Memories. More of them. Memories I’d forgotten, or ones I thought I’d forgotten, ones I didn’t even know I had stored away, have been returning.

I remember the very first night when Hen heard the noises. It was probably six months, maybe eight, after Terrance’s first visit. She wasn’t sleeping very well then. Many of those nights I’d wake up to find her lying on her back in bed, looking up at the ceiling, or at me. Some nights she wouldn’t be in the bed at all. On this night she was the one who woke me up.

“Junior,” she was saying, shaking my arm. “Junior. Wake up.”

What? What is it? I asked.

“Can you hear it? Can you hear that?”

I’m asleep. What is it?

“Listen,” she said.

I lay there, still half asleep, motionless, listening. The house was quiet. I told her so.

“I’ve been hearing it the last few nights, that noise. But tonight it’s the worst. It sounds like a scratching in the walls.”

You’re probably dreaming, I said. Go back to sleep.

A minute later, maybe longer, she was waking me again.

“There, you hear that? I think it’s the beetles. There’s more of them. You must have heard that,” she said.

But I hadn’t. I’d been asleep. Like Hen should have been, too.