How the Late Autumn Night Novel Begins

The ferryboat smells of oil and something rattles all the time like an obsession. The spotlight’s turned on. We’re pulling into the jetty. I’m the only one who wants off here. “Need the gangway?” No. I take a long tottering stride into the night and stand on the jetty, on the island. I feel wet and unwieldy, a butterfly that just crawled out of its cocoon, the plastic bags in each hand hang like misshapen wings. I turn around and see the boat gliding away with its shining windows, then grope my way toward the house that has been empty for so long. There’s no one in any of the other houses. . . . It’s good to fall asleep here. I lie on my back and don’t know if I’m asleep or awake. Some books I’ve read pass by like old sailing ships on their way to the Bermuda Triangle to vanish without trace. . . . I hear a hollow sound, an absentminded drumming. An object the wind keeps knocking against something the earth holds still. If the night is not merely an absence of light, if the night really is something, then it’s that sound. Stethoscope noises form a slow heart, it beats, falls silent for a time, returns. As if the creature were moving in a zigzag across the Frontier. Or someone knocking in a wall, someone who belongs to the other world but was left behind here, knocking, wanting back. Too late. Couldn’t get down there, couldn’t get up there, couldn’t get aboard. . . . The other world is this world too. Next morning I see a sizzling golden-brown branch. A crawling stack of roots. Stones with faces. The forest is full of abandoned monsters that I love.