Who vanquished Gothic horror? The Victorian detective. Take The Hound of the Baskervilles. It's stuffed full of Gothic elements—a fiendish hellhound, craggy moors, a crenellated old estate and eerie noises like sobbing women in the night. But Sherlock Holmes isn't afraid. He cuts through it all with science and deductive logic, revealing the cheap machinations behind the terror, and the jealousy and greed driving it. It's a simple story, really. A man is trying to kill a gentleman who has romantic designs on his sister. All the rest is puffery.

Science, deduction, logic—these were my touchstones now, my antidotes to the horror novel developing all around me. I would have worn a deerstalker cap and injected cocaine except that the cap isn't actually featured in the Holmes stories—it was an invention of the illustrator Sidney Paget—and I was too frightened of losing my mind (not to mention needles) to inject anything psychotropic. So I became Holmes on the inside, imagining myself in that "large airy sitting-room" on Baker Street, wreathed in pipe smoke as my mind worked over the problem of whether a fictional character could actually come to life. There was also something else buried deep within my fears, the nagging question of how much of this plot Klara herself was responsible for. Despite all signs to the contrary I convinced myself that she was just as innocent as I was—that she must know nothing of any darker story here.

Then I went down for breakfast.

She was sitting at her usual place, behind her usual newspaper, but I knew at once it wouldn't be a usual day—that we wouldn't have one of those again for ages. She was wearing a blouse I'd never seen—red, silky, dangling from thin straps. I stared at her like I would at an ancient frieze if one of its stone figures had popped to life and was lounging in short-shorts and a low-slung half-ripped tee-shirt. And there was more. With two lazy fingers Klara cradled a burning cigarette. She took a puff. Smoke shot out of her mouth. Suddenly I was in a fog; I could hardly see; I began to cough, my eyes to water, I got down on my knees and . . . No. Wait. She didn't smoke. There was no cigarette, no smoke, I never did those things at all. My memory is playing tricks. Yet there was something smoky-white about her, in her hair—a line of white along the fringe. It looked like a flare of sunlight or a bird dropping. But when I peered more closely I saw it was a deliberately colored white streak, a Bride-of-Frankenstein bolt of lightening shooting down one side of her face.

"Oh please, Milo, don't look at me like that."

"What are you doing to yourself?"

"You make it sound so serious."

"Since when are you not a serious person?"

"Can't I do something different for a change? Something a little rash?"

"When did you do this? Last night? This morning?"

"It doesn't matter. It's nothing," she said, flipping it back with a come-what-may jerk. "It's just fashion."

It is the mark of any civilization's decline when a long swoon into decadence takes on the trappings of fashion. That much is clear from even a cursory reading of Gibbon. But there is a private debasement as well, which Klara displayed with a half-twist of her bare shoulders, a defiant little shrug so garish in a woman of her age. It was like an impersonation of a younger, briefly fashionable version of herself—a self that scared me more than any other memory yet to surface in my mind.

She'd been a high school senior. The occasion was a school play. This play was directed by her English teacher, Mr. Mann—a greasy old bug-bear with his striped cardigans and his habit of watching girls' gymnastics competitions using opera glasses. That year he was staging a sultry adaptation of The Iceman Cometh. Klara obtained a part as a barmaid. I thought it was a joke until Father made a surprise appearance at supper to congratulate her. He stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, his lopsided smile showing-off those yellow British teeth. "You know I once dabbled in the theater myself," he murmured.

"Really?" Klara looked up from her soup. Her barmaid persona—which she'd been flashing all evening long—fell away in an instant.

"A vampire show. I think I still have the make-up."

"Could I see?"

Father shrugged. He never talked about himself, never revealed anything that would make us confuse him with an actual human being. I wondered if any of this was even true. "Well . . . "

"Don't be silly," Mother said, putting down her spoon. "Klara's playing a serving girl, not a vampire."

"But I'm interested," Klara pleaded.

Mother picked up her spoon again. "Another time."

Father was on the verge of saying something else when he stopped. He must have known he had no authority here, in the house's lower realms. "Anyway I think it's wonderful, Klara," he simply added. "O'Neill has always been my favorite American playwright."

She stared at the table. "I know."

She began never taking off her make-up. I believe this is called Method Acting. Really it's just forgetting who you are. She also started mixing Mother's drinks (Long Island Iced Teas in tall glasses) and chewing gum and talking like a New Jersey whore. I wish I could say the actual performance was any better—that seeing her in context made everything comprehensible. But it was an endless cavalcade of over-acting—bright young high schoolers putting on despair the way they'd put on a new shirt, constantly checking themselves in the mirror to see how it fit.

Then there was Father. He said he wouldn't miss it, and for once he kept his word. He sat perched at the edge of the folding chair like a bird, a black-clad parrot mouthing her words and echoing, in haunting miniature, her every grimace and smile and fake-drunken lunge. At first I thought he was just playing along. Then I realized it was far more sinister than that. He wasn't mouthing her words after the fact, wasn't imitating her at all. No, what I realized was that he was actually controlling her, manipulating her like he did me, night after night. I began to sweat. My fists balled up. Yet I couldn't simply punch him—that would accomplish nothing. He probably wouldn't feel it, or my fist would go right through him. So during the third act I excused myself and hurried to the bathroom. I hovered over the line of institutional sinks and mirrors until I was alone. That's when I took the dime from my pocket. Roosevelt was a strong President and the year it was minted, 1971, was an auspicious one—all odd numbers with a symmetry of first and last digits. With its rough edge I etched a large X in the mirror. I centered my reflection over it, cross atop my nose. I'd never done this before, but somehow I knew it would work. Though my resemblance to him wasn't as pronounced as Klara's, he was right there staring back at me—the small bloodshot eyes, the heavy brow.

When I returned he was gone.

I felt powerful that night as I turned off the light—more powerful than ever. The wind rustled through the trees and an owl hooted as if to congratulate me for what I'd done. Still I couldn't help being uneasy. For the first time I felt myself in a fiction. One where truly anything was possible. Looking back, I realize that even then I knew it wouldn't be the last.

After breakfast Klara strolled onto the patio. She stood with her hands on her hips, letting the breeze tease her hair. Meanwhile I hovered behind the patio doors, playing out various conversations in my mind: how I might tell her what I suspected and gauge how much she knew. I practiced such talks nearly every day, in steamy bathtub whispers or across the unlined pages of my diary. But I hadn't yet found a way to do it for real.

At one point she took up her sketchbook from the chaise. She cradled it in one arm and began to draw. I could tell she was distracted. I decided it was now or never. I propelled myself onto the patio. "Oh, hello," she said without turning. "What do you think of a little bower over there?"

She was gesturing vaguely into the distance. I didn't care. I was focused solely on my own careful words. "There's something wrong, Klara."

"Really? Is it too near the woods?"

"With Henri, I mean."

"Is he ill? Did he call?"

"He's—he's not what he seems."

She sighed. "You're still upset about my hair."

Then we both heard the car.

"I am so happy to see you both," he said as he climbed the steps. He wore a weathered beige shirt and faded jeans. His hair in its ponytail was as glassy and shifting as a springtime flood.

"I was just showing Milo where I wanted to put the bower."

He glanced at the sketchbook, then at her. He was too polite to say anything directly about her dress or the white streak. "Perfect," he said.

"Milo thinks it's too close to the woods."

"Not after we cut them back."

He glanced at me, and again I was struck by his eyes, how they shimmered with such clinical dispassion.

He turned back to Klara. "Come, let me show you." They descended the steps. I didn't follow. I just stood there watching. He held his hands behind his back as they walked. "You mentioned the garden as a tribute to your parents," he began, "but mostly I see it as a tribute to you. Please forgive me if I am overstepping . . . "

"No, please," she said, touching his broad shoulder. "It's true. For the first time in years I can see the possibilities. Of what I want."

He stopped and glanced around. He seemed to be judging distances. Klara handed him the sketchpad. "Do not mistake me," he said as he began roughly drawing. "Your father was a great man. In many ways he made me what I am. But we all need to become our own people in the end."

Klara paused. "Whatever can you mean?"

"In his books one senses the dark mystery of wilderness. But we can tame this. You see, he has inspired me."

He held up the sketchbook. I could just make out what it showed. The woods cut back, the land plowed into rows, its dark mystery expunged.

I'd hardly moved when, around noon, a pair of workmen arrived with great bags of fertilizer across their shoulders. Henri and Klara were still traipsing about. He was talking about Gaia, Rebirth, Nature's endless recurrence—obvious manipulation-words—and I could see how they affected her. And me, too. I actually got the feeling he was saying these things for my benefit, in a sort of coded language—telling me he knew that I knew exactly who he was.

Then he saw his men. Suddenly I sensed a different act, a different audience. He whistled at them to stop. They looked at him with more annoyance than fear, as if they'd rehearsed this moment many times against their will. "Take those bags back," he said. "I told you not to use sodium nitrate. It will only ruin these clay soils. How many times must I remind you to use my natural alternative? Is it in the truck?"

One of the workmen nodded.

"Come," he said to Klara. "Let me show you my secret formula."

I watched them go. Yet their effect lingered on. The gusty, unpredictable breezes, the harassing flies, the shrieking birds—everything around me seemed agitated somehow, in flux. Even the recent rains could be interpreted as a sign of divine displeasure, of the heavens out of sorts. That's what Klara used to tell me when it stormed. Also how Father himself once wrote it, in one of his darkest, grimmest tales:

The thunder crashed, the waves welled up and down,

And Martin should have known ‘twas time to turn around,

To listen to the signs and portents,

The weather-churned and evil torments

That plagued his mind, that fed his rage,

That made him keen to set the stage

For his own ruin. But in the end he didn't care.

He knew himself; he measured what he'd done,

Still saw the child, a neighbor boy, so curious about his gun,

And pointing it at his own head, was playing with the trigger

When Martin interceded, saved him. Hero to the neighbors, yes!

And to himself? He'd placed the gun right by the bed, then got undressed,

Said: "Here, young man, you owe me." He saw the look in that boy's eye,

Betrayal, sure, but more. Respect for Martin's honesty?

More like expectation.

For Martin, like the ancient gods of Greece, had quite a reputation.

(From Fair Weather Fiends)

Yes, I knew something was coming—knew it in my bones—yet it wasn't until mid-afternoon that I saw what it was, what our own signs and portents amounted to. I was in Klara's room. Occasionally I do this, sit on her four-poster bed and smooth a hand over the crinkly pink cover she's had for years, an innocent girlish thing she could never let go. Would she now? I wondered. I was already becoming nostalgic. I picked over the items on her nightstand—a fat novel (Middlemarch), lip balm, hot water bottle for her back, an old Cosmopolitan magazine (devoid of white streaks). Really I was breathing in the scent from her pillow and thinking of childhood—the smell of her dresses and knees, her laughter, her teasing—before everything had become so complicated, so adult, between us. I was in a kind of reverie, lost in those lost years, when it all came crashing down—when I heard a great crash at the bottom of the stairs.

I jerked upright, suddenly alert to the here and now, half-expecting the door to fly open at any moment and for Klara to stand there aghast, accusing, agape. But all was silent. I crept across the room. I opened the door.

"Hello?"

"It's nothing, I'm OK," came Marta's voice—a plangent cry.

I bounded down and found her there, at the foot of the banister, her dark arms and heavily stockinged legs clawing the air like an overturned beetle's. I gripped her crepe-paper arms. They were cool and spongy. I helped her up. "What happened?" I asked.

She hobbled into the kitchen and fell into a chair at the wooden table where she ate. "The floor must have been wet. I didn't pay attention."

"Had you been washing it?"

"No."

I went back into the hallway. Only then did I notice the dirt tracked everywhere. Not just dirt—also pine needles and leaves. I marched out the patio doors. There was a workman raking a hoe. It wasn't the tall hippie but a skinny young man with hair greased to a point like some drug-addled rock star soon to die from a heady dose of heroin and fame.

"Have you seen my sister?" I asked him.

He stopped work and glanced into the distance, at the birds circling over the woods. That's when it occurred to me that Henri had taken her out there, into Father's realm, and without waiting for an answer I hiked past the workman, hiked straight up the now-barren rise. The trees loomed impassively in front of me, giving nothing away—no broken branches, no footprints, nothing to confirm my fears. Still I knew they could have entered at a different path—there were several leading in. I strode along the latticework of branches. The ground became muddy and damp.

At the next path I saw it, the fresh stamp of a boot heel.

Before I'd made a conscious decision I'd plunged back inside, stumbling over fallen branches, trying to ignore the creatures chirping all around—that excited, eager sound. I crossed a shallow ravine. On the other side lay a mound of stones—an Indian grave, as we'd once called it. I hiked up to the intersection of the path that led to the clearing. I stopped and glanced every which way. Something was missing. The spade in the tree. I could have sworn it was right here.

There rose a mocking clash of leaves.

I panicked and hurried on, telling myself it must have been there, that I must have missed it or gotten the wrong intersection, the wrong path. Up ahead I saw sunbeams. A promise of happiness, warmth. I picked up my pace until the leaves had thinned and I spied, in the clearing, the telltale flash of clothes, different-colored clothes close together. Huddled. Huddled and bent over. I lunged behind a bush. Did I really want to see?

I couldn't resist.

Darkness. That's what it felt like—a great darkness clouding my mind, a vision of Satanic rituals and all the lascivious acts New Englanders used to imagine occurring in the woods. Klara and Henri were standing over the ruins of one of our forts. Her hair was disheveled. She was holding a Chilton's Auto Repair Guide and wire-cutters.

"I can't believe this," she said.

She was flipping through the book. Henri thrust his hands deep into his pockets, a gesture of seeming innocence. "It was hidden beneath that log. I do not know what made me look there. What does it mean?"

"The pages are all wet and stuck together. It's very hard to read."

A terrible memory came to me: the shadow I'd seen when I was last in the woods.

"Here," she went on. "Diagrams of brake wires, with handwritten instructions for accessing them."

"The handwriting. Is it Milo's?"

"It's very smudged. I can only make out a couple of words. Oh God."

"What is it?"

She pointed. "Volvo."

He touched the small of her back as she lowered herself down, her hand groping until it found a log to sit on. Henri sat next to her. "We should call the police, no?" he said.

She shook her head.

"You said you had doubts about your parents' deaths," he went on.

"No, no."

"We have a duty. The police could investigate. Inspect the car."

"It's gone. Totaled."

"We can't simply ignore what we've found."

She paused. "Maybe this was just Milo's way of understanding what happened."

"You give him great benefit of the doubt."

"He's the only family I have left." She leaned against his shoulder. "Maybe I should have warned you. As a child he could be so quiet and innocent, then do something terrible, pretending it was a game . . ." She closed her eyes. "He had a hard time with our father. We both did."

"A lot of people have had hard times with their fathers," Henri said. He looked at his hands. "Did I ever tell you of mine? He insisted my brother and I join the Army. He whipped us with his belt to get us used to the discipline."

"I'm so sorry. I had no idea . . ."

"What I am saying, Klara, is that I have changed. I grew up. I escaped him. So your brother . . . If he did this, it can be no excuse, what happened years ago."

What was he saying? That history didn't matter? That we were all born yesterday?

She glanced down. "There's something I ought to tell you. About me. It's not just Milo—"

"Shh." He touched her chin. "What is past is past, Klara. You don't have to tell me anything." He reached down to pluck a dandelion. "How perfect these are," he said, pushing it into the hair above her ear. It hung there, drooping. "You deserve to be happy."

I barely heard her voice through a tear-choked smile. "I don't even remember what that means."

I had no idea how long I sat there. At one point I noticed insects buzzing against my face and moisture on the seat of my trousers. When I looked up again Klara and Henri were gone, the clearing empty, and I wondered if I'd been dreaming again—if this had been a trick of light and sound. Then I realized what I hadn't heard. She hadn't told him it was impossible—that I'd never sabotage the Volvo because I did nothing all day except build models out of wood and plastic and was a harmless house-bound boy. She would have said such things in my dreams.

The young workman was gone when I returned—his hoe abandoned in the soil, the patio doors open, sounds of commotion emanating from within. Then he appeared in the doorway, smirking as if eager to see what would happen next. "Your sister is asking about you," he said.

She was in the entrance hall, hair disheveled, face clenched in a grimace that would have been appropriate in charades to express divine wrath. "I can't believe you abandoned Marta," she hissed.

I opened my mouth. I was still a little dazed. I wanted to rewind history's clock, to put our relationship on firmer footing for this moment. But I was compelled to speak the simple truth—that Marta had slipped on the dirt her workers had brought in, no doubt using the key she'd given them, and that I'd only left Marta to find her.

"Me?" Klara said. "Why?"

"I needed to talk to you."

"About what?"

"The difference between happiness and delusion."

She threw up her hands and stormed out the front door, leaving me alone on the entrance hall's sea of chessboard tiles. Pawn on Queen Four. I heard a car engine hum to life. I went to the door. The workmen were helping Marta into the Peugeot. Henri was making a great show of inspecting the engine as Klara circled to the passenger door. "Get back inside, Milo," she commanded. "We're taking her to the hospital."

"Wait."

I moved forward. But I didn't get very far. Klara intercepted me, holding up a hand. "We'll talk later," she said, her voice soft, almost pleading. She was breathing heavily through her nose. Beads of perspiration hung across her upper lip, bringing into relief a thin line of hair. All around us was silence—the workmen had stopped moving—and her breathing was the only sound, her face the only object with any life. She pushed the white streak off her forehead. "Just go back and wait."

"Don't do this," I said.

"We have no choice. Marta is hurt."

"That's not what I mean. Don't think you can write this story however you want."

"Come quickly," called Henri. "She's in pain."

Klara turned and walked away, choosing him. They drove off—averted faces, crunching tires—while the workmen vanished around the side of the house and the dust settled all around me. What would she say if I just walked off into the woods? I wondered. Lay down beneath a tree and never moved, becoming a mossy mound that someone found years later and wrote sad poetry about?

Ode to a Forgotten Corpse.

I wandered back inside. I stopped at the line of hooks in the entrance hall. The MG's key dangled there like a half-forgotten talisman. Father used to rub it—for good fortune, he said—before traveling the countryside looking for old houses to inspire the settings for his books. This was when I was very young, before he was satisfied with just having me.

I took the key and rubbed it with my thumb.

The garage door opened with a sound like cars rushing over a metal bridge. I saw the blank spot on the wall where the wire cutters used to be and an old workbench where I'd last seen the Chilton's Guide. Henri could have easily stolen them, but…when did he have the opportunity? That's when I remembered the footprints on the morning after the rains, muddy and filled with water, leading right up to this door. From where? I closed my eyes. From the house. That was why I'd ignored them, assuming they were Klara's. But if Henri had parked further down the driveway, where his car wouldn't be seen, and walked the rest of the way, he'd emerge from a hedge on the side of the house and approach the garage from there.

I leaned against the MG—sleek and blue like a fish—as I pondered this possibility, knowing I wouldn't be able to prove it, wondering how much that even mattered now. I climbed inside. The car was cramped and smelled like Father—a musty, feral scent emanating from the cracked leather seats. I held my breath and turned the key. Chigger chigger—a clown's evil laugh. Was the car itself mocking me? I tried again.

It coughed to life.

I didn't have a license. But Klara had taught me to drive like she'd taught me everything else. I focused on the delicate dance of clutch and brake pedal and gas, swerving down the driveway and nearly running into a wretched elm. At the bottom I turned left. I managed to keep to the road. The trees gathered overhead, curious and dark. They were like all native Vermonters—rigid, ill-spoken, menacing in crowds.

I lowered the window. Wind felt good. Soon I reached a bullet-riddled sign that read "M14." A swath of cracked pavement led toward town—an outpost of illusory civilization where the mountain folk went when they wanted to practice standing in line and tucking in their shirts. But at least it wasn't a "cosmopolitan center" like Burlington or Brattleboro. One didn't encounter transient students or "civilly united" lesbians or fur-clad New Yorkers doing "outlet shopping" or "aprés ski."

I suppose I should say its name. Battenkill. Kill from the Old Dutch killa, meaning a riverbed or channel. Battenkill is where Klara's favorite china shop is located and where there's a medical clinic with more than a single doctor. Actually it's the medical clinic with virtually all the doctors, having absorbed or driven out of business eleven other medical offices in the surrounding region. This has caused some people, including Klara, to refer to it grandiosely as a "hospital" even though it consists of a single brick building and performs only the most rudimentary surgeries.

I sped toward Battenkill, the town, along Battenkill, the river, crossing the water several times over covered wooden bridges—the sort tourists love but locals hate because they have only a single track, so whenever a car comes from the opposite direction there is endless maneuvering over who will cross first. But on that day I didn't care, didn't slow down at all. I felt an accident would be preordained or not, and there was nothing I could do. I passed an old green road sign that read "Battenkill" and "Pop. 3888" and "Elev. 3525 ft." Then came a few slumping shacks and prefabricated monstrosities with aluminum siding and backyard trailers. The town's center was a row of dilapidated red-brick storefronts built during some long-forgotten industrial age, flanked on one side by a concrete municipal structure and on the other by the post office. The clinic was a good mile or two beyond.

In town I was impeded by an old woman in a powder-blue Buick who drove like an old woman in a powder-blue Buick. Finally she veered up onto the sidewalk, as I knew she eventually would. Within seconds the post office was behind me. Then the clinic's ever-illuminated sign appeared between clusters of bushes on my right: A Service of the United Healthcare Network, The Nation's Healthcare Provider. This sign was the only new or refurbished thing about the place, other than a façade painted to look like windows and a corporate banner fluttering above the entryway that depicted little silhouettes of people in different colors holding hands.

The parking lot was behind a screen of bushes. I stopped some distance away and approached on foot, not trusting my ability to circle back. The Peugeot gleamed in the sun. I cupped a hand over my eyes and peered through its tinted windows. I saw no Chilton's guide or wire-cutters. I slipped my fingers beneath the door's handle, but it was locked. Then I remembered what was in the MG's trunk. I hurried back and fetched it—an old wire hanger. I slipped it below the Peugeot's window, fished it around. I'd seen this done in police shows and read about it in Father's books. Still I was amazed when it snagged. I lifted, heard a click, and opened the door.

The button for the trunk was beneath the seat. I pressed it. The book and wire cutters were in the wheel well, where everybody in novels conceals everything. I slid them inside my blazer. Then I glanced around. Nobody was near. I returned to the driver's door and squeezed into the seat, nearly overwhelmed by the new car scent, that odor of volatile organic compounds clearly in excess of EPA guidelines. It reminded me how new Henri's car was, just like his spade and shovel—how everything about the man seemed to be of recent manufacture.

I opened the glove compartment. A sheaf of papers. I flipped through them: receipts for soil, seeds, various chemicals. I tucked one of them inside my blazer pocket, but the true prize—a car registration with Henri's name and address—was nowhere to be found. Was this itself revealing? I began poking my hands into any other plausible place—lifting the plastic armrest, pulling out the cup holder, peering into the thin recess beneath the radio. The man was a blank.

I was just bending beneath the imitation leather seat when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a shimmer at the clinic's door. I didn't move. I remained half-crouched, my tie hanging down, a sheen of perspiration erupting across my skin. Slowly I raised my head. A bird was watching me—an old blackbird with jaundiced eyes. When it turned to peck at a weed I grabbed the charm hanging from the rear-view mirror, a plastic rabbit's foot, and flung it into the nearby shrubbery. The bird didn't move. I took out the MG's key and gouged a tiny question mark into the car's sleek outer skin.

The bird flew away.

I hurried back to the MG and stashed the Chilton's guide and wire-cutters beneath the seat. Then I approached the clinic door. It was not automatic, so I had to go to the side and punch a blue shield with an outline of a wheelchair. The lobby was bathed in a fluorescent light that reflected harshly off the speckled linoleum floor. Soporific music seeped out of ceiling speakers. A couple of formless hags leaned on canes and an old man couldn't keep his jaw from clicking up and down. Only a young Hispanic boy appeared sentient, holding his hand and whimpering into his father's shoulder. There was also a hanging television on which an earnest newscaster intoned: "We're United Healthcare, here to serve you better."

There was no sign of Henri or Klara or Marta. I approached the counter. "Excuse me?" I said to the nurse behind it. She was a young woman with long red hair like they used to burn witches for having. Her cheeks were chubby on their way to being fat and her dimpled chin receded. She reminded me not just of witches but also of a girl I once knew in middle school, Veronica Stimmel, a ponderous bookish lass who thought I might share her interest in silly novels about gnomes and warlocks and impossible journeys through icy realms. "You remind me of—" she'd said one day, uttering some unpronounceable name, Etihadilough or Letihoulituff, a name supposed to sound noble and brave, not like the stupid kerfuffle it was. I'd laughed. There was nothing else to do. She stared at her blocky feet, which had drifted close to mine, and when my laughter died I said: "I'll tell my sister. She'll find it hilarious, too." And that was the end of Veronica Stimmel.

This one, though, seemed less reticent, less easy to dispatch. She was scrutinizing her fingernails and talking rapidly into the telephone. "You've got to tell him to open up to you. I mean how were you supposed to know what that old radio-controlled speedboat meant to him?" She smiled at me, a quick sideways stab of lips, and pushed a clipboard across the countertop. It held a sheet of paper with "Patient Information" printed across the top and several blank spaces to be filled in.

"I'm not sick," I said.

She held up a finger. "He also needs to learn to admit he can't fix everything. Just tell him to buy a new one already and get over it."

"My sister, Klara Crane, and a gardener who goes by the name ‘Henri' just brought our housekeeper Marta in a few minutes ago."

She frowned and thrust the finger forward more intently, like showing off a paper cut. Her fingernail tapered to a perfectly oval point. "Listen, I got to call you back." She slammed down the receiver. "What is it you want, sir?"

I cleared my throat, recalling other girls, haughty vixenish things trying to maximize their few precious years of youthful bloom. It was satisfying to see this one already past her prime—the skin falling slack beneath her eyes and her hair hanging limp across her shoulders. But the way she clung to her attitude told me she didn't know it yet.

"My sister, Klara Crane and a gardener named Henri brought our housekeeper Marta in here, and I wanted to know whether they had to fill out forms with—"

"Marta? Marta what?" she snapped.

I sighed. "Surely there can't have been more than one person named Marta who just arrived."

"Doesn't matter. We've got rules, sir. I can't let you in if you don't—"

"I'm sorry. There seems to be a slight misunderstanding. I don't wish to go in. I merely wish to see whether this gardener has filled out one of these forms."

"Everybody has to fill out a form. Those are the rules."

"Yes, good, I see we both appreciate rules, now if I might just be able to see this form?"

She gave a pert little smirk. "You must be kidding."

"I can assure you I am not, generally speaking, a kidder."

"Then who the hell do you think you are, mister?"

I cleared my throat. It was always so tedious speaking with members of the public. I found I had to constantly explain myself as if to a child. "As I just said, I'm Marta's employer, and it was my sister Klara, Klara Crane, who came in here with the gardener."

She blinked and looked at me.

"You probably haven't filed their forms yet," I continued. "Look, what's that on your desk?"

I pointed to a filled-in Patient Information sheet, which she quickly covered with her freckled elbow. "Rules are rules, sir. Now don't make me call security."

I smiled, half turning to the others in the room, who remained stupefied by their ailments, and then, finally understanding her, pulled out of my wallet a pair of twenty dollar bills. "I trust this should suffice," I said in a low voice.

She rolled backwards on her swivel chair. "Hey! Ralph! Can you help me out here a second?"

I could see she was serious. There was no use continuing. I turned and walked away, past the gauntlet of infirm limbs. I didn't wait to punch the blue shield on the inside of the doorway. I thrust my shoulder against the glass, thinking: what am I running from? I haven't done anything wrong. But I knew I had. I'd botched the interrogation. Sherlock Holmes would have done it much better—would have disguised himself as an inspector and demanded to see the hospital's paperwork. I pushed my hands into my pockets and told myself there was a good reason I hardly ventured into town. I couldn't navigate it; I was not welcome here.

This time it was easier to start the car. I drove to the Battenkill river and stopped in the middle of the bridge. I reached beneath the seat. The Chilton's guide and wire-cutters were still there. I flung them into the water and watched them bubble away, the wire-cutters disappearing instantly, the Chilton's guide holding out a little longer, swirling and scrabbling to stay afloat. Then I pulled out the receipt. It was dated some months ago. It was for five fifty-pound sacks of organic fertilizer and something called "pH balancer." The letterhead was from a "Girardi & Sons"—the logo printed inside a silhouette of a greenhouse—with an address on "J" street, only a few blocks from the center of town.

I held the receipt as I drove, turning left at the post office, then right down another tree-lined street. "Girardi & Sons Gardening and Nursery Supply, Since 1946," was painted on a swinging sign. Behind the sign lay an old ramshackle building with aluminum siding and a greenhouse with several broken windows. The driveway was lined with potted plants, which I had trouble avoiding as I parked, crunching one beneath my tire, toppling another when I swung open the door.

I began in the greenhouse. Almost instantly I was struck by its moisture, the physical sensation on my skin and the dank metallic stench. There were plants everywhere—small buds, blooming flowers, half-sized trees—lined up in rows like slumbering troops. But otherwise I could tell right away that I was alone. I've spent enough time in solitude to recognize the stillness, to know the signs.

There was a door at the far end. I passed through it. I found myself in the main house. In an office.

"Hello?" I called out.

The room was small, with a heavy wooden desk in the center and wood-paneled walls. On the walls hung pictures of oarsmen and flowers and lions emblazoned with the words TEAMWORK and QUALITY and SUCCESS. There was also a rifle hanging behind the desk. I walked up to it and leaned forward. I could hardly believe my eyes. An authentic World War II M1 Garand.

"It was my dad's. He started this business after the war."

I whirled around. Behind me stood a rock of a man—his short sleeves taut around his biceps, his forearms webbed with veins. Beneath a loose silk shirt moved tectonic plates of pectoralis muscles. He thrust out a hand. "Phil Girardi," he said.

"Oh, yes, Milo Crane," I replied. His hand was hot and dry and callused and so large that it nearly enveloped mine.

"You a World War II buff?"

I nodded. He smiled, then walked to another door at the far end of the room, one I hadn't noticed because it was cut into the wood-paneled wall like a trap door in novels. For a moment I wondered if I was in a novel, and I pinched my earlobe—an old trick.

"My dad was in the war. Brought back loads of stuff."

The door opened on a spring. It was a small annex—really more of a shrine—and on the walls hung black-and-white photos of a young man whose chiseled features bore a striking resemblance to Phil's. Only his physique was much thinner—his pale Army uniform hung loosely over his frame. It was the uniform of the Pacific Army Group, and in the more formal photos I spied the double-bar insignia of a Second Lieutenant. But in the combat photos he looked like a plain infantryman squinting nervously at the surrounding palms, or wading through chest-high water holding a rifle like a trapeze bar over his head. There were other memorabilia—medals, newspaper clippings, a bullet-riddled helmet and dilapidated combat boots. On the far wall hung a rusted bayonet, an officer's .45 caliber pistol, a few mortar casings, .50 caliber machine-gun bullets, the shell of a hand grenade, the nozzle end of a flamethrower, and a slightly unsheathed Japanese officer's sword near whose hilt I could just see the rusted flecks of blood.

"This is incredible," I breathed, noticing that none of the weapons had been defused—the bullets' powder not removed nor the pistol's barrel spiked. This gave me a thrill beyond any normal museum display.

"That sword belonged to a Japanese officer they trapped in one of the caves on Guadalcanal," said Phil, rubbing his goatee. "Poor bugger killed himself instead of being taken prisoner."

"They did do that," I agreed, recalling my picture books of the battle—the rotting corpses, emaciated Japanese defenders, one American officer with the top of his head blasted off and a stump of cigar still clinging to his chin.

"Crazy bastards."

"They took dishonor even more seriously than death," I said.

"Boy, has the world changed." He closed the door again. Then he rubbed his massive hands together. "You looking for perennials? I think I've got some delphiniums back at the greenhouse."

"No, no, I'm just—"

"Sorry. Everybody seems to want perennials lately."

"Ah yes." I took a deep breath. "I'm afraid I'm not much of a gardener. I'm a journalist, you see." I pulled out my notebook and spy pen.

"What can I do for you?" Phil said warily.

I smiled, explaining that I was researching several of the more prominent gardeners in the area and that Phil's name had arisen as a source for many of their soil and fertilizer needs. "For example, I've already spoken with a Mr. Henri Blanc. He comes to you regularly, does he not?"

Phil nodded.

"I understand he's got some sort of"—I flipped a few pages in my notebook for effect—"secret fertilizer or something?"

"He calls it that, but everyone who works around here makes something like it. You got to, with these soils."

"Do you think he's not an especially forthright gardener, then?"

He cocked his head. "He's a good guy. Just interesting."

"Do you know where he's from?"

"He's French, right? I don't know much else. He kind of came out of nowhere."

"What do you mean?"

"He showed up suddenly a few months ago. Then it was like he was always here."

"A few months ago?" I've worked with Elizabeth for months.

"That's right. Hey, what did you say your name was again?"

I hesitated. "Milo Crane."

"Your father was that writer, wasn't he?"

I nodded, bracing myself for the inevitable barrage of questions: What was he like? How did he come up with those books?

"Because Mr. Blanc said he knew him," Phil went on. "Your father. Said that's why he moved here. This was right after, well, that terrible accident. I'm so sorry, you know, for your loss."

But I wasn't thinking of my loss. There were too many questions, too many strange coincidences. "He moved here in the winter? From where?"

"Said he was working upstate. Near Burlington."

"Why would he move here for my father after my father's death?"

Phil shrugged those huge shoulders. "You mean you don't know?"

"He's a stranger to me."

"Oh." Phil looked perturbed, like he was trying to solve a difficult sum.

"Do you know anything else about him?" I asked.

"I heard he was pretty popular."

I snapped closed the notebook. "One last question. When Henri orders supplies, where do you deliver them?"

"He picks up everything here."

"I suppose he always pays cash?"

"Listen, I can't . . ." He looked away, fingering a couple of papers on his desk. "I really can't get into that. Sorry."

I bit my lip, knowing I'd bungled things again. It seemed so easy in stories to question witnesses. They either answered the detective or had something to hide. Either way they gave useful information.

"Is there anything else I can get you before you go?" Phil asked.

I paused, wondering if I could salvage something yet—an insurance policy, so to speak. "Actually . . ." I smiled meekly. "You wouldn't have any sodium nitrate fertilizer, would you?"

It was simple enough to find information at the local library concerning the impact of sodium nitrate on ornamental plants. In a monograph entitled "Soil Fundamentals," Dr. Willis Greene writes that "sodium ions increase the density of clay and can lead clayey soils to assume a cement-like hardness." Mrs. Meg McDonald, in her seminal work Your Perfect Rose Garden, suggests that "to keep from burning the rose, apply inorganic fertilizers to moist soil and avoid spilling fertilizer on the bud union. If this occurs, wipe off fertilizer at once!" Both sources agreed that over-use was harmful because sodium nitrate was concentrated and fast-acting. "No more than a light dusting of nitrates, followed by a good watering," says Mrs. McDonald. "Or else you'll quickly drown your roses in nutrients. You can have too much of a good thing!"

I returned home and parked the MG in the garage just as it had been before. I left the fertilizer in the trunk. I was taking no chances. The workmen's truck was gone, as was the Peugeot, but Henri may have dropped-off Klara and Marta—they might be watching through the windows. I walked into the entrance hall. "Hello?" Nothing. Still I didn't move. The emptiness weighed on me. Because no place was truly empty. There was history, memory, and I began to see them—the ghosts of Mother and Father flitting across the tiles. They were getting ready for that last reading at the Barnes & Noble in Manchester. "Don't forget your coat," Mother said. Father didn't reply. He was more distant and self-absorbed than usual. Maybe he was drunk. Music from Klara's bedroom trickled down the stairs—brooding, low, romantic—Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, as I knew from her long-ago lessons. Father was listening to it intently, like it was some kind of code. Klara had been anxious all day, knocking at his attic door, yelling that she'd steal a key. Did Mother have a clue what was going on? Did she even care? She planted a kiss on my forehead and said: "Be a good boy." Father nodded as if he agreed with her, then turned to me, his mouth open, eyes bleary, some painful pretense to profundity shambling across his lips. But in the end not a sound emerged. He couldn't seem to muster it. Then they were gone. I watched them march across the driveway, watched the Volvo pull away and their footprints fill with snow and the silence as the whole world slumbered. That's when I retreated to my study and my tiny Greek.

Finally they came.

Tires squealed across the driveway. I'd drifted into the kitchen and was consuming a tall glass of water to flush away the memories. The front door burst open. I heard Klara and Henri conversing in urgent whispers and Marta's protesting moans. Heavy footsteps on the stairs. Henri's insistence on medicine. "It will help you sleep." Then the kitchen door swung open and there he stood, bottle in hand, his thin red lips an O of surprise.

"Milo?"

I closed my eyes. I needed to be strong, I told myself, to not succumb to his charms as easily as Klara had, for I was fighting for my—our—future, the future that had been so achingly close before he arrived. "I can see you're disappointed," I said, looking at him straight on, studying that chiseled, suntanned face.

He smoothed a hand over his ponytail. "Nothing could be further from the truth. I am only sorry we've not had a chance to talk. Perhaps after I've given Marta her medicine?"

He moved past me to the sink, his rough veined hands pulling a glass from the drying rack and filling it with water. I watched him, how carefully he moved, how conscious of being watched, and while he was preoccupied I sent a whisper across his sweat-damp back, an insinuated magical word:

"Malevolent."

I told myself it was a powerful word, one that Father always loved, with its shades of reverent and violent and malignant. Yet as soon as I'd uttered it, I realized my mistake. Because suddenly it was more than a word. More than a spoken one, I mean. I saw it hanging in the air like an invisible word cloud. What was happening? Henri turned and flashed his yellow teeth. Then the word was gone, bits of its dismembered letters dribbling down his chin. I saw a footless a, severed m, decapitated e. I backed up, moved a chair between us, a flimsy barrier that I was sure would do no good. Yet I clung to it for something tangible to hold onto.

Is this how a fictional character reveals himself?

"Are you alright?" he asked. He'd become absolutely still, a rough hard trunk of a man with branch-like hands, the scar oozing sap across the knotted base of his thumb. His body was all sinews and crooked angles, a tree growing in poor soil.

"I . . ." No, I wouldn't give him more words to chew and spit out, so I just shook my head and watched him bend toward the door, keeping an eye on me as if I might hurl the chair at him at any moment. "I am sorry if the garden feels like—an imposition," he said, before smiling and flicking his tongue.

It took only a moment. Afterwards I wondered if it had happened. If any of this was real. I rubbed my eyes and squinted. Still I couldn't tell. It was like those times when I see a familiar word and fail to recognize it, when the letters themselves can't coalesce.

"Have you considered a vacation?" he said, a hand already on the door. "Going someplace to relax? I know of a place outside of Burlington where they are very kind. A wonderful facility. If you like, I can place a call."

Go away. Leave us.

He gave a sly smile, a slight shift of his mobile mouth as if he'd heard my thoughts.

"I am only trying to help," he went on. "To make things easier for you."

He turned to leave, and that's when I decided to risk more speech: "You mean until you have me arrested? Or killed?"

This time the words swirled around him too fast for his snatching jaws. He smiled again, which I didn't expect—the eager expression of a boy with a slingshot who's finally spotted his elusive squirrel. He must have been relieved to finally know what he was up against, to have the battle lines so unambiguously drawn. But was I? The man remained a cipher, and that was the trouble. I thought of what he'd told Klara earlier—that Father had inspired him. Inspired as in breathed life into? That would be just the joke Father would make, a double-entendre to hide the truth in plain sight.

"I understand you had a difficult relationship with your father," he replied with a hint of wary tease.

He shifted shapes again, leaning against the countertop with his shoulders hunched to make himself appear like a rattlesnake about to strike. "You cannot escape him, am I right?" he said. "He influences you still? Yes, I can see that. You have a powerful imagination, just like him. In fact both you and your sister have a touch of the artist about you."

"What are you making her do?"

"No one can make anyone else do anything."

"Are you saying she's . . . ?"

I closed my eyes. I remembered marching off to look for them. That workman dialing his cell phone. "You knew I was coming," I said. "In the woods."

But when I opened my eyes again, he was gone.

The next thing I knew I was in my room, writing the whole strange scene in my secret diary. Again I wondered if any of it had been real. Still I kept thinking about what he'd said at the end: No one can make anyone else do anything. Klara's sympathy for me in the woods had given me a glimmer of hope. Only now I realized it wasn't that simple. The fact that they knew I was coming meant the entire thing could have been staged—to make me think Klara was an ally.

Yes, the more I thought about it, the more I realized this might be a classic John Crane plot, where nothing was what it seemed. After all, it was Klara herself who'd always insisted the car crash had been an accident. She'd refused to admit that Father might have been afraid of something at the end. Was that because he'd been afraid of her? Or of Henri? Or of them both? Had Father finally realized the power of his fiction—the power to literally create a life that leapt off the page and crossed over into the so-called real world?

The questions wouldn't stop. I had to do something. They'd overwhelm me if I didn't. So I peered into the hallway. It was empty. My mind screamed to stay inside my room where it was safe, but no place was truly safe anymore. Cautiously I crept out. Past Klara's room, past oil paintings of Father's literary heroes looming from shadowy nooks—Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe—between guest rooms that I had no memory of ever being used. I opened the first one. A single band of sunlight leaked through its wooden shutters. I imagined dead moths trapped between the slats, crumbling if you breathed on them. Otherwise it was empty, a pile of unused furniture covered in sheets. The others were the same—all except Mother and Father's at the end of the hall. That's where I finally found her, sprawled atop their bed, uniform disheveled, skirt riding up her bare puffy legs. Marta had once lived with us in the servant's quarters off the kitchen, and a memory came back to me of watching her sleep, trying to decide if she was dead. Why had she moved away? Had she been running from something too? It was impossible to know. She never talked about herself—about anything, really—but I hoped she'd talk now to me.

"Milo? Is it you?" she whispered.

I went to her side. One foot was still in the boot and there were bandages on her arm from drawing blood. "Are you alright?"

"Don't worry about me."

Her eyes were heavy. I knew I didn't have much time. I bent low, nearly overwhelmed by her animal scent of sweat and fear. "Did you notice the gardener's real name at the clinic? On one of those forms he had to fill out?"

"He was so nice. The doctor was his friend."

"What's his name, Marta?"

"One time the doctor called him . . ." She moved her mouth. A long sibilance emerged: "tthhhhh." She smiled. Not at me, at something beyond. I turned. There was the ladder. I had another idea. "This doctor . . ." I began.

Too late. She was already gone, her mouth open, her chest barely moving. I could only imagine what Henri had given her—what he'd conspired with his doctor-friend to do. I draped a dusty blanket loosely over her. Then something drew me to the balcony. I opened the door. Night was rapidly descending. Trees were becoming silhouettes. Nature itself was turning dark and inward.

I tried to sleep that night. But I should have realized I couldn't, that my dreams would conspire against me. In my mind I saw Klara enter my room, her face like a wooden mask in a museum: Helmet Mask, Kingdom of Bamum, 19th Cent., Cameroon. "Would you like supper?" she asked. Then Henri pushed past her and sat on the edge of my bed. "It pains me to see you so unhappy."

"You're a fraud," I told him in the dream. "A fiction."

He untied his hair, shaking it loose like a girl. His neck was thin and red, his skin blotched from the sun. "Do you think that only those things in your history books are true? What about belief? Faith?"

"You're making Klara think the most terrible things about me."

"It doesn't have to be this way, Milo."

He smiled like the daguerreotype of a snake-oil salesman holding up a flask of "Peterson's Copper Canyon Snakeroot Cure-All" in George Lyon's Illustrated History of How The West Was Won. The figure in the daguerreotype had a thick moustache and more muted expression, but one that contained the same promising quality, in all senses of the word.

"You can choose to be happy with us, or unhappy without us. It's up to you."

"And what if I want nothing to do with you?"

He leaned close, his smile becoming lopsided as if he were daring me to recognize him, as if to say that's impossible now. "I've seen your models," he said. "You are precise, with a flair for the dramatic. I think you'd be a natural gardener, just like her. Why not join us?"

"Because you don't really want me. This is all a lie."

"What's your favorite color?"

"My favorite—?"

"Color."

I paused, uncertain where this was going. "Blue."

His eyes sparkled beneath those sleepy lids. "I've always said that blue is the most underrated color in the garden. Red, pink, yellow, everybody uses these colors. But blue? Now there's a challenge. There are beautiful blue hyacinths and irises and crocuses and daffodils, but did you know that no one has yet been able to breed a blue rose? It is the holy grail in roses. The first to breed a blue rose, he will be someone who is remembered. Our garden is already ground-breaking for so many reasons, why not try for the blue rose too? We could have a corner of the garden devoted to nothing except that. Think about it, Milo. Think about it."

He reached up and placed a hand on the side of my neck. His skin was cool. Mine, by contrast, burned.

It took me a moment to realize I'd been dreaming. I could still see Henri's face hovering close, still smell his musky incense-laden scent and hear his unspoken challenge: impossible. Yes, that's what my dream was telling me, that there was something impossible about him—that he was the blue rose. I pushed back the covers and got to my feet. I peered through the curtains. A sliver of moon had risen high in the night sky; it suffused everything—the driveway, garage, woods—in a dim blue light. The Peugeot was gone. I crept down the hallway and listened, first at Klara's door, then at Marta's. I heard nothing. Both were fast asleep.

I put on a black cotton turtleneck and trousers, then floated down the murky stairs into the kitchen. I opened a drawer and removed the heavy scissors that Mother had once used for her artistic projects. From another drawer I took a thick rubber flashlight and a garbage bag, and from the cupboard an old plastic cup I knew no one would miss.

I stole across the entrance hall and crept out the front door, into a cricket-filled night whose constellations hung low outside the soft aura of the moon. I recognized these from Klara's drills: Draco and Cepheus and Leo Minor. I also saw what's commonly known as the Big and Little Dippers, which were of course not constellations but rather parts of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor—the big and little bears. I could only hope there'd be no bears tonight.

The flashlight's beam extended forward like a lance. I picked out the garage. The crickets went silent as I approached, their bug-eyes and quivering antennae alert behind every tree. I lifted the door. The MG's trunk was barely visible. I slipped in the key, creaked it open with the hushed deliberation of a priest. My light washed over the fertilizer sack with its picture of a jaunty mustachioed farmer in overalls. I raised the scissors. He didn't flinch. I stabbed him in the face—again, again. Then I thrust the cup into the gaping wound, scooped out fertilizer and added it to the garbage bag. I took only half the sack—that was all I could carry. I found one of those funnels for changing oil and a pair of old work gloves. I slipped on the gloves and carried the bag and funnel to the rear of the house. The old Roman glowed a cadaverous green, moon-shadows falling across his eyes. It lent him the same haunting surprise one sees in photos of dead troops. And here I was, about to add corpses to the heap.

I began with a cluster of yellow roses near the patio wall. They were in full bloom. Henri must have planted them that way. I wasn't surprised. I dug out the soil near its roots and with the funnel carefully replaced it with sodium nitrate. Then I doused the buds. I could practically hear the flowers scream. I repeated this procedure with the others—the pinks, whites, purples, reds—replacing their soils with this binding agent, choking them with "too much of a good thing." I worked for almost three hours until my back ached and I could hardly breathe through all the dust. Still I was careful to cover up the sodium nitrate with a thin layer of soil to conceal my handiwork. I felt sure no one could tell what I'd done, how I'd break Henri's spell. Yes, Klara would have to doubt Henri now—she'd see the failure of their garden to thrive as symbolic. We'd both been immersed in novels long enough to feel the heavy weight of symbolism.

Suddenly I heard something. A footfall.

I froze. The night felt alive. Like the trees were aware of my presence. But I couldn't see a thing. I glanced at the house. For a moment I thought I saw Marta in the window—saw her eyes trained on me with the same hovering inscrutability she'd displayed when I was a child. But when I shined my flashlight, no one was there.