of events, even asked clarifying questions. At the end, she nodded and went back to eating her food. He should have left it there, building upon that foundation another day, but he stupidly added, “Despite what your dad might think, I like this work. It really is fulfilling. To me.”

Jennifer looked over at him. “Let’s leave my dad out of this.” She put her fork down. “What do you think your parents would say if they saw you today? What would your dad think of what you’re doing? Or your mom?”

Alex shifted uncomfortably, avoiding her gaze. They had drifted into awkward territory. Jennifer had never met his parents, both had died long before he met her, and the picture he had painted of them was not exactly…accurate. In his telling, he’d had a happy TV-sitcom childhood, with a cheerful stay-at-home mom, and a hardworking dad who helped him with his homework every school night and played outside with him on the weekends.

But the truth was…different.

Alex honestly had no clue what either of his parents would have thought about his job or his marriage or any part of his current life, because he hadn’t known them well enough to be able to extrapolate their feelings about anything.

He forced himself to smile. “My parents were always very supportive. They’d back whatever decision I made. They weren’t as judgmental as some people I could name.”

“Daddy isn’t—”

“I could name, I said. But I didn’t.”

“Knock it off. We both know what you meant.”

Somehow, they de-escalated from a potential fight, reaching an unspoken truce and avoiding an argument. But they were back where they started, and Alex realized there was probably nothing he could do or say that would change her opinion of his work. Why she was so adamant in her opposition was a mystery, and while he was sure a lot of it had to do with her father, there seemed something deeper here, and that worried him a little.

The next morning, Britta was waiting for him at the coffeeshop. He could tell from the expression on her face and the way she was drumming on the lip of her coffee cup with a spoon that she had something to tell him. Strange, he thought. The two of them had shared an office for years, sitting six feet apart almost all day every day, Monday through Friday. But he’d gotten to know her far better during this past pandemic year when, by necessity, they’d spent very little time in each others’ presence, than he had while enjoying the enforced intimacy of the office. There was no way he would have been able to read her moods the way he could now if they were still back at Illustrious.

Britta sat up straighter when she saw him. “I think we need an app,” she said. “A phone app.”

Alex slid into the booth opposite her. “What brought this on?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I think if we want to really compete with some of the bigger providers, we need to make our service more user-friendly. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, your website’s great, and it’s gotten us where we are today but maybe it’s time to move on to the next level.”

Her almost apologetic tone told him that she was worried about hurting his feelings, and Alex smiled, oddly touched. “Our website’s a freebie I created in a couple of days. Of course it’s time to upgrade. I’m no app developer, though. We’re going to have to find someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“I was thinking you might know somebody. You had more dealings with the IT department than I did, and with people outside the company.”

Alex thought for a moment. “I might know someone,” he conceded. “The only thing is…we’ve developed a kind of niche here. A lot of my regulars just call and tell me what they want. Some won’t even call—they will only tell me in person. So I’m not sure all of our clients would feel comfortable using an app.”

“I know exactly what you’re saying.” Britta lowered her voice. “I’ve been delivering Chinese hair to this freelance wigmaker, and the whole thing’s extremely convoluted and weirdly secretive, which makes me think it’s probably illegal. So I get it. And obviously we’re too small to compete in the mainstream—delivering Olive Garden dinners, Target beauty supplies or what have you. But an app would make it easier for new people to find us. Of course we’d keep the website and the email and the phone number; we’d just be adding the app as another way to contact us. And, who knows, maybe we’d be able to expand enough to go on a hiring spree. We’re already at capacity with me, you, Lonnie and Rodrigo.”

A waitress came by, and Alex ordered a cup of coffee. He waited until she left before asking, “What do you think of Lonnie and Rodrigo? I feel like I don’t have a good bead on those two.”

She shrugged. “They seem all right.”

“I just think that, in the future, if we are going to expand, we need to have some sort of vetting process in place.”

Britta nodded. “I agree.”

The waitress returned with coffee, and Alex thanked her. He poured a packet of sugar into his cup, stirring it. “You ever notice that tattoo on Lonnie’s hand? Between the thumb and forefinger?”

“I can’t say that I have.”

“It’s some kind of symbol. I’ve tried to make out what it is, but it’s in a weird spot and it’s hard to get a good look at. I was wondering if it’s a white supremacist thing.”

She shook her head. “I don’t get that vibe from him.”

“I don’t, either. But these days, you never know.”

“He doesn’t have a criminal record. I did look that up.”

“But if we hire anyone else, we need to do a more thorough background check.”

“Agreed.”

Before splitting up and heading out, they calculated how much they could afford to spend on development of an app, and Alex promised to reach out to a couple of people he knew. Even if his contacts couldn’t create an app themselves, they were almost certain to know someone who could.

Getting a to-go cup of coffee, he said goodbye to Britta. He still owed Jeff Pinkner the black Labrador from yesterday and picked the dog up at the county animal shelter. The vet seemed put out, even though Alex apologized. “Rain won’t affect my research,” he grumbled, “but time delays will.”

Alex apologized again. Research? he thought. He’d assumed Pinkner was reselling the animals. This was not the time to ask what the vet was doing, however, and he left as unobtrusively as possible.

Halfway through his morning deliveries, sitting in a pocket of unmoving traffic on the 405 freeway, a text alert came in, and he checked his phone to find that Hugh Winters had actually given them a referral. One of the vice president’s neighbors in Brentwood needed delivery of an expensive case of boutique mescal from a craft distillery in Torrance.

Alex still had several purchases, pickups and deliveries to make, over a fairly wide section of the southland, but luck was with him, and he finished the scheduled jobs by three, which allowed him to call Winters’ neighbor and let him know he was available. His plan was to get the information he needed concerning the distillery and the order, then pick it up and deliver it, but the man, a supercilious-sounding fellow with the apt name of Fenton Cannerby, asked him to stop by his residence first.

He even called it his “residence.”

Alex pointed out that he was currently closer to Torrance than Brentwood, and it would be much faster and more efficient to pick up the case of mescal before coming over, but Cannerby was insistent. Annoyed but acquiescent (the customer was always right!), Alex fought the northbound traffic and finally pulled into Cannerby’s extra-wide driveway shortly after four. Upon meeting the man, who looked exactly as he would have guessed, Alex informed him that he would not be able to make it all the way back to the distillery and deliver the mescal until tomorrow morning.

“I called you because I need it today,” Cannerby said. “Hugh Winters assured me that you would be able to satisfy my requirements.”

“Unfortunately, our hours stop at five.”

“You shouldn’t have hours. Not if you have any hope of being successful.”

Alex had had just about enough of this guy.

“Let’s take a look at your mode of transport,” Cannerby told him. “That’s why I asked you here to begin with.”

Alex opened the doors of the van and showed him how he would secure the case of mescal.

“I would like you to find another vehicle in order to deliver my purchase.”

“I’ve used this van to carry cargo far more fragile than bottles of alcohol. I think it’ll be fine.”

The man looked at him as though he were a bug. “I don’t give two-tenths of a shit what you think.”

“Then fuck your mama’s dirty asshole,” Alex responded, and slammed the doors shut. “Find somebody else to haul your damn booze.”

He was filled with an almost exhilarating sense of satisfaction as he got into the van. It’s good to be a boss. He’d heard that in some movie or other, and it was true. Unlike his days at Illustrious, he could now make his own decisions. He didn’t have to follow orders and grovel before jerks like Cannerby just to maintain good customer relations. Backing out of the driveway, he drove off.

Two stoplights away, his phone rang. It was Hugh Winters. Apparently the first thing Cannerby had done when Alex left was call his neighbor to complain about Strait To You.

“I’m sorry about Fenton,” Winters said, and Alex was gratified to hear a note of worry in his voice. “I gave him your name, because I thought you could use the business. But I want you to know I had nothing to do with anything he said or did, and I hope this isn’t going to affect our working relationship. I think you do a fantastic job.”

Alex smiled. “Don’t worry about it.”

The light changed, and he moved to the middle of the intersection, waiting for a break in the traffic so he could turn left.

Winters cleared his throat. “I was wondering. Since you’re in the neighborhood, do you think you could stop by real quick? I have a list. It’s just a few items.” He still sounded chastened. “If you can’t, I completely understand.”

Alex glanced at the clock on the dashboard radio. It was nearly four-thirty, and any job he might start would take him until after five, but that five o’clock thing was just something he’d made up for Cannerby, a statement of his own personal preference rather than a hard and fast rule. Besides, he was only a mile or two away, and taking care of this now would save him more time than driving all the way out here tomorrow. “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” he said.

He was half-hoping that Cannerby would still be outside, so he could honk his horn and wave, but there was no sign of the man, and Alex continued on to Winters’ house.

Surprisingly solicitous—was this all it took to get him to behave like a person?—the vice president came outside to greet Alex as soon as the van pulled to a stop, and immediately invited him into the house, leading him through the foyer into a larger sitting room. “I’m so sorry to do this to you,” he apologized. “But there are a few things I really need. Sit down. Can I get you something?”

Alex turned his wrist, pretending to look at a nonexistent watch. “Just the list. It’s getting late, and I’d like to beat the rush-hour traffic.”

“Certainly, certainly. I completely understand.”

The exotic young woman who last time had been lounging on the expensive couch staring at her phone, walked into the room through an arched doorway off to the side, and this close, she looked vaguely familiar. Had she been a secretary or executive assistant at Illustrious? Winters, who was standing at a long table at the opposite end of the room, writing his list, said nothing but shot her a laser stare. She quickly left the same way she’d come in, but not before Alex had seen what looked like fear in her eyes.

A bruised beauty.

That was the description that occurred to him. Because she was beautiful. She also had a black eye and obvious contusions on her left cheek.

Abused beauty was probably more accurate, and he wondered what exactly was going on here. The most obvious explanation was that Winters had hit her. But maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe she had had some sort of accident, which was always what was claimed in these cases. Or maybe she was not Winters’ wife or girlfriend but someone to whom he was offering refuge. Perhaps someone else had beaten her, and he was providing her a place to stay. Maybe she was his daughter and he was protecting her from an abusive husband.

Although that didn’t explain the look of fear on her face.

“Here’s what I need,” Winters said cheerfully, handing him a scrap of paper. “It’s short, and everything’s from the same place, a specialty store just a couple miles away, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Alex scanned the list. He was not quite sure why Winters was in such a rush, or why he needed someone else to buy and deliver the items when he could easily do it himself, but he nodded, accepting the assignment.

Speaking in a manner that was supposed to seem spontaneous but clearly wasn’t, Winters added, “I also need some rope, for a project I’m doing. Maybe twenty feet? Could you stop by a Home Depot or something and pick some up for me? I’ll pay you extra, of course.”

“Sure,” Alex said.

“Make sure you get thick rope,” Winters specified.

“Will do.”

He went to the specialty store first, knowing that Home Depot stayed open until nine. As he’d expected, the store’s hours were ten to five, and it was just about to close, but he talked his way in for one last sale of the day. It didn’t hurt that he mentioned Winters, who was apparently a frequent and lavishly spending customer.

Afterward, he went to the nearest Home Depot, which was farther away than he would have liked, and bought twenty feet of heavy-duty rope.

Winters met him outside this time, in front of the house, and once again paid by check, leaving a generous tip. The bag of items from the specialty store he accepted and placed by his feet, but the coil of rope he held in his hands, raising and lowering it as if estimating its weight. A strange smile played across his lips.

It was getting late, Alex said, excusing himself, and got into the van, backing out of the driveway. Winters raised a hand in farewell, but Alex ignored him as he pulled onto the street, seeing in his mind the woman’s bruised face, and thinking about the measured way the vice president had hefted the coil of rope that had been delivered to him.

He drove home, feeling uneasy.

FOUR

1

The coronavirus’ Delta variant brought with it a surge of new business. Even before the development of their app, they began to be inundated with delivery requests from prospective customers. Unfortunately, just as their workload increased, Lonnie disappeared. He didn’t show up one day—then seemed to drop off the face of the earth. All of their attempts to contact him failed, and after a few weeks they gave up. Rodrigo remained—he had no clue what had happened to Lonnie, either—and they increased his pay to compensate him for the extra work.

If they were going to meet this moment, they required two additional full-time employees, and despite Alex’s concerns about conducting more thorough background checks, they were so desperate that they basically hired the first two people who applied. Fortunately, both hirees were motivated, capable and responsible, and their addition to the team enabled Strait To You to keep up with demand.

Still, additional changes needed to be made. Alex truly enjoyed his route, but it was all over the place, and with more clients and more employees, he and Britta agreed that it would be more effective and cost-efficient to divide Los Angeles and Orange counties into five different segments and assign one person to cover the clients in each. Alex had his choice of regions, and he picked the largest one, a long strip at the north end of the metropolitan area, partially because it included his hometown of Pasadena, but also because it encompassed Brentwood—and he wanted to keep an eye on Winters.

Although he and Britta considered renting office space, with the way their venture was set up, any office they had would remain empty most of the time. So, as unprofessional as it might seem, they continued to conduct most of their business online or over the phone, meeting with each other and their employees at Britta’s favorite coffeeshop.

The Friday after they’d hired their new employees, Stacey and Lee, he and Britta remained at the table post-meeting. Alex watched through the window as Rodrigo got into his pickup and pulled out of the parking lot.

“Jennifer called me the other day,” Britta said. “Did she tell you that?”

Alex turned to look at her. “No. This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

“She wanted me to persuade you to apply for a position with another big company like Illustrious. A real job, she called it. Something stable. Told me to use the parent angle to pressure you because, apparently, she thinks this job is so far beneath you that if your parents were still alive they would disapprove of your choices. She wanted me to guilt you, I guess. Although why she thinks I’d sabotage my own business by trying to convince my partner to get a different job is a mystery.”

“I’m sorry—” Alex began.

She waved him away. “Don’t worry about it.” There was a moment’s hesitation. “I didn’t realize you lost both your parents.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, well. It was a while ago.”

“I’m lucky. Both my mom and dad are still alive. Even though they live in Michigan.” Another pause. “If you don’t mind me asking…”

He knew what was coming, and he thought of telling her that his parents had died in a car crash. That was a simple, matter-of-fact explanation. Or he could say that his mom had had cancer, and his dad had died from a heart attack, which was what he’d told Jennifer.

But that wasn’t what had happened.

He pushed the thought away. He did not want to go there.

“What do you think I should do about Winters?” he asked, cutting off her question and changing the subject. “Do you think I should report him?”

“Do you have any actual evidence?”

“Not really. But I’m pretty sure that woman’s being abused. Even though the last time I saw her, they were all lovey-dovey. At least in front of me.”

“I don’t think you can call the cops based on a feeling. Well, you could, but there wouldn’t be anything they could do. And he’d probably sue our ass for…something.” Britta took a sip of her cold coffee and grimaced, immediately putting the cup down. “Like I said before, we could always refuse his business. We’re doing well enough to let him shine. He can find someone else to deliver his shit.”

Alex shook his head slowly. “I’m thinking it’s better to keep an eye on this. I don’t know that anyone else is aware of what’s going on, and if I see something I can report…”

Britta smiled. “Maybe we can get him fired.”

“Wouldn’t be the worst outcome in the world.”

“Then, after that, we start working on Thompson.”

Alex laughed.

Usually, the two of them left the coffeeshop together, but today Alex remained behind, telling her that he was going to have another cup of coffee.

“Well, I’ve got an especially busy morning,” Britta said. “I’m out of here. Call you later.”

“Later.”

“You get the check?”

He waved her away, to let her know that he’d take care of it. Watching Britta through the window as she got into her Land Cruiser, he found himself wondering when Jennifer had called her. It surprised him to learn that she had done so at all. His wife didn’t know Britta, and to make such an effort meant that she really didn’t want him to have this job. She’d made sure he was aware of that, of course, but to go this far seemed almost pathological.

Why? Alex wondered.

He had no idea.

Under other circumstances, he might have been mad about her going behind his back, but he was actually more annoyed than anything else—although the fact that Jennifer had tried to get Britta to guilt him by using his parents definitely rubbed him the wrong way.

His parents.

Unbidden, a memory came back to him.

He was ten years old, it was a hot summer night, and Mrs. Walsh, a woman who lived down the street, had wandered into their yard. He’d been fast asleep, but woke up when he heard her voice through his open window, calling, “Stu!…Stu!…Stu!”

There seemed something eerie in her unvarying repetition of the name, and he crept out of bed and went into his parents’ room. Feigning bravery, he turned on his parents’ light and said, “Mrs. Walsh is in our back yard. She’s looking for her dog. He must be lost.” Alex pretended he was concerned for her pet, but really he just wanted to get away from the creepy sound of her voice.

His mom sat up groggily. His dad remained asleep and snoring. “What?” she asked, confused.

“Mrs. Walsh is looking for her dog. She keeps calling, ‘Stu! Stu!’”

“Oh, that’s not her dog,” his mom said. “That’s her dead husband. She must think he’s roamed into our yard. Turn the light off and go to sleep.”

She plopped her head down on the pillow, and Alex did turn the light off, as she’d told him, but he remained in place, his mind reeling. Her dead husband? She thought he’d roamed into their yard? His parents didn’t think that was crazy?

Or spooky?

He definitely thought it was spooky, and he stood where he was, afraid to go back to his room. His dad was still snoring, and seconds later, his mom joined in, but beneath their sleep sounds, he could hear the faint sound of Mrs. Walsh’s voice: “Stu…Stu…”

What if her husband had somehow wandered into their yard? What if a dead guy was right now lurching through the trees?

And heading for the house behind their house?

Alex turned on the light again.

His mom sat up, squinting blearily into the sudden brightness. “What is it now?”

“I’m scared,” Alex told her.

His dad had been snoring only seconds before, but now his voice rang out clearly and not at all sleepily. “Go to bed now or I’ll spank your butt ’til it’s good and red!”

Alex quickly shut off the light.

He backed slowly into the hallway, and hazarded a look toward his bedroom.

“Stu!” Mrs. Walsh called from outside. “Stu!”

He wet his pants.

He didn’t know it was going to happen until it did, but he felt a warm wetness spread outward from his crotch, felt it drip down his leg, and Mrs. Walsh or no Mrs. Walsh, he hurried back to his bedroom and quickly closed the door. His dad would beat him if he found out what had happened—he was far too old to be wetting his pants, no matter how scared he was—and Alex turned on the light and immediately took off his pajama bottoms and underwear. He could still hear Mrs. Walsh through the open window, and for all he knew, her dead husband was walking with her, but as he shoved his wet PJs and underwear under his bed, the sound of her voice gradually faded.

She was leaving.

That fear diminished, but fear of his father still remained, and he took off his pajama top and shoved it under the bed as well, getting out new underwear and different pajamas from his dresser. Hopefully, his parents wouldn’t remember what he’d been wearing and wouldn’t notice that he’d changed, or he’d be in even bigger trouble. If all went well, he could sneakily wash out his underwear and pajamas in the bathroom sink tomorrow while his parents were outside working on the lawn or something, and let them dry in his closet before putting them into the hamper.

If he got caught, though…

He hadn’t gotten caught, Alex remembered. He’d gotten away with it. But as much as the threat of punishment from his dad, it was his mom’s eerie acceptance of the idea that Mrs. Walsh was looking for her dead husband in their yard that had frightened him. And both of those strains had come together when his parents—

Alex refused to think about that.

He finished his coffee, picked up the check and, leaving a generous tip, walked up to the register to pay.

In the back of his van, among other items to be delivered, was a carton of books requested by Mrs. Beauchamp, a rich older lady in San Marino to whom he’d brought several similar shipments over the past year. He always picked up the volumes from a private collector, and had thought nothing of it, assuming from the price paid that the books were rare first editions, but yesterday, for the first time, the box had not been sealed, and he had seen within a volume titled The Killing of the Ruiz Family. On the cover of the book was a graphic full-color photo of a young boy who had been disemboweled on top of a bedspread covered with bright pink and lavender flowers. Curious, Alex had lifted up the book to see what was underneath it, and had found another volume titled Ritual Beheadings in the Twentieth Century, featuring a cover photo showing exactly that.

Mrs. Beauchamp was ordering snuff books.

He had a hard time reconciling the gruesomeness of such photos and subject matter with the kindly old matron who paid him in cash with money she carefully extracted from an old-fashioned beaded pocketbook, and last night he’d tried looking up both volumes online but had found no listings for either. Were there underground publishers who put out these types of books? Was that even legal? He didn’t know, but he’d used his phone to take pictures of the two covers and decided to check with some reputable booksellers about it when he got a chance.

This morning, he dropped the carton off at Mrs. Beauchamp’s, noticing for the first time the gleam in her eye when he placed the box in front of her. Accepting the bills from her dainty wrinkled hands, he felt as though he needed to sanitize them.

It was rare that he was ever called upon to take something back. In fact, it had only happened twice since he’d been doing this job: once when a client had changed his mind about something he’d ordered, and once when Alex had mixed up two nearly identical boxes and had delivered them to the wrong customers. But two days ago, he had supplied a Yorkshire terrier to John Pinkner that he’d gotten from the county animal shelter, and last night Joe Morello had called to say that he needed the dog back. The animal’s owners, armed with photos, had shown up to the shelter looking for “Finn,” and Joe had promised he could reunite them with their pet.

Alex had emailed, texted and called Pinkner, but the veterinarian had not responded. He happened to have another delivery in Burbank today, so, after dropping off Mrs. Beauchamp’s carton of books, he headed over to Pinkner’s place. The vet answered the door, clearly surprised to see him. “Another one this soon?” He looked over Alex’s shoulder at the van.

“No,” Alex told him. “I’m actually here to see if I could get back that terrier I dropped off the other day. It seems that the owners turned up at the shelter looking for him. We’ll refund your money, of course.”

“Oh, I already shot that dog,” Pinkner said.

Alex wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “What?”

“Yeah, that afternoon.”

“You shot him?”

The vet frowned, as though puzzled by the question. “Yes.”

“I thought…I thought you were selling these animals and finding them homes.”

“A misunderstanding.” Pinkner smiled, opening the door wider. “Come in.”

Alex followed him through the large house to an impressively furnished office. A door in the room’s rear wall led to a back yard the size of a small park. They stepped outside. Against a sloping hill, next to a red shed designed to look like a barn, was a wall of metal cages six feet high. Within the cages, dozens of dogs and cats were sleeping, pacing, barking, growling and mewling.

“What is this?” Alex asked.

“Most of these are damaged assets from my practice and my work at the animal hospital. I’ll get to them eventually. But the specimens you bring me are in much better shape, and those are the ones I start with. I’d prefer only healthy animals, but I can’t seem to get enough of them.”

“But what are they for?”

“I’m researching better ways to treat the head wounds of soldiers.”

Alex had a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach. “So you…”

“I shoot them in the head, yes.” Pinkner walked up to the shed and opened the door, flipping on a light. Inside, the small building was lined with shelves. Those on the right were crammed with the shattered skulls of various pets. On the shelves to the left were more recent and gruesome animal heads, including, nearest the door, that of the Yorkshire terrier, a segment of white brain visible through the dried blood coating the jagged hole where the dog’s nose and right eye had been. The entire room was filled with a nauseating stench so overpoweringly strong that Alex had to step back.

“I shoot them there,” Pinkner said, pointing to a table covered with dried blood that sat against the far wall. The wall itself was a Rorschach splattering of black, brown and red.

Trying not to gag, Alex turned away, moving back onto the grass and sucking in as much fresh air as he could. The noises of the animals in the cages sounded even louder.

Pinkner closed the shed door.

“So this is some sort of scientific study?” Alex asked, feigning an objectivity he did not feel.

“Well, it’s not part of any official study or anything. I’m doing this on my own. It’s more like a hobby.”

Alex nodded, as though he understood, but the thought in his head was: This guy’s crazy. Pinkner clearly wanted to talk more about his “experiments,” but Alex made a show of looking at his phone and declaring that he needed to get going because he had a lot of other deliveries to make this morning. He was polite and respectful as they walked back through the house, but once alone in his van, he vowed never to deliver another animal to the veterinarian. He was so shaken that he was tempted to call Britta then and there, but he knew she was busy and decided to talk to her at the end of the day.

Troubled, Alex drove through Pinkner’s neighborhood toward downtown Burbank and the freeway beyond. Passing by one expensive house and then another, he found himself wondering what was going on behind those doors. No one could possibly guess, just looking at the front of Pinkner’s place, that he was killing pets in his back yard. Just as it would be impossible to tell that a rich old matron in San Marino devoured snuff books, or that within a narrow deco building in downtown L.A. a mummified corpse was polished daily with oleander oil.

There seemed to be…patterns here. It was the best way he could think to put it. Had he not had this job, had he not been privy to people’s private buying habits and exposed to their intimate living spaces, he never would have known, never would have even suspected any of this was going on. But beneath the public-facing façades were dark secrets and dead bodies, an entire world that regular people and ordinary society had no clue existed.

It reminded him more than anything of the house behind their house when he was a child, and for the first time, he wondered if Jennifer might not be right, if maybe he should find another line of work.

The rest of the day went smoothly, though. And, while purchasing and picking up some illegal-in-California foie gras for the longtime host of a Food Network show (Jennifer was going to be so impressed!), he discovered an amazing international bakery, at which he bought a dozen pastries to take home. As enticing as they were, none of the pastries were familiar to him, and not knowing what they were, he simply pointed and said, “I’ll take one of those. And one of those. And one of those…” Eating one of the pastries in the van, it was so delicious that he actually closed his eyes.

Maybe his job wasn’t so terrible after all.

Just before five, after his last delivery, he found himself down the street from Britta’s coffeeshop, and he texted her to see if she wanted to meet. As it happened, she had some things she wanted to discuss as well, so he pulled into the parking lot, went into the restaurant, found a table and waited for her to arrive. Across from him, a heavily tattooed man was scowling at an anorexically thin woman with a shaved head who was berating him over something. The contents of their plates had been overturned on the table between them. At the counter, a disheveled older man in a ratty green coat was mumbling to himself.

Alex turned his attention toward the window. He’d never been here at this hour before, and the afternoon clientele definitely seemed different than that of the morning. Usually, other tables were occupied by elderly couples, groups of retired men or busy individuals stopping off for a quick bite on their way to work. The customers who were here now seemed another breed entirely.

Britta pulled into the lot, and he switched his attention to the door, waving her over when she walked in. She sat down wearily in the seat opposite him. “What a day.”

The waitress came over, and Britta ordered an iced tea.

“What happened?” Alex asked.

“I had my first non-payment. That new customer I told you about this morning. The one who wanted the pants made out of U.S. embassy flags.”

“That’s a weird one.”

“Ours is not to judge. I drove all the way to San Pedro, picked up the pants, dropped them off—and the bastard wouldn’t pay me.” She raised a hand. “I know, I know. I should’ve gotten the payment first, but, honestly, after all this time, I’ve never had any trouble, and I kind of just took it for granted that everyone pays. Not this guy, though. I told him how much it was, and he just went back inside his house and wouldn’t come out. I kept knocking on his door and ringing the bell, and he called me every name in the book. I started to think he might have a gun or something, so I ended up leaving.”

“So what do we do?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. Sue him? Write it off? I’m going to have to do some research.”

The waitress brought her glass of iced tea, and Britta thanked the woman. She dumped a packet’s worth of Splenda into her drink, stirring it with a straw. “After that, I got in a fender bender with this jackass who cut in front of me and then slammed on his brakes. That was a waste of another half-hour. I took pictures, got his information and contacted my insurance company, but he pissed and moaned the whole time, said it was my fault because I was tailgating him, so I’m sure the insurance companies are going to be fighting it out. There’s not much damage, but there’s a definite dent in the front fender, so I also have to find time to get it fixed.”

She took a sip of her tea. “It made me think, though. About liability. What happens if Rodrigo or one of our newbies gets in an accident? What if they get hurt? Or injure someone else? Is that covered by their car insurance or are we responsible? I’m thinking now that we need to draw up some contracts, make it clear that they’re contractors, not employees, so we’re not put on the hook for God knows what.” She sighed. “You’re right. We should have vetted them better. Just in case.”

Strait To You was Britta’s baby. She’d come up with the idea, and while he’d been happy to jump on board as a partner, he’d left all of the licensing details and official paperwork to her. Now he wondered if he was going to end up sued and bankrupt because of some mishap involving one of their drivers and the slipshod way they’d put this business together.

Although…their “partnership” was little more than a handshake deal. He hadn’t signed any contracts or paperwork, either.

Just how legitimate was this enterprise?

She seemed to read his mind. “Don’t worry. If something happens right now, and it is our responsibility, I’ll take care of it. It won’t come out of your end. But I think we need to get some professional advice about how we should structure the business and limit our liability. We’ve kind of been running everything by the seat of our pants—which is fine for what we were—but if we’re going to grow—and we are growing—I think we need to step up.”

“Look,” he said, “I appreciate you bringing me in on this and calling me your partner, but I’m not your partner, really. You started this, you set it up, you’re the one calling the shots. I basically work for you.”

“That’s not fair!”

“I’m not complaining,” Alex assured her. “It’s fine.”

“I’m going to involve you more, I—”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m in. I’m committed. You don’t have to—”

“I don’t want to run everything by myself. That’s why I partnered with you. I need someone to share the responsibility, someone to bounce ideas off of, someone I trust.” She seemed perilously close to tears, and Alex felt terrible for putting extra stress on her.

“I didn’t mean—” “I’m going to—” They both spoke at the same time.

“You first,” Alex said.

“It’s too much work and responsibility for one person—or at least for me. And I’m sorry if I haven’t involved you enough, but I will. I need someone to share the load, and I honestly want us to be partners. Real partners.”

He reached across the table and put his hand on hers. “If you want a partner, you’ve got one. I don’t know how we got off the rails here. I wasn’t suggesting that I don’t want the job. It just seemed like you were doing most of the heavy lifting, and I was taking credit that I didn’t deserve. It didn’t seem fair that I was riding your coattails and being rewarded for things I didn’t do, when you were the one really responsible.”

She looked down at his hand. “Are you coming on to me?”

Shocked, he pulled his hand back, about to respond with an emphatic “No!” when he saw the smile playing across her lips and realized she was joking.

“Can you blame me?” he said.

“You know I’m gay, right?”

He hadn’t, actually.

“Are you in a relationship?” he asked.

“Not at the moment.”

“So I still have a chance?”

Britta laughed.

“That’s okay. I’m married anyway.”

She smiled at him. “It’s been a long and horrible day. I’m sorry I’ve been acting so weird. Let’s just forget this ever happened and start fresh tomorrow. I mean Monday.” She shook her head. “I’m so punchy that I can’t even remember what day it is.”

He held his hand out across the table. “Partners, then?”

She shook it. “Partners.”

“Listen, do you want me to investigate liability insurance?”

An expression of gratitude crossed her face. “Would you?”

“What are partners for?”

“And I think we should have a real meeting. We’re turning into an actual company, and I think it’s about time we sat down together to lay things out, delineate responsibilities, maybe even draw up paperwork.”

“Whatever you want,” Alex said.

“I’ll call you. Right now, I just want to go home and de-stress.”

He hadn’t told her about the crazy pet-shooting vet, the reason he’d wanted to meet in the first place, but Alex decided that could wait. She’d told him before that he was empowered to drop any client he did not feel comfortable with, and that had to be doubly true after the conversation they’d just had, but he felt guilty about getting rid of such a consistent income stream, and would still feel better if he ran it by her.

Outside the coffeeshop, they said goodbye and, for the first time, hugged. Learning she was gay made him realize that though he knew her, he didn’t really know her, but he had the feeling that was about to change, and that made him feel good.

At home, Jennifer was already making dinner.

“You’re late,” she said accusingly. “I expected you a half-hour ago.”

“Britta and I had a last-minute meeting.”

“You could’ve called.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead.

The argument that had seemed on its way didn’t materialize. He helped with dinner, making a small salad, and the two of them had a pleasant meal. Halfway through, the phone rang, and Jennifer got up to answer it.

She returned from the kitchen, cordless in hand. “It’s Daddy,” she said, and there was a hint of surprise in her voice as she handed him the receiver. “He wants to talk to you.” The hopeful expression on her face told him she thought it might be a line on a job.

Alex took the phone. “Hello?”

There was a long pause. “Alex?”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask: is Jennifer in the room with you?”

“Yes.”

“Could you move to another room? I’d rather talk in private.”

“O…kay.” This was weird. Alex stood and put his hand over the mouthpiece. “He wants to talk to me in private,” he told Jennifer. She gave him a quizzical look, and he shrugged his shoulders, indicating he had no idea what this was about. He walked into the hallway. “All right,” he said.

There was another pause on the other end of the line.

“Are you still there?” Alex asked.

“I’m here.” His father-in-law took a deep breath. “Look, I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye over the years, and I know a lot of that is my fault, but I do consider you family, and…and I’m asking for your help.”

This was definitely weird. “Of course,” Alex said. “What is it?”

“I don’t want you to say anything to Jennifer. I don’t want her or her mother to know anything about this. Okay?”

“Okay.”

There was an extended silence from both their ends.

“What’s the problem?” Alex prodded.

His father-in-law took another deep, audible breath. “I saw it,” he said. “That house. In my back yard. And I remember it this time.” He sounded shaken.

Alex felt a chill pass through him.

“I went out this afternoon to do a little yard work, and there it was. Right behind the trees. And…and there was something wrong with it. The house, I mean. There weren’t enough windows, and the door was in the wrong spot and…everything was just wrong. Everything about it, do you know what I mean?” He sounded almost frantic.

“I do,” Alex said quietly.

“The thing is, I remembered that I saw it before, when you were here. We all saw it, but at the time it seemed perfectly normal—and then we forgot all about it. Everyone but you. But this time, I remember, too. And it scares the shit out of me. What the hell is that thing?”

“I don’t know.” It was Alex’s turn to take a deep breath. “When you were looking at it, were you stuck there, like you couldn’t look away?”

“Yes! And I thought I was there for only a few minutes, but it was more like an hour!”

“And it disappeared when you looked away?”

“I don’t know.” For the first time in all the years he’d known him, Jim Price sounded embarrassed. “I was afraid to look back.”

“It’s probably gone, though. That’s what happened before.”

“Let me check.” There was a pause, and the sound of rustling. “I’m looking out the window right now.”

“And?”

He heard the fear in the old man’s voice. “It’s still there.”

2

They drove over to her parents’ house the next morning, leaving early and arriving by nine. Alex had kept his promise and said nothing to Jennifer, but she clearly sensed that something was amiss, and the mere fact that he had instigated this outing meant that the entire ride over was one long interrogation.

“You’ll see when we get there,” he kept telling her.

But he hoped she wouldn’t.

It turned out to be a little bit of both. The house was still there, but only he and her dad could see it. Jennifer and her mother could not. With the two women in the kitchen, a shaky and uncharacteristically subdued Jim Price led Alex through the back yard into a space that could not be. They stood far back, staring at the impossible structure.

“What the hell is it?” Jim asked.

Alex did not respond, unsure of what to say. This might look nothing like the strange house behind his childhood home in Baltimore, but the concept was the same, and he remembered the time he took his friend Robby out to the house. Robby, too, had been able to see it somehow, and while that was reassuring, he had not liked the fact that his friend did not seem at all frightened. Robby, in fact, suggested that they try to get inside; he wanted to explore the building. To him, it was a big adventure, and when Robby called him a “tulip” and said that if Alex wouldn’t come with him, he’d go in by himself, Alex remained where he was and said, “Go ahead.”

His assumption had been that the front door would be locked, but it wasn’t, and with only a slight hesitation after turning the knob, Robby walked inside.

The door slammed shut behind him.

Alex jumped, shocked, yet not completely surprised. He wanted to run up onto the porch, yank the door open and get his friend out of there, but he was afraid to do anything. Instead, he remained rooted in place, eyes darting from window to window, searching for any sign of movement. The only thing he saw behind the glass, however, was blackness, and, gathering his courage, Alex walked around to the rear of the house, keeping a wide berth in order to maintain a safe distance. Back here, the house seemed taller somehow, and looking up at the second story, he noted that there were no windows. He was almost certain that, last time, there had been.

Faintly, from within, came the sound of a woman—the woman—singing the same eerie, tuneless song he remembered from before. Only this time, someone else was singing with her.

Robby.

He shouted out his friend’s name: “Robby!” Picking a rock up off the ground, he threw it against the house. It missed the window he was aiming for and clattered ineffectually against the clapboard side of the building. He searched around for another rock but none were nearby, so he kept calling out Robby’s name at the top of his lungs. There was a small window in the top half of the back door, which looked to him like a kitchen door, and though there was only blackness beyond the glass, Alex thought he saw slow movement in the gloom. Whatever it was moved strangely, unnaturally, and, terrified, he dashed back to the front of the house the same way he’d come.

Where Robby was staggering off the porch onto the grass.

The other boy’s clothes were torn and his face bruised. He looked around wildly, saw Alex, then ran away, toward the back yard and the street and neighborhood beyond. Alex followed, calling out his name, but was unable to catch up. By the time he reached the sidewalk in front of their house, there was no sign of the boy.

He and Robby weren’t friends after that.

Next to him now, Jennifer’s dad was shaking his head in fear and frustration. “Why is this happening?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Alex admitted. He thought of telling his father-in-law that he’d encountered something similar as a child, but immediately decided against it. The old man would promptly blame him for what was going on here and automatically assume all of this was his fault.

Which maybe it was.

But right now the two of them were united, and Alex did not want to disrupt that tentative truce.

Jim licked his lips. “I thought I heard something yesterday when I was out here. Coming from the house.”

“A woman singing?”

His father-in-law looked surprised. “Yes!”

“I heard it, too.”

“Last time?”

“Yes,” Alex lied.

“Scared the shit out of me, if you want the God’s honest truth.”

“Me, too,” Alex said.

The two of them stood next to each other, staring at the house. “Who the hell do you call for something like this?” Jim wondered. “If the place was on fire, I’d call the fire department. If someone had vandalized or stolen something, I’d call the police. But a house that just appears? In a space that can’t possibly be there?”

“You still have a lot of government contacts—”

“Not as many as I used to.”

“But maybe you know someone who knows someone who knows what to do with this kind of situation.”

“What is this kind of situation?”

As if on cue, the front door of the house slowly swung open. In keeping with the oddness of the building, the door opened outward instead of inward. There was no one on either side of it, but moving gradations of darkness within the house made it clear that someone—
something

—was there.

Alex and Jim looked at each other. Neither had any intention of going anywhere near the building, let alone entering, and the only question was whether they would remain where they were or quickly retreat.

On a cold gentle breeze came the sound of a woman’s soft mocking laughter.

“I can’t call anybody about this,” Jim said. “No one will believe me. Hell, I didn’t believe you.”

Alex nodded, understanding.

“But whatever the hell this is, I can’t just let it sit here in my back yard. Or in back of my back yard, I guess. What if other people start seeing it? What if someone goes in there and…dies? Or disappears?”

Was he actually concerned about people coming to harm as a result of the house behind his house? Or was he worried about his legal liability? Knowing his father-in-law, Alex suspected the latter.

That was mean. How could he have retreated so quickly to his usual corner, when Jim was actually confiding in him and had invited him over? They were both in this together.

“Let’s walk around the back,” Alex suggested.

“Let’s go in back of the back,” Jim said. “I don’t care if there is some weird sort of space distortion going on; behind that house should be our fence, and past that, the alley. I want to see how this thing works.”

It was a good idea, Alex thought, and the two of them walked together around the side of the house. He was an adult now, but he recognized from his childhood the deep primal fear that gripped him as he rounded the first corner. The years had lessened neither its intensity nor the feeling of panic it engendered. At this moment, he wanted nothing more than to run away.

“I’m sorry I razzed you about being laid off,” Jim said, as though they were on an ordinary walk through the neighborhood. “I shouldn’t’ve done that. Truth is, you’re good for Jennifer. Both her mother and I think so, even if we don’t say it.”

Under other circumstances, the apology would have been welcome, but a slight wobble in the old man’s voice reminded Alex of the danger they might be walking into and made it sound like something Jim wanted to get off his chest in case he didn’t survive.

A deathbed confession.

The soft laughter could be heard in back of the house as well, though neither of them mentioned it. Alex found his attention drawn to the low-slung structure’s back door, which also swung outward and was open wide. Jennifer’s dad did not stop but kept walking past the house. The land here was a mirror of that in the front, an extension of the Prices’ back yard: lawn grass, lemon and avocado trees.

But there was no fence here, no alley.

Wherever this was, it continued on as far as Alex could see.

Struck by a sudden fear that they were stuck in this place, Alex stopped walking and said, “Let’s go back.”

He got no argument. Jim nodded, and the two of them reversed course. Alex was hoping the house would go away on its own and disappear as they passed by it, but no such luck. It remained as solid as ever, occupying a space that should not exist. To his relief, he could see Jennifer’s parents’ home between the lemon tree and the avocado tree, and, grateful, he walked quickly across the lawn until he reached the back patio, Jim right behind him. When he sat down on one of the patio chairs, it was with the feeling of having just escaped a horrible disaster.

Jennifer’s dad sat down across the table from him, looking back toward where they’d been, the other house still clearly visible behind the trees. “Maybe it’ll go away. It did before, right?”

Alex nodded, not answering.

“But you don’t think it will?”

He shrugged at first, then slowly shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

“So I just have to learn to live with it?”

Yes, Alex thought. It was what he’d had to do as a child, and he was tempted to reveal to Jim what he’d had to live through, to let him know that such coexistence was possible. At least until…

No. It was definitely not a good idea to tell him about that.

An idea occurred to him. “This may sound crazy,” Alex said. “But what if you built a fence in front of the other house, blocking it off?”

“Halfway through my back yard?”

“But it’s not halfway through the back yard, is it? It’s behind those trees. In fact, it’s only a few feet from where the fence and the alley should be. Sure, if things were the way they normally were, you’d be putting up a new fence right in front of your old fence. But they’re not. You might be able to put up a fence high enough that you can’t see the house. At the very least, you’d be keeping people away from it. Gardeners and what have you.”

“Except the people who’d be building the fence.” Jim was silent for a moment, musing. “It’s not a bad idea, though. And it might work.”

“I can’t think of anything else.”

They both looked toward the other house.

“Give me an ugly cinderblock wall any day over that thing.”

“It doesn’t even have to be ugly. Make it a wooden fence, like the one you already have back there.”

“What if the workers see it?” Jim said. “The guys putting up the fence? Do you think they’ll forget about it when they leave? Like I did? Like Molly and Jennifer did?” Alex and his father-in-law were clearly thinking along the same lines.

“Maybe.”

“What if it won’t let them build the fence?”

He’d been wondering that, too. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

Jennifer and her mother emerged from the kitchen. While they both should have been able to see the house from where they were, it was clear that neither of them did. Alex and his father-in-law shared a glance.

Jennifer caught it. “What?” she said. She looked suspiciously from one to the other. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing,” Jim lied.

“I don’t trust you two,” Jennifer said, but beneath her mock annoyance, Alex detected a note of pleasure. She had always wanted her husband and father to get along, and now that they seemed to be sharing some sort of confidence, it made her happy.

On impulse, Alex stood, taking out his phone. He suddenly had an idea, and by the expression on Jim’s face, Alex knew that his father-in-law understood exactly. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and stepped off the patio onto the grass.

Why hadn’t he thought of this before?

He was going to take a photo of the house.

From there, he could show it to Jennifer and her mom, even show it to someone who could help them figure out what it was and what to do about it—although he had no idea yet who that might possibly be. He could also zoom in and maybe see what lay behind the windows, or, if it was open, the door. At the very least, there would be proof that the house was really there, tangible evidence that it actually existed.

Assuming the photo showed up on his phone.

Standing next to the lemon tree, Alex took a picture of the house, then checked the screen to see if the image was there. It was, and he moved first to the left, then to the right, to get different angles. He was by himself, and without Jennifer’s dad here, he was reluctant to go any closer, but he was able to snap several clear images, and when he zoomed in, he thought he saw the outline of a figure in the window to the right of the door, although the morning sun was reflecting off the screen, so it was difficult to tell for sure.

Returning to the patio, Alex immediately showed Jim what he had. Sure enough, in two of the pictures, a hazy indistinct form could be seen in the darkened right window, what might have been a woman in a long white dress. Next to the figure, in the second picture, was a shorter, dimmer form standing in the same pose.

“What are you two looking at?” Jennifer asked.

Armed with the photos, he and his father-in-law explained to the women what was going on. Jennifer looked back and forth from the picture on his phone to the location of the other house across the yard. “How is this possible? There’s nothing there.”

Grateful that she believed even without being able to see it, Alex explained that both he and her father could see the house. He told Jennifer and her mother that he had seen it the last time they were here and had dragged everyone out to look. At the time, they had seen it, too, only they had forgotten the house immediately after being out of its presence. He was the only one to remember.

“That sounds kind of familiar,” Jennifer said. Her voice was subdued.

“We have no idea what it is or how it got there or what it does or…anything,” Alex admitted. “But your dad saw it yesterday and called and told me, and that’s why we’re here today. I was hoping it would be gone—but it’s not.”

Jennifer’s mom stared numbly at the back yard. “You mean there’s a ghost house out there?”

Alex hadn’t thought of it that way, but it seemed closer to an appropriate description than anything else.

“I don’t think it’s dangerous,” Jim said. He looked to Alex for confirmation, and Alex nodded, though he was not at all sure that was the case. “I think it’s just…there. Since you can’t see it, and I can ignore it, we should be fine. Hopefully, it’ll go away.”

“Like it did last time,” Alex said.

Jennifer’s mom looked at her husband. “You’re watering the fruit trees,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere near that area.”

“Agreed,” he said.

“So what’s our plan?” Jennifer asked, looking around. “Are we just going to stay here all day and monitor it?”

Alex nodded. “Kind of, yeah.”

“So you’re staying for lunch and dinner?” his mother-in-law asked.

“I guess so.”

“Then I need to go out and get some groceries.”

“I’ll come with you,” Jennifer said quickly.

The women went back in the kitchen, presumably to take inventory and determine what they needed to buy.

Alex and Jim remained where they were, on the patio, silently staring across the yard at the other house.

****

That night, after Jennifer fell asleep, Alex got out of bed and went into the kitchen to get a drink of water. The motion sensor light on the side of the garage was on, but it only served to make everything around it darker, and he stared into the blackness, wondering if there was something behind their own house that he couldn’t yet see.

3

In all the time they’d been working together, Alex had never been to Britta’s home, but on Monday, she invited him over to review employment contracts that she’d gotten off an internet site offering legal advice. After they decided on a basic framework, they were going to meet with an actual lawyer and have it codified.

Her house was different than Alex was expecting. He’d assumed for some reason that it would be decorated in a clean modern style, all white walls and spare furnishings, but to his surprise, it was funky and crowded and reminded him of a photo of a San Francisco hippie den that he’d seen on an old Janis Joplin album cover. He felt comfortable here, and he sat down next to Britta at the dining room table, where she’d set up a laptop. On a buffet on the other side of the table were a host of framed photographs, most of them old. Britta and her family, presumably. “Where’s your significant other?” he asked, gesturing toward the pictures.

“Don’t have one,” she said.

“Since…?”

“A long time. But we’re not here to discuss my love life.”

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to—”

She smiled. “It’s okay. We’re not just officemates anymore, we’re part of each other’s lives now, so maybe it’s time we open up a little.”

“I don’t want to—”

Britta cut him off. “I’m not trying to force you,” she assured him. “If you don’t think—”

Alex held up a hand. “I guess this is new for both of us. And neither of us seem to be…let’s call it ‘socially adept.’ But we’re partners, and I consider you a friend and…well…yeah.”

Britta laughed. “Well put, well said.”

“I try.”

She patted his hand. “We are friends, and we are partners. So let’s just act like it, and we’ll go from there.”

“Sounds good.” He paused. “But you really are a lesbian, right?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I knew it. I was just checking.”

She laughed.

The legal forms and information she’d gotten off the internet were actually helpful, to the surprise of both of them, and they pretty quickly agreed on the approach they should take in regard to their drivers. Alex knew a guy from Big 5’s corporate office who he thought might know a good business lawyer, and they cold called him, both of them on speakerphone, to ask if he had any recommendations. He suggested the names of two attorneys with whom he’d worked. They did some quick online research, found that both received high marks from their clients and both charged standard (expensive) rates, but since one was closer to their area, that’s who they decided to use.

Britta called and made an appointment for the following week.

“So what’s your schedule like today?” she asked, checking her email to see if they had any new requests.

“Light. Should be easy for me to catch up.”

“Have enough time to add another one?” She pointed to the laptop screen. A man in Rancho Palos Verdes, an area far out of Alex’s district, was looking for someone to pick up a carved elephant tusk from a private owner in Long Beach.

She could obviously read the expression on his face. “Want me to take it?”

“Could you?”

“You have to take the next one, then. Fair is fair.”

“Deal,” he said.

The morning was already half over, and he was slated to pick up more exotic plants for Hugh Winters from the greenhouse in Arcadia. Rush hour was past, and the Foothill Freeway was unusually clear, so he got there in half the time expected. The old horticulturist informed Alex that Winters had also asked for a twenty-pound sack of lime.

Alex frowned. Lime? He wasn’t sure exactly what that was, but he knew he’d heard of it before. Wasn’t it used to dissolve bodies and body parts?

“What’s the lime for?” he asked, keeping his tone casual.

“It neutralizes acidic soil. For the plants he’s buying, that’s pretty important.”

Despite the logical explanation, he still felt there was some other reason Winters wanted lime, and while there wasn’t enough here to cause even a hint of suspicion, Alex drove away from the greenhouse feeling apprehensive. Heading toward Brentwood, he found himself thinking about Winters’ wife, girlfriend or whatever she was. It had been a while since he’d seen her, and he wondered if the two of them had broken up.

He wondered if she was dead.

Alex was not sure why his mind had automatically jumped to that. It was a massive leap, but he remembered the woman’s black eye and bruised face, recalled Winters’ unnerving smile as he’d hefted the rope, thought of the sack of lime in the back of the van.

Maybe it wasn’t such a massive leap after all.

Winters was through the front door before Alex exited the van, obviously waiting and watching for his arrival. Alex had been hoping to go into the house—
to check on the woman

—but Winters had him carry the bag of lime into the garage, and took the two small shrubs himself, placing them on the front stoop before proffering payment. “Thanks,” he said. “Appreciate it. As always.”

Alex was half-tempted to invent an excuse to go into the house and snoop—claim that he needed a drink of water or had to go to the bathroom—but in the end, he merely thanked his old boss and left, still wondering what exactly was going on and feeling guilty that if the woman was being abused, he was doing nothing to help.

Maybe he should make an anonymous call to the police.

He still didn’t like that sack of lime.

Halfway to the freeway, he received a text alert and pulled the van into a small Starbucks parking lot. Linda Harriott, a county supervisor who lived in his district, was asking him to call back on her private line in order to discuss an order she would like to place.

The supervisor picked up immediately when he called. “Is this Strait To You?” she asked.

“It is,” he confirmed.

“I understand that you are able to find and deliver items of, let’s say, an unusual nature.”

“We often do that.”

“And you are discreet?”

“Yes,” he said, thinking, This is going to be juicy.

“I’d like to discuss this in person. Could you meet me at my house? I’ll text you the address.”

“That will be fine,” Alex told her.

A prominent conservative who loudly and consistently harped about the importance of “family values,” Ms. Harriott lived in Pasadena, five miles away from Alex’s house, in a much nicer neighborhood.

One room in her McMansion was outfitted as a dungeon.

After he once again assured her that Strait To You kept everything they saw or did completely confidential, the supervisor unlocked and opened the door to the large dark room, and led him inside. Beneath the mirrored ceiling, Alex saw what appeared to be a medieval rack titled at a forty-five-degree angle, an open iron maiden with slender rubber tendrils instead of metal spikes, and an oversized chair that not only had arm and leg restraints but a round-headed peg protruding from the center of the hard seat.

“What I’m looking for,” she said, walking up to a wooden cabinet and opening it, “are better whips. These, as you can see, are getting pretty old and frayed.” She fingered the braided tip of a thick whip at the far end of the display, smiling slightly. “I’d like to get a set that is newer. Firmer.”

Was she coming on to him?

He remained strictly professional. “So you would like us to find a new series of whips.”

She smiled, as if playing with him, and mockingly responded in the same no-nonsense manner. “That is correct, sir.”

He had his phone out so he could take notes. “Price range?”

“That’s not an issue.”

“How many whips do you need and what are the specifications for each? Size, material, whatever.”

She provided him with details, and he promised to let her know once he found some options.

The supervisor held a finger to her lips. “And discreet, right?”

“Discreet,” he promised.

Having gotten a late start, the rest of his day was taken up with pre-arranged purchases, pickups and deliveries, and it was not until he was home that he was able to scour the internet for whips. Only two sites sold full sets—the rest sold individual crops and switches—but he knew of another supplier through dealing with a previous client, and this vendor was not only local but offered a better deal.

Seeing his laptop screen as she walked past him on her way to the bathroom, Jennifer stopped. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked.

“It’s for a VIP client. Very hush-hush.”

She gave him an ironic pat on the shoulder. “Your parents would be so proud.”

Obviously, she wasn’t giving up on that approach.

He hadn’t told Jennifer about the county supervisor, primarily because she wasn’t interested, but he did tell Britta, and she thought it was hilarious. “That hypocritical bitch! Now every time I see her on the news spouting that right-wing bullshit, I’m going to think of her dressed in leather and flogging her poor naked husband.”

“But you can’t tell anyone.”

“Of course not. My lips are sealed.” She laughed. “But, damn!”

The next day, he picked up the whips, eight of them, inconspicuously packaged in three plain cardboard boxes, and delivered them to the supervisor. Her tip doubled the price of the merchandise and the delivery charge, and he understood that to be a hedge against his revealing her secret.

“Anything else you need,” Alex said before leaving, “just let us know.”

If he were wearing a hat he would have doffed it.

As he drove to his next destination, he thought admiringly that Britta really had created a business that filled a need, catering to a heretofore unknown market. He recalled a scene in the cartoon King of the Hill, where Hank Hill, giving work advice to his son Bobby, said, “Find what your niche is. That leads to riches.” Britta had found her niche, and he was glad that she’d brought him along for the ride. None of it would have happened without the pandemic, and he recalled a favorite saying of his grandma’s: “It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow somebody some good.”

That night, they had just finished making love, and he was in bed watching TV while Jennifer was in the bathroom taking a shower, when the phone rang. He glanced at the clock. It was after eleven. Who could be calling this late? Reaching over, he picked up the phone on the nightstand and checked the caller ID.

It was Jennifer’s dad.

He was suddenly filled with dread. “Hello?” he said.

Jim’s voice was hushed and secretive, as though he was trying not to be overheard. “Alex?”

“Yeah?”

“I think my wife sees it.”

The room suddenly felt cold.

“We went to bed around nine, like we usually do, but when I woke up a few minutes ago, she wasn’t next to me. She got up while I was asleep and pulled open the bedroom drapes, and now she’s just standing there, staring out the window at the back yard, holding one of Jennifer’s old dolls. She won’t talk, and when I say something to her, she doesn’t seem to hear me. It’s like she’s frozen. I’m pretty sure she’s staring at the house.”

“So it’s still there.”

“Oh, it’s still there.”

“Do you think she’s sleepwalking?”

“I don’t know.”

From the bathroom, Alex heard the sound of the shower turning off. He lowered his voice. “I don’t know what to tell you. Jennifer just finished taking a shower and’ll be coming back in here in a few minutes, so…”

“I understand. Don’t say anything to her. But I wanted you to know.” There was a pause. “Just in case.”

He didn’t need to say more. Alex knew what he meant, and he shivered as he hung up the phone.

In the morning, after breakfast, while Jennifer was in the bathroom, Alex made a quick call to his father-in-law to make sure—
her parents were still alive

—everything was okay. It didn’t sound as though Jim had gotten much sleep, but his wife had eventually gone back to bed, and, when she woke up, remembered nothing of what had occurred. Jim had stayed awake most of the night on guard duty.

And now the house was gone.

That was a relief—to both of them. Although he worried that it could come back at any time, and that Jim might not be able to see it or remember it during the next round or might end up mesmerized and staring, like his wife, Alex said nothing to his father-in-law.

He hung up before Jennifer returned.

The remainder of the week was uneventful, both at work and at home. Alex went on his regular rounds, with no additions or surprises, and though he checked in with Jennifer’s dad every day, the house behind her parents’ house did not reappear.

The following Monday, he was back at Hugh Winters’ place to deliver a batch of suspect “herbal supplements” from a “nutritionist” who worked out of an unmarked storefront in a part of Hollywood that had definitely not been gentrified. Like the mysterious edibles that were part of Britta’s usual delivery schedule, Alex was not sure these were entirely on the up-and-up, but he brought them to Winters anyway. He did so without providing a timetable for arrival, hoping to catch the man off guard.

He was getting very curious about the missing mistress of the house.

The plan worked, because no one came out to greet him, and he knocked on the front door, bag of “herbal supplements” in hand.

Winters opened the door, clearly surprised to see him. “Oh. I thought you were coming by tomorrow.”

“Must’ve been a miscommunication,” Alex said. He handed over the bag, quoted the price and Winters paid, adding, as usual, a large tip.

Alex looked behind his old boss, into the house. “Where’s your wife?” he asked, trying to sound casual. “I haven’t seen her for a while.”

“I’ve been divorced for ten years.”

“Oh, I just assumed…” He felt his face redden. “I meant that lady who used to be here when I came by. I haven’t seen her around.”

Winters smiled, and Alex didn’t like that smile. “She’s gone.”

She’s gone

That could mean a number of different things, he told himself, and nodded in noncommittal acknowledgment.

“She won’t be back,” Winters said, still smiling.

Alex looked away. Maybe he was being paranoid, but thinking about the small shrubs he’d delivered here last week, he was reminded of the roses Jimmy Stewart had noticed through his telephoto lens in Rear Window. Could Winters have buried her body somewhere on the property and planted the shrubs over the spot?

And what was the sack of lime for?

Again, he considered making an anonymous call to the police, telling them that Winters had killed a woman, but it was not easy to make calls anonymously these days, since public telephones were almost nonexistent, and he didn’t want to use his own phone, because he didn’t want anything traced back to him.

Maybe he’d run the idea past Britta and Jennifer to see what they thought.

The rest of his route went smoothly, but his last stop was way over in Encino, and he got bogged down in a long conversation with the client about whether movie theaters were ever going to return to their pre-pandemic popularity, and ended up stuck in traffic on his way home.

Jennifer was waiting for him when he walked through the doorway, and she was not in a good mood.

“Very funny,” she said.

“What?”

“You know.”

“I swear I don’t.”

“Your buddy stopped by about an hour ago and dropped off a shipment of crotchless panties and other porn star lingerie.”

Alex frowned. “I don’t know anything about this.”

“Right.”

“I don’t! Who did you say dropped this off?”

“One of your delivery boy pals. Very smarmy he was, too. Lee, I think he said his name was.”

“That’s one of our new employees.” Alex shook his head. “But this doesn’t make any sense.”

“You want to see?” Jennifer used her foot to kick a box on the floor next to the coffee table that he hadn’t noticed before. The top of the box was open, and as he moved closer to look, he saw a jumble of red, black and pink silk underthings.

“I didn’t order any of these,” he said.

“Then who did?”

“I have no idea. But don’t worry,” he promised. “I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

“Even if this isn’t your doing, that weirdo, Lee, knows where you live, knows that you’re married.” She kicked the box again. “Knows my name, since it’s on the label. How much personal stuff are you sharing?”

“None of it. I have no idea how he knows any of this.” He took out his phone. “Britta should be home by now. I’m going to see if she can tell us anything.”

Not only was Britta home, but she too had received a shipment of exotic underwear. “I was just about to call you about it,” she said. “I mean, what the hell?”

“Jennifer was here when we got ours. She said Lee delivered it to her personally—and was creepy about it.”

“I’m calling him right now,” Britta said. “I’ll call you back after.”

“She’s going to track it down,” he told Jennifer, “and call right back.”

They stood there and waited. The television was already on. It always seemed to be on when Jennifer was home, and he’d taken to calling her Montag’s Wife, after the character in Fahrenheit 451, which irritated the hell out of her. Right now, a Republican politician running for national office was on the news criticizing California and its Democratic lawmakers for being elitist and out of touch with “real Americans.”

“How can they do that?” Jennifer said disgustedly, watching the screen. “Run against entire sections of the country and not even get penalized for it? They fundraise off trashing gay San Francisco and liberal Hollywood, and they’ve been doing it so long that it’s just accepted. Yet we can’t do the same. If a Democrat dared to ask voters if they’d rather live in a country that was more like California, with good jobs, nice houses and a good educational system, instead of a place like Alabama, where toothless hillbillies drink corn liquor while sitting in their outhouses, he’d be dead in the water.”

Alex smiled. “And they dare to call us elitist.”

“I’m serious. They can get away with a lot more than we can. How come?”

“Ask your dad. I’m pretty sure he was in at the ground floor of all this.”

She turned to him. “Speaking of my dad, you two have been awfully chummy lately. What’s up with that?”

“Nothing.”

“Because I’ve had the distinct impression over the last fifteen years that you guys did not particularly like each other.”

He feigned innocence. “Us?”

She hit his shoulder. “Knock it off.”

“Have you heard from your dad today?” he asked carefully.

She pointed. “See! Right there!”

“What?”

“Something’s going on with you two.”

Alex pretended to check his watch. “I wonder how long—”

His phone rang, and he answered immediately. It was Britta. She had not been able to get ahold of Lee, and she’d left both a voicemail and text message. She’d also sent him an email. “Obviously, we need to fire his ass,” she said. “But I still want to find out what’s up with this.”

“We definitely need better vetting.”

“You’re right about that. You’ve always been right about that. Why don’t you try to contact him? Maybe he’s just blocking me. Maybe he’ll talk to you.”

“I’ll give it a shot,” Alex said.

But he couldn’t reach Lee either, and though he downplayed it for Jennifer’s sake, something didn’t seem right to him about all this, and he was antsy and anxious the rest of the evening. He went to bed feeling unsettled.

By the morning, neither he nor Britta had heard from Lee, and they convened a meeting with all of their employees, showing up at the coffeeshop a half-hour early to talk together first and figure out a unified approach to discuss with the others.

“Rodrigo and Stacey both confirmed,” Britta said as Alex slid into the booth. “No sign of Lee.”

“Maybe he’s pulling a Lonnie.”

“And kissed us off with boxes of underwear? That seems a little…odd.”

Alex leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Do you know what’s even odder? He’s sitting at a table over by the restroom.”

The man had been there the entire time, but Alex had not noticed who it was until he looked over Britta’s shoulder and saw him glance in their direction.

Lee quickly bowed his head, focusing on his cup of coffee.

“I don’t like this,” Alex whispered. “He knows we’re here, but he’s trying to hide from us.”

“Let me just call him over.” Britta straightened up and turned around. “Lee!” she said.

With a scream, he stood, knocking over his table. Coffee cup, silverware and cream container all clattered to the floor. A woman cried out, startled, and everyone looked over. Maybe it was instinct, maybe just the ingrained memory of countless movies and TV shows, but Alex immediately got under the table, reaching out to grab Britta’s legs and drag her down as well.

Seconds after she slid off the booth bench onto the floor, the first shot rang out.

He was not exactly surprised—it was why he was down here—but he suddenly realized that this was the worst place they could possibly be. Lee had seen them. He knew their table, and now they were sitting ducks. He could just walk over, crouch down and blow them away.

The first shot had been loud. Alex had never been this close to a firing gun before, and his ears were ringing from the blast, the sound reverberating in his skull. Tables were crashing to the floor, plates and glasses shattering, other customers screaming, but the noise was muffled, as though coming from far away. He saw pantlegs and shoes running past, one bare-legged woman in high heels almost tripping and instantly righting herself as she sped toward the restaurant’s front door.

The sound of the second shot overrode everything else. Alex could no longer hear the screams and crashes, only a deafening explosion followed by ringing nothingness that obliterated all other noise. He had no idea what things looked like from above the tabletop, but there was a chance in all the chaos that Lee might think they had escaped and were already out of the coffeeshop.

Another gunshot, slicing through the deadened silence. He saw a waitress near the counter fall to the floor in a splatter of blood, one lifeless eye staring in his direction.

Scrambling, Alex moved onto his back and twisted around, his elbow hitting Britta’s thigh as he repositioned himself so that his feet were facing outward, ready to kick should Lee poke his head down here. He wouldn’t be able to stop a bullet, but if he acted quickly and maintained the element of surprise, he might be able to knock the gun out of the man’s hand before he fired, or at least throw off his aim long enough to get in another kick and do some damage.

The thunderous noise of the fourth gunshot split the muffled air, and then two blue-jeaned legs were standing in front of their table. Alex was about to kick out with both feet, using enough force to break the man’s shins if possible, but there was another shot, and the legs buckled. Above them, the table shook as Lee’s lifeless body fell atop it.

He met Britta’s gaze. Neither of them moved, waiting to see what happened. The blue-jeaned legs stayed where they were, unmoving, blocking their exit. Alex’s hearing was muted, but he could sense that things were calming down, and across the floor, behind the dangling legs, he saw a white-uniformed cook bending down to check on the fallen waitress.

Britta screamed, the horrified expression that contorted her features far more immediate than the dampened sound of her cry, and he saw a trickle of blood dribbling down from the edge of the table onto her arm. Taking a chance, Alex climbed back up onto his seat. Directly before him, in the center of the table he saw what was left of Lee’s face, the man’s exposed teeth and upper jaw shockingly white against all of the wet ragged red. The gun he had turned on himself was still on the table next to his right hand after sliding out of his fingers. Crazily, his right pinky was still twitching.

Crying out in horror and disgust, Britta crawled out from under the table, pushing aside Lee’s legs and causing the body to shift slightly. Alex thought for a second that it was going to slide off the table on top of her, but it didn’t, and she stood, her arm, shoulder and a section of her hair streaked with blood.

Around them, nearly all of the customers were gone. The front door of the coffeeshop was wide open, and in the parking lot, people were running away. The cook was still crouched next to the dead waitress, another waitress kneeling next to him, sobbing. No one was coming anywhere near Lee.

Alex slid out of the booth. His right hand was shaking, and he tried to steady it with his left, but that was shaking, too. He faced Britta. If this were a movie, one of them would have said something clever and cute, like “We should have done a better job of vetting.” But instead they just stared at each other, stunned, as, from somewhere outside, the sound of a siren grew louder.

FIVE

1

In his dream, he was ten years old, only he was living in Jennifer’s parents’ house, and Jennifer was his mother. He had awakened in the middle of the night because Mrs. Walsh was wandering through the back yard calling for her dead husband. “Stu! Stu! Stu!” Terrified, he ran into his mom’s room to ask if he could stay in her bed, but she was staring out the open window into the darkness, holding a raggedy doll and humming something that he recognized but wished he didn’t.

Alex opened his eyes, heart pounding, surprised to find that Jennifer was already up and had not bothered to awaken him. The alarm clock said it was past seven-thirty, and he was filled with a moment of panic until he realized that it was Saturday.

Jennifer was in the kitchen, finishing a breakfast of yogurt and coffee, and she looked up at him as he entered. “You were tossing and turning so much, I thought I’d let you sleep.”

“Thanks,” he told her, although he was not sure if his expression of gratitude was sincere or sarcastic. Pouring himself a cup of coffee, he sat down at the table across from her.

She looked at him. “I’ll just come right out and say it: I think you should quit your job.” She held up a hand to silence him before he could respond. “It’s not because it’s beneath you, or it’s unstable or—”

“Any of the other things you’ve been telling me.”

“It’s because it’s dangerous. That shooting was on the news! One of your workers, one of the people you hired, was trying to kill you and shot up a coffeeshop. After he delivered me a bunch of sexy lingerie. This is not normal!”

“You’re right,” he said. “It isn’t. But the odds of something like this happening again are like one in a billion. It’s like getting hit by lightning twice. The law of averages says things should be clear sailing from here on in.”

She looked at him, saying nothing.

“Come on, spill it. You’ve been against this from the beginning, and it’s not for the reasons you try to persuade me. What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and he heard worry in her voice as well as a resignation that indicated she was finally being honest. “Nothing against Britta—she seems nice. And you’re both right: there’s obviously a market for what you’re offering. But I don’t like this job. Something about it feels wrong. Call me crazy, but I was…expecting something like this to happen.”

He looked skeptical.

“Okay, maybe I wasn’t actually expecting it, but I wasn’t surprised when it happened. I’ve been waiting for the hammer to fall for a long time. Every day I expect to get a phone call telling me that you’re…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. “You don’t know how often I’ve been tempted to call during the day just to make sure you’re all right.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

“Would you have listened?”

“Yes.”

She fixed him with a skeptical look.

“Okay. Probably not.”

“Besides, it sounds insane. I’m not even sure why I’m telling you now.”

Alex was unexpectedly moved, and he wanted to be able to reassure her, to tell her that there was nothing to worry about and her fears were completely unfounded. But he couldn’t. The terror he’d felt during the shooting had not completely gone away, and he thought about the house behind her parents’ house and the bizarre things he’d encountered during his deliveries, and all of it combined into one overpowering feeling of dread that made her fears seem entirely logical.

She met his eyes. “You’re not going to find another job, are you?”

How could he explain to her that he had a feeling, too? That, as freaky as it might be sometimes, this was the job he should be doing? He shook his head slowly.

“Why not?”

He didn’t have an answer.

“I’m afraid,” she said, and her naked honesty touched him.

“It’ll be all right,” he promised.

She held his gaze. “Will it?”

For that he had no answer.

****

The coffeeshop was closed for the foreseeable future, so they had to find a new place to meet. After much discussion, they settled on a Denny’s with a white-tented outdoor eating area that offered both privacy and an easy escape should…something arise.

Rodrigo was still with them, but Stacey, who’d been outside the coffeeshop and on her way in when the shooting started, had bailed. They were going to be swamped with work for a while, and would have to rearrange routes daily in order to find the most efficient way to serve as many clients as possible, but both Britta and Alex were resolute in their determination not to hire another person until he or she had been completely checked out. It was Alex’s responsibility to come up with a new job application form that would help them better investigate the pasts of their future employees, and he’d been working on it for the past several nights, although as far as he was concerned, it was nowhere near ready to implement.

All three of them met each morning now, not only in order to sync their schedules, but to keep tabs on one another. “It’s a hard, high-pressure job,” Britta said. “We need to make sure none of us is creeping close to the edge.”

“I always had my doubts about that Lee,” Rodrigo admitted. “I’m shocked by what he did, but I’m not totally surprised. You know what I mean?”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Alex asked.

He shrugged. “It’s not my place. I mean, you guys hired him. I figured you knew what you were doing.”

“From now on,” Britta told him, “speak up. Any hunches, feelings, vibes, whatever, let us know. We don’t know what we’re doing. Well, we do when it comes to the job, but when it comes to hiring? We’re new at this. So we’ll take your input seriously.”

“Seriously enough to give me a raise?”

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe not right away. But soon.”

Rodrigo grinned. “You got it.”

Strait To You was not mentioned in any of the news stories about the shooting, as far as Alex knew, but word got out somehow, as it always did. Instead of hurting business, however, they were inundated with new orders, as though the tragedy somehow conferred upon them a new legitimacy.

“You’re not a real company until you’ve had a disgruntled employee go on a shooting rampage,” Britta said wryly.

There was no way the three of them could keep up with the new demand, so until they hired some extra workers, they decided to be more choosy about the jobs they took. Longtime clients with a history of high-end purchases and generous tips were given first priority, and Alex and Britta decided together on the others, based on time requirements and convenience of location. Those they had to turn down were advised to try again in a month or so, once “restructuring” was complete.

One of the clients Alex intended to retain, if only to keep an eye on him, was Hugh Winters. As petty as it might be, one of his goals was to bring down his ex-boss (and if he could have figured out a way to drag Thompson and the entire rest of the company down as well, Alex would have gladly done so).

That wasn’t necessary, though, because when he pulled onto Winters’ street with a new shipment of “herbal supplements,” Alex encountered a fleet of police cars parked both in the driveway and next to the curb in front of the vice president’s house. Winters himself was being led out in handcuffs. Stopping across the street, Alex got out of the van and walked over. There were no other onlookers—the neighborhood was too tony for such gaucheness—but there was an officer assigned to crowd control who prevented him from advancing onto the sidewalk. “Please stay back, sir,” the officer admonished.

“What’s going on?” Alex asked.

“Please step back.”

“I’m here to make a delivery,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Can I just leave it on the porch?”

“No.”

Winters looked over as he was being ushered into the back of a patrol car, and though it was too far away to see clearly, Alex thought he saw an expression of blank incomprehension on the man’s face, as though he had no idea what was going on.

This had been one of his fantasies, and while revenge was supposed to be sweet, seeing it unfold like this, Alex felt an unexpected sympathy for Winters.

The man had killed his girlfriend, Alex told himself. He didn’t deserve any sympathy.

But had he killed her? And was that even the reason he was being arrested? For all Alex knew, he was being charged with insider trading or some white-collar crime connected with Illustrious Footwear.

“Why are you arresting him?” Alex asked the policeman, trying again.

“Please move your vehicle off the street,” the officer said, nodding toward the van. “This is a restricted area.”

There was no parking allowed on any of the streets in this neighborhood, so Alex drove a couple of miles to a broader thoroughfare. Pulling into a 76 gas station, he parked on the side of the building near the air pump and water hose before calling Britta. She was either busy with a client or on the freeway, because he was transferred directly to voicemail. He left a message describing what had happened, then immediately went online to see if he could find any information about the arrest.

There wasn’t any news yet, but by the end of the day he had learned that Winters had indeed been arrested for the suspected murder of Clarissa Hamill, his live-in partner, who was missing and presumed dead, though no body had as yet been found. Alex thought about the battered yet stunning woman he had seen in Winters’ house. There still seemed something familiar about her, which made him pretty sure that she’d worked at Illustrious. He smiled to think of the chaos that must be rampaging through the company behind the scenes.

The arrest was the top story on the Channel 4 news that night, and the same cop who had kicked Alex off the street was giving a detailed account of Winters’ arrest to reporters.

“Asshole wouldn’t tell me shit,” Alex said to Jennifer as they sat next to each other on the couch. “But get him in front of a camera, and he’s Chatty Cathy.”

“Everyone wants to be a star.”

“Publicity hound.”

Britta called soon after, having seen the same story on Channel 7.

“One down, Thompson to go,” she said wryly.

Alex wasn’t sure what to do with the “herbal supplements” in the back of his van. Winters had paid the “nutritionist” ahead of time, and the only money Strait To You would have received was for delivery. Now that wasn’t going to happen, and he wondered if he could return the carton for a refund, even though he wasn’t the one who had made the purchase. Otherwise, he was going to have to either deposit the package on Winters’ doorstep and let it sit there for God knew how long, save the supplements in case Winters ever got out, or toss everything.

For the time being, he left the carton in the van.

Winters’ arrest, although welcome in a schadenfreude way, was a little unsettling and brought home the fact that quite a few of the individuals he dealt with were odd and unstable. He thought once again that behind the pleasant façade of ordinary society was a darker secret world that the general public knew nothing about.

Britta had a high-paying new assignment, picking up all the way over in the Antelope Valley and dropping off in Pacific Palisades, and Rodrigo was booked solid for the day in central L.A., so Alex took over Britta’s usual delivery of iffy edibles to her oldest and most reliable client. More than once she had suggested, due to the sheer volume of deliveries, that the wealthy man buying the edibles was selling them elsewhere—dealing—and while that possibility made Alex uncomfortable, this was her route not his, and he was resolved not to screw things up for her (although, in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help wondering if Strait To You been hired because transportation of these items was illegal, and the client did not want to get caught conveying them across the city).

Originally, Britta had picked up the edibles from a street cart on Soto in East L.A., but as the client’s orders had gotten larger, she’d begun getting them directly from the source, which was neither factory nor store, but a house in one of the seedier sections of the city. Nearly all of the residences here had black iron bars on the windows, and brick or chain-link fences around the small front yards. As he drove by, a group of young men huddled together on one of the street corners, all of them sporting shaved heads and wearing white t-shirts. They glanced suspiciously at him as he passed.

Following Britta’s instructions, Alex had texted ahead that he was coming, receiving back an “OK.” He was hoping that Enrique, the edibles seller, would be standing out front waiting so that he’d know where to go, but no such luck. Alex had to find the house by following address numbers painted in faded white rectangles on the side of the curb.

There were quite a few vehicles parked on the street, and he ended up pulling behind a blue Impala a couple of houses down. In front of Enrique’s address was a battered panel truck, and on the side, clumsily hand-painted in bright red, was the message, “EAT MORE PETS!” Alex got out of the van. Strangely, he heard no barking dogs, which was highly unusual for this type of neighborhood. A quick glance around revealed no cats either, and he ventured a look back at the panel truck, feeling uneasy.

Did its owner actually eat pets?

Opening the unlocked gate of the chain-link fence, he crossed the weedy front yard and knocked on Enrique’s door. It opened right away. “You from Britta?” asked the impressively mustached man before him. “You here for the package?”

The drug dealer talk made Alex even more uncomfortable than he already was, but he nodded. “I’m with Strait To You.”

“I’m Enrique. Wait there.”

Alex stood in place as the man disappeared into the gloom. Inside, the curtains weren’t drawn, but the open door did not allow in much light, and between the bars over the windows and the thick bushes growing next to the house, the front room was surprisingly dark. Not so dark, however, that he didn’t see the woman behind the counter which separated the front room from the kitchen beyond—a dusky black-haired beauty he recognized instantly.

Clarissa Hamill.

Winters’ girlfriend.

The one he was supposed to have killed.

Enrique emerged from a side doorway carrying a brown paper lunch sack, presumably filled with edibles, that was stapled shut along its folded top. “Here you go.”

Alex took the bag. “Do you need a receipt? I—”

“No receipts,” Enrique said, fixing him with a hard stare.

Britta had already told him that, but distracted by Winters’ supposedly dead girlfriend, he’d forgotten. Alex nodded toward the woman. “Isn’t that Clarissa?” he asked. “Clarissa Hamill?”

The mustached man frowned at him. “No. And it’s not your business.”

“I’m sorry. She looked like someone—”

“Why don’t you go now.” Enrique said. It wasn’t a question.

Behind him, the woman moved around the counter out of the kitchen, sauntering slowly toward the front door. She was humming to herself. The tune was familiar, though at first Alex couldn’t quite place it.

Then he could.

The wordless, tuneless song the unseen woman had been singing in the house behind their house when he was a child.

Alex was suddenly cold, the hair on his arms and the back of his neck bristling.

The woman reached Enrique, and draped a languorous arm over his shoulder. Still humming softly, she looked directly into Alex’s eyes, and the sides of her mouth curved slowly upward into a smile.

2

“It was her,” Alex said. “I’d swear to it.”

“If she’s still alive, you need to tell the police,” Jennifer told him, “because that means Hugh Winters is rotting in jail for something he didn’t do.”

“I’m not sure she is alive.”

Jennifer fixed him with a hard stare. “I’m trying to be reasonable here.”

“I know how this sounds, but I’m not crazy. I saw what I saw and—”

“And you saw a woman alive who was supposed to be dead. You shouldn’t be telling it to me, you should be telling the police.”

Alex looked away. How could he explain to her about the weird song? And the woman in the house behind his house when he was little, and his friend Robby, and…

Everything was all muddled together in a hellish jumble, and while he probably could just sit her down and lay things out, explaining it all from the very beginning, he didn’t want to. Like her dad, he wanted to protect her, and he just nodded and said, “You’re right.”

He did call the police, dialing 911, but it was the Pasadena Police Department who answered. Not knowing who had jurisdiction over this, he simply told his story to the officer on the phone, who transferred him to the LAPD, to whom he told the story all over again. Downplaying his certainty, he covered himself by saying “I think” and “It looked to me like,” but he provided them with the edible seller’s name and address, and then called Britta to tell her what he’d done.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope this doesn’t cost us our client, but—”

“I would’ve done exactly the same thing,” she assured him. “And if we lose a customer, c’est la vie.”

“Maybe we’ll get Winters back. That’ll balance things out.”

“Just what you wanted.” He could hear the amusement in her voice.

Alex heard nothing back from the police, and his attempts over the next two days to text, call and email Hugh Winters went nowhere, so he contacted the LAPD himself to find out what was going on. In the parking lot of Tito’s Tacos, a boxed burrito on his lap, he phoned the department and, not knowing who to ask for, described to the gravelly-voiced man answering the phone the information he’d called in. “I’m just curious about the status,” he said.

“I’ll find out,” the officer said brusquely. There was a click and then silence. Alex remained on the line for several moments, not sure if he’d been cut off or put on hold until a recording of a robotic woman’s voice thanked him for holding. There was another click. More silence. Finally, the officer came back on the line. “Yeah, that’s not the same woman,” he said.

“I’m pretty sure it is,” Alex told him, speaking carefully.

“We checked. It’s not. Anything else?”

“No. Thank you.” Alex hung up.

It was the same woman. He’d known it the second he saw her, and she knew he knew and had thrown it in his face. She was also, as impossible as it seemed, either the same woman from the house behind their house or somehow connected to her.

But he wasn’t a detective, and he wasn’t one of those plucky amateurs who, in movies and books, took it upon themselves to solve a crime. He was just a regular guy, and he was not about to dig into the situation on his own so he could find out what was really going on.

And one thing was for damn sure: he was never going back to that house.

Britta was fine with that, but since she had no problem with picking up and delivering Enrique’s edibles, she intended to continue doing so.

“Just do me a favor,” he told her. “If you see that woman, keep an eye on her. And if you notice anything strange or unusual, let me know.”

“Like what?”

“I have no idea,” he said.

In his dream that night, Britta was driving to Enrique’s place to pick up a sack of edibles for her client. She was running late, and the sun was down by the time she reached his street. The EAT MORE PETS! van was still parked in front of the small house, and Britta pulled behind it. The gate in the chain-link fence was open, as was the door to the house, and she walked across the yard and into the darkened front room. Enrique was nowhere to be seen, but the woman was standing behind the kitchen counter, a distracted smile on her face, singing to herself as she chopped up a puppy and dropped pieces of the animal into a pot on the stove. There were no lights on in the kitchen, only a single flickering candle that seemed to be floating in the air in front of the refrigerator. The woman stopped singing when she saw Britta and said, “You’re here! Did you bring me the baby I ordered? It’s almost dinnertime.”

Alex awoke groggy and disoriented. He had never before had a third-person dream, one in which he was a viewer rather than a participant, and the experience left him feeling decidedly unnerved.

Maybe Jennifer was right. Maybe this wasn’t the job for him.

Thinking about the supposedly dead woman’s smile, and hearing in his mind the echo of that horrible tuneless refrain, made the idea of going to work each day at a boring ordinary office seem almost desirable. But he, Britta and Rodrigo met at Denny’s for their morning meeting, and once he was on the road and back in his normal groove, those doubts disappeared.

He really did like their little startup company. This was where he was supposed to be.

Still, he felt a twinge of unfounded trepidation when, halfway through the day, Britta texted him the name, address and order of a man who wanted Strait To You to convey a collection of fossils from Paleozoic Presents in Santa Monica to an office in Westwood. Though the pickup and delivery went smoothly, a floating sense of foreboding remained with him for the rest of the afternoon, and he wasn’t able to relax until his work was done, and he was finally on his way home.

The next day, thank God, was Saturday. Grateful for the weekend, he slept in, and Jennifer let him. She was grading papers on the dining room table when he awoke, and he kissed the top of her head on his way into the kitchen to get some coffee. She looked up at him. “Like the taste of my shampoo, do you?”

“The smell of it. Apple Blossom, right?”

Not particularly hungry, he made himself a piece of toast to go with the coffee. Before the pandemic, they might have spent the day at the county arboretum or gone to a movie in the afternoon, but even though they were both vaccinated and things were finally getting better, they were no longer in the habit of going out, and he assumed they’d stay home today as well. Which was fine with him. Now that he was on the road all week, it was nice to just hang out and relax, maybe mow the lawn, do some chores, take a walk around the neighborhood or catch up on TV shows they’d recorded.

Jennifer had finished her grading by the time he’d shaved and showered, was putting her students’ papers into a folder, and she turned to him as he entered the room. “My mom’s not answering the phone,” she said. “Neither’s my dad.”

Alex froze.

“I’m worried.”

“Maybe they went somewhere.”

“This early?”

“They could be out working in the yard and didn’t hear the phone ring.”

“Maybe…” she conceded.

“But you don’t think so?”

She shook her head.

In his mind, he saw her parents’ home empty, uneaten food still on the table, the back door open, the house behind their house returned and…waiting.

This might be the time to come clean.

Jennifer picked up her folder. “I’ll try again later.” She headed down the hall to their shared office.

Opportunity missed.

She did call again later in the morning, with the same result. In fact, she tried calling her parents several times before lunch, both on their land line and cell phones. The cell phones went directly to voicemail. the home phone just rang and rang and rang.

“We need to talk,” Alex said finally. Jennifer had just tried calling again and looked over at him as she put down the phone.

“What?”

He took out his own phone, showing her one of the pictures he’d taken of the house behind her parents’ place.

“I don’t have time for this.”

“You’d better make time.” He swiped to the next photo. “There was another house in your parents’ back yard. Only the back yard was bigger than it was supposed to be. Like another dimension or something. Your dad and I both saw it.”

“I was there. I didn’t see it.”

“But you saw these pictures of it. You and your mom both did. You just forgot. Because when I took the photos, this house showed up. And that wasn’t the first time. Maybe you don’t recall, but when we went over to your parents’ back in the spring, after we got vaccinated, I saw the house. I showed it to you and your mom and your dad, and you all saw it, but you all forgot about it. I was the only one who remembered.” He pointed to the screen. “The next time, your dad and I both saw it. It was creepy as hell. And I took these pictures.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” she said, but he could hear the hesitancy in her voice.

“He called up one night while you were in the shower, and your mom could see it, too. She was standing by the window, in a trance, holding one of your old dolls, and just staring at the other house. Then the next day, the house was gone, or at least neither of them could see it anymore. Your dad didn’t want me to say anything—”

“And for the first time in your life, you listened to him?”

“We didn’t want to worry you.”

She held up a hand to keep him from talking. “I am worried. Which is why we need to get over there right now. Maybe it has something to do with your haunted house and maybe it doesn’t, but something happened.”

That’s what Alex’s instinct was telling him as well, and they quickly locked up and drove to Simi Valley. Both cars were in her parents’ driveway, which made it look as though they were home, but when Jennifer rang the doorbell and waited, then knocked on the door and waited, the queasy feeling in his stomach intensified.

Jennifer took out her own keys and let them in. “Daddy?” she called. “Mom?”

The house was silent.

They went through the rooms, Jennifer calling out, “Mom? Daddy?” and Alex calling, “Jim? Molly?” The place was empty. He walked through the kitchen to the sliding glass doors that led onto the patio. Stepping outside, he saw instantly that the other house was not there.

Jennifer was right behind him. “Where is it? Your secret house? Do you see it?”

He shook his head. “No.”

He was staring at the place where it had been, now a much smaller section of back yard ending at the beginnings of a cinderblock wall that Jim was having built in front of the wooden fence, but Jennifer had already moved on. “Maybe one of the neighbors knows something,” she said. “I’m going next door to talk to Mrs. Hill.”

Alex stared at the place where the house had been, thinking back to when he was in high school and the house in back of theirs had disappeared and he’d seen his dad…

He quickly turned. “Maybe we should call the police,” he told Jennifer.

He had spoken aloud what she’d been thinking, and when he saw the expression on her face, he instantly regretted it. She looked absolutely devastated, and he wanted to take it back, but after walking through the emptiness of his in-laws’ home, and seeing nothing out of the ordinary in the back yard, he was even more sure that her parents were—
in the house

—missing and not coming back.

He attempted to be reasonable and reassuring. “It doesn’t look like anyone broke in. But both cars are here and they aren’t. The police might be able to—”

Jennifer had regained her composure. “I want to talk to the neighbors first. My dad might’ve had a heart attack or something and my mom went to the hospital with him in the ambulance. Or maybe my mom had a stroke, and my dad went with her in the ambulance.”

He didn’t point out that if either of those had been the case, someone would certainly have called her. And it wasn’t a good sign that a heart attack and stroke were the most optimistic possibilities she could think of at the moment. But he went with her to talk to the neighbors. As he’d suspected, none of them knew anything; all of them had assumed that Jim and Molly were still at home, since their cars were in the driveway. There’d been no sirens, fire engines or ambulances.

Returning, Jennifer found her parents’ address book next to the phone in the dining room alcove and began calling the friends and even far-flung relatives whose numbers were listed. None of them had been contacted by either Jim or Molly within the past few days, and none had any idea where the couple might be.

Increasingly frantic, she did call the police, dialing 911 and explaining to the person who answered that her parents were missing. “Yes,” she said, answering a question. “Well over forty-eight hours.” There was a pause. “No, I don’t want to file a report. I want someone to come out here, to the scene of the crime, and find them!”

She finally convinced them to send someone out and hung up the phone.

“We need to put on our masks when they get here,” he told her. “A lot of those assholes are unvaccinated.”

Jennifer nodded absently. They’d discussed this before, when reports of police unions protesting vaccine mandates were in the news, and it was her opinion that such scofflaws should be fired, reasoning that many of them were the same ones responsible for incidents of police brutality. Now that she needed them, though, those concerns were clearly on the back burner.

Jennifer was glad that the police were dispatching an officer to investigate, but the fact that they had to be involved at all obviously made her mind jump to worst-case scenarios. “What if they were kidnapped and murdered?” she asked. “Or my dad went crazy and took my mom someplace where he killed her before killing himself?”

“I don’t think so,” Alex said reassuringly.

“It’s possible.”

“But highly unlikely. It’s probably something simple that we aren’t seeing right now, and they’re both fine.”

“Do you think so?” she asked hopefully.

He nodded.

But he didn’t really.

He thought they were in the other house.

3

When the police were not only unable to discover what had happened to her parents after several days but also became irritated with her constant prodding and requests for updates, Jennifer went to the local news stations with the story. True, this wasn’t the type of missing-pretty-young-blond-woman that the media loved so well, but her father had been prominent enough in politics over the decades that his disappearance was considered newsworthy. The resulting public scrutiny even brought the FBI on board, and for a brief week, Alex and Jennifer thought progress might be made. But there were no leads, no clues, no theories, and things soon settled back into their previous state of stasis.

They were questioned interminably, and in a moment of paranoia, Alex wondered if the two of them were under suspicion. But it was clear that was not the case—the detectives in charge were only doing their job—and the fact that the investigation kept circling the same track told him that a resolution was highly unlikely.

Severely depressed, Jennifer seemed certain that her mom and dad were dead, and it was Alex who tried to convince her that maybe they weren’t. She was desperate enough that she’d bought into his story of the house behind her parents’ house, and each weekend when they went over to go through the mail, mow the lawn, check the timers attached to various lamps, and do whatever else was needed to keep up the place and make it look like someone was living there, she would go into the back yard, hoping to see evidence that the other house had returned.

He wasn’t sure why, but Alex had made no mention to her of his childhood experiences. Maybe it would have helped, maybe it wouldn’t, but he didn’t want Jennifer to know what had happened, didn’t want her to be any more scared than she already was.

And he didn’t want to relive it himself.

In the back of his mind, though, he did believe that her mom and dad were stuck in that house. Where the house was and what shape her parents were in, he had no idea. For some reason, he did not think they were dead, however. Changed maybe. But not dead.

Through it all, they both continued going to work. They couldn’t afford not to. Jennifer took a few personal days at the beginning, but Strait To You had yet to hire anyone other than Rodrigo, and Alex’s help was sorely needed. There were a bunch of job applications to sort through, with new ones coming in all the time, and Britta had already identified several possibilities, but they’d had no time for a more thorough vetting, which was technically Alex’s job, and until that hurdle was jumped, they weren’t going to have any additional help. All deliveries were up to the three of them.

He had asked Britta to keep an eye on Enrique’s house and let him know if she saw anyone resembling the woman he had described to her. She had done so, but in all the times she’d gone to pick up bags of those mysterious edibles, she’d seen no one other than Enrique himself. She’d even taken it upon herself to ask, in a casual roundabout way, whether he lived alone, and, according to Enrique, he did.

Hugh Winters was still being charged with the murder of Clarissa Hamill, although no body had ever been discovered. He was out on bail, and more than once, Alex had been tempted to stop by and tell the man that he’d seen Clarissa alive, but something kept him from it.

He was the one who saw the woman again.

It was late Friday night, and he was sorting through the list of people applying for a job with Strait To You.

She was one of the applicants.

Alex stared at the photo accompanying the resume. Jennifer had already gone to bed, and he was alone at his desk. The house around him seemed suddenly darker, and he was filled with an irrational need to check on his wife to make sure she was still there. He did, and she was, but the office seemed gloomier when he returned, even with the lights on. He sat down again in front of the computer. Just looking at her photograph sent a chill down his spine. He had never before had an opportunity to examine her features so carefully. She was indeed beautiful and darkly exotic…but there was also something off about her. Her gaze was too direct, her green eyes a little too green. The smile that was supposed to be friendly and welcoming was instead knowing and secretive.

The name on the application was Bess Hanson, although he doubted that name was any more real than “Clarissa Hamill.”

According to the attached resume, Ms. Hanson had graduated from UC Brea with a BA in Graphic Design. Her subsequent work history consisted of a series of jobs with various companies, most unrelated to her major.

On the application itself was an address. Alex had no idea whether this was actually where she lived, or if the address was even valid, but it gave him a concrete starting point, and he took out a notepad and wrote it down.

There was also a phone number on the application.

The idea of calling her frightened him, but he couldn’t not do it, and though it was late, he picked up the desk phone and dialed. After one faint, anemic ring, someone picked up.

At the other end of the line, in a high eerie voice, a woman began singing a horrifyingly tuneless song.

Alex hung up immediately, his hands shaking.

It was her.

He took a deep breath, wishing he had something to drink that was within grabbing distance. It seemed clear to him that this woman—
whatever she was

—was stalking him. Whether she was the one from the house behind his childhood home, he had no idea. Even if she was, the fact that she had been with Hugh Winters could still have been a coincidence. The same was true for her association with Enrique. But submitting an application for Strait To You? That was intentional, and Alex thought of the woman’s voice he and Jim had heard in the house behind his in-laws’ place, thought of Lee shooting up the coffeeshop, and could not help feeling that all of it was somehow connected.

He tried to recall the first time he had heard that horrible tuneless singing. He was pretty sure it was the day of the barbecue, the day he’d finally gathered up enough courage to walk out to the house. Standing on the grass, staring at the two-story picture-book home, the world around him completely silent, he’d been frozen in place, unable to move. From within, he’d heard the woman’s voice. She was singing, not just to him but to someone else in the house. Something else. What that thing could be he had no idea, but the very thought of it had frightened him, and he knew he had to get out of there and back to his parents before…something happened.

Alex was overcome now by that same sense of fear, and he shut down his computer and hurried over to the bedroom, crawling in bed next to Jennifer and holding her tight. He could see from a glow in the hallway that he’d left the office light on, but he wasn’t about to go back and turn it off, and he rolled over, closed his eyes and forced himself to fall asleep.

****

He told neither Jennifer nor Britta, although he probably should have told them both.

Alex sat in his van across the street from the East L.A. address he’d copied from “Bess Hanson’s” job application. To his surprise, it was not a house but a small church, a dirty clapboard structure that looked as though it had been abandoned decades ago. Appearances could be deceiving, however, and he remained where he was, watching the building for any sign of movement within. Several of the steps that led up to the closed double doors were visibly broken, and the handful of shrubs in front of the building were brown and dead, although the two stained-glass windows flanking the entrance remained intact, even though the surrounding neighborhood was not the greatest.

She must have provided a fake address, Alex decided, and was about to leave when he noticed what appeared to be movement behind the window on the right, a shadowy flutter that briefly darkened the colorful stained glass. His heart lurched in his chest. Instinct told him to leave, but he had to know if she was here, so he got out of the van, gathered his courage and crossed the street.

It was a warm sunny day, but Alex felt cold as he passed through the small patch of land in front of the church. He stood for a moment at the bottom of the steps, feeling alone and exposed, wishing someone else was with him. He’d kept his eyes on the window the entire time but hadn’t noticed anything unusual and tried to convince himself that he’d imagined what he’d seen. His gaze shifted to the window on the other side of the door.

This time there was no mistaking the fluttering behind the glass, something dark and shapeless that caused the colors in the window to flicker as it passed by.

If he’d been smarter, Alex would have left then and there. But he didn’t. As nervous as he was, he walked carefully up the short set of broken steps and knocked on the church’s door. This close, he could see that there were letters carved into the sun-faded wood. Initials. And a single word.

Enfin.

Alex flinched as if struck, his eyes widening. Turning immediately, he hurried down the steps and practically ran back to the van, where he got in, quickly locked the doors, and sat there, breathing deeply.

It was a word he had not heard since childhood, and it brought back memories that were buried so far down he’d forgotten they existed. A church word, it was one that had been spoken—

Enfin

—at the beginning of certain Sunday services as a kind of convocation or…something. He’d never been sure exactly what the word meant, but there’d been power in it, and the other worshippers—his family and their friends—had always bowed their heads at its mention.

Their church had met the first Sunday of every month in a vacant lot cattycorner from his house. His father headed the small congregation and would stand at the foot of a large oak, while the rest of them sat on the grass before him. Alex understood now that it had been a personal religion cobbled together from the practices of other denominations, customized to fit their own emotional and spiritual needs, but at the time, he knew nothing else. It was the only church he had ever attended, the only faith he had ever known, and the rites and rituals, as strange as they might seem to outsiders, were to him routine.

Until the summer the man in the hat had come to visit.

When everything changed.

Alex pushed the thought away, shivering involuntarily. With one last look at the church across the street, he started the van and drove away.

Enfin

For the next half-hour, he cruised aimlessly down streets he didn’t know, turning left here and right there, in an effort to calm himself down. He needed to talk to someone, but Jennifer was already overwhelmed by her parents’ disappearance, and he didn’t want to put any more stress on her. There were no male friends he felt close enough to that he could discuss any of this with them. Which left Britta. They were supposed to be friends now, not just coworkers, and though this might be putting that to the test, he drove to her house, showing up without bothering to call.

She seemed glad to see him, and immediately invited him in.

The visit was not as formal or businesslike as last time. Rather than sitting in straight-backed chairs in front of a laptop on the dining room table, they sat in comfortable mismatched couches in the quirkily decorated living room. Beside him was an end table made from a gigantic ornately adorned Mexican pot topped by a circle of glass. Next to the doorway that led into the hall was a curio cabinet with shelves full of small antique toys. On the wall behind Britta, between two plaster angels, below a rainbow-painted cow skull, framed and written in Old English script on parchment, were the words I am me.

It was a uniquely curated environment, and he thought, as he had before, that it fit Britta perfectly.

“So what’s up?” she asked.

He told her.

He put it in the simplest, most direct way possible, which might not have been the best idea, because it sounded crazy to him even as he said it. He left out any mention of either the house behind his childhood home or the one behind Jennifer’s parents’ place, not wanting to complicate things further, but he did explain to Britta about his family’s religion and its connection to the word carved on the door of the East L.A. church. And he told her that Winters’ supposedly murdered girlfriend had now applied for a job with Strait To You and that when he’d followed up, she’d hummed a creepy song to him over the phone. Her given address was an abandoned church with a weird thing fluttering behind one of the stained-glass windows.

Alex slumped back into the cushion, exhausted. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m laying all this on you. I just…” He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

Britta leaned forward. “I’ve seen things, too,” she said softly. “Maybe not the same things you have, but enough that I don’t automatically dismiss anything anymore. I can’t pretend I understand what you’re talking about, but if you think it’s real, then I believe you.”

He paused. “It might be connected to Lee, too. I’m not sure why I think that, but I do.”

“Maybe everything’s connected.” She was silent for a moment. “Last week, I delivered to a man with a stick wife. That’s what he called her, ‘my stick wife.’ And she really was just a bunch of twigs tied together. I mean, she kind of looked like a person, if you really used your imagination. But there was no head or anything, just long bare branches connected with twine. Like something a three-year-old would draw. A stick figure. The thing is…she moved. I saw it. He said something to her, and one of those twig arms shifted and kind of swung onto his shoulder. He smiled at me, and I couldn’t help thinking that if the stick wife had a head, she’d be smiling, too. It scared me.” Britta shivered. “I’ve had nightmares about it.”

“I’ve seen weird things, too. But…this is different. With everything else, I drop the goods off, collect my payment and go. I’m gone, and the weirdness stays where it is. But this woman, she moves. From Winters to Enrique to our job application… I feel like she’s following me.”

“Maybe she is.”

“And that creepy song she sings. I heard it before, when I was a kid. It scared me then, and it scares me even more now. Honestly, I don’t know what the hell to do.”

“I know what to do.” Britta looked into his eyes, and the expression on her face was deadly serious.

“What?”

“Stay as far away from her as possible.”

SIX

1

The man in the hat had shown up for services one midsummer Sunday.

It was early morning, but already the day was warm and humid. The small congregation was standing on the grass, listening to his father preach, and Alex, off to the side and next to his mom, watched the man approach. It was no one he knew, no one he’d ever seen before, a clean-shaven nondescript fellow whose black tie and gray homburg stood out among the more modern attire of the longtime parishioners.

His dad was speaking about the concept of punishment, both in this world and the next, and their friends and family were paying close attention, as they always did, but the man in the hat wasn’t listening at all. He sidled through the small crowd, bumping the very pregnant Mrs. Davies as he pushed by, elbowing Jimmy McCallister’s dad in the stomach as he passed, until he was standing in the front row of worshippers.

Alex felt uneasy. Something about the man made him think of the house behind their house. There was about the stranger a similar air of wrongness, a sense that it would be best to maintain a safe distance. The man in the hat looked at him, smiled, and Alex immediately averted his eyes, heart pounding. The last thing he wanted was to be noticed, and it took every last ounce of willpower not to glance up to see if the man was still looking in his direction.

“The wages of sin…” his dad was saying.

In a clear and surprisingly strong voice, the man in the hat interrupted. “Why do you not have a church?”

Alex’s dad continued with his sermon, ignoring the question, but when it was asked again, even louder this time, he paused. Addressing the stranger, he gestured around at the empty lot. “This is our church, sir. We worship in nature, under the skies, surrounded by God’s wonderous creation.”

“Why not avail yourselves of a real church and worship in a building consecrated for that particular purpose?”

There was uncomfortable shuffling amongst the parishioners. Mr. Connor loudly cleared his throat. Lara Davies asked her mom what was happening, and Mrs. Davies told her daughter to shush.

The man in the hat did not wait for Alex’s dad to respond. “There is a church that awaits,” he said. “I have been sent to introduce you to this house of worship so that you may avail yourselves of its accommodations.”

He’d been sent? Who sent him? Alex thought. He reached for his mom’s hand and held it tightly. The man in the hat not only looked old-fashioned but spoke in an old-timey manner, the way his father did when he was preaching, and something about that made Alex feel even more unnerved.

Annoyed, his mom pushed his hand away. “Knock it off,” she whispered.

“We do not need more than we have in order to worship our Lord,” his dad countered.

The man in the hat smiled. “That may be true during the balmy days of spring and summer, but following the onset of inclement weather, do you insist upon your flock braving the elements when they could be comfortably ensconced within a house of God constructed expressly for that purpose?” He tilted his head, as though he heard a sound the rest of them could not, then refocused his attention away from Alex’s dad to an area behind and to the right of the tree. “Why, verily, there it stands.”

Sure enough, though it had not been there previously, a white wooden building, a simple single-story structure with a dark front door, stained-glass windows and a small steeple atop the peaked roof, now stood at the back of the vacant lot.

Or in back of the back of the lot.

Chilled to the bone, Alex recognized the impossibility of the space. It was just like the house behind their house, and when he hazarded a glance at the man in the hat, he saw that the stranger was looking directly at him.

Alex quickly glanced away.

His dad seemed to know something was wrong, and Alex was unsure if he was about to warn his congregation away from the building—or whether it would have worked if he had—but before he could say a word, Mr. Connor and Mr. McCallister began making their way toward the white chapel. The other families followed. Alex stood next to his mom, unmoving, until his dad reluctantly indicated that they should go as well.

The entire congregation traipsed around the side of the tree into the new part of the lot, his dad and the man in the hat bringing up the rear, walking next to each other but not speaking. Alex was frightened. He was afraid of the man, afraid of the building, afraid of what might happen if any of them stepped inside the church.

But they did step inside, all of them, and Alex wasn’t sure about anyone else, but passing through the double doors he experienced an instant sense of comfort, a feeling that this was where they belonged. Rows of smooth polished pews to either side of the central aisle made up the greater part of the chapel, while at the front was a simple unadorned podium behind which a large wooden crucifix stretched from floor to ceiling. Three stained-glass windows in each of the side walls depicted scenes from The Bible. Soft white light filled the room from a pair of milky skylights in the ceiling.

Even his dad seemed to have fallen under the spell of the building, and when the other parishioners looked to him for his reaction, he nodded his approval.

“Enjoy your new church,” the man in the hat said from his place behind them, and, bowing formally, he exited through the open door. Alex wanted to follow and see where he went, but remained next to his mother, who ushered him to the front of the chapel, where they stood to the right of the podium as his dad ascended the pulpit.

The members of their small congregation sat down, filling barely a fourth of the pews, and after a moment the sermon continued as if it had not been interrupted.

The first Sunday of the following month, the man in the hat appeared again at their services, bringing with him two older women, dressed in clothes as old-fashioned as his own, who seated themselves in the back pew. Before services started, one of the women raised her hand and asked if she might be allowed to stand in front of the congregation and recite her own prayer. “I want to thank God and show Her my gratitude for leading us to this house of worship.”

His dad stiffened. “The Lord our God is not a woman.”

“How do you know?” the man in the hat interjected, a small smile playing about his lips.

“The Bible tells us. ‘God created man in His own image.’ ‘He maketh me lie down in green pastures.’”

“It seems The Bible has misled you on that point.”

“Blasphemer!” his dad pronounced.

“I have seen God,” the woman assured him. “And She is beautiful.”

Alex could see his father struggling to contain both his anger and his disbelief at such sacrilege. “I will be conducting the benediction and the service,” he said tersely.

Ignoring him, the woman stood and clasped her hands together. “Enfin!” she declared. “Our Mother, who art in Heaven…”

Alex looked over at the other parishioners and was surprised to see their heads uniformly bowed in prayer.

That had been the beginning of the end.

From that point on, his father no longer seemed completely in charge of the church. The next month, the man in the hat was accompanied again by the two women, as well as a younger couple with a little boy, all six of them filling the back pew. Without asking for permission, the praying woman from last month’s meeting strode to the front of the church before Alex’s dad could begin the service, and once again intoned her prayer. “Our Mother…”

The following month, somehow, the entire congregation was in place even before Alex and his family arrived at the church. They were seated, ostensibly waiting, but many of them looked embarrassed and guilty. It felt to Alex as though, prior to their arrival, the parishioners had been doing something, and had quickly stopped and taken their seats immediately before his family walked through the door. Indeed, on the dais, there was evidence of hastily wiped-up blood.

Their church was not unfamiliar with sacrifice. Once a year, on the occasion of Jesus’ death and resurrection—what Alex had learned on the school playground other churches called “Easter”—his dad would kill a chicken as the worshippers recited the prayer of rebirth, carefully slitting its throat and sprinkling the dripping blood in a binding circle around the standing congregation. But this was different. This was secretive.

And wrong.

The Davies family, Alex saw, had gotten up from their pew and were making their way along the side aisle toward the door. Lara Davies had a stricken look on her pale face. He expected his dad to ask them what was the matter, find out why were they going, but his father was staring at the spot of smeared blood on the dais and did not seem to notice that they were leaving. Alex turned toward his mom, but she just shook her head at him, looking stern, and he let it go.

Moving into his usual position behind the podium, his dad placed his Bible on the stand and stared for a moment at his flock. His gaze lingered a second longer on the man in the hat, then he looked down and took a deep breath. “Enfin,” he said for the first, but not the last, time, and began the Invocation.

Over the next year, the church began to change, slowly and not always perceptibly. Seating arrangements shifted. The McCallisters, who had always been at the front of the congregation, both outside in the lot and here in the building, moved to the rear. Someone suggested that they meet every Sunday rather than once a month, and the worshippers voted on it, and it was approved. An occasional prayer used to bless the souls of loved ones when they passed on became a weekly ritual for communicating with the dead.

And still the congregation grew, the man in the hat bringing new people to each meeting, until one Sunday the church was full, and Alex realized that the families who had always been part of the church were now a minority. And quite a few of them were gone.

Outside of the church, at home, his dad was drinking more, and it had gotten to the point where Alex was almost afraid to be around him. He certainly made an effort to ensure that they were not left alone together. Not that his mom was much better. Something had changed in her since the man in the hat had shown them the building—

I have been sent to introduce all of you to this house of worship

—and while she had never been the world’s most affectionate mother, now she was downright cold.

Even more than before, Alex had the impression that both of his parents would be happier if he had never been born.

His feeling that there was something wrong with the man in the hat had never gone away, and during services he never looked in the man’s direction, certain that if he did so, those hard, scary eyes would be trained on him. Although the church itself occupied the same sort of impossible space as the house behind their house, Alex continued to find himself comforted by the building. The church might be wrong—but he liked it.

It scared him a little that he liked it.

He did not like the house behind their house. He had not attempted to go anywhere near it since the incident with Robby, in fact had done his best to ignore the building, even going so far as to stay out of the back yard and keep the drapes in his bedroom permanently closed so he wouldn’t have to see it. But it was there. And he was always aware of its presence, the knowledge of its existence permanently etched in his brain. Sometimes, when he awoke alone in the middle of the night, he even thought he could hear, very faintly, the woman in the other house singing. Plugging his ears did not make the sound go away, just as closing his eyes did not keep him from seeing the house in his mind, and often he would lie awake, too frightened to move, until his parents got out of bed in the morning.

He wondered sometimes if the man in the hat had come from the house, if he was the one to whom the mysterious woman was singing.

No.

She had been singing to something else.

The truth was that none of them had any idea where the man came from or where he went after church services were over. More than once Alex thought that someone should follow him, but he shared that idea with no one. He had the feeling that such an action would be dangerous, and he didn’t want to be responsible for anyone getting hurt.

Or killed.

The new parishioners were odd as well. Alex wasn’t sure how his parents or the remaining members of the original congregation felt about them, but he found the new people more than a little threatening—even the families with children. And while attending church had once been something not particularly fun that he put up with once a week, it had now become something that he actively dreaded.

One Sunday after services, after they had walked home and Alex had gotten out of his church clothes and his mom had gone into the kitchen to start lunch, his dad came in from outside, stepping into the family room with a bewildered look on his face. “Do you know there’s another house behind ours? It’s in the back yard.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t understand it. The yard’s bigger now. And there’s a house back there.”

He could see it, too!

Alex’s brief sense of relief was replaced almost instantly by fear. The confusion he sensed in his father frightened him, and made him realize that even his dad, who preached each Sunday about good and evil, who claimed to know how the world was created and what happens to the soul after death, did not understand what was in their back yard.

“Come on,” his dad said. Ushering his wife and son outside, he led them across the grass, past the roses and the peach tree and the apple tree.

And, as always, there it was.

There was no neighborhood noise. No birdsong, no cars, no lawnmowers, no children playing. No sound came from within the house itself. It was as though they had entered a bubble of silence. Alex found himself looking at one of the upstairs windows, reflected sunlight shining directly into his eyes, and he glanced quickly away, suddenly convinced that she was behind the window using a handheld mirror to point the light at him.

“Do you see it?” his dad asked, and there was an uncomfortable mix of fear and piqued curiosity in his voice.

Alex nodded mutely.

They both looked to his mom, who met their eyes with an expression of blankness. “What are you talking about? There’s nothing there.”

She couldn’t see it. Only he and his dad could.

Alex had no idea what that meant, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. “Let’s go,” he said, tugging on his father’s sleeve.

His dad nodded, uncharacteristically obliging, and the three of them walked back toward their own house.

But not before his dad took one last lingering look behind him.

2

“They found my parents!”

Jennifer burst into the bathroom while he was taking his morning shower, her excited shout so loud that he could hear her even above the sound of the water. He had not yet shampooed his hair, and Alex turned off both the hot and cold faucets, opening the shower door. Her face was a mask of happiness and relief. He felt relief as well, as though a great weight had been lifted off him.

“Who found them where?” he said.

“Get dressed! They’re all right, but they’re at the hospital being checked out. We need to get over there!”

He was already out of the shower and drying himself. “Why are they at the hospital? What happened?”

“Hurry up!” Jennifer rushed out of the bathroom, leaving the door open behind her.

Her parents were not at a hospital near their home in Simi Valley but at Beverly Hospital in Montebello, which was much closer to their own house, and, on the way, Jennifer told him what she knew. Apparently, before dawn this morning, a kid and his brother, walking by an abandoned church in East L.A., had heard voices and gone into the building to discover her parents sitting on the floor, confused and not knowing where they were. The kid had called 911, an ambulance had come and her parents had been taken to the nearest hospital for observation.

An abandoned church in East L.A.?

Even without being told, Alex knew exactly which church that was.

Enfin

He said nothing as he drove south through the Montebello Hills, but inside his mind was churning. Everything was connected. He didn’t know how exactly, but the ties obviously went deep, and though he wanted to talk to Jennifer about it, he was afraid to do so.

Afraid?

Yes.

He didn’t want her involved. He didn’t want her…

to die

Troubled, he drove the rest of the way without speaking, a relieved Jennifer carrying on a one-sided conversation about her parents while he nodded in agreement at appropriate intervals.

Her mother and father were sharing the same hospital room, although a curtain could be pulled along a ceiling track between the two beds should one of them need to be examined alone. An attending nurse told Jennifer that while there was nothing physically wrong with either of her parents, both were suffering from identical memory loss that coincided precisely with the time that they’d been missing.

Jennifer tried her best to jog their memories, but the longer she talked to her parents, the more obvious it became that they were unable to recall anything about where they’d been or what had happened to them. That was the only sign of impairment, though. Their memories leading up to that point appeared to be completely intact, and while they might have been groggy upon first discovery, they were lucid now and behaving like their normal selves.

Alex had questions he wanted to ask her father, but not in front of Jennifer or her mom, so he held back, playing the supportive spouse and son-in-law. Seated in a chair by the window, he watched his wife shuttle back and forth between her mother and father, relief evident in her every movement.

She was lucky.

When his parents had disappeared, they’d never been seen again.

He had not allowed himself to revisit that day, and the mental defenses he’d developed to avoid the subject, not just in conversation with others but within his own private thoughts, were so strong that it required actual effort to access those memories.

But it was becoming increasingly obvious that what had happened to his mom and dad all those years ago had a bearing on what was occurring now.

Staring out the window at the white smoggy sky, he tried to remember when and how it had started, but everything remained kind of fuzzy. He was pretty sure it had been summer, because he recalled the weather being warm, and he was almost certain that it was a Sunday, because in his mind he saw his dad in his church clothes. Beyond that, however…

Alex concentrated. He knew that his parents had ended up at the house behind their house, but exactly how that had happened he couldn’t quite remember. Since his mom was there, he assumed that by this time she’d been able to see the other house as well, although it was equally possible that his dad had just led her into the back yard, since she usually did whatever he told her to do.

In his mind was an image of his parents tiptoeing past his bedroom in the middle of the night when they thought he was asleep. He was pretty sure he had been asleep but that something had awakened him. A noise from outside. Not anything originating from the other house—
singing

—but Mrs. Walsh, calling out again for her dead husband. Her cries frightened him (“Stu! Stu!”), though not as much as the realization that his parents were on their way outside to join her.

He heard the back door open and close.

Sliding his feet into the slippers by the side of his bed, Alex hurried out of his room, down the hall and through the kitchen. Outside, he could see his dad, mom and Mrs. Walsh walking across the yard toward the other house, and his heart began hammering in his chest. He wanted to yell at them to stop and come back but was afraid of what his parents’ reaction might be.

He was even more afraid that they would have no reaction, but would continue walking, hypnotized and unable to hear him.

Unsure of what to do, Alex pressed himself against the edge of the half-open door, holding on to the handle as hard as he could, as if doing so tethered him to reality. He watched the two women in their nightgowns, and his dad in his underwear, walk barefoot over the grass, past the roses and the fruit trees, into the dark space where the other house lurked.

Only it wasn’t actually that dark. The moon was out, and its silvery light illuminated jet-black windows set in bone-pale clapboard. Any storybook aspects of the house were long gone. In the night, the face of the building appeared sinister and threatening, everything he’d sensed about the place made visually manifest.

“Stu!” Mrs. Walsh cried, her voice growing faint with distance. “Stu!”

The door of the other house was blocked from his view by leaves and branches of the apple tree. For a brief moment, Alex saw the dark shape of his dad heading in the direction where he knew the door to be—then the scene in front of him turned black. Somehow, although the moon was still bright in the sky, its light no longer reached the back yard.

Alex waited at the door, holding his breath. Time passed, too much time, and he was about to call out for his dad and mom when he saw them emerge from the darkness next to the rose bushes.

Mrs. Walsh was not with them.

Moonlight once again shone upon the house behind their house, and in the stillness of the night he heard the faint tuneless sound of a woman’s voice.

Alex ran back to his room, jumped into bed and pulled the covers over his head, plugging his ears and closing his eyes.

The next day was a Sunday, the last Sunday, and he remembered his mom waking him that morning for church. She looked a little tired from the night before, but otherwise normal. As was often the case, she had not had time to make breakfast, so concerned was she about selecting and putting on her church clothes—something that seemed to have become ever more important to her since the man in the hat had arrived.

His dad did not seem tired at all but energized, filled with more enthusiasm than Alex had seen in a long while. Something about that made him uneasy, and he slipped into the kitchen to pour himself a quick cup of milk, staying away from both his parents until it was time to go to church.

The service that morning was odd even for what their church had become. There was almost no one left from their original congregation, and his dad allowed a man to come up and use a switch on the already-scarred bottom of his disrespectful son, and let a matronly woman in a flowered dress pray for the death of the husband who had abandoned her. His father’s sermon concerned the power of God’s wrath and contained a warning that He might decide at any time to end the world again. At the conclusion of the service, his dad burned the skeleton of a mouse (“the least of God’s creatures”) in a small crucible, then mixed the ashes with water to cool them down, before enjoining each churchgoer to dip his or her forefinger into the mixture and dab it on both earlobes.

Alex had to do it as well, but the gooey ashes smelled bad, felt weird and creeped him out. He was the last one to participate in the ritual, and he could tell from the expression on his face that his father was unhappy about that.

The walk through the vacant lot and back to their house was conducted in silence.

Lunch, he recalled, was tense and awkward, and after lunch, still in their church clothes, the three of them walked into the back yard. Alex could not remember the pretext, but once outside, his mom grabbed one of his hands, his dad the other. “Come with us,” his dad said.

They started toward the other house.

Being with his parents should have made this less frightening, but after what Alex had seen last night, he was more frightened than he would have been otherwise. While each step forward filled him with dread, the expressions on his parents’ faces were those of people anticipating something for which they had long been waiting. Surreptitiously, he tried to wriggle out of their grasp, but they were each holding tightly to a hand, and there was no way he could escape.

“Where’s Mrs. Walsh?” he blurted out.

Neither of his parents answered.

“I know you went out to the house with her last night!”

“Mrs. Walsh is with her husband,” his dad said simply.

“You killed her?” Alex stopped walking and dug his heels into the grass.

His parents dragged him forward, causing him to stumble. “Don’t be silly,” his mom said, but the way she said it was threatening rather than reassuring.

And then they were standing in front of the other house.

The sense of wrongness had, if anything, increased. It still looked like a house from a storybook, but the placement of each element was off, and the impression of willful malevolence was even more pronounced. The door was open this time, and though the interior was dark, he thought he could make out the shadowed forms of inappropriate furniture. In the silence of this place, the faint, strange sound of tapping that issued from the doorway seemed as loud as a jackhammer.

As if on cue, his mom and dad both let go of his hands, then started toward the entrance of the house.

Maybe they expected him to follow, but terror kept him rooted in place. He wanted to shout for them to stop, but his voice seemed to have disappeared. Within the darkness beyond the open doorway, one of the indefinable objects he had taken to be furniture moved. His dad, uncharacteristically, raised his hand in greeting. “We’re back!” he called.

There was a noise from inside, a low scratchy sound that caused the hairs on the back of Alex’s neck to prickle.

His father took his mother’s hand, and the two of them walked up the porch steps and through the doorway into the house.

The woman was there. Before the door closed, Alex saw her, if only for a second, though he did not see the thing that lived in the house with her. All these years later, he could not remember what she looked like, not exactly, but he recalled dusky skin and long black hair, and he knew now why “Clarissa Hamill” had seemed familiar to him.

The door clicked shut, the sound like a gunshot in the stillness, and he noticed that the scratchy noise had faded away. Somehow it was night—

Where had the day gone?

—and he called out for his parents, even though he thought they were probably dead. “Mom!” he cried, and tears ran down his face, blurring his vision. “Dad!”

A sudden infusion of courage caused him to run toward the house rather than away from it. He wasn’t sure what he intended to do—break down the door and pull his parents to safety?—but he rushed forward, heedless of the consequences, until he found himself on the porch and in front of the door. Trying the handle, he found it locked, so he moved to the off-center window and peered in.

There was no interior lighting, but illumination from the risen moon behind him showed a square empty room with bare gray walls. Through his tears, in a stray beam of moonlight, he saw a naked man, covered in blood, dancing wildly on the dusty wooden floor, mouth wide open in a silent scream.

His dad.

It was the last glimpse he ever had of his father. Running away as fast as his legs would carry him, Alex sped over the grass, charging past the fruit trees and his mom’s roses, completely and utterly terrified. Reaching his own house, he dashed inside, locking all the doors, closing all the windows and turning on every light. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have called 911, but fear overpowered everything else, and he instinctively crawled into bed, hiding under the covers, praying harder than he had ever prayed for anything in his life that this was all a dream, and that he would wake up in the morning and his mom and dad would both be there.

But, of course, they weren’t, and in the morning, the other house was gone. He knew it even before looking out the window. He could feel it, a difference in the air, a lightness, a cleanness, and indeed when he peeked outside, he saw only their yard.

He had called 911, finally, although there was no way he was going to tell anyone what had really happened. With the house gone, it began to seem like a dream even to him, and by the time the police arrived, he had decided to tell them only that his parents had disappeared and that when he’d awakened this morning, they were gone.

Eventually, he was taken to live with his childless Uncle Bob and Aunt Natalie, two relatives who also lived in Baltimore and who, until this past year, had been a part of their church. From the first day, his uncle and aunt tried to avoid any mention of his parents. He did not bring them up, either, and after a week or two, it was almost as though they had never existed.

What had happened to his dad and mom? he wondered now.

Had she taken them?

Or was it the thing that lived in the house with her that had captured them?

Killed them.

Alex turned away from the hospital window toward his father-in-law. Their eyes met. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he saw a hint of fear on Jim’s face. Or…maybe it wasn’t fear.

Maybe it was something else.

Was there a sly cast to his features? Could he be hiding something? Did he remember more than he was saying?

Alex turned his attention to Jennifer’s mom. There was nothing ambiguous about the expression on her face. She was just happy to be with her daughter.

Facing the window once again, he considered that he might be reading too much into all of this.

But her parents had had another house in their back yard, and they had disappeared for several days, and—

“Can you get me something to drink?” Jennifer asked him. “I’m dying of thirst.”

Smiling, Alex stood. “What do you want?”

“Sprite, if they have it.”

“I’ll be right back.” He went out to find the hospital’s cafeteria.

Jennifer was chatty and happy on the trip home. They had spent most of the day at the hospital, and she’d wanted to stay overnight with her parents, sleeping in a chair, but they’d both urged her to go home, eat dinner and get a good night’s sleep. Alex had agreed, and, reluctantly, Jennifer had bid her mom and dad goodbye, giving them each a kiss on the cheek.

“What do you think happened?” she asked in the car. It was the first time since entering her parents’ hospital room that they’d been alone and able to talk.

“We may never know.” Hopefully, he thought. He was pretty sure their absence was connected to the house, and he didn’t think he wanted to know the details.

“I don’t like the fact that their brains are both missing the same amount of time. Don’t you think there’s something creepy about that?”

He nodded.

“But at least they’re back,” Jennifer said. “Maybe they’ll remember more in a few days, once they get back to normal.”

He forced a smile. “Maybe.”

It was nearly dark by the time they pulled into the driveway. Happy but emotionally exhausted, Jennifer stepped inside the house, and walked through the living room to the kitchen. “I don’t feel like cooking tonight,” she said. “Why don’t we just heat up some Lean Cuisines?”

“Fine by me,” he said, throwing his keys on the small table beside the front door.

There was no response, and, frowning, he followed her path to the kitchen. Jennifer was standing before the sink, looking out the window. “Alex?”

He could hear the fear in her voice and was suddenly on edge. “What is it?”

“There’s another house behind our house.”

3

Not only could Jennifer see the other house, but she did not forget about it once it was out of sight. She remembered it, and that worried him.

Alex stood up from the kitchen table and looked into the darkening back yard through the window above the sink, checking to see if the house was still there.

It was.

“I don’t understand,” Jennifer said for a second time.

He tried again to explain, once more describing the house behind his childhood home, and how Mrs. Walsh and his parents had disappeared.

“And you never saw them again?”

He shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

“How come you’re the only one who can see these things?”

“I’m not the only one, I’m just the first one.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

She was curious. “Who raised you after that? I mean, where did you live? You gave me the impression that your parents died when you were older, in your early twenties or something, but you were just a kid. What happened after your parents disappeared?”

Alex shrugged. “I went to live with my aunt and uncle.”

She looked at him warily. “It almost feels like…I don’t know you. There’s this whole part of your life I knew nothing about until now.”

“You know me. You know me better than anyone.”

It was dark outside, but Jennifer stood, walked over to the sink and peered out through the window, instantly drawing back. “It’s still there.”

“There was one in back of our house for most of my childhood, and everything was fine as long as I stayed away from it.” He gripped her hand. “Don’t get me wrong: it scared me. But it was literally there for years and nothing happened.”

Until it did

“The one at your parents’ house went away,” he reminded her. “This probably will, too.”

“This one. That one. How many of these things are there? And what are they?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“I’m scared, Alex.”

He put a reassuring arm around her. “It’ll be okay.”

“What if it isn’t? What if we disappear like my parents and show up a week later and don’t know what happened to us?”

What if we disappear like my parents and never show up again?

She had to be thinking that, too.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“I’m not spending another night in this place.”

“Jen…”

“You know how in horror movies, people stay in haunted houses even after they hear strange things or see a ghost? And everyone in the audience is going, ‘Get out of there, you morons!’? Well, we’re not making that mistake. We’re getting out of here.”

Her certainty was actually reassuring, and he nodded. “Okay.”

Holding his hand, she led him out of the kitchen and into the living room, away from the back yard. “So what’s the plan?”

“We could go to a hotel, I guess.”

“With COVID still out there?” Jennifer shook her head firmly. “I don’t think so.”

“Maybe we could stay with someone. Britta would probably let us come over. She lives alone and has a pretty big house. She’s double-vaxxed and even more careful than we are.”

Jennifer was hesitant. “I don’t really know her…”

“Maybe one of your friends, then. Connie. Or Sun.”

“They both have kids. It’d be too inconvenient.”

“Then let me call Britta. She already knows about some of this stuff anyway—”

“Knows about what?”

“We work together. And we were almost killed. We’ve talked.”

“About things you didn’t tell me?”

“No, it’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like?”

He didn’t want to pile on with anything else—she had enough to deal with already—so rather than answering, Alex picked up the phone and called Britta. He had no idea how to explain why they needed a place to stay, but as it turned out, he didn’t have to. He made the request before providing a reason, and she immediately said yes.

“Thanks,” he told her before saying goodbye and hanging up. He turned to Jennifer. “Pack some clothes and whatever else you need. We’re getting out of here.”

They took Jennifer’s Kia, and it was completely dark by the time they reached Britta’s. The porch light switched on as they pulled into her driveway, and she was out of the house and coming toward them as they emerged from the car. “So what’s this about?” she asked. “Tenting your house for termites? On the run from the law?” Her eyes met Alex’s, and he saw in them the question she was afraid to ask aloud.

He sighed tiredly. “I’ll explain it all when we get inside.”

Britta, it turned out, was quite a cook. Alex wasn’t sure if she had been planning to make the same meal for herself and had tripled the recipe to include them, or if she had come up with this after learning they were coming over, but she was preparing a braised lamb that smelled absolutely incredible, along with Greek lemon soup and freshly baked rosemary bread. As she moved around, fixing the meal, Alex and Jennifer sat at the open counter that separated the dining room from the kitchen, and explained to her about the other house from Alex’s childhood, Jennifer’s parents’ disappearance and reappearance, and the house behind their house that they’d discovered after returning from the hospital.

Britta stopped stirring the soup and looked at them, stunned. “Jesus.”

Alex nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want, as long as that…thing’s still there.” She put down her wooden spoon. “Do you think I could see it?”

“In the daytime,” Alex said.

“But don’t get too close.” He heard the worry in Jennifer’s voice and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

“Don’t worry,” Britta promised. “I won’t.”

If Jennifer was surprised that Britta believed their story, she didn’t show it, and to Alex it showed how far things had gone that such insanity was so readily accepted.

The dinner was amazing, and while they ate, the conversation remained in more neutral territory and stayed away from the reason why they were here. As they were finishing their meal, however, Britta cleared her throat. “There’s some news about Lee I found out today.”

The police were under no obligation to share anything they had discovered about Strait To You’s former employee after the shooting, but Britta was persistent and had been able to gain the semi-confidence of a detective assigned to the case.

Jennifer shivered. “He came to our house before…”

“Apparently, he also left a note.”

“A suicide note?”

“I guess. They found it on his pillow on his carefully made bed, and all it said was ‘I don’t want to see any more.’”

Alex frowned.

“They’re not sure if he meant that he didn’t want to see anymore, that he was tired of having sight and wanted to be blind, which, frankly, makes no sense, or whether he was seeing things, visions or something, that he didn’t want to keep seeing.”

“Or things on the job that he didn’t want to see anymore.”

“That’s what I was thinking, too.”

They were silent for a moment.

“He could’ve had visions,” Britta said. “A lot of shooters do.”

“But he could’ve also seen actual things. It’s a weird world out there.”

“Yes, it is,” Jennifer said, her voice breaking.

There was not much to say after that.

Britta had made the meal, so Alex and Jennifer offered to clean up. They were her guests, Britta insisted, but they refused to back down, and, since the kitchen didn’t have a dishwasher, Jennifer washed and rinsed while Alex dried. Britta prepared the guest bedroom and bathroom for their stay.

How long were they going to stay? Alex wondered. The other house from his childhood had been there for years, the one behind his in-laws’ home for several weeks. They couldn’t live with Britta permanently.

They were in the living room, and he was about to broach the subject, when the doorbell rang.

Britta glanced over at the clock on the wall. “Who’d be coming over at this time of night?” Frowning, she got up, and walked over to unlock and crack open the front door.

From his seat, Alex could see the dusky black-haired woman who stood outside, and he froze in place, his heart thumping crazily.

“I’m here for the job,” said the woman. Her eyes found Alex over Britta’s shoulder, and a smile spread slowly across her face.

There was something hateful in that smile, and Britta immediately closed the door and locked it. She turned around. “Is…?”

Alex nodded, his mouth dry.

“Why’s she here?” Jennifer asked, looking from Alex to Britta. “What’s going on?”

From outside, he heard singing. A wordless, tuneless song that raised gooseflesh on his skin. “How did she find me?” he finally got out. His voice sounded to himself like that of a little boy.

“How do you know her?” Jennifer demanded.

Britta looked at him. “You didn’t tell her?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. There’s been too much going on.”

The doorbell rang again.

And again.

And again.

“Don’t answer it!” Alex said.

“I wasn’t going to.”

The woman stopped ringing the bell and started knocking, a repeated series of raps with no pause.

Britta walked back to where they were sitting, and Alex turned to Jennifer, speaking low, as though afraid of being overheard. “What did you mean, ‘Why’s she here?’ and ‘How do you know her?’ Have you seen that woman before?”

“She’s a substitute. She had the class next door to me when Connie was out with the virus.”

Alex felt cold. That was over a year ago. Had she been hanging around that long?

“What did she tell you her name was?”

“Abby Hancock. Why?”

“Because that’s ‘Clarissa Hamill.’ The girlfriend Hugh Winters is supposed to have killed. She also called herself ‘Bess Hanson’ and applied for a job with us.” He took a deep breath. “And I’m pretty sure she was in the house that was in our back yard when I was a kid.”

“How is that possible?”

“How is any of this possible?”

The knocking on the door had stopped, but they heard tapping on various windows as she walked around the outside of the house.

“I think she’s following me.”

“Well, I’m calling 911,” Britta said, picking up her phone. “She’s trespassing on my property and harassing us. Let the cops take her away.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the lights went out, the only illumination left in the suddenly dark room the glow from Britta’s cell phone. The air conditioning shut off simultaneously, and without its underlying hum, the house fell completely silent.

There was a scuffling noise on the roof.

“My name is Britta Strait,” Britta said into her phone. “Someone’s trying to break into my house.” There was a pause. “Forty-six seventeen Alcapa Drive.” Another pause. “Yes.” Pause. “Right now!” She hung up. “I’m not answering any more questions. They want answers, they can get their asses down here and talk to me in person.”

The sounds above their heads were clearly footsteps.

Jennifer’s hand found his in the dark. “How did she get up there?”

“I don’t know,” Alex admitted, and while it didn’t surprise him, it worried him.

The power was back on by the time the police arrived, the woman long gone, and even with the three of them attesting to what had occurred in identical accounts, the bored officer answering the call seemed skeptical. They left out anything that might undermine their credibility, but even sticking only to tonight’s incident, the policeman did not bother to walk around the house, dust the door for fingerprints or do anything except write down what they told him. Before leaving, he said that he would file the report but they shouldn’t expect any sort of resolution.

Britta slammed the door behind him. “That was a complete waste of time.”

“Maybe,” Alex said. “But it might’ve been what scared her away.”

“You think she knew we were calling the police?”

He shrugged.

“Where do you think she is now?” Jennifer asked in a small, scared voice.

Back in the house, Alex thought. But he shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m just glad she’s gone.”

****

He slept only fitfully in Britta’s guest bed, waking up several times with the horrifying images of half-remembered dreams swirling about his brain.

In the morning, their fear from the night before did not seem silly, as such things often did in the rational light of day, but the situation did seem less dire. The woman was gone, and there was nothing on the porch or in the front yard to indicate that she had ever been there. Alex checked to make sure there was not another house behind Britta’s, and was relieved to find that everything was as it should be. Still, “Clarissa Hamill” or “Bess Hanson” or “Abby Hancock” or whoever she was, was still out there. He imagined her skulking around Britta’s yard until midnight, then, keeping to the shadows, making her way back to their place and, just before dawn, going into the house behind their house, slowly closing the door behind her.

He rubbed his hands over his arms to dispel the goosebumps.

Britta made waffles for breakfast, and all three of them were surprisingly hungry. Fear, apparently, was good for the appetite.

“I want to see that house today,” Britta reminded them.

“Maybe this afternoon,” Alex said, “if it’s still there. Hopefully, it’s not. But this morning, we need to check on her parents.”

Jennifer stood. “And I have to call in sick before we go to the hospital.”

Britta finished her coffee. “While I still have deliveries to make.”

“Life goes on.” Alex tried to smile. “Do you think you and Rodrigo can handle things today?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Britta told him.

“We definitely need to hire more people.”

“But not her.”

Alex nodded, thinking of that terrible, slow smile. “What do we tell Rodrigo? It seems like we should give him a heads-up or something.”

“If you can figure out a way that doesn’t make us sound crazy.”

“Or scare him off.”

“I think we’re safe there. He seems to be in for the long haul.”

“I’ll leave it up to you. But we should warn him. We don’t want another incident on our hands.” They were both thinking of Lee.

“I’ll tell him to be careful,” Britta promised.

“And you be careful, too.”

“Oh, I will.”

He and Jennifer were at Beverly Hospital by eight-thirty, and after an uneventful night, the morning nurse attending Jennifer’s parents said they’d probably be released once the doctor came by to check on them. Alex sat in the same chair as yesterday and watched the Today show while his in-laws ate a late breakfast and Jennifer continued to quiz them about what they’d gone through. The doctor didn’t arrive until shortly after ten, and after scheduling a follow-up appointment, he okayed their release, ordering the nurse to provide them with a list of dos and don’ts for the next several days.

They drove her parents home, and the first thing Alex did when they arrived was walk through the house to the kitchen and look out the window.

“Is it there?” He could hear the fear in his father-in-law’s voice.

Alex shook his head. Behind him, Jennifer and both of her parents let out audible sighs of relief, as though all three of them had been holding their breath.

“Thank God for that,” her mother said.

The women remained in the kitchen, while Alex followed Jim into his office and closed the door behind him.

“You really don’t remember anything?” Alex asked.

“No.” The older man shook his head.

Alex sensed something being held back. “But…” he prompted.

Jim looked at him, thought for a moment. “I don’t think we were alone. I don’t actually remember anything, but wherever we were, I have the impression that there was someone else there.” He lowered his voice, glancing quickly toward the closed door. “It feels like we were in the house to me. I have that sense, you know? That kind of dread. Obviously, it’s not normal to have part of your memory just…disappear. That’s concerning enough. But there’s something else going on—only I don’t know what it is.” He met Alex’s gaze. “Keep it to yourself, though. I don’t want Molly or Jen to worry.”

Alex nodded.

“I keep thinking of that night when Molly was just staring out the window, holding Jen’s old doll. She didn’t remember a thing about it afterward. Were we both doing the same thing when we were out? Was I hypnotized and just standing there staring? And how the hell did we end up in that church?”

“I don’t know,” Alex admitted.

“It scares the shit out of me.”

There was a knock at the office door, and Jennifer poked her head in. “Lunchtime.”

“Coming,” her dad said, giving her a smile. He shot Alex a look, and the two of them walked out.

“I think we should stay here tonight,” Jennifer said as they ate sandwiches at the dining room table.

“Fiddlesticks,” her mother responded. “We’re fine. There’s no need to keep an eye on us.”

“You’re not fine, and we’re staying,” Jennifer insisted. Alex knew that she also didn’t want to go back to their house, and that she found her parents’ place preferable to Britta’s. Jennifer turned toward Alex. “Do you think you could go back home and pick up some stuff? Enough for a couple of days?”

“A couple of days?” her mom said.

“Give me a list,” Alex told her.

“I will.” Jennifer turned to her mom. “So you don’t want us here? We’re not welcome?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Then it’s all settled.” She smiled. “We’re staying.”

It was Friday, so they could remain at her parents’ through Sunday, but there was no way Jennifer would be able to get to work on time Monday morning if they were still here in Simi Valley—unless she planned on waking up at four. Or calling in sick. It would be inconvenient for Alex as well, but this probably wasn’t the time to bring up practical matters. There’d be plenty of time for that tomorrow.

Alex had just gotten into the car and was still in the driveway when his phone buzzed. It was Britta, and she was calling, not texting, which was never good. He immediately picked up. “Yeah?”

He could hear the fear and anxiety in her voice. “Enrique’s dead.”

“Did you…find him?”

“No, nothing like that. I came to pick up my shipment, and there was a new guy, Antonio, who I guess is taking over Enrique’s business. I asked him where Enrique was, and he said he died last night. His girlfriend killed him.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah.” There was a long pause. “I’m thinking you should check in on Hugh Winters.”

“In case he’s…?”

“You saw her with Enrique and Winters. Maybe she’s, I don’t know, tying up loose ends.”

“You want to come with me?”

“Not really. But if you need me to…”

“I do. Besides, if I…find something, it’d be better if I had a witness.”

“Text me the address. I’ll meet you there.”

“It’s going to take me probably an hour. I’m over in Simi Valley at Jen’s parents’ place.”

“That works out fine,” Britta said. “I have a couple local deliveries to make. Three o’clock sound okay?”

“I’ll meet you then.”

Alex arrived first. Sitting in his van on the opposite side of the street, waiting for Britta, he kept an eye on Winters’ house, looking for any sign of his former boss. In a neighborhood like this, it was probably only a matter of time before someone called the cops on him for suspiciously lurking around, and he hoped Britta arrived soon. It was another twenty minutes, however, before she pulled up in front of Winters’ house. He quickly got out of the car and hurried across the street.

“Sorry,” she said. “Traffic.”

“I’ve been watching the place, and I haven’t seen anyone. No movement. Not even his car, although it could be in the garage.”

“Let’s just go up there and see if he’s—”

“Alive?”

“—home.”

They looked at each other and immediately started up the driveway.

Alex had been half-afraid that there would be no answer when they rang the doorbell because Hugh Winters’ bloody body would be cooling on the tiled floor of the entryway, but the vice president opened the door himself, and stood for a moment staring, as though not recognizing who they were. It was hard to believe that this was the same man who, as a member of senior management, had stridden through the halls of Illustrious Footwear arrogantly ignoring all employees of lower status. For the person who stood before them now, gaunt and unshaven, wearing a wrinkled, untucked shirt, seemed muddled, confused and frightened of his own shadow.

“Mr. Winters?” Britta said.

His eyes seemed to focus. “Are you bringing me something?” he asked, looking at Alex. “I don’t remember ordering anything.”

“No, we’re just here to check on you…”

Alex didn’t know where to go from there, but Britta jumped in. “The woman who called herself ‘Clarissa Hamill’ is still alive. We’ve seen her.”

Winters stared at her blankly.

“We know you didn’t kill her,” Britta said quickly. “Alex saw her with one of our clients, only she was calling herself something else. He called the police and told them, but of course they haven’t done anything about it. Then she applied for a job with our company, telling us her name was ‘Bess Hanson.’ Last night, she tried to break into my house, and today our client’s dead. So we know you didn’t kill her.”

“But I did,” Winters said.

Alex and Britta looked at each other. Even if that were true, why would he admit such a thing? For all he knew, they were wearing wires and working for the prosecutors. At the very least, they could testify against him in court.

Winters leaned forward conspiratorially. “Only she didn’t stay dead.”

Alex attempted to maintain the fiction that he did not believe any of this, that he thought Winters was crazy or, at the very least, shooting for an insanity defense.

But he did believe it.

And glancing over at Britta, he knew that she did, too.

“I already told my story to the police,” Winters said, correctly interpreting the expressions on their faces, “but of course they thought I was lying. Or trying to set the stage for an insanity plea…” He trailed off, as though not sure if he wanted to explain it all to them.

“What happened?” Britta prodded.

“There was something wrong with her. I always knew there was something wrong with her, but I put up with it at first because she was, you know, a babe.”

The sympathy Alex had started to feel for him ebbed a bit.

“But I never saw her sleep. Never. She was still awake at night when I went to bed, and she was always up in the morning before me. If I woke up in the middle of the night, she was never in the bed, although she always had some reason: she had to go to the bathroom, she was getting a drink of water. I know that doesn’t make much sense…”

“Go on,” Britta said softly.

“I saw her eating dirt once. Out of a bowl. With a spoon. And there was a squirrel in the back yard that was digging up one of her plants, and she caught it in her hand and twisted off its head. I saw her do it! She dropped the body and threw the head into the bushes.”

“So you killed her?” Alex said. “Because she was crazy?”

Winters shook his head. “That’s not why. It was a lot of things. But the last straw was when she started seeing someone else. She denied it, and I never caught her, but she liked it rough, you know, in the sack, and I found bruises on her that I didn’t put there. She made sure I saw them, and when I quizzed her about it, she just smiled and sang this creepy song to herself.” He paused, looking directly at Alex. “And she started asking about you. From the first time she saw you, she started asking me questions about what kind of person were you, where did you work, were you married, did you have kids. I even thought for a moment that you were the one she was seeing behind my back. But I thought about it and knew that couldn’t be possible.”

Absurdly, Alex found himself slightly offended. “Why not?”

“Logistically, it wasn’t feasible. You live far away, your delivery job takes up a lot of time… It just didn’t seem likely.”

“Well, it wasn’t me.”

“I know that.”

“So how did you kill her?” Britta asked, getting back on track.

“Hung her.” He nodded at Alex. “With that rope I had you buy. I knocked her out first with something I put in her water. Then I dragged her outside, threw the rope over the branch of a tree in back and hung her. I wanted to make it look like an accident, like she did it herself. But…” He shook his head, as though still not able to believe what had happened.

“I was suspicious when you wanted me to deliver that sack of lime,” Alex said.

“Lime?” Winters frowned.

“You know, for disposing bodies? You said it was for your garden?”

Winters allowed himself a small smile. “I think you’re thinking of lye. The lime really was for the garden.”

“Oh.” Alex felt slightly embarrassed. “What did you do with her body, then?”

“I left her there, hanging. I drove around for a while. My plan was to come back and ‘find’ her. I’d call the cops and be shocked and upset and heartbroken by what she did. But when I got back, she was gone, the rope was gone, her clothes and all of her things were gone. It was like she’d never been there, never existed. I didn’t know if someone had come and taken her and cleaned up after her, or if she…”

“If she what?”

“I don’t know. But I told myself she was alive and she’d left, and I didn’t look back. Until they arrested me.” He shrugged. “I guess she made an anonymous call or something and turned me in.”

“You killed her,” Alex said. “You know you did. She was dead.” He gestured toward Britta. “But we’ve seen her since, and she’s alive again, calling herself different names. How do you think that happens?”

“I don’t know!”

Alex saw fear beneath the flash of anger, and he glanced over at Britta.

“We’re just here to let you know what’s going on,” Britta said soothingly. “The man she was with after you is dead, and we think you should be careful.”

“Oh, if I see her, I’ll kill her again. I have a gun in every room.”

Alex frowned. “So you’re expecting her?”

“Just go,” the other man said tiredly. “I don’t need your help, I don’t want your help, just…go.”

Alex backed away. They’d done what they came here to do, and he could tell they weren’t going to get any further with Winters. Not today. Maybe once he had time to think about it a bit…

“You know our number,” Alex said. “If you see her or if there’s anything else you want to tell us, just call.”

Winters closed the door without responding, and Alex and Britta walked back toward their vehicles.

“That was interesting,” Britta said.

Alex nodded.

“I assume we both believe him? Because I sure as hell do.”

“I do, too.”

“What is she?” Britta asked.

“I wish I knew.” They had reached the end of the driveway. “We’re going to be staying with Jen’s parents tonight,” Alex said. “She’s worried about them.”

“Leaving me alone, huh?” Britta was joking, but there was worry behind it, and Alex suddenly felt guilty. The woman knew where Britta lived.

“Maybe you should stay somewhere else for a few days,” he suggested.

She smiled. “Are you inviting me over to your in-laws’? Because that’s a hard no.”

“I’m just thinking you might be safer if you went someplace she didn’t know.”

“I’ll be all right,” Britta assured him. “As soon as I get home, I’m locking the place up tight and getting out my baseball bat.” She put a hand on his arm. “The bitch couldn’t get in last night; there’s no reason to think she can tonight. It might be one of those things where she has to be invited in.”

“She’s not a vampire.”

Britta cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

“Good point.” He stopped at her SUV before crossing the street. “I need to pick up some stuff from home, as well as get our suitcases from your place. You still want to see the other house?”

“You know I do.”

“Follow me.”

They got lucky with the traffic, and it was clear sailing all the way back to Pasadena, but as he pulled into the driveway, he experienced a feeling of trepidation. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought her here, dragged her into this.

She was in it already, though.

Before going inside, he opened the side gate and led Britta around to the back yard. He was hoping to see only their lawn and bushes, but the yard went back farther than it should, and next to him Britta stopped walking, grabbing his hand tightly as she stared ahead.

“Oh my God,” she said.

The other house was still there.

And she could see it.

SEVEN

1

They returned home Sunday afternoon. Distance, time and staying with her parents had made Jennifer braver, and even before they unpacked, she wanted to go into the back yard and see the other house.

Alex’s fear had not abated—this wasn’t his first rodeo—and he didn’t entirely concur with Jen’s assessment that her parents were fine, but from a practical standpoint, it was better to be home. Since he was the one who had convinced her that the other house did not present any physical danger to them as long as they stayed away from it, he agreed to go into the back yard with her to take a look, but he warned her that they should not get too close.

“I wasn’t planning to,” she assured him.

Although it was mid-afternoon, the sun bright and the day warm, Alex still felt cold. Holding tightly to Jennifer’s hand, he led her across the impossibly long lawn toward the dreadful structure. She had spied it only through the window from a distance, and this close she could see that there was clearly something wrong with it. The features of a normal house were there but were all slightly off, put together incorrectly and arranged in such a way that the overall impression was one of forbidding dread.

They stopped several yards away. Alex found himself trying to peer inside, though the two windows facing them reflected only the yard. He was relieved to see that the front door was closed.

“Something’s in there,” Jennifer whispered. “I feel it.”

Alex did, too. And it wasn’t the woman. It was that other thing.

“This is as close as we get,” he said.

“I don’t think it wants us here.”

“I think it does. I think it wants us to go inside.”

“You don’t—”

“No!”

“Okay,” she told him. “Let’s go. I’ve seen enough.”

Even with the house behind them, Alex felt anxious, and it was all he could do not to turn around to make sure they were not being followed. By what he had no idea, but the sense of being watched remained with him all the way back to their own house.

“I understand now,” Jennifer said once they were inside. She hadn’t spoken until the door was closed behind them, and she breathed deeply, as though she’d been holding her breath. “My God.”

“Told you.”

She looked out the window. “You think we’re safe here?”

“I hope so.”

“But what do you think?”

“I have no idea. I told you, that house was there for years when I was a kid. And the one at your parents’ disappeared. My guess is that if we stay away from it, we should be okay. Although it might not be a bad idea to keep the shades down over windows that face that direction so we don’t have to look at it.”

“Should we go back to Britta’s?”

“It’s your call.”

“It’s both our decision.”

“Let’s stay here tonight and see how it goes.”

After everything that had happened, they were both tired at the end of the day and went to bed early. Alex woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and couldn’t resist pulling the shade aside and peeking out the window at the back yard. He had a nagging suspicion that he would see a light on in the other house, but the structure was only a dark blocky shape in the night and, relieved, he let go of the shade and continued on to the bathroom.

Checking his phone at breakfast, Alex saw that he had a full delivery schedule for the day, and he called Britta as Jennifer got dressed for work. Thankfully, they’d both had uneventful nights, and while they ordinarily met in person before setting out on their rounds, Britta suggested that they meet after they made their deliveries today. Rodrigo had called last night to let her know that he had a friend interested in delivering for Strait To You, and he’d asked if he could let his friend tag along today to get a feel for the job.

“He said the guy’s responsible, and I said okay. I thought we could all meet afterward so we could ask him some questions, let him ask questions, and see if we think he’d be a good fit.”

“Great,” Alex said. “It’d be nice to get some help.”

“I know it’s hard to focus on small stuff with all this shit going on—”

“Don’t apologize. We’re growing, and we need to keep our eye on the ball or that’s going to go to hell, too. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it. But if we don’t still have a company when this is all over, we’ll have to start looking for jobs.”

“Do you think it ever will be over?”

“One can hope.”

“Oh, one can, can one?” He could hear the smile in her voice.

“Don’t pick on me.”

It felt good to be back in the van again and working. It was his usual Monday route today, with nothing new or unexpected, and he found the routine reassuring. He also liked being out and about, and when Jennifer called to check in with him at lunch, he could tell from her voice that she, too, found work comforting. He was not sure when he would be done with his deliveries, and afterward he and Britta were meeting with Rodrigo and his friend Luis, so Alex and Jennifer agreed that if he was going to be late, she would hang out at the library or somewhere until he was off, so she wouldn’t have to be alone at the house.

But the stars were aligned, because not only did Alex and Britta finish early, so did Rodrigo and Luis, and when the four of them met up at Denny’s, their rapport was instant. Luis had enjoyed going out with Rodrigo, and since he had worked as an Uber driver before, he was familiar with the streets and freeways of Southern California. He also had a pickup with a shell, which would enable him to carry a number of large items and still protect them from the elements. Britta and Alex were honest about Lee and the reason they wanted to do a background check before hiring him, but he’d already heard the story from Rodrigo and completely understood. Luis spread his hands. “My life’s an open book. Check away.”

He was likeable, funny, his attitude was good, and while Alex knew they needed to be more cautious than they had in the past, he was pretty much willing to sign Luis up then and there.

Their meeting finished just as Jennifer was getting off work, so he texted her that he was on his way home, and they both pulled into the driveway at almost the same time.

The next day was different.

His first client was new, a woman living in a very pricey San Marino neighborhood who wanted him to find a box of rare butterflies from South America. “I’m sure someone sells them, but I looked online, and I’ve been calling everywhere and I can’t find any,” she told him over the phone when he responded to her text. She sounded as though she was about to cry, and Alex assured her that Strait To You would do its best to locate what she requested. He asked her to text or email him the name and photo of the type of butterfly she was looking for, and once she did, he contacted a few sources who’d provided him with exotic birds and flowers, and one of them put him in touch with the owner of a butterfly farm in La Canada Flintridge. As it happened, the butterfly farm had just had a maturation of over 300 larvae from a species closely related to the one for which he was searching. He quickly called back his client, Juliette Austin, put her in touch with the butterfly farmer, and after some back and forth, he was on the Foothill Freeway headed west.

“I told her she could have fifty,” the butterfly farmer grumbled as he handed Alex a cardboard carton with holes poked in the top and sides. “She wanted them all, but no one needs that many. No one even needs fifty, but she’s paying through the nose for ’em, so what the hell.” He watched Alex carefully load the carton in the front seat of the van. “You know what she wants ’em for? She have a butterfly garden or something? She a lepidopterist?”

“You got me,” Alex said. “I’m just hired to deliver.”

“You tell her if she has any questions about what they eat and their proper diet, let me know.”

The Austin house was as big and impressive as Hugh Winters’ place, and when Alex rang the doorbell, Juliette herself answered. She was a tall blond woman in a tailored suit who favored him with a patrician stare. Standing next to her was…Alex was not sure. The small person was shirtless, barefoot and wearing a diaper. Obviously male, Alex would have thought it was a little boy were it not for the thick beard.

“Where is the box of butterflies?” Juliette said. “Bring it to me.”

Alex went back to the van and carefully returned with the carton containing the insects. She took the box from him and put it down, tossing aside the lid. The midget or bearded child or whatever he was started clapping his hands. She picked him up and put him in the box. “Stomp ’em!” she shouted. “Stomp those suckers before they get away!”

Screaming crazily, the little person did exactly that.

The butterflies were crushed and dead in a matter of seconds, and for a moment Alex wondered if he was going to get paid. Then Juliette turned to him. “How much do I owe you?” she asked.

Alex was glad to be out of there, but the day was not over. After that, he picked up “human manure” from an old couple living in a home across the street from a sewage treatment plant and delivered it to a boutique nursery in Monrovia, before buying, for a history professor at a small private college, parchment that was, Alex was told after delivery, made from the skin of dead Nazis.

Britta called him halfway through the day, just as he was about to stop for lunch.

“I saw her,” Britta said, voice low.

Alex’s heart started hammering. “Are you sure?”

“She’s still in Enrique’s neighborhood.”

“What are you doing there? It’s not your edibles day, is it?”

“I was nearby, and I thought I’d just drive by and… Who am I kidding? I wanted to see if she was there. I had a feeling or a hunch or whatever you want to call it.”

“And it paid off.”

“Oh, it did. I drove by Enrique’s and she was right out front. The gate was open, and she was sitting on the stoop staring out at the street, looking trashy. High hair, too much makeup, the whole nine yards. She was wearing a white tank top with her boobs hanging out and tight Daisy Dukes with her legs spread. When I drove by, she waved at me!” He could practically hear Britta shiver. “Our eyes met.”

“Where are you now?”

“A mile or so away. In front of what looks like an Armenian market. There’s a taco stand across the street. I guess maybe I should’ve parked there.”

“Do you want me to come by?” he asked gently.

Britta sounded relieved. “Yeah, I was kind of hoping you could. Just to confirm that it’s her, you know?”

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

He met her across the street from Enrique’s house. She remained in her Explorer, and he parked behind her, walking up to the passenger window and tapping on it. Britta jumped. She rolled down the window. “You scared the hell out of me!”

“Sorry. Thought you knew I was here.” He gestured across the street. “Any sign of her?”

“No sign of anybody.”

“Do you want to check it out?”

“Not really. But we probably should.” She unbuckled her shoulder harness, took the key out of the ignition and opened the door to get out. Alex walked around to her side of the car, and the two of them stood for a moment looking at Enrique’s place. There were no vehicles parked in front of the house, none in the short driveway, and the front door was closed, the curtains over the windows drawn.

“Where did you actually see her?” Alex asked.

“I told you. On those steps there.” She pointed.

“But when you came back, she was gone.”

“Yep.”

No one answered the door when they knocked, and when Alex turned to look around the neighborhood, the whole place seemed dead. There were not even any cars passing by on the street. “Any idea where she might’ve gone?” he asked.

Britta shook her head. “I have no clue.”

They stood there for a moment. Two doors down, parked next to the curb, was a vehicle he recognized. The old panel truck on whose side was hand-painted the bright red message: “EAT MORE PETS!” He turned to Britta, pointing. “What’s with that thing? Does the guy who owns it really eat pets?”

“I don’t know, but it always seems to be in the neighborhood.”

“Well, we’re here. Let’s check it out.” Alex started down the cracked and dirty sidewalk, stepping over spraypainted graffiti and black burn spots left by illegal fireworks. There was no one in the front seat of the panel truck, but the back doors appeared to be open, and he walked around to the rear of the vehicle.

The smell was horrendous and hit them immediately. Britta gagged, stepping back onto the sidewalk, and Alex pinched his nostrils shut, breathing through his mouth, wishing he’d taken his mask out of the van. Inside the truck, hanging from hooks, were dogs and cats in various stages of decomposition, most of them wearing collars. Closest to the opening was a gigantic Doberman coated with dried blood, its head lolling, the hook speared through its neck tipped with a blackening hunk of rotting flesh.

Britta was already calling 911. “No one’s reported this?”

“The street’s empty. There’s no one here to report it.” Alex looked up and down the street. “I wonder where the driver is.”

She didn’t answer him, already explaining the situation to a dispatcher on the other end of the line.

Alex continued walking around the panel truck. On the side of the vehicle facing the street, he saw a primitive color rendering of a church.

The East L.A. church that “Bess Hanson” had given as her address.

“Look at this,” he said as Britta got off the phone. She came around the front of the panel truck, not wanting to see or smell what was in the open back.

“It’s a church,” she said, frowning. “Does this pet eater work for a church?”

“I have no idea, but I know that church. It’s here in East L.A.” He paused. “That’s where Jen’s parents were found.”

“What?” She stared at him.

Alex nodded.

“Jesus. Everything is connected.”

“I think we should check it out.”

Britta stared at the picture. “Okay,” she agreed, speaking slowly. She turned toward him. “But you don’t think she might be there?”

“I don’t know.”

Two policemen arrived soon after, in a single patrol car with no siren on. Alex and Britta showed the cops what they’d found, describing the circumstances of their discovery and providing their own contact information. They headed back up the sidewalk while the officers remained with the panel truck, waiting for it to be impounded.

“Follow me to the church?” Alex asked as they walked across the street.

“Lead on.”

The church was literally five minutes away in a neighborhood that also seemed curiously deserted. They parked their vehicles directly in front of the building, then strode over the dried patch of ground toward the entrance. “What do you think’s going to happen to Hugh Winters?” Britta asked as they approached. “Do you think she’ll get him?”

“I don’t know.”

“What the hell is she?”

They went up the short set of broken steps. He’d been watching the windows for any sign of movement, but the church today seemed completely dead.

Dead

His eyes focused on the letters carved into the bleached wood of the door before them: the random initials and the single word Enfin. The door should have been locked, but it was not, and when pushed, it swung open.

He immediately recognized the interior of the church.

“Oh my God,” he breathed.

Part of him must have been expecting this, because he wasn’t entirely caught off guard. The chapel was dirty and dusty, many of the pews overturned, and there were broken bottles, used condoms and cigarette butts in the corners of the room, but the layout was exactly the same as the church of his childhood. He could see the pulpit where his dad would have stood, and the spot to the side where he and his mom would have watched and listened to the sermon. Behind the pulpit, a wooden crucifix stretched from floor to ceiling.

He recalled the fluttering movement he had seen last time from behind the window, and walked over to the spot where that would have been, hoping to see an indication that something had been there. The site was clear, however, and there was no evidence of anything unusual. He glanced up, half-expecting to see a fluttering in the low rafters, but there was nothing, only dim gray light filtering down from the pair of dirty skylights.

“Where were they found?”

Britta’s voice startled him. For a moment, he’d forgotten she was there.

He looked around. Where had Jennifer’s parents been found? And how in the world had they ended up here? It was a question for which there might never be an answer, and as Alex tried to determine where they would have been, he wondered if his in-laws had just appeared in this place—and whether that meant he and Britta could disappear.

The warmth and comfort he had felt in their old church was nowhere in evidence. The atmosphere here was one of dread and apprehension. Britta must have felt it, too, because when she spoke again, her voice was quieter. “Maybe we should go.”

Alex nodded. “Maybe we should.”

They weren’t going to find anything here. Whatever answers there might be were not about to reveal themselves, and the increasing sense of danger was generating within him a growing anxiety, causing him to look over his shoulder and flinch at every stray sound or random shadow.

He took a last look around. While the woman might not be here now, he had no doubt that she knew of this place, and he imagined her sitting in one of the dusty pews, looking down at the still forms of Jennifer’s mom and dad, and smiling.

“Come on,” Britta urged. She was already back outside.

Alex followed, closing the door behind him. The street no longer seemed so empty. A car passed by. A trio of small children ran, laughing, down the sidewalk.

She’s gone, he thought.

Alex had no idea what made him think such a thing, but it rang true, and he glanced over at Britta to gauge her reaction. She seemed palpably relieved to be out of the church, and when she caught him looking, she said, “What the hell was that?”

“You felt it, too?” he asked her.

“Oh, yeah. That’s the scariest damn place I’ve ever been.”

“Maybe it is where she lives. She did list it as her address.”

“Well, we’re not hiring her, and I’m definitely not going back inside that church ever again.”

“Me, either.”

“So what’s the plan? I suggest we stay as far away from her as possible and get our butts back to work. And if I ever see her again? If she’s waiting outside some client’s house? I’m driving past and not stopping. I’m done with this.”

“We may be done with her,” Alex said. “But what if she’s not done with us?”

She looked at him. “I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

2

Alex lay awake in bed, thinking.

There was still a house behind their house, although their strategy of ignoring it seemed to be working. The drapes and shades facing that direction were permanently drawn, and for all he knew the plants in the back yard were dead, since neither he nor Jennifer were watering them, but they were living normal lives—making and eating breakfast and dinner, showering and sleeping, watching TV—and their refusal to think or talk about the other house almost made it seem as though it wasn’t there.

Almost.

Alex stared up at the ceiling. Being in that church today had gotten to him. He’d thought about it all afternoon, while driving to Monrovia and Artesia and South Pasadena, and by the time he was heading home, he had half-convinced himself that he’d seen something lurking in one of the corners, next to the broken bottles and cigarette butts, a dark shadowy figure watching them from the stillness.

But of course he hadn’t.

Had he?

Here in the night, in the dark, he thought that maybe he had.

It was not only the church or the house behind their house that occupied his mind, however. It was the inescapable idea that they were a part of something else, something larger. He thought about all that he and Britta had encountered: county supervisors with dungeons in their homes; deformed children stomping on rare butterflies; people killing and eating pets; men polishing mummies with poison oil, shooting puppies for backyard “experiments,” making wives out of sticks. Strange things were going on beneath the surface of everyday life, actions and events of which ordinary people were not aware, and while ostensibly, there were no similarities between any of them, behind the superficial differences, he sensed parallels and recurring configurations.

Behind everything normal was something that was…not.

His thoughts drifted to the church door, and the letters carved into the wood.

Enfin

Alex sat up, grabbing his phone from its charging station on the nightstand. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? He turned the face of the phone away from Jennifer so as not to wake her, and once he’d signed in, looked up the definition of Enfin. At first there was nothing, but he scrolled past entry after entry, most having no connection to his query, before ultimately finding what he was looking for.

Enfin was a French word meaning “at last” or “finally.”

What the hell did that mean?

There’d been initials before the word on the door of the church, Alex recalled, but he could not for the life of him remember what they were. Stupid! Why hadn’t he taken a photo of the door? The initials were probably meaningless, carved there by neighborhood kids, but it was always possible that they could reveal something.

Although he wasn’t sure what.

Switching off his phone, he put it back on the nightstand.

Next to him, Jennifer rolled onto her side. Her buttocks pressed against the back of his hand, and Alex was tempted to turn his hand around and grab her, but he knew she wouldn’t appreciate being awakened, so he ignored the impulse. Carefully, gently, he scooted a little to the right.

Staring into the darkness, he thought about the house behind his childhood home. What had been in there, exactly? She lived there, he knew. But something lived there with her, and that was what worried him. It was what had always worried him. He was tempted to get out of bed and peek outside to see if the other house was still in place, but he knew it was. He could feel it. And the last thing he wanted right now was to see that house.

He closed his eyes, remaining where he was.

Eventually, he fell asleep.

And dreamed of a beautiful dark-skinned, black-haired woman standing on the pulpit of an abandoned church, singing a wordless, tuneless song to a dark shadowy thing in the corner that danced crazily atop a pile of broken bottles and used condoms and cigarette butts.

In the morning, after eating, showering and getting dressed, Alex did go into the back yard to look at the other house. A panicked Jennifer told him not to, but he assured her that he was going nowhere near it and just wanted to see what was doing. He got no vibe at all off the building—in the morning sunlight, it didn’t even look creepy—and, satisfied, he returned quickly back inside. Had it somehow been neutralized? Alex doubted it, but he was not lying when he told Jennifer that he thought they were going to be okay.

Maybe it would even be gone by the time they got home from work.

That didn’t happen, but the tension and air of dread that had hung over them since the appearance of the other house seemed to have dissipated, and the next few days were almost normal.

Luis, their new hire, was working out well. Alex’s background check, while not comprehensive, had been pretty thorough and turned up nothing, and Luis was such a good driver and knew the streets and freeways of Southern California so well that he was able to make more daily deliveries than any of them. Additional customers were coming on board each day, most using the app, and they again talked about hiring more workers.

One positive side effect of the recent craziness was that Jennifer seemed to have abandoned her crusade to get him to quit Strait To You and find a “normal” job. Maybe it was getting to know Britta better, or maybe she’d finally realized it was a lost cause, but whatever the reason, she appeared to have accepted his career decision.

On Friday, they made love before going to bed, the first time in a while. Neither of them had felt comfortable putting themselves in such a state of vulnerability with the other house still in the back yard, but when Alex came out of the bathroom, Jennifer was naked atop the bed, on her hands and knees, waiting for him. Ordinarily, it was her least favorite position—the angle made it awkward, and she usually complained that it hurt—but she wanted it that way tonight, and he put on a condom, situated himself behind her, shoved it in and started thrusting. He could not tell if her screams were of pleasure or pain, but she didn’t tell him to stop, and when they were finished, they both collapsed on the bed, breathing heavily.

After a while, Jennifer got up to take a shower. She had to be clean before going to bed and could not understand why Alex didn’t care about that, but he didn’t, and he was dead to the world before she returned.

He was yanked out of a deep sleep in the middle of the night by the phone. He had no idea what ring it was on, but that didn’t matter, a phone call at this hour was never good, and he practically knocked over the bedside lamp trying to grab the receiver. “Hello?”

His fogged brain had a difficult time understanding what was being said, but as soon as he got it, his mind sharpened up quickly. “Wake up!” he told Jennifer, shaking her. Somehow she was still asleep. “Wake up!”

“What?” she said groggily.

He had no idea how to break the news, so he just blurted out what he’d been told.

Her father had killed her mother and then himself.

****

The next week was a nightmare of activity.

Thank God they had hired Luis, because Alex had no time to devote to Strait To You. Britta told him not to worry about it, he could come back when he was ready. The most important thing was for him to be there for his wife.

Neither he, Jennifer, nor her parents’ friends or neighbors could tell the police why such a thing had happened. It was a shock to everyone. Of course, her mom and dad’s mysterious disappearance and subsequent memory gap loomed large in the investigation, but there were no clear links, only a vague sense that there could be some association between events.

Both of her parents had wills, but there were no specifications as to what type of funeral they wanted, or whether they should be buried or cremated. Nor had they ever discussed such things with Jennifer. They were old school, and Jennifer assumed they would prefer to be buried next to each other in a traditional cemetery, but she thought it would be nice to have them cremated, so she could keep their ashes and they would always be with her. Alex told her he would support whatever she decided.

One look at where the bodies had been found convinced Alex to hire someone to clean up the aftermath. There was no way he was going to let Jennifer scrub her parents’ blood off the floor and furniture. For Jim had killed Molly in his office by shooting her in the face, before turning the gun on himself, and there was a tremendous amount of splattered red on desk and chair, wall and carpet.

In the car, during the endless trips back and forth between their home in Pasadena and her parents’ place in Simi Valley, their sole topic of discussion was: Why?

Jennifer was willing to concede that her dad might have been different after his disappearance, but there was no way he was suicidal. Let alone homicidal. Alex tended to agree, but the fact was that neither of them could explain exactly how he was different or whether that had any bearing on what he’d done. They went over and over the details of every interaction, only to conclude that they knew nothing. Alex thought back to the last glimpse he’d had of his own dad, naked and covered in blood, illuminated by a stray beam of moonlight as he danced wildly on the dusty wooden floor of the other house, his mouth open in a terrible silent scream.

Maybe there were some things that could never be understood.

What nagged at the back of his mind, however, what he refused to share with Jennifer, was the idea that all of this was somehow his fault, that horrors from his childhood had followed him into his adult life and that if Jennifer had never met him, if Hugh Winters had never met him, if Enrique had never met him, nothing would have happened to them.

He and Jennifer were inundated with condolence cards from friends and family. Relatives she hadn’t seen for years came out of the woodwork, trying to reconnect. Several of her fellow teachers chipped in with extra vacation hours so she could extend her bereavement leave for two days, but she didn’t want her leave extended. She wanted to get back to work, needed to get back to work, to lose herself in classroom routine, so she said thanks-but-no-thanks and returned to school as quickly as possible.

Alex returned to work as well, although taking just a couple of days off had lent everything an unfamiliar quality. It felt as though he’d been gone for six months rather than for only that brief period; his normal route seemed almost foreign to him, and having to hunt down specialized items for a couple of new customers took far longer than it should have. The deaths of his in-laws hung heavily over his head, and he checked in with Jennifer several times during the day to make sure she was all right, but she found his concern oppressive rather than supportive, and, irritated, told him to knock it off.

Antsy.

That was probably the most accurate description of how he felt. It was as though he was waiting for something to happen, and no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to shake the sensation. If this were a book or a movie, amateur sleuthing would have led him from one clue to another, and finally to an answer. His visit with Britta to the abandoned church in East L.A. would have steered him to another location where he would have uncovered valuable information linking his in-laws’ disappearance to Winters’ resurrected girlfriend and the house in their back yard. But whatever connections there might be remained stubbornly buried, and right now he knew virtually nothing about what was going on. There was only a nebulous sense that he bore some responsibility, and that there was more to come, all of which left him feeling anxious and uneasy.

Dinner that night was quiet. Jennifer told him she had a headache and didn’t want the TV on, but neither of them seemed to have much to say, and the only sounds at the table were chewing, swallowing and the clinking of silverware. He knew she was hurting, and he wanted to be there for her, but he didn’t know how to make things better or even console her in a way that wasn’t awkward and ineffective, and he allowed himself to be helplessly pushed off to the emotional sidelines, telling himself that if she needed something from him she would ask.

They went to sleep early, as they had every night this week, and when he awoke from a horrifying dream sometime after midnight, Jennifer was not in the bed next to him. He assumed she was in the bathroom, but then he heard her voice, shouting from the back yard.

“Mom! Dad!”

She was calling for her dead parents.

Childhood memories of Mrs. Walsh flooded his brain, and Alex shoved off the covers and ran out of the bedroom, down the hall, in his underwear. He was barefoot, but he didn’t care, and he ran into the back yard, afraid he would find Jennifer gone, afraid he would see her walking into the other house.

But she merely stood alone in the moonlight, facing the house behind theirs and sobbing uncontrollably.

****

In the morning, the two of them looked blearily at each other across the breakfast table. Neither of them had slept, nor had they talked, and Alex wondered just how much Jennifer remembered about the night before. After discovering her outside, he had tenderly put his arm around her waist, leading her back inside, and she had cried on his shoulder for nearly an hour. When she was all cried out, she leaned against him, drained, and though he tried to find out why she’d been out there and what she’d been doing, she didn’t respond to any of his questions, and they ended up huddled together on the bed, wide awake and lost in thought until dawn.

Now Alex sipped from his coffee. “So…what were you doing outside?”

She looked at him for a moment before answering. “I don’t know,” she said.

“You weren’t going to go into that house?”

Her eyes widened in shock. “No! Never!”

“Yet you were out there. And you didn’t seem scared at all.” He cleared his throat. “And you were crying.”

“I just felt sad,” she told him. “Overwhelmingly sad.”

“That’s understandable.”

“But it wasn’t about my parents. I mean, it probably was, deep down. But I was actually crying because this feeling came over me.”

He took another sip of his coffee. “So the house made you sad?”

“Maybe.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know that I felt sad. So sad that I couldn’t stop crying.” She reached across the table and took his hand. “What in the world’s going on?”

He was not sure anyone could answer that question.

“I keep thinking,” he told her, “of the church we went to when I was a kid, the one where my dad was the preacher. There was only a handful of people in the congregation—relatives, neighbors—and we met outside by this big tree, because nature was like God’s temple or something. Then one day, this man shows up. A creepy guy wearing an old-fashioned suit and hat. He scared me, to be honest. He talked in an old-timey way, and he said there was a church waiting for us, an actual physical building, and suddenly there it was, behind the tree.” Alex paused. “It was in a space that wasn’t there before, like the house behind our house. There was nothing scary about it, and we used it for years, but there was something wrong with the man, and something wrong with the church. And, gradually, our little congregation changed. The man in the hat brought in new people, old people started leaving, and after a while everything was just…different.”

“I don’t understand—”

“One Sunday after church, my parents went into the house behind our house and didn’t come out. I never saw them again.” He breathed deeply. “I guess the point is, whatever’s going on, I think it started back then. I think it’s connected to our old house and that church and…me. I seem to be the only common denominator here.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“What about this does?”

The phone rang, and both of them jumped. Alex got up and walked over to the wall phone, picking it up. “Hello?”

It was the secretary at Jennifer’s school, and he handed off the phone to her. Pulling a box of Cheerios from the cupboard, he was about to pour the cereal into a bowl, when a sudden change in Jennifer’s tone caused him to glance over. “No,” she was saying, “I didn’t.” She looked at him, her face blanched.

He put the Cheerios box down.

“Don’t worry,” she said into the phone. “I’ll take care of it… Okay… Thanks… Bye.”

Jennifer placed the handset back in its cradle. “They wanted to know if I was calling in sick today, because even though I hadn’t notified the office, the district had assigned a sub for my class. ‘Abby Hancock.’”

“Is—”

“She’s on her way.”

Alex closed the top of the cereal box. “We have to get over there. This is our chance to confront her.”

“We were hiding from her at Britta’s.”

“This is different. It’s daytime. It’s in public. This is our chance to get some answers.” He was already starting down the hall. “Get dressed! We need to go!”

Ten minutes later, they were in the Kia and speeding toward Jennifer’s school. Classes didn’t start for another hour, but a few teachers’ cars were in the parking lot, and a handful of kids who’d been dropped off early by parents on their way to work were swinging on the playground swings or running around the field. Jennifer led the way to her classroom at the far end of the middle building, but though she had her key out, she didn’t need it because her door was unlocked and open.

Stretching out an arm to keep Jennifer behind him, Alex walked in first. On the blackboard at the front of the class, he saw instantly, was an accurately depicted chalk drawing of the house behind their house. In front of the house stood two stick figures, one with a triangular abdomen obviously meant to represent a dress. The two of them? Seated to the right of the blackboard behind Jennifer’s desk was—

Her.

“Alex,” the woman said, and smiled in a way that made his pulse race.

He tried not to let his panic show. “Who are you? What do you want?”

Her smile grew wider. “I want the same thing I’ve always wanted.”

Jennifer grabbed his hand, holding it tight. “And what is that?”

“I want you to visit us. In my house.”

Us

Movement registered in his peripheral vision, and he glanced again at the blackboard, where the stick figures, hand in hand, were walking cartoonishly through the open doorway of the house. The chalk-drawn door closed behind them.

“Leave us alone,” Alex demanded.

The woman stood, picking up a rectangular felt eraser from the metal lip at the bottom of the blackboard and erasing the drawing.

“This is my classroom,” Jennifer informed her.

The woman turned, her eyes sparkling. “I can show you another classroom.”

Alex’s fists were clenched. “She doesn’t want to see your other classroom. And we never want to see your house. We want you out of our lives.” He took a step toward her, and, involuntarily, she recoiled.

Was that fear in her eyes?

From outside, behind them, came the rattling sound of a custodian’s cart, hard metal wheels clacking on concrete. “Mrs. Lowry,” an old man said in a thick Middle Eastern accent. “You’re here early today.”

Jennifer turned to him. “Hello, Hassan.”

Alex glanced briefly at the man, and when he turned his attention back to the classroom, the woman was gone, and the door in the side wall between Jennifer’s room and the class next door was just closing.

He hurried forward, pulling the door open. Lights were off in the other classroom, the space mostly dark, but he could see immediately that it was unoccupied. The woman was not here. He pushed open the door leading outside and saw only the custodian and his cart in front of Jennifer’s room. “Did a woman come out of here?” Alex demanded.

The custodian shook his head, confused. “No, just you.”

Alex hurried around the side of the building on the off chance that there was an identical row of other classrooms behind it.

“That’s my husband,” Jennifer said as he ran by.

There was no other classroom, only the school library and cafeteria. Disappointed, he walked back around to the front of the building. Jennifer was in her room, looking down at her desk. The custodian had continued down the passageway toward the office.

“She disappeared,” Alex said, walking in.

Jennifer nodded. “I know.”

They looked at each other.

“So what now?” she asked.

“I have no idea.” Alex admitted.

“I still have a little bit of time before school starts. Do you want me to drive you home, or do you want to take the car and come back and pick me up at three-thirty?”

“Either one. It doesn’t matter.”

She said something else, but he didn’t really hear her, because his eyes were focused on her blackboard, where he could still see a faint smeary outline of the drawing of the other house.

3

Alex didn’t think he would be able to sleep, afraid Jennifer might wander out to the back yard again in the middle of the night and maybe this time go up to—or even into—the other house. He closed all of the windows, locked all of the doors, even put some empty aluminum cans on the floor so that they’d make noise if she tried to leave. Despite his fears, he fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, but luckily Jennifer slept through the night as well, and neither of them awoke until the alarm buzzed in the morning.

He was the one who knocked over the cans.

They talked about it at breakfast, and she assured him once again that she had no intention of ever going anywhere near the other house.

“It doesn’t matter what your intention is—you might not be able to help yourself.”

He was thinking about her parents, and he knew she was, too, but neither of them said it out loud.

“Don’t worry,” she told him, but that made him worry even more. Initially, she’d been terrified by what lay behind their house, and the fact that she’d gotten used to it, that she no longer felt uneasy staying here at night, concerned him.

“She could be living there,” he said quietly.

“We’ll be okay,” Jennifer told him, putting her hand on his.

But he wasn’t sure that they would be.

And her unfounded optimism frightened him.

Later that day, Alex was in the middle of a delivery, taking a carton of discontinued carcinogenic baby powder to “The Museum of Failed Products” in Hollywood, when he had an idea.

He should call his Uncle Bob and Aunt Natalie.

Why such a thought had not occurred to him before was a mystery, and Alex could only put it down to the fact that he never thought of his relatives and had not seen them since graduating from high school and taking off to college. In truth, he’d felt distanced from them even while living in their house, but they had been part of his father’s congregation and had taken him in after his parents’ disappearance. If anyone might know of a connection between their church and what he and Jennifer were now experiencing, it would be them.

He hurried through the rest of his route, arriving home earlier than Jennifer. As always, he pulled open one of the back curtains to see if the other house was still there (it was), before getting something to drink and sitting down at his desk.

The last number he had for his aunt and uncle didn’t work. Alex tried looking up their names online, hoping to find a current address or phone number, but kept hitting dead ends. Jennifer arrived home, he told her what he was doing, and after pausing for dinner, he continued his search. Eventually, he came across an obituary for his aunt in the archives of The Baltimore Sun. She had died of heart failure over a decade ago. The obituary stated that she was survived by her husband, but try as he might, Alex could find no mention of his uncle anywhere else.

Maybe he’d disappeared.

Under other circumstances that would be a ludicrous idea, but right now it seemed a very real possibility.

He tried to remember names of his uncle’s friends and neighbors, or even the name of the company for which he’d worked, thinking that someone in the HR department might have contact information if his uncle continued to receive retirement compensation, but his mind remained a blank. He thought about contacting some of their church’s other former parishioners, but realized he knew most of the adults only as “Mrs.” or “Mr.” He didn’t know their first names—although he did know the names of the children. The problem, however, was that most of those families had left as things started to turn weird. They weren’t the ones who’d have any insights.

Did the church itself still exist?

He’d never thought of that before. Had services continued on after his dad’s…disappearance? Had someone else taken over?

The man in the hat

It was possible, but even if that were the case, Alex doubted whether such a small denomination could have survived all these years. Nevertheless, he looked up the names of all churches in the Baltimore area. Their church, to his knowledge, had not had a name, at least not one that he had ever heard spoken, so he looked up information about listed fringe denominations with which he was not familiar. None of them turned out to have been their church, which made him think that their congregation really had disbanded.

It was late, and Jennifer had already taken a shower and was getting ready for bed, when Alex finally shut off his computer. He felt drained and disappointed. He wasn’t sure what he’d thought his aunt and uncle, or other church members, could tell him, but he’d gotten his hopes up that there were answers to be found.

He dreamed that night that he returned to Baltimore and visited his old neighborhood. Their church was gone, but the empty lot and the tree next to which they’d originally held their services was there. Hanging from ropes thrown over two of the branches were the bodies of his mom and dad. Securing the ends of the ropes that had hoisted them was the man in the hat. He smiled at Alex. “Welcome back,” he said.

He thought he saw the woman twice the next day. Once in the early morning, walking past the front window at Denny’s when he was meeting with Britta, Rodrigo and Luis, and again in the afternoon, standing at the corner of a Burbank intersection while he waited for the light to change. She was wearing different outfits both times, and he didn’t understand how it could possibly be her, but a lot of things made no sense these days, and there was no way to prove that it wasn’t her.

He told Jennifer when he got home, and they both stood by the window in the bedroom, pulling the shade up and looking out across the back yard as the sun began to set. There was no sign of movement at the other house—at least nothing that could be seen from this vantage point—and for a moment neither of them spoke.

“So…what are we going to do?” Jennifer asked finally. “Just live like this while we wait for something to happen?”

“I don’t know. We could move, I suppose, although that’s no guarantee of anything.”

“I keep thinking about my parents.”

“I know. Me, too.”

“That wasn’t something that just occurred.”

“No,” he agreed.

They were silent for a moment.

“So what’s that mean for us?” Jennifer said quietly.

She turned away, and as she did so, he thought he saw something move. It could have been her reflection in the glass, it could have been the shadow of a tree branch swaying in the slight breeze—or it could have been the parting of curtains in one of the other house’s windows.

Alex shivered.

He quickly pulled down the shade.

“What do you want for dinner?” Jennifer asked.

****

Halfway through his route, Alex began to suspect he was being followed.

It was a feeling more than anything else, a sense that someone was monitoring his movements, but there was nothing specific he could point to, no car that was tailing him or mysterious person he had seen more than once.

Her, he thought.

He debated whether or not to tell Britta—he definitely wasn’t going to worry Jennifer by voicing his suspicions—but in the end kept it to himself. It was probably just an overreaction on his part, the result of everything that had been going on. He remained on edge, however, and over the next few days maintained his vigilance. A couple of times, he actually did think he saw the same car more than once, a silver Chrysler, but he never got a good look at the driver, and in an area as large as metropolitan Los Angeles, there were obviously many identical vehicles, so such a coincidence would not be unusual.

Still…

He had a new client, a deaf man who apparently communicated solely through texts. When Alex arrived at the hilltop geodesic dome in which the man lived, bringing the case of Peruvian sulfur water he had ordered, a text arrived informing Alex that the dome’s door was unlocked, and he should walk right in. The interior was a gigantic single room, and the man, bald and naked, sat on a white chair in the otherwise empty space, staring at the smartphone in his hand.

Alex’s phone pinged as another text arrived: Place the case of water next to my chair.

He did so.

Ping.

I have transferred payment to your account. You may leave.

Automatically, Alex said, “Thank you,” before realizing that if the man was deaf, he wouldn’t be able to hear it. He considered texting back a thank you, but it was clear that the naked client had already dismissed him from his consciousness, so Alex simply turned around and exited the dome.

Walking out, he saw the silver Chrysler parked next to his van.

Alex’s heart began thumping hard. He almost went back inside, but instead took out his phone and began recording as he strode directly up to the car. He could not determine, through the tinted windows, who was inside the vehicle, and he did not get a chance to find out, because the Chrysler drove away just before he reached it. Alex recorded the car turning onto the street and heading down the hill.

The fact that someone was following him made Alex feel concerned, but, surprisingly, not frightened. There was actually something normal about it. This wasn’t a creepy house existing in an impossible space, or a woman he’d seen as a child who’d mysteriously re-appeared, unchanged. This was a person driving around the streets of Southern California and tailing him. Somehow, that left him feeling reassured.

He didn’t want to worry Jennifer, but he did tell Britta, and she suggested he buy a dashboard camera. “I’ve been thinking we should all get dashcams anyway,” she said. “Just in case. In any your-word-against-mine accident, we’d have proof. And in a situation like this, it might give us something to show the police.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” he admitted.

“Charge it to our Amazon account. It’s a business expense. Get one for me and Rodrigo and Luis, too.” There was a pause. “Do you have any idea who it might be?”

“I have no idea.”

“Do you think it could be her?”

“I don’t know.”

There was no sign of the Chrysler or anyone else following him over the next few days, but between keeping tabs on the house behind their house and trying to determine whether someone was stalking him, Alex remained perpetually anxious, his nerves rubbed raw. He wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to put up with this.

At the morning meeting on Friday, before Britta started her usual daily rundown, Luis nodded toward Alex across the table. “Dude. This chick was asking about you last night.”

Alex frowned. “What?”

“I was clubbing with friends, and we were partying, having a good time, you know, and this chick walks up to me. ‘Do you know Alex Lowry?’ she asks. ‘Yeah,’ I told her. ‘He’s my boss.’” Luis looked quickly at Britta “Or one of them. And she said, ‘How’s he doing these days?’”

Alex and Britta shared a glance. “What’d she look like?” Alex asked.

“Gorgeous, dude. Perfect dark skin, black hair—”

“Did she say anything else?”

“You know her, huh?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe. What’d she say?”

“Nothing really. She just told me to tell you that she’d see you around.”

“Okay,” Britta interrupted. “If you see her again—” She looked toward Rodrigo. “—or if you see someone who looks like that, avoid her. Stay as far away as possible.”

Luis and Rodrigo looked confused.

Britta took a deep breath. “I know this sounds crazy, but we think she had something to do with Lee and the shooting. A woman matching that description was also the girlfriend of one of my clients who was killed. Since then, she’s been stalking Alex, and even applied for a job with us. Not to mention the fact that she tried to break into my house. So, word of caution, stay away from her. And if you see her, let us know immediately.”

Luis looked shocked but skeptical.

Rodrigo instinctively believed it.

Both promised to be on the lookout for the woman.

Standing in front of the restaurant after the other two had left, Britta asked, “How’s Jennifer doing?”

Alex shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Under the circumstances. But I’m definitely not bringing Luis’ story up to her.”

“How does this end?” Britta asked quietly. “Do you ever wonder about that?”

“Every day,” he said.

With a resigned wave, he walked past a Lexus and a Prius to his van. How did this end? he wondered. With both he and Jennifer disappearing like his parents? Or a murder-suicide like hers? Even the status quo was untenable, and he could not imagine any scenario where things ended well.

A new client in Brentwood was only a mile or so away from Winters’ place, and after dropping off a Japanese exercise mat made from compressed plankton, he decided to swing by his former boss’ house.

A team of gardeners was mowing Winters’ lawn, trimming bushes and pulling weeds, which gave the scene an appearance of normalcy. But when he walked up to the front door, Alex could tell immediately that something was wrong. There were several overturned Amazon boxes next to the door, and the door itself was partially open.

He rang the bell, shouting into the gap between the door and the jamb. “Hello! Mr. Winters?” He knocked on the door itself, and the pressure pushed it inward a fraction. “Hello?”

Hearing nothing, he let himself in. What otherwise would have been a scary situation seemed less so thanks to the noise of the mower and edger outside. Still, for all he knew, Winters was dead, his body rotting somewhere in the house, and Alex left the front door open in case he needed to call for assistance or make a quick escape.

The floor of the foyer was littered with envelopes and ads that had been pushed through the mail slot, and peering further into the house, he saw the couch where he had spotted her for the first time.

“Mr. Winters!” he called again, stepping forward. “Mr. Winters!”

This time, there was a response, a low moan that seemed to come from an arched doorway off to the side of the sitting room ahead.

It was the same doorway through which she had come.

The moan sounded again. Or was it a groan? There seemed to be pain associated with it, as though the man making the sound was awakening after being knocked unconscious.

“Mr. Winters?” Alex called.

The room or hallway beyond the arched doorway was dark, and he hesitated a moment before continuing on. The sounds of the gardeners outside lent him courage, however, and he stopped in the doorway, feeling around with his right hand until his fingers found a light switch on the inside wall. He pushed up the switch, and a ceiling lamp in the center of what turned out to be a long hallway flickered on. Before him, Alex saw a series of closed wooden doors. The moaning was louder here, and it took him only a few seconds to determine that it was coming from behind the first door on the left.

Hesitant about entering without permission—he hadn’t even been invited into the house—he called out, “Mr. Winters? It’s me! Alex Lowry!”

The response he received was more of a cry than a moan, and he had no choice but to open the door to find out whether the person behind it was okay. The door was unlocked, and he twisted the knob and pushed it open. “Mr. Winters?”

The space beyond was so dark that Alex could not tell if it was a closet or a bedroom or a banquet room. Once more, he quickly felt for a light switch, found one and flipped it on.

Whatever the purpose of the room had once been, it was no longer. Furniture and smaller household items had been broken, smashed and shoved into a waist-high pile at the back of the room. In the open space before the rubble, directly beneath the inset ceiling light, Hugh Winters lay on the floor, in his underwear, on his back, his arms and legs tied with twine to parallel broomsticks. His face and body were red with blood, and atop his chest was the headless chicken from whose spurting neck the blood had come.

Alex froze for a second, the sight imprinting itself on his brain. He remembered this ritual from his childhood. It was not one of those originally practiced by his father’s congregation but one that had come later—after the man in the hat had arrived and they’d moved to the church building. It was supposed to cleanse the mind and spirit, and at the time, it had been performed on a mother whose husband and son had claimed she’d fallen from the path of righteousness. Alex could only remember having seen it once, but the picture in his mind was so vivid that while he hadn’t thought about it for decades, he could recall with perfect clarity the sickening sight of the chunky woman in her old-lady underwear thrashing around on the wooden boards of the dais, trying to avoid the stream of blood pouring on her from the open neck of the slaughtered chicken. She had cried out in anger, disgust and humiliation as his dad had recited a horrific prayer so graphic that Alex’s face had burned with embarrassment.

On the floor before him, Winters cried out.

The man’s eyes were shut, and to Alex, it appeared as though he was having a nightmare. “Mr. Winters!” he shouted in an attempt to wake him up. “Mr. Winters!”

With a moan, Winters opened his eyelids, then quickly closed them as blood dripped onto his eyeballs. “Hello?” he croaked. “Who’s there?”

“Alex Lowry. Your door was open. Are you okay?”

“I’m tied up!”

He sounded somewhat confused, and Alex decided that the best thing to do was free him, get him to his feet and then maybe call the police. He looked around. There might have been a knife or scissors in that big pile of debris, but he wasn’t about to dig through everything to find it. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “I need to get something to cut that rope.” He paused. On the off-chance that he might get a coherent answer, he asked, “Do you have any scissors or—”

“I’m tied up!” Winters croaked.

“I’ll be right back,” Alex promised.

He hurried out of the room and back through the archway into the sitting room, glancing about. He saw the dull metal edge of what looked like a refrigerator protruding from the end of the wall to his left, and, sure enough, when he rounded the corner, he discovered a large open kitchen. Quickly, he pulled open drawers, searching for something he could use. In one, he found a series of knives arranged by size and grabbed the two biggest.

It took quite a while to saw through the rope, and halfway through, Alex realized that the gardeners outside probably had shears that would have worked far better. He had used the largest knife to push the dead chicken off Winters’ chest, not wanting to get blood on his fingers, but both of his hands and half of his right arm were smeared with blood by the time he finally cut Winters free.

“Are you hurt?” Alex asked as the man awkwardly got to his feet. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

Winters shook his head.

“Should I call the police?”

Another head shake.

“What happened?”

“She came back,” Winters whispered, and glanced furtively around, as though the woman might be nearby, ready to jump out at them. “Clarissa.”

The answer was expected, but it still sent goosebumps down Alex’s arms. He looked about the room, focusing his attention on the pile of rubble: hunks of splintered wood, a torn section of mattress, broken chair legs, part of a shattered lamp, unrecognizable fragments of metal, glass, porcelain, plastic.

“She was there when I woke up,” Winters said, speaking low. “Standing over my bed. And she went crazy! She threw me against the wall and started tearing up the room. She was so strong! I tried to escape, but she hit me with something and knocked me out, and the next thing I knew, the room looked like this, and I was all tied up on the floor, and she was emptying that chicken’s blood on me and chanting some crazy shit.”

He no longer seemed confused or dopey, and Alex asked, “Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. I passed out again.”

She could still be in the house.

Alex nodded toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

“And go where?” He could hear the defeat in Winters’ voice. “She’ll find me wherever I am.”

“You’re just giving up?”

“You can’t fight something like…her.”

Alex thought that was probably true, and he looked carefully around as he and Winters walked out of the room, seeking signs of movement. What was she? He thought of the ritual she had performed on Winters, the ritual he remembered from church. Had their congregation done something to conjure her? he wondered. No. Both she and the house behind his house had been there prior to the appearance of the church building.

But perhaps they had strengthened her somehow.

Maybe that was why the man in the hat had come to them.

In Alex’s mind, the man in the hat and the other house had always been connected.

Leading Winters outside, where the team of gardeners was still hard at work, Alex took out his phone. “Do you want me to call the police?”

“What for? To tell them the woman I killed is now trying to kill me? Who’s going to believe that one?”

“I’m a witness.”

“Get out of here, Lowry. Go on with your day. I’ll be okay.” He shrugged. “Or I won’t.”

Seeing a man in his underwear, covered with blood, the two nearest gardeners had stopped what they were doing and were walking over.

“It’s okay!” Winters called out. “I’m fine! Go back to work!” He turned to Alex. “Go on. Get out of here.”

Winters headed back into the house, shutting the door behind him. Was she still somewhere inside? It was more than just a possibility, and Alex did not feel good as he reluctantly got into his van, backed up and drove away.

He went through the motions for the rest of the day, picking up items from vendors and delivering them to customers. He wanted to text Britta about Winters, wanted to call her, but this was something that needed to be discussed in person, and they arranged to meet at her house after finishing their routes.

When he arrived, Britta was already waiting. She was standing in the driveway next to her Explorer, and the expression on her pale face told him something was up. He quickly got out of the van. “What is it?”

She started toward the side of the house, motioning for him to follow.

Alex had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “There’s another house back there,” he said dully.

“Not just that,” Britta said.

Already he could see her expanded back yard and a two-story red brick house that was completely unlike Britta’s. Just looking at it filled him with dread.

Stopping at the edge of the side yard, she stood on her tiptoes and peeked over the fence at her neighbor’s property. “Look.”

Alex stood next to her and peered over the tapered wooden boards.

There was a house behind her neighbor’s house.

“Oh, my God.”

“Keep looking,” Britta said. “Farther.”

Beyond the adjacent yard, Alex saw another house behind the second neighbor’s home.

“I went next door and talked to them. And to the people on the other side. None of them see the houses.”

Alex said nothing.

“But they will, won’t they?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“But if they do…”

He met her eyes. “I don’t know.”

EIGHT

1

Alex didn’t tell Jennifer about the other houses.

He knew he probably should have, but he didn’t want to stress her out more than she was already, and in the back of his mind, he was hoping that all of this would…end. How, he had no idea. Maybe the houses would disappear once and for all, and the woman would never be seen again. Or maybe the houses would remain, visible to some people but not others, while the woman, having completed whatever her mission might be, vanished forever.

But he had no expectation that anything like that would occur, and though he kept Jennifer in the dark, these latest developments left him feeling anxious and uneasy.

Over the next week, the deliveries he made grew even stranger. Wealthy individuals with bizarre predilections, or even severe deformities, requested items of peculiar provenance, while ordinary citizens proved willing to spend inappropriate amounts of money on things both unnecessary and dangerous.

To the home of one grotesquely overweight man in a hilltop home, Alex brought a carton of “rare earth” from eastern Turkey, and was led to a deep basement where, on a grimy stage in the center of the room, a filthy woman in a soiled nightgown crawled around in circles, mewling like a kitten.

The obese man asked Alex to sprinkle the “rare earth” over the stage, promising extra pay.

Alex watched the woman crawl. Was she a captive? A willing participant? He wanted to ask, but the atmosphere in the basement was tense, and he was afraid to do so, scared that he might end up on that stage.

Alex declined to scatter the dirt, explaining that he had other deliveries to make, and the man, suddenly belligerent, paid him in crinkled dollar bills stained almost black and told him to see himself out. Halfway up the stairs, he heard voices from below. “You got it for me!” the woman sobbed gratefully, and Alex understood that she was not a victim but a part of this, and he hurried up the steps and out of the house, glad to be free of whatever was happening in the basement.

Later, he found himself in a narrow, unnamed store located between a nail salon and a dry cleaners, purchasing growth supplements made from compressed insects and algae for a thin, beautiful young woman only two feet tall.

On Friday, he had a single client: an in vitro fertilization specialist in Glendale who had purchased five thousand frozen chimpanzee fetuses from an underground medical supply house in Alhambra. With only his van to haul the specimens, the trips back and forth were going to take him most of the day, so he split his regular route between Luis and Rodrigo, letting them take on his usual deliveries. The specialist definitely seemed a little too enthusiastic about the chimp fetuses when he brought her the first batch. There was something in her eye that reminded him of John Pinkner, the Burbank veterinarian with his self-designed “experiments” shooting puppies in his back yard. He was reminded as well of the panel truck on Enrique’s street—

EAT MORE PETS!

—and though he definitely did not want to know any specifics, Alex had a lot of time to think about what she might be doing with the fetuses as he drove back and forth between Glendale and Alhambra.

He was tired, both mentally and physically, by the time he headed home. He was hoping Jennifer had made something for dinner, but figured, if not, he’d just open up a package of macaroni and cheese or heat up a couple of hot dogs in the microwave. He definitely needed to go to bed early.

He pulled onto their street.

And saw in his driveway the silver Chrysler.

Alex’s breath caught in his throat. His first instinct was to gun the van and get the hell out of there. Jennifer’s car was not in the driveway, so she wasn’t back yet, and he could pull over a couple of blocks away and call her, telling her not to come home.

But she might already be on the way, even on the next street over, and he knew she shut her phone off while she was driving to ensure that she wouldn’t get in an accident, so there was no real way to warn her.

Braking quickly, Alex pulled over to the curb two houses up from his own. He hurriedly looked in the rear of the van for some type of weapon, but found only a short metal brace that had come loose from the vehicle’s side wall and had been rattling around all afternoon. Hefting it, and determining that he could use it to defend himself if necessary, he got out and stood next to the driver’s door, keeping an eye out for any sign of Jennifer. Taking out his phone, he called 911.

“Nine one one,” a woman answered. “What is your emergency?”

He was about to respond, and—

—he was tied to a chair, his head hurt like hell, and something was pressed over his mouth to prevent him from making any noise. He was in a room he didn’t recognize, although from the bare wood walls and exposed overhead beams, he was pretty sure it was someone’s garage. He’d been knocked out and kidnapped, Alex realized, and he turned his head from left to right as far as he could, trying to find his captor, but saw only another chair with another person secured to it.

Britta.

There was duct tape over her mouth, and a trickle of blood dripped from a cut on the cheek that was visible to him. Her head was hanging down—she was either unconscious or dead—and Alex rocked back and forth on his chair, trying to make enough noise to rouse her. He was yelling, but the only sound issuing from his duct-taped mouth was a muffled whimper.

His chair tipped over on its side, and from this low angle he saw that blood was also dripping from Britta’s nose.

Had she been tortured?

Fury and fear battled within him for supremacy. He jerked his legs and arms as hard and violently as he could, hoping to break free of his restraints or at the very least weaken them, but succeeded only in cramping his muscles.

Then his chair was being lifted and righted, and he saw two men, one elderly, one middle-aged, both of whom looked familiar, though he could not immediately place them. They stood in front of Alex, staring at him.

“It is Reverend Lowry’s son,” the younger one said.

The other man nodded, and Alex recognized him as Mr. McCallister. A member of his dad’s church. He was old now, and his fake teeth were as white as his hair, a disconcerting look that made Alex think of a creepy doll he had delivered last week.

Which meant that the middle-aged man had to be Mr. McCallister’s son Jimmy, who was younger than Alex but looked years older.

Alex struggled against his bonds, his vain attempts at speech muted by the duct tape over his mouth. Britta, he saw, was still unconscious.

Or dead.

“We’ve been looking for you, boy,” Mr. McCallister said, his voice thin and reedy but somehow still reflective of the suburban dad Alex remembered. “Been searching for you and your family. For years. Ever since…” He trailed off, his gaze somewhere far away. “Then this…delivery business pops up, and your name’s on it. You and that bitch over there.”

Alex stared flatly into the man’s eyes, unblinking, in an attempt to communicate his anger and defiance.

“Your dad abandoned us! He left us! Left us with that church!”

Jimmy spoke this time, his voice breaking. “They killed my mom.”

Mr. McCallister started pacing. “It’s his fault! Once your dad was gone, everything changed. It wasn’t about God anymore. There were all those ceremonies… And what was the purpose? They just made people… They… They targeted people. They hurt people…”

“They killed my mom,” Jimmy repeated.

“He was our pastor! Why did he take off like that? Why did he just disappear?”

Alex stared into the old man’s crazy eyes. Even if he were able to reply, how could he possibly explain what had happened to his father? To both his parents? He didn’t really know himself.

“My wife was sacrificed,” Mr. McCallister said.

Jimmy started crying.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” The old man dug his fingers into Alex’s cheek in order to pull up a corner of the duct tape, then ripped the tape off his mouth. It hurt like hell, but Alex refused to give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

“Your family—” Mr. McCallister began.

“My family didn’t do shit!” Alex spat. “I was there! I might have been just a kid, but I saw what happened, and my dad was the one who didn’t want that church! He wanted to keep preaching by the tree, and assholes like you followed the man in the hat to the church!”

The old man nodded. “The man in the hat.”

Alex looked at Jimmy. “That church took your mom? It took my mom and my dad.”

Britta raised her head groggily and moaned.

“Why is she here? And why is she bleeding?” Alex demanded. “Did you torture her?”

“No!” both men said at once.

“Then why is she bleeding? Why did you knock her out? Why is she tied to a chair? Why am I tied to a chair?”

Now that they’d done what they’d come here to do, Jimmy and his dad seemed to be at a loss, uncertain where to go from this point.

“Untie us!” Alex ordered, but neither made any move to comply.

How long had he and Britta been unconscious? Alex wondered. Surely, Jennifer had noticed his absence by now. She must have called the cops.

Unless she’d been kidnapped, too.

He tried to turn his head and check out the parts of the garage he had not yet seen, but the area behind him remained completely hidden from view.

“What the hell do you want?” Alex demanded. “You’ve been searching for me. You found me. So what do you want?”

The two men looked at each other. “We want you to call her off,” Jimmy said. “We want you to make her stop.”

Sudden comprehension shut down Alex’s rage, replacing it with fear.

The old man nodded. “She’s been hunting us down. All of us.” He turned to his son. “We might be the only ones left.”

“So did you kidnap me because you think my dad summoned and sicced her on you, or because you’re mad that he left the church? I’m confused.” It was a cruel thing to say, but he’d been knocked out and was bound to a chair, so he wasn’t feeling a lot of sympathy for the McCallisters at the moment.

Even though he understood their fear.

“We just want it to stop,” Jimmy said, sounding as though he was about to cry again.

“Then let me up.”

Mr. McCallister nodded his assent, and Jimmy knelt down to untie the ropes binding his arms to the chair.

“Her, too,” Alex said, nodding toward Britta.

“Maybe we were wrong, coming after you,” the old man said. “But we didn’t know what else to do. And we do blame your dad for bringing her into our lives. She’s haunted us for years.”

Arms free, Alex bent to untie his legs while Jimmy went over to Britta’s chair to release her. “Who is she?” he asked.

“We thought you could tell us.”

“Where did you first see her?” Free of the chair, Alex walked over to Britta and started to untie her left arm while Jimmy undid her right. She was awake—sort of—but he held tightly to her arm to make sure she did not slip off the seat once unbound.

“We didn’t see her. But we encountered her. At church.” An of course was implied in Mr. McCallister’s tone of voice, and Alex tried to think back. He was almost certain she had never been at the church when he was there.

Only in the house behind their house.

“What the hell?” Britta muttered. Jimmy had removed the tape from her mouth, and she started to say something else, but saw Alex kneeling before her and frowned.

Her groggy mind might be thinking he was involved with this somehow, so he quickly said, “They knocked us out and brought us here. Something to do with Clarissa Hamill or Bess Hanson or whoever she is. They used to be part of my father’s church.” He turned back to the McCallisters. “So spill it—unless you want us going to the cops and your asses ending up in jail. I want the full story. From the beginning.”

“How far—”

“The church. After my dad was gone.”

Mr. McCallister nodded slowly, and Alex had the distinct impression that he wanted to tell his story.

“The church was wrong for a while. Even before your dad left us. Most of the original people, our friends and family, were gone, and the new people who came in with—” He nodded at Alex. “—the man in the hat, were different. I don’t even know if their religion was our religion, but they pretended that it was. They started having their own mini-services before your family would get to church, rituals with blood and dirt and animals and…” He shook his head. “There wasn’t any one minister or anyone in charge. People would just get up and say their own prayers and everyone would kind of follow along. Even us. Then one Sunday, your family wasn’t there. Your dad never came back, or your mom, and we heard later that they’d gone somewhere and left you with your aunt and uncle, who stopped being part of the church, too.”

“So why did you stay?”

“That was our church,” Mr. McCallister answered, as if that explained everything.

“We shouldn’t have,” Jimmy said quietly.

“Hindsight,” his dad told him.

“What happened after we were gone?” Alex asked.

“The man in the hat—I don’t think I ever knew his name—was pretty much in charge. He and his friends. And things got really crazy. An old woman was supposed to be possessed by demons, and we spent a whole day doing an exorcism. People sacrificed pets to change their luck, or let symbols be carved into their skin to protect them from spirits. And it all seemed…normal at the time. Well, maybe not exactly normal, not if you stopped to think about it, but everything came on so gradually that by the time it got to that point, we were used to it.

“And then one Sunday, we went to church and… We could tell right away something was wrong. It was a mood. No one was talking. People seemed angry. One guy pushed me, and I pushed him back, and his kid tried to trip Jimmy. This was on the way to our seat. A couple people laughed. There was someone singing, a woman, a song with no words and no tune, really. We couldn’t see her, but we could hear her, and the sound was just grating. It got under your skin, you know? Made you think weird thoughts.

“And then an old man got up in front of everyone and said my wife was bringing a negative energy to the room. He said she was responsible for his roses dying, and his grandson falling off a skateboard and breaking his leg. It was so ridiculous, I laughed. But no one else was laughing. And all of a sudden other people were standing up and blaming her for the bad things that were happening to them. The mood was getting even more hostile, and I stood up. We were going to leave, Jimmy, Junie and I, but then Junie was called to the front of the church, and she went.”

He grew silent.

Alex knew what was coming, if not the specific details, and not wanting to press, he gave the man time.

“No one told her to do anything,” Mr. McCallister said, speaking at last. “At least not that I heard. But she laid down on the altar and started crying and saying she was sorry, and then there was a knife in her hand, and before I could stop her, she stabbed herself in the stomach. No one came to help her. They all just sat in their seats. I tried to stop the bleeding, and Jimmy was screaming, but everyone else was silent. There weren’t really cell phones back then, so I couldn’t call for an ambulance, and I held her as she died. The life just…left her. One second she was there, the next she wasn’t, and she said nothing to me, no last words, she just…stopped.” There were tears in his eyes. “Everyone said a prayer then. They all knew the prayer, everyone but me—”

“And me,” Jimmy said.

“—and they thanked her for sacrificing herself for the church.”

“Jesus,” Britta said. Alex looked over at her. She seemed back to her normal self, the grogginess gone.

Mr. McCallister wiped his eyes. “I guess it was crazy to blame your dad for that, but I did.”

“We did.” Jimmy.

“Obviously, we quit the church after that. Haven’t been back to any church since. Tried to bring charges against them, too. Tried to sue. Tried everything. But that freedom of religion thing covers up a lot of sins, and we were just shit out of luck. No one would help us. Hell, no one believed us. The official cause of death was suicide. Open and shut. Case closed.”

Jimmy wiped his teary eyes.

“What about the woman?” Alex asked. “She was the one singing, wasn’t she? I’ve heard that song, too.”

Mr. McCallister nodded. “We might’ve been through with the church, but it wasn’t through with us. We left Maryland, moved in with some relatives in Connecticut, then I got a job in Houston, and everywhere we went, it seemed like she was there. We never saw her, but we heard her. That damn song. When it was quiet sometimes, or one of us was alone, we’d hear a woman singing that horrible thing.”

“I thought I saw her once,” Jimmy said. “Through my window one night.”

Mr. McCallister waved that away.

“Dad didn’t believe me.”

“The only thing we saw for sure, both of us, was a house. It looked like our old house in Baltimore. Only different. No one else could see it, though. We learned that pretty quickly. Which is why we shut up about it. But it would be there sometimes, in back of where we lived. We’d see it for a while, and then it would be gone. But while it was there…we knew she was inside it.”

Alex nodded. “I know.”

“You’ve seen it, too?”

“Houses just like it. Ever since I was a kid.”

“One time we saw the church,” Jimmy told him.

“It’s true. We were looking for your dad, which is how we spent our vacations, and there was a Sam Lowry that we thought might be him. It was in Dallas, where I was working in the Purchasing department of a furniture company, and we went to the christening of my boss’ daughter, and behind their church was our church. I don’t know if anyone else saw it—”

“But we saw it.”

“But we saw it,” Mr. McCallister agreed. “The day was hot, so they kept the church doors open to let a breeze blow through, and right there through the back door was our church. It looked empty, and I think it was empty, but we didn’t stay to find out. We left right after the ceremony. I went back about a day later to see if it was still there, and it was gone.”

“Tell him about the others,” Jimmy said.

“We kept in contact with some of the original worshippers over the years. Not your family or the Connors or any of the new people, but some of the old people, and we found out eventually—not for a long time, because no one talked about it—that they’d seen and heard the same kind of things, too.”

“Before they died.”

Mr. McCallister nodded. “That’s right. Before they died.” He leaned in toward Alex. “I think she killed them.”

“What—” Alex began.

The old man held up a hand. “We have no proof. Just a suspicion. A feeling. But it seems like you have that same feeling, too.”

“Yes,” Alex said.

“Have you seen her?”

He smiled grimly. “Oh, yes.” He motioned toward Britta. “We both have. And my wife, too.”

The McCallisters looked at each other, astonished. “And you’re still alive?”

No thanks to you, he wanted to say, but nodded instead.

Freed from her restraints and fully conscious, Britta moved next to him. “I missed the first part of the conversation,” she told the men. “Why exactly did you assholes abduct us and commit multiple felonies? Because you used to go to the same church as Alex? That’s what I’m getting here.”

“It’s all right,” he told her.

She turned on him. “It is not all right!” She advanced on Jimmy. “What’d you do? Hit me in the head? How do I know I don’t have brain damage? Or internal bleeding? I need to get to a hospital and have an MRI—”

“Chloroform,” the old man said. “We knocked you out with chloroform.”

“Then why am I bleeding?”

“You fell. Well, I guess technically we dropped you…”

“So I could have brain damage! I’m out of here!” She strode toward a white wooden door in the unfinished wall behind their chairs, and Alex followed. They opened it, went through the doorway and found themselves in a small side yard outside a detached garage next to a green stucco house directly across the street from Enrique’s place in East L.A. Five minutes away was the church that “Bess Hanson” had given as her address.

Enfin

“This can’t be just a coincidence,” Britta said, realizing where they were.

“No.” Alex shook his head.

The McCallisters emerged right behind them. He could see from the expressions on their faces that they were panicked, and he half-expected to be chloroformed again so they could escape. But whatever drive had brought them to this point appeared to have dissipated, and they both seemed frightened and defeated.

“Is this where you live?” Alex asked.

“We’re…renting,” Jimmy said.

“Squatting,” his dad admitted.

“How did you find this place?”

The older man shrugged. “I don’t know. Just came across it.”

Alex pointed across the street. “She was living there. With one of our clients. Until she killed him. Then she applied for a job with us, and do you know what she gave as her address? A nearby church.”

Mr. McCallister paled. “A church?”

“And somehow you ended up here.”

“I don’t—”

“Leave,” Alex told him. “Go back to Texas or wherever you’re from. I didn’t kill your wife, my dad didn’t cause her death, it happened because of her. Or the man in the hat and the people he brought to our church. But you don’t want to get involved in this. We’re not going to press charges—”

“I am,” Britta said.

“We’re not going to press charges,” he repeated. “But you need to go back to your regular lives.”

“And wait for her to get us, too?” Jimmy said.

He had no answer for that.

“Just stay the hell away from us,” Britta told him. “Or I will go to the authorities. If I see or hear from you again…”

Mr. McCallister nodded tiredly.

“Now you need to drive us back to where you nabbed us.” Britta took out her phone and shook it at him. “Or I can call the police and tell them what happened. Let them take us home.”

Jimmy motioned toward a beat-up Jeep Cherokee in the driveway. “I’ll drive you.”

As he got into the back seat of the vehicle, Alex pulled out his phone to call Jennifer. It was off somehow, and when he turned the phone on, he was greeted with a long string of text messages and voicemails. It was light out, not yet dark, but he was still supposed to have been home over an hour ago, and when Jennifer answered his call, he heard the panic in her voice.

There was no way to soft peddle what had happened, so he just spelled it all out. Between his account and her questions, they were nearly home by the time he finally got off the phone. He turned to Britta. “What about you? Are you going to be all right? Do you want to spend the night at our place?”

“With that house?” She shook her head. “Do you want to spend the night at my place?”

“Do you need us to?”

“Not really,” she said.

“What house?” Jimmy asked from the front seat.

Alex shot Britta a look before answering. “Nothing.”

“Is—?”

“He said it’s nothing,” Britta stated flatly. “Just shut up and get out of our lives.”

Britta was dropped off first, mostly because Alex didn’t entirely trust the McCallisters, and by the time Jimmy pulled up in front of his house, it was getting dark. Jennifer ran out to greet him, and before closing the Cherokee’s door, he said to Jimmy, “Get out of here. Go home. I don’t want to see you again.”

But he did see him again. That night. On the eleven o’clock news.

Where the top story was what appeared to be the ritual sacrifice of two men, Phillip and James McCallister, in an abandoned church in East L.A.

2

Alex and Jennifer stood at the kitchen window, staring out at the house in their back yard.

“When is this going to end?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“I’m scared.”

“I am, too.”

“You really don’t think it would do us any good to move or hide or at least get away from here for a while?”

“I think she’ll go wherever I go.”

“But who is she? What is she?”

“If I knew that, we might not be in this situation.”

Jennifer peered through the glass. It was early morning, and the windows of the other house should have been reflecting the sun—but they weren’t. “And you think she’s behind that?” Jennifer pointed through the window.

Alex nodded. “And not just her.”

“That other thing, too. The thing you’ve never seen. That lives in the house with her.”

“Yeah.”

Jennifer pressed a hand against her forehead. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

“Maybe you should go somewhere for a while, get off the grid and as far away from me as possible.”

“No.” She shook her head. “What if something happened to you while I was gone? What if she came after me to get to you? What if she’s after both of us? She already knows where I work. She’s been there. Besides, what would I do? Quit my job?”

“You’re right,” he said.

“We’re stuck.”

“Until something changes.”

And they stared silently out the window at the other house.

****

Back to the routine.

There was nothing else to do, really, but go on. Jennifer continued teaching, while he and Britta kept up with the obligations of their business. They all stayed in much closer contact than they had before, and both Rodrigo and Luis were let in on part of it, enough to make sure they were careful, cautious and kept their eyes wide open, but other than that, the only thing they could do was wait.

Just as the makeup of his dad’s congregation changed after the arrival of the man in the hat, Strait To You’s clientele seemed to have undergone a subtle shift. The niche nature of their business meant that what and to whom they delivered was always going to be slightly off-center, but now many of their more ordinary customers seemed to have peeled off, replaced by a far odder group.

In their Monday morning meeting, Britta said that she’d received an email order late last night for a special type of baby formula, and asked Alex if he’d like to handle it since the customer was located in the area he usually covered. “You’d have to pick it up at Union Station, though. It’s being delivered by train.”

“Sure. What the hell,” he told her.

There was an armed guard safeguarding the shipment in a train station room Alex had never seen before. The guard accompanied him back to his van as he pushed the stacked cartons on a hand truck. “What’s this stuff made out of?” Alex joked. “Powdered unicorn milk?”

The guard shrugged disinterestedly.

With such elaborate security precautions and obviously expensive cargo, he expected to be delivering the formula to a mansion, or at least a very upscale residence. But to his surprise, the address on the order Britta had provided was a small tent set up on the cement foundation of an unfinished house in a blighted neighborhood. Unsure at first if he was at the correct location, Alex left the shipment in the van and hesitantly walked up to the tent. “Hello!” he called. “Anyone home?”

A young woman poked her head between the flaps of the tent. “Strait To You?”

He gestured toward the van. “I’m here with your formula.”

“Great!” Alex could hear the relief in her voice. “Bring it on over. Edgar needs it.”

Edgar, he thought, walking back. That was an ugly and old-fashioned name for a baby. He took the first carton out of the van and carried it to the tent, where the woman had already emerged and was holding Edgar in her arms.

The tiny baby had the wrinkled face of a 90-year-old man.

Alex nearly dropped his carton at the sight of the geriatric infant. Turning its head toward him, the baby smiled toothlessly, its small mouth puckering as though its teeth had fallen out rather than not yet come in. The cry that escaped the child’s pale lips was cracked and aged.

“You’re a lifesaver,” the woman said. “Edgar’s so sensitive that this is the only formula he can drink.”

Alex put the carton down in front of her, hesitating before returning to the van to pick up another. The woman and her ancient baby were living in a tent. Did she really have the money to pay for this?

She seemed to sense what he was thinking. “My phone’s in there.” She nodded her head toward the tent. “I already paid you through Venmo.”

It might be rude, but he felt obligated to check. Sure enough, eight hundred dollars had been transferred to their account.

He walked back to the van to get the next carton.

Alex had a lot of questions, but he asked none of them. The prematurely old baby creeped him out, and he wanted to leave here as quickly as possible. Dropping off the last carton of formula, he thanked the woman for choosing Strait To You and said goodbye, taking his key out from his pocket and heading toward the van. It was a hot day—there’d been too many hot days this year—and as he glanced back, the orange triangular face of the tent shimmered behind thick heat waves. For a brief second, he thought he saw the outline of the house that should have been built on that cement foundation. But it was there and gone, and he wasn’t sure if what he’d glimpsed was real or just his imagination.

Driving away, he felt decidedly ill at ease, and the uneasiness remained throughout the rest of the morning as he delivered strange products to strange people in strange locations.

His last client of the day, a painter, had a gallery and studio in Pasadena, close to home, although the materials Alex was to deliver to the man—canvases made from the stretched, bleached skin of slaughtered Grand Canyon mules, and paints infused with various bodily fluids—had to be purchased from a bizarre wholesaler in San Gabriel that sold a perplexing mixture of animal products, auto parts and art supplies. He bought what he needed from a woman at the warehouse counter with a facelift so tight her mouth was permanently fixed in a Jack Nicholson smile, before heading back to Pasadena.

The painter’s address was downtown on Colorado Boulevard, and Alex frowned as he located the building and slowed down, looking for a place to park.

He had driven this street literally hundreds of times.

That building had not been there before.

It took him two times around the block before a Lincoln Navigator pulled out and he was finally able to grab a spot. Leaving the paints and canvases in the van, he walked up the sidewalk and stood for a moment in front of the gallery. It was sandwiched between an antique store and a hip clothing boutique, neither of which he’d ever visited but both of which he recognized.

The building housing the gallery and studio, however, he’d never seen before.

Even though it was clearly quite old.

Alex opened the glass door and walked inside, a small bell jingling as he did so. The front gallery featured the artist’s work, colorful abstract paintings that were hung on off-white walls. The man himself emerged through an open door from his studio in the rear, obviously alerted by the bell, and Alex introduced himself.

“Oh, you can bring those supplies around back,” the artist said. “There’s a door in the alley. I’ll open it for you.”

Alex didn’t recall having seen an alley as he drove around the block, but then he didn’t remember ever seeing this building before, either. “Just out of curiosity,” he said. “How long have you been here?”

“Ten years or so.”

“I’ve never seen this place before.”

The man smiled enigmatically. “I hear that a lot.”

Alex glanced at the painting on the wall next to him, a mostly red canvas with a few splotches of white. There was a small card next to it, displaying the title of the artwork: Aunt Ida’s Bloody Demise Made Uncle Otto Spurt With Joy.

He blinked, read it again.

Casually, he took a couple of steps to the right in order to read the title of the adjacent painting, a mishmash of various colors: When Deanie Threw Up, She Could Taste Again All Of The Body Parts She Had Eaten.

The artist was looking at him. “Around back?” he prodded.

Alex nodded and went out the front door the way he’d come in. So this guy used paint made from bodily fluids to make paintings about bodily fluids on canvases made from mule skin.

About par for the course these days.

He found the alley, pulled around the rear of the building, unloaded the items, accepted payment and left, heading home.

After today, he really needed a shower.

Jennifer was outside and in the back yard when he arrived, standing next to the electrical meter on the segment of wall between the kitchen and bathroom windows, watching the house behind their house.

“No movement,” she reported when he walked up next to her. “I’ve been here for a while and haven’t seen a thing.” She paused. “But something’s in there.”

“You can feel it?”

She nodded. “Maybe we should call the police. Or the city. Or someone.”

“What would they be able to do? Besides, not everyone can see it.”

She turned to him. “But is that always true? I mean, I see it. You see it. Britta can see it. Maybe once it reaches a certain point, it’s visible to everyone.”

“That’s possible,” he admitted. “Unlikely, but possible.”

“It can’t hurt to report what’s going on.”

“Unless it makes us seem crazy. Then, when something happens and we really need help, no one believes us. The old boy-who-cried-wolf situation.”

“There has to be something we can do.”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

The two of them walked inside, closing and locking the back door. “To be honest,” Alex said, “I felt a whole lot better when you were afraid to be anywhere near that thing. I mean, that night you walked outside…” He took a deep breath. “I just think it would be better if you stayed in and looked at it through the window. At least until I’m here with you. I’m not sure it’s such a good idea for you to go out there on your own.”

Jennifer nodded. “Okay.”

He put his arms around her, drawing her close. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I’ll be careful,” she promised. She met his eyes. “We both need to be careful.”

“Deal.”

For dinner they had leftovers. Re-heated turkey casserole from the night before. There was another horrific school shooting that all of the stations were covering, so they ate their meal with the TV turned off.

“I was talking to Gina the registrar this morning,” Jennifer said. “According to her, ‘Abby Hancock’ was subbing at Johnson Elementary today. So she’s still in the district.”

“I thought—”

“I did tell them,” she said. “But apparently they’re so desperate that as long as you don’t have a criminal record, you’re in.”

“I don’t think she has any sort of record. I’ll bet she doesn’t even have a Social Security number, and the one they have on file for her is fake.”

“Maybe. Or maybe there is a real Abby Hancock and our gal just stole her identity to check up on me.”

“But she was a long-term sub. Shouldn’t they have figured out she wasn’t who she was supposed to be?”

“If she can live in a ghost house and never age and climb up on Britta’s roof in the middle of the night, I’m pretty sure she can finesse a simple case of identity theft.”

Alex chewed thoughtfully. “That whole sub thing makes me wonder: can she be in two places at once? Was she with Winters at his house the same time she was at your school? And did she actually teach those kids? Does she know how to be a teacher?” He shook his head. “None of it makes any sense.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“You know,” he mused, “I had some cousins from Colorado. I only saw them a few times, and I have no idea if they were part of the same religion, but I wonder if they’d know anything. Maybe I can track them down.”

“You never told me you had cousins.”

“I told you, I only saw them a couple of times when their family came to visit. And we didn’t really get along. They were brats.”

Jennifer smiled.

“After we finish eating, I’m going to look them up. She might have a different last name if she got married, but his should be the same.”

Jennifer said what he was thinking. “If they’re alive.”

He had no response to that.

Multiple online searches before Alex went to bed turned up no trace of either Sylvie or Josh, and though he intended to continue his search in the morning, he thought it was more than possible that they were dead.

He dreamed that night of the barbecue in his family’s back yard, only this time, when he went out to see the house behind their house, he took Sylvie and Josh with him. Before he could stop them, they ran into the open doorway of the other house. The door slammed shut behind them, and when he peeked through the front window, he saw his cousins naked and covered in blood, dancing wildly on the dusty wooden floor of an empty front room while something watched them from the shadows.

Maybe he was more alert and refreshed in the morning, maybe he was just lucky, but within five minutes of going online, he’d found a phone number and email address for his cousin Josh. He didn’t recognize the area code and thought it quite likely that Josh was still in Colorado. Which meant that it was already an hour later over there. Immediately, Alex dialed the number.

He’d been hoping to talk to Josh but was out of luck. He reached his cousin’s voicemail, and after the smartass message (“I’m doing important things and am too busy to talk to you, so state your piece after the beep”), Alex said, “Hi, Josh. This is Alex. Your cousin. Alex Lowry. I know it’s been a long time, but I wanted to talk to you about a few things. Catch up.” He left his cell number and said goodbye.

His phone rang almost immediately, and he thought it was Josh, that his cousin had been screening his calls, but it was only Britta.

“Luis just quit,” she said.

“What the fuck?”

“Didn’t even call or text, just sent me an email. You probably got one, too. There’s no reason, nothing. He just says he’s sorry but he can’t work for us anymore. I called Rodrigo. He’s his buddy, and I thought he might know something, but it was a complete surprise to him. He’s trying to get ahold of Luis right now. I’m waiting to hear back.”

A suspicion tickled the back of Alex’s mind. “Do you think he might’ve…seen something?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But we’re one person down today, and there are a lot of jobs scheduled. We may need to move some things around and put some things off ’til tomorrow and… Hold on a sec. Another call’s coming in. I think it’s Rodrigo. I’ll call you back.”

She clicked off, and Alex sat there for a moment before checking his own phone. Luis had sent him the same blunt email: “I’m sorry, but I will no longer be able to work for Strait To You.”

Alex frowned. Be able? What did that mean? The implication was that something had happened which would prevent Luis from working with them. Had he been ordered by someone not to work for Strait To You? Had he somehow become incapacitated?

Was it connected to her?

Britta called again. “Bad news. Rodrigo got the same email and doesn’t know any more than we do. He’s been trying to call Luis ever since, but no answer. He said he’s going to cruise by Luis’ place before our meeting and let us know what he finds.”

“He had no clue this was coming?”

“Completely surprised.”

“We’re going to need to hire some more people,” Alex said.

“We can talk about that later. Right now, we just have to get through today without pissing off any clients. Meet you in twenty?”

“See you there.”

He explained to Jennifer what had happened, unplugged his charging phone, checked his email and got ready to go. He gave his wife a quick kiss. “See you tonight,” he said.

“Hopefully.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” he told her.

Britta was already at Denny’s, seated at their usual booth, but it was another ten minutes before a stricken-looking Rodrigo arrived.

“What is it?” Britta asked even before he reached their table.

Rodrigo dropped into the seat opposite Alex. “Luis is dead. He killed himself.”

3

There was no note, nothing other than the generic email Luis had sent to each of them. Upon reaching his friend’s apartment, Rodrigo had found police and a small crowd of onlookers huddled around the open door, while two paramedics with a gurney hung back, awaiting orders. The fact that the paramedics were not rushing inside told Rodrigo everything he needed to know, and over the next few minutes, he learned that Luis had, insanely, stabbed himself in the neck with scissors, although he had left the door to his apartment open, possibly so that his body would be discovered quickly rather than after it had started to rot.

“Were there any signs?” Britta asked, stunned. “I certainly didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, but you knew him better than we did. Maybe…”

Rodrigo shook his head. “I saw him yesterday. He seemed fine.”

“Maybe he didn’t kill himself,” Alex said softly.

Neither of them responded. It was what they’d all been thinking, but saying it aloud made the possibility seem more concrete.

“They were dusting for fingerprints when I was there,” Rodrigo said. “Just in case.”

“I’m not sure she has fingerprints.”

They needed another person—two, really—in order to handle Strait To You’s workload, but under the circumstances, it did not seem safe to bring someone else on board. In fact, Britta thought it advisable to offer Rodrigo a chance to opt out, but when it was brought up, he declined, giving her a tired half-smile. “I’ve made it this far.”

“We should probably make him a partner,” Britta suggested to Alex. “A junior partner. So he can share in the profits rather than just receive a salary.”

“Good idea,” Alex agreed.

“Fine by me,” Rodrigo said.

With three partners and no other employees, they adjusted their hours in order to accommodate as many clients as possible, starting at seven in the morning instead of eight, and working sometimes until seven or eight at night. They even decided to alternate delivering on Saturdays: Britta the first week, Alex the second, Rodrigo the third.

The jobs continued to grow ever weirder. Nearly all of Alex’s normal clients had peeled off, and the ones who remained seemed even more disconcerting than they had originally. When he delivered oleander oil to the mummy man, he could have sworn that the mummy’s head moved slightly as oil was rubbed on its arms. And when Linda Harriott, the county supervisor, requested delivery of a new apparatus, it turned out to be a working guillotine.

Yet, somehow, the new clients were even stranger.

By the time the weekend rolled around, Alex was exhausted. Jennifer was, too, having spent her available free time playing amateur detective and trying to find out what she could about substitute teacher “Abby Hancock”—which was absolutely nothing.

The pandemic was not over, but it was easing somewhat, and while they did not yet feel comfortable sitting maskless in a restaurant, takeout sounded good, and they ordered pizza from the Italian place near the multiplex. Alex went to pick it up, and when he returned, Jennifer was in the kitchen. She’d made dressing and had emptied some bagged salad into a bowl, but at the moment, she was standing at the window and looking out at the back yard.

He put the pizza box on the counter.

“Alex?” she said quietly.

“What?”

Jennifer pointed. “The door’s open.”

He peered through the window. It was dusk but not yet dark, and he could still see the other house clearly.

She was right.

The front door was wide open and behind it was blackness.

Instinctively, he rushed over to their own back door, then side door, then front door, checking to make sure all were locked. Confirming that they were, he went from room to room, shutting any window that was open. Jennifer remained standing by the sink, staring at the back yard.

“See anything?” he asked.

She shook her head, then held her arms and shivered.

“Wait a minute. Do you hear something?”

She started to shake her head, but then both of them looked at each other, eyes widening. There was something. A…whistling.

He knew that tuneless refrain.

“Is she coming after us?” Jennifer whispered.

“I don’t know.”

They waited. The light was fading, but they could see the back yard all the way to the other house, and there was no sign of movement. The whistling began to taper off.

Jennifer picked up the kitchen phone. “I’m calling the police.”

“They can’t—”

“Maybe they can’t do anything. Maybe they can’t even see it. But I’ll feel better if someone else is here. I’m telling them that you’re not home yet and I thought I saw a prowler in the back yard.”

She was already dialing, and he did not attempt to stop her. The truth was that he would feel better, too. Maybe the presence of the police would make this go away, at least temporarily. If not, they might gain a witness for whatever was happening.

Or another victim.

The police station was not far from their neighborhood, and a patrol car arrived in a surprisingly short time. Jennifer told the officer her story, Alex pretended that he had just arrived home, and all three of them walked into the back yard. It was dark enough that Alex turned on the patio lights, but though he could still see the darkened bulk of the other house, it was clear that the policeman saw only an ordinary suburban lawn.

“Why don’t you check and see if he hopped over the back fence?” Alex suggested.

He could see no fence, and neither, he knew, could Jennifer. But the policeman walked halfway to the other house, held his hands in the air as though gripping the top of a wall, and for a second, Alex could kind of see the fence between their yard and that of the neighbors behind them. The officer shined his flashlight in that direction, but there was no beam. All illumination died at the invisible border.

The whistling had long since stopped, and while he couldn’t see to be sure, Alex was willing to bet that the door to the other house was now closed and that whatever lived inside was once again safely contained.

Maybe calling the police had helped.

Hadn’t a similar thing happened at Britta’s?

The fact that a supernatural entity might be influenced by the material world’s law enforcement was interesting, and Alex mentally filed away that observation on the off chance that it could help in the future.

The officer gave them his card and told them to call if anything else happened, and after he was gone, Jennifer said, “What do we do now?”

“Heat up the pizza,” Alex said. “I think it’s cold.”

****

He discovered a new street off Wilshire Boulevard just past Fairfax in downtown L.A.

Alex had driven this way hundreds of times and could have sworn that no such street had been there before, but it was there now, intersecting a major thoroughfare, and, frowning, he doubled back at the first opportunity. The name of the street was Oland Avenue, according to a sign attached to the stoplight, and when he turned left on Oland, he could see all the way to the Hollywood Hills at the far end. The buildings to either side of him were red brick Colonials, not the sort of structures ordinarily found in Southern California, and though they appeared to be businesses, he could not discern any specifics because there was no signage. His was the only vehicle on the street, which was crazy for this part of L.A. at this time of day, and he wondered if he was the only one who had noticed or could see the new avenue.

Several blocks down, the absence of traffic and similarity of the buildings began to make him uncomfortable, so he turned left at the next intersection and returned gratefully to the streets and city with which he was familiar.

He continued his route.

The next day, there was a dingy bar next to Hy’s Deli, where he had often gotten lunch and where he’d intended to pick up a sandwich today. The bar was old and run-down and looked as if it had been there forever—although it had not existed as recently as last week. Alex thought of Oland Avenue, and the gallery on Colorado Boulevard, realizing that the sudden appearance of the bar was not an isolated event but part of a pattern. Within the dark open doorway, he detected movement, and though part of him wanted to go in and see what was happening, a more logical portion of his brain told him to get away from this area as quickly as possible.

While he might have been hungry only moments before, his appetite had completely disappeared, and instead of stopping for lunch, Alex checked his phone for the next scheduled delivery and got on the Golden State Freeway heading north.

It had been three days since he’d left his cousin a voicemail, and shortly after dinner that night, Josh finally returned his call. Amazingly, Alex recognized the voice. It was deeper now, that of an adult, but somehow familiar bratty cadences remained, and hearing it, Alex knew instinctively that the two of them would not get along any better now than they had as children. Still, he said, “I’m glad you called, Josh. It’s great to hear from you.”

There were a long few seconds of silence on the other end of the line. “What do you want?”

“I was just—”

“How dare you call me?”

He was taken aback by such open hostility. “I just wanted to catch up,” he lied. “Find out what’s happening with you and Sylvie.”

“Sylvie’s dead.”

Although it came out of nowhere, the news was not quite as shocking as it should have been.

There was silence between them.

“What happened?” Alex asked finally.

“Your fucking family’s what happened, Alex.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t? Let me see. Your parents invited us to Baltimore for a ‘vacation,’ and recruited Mom and Dad into their cult. We stayed with you guys, what, about a week? We went to your weird church and then your parents spent the rest of the time trying to convert them. When we got back, they started their own church. Although it wasn’t really a church. It was my parents and us and the old lady next door and my Aunt Holly, and we met once a month in our back yard.”

Alex didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t deny it, because it sounded plausible, and while he wanted to ask more detailed questions, he knew that if he did, Josh might hang up.

Silence again.

He took a chance. “So…what happened to Sylvie?”

“My mom sacrificed her. My dad lost his job, we were having financial problems and there were probably other things going on that I’m not aware of. So the church prayed, and praying didn’t work, and they killed a cat and that didn’t do anything, so my mom sacrificed Sylvie. Pulled her up in front of everyone, made her take off her clothes, then hit her in the head with a rock! Bashed in her skull!” Josh was screaming. “And do you know what they told the police? What everyone told the police? What they made me tell the police? That she fell! Fell and hit her head!”

Did it work? was what Alex was wondering. But he kept the thought to himself.

“Where are your parents now?” he asked instead.

Josh’s voice was calm. “I have no idea. They disappeared. Sacrificed Sylvie, then ran away to become hobos or hippies or Afghan warlords or human traffickers or…” Alex could almost hear his cousin’s shrug over the phone. “Maybe they’re dead. I don’t know. I don’t care.”

He felt sorry for Josh. It was obvious that his sister’s death and his parents’ abandonment had had a disastrous effect on his life. And if his parents really had been introduced to their religion by Alex’s mom and dad, he did have a legitimate claim against Alex’s family.

“What about your parents?” Josh asked.

“They’re both dead.”

“Good.”

If he was expecting a reaction, Alex didn’t give him one.

There was another long silence.

“Are you still part of that church?” Josh asked.

“No.”

A pause.

When Josh spoke again, his voice was quieter. “I have dreams sometimes. Nightmares. About our vacation in Baltimore. About your house and your back yard and…” He trailed off.

Alex jumped in. “I know this sounds crazy, but have you ever seen another house behind your house? A house that wasn’t supposed to be there?”

“Don’t ever call me again.”

The line went dead.

That wasn’t the answer he’d expected. He’d thought Josh might ask what he was talking about, or tell him that he had seen another house, or just let the question hang and not answer at all, but the abrupt termination of the call surprised him.

That’s a definite yes, Alex thought.

Jennifer, who’d been hovering nearby, listening to his side of the conversation, gave him a questioning look. “Well?” she said.

He told her what his cousin had said.

“I heard you ask about another house behind his house.”

“That’s when he hung up on me. Which I take as a yes.”

“So your aunt and uncle were involved in this church, too? And actually killed their own daughter?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Do you believe it?”

Alex nodded slowly.

“I do, too.”

“Apparently they were brought into the church by my mom and dad.”

“Did he ever see…her?”

“He hung up before I could ask.”

Jennifer walked to the rear window, pulled aside the drape, looked out and shivered. “What do you think would happen if we moved? Do you really think it would follow us?”

“Probably.”

****

At Friday’s morning meeting, something seemed off. All three of them sensed it and found themselves glancing warily around the restaurant. Alex kept flashing back to Lee’s rampage, and as he looked about, the other customers reminded him of the unsettling afternoon clientele at the old coffeeshop, not the usual assortment of families, friends and people on their way to work, but a harder, tougher, rougher crowd.

Rodrigo seemed particularly ill-at-ease. “I was wondering if we could team up today,” he said after they’d discussed the day’s routes, and Alex realized that it was more than just the weird vibe in the restaurant that was bothering him.

“I guess,” Alex said. “Why?”

“I can’t explain. You just have to see it.”

He and Britta exchanged a glance.

“Should you show both of us?” Alex asked.

Britta shook her head. “I can’t. Too many deliveries.” She turned to Rodrigo. “What is it, exactly?”

“Something that shouldn’t be there.”

Alex’s pulse started racing.

“I know it sounds crazy—that’s why you need to see for yourself—but there’s this little hamburger stand in Downey, near the office of this lawyer who collects exotic animal skulls. It’s a dirty little place that looks like it’s been there forever, but I swear to God, it wasn’t there until a couple of weeks ago, and it freaks me out every time I go past it.” Rodrigo lowered his voice, glancing around. “It’s like how this place feels today. It’s wrong. But I can’t really describe it; it’s something you have to experience.”

Britta nodded. “Send me a photo. And give me the address.”

“Don’t go there yourself,” Rodrigo said, agitated.

“I wasn’t going to. I just think we should document it.”

There was no discussion as to whether this was real or just in Rodrigo’s head, Alex noted, and that might have been the scariest part of the whole thing: they all knew it was true.

With just the three of them, they were still playing catch-up on orders, so Alex wasn’t going to accompany Rodrigo on his rounds, but after consulting today’s schedules, they discovered that if he followed Rodrigo to Downey, the two of them could check out the hamburger stand and then go their separate ways without any real disruption to their routes.

“Let me know,” Britta said as they parted in the parking lot.

“Will do,” Alex promised.

The hamburger stand—Frank’s Burgers, according to the faded retro sign—did indeed look as though it had been in place forever, and Alex pulled his van behind Rodrigo’s truck across the street. Even from here, he picked up the same vibe Rodrigo had mentioned and with which he’d become all too familiar: that sense of wrongness. It was early morning and the place was not yet open, but it felt to him as though someone was inside, surreptitiously watching them through the grimy, slanted glass of the order window.

“See what I mean?” Rodrigo said.

Alex nodded, and the two of them walked across the street. Stepping up to the darkened window and peering in, he almost expected to see a dead body on a butcher’s block waiting to be sliced and ground up, but the interior of the small building revealed only a cash register, a counter, a grill, a fryer, a refrigerator. There was no one inside.

“How do you think it got here?” Rodrigo asked, peering around the side of the building. The two metal tables with attached benches on the dirty slab of concrete in front of the burger stand were worn and covered with inked and scratched graffiti. “It sure as hell wasn’t here a few weeks ago.”

Only maybe it had been, Alex thought. Maybe they just hadn’t noticed it. This job had shown him—had shown all of them—a city behind the city they knew, and he was pretty sure it was the pandemic that had made it possible. If life had gone on as normal, he would have been too busy to notice the singularities and inconsistencies that now jumped out at him. But things had slowed down to the point where he could see beneath the hustle and bustle of ordinary life.

If he had not joined Strait To You, Alex wondered, would he have seen her again?

Probably, he decided.

Although he doubted if Rodrigo would have ever spotted Frank’s Burgers.

It was a confluence of events that had brought them to this point, and what frightened him was the idea that there might be no turning back. This could very well be the world in which they now lived.

“Have you ever seen people here?” Alex asked. “Ordering or eating or whatever?”

“I have,” Rodrigo affirmed. “And maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I didn’t want to look too closely. I mean, I was driving by, so I didn’t have all that much time to see what was going on to begin with, but the cars looked too old, and I thought the people looked kind of weird, and I sort of sped by.”

“I don’t think you’re being paranoid,” Alex told him.

“You want to wait around until someone comes? Maybe see who works here?”

Alex shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll get a picture for Britta and send it to her, but we should get back to work. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more things like this.”

“What do we do then?”

He shrugged. “Keep track of where they are, keep each other informed.”

Rodrigo stared up at the menu in the window. “Do you think your mystery woman’s involved with this?”

“I don’t know. But it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Has anybody seen her lately?”

“Not that I know of. But that could change.” He clapped Rodrigo on the back, a forced gesture of camaraderie that hopefully seemed less awkward than it felt. “I think we’d better get going. We have a lot of deliveries today.”

That broke it up, but in the afternoon, after picking up frightening custom-made costumes made from small animal pelts and dropping them off at the stately home of a genteel elderly couple, Alex encountered another street he had never seen before, this one lined with empty grassy lots in the center of an area otherwise filled with high-density apartments. Halfway down the short road, he encountered another vehicle coming toward him in the opposite lane: a blue BMW travelling so slowly and cautiously that Alex could tell the other driver was just as suspicious of the street as he was.

The detour this morning to Frank’s Burgers, and the fact that they were already shorthanded and overbooked, meant he was going to be working past five, probably past six, maybe past seven, so when Jennifer called around three to let him know that there was a faculty meeting after school and that she and a couple of the other teachers were going to go out for drinks once it was over, he told her to have fun and said he’d meet her at home. It would do her good to get out, he thought. She hadn’t socialized with anyone other than him since the beginning of the pandemic, and it might help with her stress level if she had a chance to hang out with her friends.

It was indeed near seven and the sun was going down by the time Alex returned to Pasadena. Drinks had turned into dinner, and Jennifer had texted him that she might not be back until eight. Good, he thought.

He’d make himself taco rice or some other prepackaged dinner and—

Something was wrong.

He knew it the instant he turned onto their street, and though the sight must have registered in his brain after seeing it in his peripheral vision, it was not until he approached their driveway that he fully realized what had happened.

Their home was gone.

It had disappeared.

There was only the other house.

NINE

1

Britta was willing to take them in again, and they arrived this time with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

“Your house is gone?” Britta asked incredulously.

Exhausted and emotionally drained, Alex nodded.

“Where do you think—”

“I have no idea.”

Jennifer was numb. She had driven her own car over to Britta’s, and in her state, it was pure luck that she hadn’t gotten into an accident. In the Kia were assignments that she needed to grade, but she’d left them in her satchel in the back seat, and Alex doubted that she was going to be correcting any papers tonight.

“Let me check something in the kitchen real quick,” Britta said. “I’ll be right back.”

She wasn’t checking anything in the kitchen, Alex knew. She was checking the house behind hers. The look on her face when she returned told him that nothing had changed.

“So what’s the plan?” Britta asked.

“No plan,” Alex said tiredly.

Britta nodded, not pushing further, and for that he was grateful. He was too exhausted to think right now, and he was glad when she suggested that he and Jennifer sit on the couch, relax, watch TV and let her make dinner.

The meal, of course, was wonderful, even scrounged together at the last minute. They talked about the house but reached no conclusions and came up with no new theories. All three of them were on edge, expecting at any moment a phone call or a knock on the front door, but there was no attempt at contact, and their tension remained unresolved.

“I was thinking,” Britta said, leaning forward across the table. “Why don’t we get together everyone we can, everyone we know, and all of us go over to that house. There’s safety in numbers, right?”

“I’m not sure there is,” Alex admitted.

“But if we get a bunch of people, we can at least do a recon mission. Obviously, no one would go inside, but we could check around the outside, see if we could find…something.”

“Maybe,” he said reluctantly.

Jennifer was firm. “No. No one goes near that place. It’s dangerous.”

Maybe the best idea, Alex thought, was to go straight to the source. If he recalled correctly, “Bess Hanson” had included an email address in her Strait To You application. Even if she hadn’t, the application had been sent from an email he could message.

He said nothing, but after dinner he went on his phone and scrolled through emails until he found what he was looking for. Britta was in the bathroom, and he thought Jennifer was in the kitchen, but suddenly she was looking over his shoulder and reading the email he was composing.

“What is that?” Jennifer demanded. “Are you writing to her?”

“I have the address. I can contact her directly.”

“Why?”

“I’m thinking we could hash this out.”

“She’s a monster!”

“Don’t worry. I—”

“No!” Jennifer said forcefully. “No fucking way.”

“We need to find a way to stop this.”

“She’ll put a stop to you. I think it’s what she’s wanted all along.”

Jennifer had a point. “Clarissa,” “Bess,” “Abby” or whatever her real name was had been following him his entire life, and it was hubris on his part to think he could stop her by…what? Talking to her? Trying to reason with her?

“Delete that right now!”

He did. Jennifer was right; it was a stupid idea.

“What do we do, then?” Alex asked. But even as he spoke those words, he was thinking about the church in East L.A. It was the closest thing to a nexus in all this mess, and he’d been there before without suffering serious consequences. Maybe there was something he could learn from going back. Maybe something had changed or there was something he’d missed.

Enfin

He’d started explaining his idea to Jennifer when Britta returned. “Sounds like some decisions have been made,” she said. “What’s up?”

Alex told her he wanted to go back to the church by Enrique’s.

“We’re both off tomorrow. It’s Rodrigo’s Saturday,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You’re not doing this alone,” Britta told him, and Jennifer nodded in agreement, folding her arms across her chest in her best no-nonsense schoolteacher manner.

Alex nodded. The truth was that he was grateful to have them along. He didn’t really want to go there by himself, and didn’t like the idea of leaving the two of them alone. Besides, Britta was right. There was safety in numbers.

All three of them went to bed early.

Alex didn’t know if he’d had any dreams, but when he awoke in the morning, he was drenched with sweat and his balled fists were clutching the edge of the sheet under which he’d been sleeping.

“You know,” Britta said as she made them French toast, “this is probably a good time to be going there. It’s not the greatest neighborhood, and we’ll be done and gone before the gangs even wake up.”

It was meant as a joke, but Alex couldn’t help thinking that what confronted them was far worse and more dangerous than any gang.

They were in East L.A. and parked in front of the abandoned church by eight-thirty. Further down the block, a family of four was getting into an SUV, but other than that, the street was pretty much dead. Alex got out, walked around the front of the car—and stopped. On the other side of the cracked, graffitied sidewalk, sitting on the empty house of worship’s single unbroken step, was a man once familiar to him, a face from the past. Older, chubbier, yet still recognizable, it was Len Hearn, one of their neighbors when he was a child and a member of his dad’s congregation.

“Mr. Hearn?” he said. Behind him, Jennifer and Britta had gotten out of the car.

“Yep.” The man stood, squinting at him. “Aren’t you Pastor Lowry’s boy?”

“Alex.”

He nodded. “Alex. That’s right.”

Alex stepped forward. “What are you doing here?”

“I read that this is where they found Phil and Jimmy’s bodies. Wanted to see it for myself, I guess.”

Alex had no response to that.

Hearn glanced over his shoulder at the building. “Kind of reminds me of our church in a way.”

“Did you go inside?”

“I did. But I didn’t find what I was looking for.”

“What were you looking for?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. You, maybe.”

Alex didn’t like that. He glanced protectively over at Jennifer and Britta. Britta, he saw, had her phone in hand and was filming the scene.

“Our church was never the same after your dad left. The new pastor was…not quite right.”

“The man in the hat.”

“Yeah.” A pause. “The man in the hat.”

“What was his name?”

Hearn shook his head. “Not sure I ever got his name. Not sure he ever told us.”

“Jimmy said his mom was sacrificed. At church. I remember animals being sacrificed when I was there, but…people?”

The other man looked surprised. “You talked to Jimmy?”

Alex didn’t want to tell him the whole story, so he just nodded, sneaking a look back at Britta.

Hearn sighed. “Yeah, I guess that happened. A lot of things happened.”

“Are you still with the church?”

He shook his head. “No. Not for a long time.”

“Is it still there?”

“I don’t really know, but…” He trailed off, looked away.

“But what?”

“I live here now, in California. Not here here, but down south. San Diego.”

“Do you still go to church? A church…like ours?”

“No. I don’t go to any church.”

“So why come all the way to this one?” Alex nodded toward the building.

“I told you. I heard Phil and Jimmy died here.”

“Good friends with them, were you?”

Hearn shook his head, taking a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. “Haven’t seen them in twenty years.”

“So why—”

“I thought she might be here.”

Alex froze.

Hearn allowed himself a small, tense smile. “You know what I’m talking about, huh?”

He nodded.

“Have you seen the woman’s house?”

Alex glanced at Jennifer but didn’t respond.

Hearn lit his cigarette. “It’s behind my house. It was behind my old house in Baltimore, and now it’s behind my house in San Diego. I don’t know how or why, but it is. I thought you might’ve seen something similar.” He took a deep drag. “You know, all these years, nothing’s ever happened. I’ve never even seen her, to be honest. Just heard her. But she scares the shit out of me. And the thing that lives in the house with her scares me even more. Know what I mean?” He gave Alex a shrewd look.

Alex nodded slowly. “I know what you mean.”

“I thought you might.” His gaze turned toward the word carved into the bleached wood of the church door.

Enfin

He gestured with his cigarette. “Your dad and them used to say that in church. Never knew what the hell it meant.”

“I didn’t either, but I looked it up. It’s a French word. Means ‘at last’ or ‘finally.’”

Hearn gave a short laugh. “Well, that explains everything.”

Alex pointed to the door. “We need to go in there. Do you want to come with us?”

“Been there, done that. I think I’ll wait out here.” He moved to the side, and Alex, Jennifer and Britta walked past him up the broken steps and into the church.

Jennifer closed the door behind them. “Who is that?” she whispered.

“I taped the whole exchange,” Britta said softly, holding up her phone. “Just in case.”

“He was part of our church when I was a kid. It does seem a little suspicious that he’s here, but his story makes sense.”

“There’s a house behind his house, too,” Jennifer said.

Alex nodded.

“How many houses are there?”

“I don’t know.”

The three of them moved slowly forward. As before, the chapel was filthy, with overturned pews in the center of the chamber, trash and debris all over the floor.

“This is where my parents were?” Jennifer asked.

Alex nodded, glancing around the interior of the empty chapel, not quite sure what he should be looking for. There was still no sign of that fluttering thing he’d seen behind the window, and he was surprised once again by how closely the layout echoed that of his childhood church.

That had to mean something.

“What’s this?” Britta asked. She was standing next to one of the pews that had not been overturned and pointing at what appeared to be a child’s doll made from the skull of a bird and the desiccated body of a squirrel. The figure was dressed in small gray slacks with a white shirt and black old-timey tie. On the wood next to it was a tiny gray homburg.

The man in the hat.

He shook his head, not wanting to answer, unwilling to say those words in this space.

“Alex?” Jennifer said from the opposite side of the chapel. Her voice was low and even, but he caught the underlying note of worry and quickly walked across the rubble-strewn floor to where she stood. She was staring at a chalk drawing on the wall. It was more elaborate than the one “Abby Hancock” had made on the blackboard in her classroom but had clearly been sketched by the same hand. The drawing showed a church—this church?—with its pews filled, parishioners staring in rapt attention at…whatever was on the dais. For this figure was a smudged indecipherable scribble. Whether the depiction was intentional or whether it was merely an attempt to hide the identity of whoever—
whatever

—stood at the pulpit, Alex didn’t know, but the scribble itself he found unnerving, and he took Jennifer’s hand, pulling her away from the wall.

“We’re not going to learn anything here,” he said. “The only things we’re going to find are the things she wants us to see.”

“Then let’s go,” Jennifer said.

“Seconded,” Britta responded.

Outside, Hearn was standing on the dry patch of dirt in front of the church, facing the street and finishing his cigarette. He turned as they exited the building. “Find anything?”

Alex shook his head.

The other man dropped his cigarette and crushed it beneath his shoe. “Didn’t think so.” He lifted a hand. “Well, I’m heading back.”

“Be careful,” Alex warned.

“Don’t worry. I have prayers to protect me. And this to ward off enemies.” From his shirt pocket, Hearn pulled out what looked like a lollipop but what Alex recognized as a Holy Spur, an oak stick blessed in a sacred space by a true believer and embedded in a small hard ball made from the tanned hide of a sacrificed animal.

Hearn might not attend church anymore, but he seemed to have bought into the religion hook, line and sinker.

Alex found himself staring at the object. The sight of the Spur ignited a memory, an incident with his aunt, something he had forgotten until this moment. It had been shortly after his parents’…disappearance. Aunt Natalie, he recalled, had come into his bedroom and awakened him in the middle of the night, clutching his arm with her bony fingers. He could smell the alcohol on her breath, and though the room was dark and the only illumination came from the light of a full moon sneaking in between slats of wooden shutters, he could see an expression of wild-eyed fanaticism on her face.

“We can bring them back,” she said. “Your mom and dad. All we have to do is make a sacrifice.”

She’d handed him the Holy Spur. From somewhere outside came a tuneless singing, and he was suddenly filled with a deep paralyzing fear.

“We can sacrifice your uncle.”

“No!” he screamed, and ducked under the covers, dropping the Spur on the floor.

Hearing his cries, Uncle Bob hurried into the room.

“What’s going on?” Alex heard him ask from underneath the blanket.

“He was just having a nightmare,” Aunt Natalie said. “He’ll be all right.” Alex felt her pat his head through the covers. “Nightie-night. Sweet dreams.” Together, his aunt and uncle left the room.

Whether or not that tuneless singing continued, he couldn’t hear it with the blanket over his head, and, grateful, he remained that way until he eventually fell asleep.

In the morning, his aunt acted as though none of it had ever happened.

In fact, neither of them had ever spoken of the incident.

How had he forgotten that? Alex wondered.

“Well,” Hearn said, putting the Holy Spur back in his shirt pocket and starting toward the street, “it was good to see you again.” He paused, turning around, as though a thought had occurred to him. The move seemed too obvious, calculated, and Alex’s spidey sense started tingling. “Hey, I just thought of something. Would you like to follow me and see her house? The one behind my place?”

Jennifer’s fingers dug into his arm. She’d caught it, too.

“No,” Alex said as casually as he could. “We’re pretty busy today.”

“You came here to check out this church, just like I did. Aren’t you curious about her house? It’s literally right behind mine.”

“In San Diego,” Jennifer pointed out.

“We’re trying to stay as far away from her as possible,” Britta said. Alex noticed that her phone was out again, recording.

Hearn saw this, too. “Suit yourself.” His tone was brisk, and he turned away, walking quickly and purposefully back to his car.

Alex was gripped by the certainty that the man’s presence here had not been a coincidence, that he had been sent, and he turned toward Britta, who was still recording, seeing the same conviction in her eyes.

“What was that?” Jennifer said as they watched him drive away.

“I don’t know,” Alex admitted, “but I’m pretty sure we haven’t heard the end of it.”

Britta put away her phone, sidling next to him. “I know there’s all this going on,” she said. “And of course we need to find out what’s happening. But what are we going to do about deliveries, about our customers?” There was worry in her voice, a normal worry, a practical worry, and it was comforting to hear it.

“We keep working. We can’t leave them hanging,” he said. “We’ll just need to make sure that we remain on high alert.”

“We just keep on keeping on?” Jennifer said. “Act as if everything’s normal?”

He put an arm around her, holding her tight. “What else can we do?”

2

To impress upon Rodrigo how serious the situation was, Alex convoyed with him on Monday to the place where their house used to be, where there was now only the other house, taking the time to explain in detail all of the interconnected insanity happening around them. He was not sure, if the shoe were on the other foot, whether he would believe any of it, but Rodrigo seemed to take everything in stride.

“Frank’s Burgers,” Rodrigo said by way of explanation.

The two of them stood on the sidewalk, looking at the house, and Alex found himself wondering, absurdly, whether there was now another house behind that house.

“It doesn’t look all that spooky from here,” Rodrigo said honestly. “Not as creepy as Frank’s.”

“Walk over, get a little closer and then tell me what you think.”

“No, thank you.”

They both had deliveries to make, but they remained on the sidewalk for several moments longer, watching, waiting.

“So now there’s another house behind Britta’s? And her neighbors?”

Alex nodded.

“What if it happens to me? I mean, I live in an apartment, but what if I wake up tomorrow and find another apartment building behind mine?”

“That’s one of the reasons I brought you here. As kind of a…warning, I guess. You’re already seeing things like Frank’s. Maybe you should get out while you can. Cut your losses and quit this job before it gets you, too.”

“You just don’t want me to become a partner,” Rodrigo joked.

Alex smiled. “You caught me.” He turned back toward the house, his smile slowly fading. “Seriously, you might want to think about it.”

Rodrigo waved him away. “What’s that old-man saying? In for a penny, in for a pound or whatever? I’m in. No bitch or her haunted house is gonna scare me away.”

Part of Alex wanted to tell him he was being stupid, but another part was grateful because they were already down one driver and really needed at least two more. “Just be careful,” he warned. “And if you see anything that seems off, let me know immediately. You get a weird vibe or feel scared or anything? Bail. And call me.”

“Anything you say, boss.” Rodrigo clapped him on the back, and this time there was nothing awkward about the physical contact.

“Okay, then.”

They started back toward their vehicles, and Alex turned as he reached the van. “Check in with me when you take your lunch,” he said. “And I’ll check in with you and Britta. I think we need to maintain a little closer contact from now on.”

Rodrigo nodded. “Gotcha.” He waved before climbing into his pickup.

Alex got into the van and checked his phone for today’s first delivery. It was a weird one (Aren’t they all? he thought wryly). There was only an address; no phone number, no name. He did not even know what he was supposed to pick up or deliver. The order was prepaid, however, so he looked up the location, found the shortest route and, with a honk and a wave at Rodrigo, headed off.

Thirty minutes later, he was pulling up in front of a dilapidated shack that seemed to be the only extant building on a street lined with crumbling cement foundations. Behind the street was a half-empty reservoir whose bare sandy sides led down to a pool of algae-green water.

This was his destination?

The request had been made through their app, and there was no phone number he could call or email address he could use to send a message and confirm that this was the correct location, so he parked the van and got out. The side of the shack facing the street was actually its rear, he saw. The front of the rundown dwelling faced the reservoir, and he followed a dirt path around the side of the small structure until he reached three sagging steps that led up to a wide wooden porch. In the center of the porch, seated on a red plastic chair in front of a red plastic table, was a dirty little girl wearing only a filthy ragged shift.

“Excuse me,” Alex said. “Is your mother or father home?”

The girl looked up at him. In her grimy hand, he saw, was a naked Barbie doll, and on the play table in front of her was a Mason jar filled with honey in which dozens of flies had been trapped.

“Are your parents here?” he asked, the hair prickling on the back of his neck.

In answer, the girl held up her doll. A small finger circled the nipple-less breasts before moving down the stomach and rubbing the doll rapidly between its plastic legs, as though to stimulate nonexistent genitalia. Vocalizing for the doll, the girl grunted rhythmically, increasing in pitch and volume.

An imitation of a woman having an orgasm.

Laughing, she dropped the doll on the table and stuck her right hand into the Mason jar, scooping out a mixture of honey and flies, shoving her fingers into her mouth. She chewed for a moment, then grinned at him, black fly bits stuck between her tiny teeth.

There were no parents here, Alex realized.

He walked back around the side of the shack to the street. If this was part of a prank, it was one that made no sense. Strait To You had already been paid. If the person making the payment wanted them to pick up or deliver something, he or she was going to have to resubmit a request and provide more information next time, because Alex was out of here.

In the van, he scrolled through the list on his phone. With the loss of Luis, their strategy of having each person cover a specific region of the southland had gone by the wayside, and today’s deliveries were inconveniently all over the map. He reorganized the order of his deliveries so he wouldn’t waste both time and gas tracking back and forth across the county, then headed to Culver City to buy VHS tapes of Brazilian orphans fighting each other in street tournaments that had been requested by a retired priest.

Mixed in with a bunch of new clients was one of his few remaining regulars, a Hollywood archivist who wanted him to pick up some surreptitiously shot backstage photos of an underwear-clad Elizabeth Taylor getting dressed in her costume for Giant. As he accepted the manila envelope containing the photos, Rodrigo called to check in. Alex looked at his watch, surprised to discover that it was already one o’clock. Rodrigo was eating lunch and reported that he’d seen nothing unusual, and when Alex hung up and called Britta to find out how things were going with her, she said all was well.

Realizing that he was also a bit hungry, Alex got some fast food to go, then, checking Google maps, found his way to Western Avenue and drove the ten miles to the archivist’s office. As always, the man paid in cash, and after securing the money in a cashier’s box he kept under the driver’s seat of the van, Alex reached for his phone to see where he was scheduled to go next.

His phone wasn’t there.

Frowning, he patted his pockets, felt around on the seat next to him, felt between the seats, bent down to look on the floor, turned to check the space behind him, even looked in the glove compartment. Where was his phone? He got out of the van, walking around the vehicle, thinking maybe it had fallen on the ground without his noticing, but there was no sign of the device.

Mentally, he retraced his steps. His quick lunch—a couple of hot dogs that he’d eaten in the van—was from a Wienerschnitzel. Could he have left his phone there? He didn’t think so, since there’d only been a couple of minutes between order and pickup, but perhaps he’d had his phone with him and had left it on the counter while he took out his wallet and credit card. It seemed unlikely, but it was the only thing Alex could think of, and immediately he headed the ten miles back up Western, then down several side streets until he found the Wienerschnitzel.

Which appeared to be closed.

That was odd. It was still early afternoon, and it was not normal for a fast food place to just shut down in the middle of the day. Parking in the small empty lot next to the red and yellow building, he walked up to the order window. Checking the exterior steel counter to see if his phone was there, he found the counter dusty and covered with bird poop, as though it had been abandoned for months. Or years.

None of this made any sense. Peering through the window at the interior, he thought he saw a man near the rear door of the small kitchen, and he rapped on the glass. “Excuse me!” he called.

The man turned slowly in his direction…only it wasn’t a man, and he wasn’t turning. It was an empty uniform hanging from a hook on the back door, and it was leisurely twirling as a result of moving air. From an open window? An air conditioner? Alex didn’t know, but he backed away from the window as the front of the uniform faced him and stopped. There was something extremely unsettling about all of this—the hanging uniform, as well as the way the building looked as though it had been abandoned for years, when he had bought his lunch here less than forty-five minutes ago.

And his phone was still missing.

Where could it be?

Maybe he’d lost it before eating lunch. The last time he’d used his phone was to check in with Britta. That had been just after picking up the envelope of Elizabeth Taylor photos. He was pretty sure he’d called Britta from inside the van, but the more he tried to focus on details of the call, the less certain he was of the circumstances. When Rodrigo called him, he’d been walking toward the van, envelope in one hand, phone in the other. Had he actually waited until he was inside the vehicle to call Britta? Or had he opened the passenger door, placed the envelope on the seat and called her while he was still outside?

Even if he had called her from outside the van, why would he have done anything with the phone other than put it in his pocket?

Could he have absentmindedly placed it on the van’s roof before opening the door, getting in and driving off?

The scenario made no sense, but at this point he was running out of logical options, and he decided to go back to the seedy office where he’d picked up the photos, to rule out the possibility that his phone was there, before giving up.

Except…

He couldn’t find the office. Without his phone, he didn’t have a correct address, and when he attempted to retrace his route, he found himself driving down streets he didn’t recognize, past stores and businesses he could not recall having seen before. Turning left, then left again, he peered through the windshield, searching the horizon for the buildings of downtown L.A. and the San Gabriel Mountains in an attempt to get his bearings, but the day was smoggy and neither the buildings nor the mountains were even outlines in the haze. There were no hills nearby to indicate where he was, either, and the roads on which he drove were all perfectly flat.

Were there any maps in the glove compartment? He pulled into the nearly empty parking lot of a rundown Food 4 Less grocery store, parking in a barely defined space and digging through the glove compartment’s contents: napkins from various fast food outlets, a tire pressure gauge, a long-expired disposable camera, a box of Band-Aids, a tube of Neosporin, a broken pencil, a small screwdriver.

No maps.

He put everything back. Looking up, it seemed darker than it had only moments before, as though a cloud had passed over the sun. He peered outside. There were no clouds, but even through the smog, the sunlight was not as bright as it should have been. Glancing at the dashboard clock, he saw that it was nearly four-thirty.

How was that possible?

A flash of fear shot through him. The inexplicable loss of time, as well as the fact that he was lost and unable to get his bearings, made Alex wonder if something was wrong with him. Could he have had a small stroke? He wanted to call Jennifer or Britta but had no way to get hold of either of them. In the old days, he could have gone to a pay phone, but he wasn’t sure such things existed anymore.

Should he even be driving?

Maybe he ought to find his way to a hospital.

He sat for several moments, uncertain of what to do, wondering if his perception of reality had been off for some time. Could a mental problem be responsible for his belief that there were houses behind other houses, and that aspects of the church from his childhood were having ripple effects on his life today?

No.

Jennifer, Britta and Rodrigo were seeing things, too. Hell, Winters had gotten himself dragged into all this. And Jennifer’s parents were dead. Not to mention the fact that ex-members of his dad’s congregation had kidnapped him and Britta, and ended up dead themselves.

Alex recalled his idea of a city behind the city, and thought now that he was not only skirting the edges of that city but had ended up right in the middle of it. Starting the van, he decided that the best plan would be to find a major street and just keep driving. Eventually, he should hit a freeway or the ocean or, at the very least, some southland community he recognized. From there, he’d be able to make his way back to Pasadena.

He’d given up any hope of finding his phone. Tomorrow, he’d get a new one. For now, he just needed to get away from here. Reflexively, he checked his gas gauge. It was nearly full—which was good, because he didn’t recall having seen any gas stations for quite some time.

His strategy of remaining on one major thoroughfare in hopes of hitting something familiar or recognizable did not pay off. Fifteen minutes later, he was still in unfamiliar territory, and the sky was darkening toward dusk. At an intersection, a well-dressed young woman stepped into the crosswalk in front of the van, and Alex rolled down his window. “Excuse me!” he called out. “Do you know how I can get to the freeway?”

The woman stopped and turned toward him. She answered, but her toothless mouth made it hard for him to understand her reply.

He tried not to display the shock he felt. “Which way should I go to get back to the freeway?” he asked, speaking slowly and clearly in hopes that she would follow suit.

“Not in underpants,” she said.

Alex rolled up his window. This wasn’t going anywhere good.

The light changed, but the young woman remained where she was, and after a moment, Alex backed up, then pulled around her and continued on.

The businesses on this street had not been particularly nice to begin with, but now he was seeing more and more buildings that had been abandoned or were in states of serious disrepair. There were fewer cars here, and most of those that passed him or were travelling in the opposite direction seemed dirty, dented and old. Ahead, the street dipped under a bridge on top of which sat a stalled or abandoned train. He slowed. Something was wrong, but it took him a moment to realize what it was.

He could not see through the underpass to the other side of the bridge.

That’s what was wrong. The street before him disappeared into darkness, as though entering a long tunnel, and he was filled with the sudden sense that there was something in that darkness, waiting for him.

Alex stopped the van in the middle of the street just before the road dipped. It occurred to him that maybe the toothless woman in the crosswalk hadn’t said “underpants.” Maybe she’d said “underpass.”

Not in underpass

Judging by the sight before him, that made a lot more sense, and Alex put the van in reverse, looking over his shoulder and backing up until he could safely turn around.

It was definitely dusk now, and, as one, all of the streetlights turned on. They were further apart than they should have been, and the spaces between them were darker than they had any right to be. There were no other vehicles on the street, and the only people he saw were sitting on a bench up ahead, waiting for a bus.

Except they weren’t people, he realized. They were burnt piles of trash, the torched belongings of some homeless person or… He didn’t know, couldn’t think of anything, and the fact that there was no obvious answer troubled him even more.

He had to get out of here.

Continuing down the street the way he had come, he was soon back in traffic, and Alex made the decision to pick a specific vehicle and follow it. An SUV driven by a woman with kids in the back seat passed by him on the left, and he switched lanes, tailing it. He might end up at her house…or maybe she’d leave this area and lead him back to someplace he recognized.

Indeed, several miles later, the SUV turned onto another street, and with a feeling of relief, he saw on the right a green sign stating: 110 FREEWAY SOUTH—RIGHT LANE. 110 FREEWAY NORTH—LEFT LANE.

The SUV remained in the street’s middle lane, not going on the freeway in either direction, but it didn’t matter because there was no need to follow it anymore. Alex knew where he was now, and he got into the left lane, went under the bridge, and turned left at the stoplight immediately after the underpass. The onramp led him directly to the freeway, and, gratefully, he entered the flow of traffic, seeing in the hazy distance the Hollywood Hills and the San Gabriel Mountains beyond. All of a sudden, the sky seemed lighter, and instinctively he glanced at the dashboard clock.

It was only three-fifteen.

And his phone was right next to him on the passenger seat.

He didn’t know what had happened and wanted nothing more than to head straight home, but his work ethic wouldn’t let him, and, after a few confused, disjointed moments, he picked up the phone with his right hand, steering with his left, and checked his schedule for the next delivery. Transitioning to the 405 Freeway, he headed toward Culver City.

By the end of the day, the strange interlude had taken on an air of unreality, as though it was something he had dreamed rather than experienced. But in telling the story to Britta and Jennifer, the memory seemed to solidify, and Alex recalled once again the fear he’d felt. What if he’d gotten trapped there? he wondered. What if he hadn’t been able to get out?

“Which city was it?” Britta wanted to know. “When exactly did you…go over?”

“I don’t know. It was off Western, I think. Maybe somewhere near Gardena.”

“All of your clients today?” Britta said firmly. “They’re no longer our clients.”

“I’m not sure the clients had anything to do with it. Especially not the ones after—”

“We’re not taking any chances.”

“We might be taking a chance every time we go out. What about Rodrigo’s burger stand, or that gallery in Pasadena, or…”

Frustrated, Britta ran a hand through her hair. “What do you suggest? We quit? Give up? Start searching for jobs again?”

“No, I’m not saying that.” Alex paused. “Because it might not do any good.”

“Well, I say we keep the risk to a minimum. We’re doing well enough now that we can afford to jettison a few clients. Heck, the three of us are barely keeping up as it is.”

“We really should hire someone else,” he agreed.

“Not until all this is sorted out. I’m not putting anyone else in danger.”

Danger

That was exactly the right word.

He and Jennifer went to bed before Britta, who stayed up to do some work on her computer, but Alex found it impossible to fall asleep. Although Jennifer was snoring lightly next to him, he remained wide awake, staring silently up at the ceiling, thinking about the events of the day. The image that remained with him was the empty Wienerschnitzel uniform turning slowly on its hanger, and recalling it now, in the dark of night, sent gooseflesh up his arms.

He was finally starting to doze, or had at least closed his eyes for a moment, when there were noises from Britta’s bedroom. Random taps and knocks at first, almost as though she were hanging things on the wall, then the sound of something large scraping across the floor. Was she moving the dresser or the bed? If so, why hadn’t she waited until morning, when he and Jennifer could help?

There was brief silence, then murmuring female voices.

Was someone else there?

Alex frowned. He hadn’t heard the front door open or anyone come in, and in these still-pandemic times, it wasn’t like Britta to just allow some random person into her house.

Could it be her ex?

Even though he knew it was an invasion of her privacy, he slipped quietly out of bed and moved closer to the wall, the better to hear what was going on. The muffled conversation faded, and for several moments there was only silence. He was beginning to think he’d imagined the noises, but then there came a series of even softer sounds. Intimate sounds. What began as low yearning whimpers transformed slowly into giggles, moans, yelps, and, finally, full-throated orgasmic cries. He looked over at Jennifer to see if she’d been awakened by the noise, but she was still snoring.

Embarrassed by what he was hearing, Alex moved away from the wall and back toward the bed. Behind him, on the other side of the wall, what had been two contrapuntal series of ecstatic screams suddenly changed.

Once voice continued to squeal loudly with pleasure.

But the other was now singing.

A wordless, tuneless song.

Immediately, Alex shook Jennifer awake. How was this possible? Britta had seen her. She knew what the woman looked like. She could not have been fooled. Why would she—

There were no noises at all now, Alex realized. The other room was completely silent.

“What?” Jennifer said groggily.

“‘Abby Hancock’ was in Britta’s room. I heard her singing.”

Instantly wide awake, Jennifer was out of bed and following Alex into the hallway. She was wearing nothing but an oversized t-shirt, while he was in his underwear, but neither of them paused to cover up.

Britta’s door was closed but not locked, and Alex pushed it open, calling out her name, ready to rescue her from whatever predicament she was in.

The bedroom was empty.

Panicked, Alex checked the bathroom, the closet and under the bed. He and Jennifer flew through the rest of the house, calling out her name, searching for any sign of her. He’d come to the horrifying conclusion that she’d disappeared like Jennifer’s parents, when through a window something caught his eye.

Britta, in the back yard, completely naked, staring at the house behind her house.

She was illuminated by a motion-sensitive light that was mounted on the corner of the patio roof, and Jennifer spotted her at almost precisely the same moment.

“Oh, my God!”

The two of them rushed outside. Alex did not feel comfortable touching a naked Britta, so he looked toward the darkened other house, searching for signs of movement, while Jennifer put an arm around Britta and steered her back into her own house. Inside, Alex quickly went into their room to put on some pants while Jennifer ushered Britta into her bedroom, getting a robe out of the closet and covering her up before sitting her down on the bed.

“Are you okay?” Alex asked, returning.

Britta nodded, looking down.

“What happened? I heard noises, and when I came over to check on you, you were gone.”

She was too embarrassed to look at them. “I was dreaming…or I thought I was dreaming. And, yes, it was the kind of dream you’re thinking about. But when I woke up, I was outside, walking.”

“To the other house.”

She nodded. “But when I saw what I was doing, I stopped. Only…I kind of froze there. I wanted to turn around and go back inside, but I couldn’t. Something wouldn’t let me. Then you came.”

“The something that wouldn’t let you turn around—”

“Was something in the other house.” Britta shivered. “I felt it. It wanted me to go there.”

“What do we do now?” Alex could hear the fear in Jennifer’s voice, and he felt the same fear himself.

“I honestly don’t know,” he admitted. “Our house is gone—we can’t go there. And I’m not sure this place is long for the world. So I’m definitely open to ideas.”

Britta looked up at him from the bed. “Your church buddy, Mr. Friendly from San Diego. He was trying to get you to come with him.”

“Yeah. Suspiciously.”

“Why don’t we take the fight to them?”

“Oh, no.” Jennifer shook her head.

“Hear me out. We’ve been on the defensive this entire time. These houses and that woman… They’ve kind of been circling around us. It seems like it all has some connection to the church you went to when you were a kid, right? So let’s find that church, or find the people who’re part of that church, and go to them. We start with your pal from San Diego.”

“First of all,” Alex told her. “I have no idea where Mr. Hearn lives.”

“I’m sure we can look it up.”

“Secondly, I’ve already tried to find out whether that church still exists and track down other people from that time, with no luck. Thirdly, what do you mean by ‘take the fight to them?’ Are we supposed to—what?—go to Mr. Hearn’s house and kick his ass?”

Britta managed a smile. “No. I just meant that we should be proactive. Instead of waiting here while people kidnap us or threaten us or our houses disappear, we confront whoever—whatever—is involved with this and demand to know what’s going on.”

“And how we can get it to stop.”

“Exactly.”

Alex smiled. “Don’t you wish now that you’d started this company with Thompson instead of me?”

“Never.”

“Look, I’m sorry to break up your little lovefest here, but there’s no way I’m going to hunt down that woman or her minions.” Jennifer fixed Alex with a hard stare. “And there’s no way you’re going, either.”

“What other option do we have? Wait here until we’re…” He didn’t have to finish the sentence.

Jennifer was silent.

“I got ahold of my cousin. Maybe he can help us.”

“He didn’t even want to talk to you.”

“It’s a place to start.”

Britta stifled a yawn.

“We’re all tired. Why don’t we get some sleep,” Jennifer suggested, “and talk about it in the morning.”

What if something happened while they were asleep? Alex wondered. What if he woke up and Britta was gone or Jennifer was gone or both of them were gone? What if they woke up and he was gone?

What if they all woke up in the other house?

He forced himself to remain calm. “Good idea. We should get as much sleep as we can, while we can. I have the feeling we’re going to need it.”

Angry and upset, Jennifer turned away from him once they were in bed. But she fell asleep almost instantly. Britta, he assumed, was sleeping as well.

He remained wide awake.

3

Alex made himself toast and coffee for breakfast while Jennifer and Britta were still asleep, staring out the window at the narrow side yard as he ate. He knew some people believed in what they called a personal God, and while he was not sure exactly what that meant, he wondered now if there was such a thing as a personal demon. He’d had to read Frankenstein for a college English class, and in Mary Shelley’s novel, the monster, thwarted in its attempt to convince the doctor to create a mate, set out to destroy the doctor’s life by killing everything that he cared about, starting with people on the outer edges of his social orbit, and moving closer in to his friends and family before finally coming after him. Was that what was happening here? Was he the target at the center of all this? Was she his personal demon?

It certainly seemed that way.

In the shower, while Jennifer and Britta were eating breakfast, Alex debated whether or not to strike out on his own. It might be safer for Jennifer and Britta, taking attention away from them, but it could also leave them more vulnerable if he wasn’t around. Not that he’d done much to shield them so far.

In the end, he decided, they were better off remaining together.

The women were still at the breakfast table drinking coffee when he returned dressed and refreshed. Britta looked up as he entered the kitchen. “I can’t reach Rodrigo,” she said, holding up her phone.

“It’s early. Maybe he’s still asleep. Did you leave a message?”

“You don’t understand. I can’t reach him. His phone number no longer works.”

The sickly expression on her face mirrored the way he felt. “Let me try.”

She was right. There was nothing. Alex dialed the number and heard not a ring, not a busy signal, not even the customary tones followed by a recorded message stating that the number was no longer in service.

Nothing.

He tried texting, then emailing, but neither message was deliverable.

Impulsively, he scrolled through his contacts and began calling friends. He hadn’t remained in touch with most of them during the pandemic—his fault—but he seriously doubted that all of them had changed their numbers.

None of the phone numbers worked.

He handed the phone to Jennifer. “Call someone,” he said. “Call Connie. You, too,” he told Britta. “Call somebody. A friend, a relative, whoever.”

Neither of them could get through to anyone.

“What’s going on?” Jennifer said. He could hear the fear in her voice.

“I’m going to go in the other house,” he said. “The one here.”

“What?”

“I don’t get that logic,” Britta admitted.

“Whatever’s happening is obviously getting worse, and driving a hundred miles to San Diego to see Len Hearn again isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

“I thought you were going to call your cousin,” Jennifer said.

“No, you were right. He doesn’t want to talk to me—even if I could find a phone that worked.”

“But—”

“The house is right here. Literally a few yards away.” He nodded toward Britta. “And hers might not be as bad as ours.”

“No.”

“If there’s anything I think I can’t handle, I’ll get out. But it’s time we knew exactly what we’re dealing with.”

“Your parents probably thought the same thing.”

Before he could come up with a response, the front doorbell rang.

The three of them froze, waiting to see if the ring would sound again. When it didn’t, Britta stood and walked out to the front room. She peered through a side window, then turned toward them. “No one there.”

Alex and Jennifer crowded closer as she slowly and carefully pulled open the door.

There was no person standing on the porch, but atop the bristly brown Welcome mat lay an old-fashioned hat.

A gray homburg.

Alex acknowledged the hat’s provenance before either of them had a chance to ask. “It’s his.”

The man in the hat.

Britta closed the door, locked it.

“I have to check out that house.” Alex said.

Jennifer’s mouth was set. “No.”

He pointed at the hat. “That’s a message. For me.”

Britta looked at them both. “Let’s think this through logically. We’re all in uncharted territory here—”

“This has been going on my entire life,” Alex said. “Now it’s involving you two. It’s spreading.” He looked at Jennifer. “To your parents.” At Britta. “To Winters. And Lee. And Luis. I need to…to…”

“To what?” Jennifer demanded.

“Stop it. Put an end to it.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

“I don’t know. But I need to try. That’s why I’m going into that house.”

Britta, at least, seemed to acknowledge that his mind was made up and he couldn’t be dissuaded. “Can our phones still communicate?” she wondered. “If we kept in contact while you were in there…” She pressed a speed dial number on her phone. His own rang seconds later. “Yes!”

“Good idea,” he said.

Britta terminated the call. “Now try to call me.”

He did. Her phone rang, and she picked it up. “Hello?”

“It works,” he announced.

“There’s no guarantee it’ll work in there,” Jennifer pointed out.

“But it is the only number I’ve been able to call this morning,” Britta said.

“I’ll keep it on the entire time I’m in there,” Alex said. “Like a walkie-talkie. I’ll describe what I’m seeing, the way astronauts do.”

“Keep the camera on, too, so we can see.”

Now even Jennifer seemed to have accepted that he was going into the other house. “You get in and out as quickly as possible. And if anything happens—”

“I’m gone,” he promised.

“Maybe we should all go in. Or at least two of us.”

He did not want that. Logically, it made sense—splitting up was a Scooby Doo strategy and the reason people ended up dead in horror movies—but his gut told him that Jennifer and Britta would be safer if they remained outside and that he would be safer if he was alone. “No,” he said firmly. “I’ll get in and out faster if I’m by myself.”

Neither of them liked that, but they didn’t question it, and he looked around, wondering if there were something he could bring along for protection. He knew Britta didn’t have any guns, not that he thought a gun would work on whatever was in there. Ditto for a knife, baseball bat or any other type of traditional weapon. What he really wished he had was a Holy Spur, but then he thought that such a talisman was more likely to have come from whatever was behind all this than to act as a deterrent against it.

The amount of what he didn’t know was far greater than what he did, and more than anything else, this sojourn was going to be a fact-finding mission.

“Is your phone charged?” he asked Britta.

She nodded.

“Then let’s do this.”

Outside, in back of the back yard, the red brick house waited. As different as it was from the one behind his childhood home or the one behind his in-laws’ place or the one that had replaced their own house, it shared the same picture-book sensibility, the sort of house that might be depicted in illustrations for elementary school readers. The fact that its essence was so at odds with its appearance was what rendered it so threatening, and as the three of them stood at the back porch looking toward the structure, they were quiet.

Alex broke the silence. “I’ll make this quick,” he promised. “I’ll go in, check it out, see what I can find and bail.”

“I still think—” Jennifer began.

He cut her off. “It’ll be faster if I go by myself.”

His phone rang, and he saw Britta holding up her own. On his screen, he saw her face. He answered, “Hello.”

“Keep it on,” Britta said, her voice in stereo from both his phone and where she stood across from him. “We need to stay in contact.”

“Will do.”

There was a knot of dread in his stomach as he walked slowly across the too-big back yard toward the other house. He felt the way he had as a child, and though this house was different from the one in Maryland, there was about it the same air of foreboding. In his peripheral vision, above the wooden fences separating Britta’s yard from those to either side, Alex saw the houses behind her neighbors’ homes. Could those neighbors see them, too? he wondered. If so, what did they think? Had any tried to investigate?

Sooner than he wanted, Alex was standing in front of the other house. As before, everything was just a little bit…off. The decorative white shutters to the sides of the windows were too wide, the front door too narrow, and the red bricks that made up the front wall were not staggered but sat one atop the other in unsettlingly perfect symmetry. His phone was in his left hand, but when he looked down at it, the screen was black. “We can’t see anything through the phone,” Britta said, speaking to him for the first time. “Is everything okay?”

“I can’t see anything, either. I guess we’ll have to do it old school.”

There was a reluctant pause. “Okay.”

He turned in their direction, waving. “I’m going in.”

“Be careful!” Jennifer shouted.

“Be careful,” Britta said over the phone.

“Will do.”

He stepped onto the stoop.

A sense that everything here was horribly awry hit him so strongly that he was forced to grab onto the wrought-iron railing to avoid stumbling. Overcome with a feeling of vertigo, Alex paused for a moment to steady himself before continuing up the short set of steps. The brass doorknob, when he grasped it, felt somehow pliable—slimy—but the door was unlocked, and the knob turned easily.

He walked inside.

The front room was darker than it should have been. All three picture windows were undraped, but the light that came through their glass was dirty and unsatisfying. The furniture in the room, definitely of an earlier era, had growing from it tufts of long black hair, and a scene which would have been cartoonish had a character like Bugs Bunny dumped hair growth formula over everything, seemed instead eerie and unsettling. The furniture looked almost alive. Perhaps it was, Alex thought, and he stretched out a tentative hand to touch the hair flowing from the center of a hall tree to his right. His fingers ran through soft silky tresses, feeling hard wood underneath.

“What’s going on?” Britta demanded. “Talk to me! Can you still hear us?”

“I’m here,” he said.

“Then keep talking so we know you’re all right.”

“Sorry.”

“Where are you now? What do you see?”

“I’m in a living room or something. Except there’s hair growing out of the furniture. Long black hair. It’s, like, coming out of the wood on the tables and the material of the couch—”

“Get the hell out of there!” Jennifer ordered.

“It’s not threatening,” he assured them, although that wasn’t precisely true. “It’s just…weird.”

He glanced around, listening, hearing nothing. The place was deserted. There was no one here. He could feel the emptiness, though that was not an observation he made aloud. He didn’t want either Jennifer or Britta attempting to follow him into the house until he was completely sure it was safe.

“I’m going into the next room,” he said. “I think it’s a dining room.”

But it was not like any dining room he had seen before. It had no windows, and the skylight ceiling looked through a transparent floor into an upstairs bathroom. One wall consisted of a built-in cabinet behind whose glass doors were intricately detailed porcelain figurines of naked men and women in various states of sexual congress. The wallpaper on the other three walls was covered with patterns of fruit and flowers bunched together in irregular configurations that at certain angles resembled monstrous creatures. There was a chandelier above the table, hanging from the transparent ceiling, but it was turned off—and could not be turned on, he discovered when he tried to flip the switch to the left of the door—and the only illumination entering the space was dirty light from the previous room, which threw shadows on the walls that made it seem as though the monstrosities on the wallpaper were in motion.

Alex left the room quickly, not commenting on what he saw. “Leaving the dining room,” he announced into his phone. “Going into…another room.”

For he was not sure, exactly, what this room was. By all rights it should have been a kitchen—that was what usually abutted a dining room—but the chamber in which he found himself was once again windowless and, though narrow, extraordinarily tall. The ceiling was a full two stories above his head, the room built like a chimney that cut straight through the second floor all the way to the top of the house. The only piece of furniture was a broken plastic stool.

“What’s going on?” Britta demanded.

“Sorry. I’m in, like, a weird skinny room with a really high ceiling. I think it might’ve been a kid’s room because there’s a little broken plastic seat on the floor, but other than that, it’s empty. Like it’s been cleaned out.” He didn’t mention the overriding creepiness of the chamber, not wanting to worry them, but even as he was speaking into the phone, he was walking quickly through the room and out the door at the opposite end, where he found himself in what did look like a kitchen.

Only…

The oven was situated in the lower half of an old-fashioned refrigerator, while a freezer was located beneath the stove. Where the sink should have been, below the window, were wooden shelves, on which sat Mason jars filled with fruit preserves. Outside the window, it was night.

“I’m in the kitchen,” Alex said. “There’s no one here.” He paused. “It’s still daytime out there, right?”

“Of course,” Britta said. “Why? Isn’t it there?”

“No.”

Alex stepped slowly forward. The angles of the room met strangely and made him feel off balance, forcing him to touch and maintain physical contact with walls, doors and other stationary objects in order to keep himself from falling as he walked. This had been true to a certain extent ever since he’d entered the house, but the phenomenon seemed even more pronounced in the kitchen. He walked over and opened the refrigerator door. “Looking inside the refrigerator,” he said. “Nothing here but heads of iceberg lettuce, most of them moldy.”

He closed the refrigerator. The problem was that he wasn’t learning anything. He had hoped, by coming in here, he’d gain a little insight into what was going on, thinking it might give him an idea as to what they could do moving forward, but so far what he’d seen was just creepy and strange.

He stood still for a moment, attempting to get a sense of the place, and in the silence, it almost felt to him as though the house was waiting. For what, though?

Her.

Yes.

Alex was suddenly filled with the certainty that he had been led into a trap, that she had intentionally directed him here, wanting him, for some reason, inside this house.

“What’s going on?” Britta said. “Are—”

The connection was cut.

“Hello?” he said stupidly. “Hello?”

Running quickly back through the rooms, he sped out the front door, fully expecting to find that Britta’s house was gone and he was all alone. But her house was still there, and he could see Britta and Jennifer standing next to the back porch, looking in his direction.

Grateful, Alex hurried back through the yard.

He was done with the house behind Britta’s. There was nothing he could learn there.

“Our connection cut off,” Britta said as he approached. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, but I got the hell out.”

Jennifer hugged him. “Thank God.”

Britta was looking at her phone. “It’s a text from Rodrigo,” she said. “He finally got through. He’s asking where we are.”

“I’m going to take the day,” Alex said. “But maybe you and Rodrigo should get to work. We can’t let our business fail just because of a little haunting.” He smiled as though he was joking, but he really wasn’t, and, as he’d known she would, Britta nodded slowly in agreement. Strait To You was her baby, and she wasn’t going to let anything derail it.

“I think maybe you’re right. But what are you going to do?” she asked.

Alex glanced at Jennifer. “A little exploring.”

“Oh, shit!” Jennifer said, grabbing the phone out of his hands. “I forgot to call in sick!”

“You don’t have to.”

She fixed him with a hard stare. “But I am.” Moving away, she dialed her school, and he heard her talking to a secretary or someone, explaining that she would not be in today.

Britta turned to him. “You’re going into your house, aren’t you?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “You just better be careful. I don’t want them to find your body in that church.”

“I have to email lesson plans for the substitute,” Jennifer said, walking over. She turned to Britta. “Can I use your computer?”

“It’s all yours. I’ll sign you on.” They went inside, but Alex remained in place for a moment, looking back at the other house. He couldn’t shake the conviction that it had been a trap, and that if the phone hadn’t gone out and he hadn’t left immediately, he would be there still.

So why, exactly, was he planning to go into the house that had been behind their own?

Because he had to confront this, whatever it was, and, if he could, try and stop it at the source.

Although he had no idea if that was even possible.

Or how he could hope to accomplish such a thing.

Inside, Jennifer was in Britta’s office on her computer, and Britta was scrolling through her phone, looking over a list of today’s deliveries. She glanced up. “I think Rodrigo and I will be able to manage it,” she said. “There are a couple of non-essentials we can put off until tomorrow or the next day, and the rest we should be able to handle.”

“Thanks,” he told her.

“You be careful.”

“We will,” Jennifer said, shutting down the computer and standing.

“My phone’ll be on all day,” Britta said, holding it up. “Call or text me. Whatever happens.” She addressed Jennifer. “Make sure he does.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“We’d better get going,” Alex said. He was trying to figure out a way he could get Jennifer to stay in the van while he went into the other house. Hopefully, by the time they got there, he’d come up with an idea.

There was a moment’s awkward silence, then Britta stepped forward to give Jennifer a hug. She gestured to Alex. “Come on. Bring it in.” All three of them hugged, and he had the uncomfortable feeling they were saying goodbye.

Twenty minutes later, Britta and Rodrigo were on the road, and Alex and Jennifer were standing on the sidewalk in front of the lot where their home had been. The other house, situated further back on the property than should have been possible, waited.

He was pretty sure something was in there.

“What does everyone else see?” he wondered. “Our neighbors. Do they still think our house is there?”

Jennifer pointed next door. “It’s early, but I’m sure Louise is up. We can ask her.”

Alex shook his head. “The fewer people we involve the better.”

They were both procrastinating.

He looked toward the house. If he had seen it in a photograph, it might have seemed cheerful with its window boxes, white walls and yellow trim, but a closer look revealed the falsity of that perception. The door was too tall, the windows not precisely square, the roof overhang threateningly low. The flowers in the window boxes were cruelly formed and like nothing he had ever seen before.

In his hand was a baseball bat, one that Britta had lent him, that she kept by her bed for protection, and though he was more than a little frightened by the idea of going into the house, holding the weapon gave him confidence. “Wait here,” he told Jennifer.

“If you’re going,” she said, “I’m going.”

“There’s no reason for both of us to—”

“Die?”

“—go inside.” He took her hand. “Look, I’m not going to pretend that there’s no risk. But this has been following me around my whole life, and I’m still here.”

“For the moment.”

“But my parents aren’t here. Neither are your parents. Or a lot of other people. All I’m saying is that it might be safer if I go in alone. I don’t think she wants to kill me. You, on the other hand…”

“No dice,” Jennifer said. “Both of us or neither of us.”

“I go in first,” he told her.

“You are the one with the bat.”

They stepped off the sidewalk, walking through their too-big yard, and from the tightness of her grip on his wrist, he could tell that she was just as frightened as he was.

He was convinced the house was not empty but not sure if she was in there. There was only a vague sense that something waited for them within.

What was behind this house? he wondered as they got closer. Another house?

Was there another one behind that? And another behind that, and another behind that, and…

He’d walked with Jennifer’s dad around the house in back of his in-laws’ place and had seen only more yard, but there was no guarantee that would always be the case.

This close, they could see that there was no porch, no stoop, only the grass of their lawn going straight up to the too-tall door.

“Wasn’t the door green before?” Jennifer’s voice was low, as though she was afraid of being overheard.

It was red now, and Alex couldn’t remember if the color had been different previously. “I don’t know,” he admitted, and for some reason found himself speaking just as quietly.

Neither of them said anything after that.

The shiny brass door handle was warm to his touch. His expectation was that the interior of the building would be warm as well, but it was cold, like stepping into a walk-in refrigerator. The room beyond was empty and unfurnished, although directly to the right of the front door was a wooden hat rack.

On which hung a gray homburg.

“Is that…?” Jennifer whispered.

He nodded.

There was no furniture, no indication that anyone—
anything

—lived here, but Alex still had a very strong vibe that they were not alone, and he hefted the baseball bat, prepared for confrontation. Within the next room, something black and shadowy fluttered past the doorway, and he quickly crossed the bare floor, Jennifer holding tightly to his arm.

The large room before them was filled with dark fluttering things of various shapes and sizes. He had no idea what they could possibly be, but they were bouncing from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. From what he could tell, the shades possessed very little substance, though within the flapping forms he thought he saw faces and thought the faces familiar. Was this where they lived, or were they trapped here? He didn’t know. But he did know that he was not about to go into the room to find out.

Which meant they could explore no further.

“Let’s go,” he said defeatedly.

“I’m all for that.”

Retreating, they went out the way they came in. “I have no idea what that even was,” he said. “This is so far beyond us. I don’t know what made me think we could—”

“Alex,” Jennifer said softly.

The neighborhood had changed.

The houses, formerly 1960s tract homes in four alternating models, were now widely variant, with wooden shacks next to Mediterranean McMansions next to stucco crackerboxes. His van was still parked in front of their property, but the other vehicles on the street and in driveways were makes and models completely unfamiliar to him, many of them old-fashioned looking but some extremely modern. From the house next door emerged a woman with two children, but it was not Louise and her kids. These people he didn’t recognize, and he saw instantly that they were…malformed. The woman’s head was far too big for her body, and the faces of the boys drooped somehow, as though the skin was not securely attached to their skulls. Movement across the street caught his eye, and he saw a large fat man with tiny Tyrannosaurus-style arms kicking a mewling hairless dog across a brown front lawn.

His skin was touched by a slight breeze, but something was wrong with the breeze as well. It didn’t blow, exactly, but seemed to move sinuously, purposefully, as though searching for something it wanted, and with it came a faint scent of rot.

Even the sun was different. Not as bright as it should have been, its light diffused, rendering the world duller than it was supposed to be.

“What do we do?” Jennifer asked. He could hear a hint of panic in her voice.

Watching a peculiarly fabricated convertible drive by, its grinning driver waving at him with one massive hand, Alex was filled with an almost overwhelming sense of futility, a dispiriting feeling that he’d run out of options. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean ‘nothing’?”

“They’ve been after me since I was a child,” he said. “I don’t know why. Maybe I was just a loose end.” He met her eyes. “And now they have me.”

His defeatism seemed to energize her. The welling panic disappeared, and her voice, when it came out, was strong. “Bullshit,” she said.

He looked at her with surprise.

She put a hand on his cheek. “When you got lost making deliveries, you found your way back. We’ll find our way back, too.”

“You shouldn’t’ve come with me.”

“You’d be all alone if I hadn’t. Now at least there’s two of us. And two heads, as they say, are better than one.”

He gave her a small smile, nodding toward what should have been Louise’s house. “Unless they’re both on the same body.”

Jennifer punched his arm. “You’re awful!” But she was smiling, too, and suddenly their predicament didn’t seem quite so dire. She was right, he thought. Altered houses, deformed neighbors, these were what lay behind the regular world.

But the regular world was still there.

They just needed to find their way back to it.

For a brief moment, he considered re-entering the house; it was what had brought them here to begin with. But then he thought that instead of returning them to where they should be, they might end up even further astray.

Jennifer already had her phone in hand and was trying to call Britta. “No service,” she said, showing him the screen.

He tried as well.

The same.

“Let’s drive over there,” he said. “Or try to.”

“Isn’t she working?”

“I just want to see if her house is still there, if it’s…normal.”

There weren’t as many cars on the road as there should have been, and most of the parking lots they passed seemed curiously empty. The few people they saw on the sidewalks seemed off, although there was one woman holding her young son’s hand who looked confused, and he thought, too late, that maybe the two of them had accidentally wandered the wrong way and found themselves here. But then he was past them and gone, and he didn’t want to make a U-turn for something that was probably just in his imagination.

“Let me check something,” he told Jennifer, and pulled onto Colorado Boulevard, driving downtown. As he’d expected, the art gallery was there, looking exactly as he remembered, although the shops to either side of it had changed.

When Deanie Threw Up, She Could Taste Again All Of The Body Parts She Had Eaten.

He could see the artist’s paintings through the large front windows and wondered if locations like this existed in two places at the same time, or if he just had the ability to see them in both places.

Britta’s house was not there. Nor was her street. The entire area was altered, and what had been a nearby grocery store was now a vacant lot with a tall tree that reminded him of the spot where his dad’s congregation had originally held Sunday services. Alex looked down at the gas gauge, grateful to find that it was above three-fourths. He had the feeling they might be driving for a while.

But where should they go?

The abandoned church in East L.A. was the only place he could think of that had a connection to any of this, and he was about to suggest to Jennifer that they go there, when his phone rang.

The sound was so unexpected that both of them jumped, startled. They looked at each other as it rang again, and Alex touched the screen to answer. “Hello?”

“Hello.”

He had not heard the voice since he was twelve years old, but he recognized it instantly, and it chilled him to the bone.

The man in the hat.

“We’ve been waiting for you, boy. We’ve been waiting a long, long time.”

The voice had not changed, had grown no older, and Alex imagined the man standing at the pulpit of their church in Maryland as he spoke, although the idea of him holding a cell phone to his ear didn’t quite square with the rest of the picture.

Alex remained silent, refusing to engage.

“It would behoove you to listen, boy.” He still spoke in that stilted, old-fashioned manner.

Alex said nothing.

“Your parents were shown the way and accepted it. Why have you not? She awaits.”

“I know you,” Alex said. “You went to my high school. Everyone avoided you because you smelled like fecal matter.”

Now silence came from the other end of the line.

“In fact, I smell something coming through the phone right now. Jesus Christ, man, take a personal hygiene course! Learn how to maintain yourself for God’s sake! I’m sorry. I have to hang up. I’m about to ralph up my breakfast.” He made a retching sound, then terminated the call.

He looked over at Jennifer, smiling.

“What the hell was that about?”

“That was the man in the hat. He called me, because, of course, he can. And I was scared, as I’m sure he wanted me to be. But as I was listening to him, I suddenly thought that you can’t lose a game if you don’t play it, so I just decided to opt out. And fuck with him a little.” Alex was still smiling. “And damn it feels good.”

His phone rang again, but he turned it off.

“Turn yours off, too,” he said. “We’re not playing their game.”

Jennifer frowned. “So…where are we going?”

“We’re going…” He thought for a moment. “To the beach!”

“The beach?”

“Yeah! It’s not that warm a day, but we don’t have bathing suits anyway. We’ll just sit on the sand and watch the waves. Like we used to, on our free dates. I have a blanket in the back we can use.”

Jennifer seemed confused by his sudden switch in attitude, and Alex wasn’t sure he completely understood it himself, but getting a phone call from the man in the hat and realizing that he not only didn’t have to participate in the conversation but could change the conversation, made him think that maybe his approach to all this had been wrong.

“You know how I said there was a house behind our house when I was a kid? And it was there for years and nothing happened? At that time, no one else could see it. And I just ignored it. And nothing happened! It wasn’t until I started engaging with it that everything went to hell. I know it’s a little late now, but my thought is that we just ignore everything that’s going on and pretend it isn’t happening.”

“I don’t think that’s possible. I mean, we don’t even have a place to live.”

“We’ll stay at a motel.”

“What if our credit cards don’t work? Our phones don’t work, for God’s sake. Except for…”

“It’ll be okay,” he said, and though there was no way he could back up that promise, he felt it to be true.

Whether it was the authority with which he spoke or merely her own desire to believe, Jennifer seemed to accept his promise at face value, and though logically it was counterintuitive, she agreed to spend the day at the beach. Santa Monica was closest, and while some of the streets they took to get there had different names than they did ordinarily (Pico Boulevard was now, inexplicably, Rico Avenue), and most of the urban landmarks along the way were unfamiliar, the route itself had not changed, and in less than an hour they found themselves on what had always been Pacific Coast Highway—now called Oceanfront Road.

The public beach was surprisingly crowded for such a cool day, but they continued up the coast for several miles until they found a section of shoreline with fewer people. The free parking lot was empty save for something that kind of resembled a Jeep, and on the sand was a lone man in a business suit staring out at the waves. Even from here, they could see that the man’s dangling arms were far too long for his body.

Taking the blanket from the back of the van, he and Jennifer made their way to a part of the beach far away from the other man. Alex always kept extra water in a small ice chest between the two front seats, and they each brought a bottle with them.

“So what do we do?” Jennifer asked as she sat down on the blanket.

“Enjoy the day.”

“That’s pretty hard.”

He smiled at her. “Relax, look out at the ocean, clear your mind.”

That was easier said than done, and after five minutes of silence that seemed far longer, they found themselves commenting in low voices on the weird guy down the sand, before Alex put a stop to it. He didn’t want to talk about this, and he purposely steered the conversation to the first time he had taken Jennifer to the beach, back when they were both poor and still in college. He’d brought her to a beach in Orange County, one with tidepools, and she had packed them a lunch of potato chips and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They’d stayed for most of the day, exploring the tidepools and walking up and down the sand looking for shells. For dinner, they’d eaten at a nearby Taco Bell, before driving back to her apartment, where they’d made out in the car, since her roommate was home.

There were no sandwiches this time, only bottles of water, but they remained on the beach, reminiscing, until well after the lunch hour. When he heard her stomach growling and admitted that he was hungry, too, they decided it was time to leave. Their long-armed companion had departed some time ago, and as they trudged across the undulating sand, he noticed that the slight breeze was blowing, not moving. And the sun was actually bright.

When had that happened?

The parking lot was empty save for their van, and when they got in and drove up the gently sloping asphalt—

They were on Pacific Coast Highway again.

He thought they’d been having a relaxing time at the beach, but Alex didn’t realize how anxious and tense he had actually been until he saw the familiar blue street sign. Across the four lanes, an In-N-Out Burger sat next to an Arco gas station. Glancing over, he saw the relief on Jennifer’s face. They were back.

Neither of them knew how or why this had happened, but they were both profoundly grateful that it had.

“Here,” he said, handing over his phone. “Call Britta. Her number’s in there. Put it on speaker.”

She did, and it was with a new appreciation that he heard Britta’s harried voice. “I’m about to get on the freeway,” she said. “What’s up?”

Alex and Jennifer looked at each other, sharing a smile.

“Nothing,” he said. “See you tonight.”

TEN

1

The three of them sat around Britta’s dining room table. While he and Jennifer had entered the other house this morning and emerged in a neighborhood behind their neighborhood, Britta and Rodrigo had been making the most ordinary deliveries they had in the past six months, the new clients they dealt with normal, the items expensive and exotic but not strange or creepy.

“It’s how I originally envisioned this would work,” Britta said.

“So when I’m out of the picture, everything’s fine.”

“No!” Britta said, slapping his hand.

“But it’s true.”

“Maybe you should step back,” Jennifer offered. She spoke carefully, almost meekly, given her previously vocal opposition to his job. “For a while,” she added quickly. “Just until this blows over.”

“I’m not sure it will,” he said.

He’d been operating on a sort of half-baked assumption that the pandemic slowdown had enabled him to notice things that the busy pace of modern life had not permitted him to see before, that he had accidentally stumbled upon another world behind the regular world, something he had earlier encountered as a child. But it was clear to him now that his recent contact with what could only be called the supernatural was intentional, that he was being purposefully manipulated.

It made him wonder about the other parishioners in his dad’s church. Why, he wondered, had so many of them been killed while he was allowed to live?

Your parents were shown the way and accepted it. Why have you not? She awaits.

She awaits.

Religious people were always saying that God had a purpose for them. Well, maybe she had a purpose for him. He had been the first one to see another house all those years ago, and from what he could tell, everything afterward had spread from there.

The thought sickened him, because if that were the case, he was the one responsible for everything that had happened and for every death that had resulted.

Including those of his parents and Jennifer’s.

“Nothing’s that simple,” Britta said, and it was almost as though she were responding to the thoughts in his head. “We’re all part of this, she’s come after all of us, and I don’t think anything we do is going to change that.”

Alex was not sure he bought that argument. He was pretty sure that if he did what the man in the hat asked—

We’ve been waiting for you, boy. We’ve been waiting a long, long time.

—and approached them alone, that his friends and family would be forgotten. She didn’t want them. She wanted him.

But where would he find her?

His cell phone rang. Seconds later, Jennifer’s rang. Then Britta’s cell phone. Then her home phone. All four, with their varied ringtones, sounded cacophonously, and Alex said, “Don’t pick up. Let me answer mine.”

He pressed the green button and put the call on speaker. All of the other rings instantly stopped.

“Hello?” he said.

“Boy.” It was the man in the hat. “It seems that you have been loath to speak with me.”

Alex glanced over to see the reactions of Jennifer and Britta, and was not surprised to see expressions of fear on both of their faces.

He was frightened, too. He recalled with perfect clarity the first time the nondescript man in black tie and gray homburg had arrived during his father’s church service and stood there amidst the congregation, looking at him and smiling as though they had some sort of secret connection. Even then, he had sensed a link between the man in the hat and the house behind his house.

“Are you prepared to converse in a suitable manner?”

Alex put on a fake Southern accent. “When you have a piece of pie, you see, you have a piece of pie. So when you have a piece of pie, you see, you have a piece of pie. In other words, when you have a piece of pie, you have a piece of pie. So when you have a piece of pie, you see—”

Britta snorted. Both she and Jennifer were now smiling.

“Such tomfoolery will not safeguard you, boy.”

Britta jumped in, leaning in close to Alex’s phone. “Sir, she said, “I will need your nine-digit account number before we can proceed with this transaction.”

“So,” Alex said, maintaining his Southern accent, “you have a piece of pie, right? Well, then you have a piece of pie. You understand what I’m saying? If you have a piece of pie, you have a piece of pie. So if you have a piece of pie…”

If they thought the man would hang up, they were disappointed. He waited in silence until Alex tired of his nonsensical recitation, then said in a low calm voice, “She awaits.”

She awaits.

Alex could not help himself; he had to ask. “Where?”

There was no change in the other man’s voice, but Alex imagined he could hear a smile behind the words. “I think you know.”

He didn’t, but Alex was not about to admit that.

He terminated the call.

The ringing started again, and Britta unplugged her home phone, while they all turned off their cells.

Jennifer was no longer smiling. “That guy is pretty damn scary. Are you sure it’s a good idea to screw with him?”

“I feel like it is,” Alex said. “I think we’re expected to be scared, and when we behave as if we’re not, if we push back, I’m not sure they know how to react.”

“They’ll kill you is how they’ll react,” Britta said.

“I’d be dead by now if that was true.”

“And who is this ‘they’?” Britta asked. “‘Bess Hanson’ and your man with a hat?”

Alex nodded, and though he said nothing about it, he was thinking about the other thing he’d sensed in the house behind their house.

“And what’s your plan? Are you still going to try to find her?”

“According to him, you already know where she is,” Jennifer said. “Do you have any idea where that might be?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I am going to find her. Although I’m not sure what’ll happen when I do.”

“Well, I need to make dinner,” Britta said, pushing herself away from the table. “We’ll all think better on a full stomach.”

“Let me help,” Jennifer said, standing. “I feel useless just sitting here and watching TV every day while you make these fantastic meals. You do all the work, and we’re, like, moochers.”

“You bought the groceries.”

“It’s not enough—”

“It’s enough,” Britta promised. “Besides, I like cooking. It relaxes me. Gives me time to think.”

“I could help you chop.”

“Nothing to chop.” Britta smiled. “But I will put you two on dishwashing and cleanup duty again.”

“Fair trade,” Alex said.

Jennifer fixed him with a stare. “Not really.”

“Since I’ll be in the kitchen, watch the news and tell me what’s going on in the world. That’s your assignment.”

“Can do,” Alex said.

“And our other conversation? To be continued.” Waving them toward the living room, she went into the kitchen.

Alex used the remote to turn on the television, while Jennifer sat down on the couch next to him. The national news had just started, and the top story was a massacre at a church in rural Oregon. Authorities had discovered the bodies of sixteen parishioners who had been slaughtered and left in the pews. On the altar of the church was evidence that some sort of small animal had been sacrificed.

The reporter turned to a stunned-looking woman whose parents had apparently been part of the congregation. “I understand that the church had only recently been dedicated—”

The woman glared at him. “What are you talking about? It wasn’t even here yesterday. It just appeared.”

The reporter smoothly pivoted to a uniformed police officer. “Tell us, who first alerted authorities to…”

Jennifer turned to Alex, her eyes wide.

His heart was pounding. “That’s where she is,” he said.

****

He dreamed that night of the abandoned church in East L.A., only it was not abandoned. It was new, freshly furnished and looked exactly like the church of his childhood the first time he had seen it. At the pulpit was the man in the hat, preaching a sermon to Jennifer, Britta, Rodrigo, Hugh Winters and several other people, who were sitting in the pews with their necks slit and blood streaming down the fronts of their Sunday finest. Behind the man in the hat, on the large wooden cross that stretched from floor to ceiling, the woman who called herself Clarissa Hamill, Bess Hanson or Abby Hancock had been crucified.

And she was smiling.

In the morning, it was still dark when Alex awoke. He had set his alarm for five, and though Jennifer remained asleep, the clock’s light insistent beeping roused him from slumber, and he staggered across the room to the dresser, turning it off. Britta, to his surprise, was already awake, making pancakes from scratch, and he sat down at the kitchen table, watching her admiringly, still amazed that this person he’d seen only as his snarky officemate had turned out to be such an amazingly accomplished person.

“So have you decided?” she asked.

He nodded. Last night, the three of them had discussed the situation. He’d wanted to leave immediately for Gilliam, Oregon, which was the location of the church, while Jennifer had argued for waiting, suggesting that they let her come after them. “Manning a fort is better than conducting a raid,” she said. “Besides, I thought you weren’t going to play their game anymore. Wasn’t that your strategy?” Britta, remaining neutral, had pointed out the pros and cons for both sides. The primary argument against taking the offensive was that none of them had any idea how to stop her. But Alex was adamant that the massacre had been a message to him, a summons. She wanted him to go there, he said. If he didn’t, she’d do the same sort of thing again. And again. And those murders would be on him.

Why there, though? She’d been in Southern California all this time, at Winters’ and Enrique’s homes, at the church in East L.A., at Jennifer’s school. She’d even applied for a job with them and tried to get into Britta’s house. He’d first seen her—or rather heard her—in Baltimore, and in the years in between, she’d apparently appeared in assorted cities in various states to former members of his dad’s congregation.

But it felt as though she was making a stand now, that she was letting him know where she was and waiting for him.

Could her actual place of origin be in…Gilliam, Oregon?

As always, none of it made any sense.

“So you’re going?” Britta said.

He had decided even before promising to “sleep on it” that he needed to find and somehow stop her, and the only thing that kept him from fully committing was Britta and Strait To You. “I can’t just take off and leave you in the lurch.”

Britta waved away his protestation. “We’ll be fine.”

“You don’t need me?”

“Your job’s secure, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’re my partner.” She smiled. “But if Rodrigo knew as much as you about computers, I couldn’t promise that there wouldn’t be some serious restructuring.”

Alex laughed, and it felt good.

“Seriously,” Britta said as Jennifer walked into the kitchen, “do what you have to do. Rodrigo and I will hold down the fort. If everything works out, we’ll be free of this craziness and have a lot more time to spend on the business.”

“And if everything doesn’t work out?” Jennifer said.

They all knew the answer to that.

His resolve may have hardened during the night, but Jennifer’s opposition seemed to have softened. Maybe she realized it was the only way to put an end to this, maybe she understood that she would not be able to talk him out of his plan, but either way, he was happy they were no longer at odds. And glad that she would be with him.

She called her school and let the principal’s secretary know that she would be taking four personal days.

Britta, always organized, had looked up the route to Gilliam, Oregon and actually printed out directions, which she shared with them after eating a quick breakfast. “I don’t want you looking at your phone while you’re driving,” she told Alex.

“Jennifer could look at her phone.”

“She doesn’t have to.” Britta handed Jennifer the printout. “Here. Now, it looks like it’s going to be at least a two-day trip, maybe even three, so you’ll need to find someplace to stay, both while you’re en route and when you’re there. It’s probably a good idea to make reservations. I’ve found a few places on the way that you might want to check out, depending on what kind of time you make. In Gilliam itself, there are only two motels, and one of them’s a fleabag, so obviously not much choice there.”

The sun had been up for a while by the time they were finally packed and ready to go. Britta made them promise to check in with her at noon and whenever they stopped for the evening. “And as soon as you get there,” she said, “let me know. Whatever time it is. I want to be in on what’s happening.”

“Will do,” Alex promised.

In books and movies, cross-country road trips were often undertaken in the junkiest old beaters with no ensuing problems, but that had never been Alex’s experience. In his single days, the succession of used cars he’d driven had broken down so often that he had used up his AAA towing miles each and every year. Shortly after getting married, he and Jennifer had decided to go on vacation to the Grand Canyon in the first new car he’d ever bought, a Chevy Blazer—and it had died in the desert just outside of Barstow due to a faulty fuel pump that had to be replaced.

That pattern had never let up.

So while they’d agreed to drive Jennifer’s Kia because it was newer than the van and had fewer miles on it, Alex had no expectation that it would get them to Oregon without problems.

Sure enough, shortly before lunch, as they were approaching San Luis Obispo and driving past a faded billboard advertising “The World Famous Madonna Inn,” the Kia suddenly started losing power. As the speedometer dropped from 70 to 65 to 60, Alex pressed down on the gas pedal, but though he could hear the engine revving louder, their speed continued to fall, and when it hit 35 and it was clear that they wouldn’t be able to reach the next exit, he pulled to the side of the highway and stopped.

At least they were near a city and not out in the middle of nowhere.

“What now?” Jennifer said. Car problems made her angry, and he could hear the ire in her voice. Even after they got the car fixed, this was not going to be a fun trip.

“Let me check,” Alex said. He knew nothing about cars—a fact of which Jennifer was well aware—but he got out anyway, opened the hood and did the only two things he was able to do: check the oil and transmission fluid levels. Since both seemed fine, he took out his phone and called AAA.

The dispatcher promised that a tow truck would arrive within twenty minutes, and after a long hour, one finally did. Alex obviously didn’t know any mechanics here in San Luis Obispo, so even though it would probably cost them a fortune, he asked the tow truck driver to take the car to the nearest Kia dealer. After another long hour in the waiting room of Kia’s service department, drinking free bitter coffee, looking through an old People magazine and watching a daytime talk show on the small wall-mounted TV, the service manager walked in, led them to his desk and informed them that the problem was the idler arm assembly. He handed Alex a printed estimate. “It’ll cost you seven hundred and fifty, give or take.” Noting the stunned looks on their faces, he said, “The part itself is only about a hundred, but it’s difficult to get to, that’s why the labor charges.

“We can have it done for you by tomorrow,” the service manager added helpfully.

Jennifer glared at Alex. “I told you, you should’ve gotten the car checked out first.”

“It wouldn’t’ve caught this,” he said. “This isn’t something that would show up on a routine check.”

“He’s right,” the service manager offered. “More often than not, idler arm failure happens without warning.”

Never one to be swayed by logic when she was angry, Jennifer sat in stony silence as Alex told the man to go ahead, then arranged for a loaner car.

The loaner was the same model as Jennifer’s, only a year newer, and the first thing they did was transfer their luggage, books and snacks from one car to the other.

Alex had heard of San Luis Obispo, but had never been to the city before and was surprised by how small it was. The downtown area was cute and well-preserved, filled with historic buildings that had been converted to upscale eateries and boutique shops, probably catering to affluent college students from nearby Cal Poly. The grass-covered hills surrounding the town were lush and green.

There were several motels with vacancies, and they chose a Best Western that was fairly inexpensive but not too rundown, checking in and unloading their bags. From the room, he gave Britta a call to let her know what was happening.

“You’re off to a good start,” she said wryly.

Rather than busy themselves with the shops in town—they were already spending far too much on the car, and the last thing they needed was to waste more money—they decided to drive down the highway that led to Morro Bay and the ocean, and spent an hour or two exploring the coast, passing through the cute little towns of Cayucos and Cambria, before turning around at Hearst Castle and heading back.

Only…

The road back to San Luis Obispo seemed different. Everything was familiar until they passed the college, but once they reached the buildings on the outskirts of town, Alex began to notice changes. A corner previously home to a gas station was now the location of a rundown single-screen theater whose marquee announced that the movie being shown was called Winter’s Death. He had never heard of such a film, and while there might be no connection, it made him wonder if Hugh Winters was still alive.

And although he could not remember what had originally taken up the rest of the block, he was pretty sure it was not the dilapidated no-name grocery store that was there now. Turning onto the street that was supposed to lead to their motel, they passed an old abandoned factory, as well as a series of empty storefronts and deserted buildings. A naked old man stood on the sidewalk, grinning hugely and waving at them. Driving toward them on the opposing lane of the street was what looked like an ancient steam-powered automobile.

He’d been through this before.

“Alex?” Jennifer said uneasily.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. He hoped.

Making sure the doors were locked, he slowed the car, looking carefully around. They were in a part of San Luis Obispo that tourists never saw, that most locals had probably never seen.

A city behind the city.

Peering out from the dark open doorway of a rundown Craftsman house was an elderly lady with wild white hair and no arms. On a bus stop bench, a skinny man with an oversized Charlie Brown head, dressed in an anachronistic plaid suit, sat ramrod straight, staring directly in front of him. Further on, a tall shadowy figure slunk around the corner of a building while another smaller form ducked behind a tree.

Even the hills surrounding the town looked off, and their anomalous shapes loomed threateningly above the tops of the buildings.

“Where are we?” Jennifer said. She was almost whispering. “It’s like…”

He nodded.

“So we need to find our way out. Or back. Or whatever.”

“Yeah.”

And then he saw the church.

Actually, there was no way he could not have seen it. The road they were on dead-ended at a cross street, and directly in front of them sat the small white building.

It looked like their old church in Baltimore, a better-maintained version of the one in East L.A. White wood, dark front door, stained-glass windows, small steeple with a bell visible inside. There was a parking lot next to it, a parking lot that was nearly full despite the fact that it was not Sunday, and without running it by Jennifer, without saying a word, Alex pulled into the lot, found an empty space and stopped the car.

“No,” Jennifer said.

“We have to. It’s why we’re here.”

It occurred to him that maybe it actually was why they were here, why their car had broken down in San Luis Obispo, why they were in this place at this time.

Because they had been intentionally led to this spot.

“Wait in the car,” he told her, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the door to get out.

“Fuck that.”

She got out of the car herself, and the two of them stared at each other across the vehicle’s low roof.

“Together or not at all,” she told him.

Alex nodded, and without another word, they walked through the small parking lot to the church. The front door was closed but not locked, and carved into the wood was the word Enfin. From within the building came the sound of music, an instrumental with the teletype rhythm of a Steve Reich piece, heavily percussive and far from the lugubrious hymns usually heard in churches. A marimba maddeningly repeated the same short phrase over and over again, while other unidentifiable instruments maintained a propulsive refrain.

He didn’t like the music.

He didn’t like the church.

But they had to go in, and bracing himself, holding tightly to Jennifer’s hand, he pulled open the door and went inside.

All of the pews were full, and at first glance the people in them looked surprisingly normal, although the minister at the front of the church was definitely not. Thin and cadaverous, with a vampirically white face, he wore an old-fashioned suit with a thin black tie—and a gray homburg. He was not the man in the hat but dressed like him, and he was using a pair of what in other circumstances would have been considered comically oversized scissors to cut the hair of a little girl standing before him. “God requires the hair of the young,” the minister intoned, as an overweight elderly lady crawled on the floor, gathering the cut hair and placing it in a black cloth sack. “For She is eternally young.”

Alex noticed for the first time that all of the children in the pews were bald. Many of them had bloody scratches across their bare scalps.

The girl’s hair that the minister was clipping was now boyishly short, and the preacher opened the scissors more widely, cutting closer to the scalp. The girl let out a short cry as the shears nicked her skin, and the minister said, “Praise Her.”

“Praise Her!” the congregants shouted in response.

Jennifer’s grip tightened on his own, and Alex wondered if they should try to put a stop to this.

Where was the music coming from? he wondered. And who was playing it? Was it a recording? He saw no musicians, and paradoxically the volume was lower here than it had been outside the building.

Even with the scene at the front of the church, some of the parishioners had turned around to look at them. “It’s him,” whispered an elderly woman in the closest pew, and the message seemed to spread through the church as more people turned in their direction.

“It’s him”…“It’s him”…“It’s him”…

Moments later, the minister took notice, and he put the scissors down. Straightening, he addressed Alex from across the room. “You have come to us.”

Alex looked at Jennifer, thinking it was time to get out of here.

“He has come to us!” the minister intoned.

“He has come to us!” the congregation repeated.

“Praise God! Praise Her!”

“Praise Her!”

Jennifer squeezed his arm, and he followed her gaze. He remembered that in his father’s church, three stained-glass windows in each of the side walls depicted scenes from The Bible. He couldn’t see what was portrayed on the front four windows here, but the one at which she was staring showed a representation of himself, made of leaded glass and somehow wearing exactly the same clothes he had on today.

The minister was praying. “Our Mother, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”

Alex looked at the window on the opposite wall.

The fitted pieces of colored glass created a portrait of the man in the hat.

What pictures were on the other windows? he wondered.

“Let’s go,” Jennifer said, pulling at him.

“…for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Amen.” The minister smiled at Alex. “Welcome to you and yours.” He tipped his homburg. “We have been awaiting your arrival.”

She awaits

There were dozens of questions he wanted to ask, but his eyes were focused on the oversized scissors. He thought of the ritual sacrifices made in his father’s church, remembering when he saw fresh blood on the dais from something that had happened before his family had arrived for services.

The girl whose hair was being cut was weeping, and the bald children in the pews looked terrified.

That propulsive music from unseen musicians had swelled again, and the only thing of which Alex was certain was that he and Jennifer needed to get out of here. Now.

Without a word, they turned and exited the way they’d come. Outside, it was night. That was not possible: they’d been inside only briefly. But looking at his watch, he saw that it was indeed eight-thirty. Hanging high in the sky was a too-large moon, and he thought of President Lyndon Johnson, in a movie about the space race, shouting, “I will not go to sleep under a communist moon!” This wasn’t a communist moon, but it was definitely not the normal moon, and Alex completely understood the president’s sentiment. He did not want to fall asleep under the light of this moon.

“Run,” he said, and he and Jennifer sprinted to their rental car. He half-expected to be chased, but to his relief, the door of the church remained closed and no one followed them out.

“That was you,” Jennifer said once they were safely inside the Kia and the doors were locked.

“Yeah.”

“Was that preacher your man with the hat?”

Alex shook his head. “He dressed like him, but no.”

Jennifer already had her phone out. “I don’t know what’s going on with that hair cutting thing, but I know child abuse when I see it, and I’m calling the cops.”

The phone, as Alex had expected, was not working.

“No signal,” she said.

He started the car. “Let’s get out of here.”

“How are we going to find our way back?”

“I don’t know. I’ll just drive around until we do.”

But that was easier said than done. The San Luis Obispo that had seemed so small when they first arrived was apparently now a sprawling city, and they drove down street after street searching for a way out. Some areas were darker than others, as though beset by blackouts, and in the shadows he detected movement, the furtive scuttling and sly shifting of shapes he was unable to recognize.

It occurred to him that they might not be able to escape from this place until the sun came up.

Then he thought of the weird moon and wondered if the sun ever came up here at all.

But after a right turn at an intersection led them into a neighborhood of older homes that looked more normal than he was expecting, and a left turn at an ordinary stoplight brought them into the gentrified downtown, Alex noticed that the moon was gone and what had been night had softened into dusk. The dashboard clock said it was only six o’clock.

They were back.

He could hear Jennifer’s sigh of relief, a sound that in other circumstances he would have probably considered overly melodramatic but that right now seemed perfectly reasonable.

They passed a small Italian restaurant and a vegan café. He was hungry, but after all that had happened, it felt odd switching back to normal mode.

“Should we get something to eat?” Jennifer asked tentatively.

The fact that she obviously felt the same was reassuring. He nodded, smiling. “Let’s pick up some food and bring it back to the room. What sounds good?”

They found a Chinese restaurant in a small shopping center outside of the downtown area that was not too crowded, and took cardboard containers of chow fun and sweet and sour pork back to the hotel. Alex turned on the lights and the television once they were safely inside, grateful for the sense of normalcy. They ate in silence, watching the local news: reports about people and places they did not know, and a helpful weather forecast that said tomorrow would be clear and pleasant.

“Should be a good trip,” Alex said.

“Do we really need to go?” Jennifer asked. “Maybe this is where we’re supposed to be.”

“No. She wants me there.”

“Then what was all this today?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. A preview?”

“Maybe you’re wrong.”

The national news was on, and across the bottom of the screen scrolled a red BREAKING NEWS banner.

“For the second time in a week,” a reporter was saying, “Gilliam, Oregon is in the news. This time for the disappearance of a prominent local family. All four members of the family have gone missing, and authorities are baffled…”

Alex looked over at Jennifer. “I’m not wrong,” he said.

She nodded reluctantly.

“I guess that’s where we need to go.”

2

In the morning, they awoke late. Alex got breakfast from a McDonald’s down the block, bringing the food back to their room, and they were halfway through the meal when the Kia service manager called to tell them their car was ready. Alex was surprised, having assumed, based on experience, that it would take longer than the original estimate, but he was happy the work had been completed so quickly. Finishing breakfast, they packed and checked out, and were on the road again shortly after ten.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. They kept in touch with Britta, who, with the help of Rodrigo and Britta’s friend Lucille from Illustrious Footwear, who had agreed to work part-time, was keeping Strait To You chugging along. “It’s not ideal,” Britta said, “but it’s only for a few days—hopefully. And the way things are going, I honestly think that once you’re back and we’re at full force, we’ll be able to transition the business to the next level.”

“‘Transition the business to the next level,’ huh?” Alex chuckled. “Haunted houses, monsters or hellscapes, you’re always you.”

“I’m always me, baby.” Her voice grew serious. “Alex? Take care of yourself.”

“Always.”

“And make sure you come back.”

“I’m planning on it.”

They reached their destination on the afternoon of the third day.

Gilliam, Oregon should have been a pretty little town, and perhaps it was when seen in photos, but in person, the air of dread that hung over the community rendered it bleak and ugly. With reporters and television crews from state and national media still in town, it was easy to find the church, although, to Alex’s surprise, it looked nothing like those he had encountered before. Made of dark wood, it was narrow and rustic, blending in with the surrounding pines. Its front door was wide open, and they walked past an idle camera crew lounging against the side of a news van and into the building.

They were not alone. Several lookiloos with cell phone cameras were mixed in among the devout who were sitting in the pews. A masked teenage boy, holding up his phone and narrating what Alex assumed to be a podcast, was saying in a hushed tone, “…inside this very church, which had not been there the night before.”

The church hadn’t been there before—but that was the only connection Alex could find to what they were seeking. They combed through the entire chapel, then walked outside, around the rear of the building, returning to the front without seeing or feeling anything unusual.

“If she was here, she’s gone now,” he said.

“I guess we came all this way for nothing.”

He could see relief in Jennifer’s eyes, but the emotions he experienced were disappointment and frustration. What now? Watch the news, wait for another church killing and hope to get there in time?

Maybe there was some sort of clue at the home of the missing family. Perhaps a house behind their house. He suggested it to Jennifer, and they both walked over to the nearest television crew, approaching an overweight, long-haired guy scrolling through something on his phone. After establishing that they weren’t from some rival news organization but were merely interested civilians, the man gave them the family’s name and rough directions to their house. Why anyone would divulge such information to two random strangers was a mystery, but Alex was thankful for small favors.

There were fewer people at the house than at the church, even though the story of the family’s disappearance was newer. Part of it may have been due to the fact that there was a wrought-iron fence surrounding the property, and the long driveway leading to the mansion-sized dwelling was blocked by a closed gate. Still, there were a few curious individuals milling about, and one news van parked across the street.

If the news people weren’t able to broach those gates and get on-site, Alex knew there was no way he and Jennifer could, either. So rather than stopping, he continued on, thinking there might be a way to view the rear of the property and determine if there was anything out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, there was a hill behind the house and no road led to that area.

“Damn it,” he said.

Jennifer looked at him. “We should probably try to find a place to stay for the night,” she said. “With all these news people here, they might be all booked up.”

They should have followed Britta’s advice and made advance reservations. Although lodging hadn’t been a problem until now, both of the town’s motels, even the “fleabag,” had lit NO VACANCY signs out front. They dutifully checked to make sure, but neither place had a room available.

“I am not sleeping in the car,” Jennifer said.

They were in the parking lot of the Forest Inn, and Alex took out his phone. “What’s the next town over? Maybe we can find something there.” He started scrolling. There was a Motel 8 about fifteen miles away in the unnervingly named town of Hatchet, and he quickly called and secured a reservation for the night.

“Why don’t we check in?” Jennifer suggested. “I don’t trust these small-town motels, and I’ll feel a lot more secure once we have a room key.”

“Okay.”

He pulled onto the highway.

Alex was at a loss. He’d been acting on instinct, and while that approach had served him well initially, his intuitive sense seemed to have abandoned him. What now? Return home? Maybe Jennifer had been right, maybe they should have stayed in San Luis Obispo. Perhaps if they went back there…

No.

The Gilliam church, the missing family, that was all her. Besides, it wasn’t that far-fetched to think that she might take up residence here. Hadn’t there been other wacky religions that had made Oregon the base of their operations? He remembered reading about some cult that had practically taken over a small Oregon town, its leader driving past lines of his fawning, impoverished followers in a gaudy Rolls Royce.

She was here.

Somewhere.

And they would find her.

It was only mid-afternoon, but tall trees lining the highway partially blocked the sun, and the weak light echoed the fading illumination of dusk. They both kept an eye out for signs of anything strange, but aside from a long-abandoned Esso gas station and the burnt remains of what had probably been a house and barn, there was nothing but forest.

Hatchet revealed itself to them in patches. The two-lane highway wound between tree-covered hills, and in a flat cleared space there suddenly appeared a KOA campground. A mile or two later, on the other side of the road, a diner emerged, several pickup trucks and SUVs parked in its small dirt lot. A sign on a tall pole read simply: EAT. Further on, small branching roads obviously led to houses, as multiple mailboxes on rickety posts flanked carve-outs abutting the intersections. After that, buildings became more frequent, and moments later, they found themselves in the center of town, where an IGA grocery store with a Sonic drive-thru in its parking lot looked across the highway at a combined doctor’s/dentist’s office conveniently situated next to a small Walgreen’s.

The Motel 8 was on the opposite end of town, past a line of small shops and businesses and across the street from a park. Their reservation actually was being held, and, grateful, they checked in, surprised to find themselves in an unexpectedly large and well-appointed room, with free wi-fi and a wall-mounted flatscreen television.

The first thing Alex did was call Britta. She didn’t answer immediately, which meant that she was probably making deliveries, and he almost hung up so he could text her instead, but then she picked up, and he gave her a quick rundown of where they were at.

“Things here are still surprisingly normal,” she said. “At least when it comes to deliveries. But…” She trailed off.

“But what?”

“I haven’t seen any of my neighbors for a few days. I’m not really chummy with any of them, and we don’t socialize or anything, but usually I’ll see a couple of them outside, going to and from work, and we’ll say hi, maybe chat a little. But I haven’t seen any of them anywhere. The place is like a ghost town. And there’s still that house behind mine, and houses behind theirs, so I’m thinking…”

“You might be right. Be careful,” Alex said.

“I always am.”

“Maybe you should—”

“I know what you’re going to say, but no. I’m staying here. At least for now.”

“Then make sure—”

“In and out of the front door only. The back yard doesn’t exist, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Okay, then.”

“You be careful, too. Both of you.”

“Like I said, that’s not a problem. At least not yet. But we’ll see what we find tomorrow.”

“Make sure you call me.”

“Of course.”

They said their goodbyes, hanging up.

“So?” Jennifer prompted.

“Everything’s fine there. Mostly. Britta hasn’t seen her neighbors, and she’s worried because of the houses behind their houses, but it may be nothing.”

“What about us, I mean? Are we staying here another day or heading home?”

“I think we should try to investigate a little more. I mean, we came all this way. It seems kind of stupid to just walk through the church, look at that family’s house from the street and say, ‘Okay. Let’s go home.’”

Jennifer nodded. “You’re right,” she said.

“We’ll ask around, talk to some people, maybe some of the churchgoers, do a little detecting and see what we can learn.”

She smiled. “Pretend we know what we’re doing, huh?”

“Exactly.”

There was a pizza parlor just down the block, conveniently, and together they walked over to order an early dinner. They ate outside on a patio table overlooking a small stream that ran behind the building. The pizza was nothing to write home about, but the view was nice, and they stayed there talking until other diners started to arrive.

It was dark by the time they returned to the motel, and though it was just after six, to Alex it felt more like nine o’clock. It had been a long day, and they lay on the bed, watching TV, trying not to think about why they were here. He dozed off when Jennifer went to take a shower, and when she returned and woke him, he took off his clothes, crawled under the covers and immediately went back to sleep.

He awoke in another motel.

Alex noticed the difference instantly. The room was small and narrow, its walls not white but gray. There was no TV or window, and the blanket atop his body was rough and scratchy. Jennifer was nowhere to be seen, and he got out of bed and checked the bathroom, calling her name. Quickly putting his pants on, he opened the door and walked outside.

This was not just another motel but another town, what he knew instinctively was a Hatchet behind Hatchet.

But where was Jennifer?

“Jen!” he called.

It was early morning, and he saw no one about. He yelled loud enough that other motel guests could conceivably have been awakened, but no doors opened, no curtains were pulled aside. Hurrying back into the room, he hastily put on his shoes and slipped into yesterday’s shirt before heading outside again. The motel’s office was closed, so he jogged through the parking lot toward the sidewalk, calling Jen’s name.

Before stopping in place.

The park across the street was no longer a park but a vacant lot.

A vacant lot with a giant oak at its center.

Alex knew this place, and seeing it again after all these years filled him with an instinctive rush of fear. This was where his dad had preached his sermons, where their congregation had met, and the fact that the site was here told him that even if he had not found her, she had found him. He thought of the church in San Luis Obispo with his stained-glass portrait and the worshippers who had been expecting his arrival.

Slowly, he crossed the road. He saw no one about, and in the lot, past the tree, there was no sign of their old church.

“Jen!” he called. “Jen!”

He hadn’t brought his phone with him, and almost went back to the motel to call the police, but headed in the opposite direction instead. Because Alex knew that if Jennifer were anywhere, it would be in the impossible space behind the tree—where the church had been.

The lot went back much further than it should have. Although there was no church, and no indication that one had ever been here, another large oak stood a hundred yards or so behind the original tree—and another oak a hundred yards beyond that. It wasn’t until he had gone so deep into the lot he could no longer see the street behind him that Alex noticed something…amiss. Amiss was the word that came to him, and as archaic as it might be, it fit. For within this parcel of land stretching far beyond what should have been the next street over, there was something else not quite right, although it took him a moment to figure out what it was. Frowning, he looked around, certain now that he was passing over ground that he had already traversed. The large oak ahead of him looked exactly like—and more importantly felt like—the one he had just walked around. The pattern held true for the one beyond that and the one beyond that. And, further ahead, wasn’t that a street?

“Jen!” he called. “Jen!”

This was not the street he had left behind, Alex discovered. It was the street where his childhood home had been.

Sort of.

With increasing dread, he understood that this was the street that would have been behind his old street.

“Jen!”

There were people on the sidewalk ahead, gathered in a group.

Waiting for him.

His first instinct was to turn around, head back to the real world and find his way to the cops. But if he did that, he might never locate Jennifer, so he kept on, over the grassy ground, past the last oak tree, over more grassy ground.

And then he was in what could have been his old neighborhood—but was not. For while he recognized the houses on the street, they were painted odd colors and were in various states of disrepair, with peculiar toys strewn on dead or overgrown lawns. In the small crowd on the sidewalk were faces he knew, people from his father’s church. Most looked haggard and drawn. Haunted, Alex thought, and under the circumstances, the word seemed more than appropriate. His mind went to Jimmy McCallister and his dad, driving all the way out to Southern California to find him, after blaming his father—and Alex himself—for the misfortunes that had befallen their family. His cousin had had that attitude, too, and looking out at those gathered before him, he sensed a similar sort of resentment.

Someone tapped his shoulder.

He whirled around. Speak of the devil. Standing behind him—too close behind him—was his cousin Josh, all grown up. He had a beard and was much chubbier than he had been as a child, but Alex recognized him immediately. In back of him stood Len Hearn.

“We were wondering when you were going to get here,” Josh said. There was an undercurrent of hostility in his voice, and if his cousin’s presence in this place wasn’t suspicious enough, Hearn’s was. Hearn was smiling, and while the smile might have been meant to be welcoming and reassuring, it was not. Something was going on that he didn’t understand, and Alex stepped back. “Where’s Jennifer?” he demanded, directing his anger at them. “Where the hell is my wife?”

Had they killed her?

“Where the hell’s my sister?” Josh retorted. “Oh, that’s right. She’s dead. My mom sacrificed her. And where are my parents? Who the hell knows?”

Alex’s stomach sank. “Where is my wife?”

Josh’s smile was intentionally mean. “I don’t know.”

Alex scanned the faces of the others gathered on the sidewalk. A formerly young woman from his dad’s congregation, now an old woman, stared at him with hatred. A scar bisected her left cheek, and her eyelid on that side drooped. He didn’t remember her name, but he knew the name of the man beside her: Todd Boykin. As boys, the two of them had sometimes played together. Todd looked at him now with an expression of pained anger.

Movement from down the street caught his eye. A man in white shirt and black tie. Striding briskly down the sidewalk toward them. Wearing a gray homburg.

The man in the hat.

The crowd began to quickly disperse.

Were these the people he had once known? Alex wondered now. Or were these other people? He watched them leave, alone or in pairs, some heading to nearby homes (their homes?), the rest hurrying across the street or down the sidewalk away from the approaching man.

Josh and Len remained where they were.

The smart thing would be for him to return the way he had come, but it was still possible that Jennifer was here somewhere, so he took off in the opposite direction, running and calling her name. The block ended sooner than it should have, and around the corner was not another row of houses but a street lined with shops and small businesses. This was not what had been here when he was young, but as he looked at some of the stores, the street seemed familiar. Had he seen it back in San Luis Obispo? Or when he had gotten lost in South L.A.?

Maybe both.

It felt as though he had encountered this place more than once.

Nearly out of breath, Alex was forced to slow down. To his surprise, neither his cousin nor Len Hearn appeared to be following him, and glancing behind, he saw no sign of the man in the hat.

Yet.

He passed a closed sandwich shop, and a toy store with an OPEN sign on its glass door but a dark and empty interior. While none of the businesses had customers, he was not the only person on the street. Halfway up the block, an old man was walking slowly up the sidewalk toward him. So thin as to be almost skeletal, the man’s mouth was frozen in a horrifying rictus.

Alex crossed the street to avoid him.

The old man crossed the street as well.

Those teeth were too white, Alex thought, and there were far too many of them.

The man’s ghastly expression remained frozen. They were approaching each other now, and Alex quickly crossed the street again.

On this sidewalk, an extraordinarily tall woman was slowly pushing a stroller.

Had she been there before?

He glanced down into the stroller as he passed by, and in that short take saw a small hairy face with beady eyes and a wide-open mouth.

Alex increased his speed. There were more pedestrians all of a sudden, and on the street a short black hearse drove by, followed by something that almost resembled a motorcycle.

Still walking quickly, he turned at the corner. Before him was a street he had definitely seen before. It was the street in Pasadena where he and Jennifer lived. How that could be possible, he had no idea, but here it was. Only it was not the changed neighborhood he had last encountered but the neighborhood as it was supposed to be. The houses were once again 1960s tract homes, not the wildly divergent structures that had replaced them. And their house was their regular house, not that other house.

Could Jennifer be there?

Alex ran up the street, across his lawn and up to the front door, which was unlocked and opened easily. “Jennifer!” he called. “Jen!” He dashed from room to room. Everything was normal, everything was as it should be, but he was the only one here.

Had they killed her?

He was in the kitchen, and with a last faint hope that she might be outside, Alex peered through the window above the sink. He would not have been surprised to see either their regular back yard or another house behind their house, but what he saw instead was a forest, a far more primal forest than anything he had previously encountered, an intimidating mass of disparate tall trees growing too closely together.

The sun was out and the day bright, but Alex felt the darkness of the woods reaching out to him. It was where he needed to go, and though that impulse was based on nothing more than vague intuition, he knew it to be true. Unlocking and opening the kitchen door, he walked into the back yard. It was not really a back yard—at least not their back yard—but a narrow meadow fronting the forest, a strip of too-green grass situated before those too-dark woods. To the left and right, there was no sign of any adjacent houses.

He had gone behind that neighborhood.

Alex stood still, listening, expecting to hear the sound of a woman singing, to hear the horrible cadences of that terrible tuneless song, but the forest before him remained silent. “Jen!” he called, but his voice fell flat, its sound absorbed into the trees.

There was no path, no obvious way into the woods, so he simply chose a spot between two redwood-sized conifers and stepped from the grass onto the carpet of low ferns that covered the forest floor. It was dark in here, the sunlight blocked by a tangled canopy of needles, leaves and branches above. Continuing on was stupid, and with no clear path to follow and trees packed so closely together, it was impossible to tell the direction in which he was heading, but instinct told him to persist, and against all reason, he pushed forward.

There was no noise here, no sound other than his own ragged breathing and the snapping of twigs and rustling of brush as he walked. He maintained a straightforward course, knowing that it would be easier to retrace his steps and find a way out of the woods if he did not venture in other directions. “Jen!” he cried out occasionally, but he was not sure how far his voice carried, and there was never an answer.

Josh and Len Hearn had to have given up. He could not see them tracking him through the woods. But he could see the man in the hat continuing after him, and that spurred Alex to hurry faster. Vaguely, he understood that the trees he passed should not be growing next to each other—they were from different biomes and varied elevations—but the recognition had little effect on him. More importantly, he saw light ahead, between the trees, and he hiked toward it, not knowing what he would find.

What he found was a large open space. Beyond the spot where the trees ended was a sloping green pasture—with a familiar white-steepled church at the far opposite edge. The sight scared him, and he paused, but only for a moment. Frightened yet determined, he strode purposefully over the short green grass. There was still no noise other than the sounds he made himself, and although he thought he saw movement from the corner of his eye, when he turned his head, all was still.

The church introduced to his father’s congregation by the man in the hat had been small, but this one, Alex noted, was really small. From the opposite side of the pasture, it had appeared normal-sized, but the pasture itself was not as big as it had originally appeared, and it soon became clear that the roof of the church was barely over eight feet high, the top of the steeple only a few feet higher than that. Reaching the building, he heard singing from within. Not her singing, but a hymn vocalized by a group of people united in song.

The door was open but so low that he had to duck to get through it, and once inside, the anteroom was not much larger than a closet. Another small door led to the chapel, and it was from here that the music originated. Ducking again, he passed through this doorway and found himself in a slightly larger room with a few short rows of narrow pews. There was no sign of any worshippers, and though the singing was louder, he had no idea where it was coming from.

Less than ten feet away, at the front of the chapel, standing on the rostrum before a simple wooden cross and almost close enough to touch, was the man in the hat.

Alex’s first panicked thought was that this was a trap—How could the man possibly be here?—and if it hadn’t been so awkward and difficult, he would have turned tail and run. But crouching down to get back through that door would leave him vulnerable, if only for a moment, and he wasn’t about to give the man an opportunity to catch him.

Although his heart was pounding, Alex refused to show fear. “What do you want?” he demanded.

“The world is much larger than you thought, is it not?” The man in the hat smiled, and Alex wished he hadn’t. Something about the way the sides of the man’s mouth curved upward made him feel sick inside.

“Where’s Jennifer? Where’s my wife?”

Rather than responding, the man in the hat turned, ducked and exited through a low, previously unnoticed door to the left of the pulpit. Alex knew he was expected to follow, and a contrary sense of defiance initially made him stand his ground. But when the man didn’t return, Alex’s resolve fled. For all he knew, Jennifer was back there. Hurriedly, he took the few steps that brought him to the front of the small chapel and ducked through the side door.

The short corridor in which he found himself had a ceiling so low he was practically bent over as he passed through, but it opened onto a gigantic chamber that looked as though it belonged in a European cathedral. Stone walls rose high overhead to a vaulted ceiling, and row after row of wooden pews, filled with people, stretched all the way to a huge, elaborately carved altar.

He stood there, numb, taking it all in, realizing that this was the church behind the church he had just left, which was behind the forest behind the house behind the neighborhood behind…

How far away was he now from the world he knew?

The world is much larger than you thought, is it not?

The man in the hat stood in the center aisle at the front of the chamber, turned away from Alex and facing the wall before him. There was no crucifix on display here, only a tangled mess of wood and wire, skin and bone, fur and feather, rubber and rope that was uncannily similar to the scribbled chalk drawing he had seen in the East L.A. church. He had no idea what the shape was supposed to represent, but the sight was deeply unnerving, and he could look at it for only a few seconds at a time before needing to turn away.

Remaining where he was, Alex was uncertain whether to retreat or move forward. But Jennifer was still missing, and he was willing to bet that the man in the hat knew something about it, so he progressed slowly and carefully up the aisle.

“Where’s my wife?” he asked again.

The man in the hat neither turned around nor responded.

Alex glanced to the left and right. The figures in the pews remained completely unmoving, and for a second Alex thought—
hoped

—that they were mannequins, but he realized almost instantly that they were people.

And they were dead.

Not only were they dead, but he knew them. Several were from his childhood: Mrs. Walsh, his Aunt Joan, Uncle Henry, Uncle Bob, Aunt Natalie, his cousin Sylvie. Others he’d known more recently, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach, he saw Jennifer’s mom and dad seated next to Hugh Winters. All were dressed in their Sunday best, propped up in the pews, facing forward, frozen eyes wide open in alabaster flesh.

There were other parishioners as well, churchgoers he recognized but didn’t know, those odd and threatening worshippers who had taken the place of the original congregation once his dad’s flock had started to leave.

Walking past the pew where Jennifer’s parents were seated, anger overtook fear. “Hey!” he said harshly. “You!”

The man in the hat turned. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. The expression on his face was one of reverence and utter devotion, and Alex saw the man now for what he was. Not the one responsible for this, but a follower, a factotum.

“Praise Her,” he whispered.

Alex stepped toward him. “Tell me where my wife is. Right. Fucking. Now.”

The man in the hat instantly regained his composure. It was as though a switch had been flipped. The tears were gone, the worshipful look replaced by his usual creepy formality.

“She is where she has always been,” he said, and Alex knew he was not talking about Jennifer.

“My wife,” Alex demanded. “Where is my wife?”

That unsettling smile crept slowly up the man’s face, and once again Alex felt sick inside. “You know where she is,” he said.

And Alex realized that he did.

He always had.

3

This time he didn’t need to go anywhere to end up behind where he was. The cathedral-sized church around him, and all that lay within it, simply began to fade. The seated corpses—Winters, Jennifer’s parents, his aunts and uncles, Mrs. Walsh, all of them—grew fainter and less substantial, along with the roof and walls and the concrete below his feet. Only the man in the hat and that horrible twisted shape from the front of the church remained, the terrible form floating in the air as though it was not merely the symbol of a religion or the representation of a concept, but an entity in and of itself.

The man in the hat had once more turned to face the object, and he dropped to his knees in front of it. They were standing on grass now, beneath an open blue sky, and as Alex watched, the chaotic shape tilted forward and lowered itself on top of the man with the hat, pressing down, pushing him into the earth. His form changed as he sunk into the ground, flattening out, and at the end he was no longer human—if he ever had been. The shape itself was no longer recognizable as anything, though for the first time, its component parts were apparent. Alex saw, within the tangle of disparate elements, fragments of specific objects and animals: a trace of dog and radio, a suggestion of fence and telephone line, hints of bottles and balls and birds. There were the remnants of human bodies in the mix as well, all of it combined into one confused and staggeringly repulsive mess.

Then it sunk into the earth along with the man in the hat, and Alex was alone and facing a house. The house that had been behind his childhood home. The first house. The house where she lived.

And where that other thing lived with her.

He paused only a second before stepping forward, walking slowly across the grass toward the picture-book home.

He thought of an old song by The Sundays.

Here’s Where the Story Ends.

It looked exactly as he remembered, down to the green trim, red brick chimney, green shutters and protruding gable over the raised porch. Just as when he was little, sunlight reflected off the windows, turning them into mirrors, and the door remained tightly shut. Even the air smelled familiar, though he had not known until now that he’d associated any sort of scent with the house. Disconcertingly, the smell was pleasant and reminiscent of freshly laundered clothes.

The fear he’d felt as a child had not disappeared. If anything, it had intensified. He knew more now. But he was braver than he had been, and it was not only the need to find Jennifer but a desire to put an end to all of this that propelled him forward.

He stepped carefully onto the porch, prepared for anything. Nothing leapt out at him, though, nothing attacked. There was no noise, not from within the house or the surrounding land. Even his own footsteps sounded muffled and faint, as though coming from far, far away. He reached for the door handle and tried to turn it. To his surprise, he could not. The fact that he had been directed to this place had led Alex to assume that she wanted him to go inside, but for some reason, the door was locked.

Should he knock?

He decided to go around back and try the rear entrance instead. Maybe he was expected, and maybe he wasn’t, but it seemed safer to keep a low profile.

The back of the building was taller than the front, and there were no second-story windows. It had been that way when he’d visited with his friend Robby. At that time, there’d been what looked like a kitchen door, with a small window in its top half, but the back door now was identical to the one at the front of the house.

Only this one was unlocked and open.

He hesitated briefly before stepping inside, acutely aware that he was going in alone and unarmed against…who knew what. But this was why he was here, and it might very well be his only opportunity to find Jennifer, so he gathered his courage and walked into the house.

The room he entered was not a kitchen, as he’d originally supposed. It was a small antechamber, a dirty little space with bare moldy walls and a floor of rotting wood. It was dark, the only light entering from the open door behind him, but ahead the next room was considerably brighter, and he passed through the arched entryway to find himself—

—in the living room of his childhood home.

Alex stood rooted in place, stunned by seeing again the intimately familiar space and overwhelmed by the wave of emotions it engendered. There was the flowered couch and in front of it the table where he used to do his homework. On top of the table rested the Bugs Bunny glass that had held his chocolate milk. Through the front window was a view of the street, and outside, a couple of neighborhood kids were racing their bikes down the sidewalk.

How could this be?

The only noise in the otherwise still air was a low scratchy sound, the same sound he’d heard when his parents had walked into the other house and disappeared forever, and it took him out of the scene, making him realize that he was not where he appeared to be. As much as this looked like his old house, it was not, and Alex turned around, seeing the dark antechamber and, past that, the open door that led outside.

What was he supposed to do now?

The specificity of personal detail in the living room made it clear that his presence here was already known, and with nothing to lose, he moved forward, calling out Jennifer’s name. There was no response—he hadn’t expected one—but all of a sudden the living room did not seem quite as accurate as it had a moment before. There was no television, he noticed, focusing on the spot where theirs had been, and on the wall above the couch, where his parents had hung an elaborately framed mirror in an effort to make the living room appear larger, there was, within that same frame, an abstract scribble resembling the tangled shape from the front of the church. In the Bugs Bunny glass on the table was a disgusting black liquid that was definitely not chocolate milk.

“Jen!” Alex called. “Jennifer!”

He had come into the room through what should have been the entrance to the kitchen. Opposite him was the front door, and he walked across the shag carpet, past the familiar furnishings, and opened it.

It did not lead outside, of course. It led instead to another room, a square, empty room with bare gray walls. He recognized this place. It was the room in which he had last seen his dad, naked and covered in blood, dancing wildly on the dusty wooden floor, his mouth wide open in a silent scream.

As before, there was a stray beam of moonlight shining through the window—
moonlight?

—only this time, it shone upon two figures who were not dancing but standing stock still. A man and a woman, wearing no clothes, their skin as pale as the wall they stood against.

“Dad?” he said. “Mom?”

They were old, frighteningly so, and their small wrinkled faces filled him with alarm. What had they become? He recognized them somehow, but any resemblance to the parents he had known was buried under layers of years. Neither seemed to have any clue who he was; there was no comprehension in their barely identifiable features, no indication that they understood he was their son. There were only blank expressions and vacant stares. Toothless mouths, slack-jawed and open.

What did he want to say to them? What did he want to do?

He realized that he was afraid to approach either of them. He should have felt sorry for the nearly comatose figures, but the truth was that his parents—or what had been his parents—terrified him. What he really wanted was to get as far away from them as possible.

His father moved, and Alex jumped.

It was a small shift in position, a barely perceptible foot shuffle, and it was followed by the twitch of a hand, but it made him think of that horrifying dance, and Alex saw in his mind his blood-covered dad cavorting crazily in the moonlight.

What was it the man in the hat had said? “Your parents were shown the way and accepted it. Why have you not?” If accepting “the way” meant turning into whatever his parents had become, he was grateful he had not done so.

He had to find Jennifer. That was the reason he was here. There was nothing he could do for his parents, and the best thing right now would be to leave them where they were while he continued on.

His mom’s head tilted almost imperceptibly, and her eyes moved dully in that horribly wrinkled face, attempting to follow him.

Alex shivered. He could not stay here any longer, and since the bare room had no other door, he turned around and left the same way he’d come. He was once again in the living room, but to his left was a staircase that had not been there before, an elaborate, old-fashioned staircase jarringly at odds with the plain furnishings of his family’s house. Looking through the door to the antechamber, Alex could see that it really was night outside.

The scratching sound had returned, issuing from somewhere upstairs, and as frightened as he was, Alex was determined to follow it to its origin. The steps, of dark polished wood, were not a uniform height; some were higher than others, some lower, and he walked slowly, holding onto the banister so as not to lose his balance.

He had stopped calling out for Jennifer. Was it because he had decided that she would not be able to respond, or because he was afraid of announcing his presence to whatever held her captive?

Both, he thought.

At the top of the stairs was neither landing nor hallway. Instead, Alex found himself in a room made of hardpacked dirt, a place so dark, primitive and elemental that the word that came immediately to mind was lair. It was as though he had stepped far into the past, and the transition between this place and where he had just been was so abrupt, the dichotomy so jarring, that it took his mind a moment to adjust.

The first thing he noticed was the sparse, incongruous furniture: a tall thin table covered with pink filigreed cloth; a plain white porcelain toilet; a footstool with an elaborately embroidered cushion. There were chalk drawings all over the rough dirt walls, but these were not the simple sketches he’d seen in Jennifer’s classroom or at the church in East L.A. The walls here were covered with hundreds of elaborate shapes and symbols, and accompanied by some sort of cuneiform writing.

One corner of the room was darker than the rest, and within that darkness was a deeper darkness possessing a vaguely human shape. His heart lurched in his chest, an instinctive reaction, and as the figure stepped forward, he saw that it was her.

Clarissa Hamill…Bess Hanson…Abby Hancock…Whoever-She-Was.

She stood next to the table. Seen up close, she was indeed beautiful, and the tone of her skin bespoke an exotic origin. Her face was bruised again. He knew this time that she had not been struck by Hugh Winters, but he had no idea how she had received the bruises.

Behind her, the darkness was still not empty.

She smiled at him. “Enfin,” she said.

At last.

He knew what it meant and knew now why she said the word. He had finally arrived at where it was.

For the thing that lived with her was what had wanted him all along.

What had the man in the hat said?

We’ve been waiting for you, boy. We’ve been waiting a long, long time.

He expected to see it disassociate itself from the darkness, but whatever unspecified light source illuminated this space brightened slightly, and he saw that there was actually nothing at all in the corner, only a meeting of dirt walls and more chalk drawings.

“Where’s my wife?” he said. “What’ve you done with her?”

Rather than answer, she began singing, softly. That wordless, tuneless song, at once familiar and horrifying.

It was a hymn, he realized.

To it.

Her eyes had never left his, and she nodded slightly, as though reading his mind.

The corner was darkening again, just as slowly as it had brightened. There was something organic about this measured pulsing of unseen illumination. It was connected to her, somehow, to the thing that lived with her, to this place, to her song. Not only the corner was dark now but the entire back half of the room, and the darkness was much deeper, much blacker.

“Where is she?” Alex demanded.

The woman continued singing.

The gloom that had enveloped the space receded again, and this time it revealed a doorway leading into a different room, one with white stucco rather than brown dirt walls.

Was this an answer to his question?

Was Jennifer there?

Giving the woman a wide berth, Alex walked around the toilet and through the doorway. There were windows in the walls of this room, which was definitely not a lair. Not only were the walls white, but so were the floor and the ceiling. On the other side of the three windows were dark fluttering forms, the same sort of insubstantial shades he and Jennifer had seen in the house that had replaced their own. Again, they were of various shapes and sizes, and they passed to and fro, flapping dementedly like moths near a light. He still had no idea what they were, but once more, he thought he saw faces within the chaotic whirl.

The room itself was empty.

And then it wasn’t.

There was a shift, an almost imperceptible flicker. For a brief fraction of a second, the space beyond the windows was black and the fluttering figures white. The room itself shimmered, blurred. Then he blinked, and he knew he was in a room behind that room.

Because Jennifer was here.

She was lying on a bed covered with the same pink filigreed cloth that had draped the oddly shaped table in the primitive lair. She was naked and had clearly been beaten. Blood dripped from a gashed cheek. Her breasts were bloody as well, her eyes closed. For one brief terrifying second, he thought she was dead, but then he saw that her chest was moving gently up and down. She was breathing.

“What have you done to her?” Alex screamed, but the volume of his voice was low, muffled by the heavy air of this place.

He turned back toward the doorway, toward her, and noticed that the woman had stopped singing.

And was no longer alone.

Standing before her in the dirt room was an unnatural creature of shadow and darkness, a squat figure whose amorphous form bore but the vaguest resemblance to anything organic. Only a triangular configuration of holes in the upper segment of its body suggested that it had a face. Its very existence seemed profane, and looking upon it, Alex was consumed by fear.

The shadowthing lurched forward on undeveloped limbs, causing Alex to step back. There was a sly cast to its rudimentary features, and the sound out of its mouth was the roaring of wind in an endless void. It stopped in the doorway, and Alex realized that there was no way out of here. He and Jennifer were trapped.

He moved protectively to the side of the bed, next to her, grasping her right hand with his. Though her skin was warm, her muscles were limp. She was alive but just barely, and he knew that could change for the worse at any moment. “Jennifer,” he whispered. “Wake up. Please. Jennifer…”

Alex looked from her bloody face to the thing in the doorway. It held what could have been hands over the holes that were its eyes. Its shape shifted slightly as it shifted position, and he thought that he had seen this thing before in a dream or a nightmare.

“Jennifer,” he said again, and touched the wet, spongy skin of her bloody cheek, trying to will her back to consciousness.

Something registered out of the corner of his eye, and for the first time, he realized that there was no movement outside the windows. The black fluttery shapes were gone. In their place, landscapes were visible, different locations through each window: a desert, mountains, a forest.

With an awkward lurch, the shadowthing was in the room, and directly behind it came the woman. In back of them were others, men and women, boys and girls, all angrily jostling for position, trying to get in. He wondered if they were the ones who had beaten Jennifer.

“Wake up,” Alex pleaded.

Jennifer remained unmoving.

There was a brief flicker again, a shimmer, and then they were no longer inside. Jennifer was still lying on the bed, and he was seated next to her atop the pink filigreed cover, but they were on a lawn in front of the house, between a blooming rose bush and a dwarf tree fully loaded with a mixture of lemons, peaches and avocados. The woman and the shadowthing, even more hideously unnatural somehow in the outside light, stood on the porch, while through the open doorway behind them, the crowd of jostling people seemed to fill up the home’s interior. In every direction, stretching one after the other for as far as he could see, were other houses, nearly identical but each subtly different, all slightly off.

The woman was singing her wordless, tuneless hymn, and the rabble behind her chimed in, all of them singing a song of praise to It.

The dark, squat figure slowly rolled its unformed head from side to side, and from the hole that might have been its mouth issued the sound of the void.

It was a god, he realized, and though he had no idea what she might be, he knew that together they were…something more. It made no sense, but he knew it was true, even though he didn’t understand it. Of course, he had never understood how the Christian God was supposed to be a “Trinity” consisting of a “Father,” a “Son” and a “Holy Ghost,” a concept that seemed both incomprehensible and nonsensical to him. Hell, he didn’t know what a “Holy Ghost” actually was—despite the fact that his dad had been a minister.

Alex stared at the woman and the shadowgod, his ears filled with the contrapuntal sounds of that horrible hymn and the lifeless wind of dead space.

Was this what his father’s congregation had worshipped? Maybe not at the beginning, but standing in Its presence, Alex had no doubt that It was the deity to which the parishioners’ loyalties had shifted after the arrival of the church building and the man in the hat. His gaze moved from the chaotic throng behind the open doorway to the rows of houses surrounding them. He thought about the churches in Gilliam and San Luis Obispo and East L.A., a realization dawning within him. The thing before him was not merely a god of these followers, but a god of this land, an American god, and here it held sway. Modern believers might worship other gods, gods from the Middle East or Asian gods, but none of those deities had power in this place. For where he stood now was a different America, the country behind the nation everyone thought they knew. It was what he had stumbled on as a child, and he had been skirting its edge ever since.

Jennifer’s hand tightened in his. Her eyes were closed, and she appeared to be still unconscious, but this was the first real sign of life she’d shown, and Alex turned all of his attention on her. “Jen?” he said softly, patting her bloody cheek.

There was no response, but her fingers continued to squeeze his hand.

Another split-second flicker, another shift, and the endless lines of houses were replaced by their neighborhood in Pasadena. Sort of. Because while the bed on the lawn, the bush, the tree and the house with its occupants had been transferred to their property and Louise’s home next door was where it had always been, across the street was a decrepit and rather ominous-looking coffeeshop adjacent to the Motel 8 from Hatchet. Further down the block were fragments of different cities, individual buildings he recognized from other places he had been. The sky was somehow gray but not cloudy.

Walking down the sidewalk, head bobbing up and down, was a very thin man with a very wide smile, wearing a Wienerschnitzel uniform.

Alex squeezed Jennifer’s hand. What was all this about? What did any of it have to do with him? Why was he here, and why had she been stalking him?

She awaits.

From the beginning, he had been able to see the house behind his house. As a child, he was the only one who could. Which meant there was something different about him. But was he to be killed for that or converted?

Your parents were shown the way and accepted it. Why have you not?

He thought of Frankenstein again, concentric circles leading from acquaintances like Winters, to friends like Britta, to extended family like Jennifer’s parents, to family like Jennifer, to him.

Could it be as simple as the fact that he’d seen something he shouldn’t have? Had that started this ball rolling?

Maybe everything that had come after was nothing more than an attempt to put things right so that everything he’d encountered would slip back behind the material world, leaving no witnesses.

Or maybe he would never know what it was all about.

Not everything had an easy answer.

All of the singing stopped, and the shadowgod shut what might have been Its mouth, putting an end to that wind from the void. Suddenly, there was silence. Alex had never experienced complete silence before—even in what he thought had been silence, there had always been some sort of ambient background noise—but this was the complete and total absence of sound.

“What do you want from me?” he demanded. His voice was like the roar of a jet in the stillness.

“What do you want from us?” the woman asked, her words soft somehow and quiet.

The reaction surprised him. She reached out to the thing next to her, hand and forearm disappearing into inky shadowsubstance. Alex looked into what passed for a face on that hideous dark god.

Could It be as scared of him as he was of It?

He saw nothing in those rudimentary features to confirm or deny such a possibility, and turned his attention back to the woman. “Just let us go.”

A cruel smile was her only response.

He had no leverage, Alex knew. His instinct was to plead his case and point out that Jennifer needed to be taken to a hospital, but they were the ones who had injured her in the first place, so it was clear that any emotional plea would only fall on deaf ears.

The smiling man in the Wienerschnitzel uniform passed by on the sidewalk. A small clown car put-putted into the parking lot of the Motel 8, white smoke billowing from its exhaust pipe.

If Jennifer were conscious, they might try running, but there was no way he could pick her up and carry her. Even if they did try to escape, where could they go? This was not his world. And he was pretty sure those followers in the house would immediately chase after them. Looking over the woman’s shoulder at the jostling throng, he saw amidst the uncovered heads a gray homburg.

Alex met her hard eyes. He could not bring himself to look into the empty holes in the face of the thing next to her. “Why am I here?” His voice was still too loud. He squeezed Jennifer’s hand. “Why are we here?”

“Why are you here?”

“I don’t know!”

Her smile faded. “You saw my house.”

“I didn’t want to see it! I’ve never wanted to see any of this!”

“You see it, though. You always have.”

“If I could stop it, I would. If there was a way…”

“You are part of Us. You are one of Us.”

“But I’m not!”

“You belong here.”

Something seemed to have changed. He was no longer afraid of her, Alex realized. They were speaking as equals, and that in itself told him that things were not exactly as he had believed.

What do you want from us?

Maybe they hadn’t killed him because they couldn’t kill him.

“No, I do not belong here,” he said.

They faced each other, seemingly at a stalemate. Next to him on the bed, Jennifer moved, moaned. He was about to demand answers as to why she was injured, wanting to know who had hurt her, when the shadowgod lurched forward.

Startled, Alex took a step back, stifling the scream that rose in his throat, still holding tightly to Jennifer’s hand.

The monstrous creature waddled forward on undeveloped legs, a sound of emptiness issuing from what should have been Its mouth. Alex sensed from It an all-consuming neediness, and beneath his fear and horror lay a growing sense of despair.

There was no way out of this.

Her voice high and keening, more grating than he had ever heard it before, the woman began singing her wordless hymn, backed by the crowd behind her.

The shadowgod approached the foot of the bed.

“Come on,” Alex begged Jennifer, willing her to regain consciousness. He gently shook her arm. Although she stirred slightly and moaned, her eyes remained closed.

The shadowgod moved slowly. He easily could have outrun it, but there was no way Alex would ever leave Jennifer to Its unknown intentions. Gripping her hand tightly, he steeled himself as an inky black stump reached out and touched the foot of the bed.

Everything disappeared.

There was no bed, no Jennifer, no house, no jumbled world. He was in some sort of small space, a room that felt more like a pen, and he was not himself. He was heavy and movement was difficult. Next to him, though he couldn’t see her, was his creation who was his daughter who was his wife. It was she who fed him the energy he needed to exist. Through a window, he could see a small boy approaching tentatively across a lawn, and Alex was filled with a sudden hunger. He wanted to devour that boy, to consume and absorb him. Mixed in with the hunger was a longing that was almost jealousy, and as much as he wanted to consume the child, he also wanted to be that child, or, more accurately, to be where that child was, rather than confined here in the room.

Alex suddenly recognized the clothes the boy was wearing. They were clothes that he had had, and he knew that he was looking at himself when he was four or five.

Was he seeing through Its eyes?

Apparently so, because now the young him was slightly older and approaching the window with his friend Robby, and Robby entered the room and It touched Robby with the rough shadowy stubs that were the closest thing It had to arms, and an energizing jolt passed through It, and Robby was running away crazily.

Mrs. Walsh crossed the grass, calling out to her dead husband.

The world outside was speeding up, and memories began mixing with the sights he saw. A memory of when It had been formless. Sights of strange cities and people different. The man in the hat, a factotum created to establish contact with Alex’s world.

The memories and sights were one and the same, Alex realized. None of them were occurring now, all had happened in the past, and Alex wondered if It experienced time differently, in a non-linear manner, if to It these events were happening now instead of then—or if, from Its perspective, they were always happening.

The place over which the shadowgod reigned was dark, and Alex saw far more of it than he ever had before, but the focus was on Alex himself, as well as Alex’s family and friends. Through Its eyes, he watched as his father’s congregation moved from the lot to the church It had provided, watched Alex’s parents approach the window, enter the house and accept their new life, saw Its creation/daughter/wife follow other friends and family to different places before taking them.

At the core of it all was that jealousy and longing, but somewhere along the way, the dynamic shifted. There remained a sense of consuming hunger, but he sensed that It did not want to be a part of Alex’s world. It wanted Alex to join It here, needed Alex to join It here. Alex was a bridge that shouldn’t be, that needed to be drawn up.

Such an outcome seemed unlikely, however.

More sights.

The art gallery. Frank’s Burgers. Glimpses of what could be, what should be.

Alex was not enticed.

Jennifer’s parents. Winters. Lee.

Alex was not intimidated.

It watched Jennifer and Alex at the beach behind the beach in Santa Monica, and It was hurt and confused by Alex’s lack of seriousness and the glib dismissal of all that he had seen. Alex and Jennifer had actually joked over the phone with the man in the hat, and such inappropriately flippant behavior did not go over well.

Alex and Jennifer were lured here.

Jennifer was taken.

The shadowgod removed Its inky unformed limb from the foot of the bed. Alex was once again kneeling on the mattress next to Jennifer in the front yard of their house in a neighborhood that could not be. The woman—
creation daughter wife

—stood in the doorway of the house, multitudes behind her.

He understood now why they wanted him here.

They were afraid of him.

Why? he wondered.

There was something he was missing, some connection that his mind had not yet made. Although they considered him a threat, they had not been able to kill him, harm him or stop him in any way, and even when he had been drawn into the world behind, he had always found his way back.

Could he harm them?

It seemed the obvious explanation, but Alex had no idea whether that was the case. If it was possible, what exactly would he be able to do and how could he do it?

Frustration built within him as he stared into the black holes that were the shadowgod’s eyes. He had shared Its thoughts, and It had undoubtedly shared his, but he had no idea what that meant or where he should go from here.

Jennifer moaned again and stirred, squeezing his hand.

The standoff continued. It definitely wanted him to remain in this place. All of the efforts over all of these years had had a single goal: to get him here. Somehow, the fact that he could see both worlds made him dangerous.

He remembered that when he had first seen the woman—
creation daughter wife

—up close at Winters’ house, as his ex-boss wrote down a list of items for him to buy, she had walked into the room and then quickly left the same way she’d come in. There’d been fear in her eyes, fear he had seen again when encountering her in Jennifer’s classroom. Tellingly, she had not entered Britta’s house when Alex, Jennifer and Britta had been holed up there, and he realized that even here in this place, she had maintained her distance. It was as though she feared physical contact with him, and perhaps that was why their meetings had been so few and far between.

He looked at her now, standing in the doorway. Even after all this time, she remained nameless to him, and he wondered if she even had a name.

What was it she had said to him in the house?

You are part of Us. You are one of Us.

Maybe, maybe not, but possibly he was on equal footing. She seemed to be afraid of him, and he thought it was possible that his ability to see behind might actually enable him to physically hurt her.

Maybe not just her.

The stalemate had dragged on too long. Alex let go of Jennifer’s hand and stood. He faced the shadowgod. “Let us go,” he said. “I don’t care about any of this. He was hoping to convince It of his sincerity, hoping that just as he had seen things from Its point of view, It had seen things from his and had been granted insight into his own thoughts. “None of this means anything to me. I don’t give a shit about you or who you are or where you are or what you do. I just want to live my regular life.”

There was no response.

“Okay, I can…see things. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to see her, I don’t want to see any of this.”

Somehow the woman was next to It. “You want us to send you back,” she said.

“Yes!” It was less a word than a grateful exhalation of air, and before she could say anything to deny his request, Alex said, “I will never speak of this—or anything I have seen. Just have your god take away this ability. I don’t want it. I just want a normal life.”

“Alex?”

He turned. Jennifer was conscious. Groggy but conscious. She looked at him with glazed eyes. “Where are we?”

“Please!” Alex begged.

The woman smiled cruelly. “No.”

“Just—”

“No.”

He lunged at her, grabbing her arm. The world flickered around him, and for a second, Alex saw his neighborhood, his real neighborhood. He yanked the woman toward him. Her arm was solid beneath his grip, the skin rubbery and cold. Her muscles jerked and tightened as she tried to pull away, her face contorted in a pained expression that was somewhere between anger and fear. She kicked him hard, her shoe connecting with his shin, a flaring flash of agony nearly causing him to fall over. He kicked her back and was gratified when she recoiled in pain. He was right. He could hurt her, and as she thrashed about, glaring at him with powerful, too-bright eyes, he managed to get his hands around her neck. She started to sing her tuneless hymn—

And he squeezed his hands and twisted.

Lifeless, she fell at his feet.

The shadowgod roared at him, a sound unlike anything Alex had ever heard and one that he would never forget, the impossible sharpness of its alien tone frightening him more than any noise he had ever encountered.

Lurching furiously forward, It advanced on Jennifer, stunted limbs outstretched.

Alex was at the bed in seconds. He had killed Its creation daughter wife, but could he hurt It? The shadowgod was obviously far more powerful than he was, but It had seemed afraid of him, too. Alex wasn’t sure It had solid form, did not know if It could be physically harmed, but maybe he could disperse Its ethereal substance, maybe his touch would contaminate It, maybe…

He didn’t know, but he had to do something, and he intercepted the squat figure before It reached Jennifer, shoving his fist into what was supposed to be Its head. He encountered little resistance, felt only a warm softness reminiscent of the viscosity of water. Touching the shadowgod, his arm grew shadowy itself, a fuzzy blackness enveloping his skin until his own arm was little more than a murky, ill-defined blur.

Suddenly certain that he was about to be erased, Alex punched Its unformed head with his other arm, turned toward Jennifer, who was cautiously sitting up in the bed, and—

They were back.

It was as simple as that. They were in their house, in their bedroom. He was standing by the dresser, she was sitting up in their bed. The shift was too sudden, and his brain took a moment to process where they were before even attempting to address what had happened. Jennifer was staring at him dazedly, and he hurried over to her, taking her hands in his. The shadowgod had returned them home, but how it had happened Alex had no idea. Had It done so to protect Itself? Had he damaged It somehow? Or were Its actions based on Its own unfathomable motives and reasons?

Such questions, Alex knew, would never be answered.

Jennifer’s injuries had not gone away. Bruises were prominent all over her naked body, and blood continued to ooze from her gashed cheek and lacerated breasts. The first thing he did was grab the phone on the nightstand next to the bed and dial 911. He quickly described her condition and requested an ambulance, though he knew as he hung up the phone that he was going to have a difficult time explaining her injuries. They’d probably think it was domestic abuse, and he prepared himself to answer a host of accusatory questions.

“What happened?” Jennifer asked weakly.

“What do you remember?”

She grimaced in pain, sitting up straighter. “After going to sleep at the motel? Not much. I woke up to pee, and you weren’t there, and it seemed like there was something wrong with the room, so I peeked outside and…I think someone attacked me. Then I woke up in bed on the lawn and then we were here.”

Alex nodded.

She shifted, trying to find a less painful position. “I saw something there. On the lawn. A…creature.”

“That’s what’s behind all this.”

“I thought it was Abby, or whatever her name is.”

“It’s both of them.”

“But…we’re back here. We’re home.”

“Yeah. They let us go.”

A practical part of him wondered how they would get their car back from Oregon, but that was definitely of secondary concern right now.

She closed her eyes. “Why?”

“I don’t know. But you’re safe.”

“Is it over?” she asked. They heard the first faint sound of the ambulance siren.

He thought for a moment, considering what had happened. “I think it is,” he said.

4

Jennifer was sent home from the hospital the next day, a Sunday afternoon, and shortly after they’d arrived back at the house, Britta called, offering to bring over food. “All you have to do is heat it up,” she said. “There’s enough for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow. For breakfast, you’re on your own.”

“That’d be great,” Alex admitted.

Britta brought over vegetarian chili, macaroni and cheese and some type of exotic casserole, everything packed in microwaveable containers. There was enough food for three meals rather than two, and both Alex and Jennifer expressed their sincere gratitude for her kindness.

Alex gestured through the window toward their now-empty back yard. “What about the house behind your house? Is it still there?”

Britta smiled. “It’s gone. Thank God.”

“What about your neighbors?”

“What about them?”

“Are those houses gone, too?”

“Those houses?” She frowned, shook her head. “I’m not sure what you’re…”

Alex saw the confusion on her face and understood what was happening. Just as the memory of the house behind his in-laws’ place had been forgotten by Jennifer and her parents after they had seen it, Britta’s recollection of what she had seen was fading.

Which was probably just as well.

How much would she eventually end up remembering?

“It’s nothing,” Alex told her.

Britta was puzzled. “Are you saying there were other houses behind my neighbors?”

He smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it.”

Jennifer had some explaining to do to her principal. She’d taken four personal days and had been gone five, without calling to inform anyone of the extension, but her hospital stay quickly solved that problem, and though Jennifer declined, the principal offered to let her take two extra days if needed.

Alex went right back to work. Strait To You’s app was filled with new clients, and even though Britta’s friend Lucille was staying on part-time and working for them three days a week to help out, all of their agendas were full. In a rare Monday night meeting at Alex’s house, he, Britta and Rodrigo went through a list of job applicants, did background searches on the three most promising, and scheduled interviews for late Wednesday afternoon.

The clients and their requests remained weird but not exceptionally so, and while Strait To You’s customer base continued to grow, some of the more problematic previous clients fell by the wayside.

Still, Alex was having a difficult time adjusting to normal life. Over the first few days—hell, the first few weeks—he found himself tensing up each time he met a new client, and looking suspiciously at unfamiliar streets and neighborhoods, searching for signs of anything out of place. Gradually, however, a sense of normalcy began to return, though it happened more quickly for Jennifer and Britta than himself.

Part of him wanted to let the world know what he’d seen, but he knew that wasn’t possible. No legitimate reporter would interview him, no reputable news outlet would publish anything he wrote about the subject, and he’d end up posting on the pages of some wacky Facebook group or being interviewed by a conspiracy theory podcast with six whole listeners.

The pandemic and its resultant political chaos had shown people that the world was more fragile than they’d thought, but the truth was that it was even more fragile than that. Layers of existence lurked behind the barely scratched surface of everyday reality.

People were not good at facing uncomfortable truths, though. These days, if they even bothered to think about the pandemic at its peak, they recalled the political divisions and the protests, not the rows of cold-storage trucks parked outside hospitals and filled with bodies that overtaxed morgues were not able to process.

If the general public couldn’t handle thinking about a shared crisis the entire country, the entire world, had gone through, how could they possibly deal with the concept of a reality behind this reality, one overseen by some type of indigenous god?

Did they need to?

Maybe not. Maybe this was one instance where ignorance really was bliss. He would certainly be happier if he had never seen the house behind his house…or anything that had come after. He looked across the dining room table at Jennifer, realizing how lucky they were to have been released, although he still had no idea why or how it had happened.

As if reading his mind, she wondered. “Why would they let us go?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“But you think it’s over?”

“I hope so.”

They made love later, in the afternoon for the first time in a long while—and without a condom. Jennifer snuggled happily against him, pleased that he had finally acquiesced to not using birth control.

“It feels good to be back in the real world,” she said. “The normal world.”

It did feel good, Alex thought.

“The type of world where two people might start a family.”

Smiling, he patted her stomach. “We’ll see what happens.” He glanced out the window at the back yard.

And frowned.

Something was off, and for a moment he couldn’t figure out what. Was there a bush by the fence that had not been there before? He saw yellow flowers blooming atop the shrub, and could not recall ever having seen such blossoms. Squinting, his gaze took in the rest of the back yard. The bush was not the only thing wrong. The large plastic receptacles for trash, recycling and yard waste at the side of the garage had somehow been replaced by squat metal garbage cans. Where a small tree should have been, there was now a large cactus. An insidious thought crept into his mind.

Were they actually back?

Or…

“What is it?” Jennifer asked him, frowning.

He started at the sound of her voice.

“Alex?” she pressed.

He paused, looking out at the bush with the yellow flowers.

“Alex?”

He forced himself to smile. “Nothing,” he told her. “It’s nothing.”

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten