Skinder’s Veil

Kelly Link

ONCE upon a time there was a graduate student in the summer of his fourth year who had not finished his dissertation. What was his field? Not important to this story, really, but let’s say that the title of this putative dissertation was “An Exploratory Analysis of Item Parameters and Characteristics That Influence Response Time.”

By the middle of June, Andy Sims had, at best, six usable pages. According to the schedule he had so carefully worked out last year, when a finished dissertation still seemed not only possible but the lowest of the fruit upon the branches of the first of many trees along the beautiful path he had chosen for himself, by this date he should have had a complete draft upon which his advisors’ feedback had already been thoughtfully provided. June was to have been given over to leisurely revision in the shade of those graceful and beckoning trees.

There were reasons why he had not managed to get this work done, but Andy would have been the first to admit they were not good reasons. The most pressing was Lester and Bronwen.

* * *

Lester, Andy’s roommate, was also ABD. Lester was Education and Human Sciences. He and Andy were not on the best terms, though Lester did not appear to have noticed this. Lester was having too much sex to notice much of anything at all. He’d met a physiotherapist named Bronwen at a Wawa two months ago on a beverage run, and they’d been fucking ever since, the kind of fucking that suggested some kind of apocalypse was around the corner but only Lester and Bronwen knew that so far. The reek of sex so thoroughly permeated the apartment in Center City that Andy began to have a notion he was fermenting in it, like a pickle in brine. There were the sounds, too. Andy wore noise canceling headphones while doing the dishes, while eating dinner, on his way to the bathroom where, twice, he’d found sex toys whose purpose he could not guess. He was currently in the best shape of his life: whenever Bronwen came over, Andy headed for the gym and lifted weights until he could lift no more. He went for long runs along the Schuylkill River Trail and still, when he came home, Lester and Bronwen would be holed up inside Lester’s room (if Andy was lucky) either fucking or else resting for a short interval before they resumed fucking again.

Andy did not begrudge any person’s happiness, but was it possible that there could be such a thing as too much happiness? Too much sex? He resented, too, knowing the variety of sounds that Lester made in extremis. He resented Bronwen, whose roommates apparently had better boundaries than Andy.

No doubt she was a lovely person. Andy found it hard to look her in the eyes. There were questions he would have liked to ask her. Had it been love at first sight? In the fateful moment that day, standing in the refrigerated section of the Wawa, had Lester’s soul spoken wordlessly to hers? Did she always love this deeply, this swiftly, with this much noise and heat and abandon? Because Andy had been Lester’s roommate for four years now, and aside from a few unremarkable and drunken hookups, Lester had been single and seemed okay with that. Not to mention, whenever Andy brought up Lester’s own dissertation, Lester claimed to be making great progress. Could that be true? In his heart of hearts, Andy feared it was true. He mentioned all of this over the phone to his old friend, Hannah. It all came spilling out of him when she called to ask her favor.

“So that’s a yes,” Hannah said. “You’ll do it.”

“Yes,” Andy said. Then, “Unless you’re pranking me. Please don’t be pranking me, though. I have to get out of here.”

“Not a prank,” Hannah said. “Swear to God. This is you saving my ass.”

The last time they’d seen each other was at least two years ago, the morning before she left Boston for an adjunct position in the sociology department at some agricultural college in Indiana. “Adjuncts of the corn,” she said and had done three shots in succession. She’d been the first of their cohort to defend, and what had it gotten her? A three-year contract at a school no one had ever heard of. Andy had felt superior about that for a while.

Yesterday, Hannah said, her recently divorced sister in California had broken her back falling off the roof of her house. She was in the hospital. Hannah was flying out tomorrow to take care of her two young nieces. All of her sisters’ friends were unreliable assholes or too overwhelmed with their own catastrophes. Her sister’s ex was in Australia. What Hannah needed was for someone to take over her housesitting gig in Vermont for the next three weeks. That was what she said.

“It’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s outside of town, and the nearest town really isn’t a town anyway, you know? There’s not even a traffic light,” Hannah said. “There’s no grocery store, no library. There’s a place down the road where you can get beer and lightbulbs and breakfast sandwiches, but I don’t recommend those.”

“I don’t have a car,” Andy said.

“I don’t have one either!” Hannah said. “You won’t need one. There’s a standing grocery order, so you won’t need a car for that. I get a delivery every Tuesday from the Hannaford in St. Albans. If you want to make changes, you just send them an email. And I’m leaving a bunch of stuff in the fridge. Eggs, milk, sandwich stuff. There’s plenty of coffee. I have an Uber coming tomorrow at five p.m. Can you get here around three? I went ahead and mapped it, it should take you about seven hours to get here. I’ll send directions. Show up at three, we can catch up and I can go over stuff you need to know. But don’t worry! There isn’t a lot of stuff. Really, it’s just a couple of things.”

“You’re not giving me a lot of advance notice,” Andy said.

“What’s your Venmo?” Hannah said. “I’ll send you nine hundred bucks right now. That’s half of what I’m getting paid for three months.”

Andy gave her his Venmo. The most he’d ever been Venmoed was, what, around forty bucks? But here it was immediately, nine hundred dollars, just like that.

“So,” Hannah said. “You’ll be here. Tomorrow, by three p.m. Because promise I will hunt you down and remove the bones from both legs if you don’t come through. I’m counting on you, asshole.”

* * *

He was googling one-way car rentals when Bronwen wandered into the kitchen. She had Lester’s old acapella T-shirt on (Quaker Notes) and a pair of Lester’s even older boxer shorts. She got a Yuengling out of the fridge and popped it open, then stood behind Andy, looking at his screen.

“Going on a trip?” she said. She sounded wistful. “Cool.”

“Yeah,” Andy said. “Kind of? I agreed to take over a housesitting gig in Vermont for the rest of the month and it starts tomorrow afternoon. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, and even if I took a bus I’d still be over an hour away, so I guess I’m renting a car.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Bronwen said. “Car rental places will just rip you off, especially in summer. I’ve got a car and I’m off work the next couple of days. Lester and I’ll drive you.”

“No,” Andy said. He had spent most of the month trying to avoid being in the same room with Bronwen and Lester. Hadn’t she noticed? “Why? Why would you even offer to do that?”

“I’ve been trying to get Lester to get off his ass and go somewhere all summer,” Bronwen said. “Just say yes, and I’ll tell him it’s a done deal. Then he can’t weasel out. Okay? We’ll drop you off and then camp somewhere on the way home. A lake, maybe. Lots of lakes in Vermont, right?”

“Let me think about it,” Andy said.

“Why?” Bronwen said.

There really wasn’t anything to think about. “Sure,” Andy said. “Okay. If you’re okay with it and Lester is okay with it.”

“Great!” Bronwen said. She seemed truly delighted by the prospect of doing Andy this favor. “I’m going to go home and get my tent.”

* * *

He spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding Lester—who despite Bronwen’s reassurances was clearly sulking—and going through his piles of reading and research material. In the end he had a backpack and three canvas bags. He stuck his laptop and printer and a ream of paper in his gym bag, wrapped up in underwear and socks, a sweatshirt, his last two clean T-shirts, running shorts, and a spare pair of jeans. A waterproof jacket and a pair of Timberlands and his weights. There was a guy down the street who made regular trips up to various weed dispensaries in Massachusetts to buy merchandise which he then sold on locally at a healthy profit, and after perusing what was on offer, Andy spent a hundred dollars of Hannah’s money on supplies. After some thought he also purchased a pouch of Betty’s Eddies Tango for a Peachy Mango gummies for Bronwen as a thank you.

Because, really, it was Lester that Andy bore a reasonable grudge against. There was, for example, the time Lester had been complaining about Andy at top volume to Bronwen, not realizing Andy had come home and was right there, next door in his bedroom. “It isn’t that he’s a terrible person. He’s so fucking smug. Has to map every single thing out, but only because he won’t let himself think about whether or not he wants any of it. What does he want? Who knows? Definitely not Andy. No interior life at all. You know how people talk about the unconscious and the id? The attic and the basement? The places you don’t go? If you drew a picture of Andy’s psyche it would be Andy, standing outside of the house where he lives. He won’t go inside. He won’t even knock on the door.”

Which was rich, coming from Lester. That’s what Andy thought. And anyway, Lester wasn’t a psychologist. That wasn’t his area at all.

He texted a couple of friends he hadn’t seen in a while and went out, leaving Lester and Bronwen to fight about Vermont or fuck or watch Netflix in peace. It was good to be out in the world, or maybe it just felt good to know that tomorrow he was going to be in Vermont with all the time and space he could possibly need to get some real work done. To all of the questions about the house and its owner, he just kept saying, “No idea! I don’t know anything at all!” And how good that felt, too, to be on the threshold of a mysterious adventure. It wouldn’t be terrible, either, to see Hannah again.

As if this thought had summoned her, his phone buzzed with an incoming text. You’re still coming right?

All packed, he wrote back. So I guess I am.

You’re going to love it here. Promise. See you tomorrow. BE HERE BY 3!!!!

* * *

The plan had been to leave no later than six a.m. They got a late start, because Lester needed to find his spare inhaler, then bug spray, then a can opener, and then he wanted to make a second pot of coffee and take out the recycling and trash and check e-mail. By the time they were in the car it was eight a.m., and of course they hit traffic before they were even on the 676 ramp. Lester fell asleep as soon as they were in the car.

Bronwen, checking the rearview mirror, said, “We’ll make up the time once we’re on 87.”

“Yeah,” Andy said. “Okay, sure.” He texted Hannah, on my way hooray, put his airpods in and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were stopping in New Jersey. It was 10.30. According to his phone, they were now five hours away.

Andy paid for gas. “I could drive,” he said.

“Nah, buddy,” Lester said. “I got it.” But he took the wrong exit out of the rest stop, south instead of north, and it was five miles back before they were going in the right direction again.

Bronwen, in the passenger seat, turned around to inspect Andy. “One time I missed an exit on 95 going down past D.C. and so I just went all the way around again. It’s a big ring, you know? Turns out it was a lot bigger than I thought it was.”

There were a lot of trucks on 87, all of them going faster than Lester. No cops.

Bronwen said, “You got any brothers or sisters?”

“No,” Andy said.

“Where you from?”

“Nevada,” Andy said.

“Never been there,” Bronwen said. “You go back much?”

“Once in a while,” Andy said. “My parents are retired professors. Classics and Romance Languages. So now they spend a lot of time going on these cruises, the educational kind. They give lectures and seminars in exchange for getting a cabin and some cash. They’re cruising down the Rhine right now.” No, that had been December. He had no idea where they were now. Greece? Sardinia?

“That sounds awesome,” Bronwen said.

“They’ve had norovirus twice,” Andy said.

“Still,” Bronwen said, “I’d like to go on a cruise. And once you’ve had norovirus, you’re immune to it for like a year.”

“That’s what they told me,” Andy said. “They were actually kind of psyched after they had norovirus the first time.”

“This friend,” Bronwen said, “the one in Vermont, what’s her name?”

“Hannah,” Andy said.

“Did you ever date?”

“No,” Andy said.

“Yes,” Lester said.

“It wasn’t really dating,” Andy said. “We just kind of had a thing for a while.”

“And then Hannah went off to teach at some cow college,” Lester said. “And Andy hasn’t gotten laid since.”

“I’m just really, really trying to concentrate on my dissertation,” Andy said. Sometimes, avoiding Lester, he forgot exactly why he ought to avoid Lester. It wasn’t just Bronwen, and sex. It had a lot more to do with just Lester.

“Yeah,” Bronwen said. “That makes so much sense. Sometimes you have to keep your head down and focus.”

She really was very, very nice. Unlike Lester. “You have any brothers or sisters?”

“Nope,” Bronwen said. “Just me. My parents are over in Fishtown.”

“Fancy,” Andy said. Fishtown was where all the nice coffee shops and fixed-up rowhouses were.

“Yeah,” Bronwen said. “My mom’s mom’s house. But they’re saying they’re gonna put it on the market. The real estate tax is insane. But, you know, I think my mom is afraid if they sell the house they’ll end up getting divorced, and then she’ll have no husband and no house.”

“I’m sorry,” Andy said.

“No,” Bronwen said. “I mean, my dad’s kind of a dickhead?”

“I can vouch for that,” Lester said.

“Shut up,” Bronwen said. “I can say it but it doesn’t mean you can.”

“Whatever,” Lester said. “You love me. It was love at first sight. Coup de foudre.”

“I like you a lot,” Bronwen said.

“She doesn’t believe in love,” Lester said to Andy. “She’s only with me because I’m ghost repellent.”

“Believe it or not, he isn’t my usual type,” Bronwen said. “I’m actually more into girls.”

“Go back a minute,” Andy said. “To the thing about ghost repellent.”

Lester said, “So we met at the Wawa, remember? There was only one six-pack of Yuengling in the cooler and I got it. And Bronwen came up while I was at the counter to ask the guy if there was more, and there was, but it wasn’t cold. So I invited her over and we hooked up and she ended up spending the night but she said that at some point she’d probably have to split because everywhere she goes eventually this presence, this ghost, shows up, and unless she’s at work or something and can’t leave, she’ll just take off again. But the ghost never showed up. It never shows up when she’s with me. So, you know, we started hanging out a lot.”

“What do you mean a ghost shows up?” Andy said.

“It’s just something that happens,” Bronwen said. “Ever since I was a kid. Just after my fourteenth birthday. I don’t know why it happens, or why it started. It doesn’t bother anyone else. No one else sees it. I don’t even see it! I don’t even really know if it’s a ghost or not. It’s just, you know, this presence. I’ll be somewhere and then it will be there too. It doesn’t do anything. It’s just there. My mom used to tell me that it was a good thing, like a guardian spirit. But it isn’t. It’s kind of awful. If I leave a room, or if I go somewhere else, it doesn’t come with me right away, but eventually it’s with me again. If I stay in one place long enough, like if I’m asleep long enough, then when I wake up it’s there. So, yeah. I’m a terrible sleeper. But I went home with Lester and I fell asleep in his bed and then I woke up and it wasn’t there.”

“Ghost repellent,” Lester said smugly. There was a car in front of them that wasn’t even doing sixty-five. Lester just stayed there behind it.

“I thought maybe it was gone for good,” Bronwen said. “But I went home and took a shower and it showed right up. So, not gone. But any time I’m with Lester it stays away. So, yay.”

“Incredible,” Andy said.

Bronwen was facing forward again. “You probably don’t even believe me,” she said. “But, you know. There are more things than are dreamt of.”

“I don’t not believe you,” Andy said, equivocating.

But this didn’t appear to satisfy Bronwen. She said, “Well, whatever. I bet you’ve had weird shit happen that you can’t explain. Weird shit happens to everyone.”

“Except me,” Lester said.

“But that’s your weird thing,” Bronwen said, patting him on the arm. “If nothing weird ever happens to you, then that’s pretty weird.”

Andy said, “Once a kid knocked on our door, and when I went to answer it, he didn’t have a head.”

“Right,” Lester said. “Last Halloween. We gave him some Tootsie Rolls.”

“Both of you are utter and complete assholes,” Bronwen said. She put Ariana Grande on the stereo, tilted her head back, and closed her eyes. Apparently she found it easier to ignore assholes than a ghost.

* * *

They stopped at a McDonald’s just off the highway around three p.m. The map function now said they’d get to the house around 4.15. Andy sat at a table outside and texted Hannah. She called him back immediately. “Cutting it close, asshole,” she said.

“Sorry,” Andy said. “But it isn’t my car, so there isn’t much I can do.”

“Whatever, I owe you for agreeing to do this at all. It sucks, you know? Having to take off like this. This is such a sweet job. Please don’t fuck it up for me, okay?”

“How’s your sister?” Andy said.

“She’s okay, sort of? Doesn’t want to take the good painkillers, because she has a history with that stuff. So that’s going to be fun for everyone. Oh, hey. She’s calling. See you soon.”

Bronwen came outside and sat down on top of the picnic table. She was dipping French fries into the remains of her chocolate milkshake.

Andy said, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you guys driving me.”

“Not a big deal,” Bronwen said, tilting her head up and back toward the sun. She was a tawny golden brown all over, hair and skin. There were little golden hairs all over her forearms and legs. Andy could almost understand why a ghost followed her everywhere. Hannah was long and pale and freckled and sort of mean, even when she liked you. She was funny, though. She changed her hair color when the mood struck her. In her last Instagram post her hair was brown with two red-pink streaks, like a Porterhouse steak.

“Oh,” Bronwen said. “Oh, that was quick. Much quicker than usual.”

She’d dropped her milkshake. Andy picked it up before much could spill, but when he tried to give it back to her, Bronwen ignored it. She was watching a space on the sidewalk a few feet away.

“What?” he said. “What is it?”

Bronwen said, “I’ll go see if Lester’s done.” She jumped off the table and went back inside the McDonald’s.

Did Andy feel anything? Some kind of presence? He went over to stand, as far as he could gauge, in the place Bronwen had been staring at. There was nothing there, which probably meant that Bronwen had some kind of mental health issue, but also she’d just driven him most of the way to Vermont. “I don’t actually think you’re real,” he said, “but if you are, maybe you could go away and stop bothering Bronwen. She’s a nice person. She doesn’t deserve to be haunted.”

Saying this seemed the least he could do. When he went inside to check on the situation, Bronwen was in a booth, slouched down with her face in her arms and Lester rubbing her back. Andy went and got her ice water.

Eventually, she sat up and took a sip. “Sorry,” she said.

“No worries,” Andy said. “But we’d better hit the road. I need to get there before Hannah’s ride shows up. I don’t want to cut it too close.”

“Dude,” Lester said. “Give her a minute.” He actually seemed to be irritated with Andy and did that mean he believed Bronwen? That there was a ghost?

“Yeah,” Andy said. “Of course.” He went and used the bathroom and when he came out again, Lester and Bronwen weren’t in the booth. They weren’t at the car, and eventually he realized they had to be in the family restroom because there was no one else in the McDonald’s and the lock was engaged. It was another good twenty minutes before they emerged, and apparently the ghost had gotten tired of waiting and left, because Bronwen seemed much more cheerful getting back in the car. Lester too, for that matter.

Shortly after that, Andy’s phone lost all reception, which was probably for the best, because although Bronwen drove at least ten miles above the speed limit the rest of the way, they didn’t reach the address Hannah had given him until well after five.

* * *

The place Hannah had been housesitting was off a two-lane highway, the kind they’d been following for the past two hours. There were two stone pedestals on either side of the dirt drive, but nothing on top of them. There were a lot of trees. Andy didn’t really know a lot about trees. He wouldn’t have minded if there were fewer. It was the first turnoff in maybe half a dozen miles, which was what Hannah’s directions had said. If you kept going, you got to the store where you could get sandwiches and gasoline. That would have meant they’d gone too far. But Hannah’s directions had been clear, and they hadn’t gotten lost once. Nevertheless, they were late and Hannah was long gone.

You couldn’t see anything from the turn-off because of all of the trees. It was like going into a tunnel, the way the trees made a curving roof and walls over the narrow lane of white gravel, but then suddenly there was the house in a little clearing, very picturesque, three wide gray flagstone steps leading up to a green door between two white pillars, a pointed gable above. The house itself was a sunny yellow color, two-story with many windows. Behind the house, more trees.

“Nice place,” Bronwen said. “Cheerful.”

Andy’s phone still had no reception. It seemed to him that there were several possible scenarios about to play out. In one, Hannah’s Uber had been delayed. The green door opened and Hannah came out. In another, this all turned out to be a substandard prank, and the door would open and a stranger would be standing there. But what happened is that he got out of the car and went up the steps and saw that there was a note on the door. It said:

CAN’T WAIT ANY LONGER. WILL CALL FROM AIRPORT. WROTE UP INSTRUCTIONS FOR YOU AND LEFT THEM ON COUNTER. FOLLOW ALL OF THEM.

Andy tried the door. It was unlocked. Bronwen and Lester got out of the car and began to unload the trunk.

“We must have missed her by, what? A half hour?”

Andy said, “I guess she waited around a little while.”

“It always takes longer than you think it will,” Bronwen said. This seemed accurate to Andy, but not representative of the whole picture.

Lester said, “Come on. Let’s get Andy’s stuff in and hit the road. There’s a sugar shack near the campground we booked that does a maple IPA, and today’s Tuesday so it closes at six-thirty.”

“Or you could stay here,” Andy said. “Why camp when you can sleep in a bed?”

“Oh, Andy,” Bronwen said. “That’s so nice of you. But the whole point of this is camping. You can sleep in a bed anytime, you know?”

“Sure,” Andy said. “I guess. You want a quick tour before you go? Or to use the bathroom?”

“Here,” Lester said. He passed Andy’s backpack over and then went back to the car to get the gym bag and the rest. Something about his body language suggested that perhaps Lester was as weary of sharing an apartment with Andy as Andy was of sharing one with him.

Bronwen and Andy remained on the porch. You could see, through the door, an open-plan living room with furniture arranged around a central fireplace and chimney of stacked gray stone. Even though it was summer, there was a stack of firewood piled up beside the fireplace. Everything looked comfortable and a little shabby. There was no reason not to go inside.

“At least come get a glass of water,” Andy said.

“No,” Bronwen said. She sounded very certain. “I’m good.”

“What?” Andy said. “Are you getting a bad vibe or something? Is it haunted?” He was joking. He was kind of not joking.

“No,” Bronwen said. “No vibe at all. Promise. It’s just I don’t think I want to go inside, if that’s okay. That’s all.”

“Oh,” Andy said. He mostly believed her, he thought. “Okay, good.” On the whole, however, he had liked Bronwen better before he knew she was an authority on the supernatural. He decided he would keep the gummies for himself.

“That’s everything!” Lester said. “Have fun, buddy. Get lots of work done. See you in a couple of weeks.”

“Will do,” Andy said. “Enjoy sleeping on the ground. Bye.”

They got back in Bronwen’s car, Lester driving again, and turned around, disappearing back into the trees. You could see how the lower branches were practically scraping the top of the car. It was cooler here than it had been in Philly, which wasn’t exactly a surprise. The coolness must collect in the trees, little pockets under each leaf. There was no breeze, but the leaves were not still. They flexed and turned, green to silver to black in a shivering cascade as if Lester were catching a glimpse of the scaled flank of some living, crouching thing, too enormous to be seen in its entirety.

Andy picked up the carrier bags and went inside the house. It was a very nice house, very welcoming. He was lucky Hannah had thought of him. He went in search of the instructions she’d left.

* * *

Your phone won’t get reception here, she’d written, unless you’re online. Then it should be okay downstairs. Upstairs not so great. You’ll see the network. Skinder’s Veil. No password. Get on and send me a text, please, so I know you’ve arrived. If you don’t, I’m going to have to turn around and come back.

Sleep in whatever bedroom you want. The one at the back of the upstairs on the left has the most comfortable bed. Also the biggest. The bathroom upstairs is a little finicky. Don’t flush if you’re about to take a shower.

Don’t forget groceries come on Fridays. Driver comes around ten a.m. and leaves everything on the porch. The delivery list and all the info is on the fridge if you need to add anything.

If there’s a storm the power will probably go out, but there’s a generator. You have to fill it every twelve hours when it’s running. It’s in the little shed out behind the kitchen. Internet is mostly good if slow.

Help yourself to whatever you find in the cabinets. Laundry is upstairs next to the bathroom.

This house belongs to Skinder. I don’t know if that’s his first name or his last name. He’s eccentric but this is a sweet gig so whatever. He only has two rules for the housesitter, but please take them very seriously. Like, Moses coming down with the stone tablets level serious. All of this was going to be much simpler to explain in person, but you’ve already fucked that up, so let me hammer this home. TWO RULES. DON’T BREAK THEM.

RULE ONE! IMPORTANT! If any friends of Skinder’s show up, let them in no matter what time it is. No matter what or who they are. Don’t worry about taking care of them. Just let them in and do whatever and leave when they’re ready. Some of them may be weird, but they’re harmless. Some of them are actually pretty cool. Hang out if you want to and they want to. Or don’t. It’s totally up to you! You’ve got your dissertation to finish, right? Anyway, it’s entirely possible nobody will show up. Some summers a bunch of Skinder’s friends show up and some summers I don’t see anyone at all. No one so far this year.

RULE TWO! THIS ONE IS EVEN MORE IMPORTANT!!! Skinder may show up. If he does, DO NOT LET HIM IN. This is HIS OWN RULE. Why? I have no idea, but for the duration of the time during which he pays me to stay here, Skinder may not enter his own house. No matter what he says, he is not allowed to come in. I know how bizarre this sounds. But, fingers crossed, this will be a non-issue and you won’t see Skinder at all. If you do, then all you have to do is not let him in. It’s that simple.

ANDY: This is my favorite place in the world and the easiest job in the world and you had better not fuck it up for me. If you’re thinking of fucking it up, then also start thinking about how I’m going to murder you one inch at a time.

Love, Hannah.

P.S. If you look outside at night and there’s mist coming up from the ground all over, don’t freak out! There are a lot of natural springs around this area, a lot of water underground on the property. The mist is a natural phenomenon. It’s called Skinder’s Veil which is also the name of the house, which has belonged to the Skinder family for a long, long time. Also, the water here comes from a well. It’s spring fed so it tastes funny but apparently it’s good for you. It’s supposed to, and I quote, “open your inner eye.” So, basically, free drugs! There’s plenty of bottled water in case you don’t like the taste but I always just drink the water from the tap.

P.P.S. Seriously, if Skinder shows up, do not let him in the house no matter what he says.

* * *

Andy put the note in his pocket. “Much to think about,” he said out loud. This was a thing that one of their TAs had liked to say at the end of every class, back in undergrad. There’d been a certain intonation, and it had cracked Hannah and Andy up all semester. They’d said it to each other all the time. It had been the working title of Hannah’s dissertation. Andy couldn’t even remember the guy’s name.

He found the network on his phone, waited until he had a few bars back. And here were Hannah’s texts, increasingly frantic, then terse. Three voicemails. He went back to his bags at the front door and dug through the backpack until he’d found the pouch of gummies. Ate one and then texted Hannah back. Here! Just missed you, I’m guessing. So so sorry. Call me when you can. I have some questions.

He investigated his new living situation while he waited for Hannah to call. The kitchen and the living room he’d seen. There was a farmhouse table off to one side of the open-plan space, set in front of a big window overlooking a small area of flagstones, furred with moss. There was an Adirondack chair in case you wanted to sit outside, which Andy was not sure he did. Everything was very green: the mossy flagstones, the chair, the slumped, ferny ground, and trees, trees, trees crowding in close around it all. It had taken Andy some time to get used to the East Coast, the way there were trees growing everywhere, but this was another order of magnitude. Here there was nothing but trees and this house and whatever lived in and among trees.

There was the start of a path, too, heading off into those trees. Maybe it went somewhere interesting. More likely it was just going to be more trees.

There was a flat-screen TV, though, on the wall opposite the fireplace. And there had been a satellite dish on the roof. That seemed promising. They didn’t have a TV back in the apartment in Philly. There was a bookshelf with a blue ceramic bowl of small pinecones, a perfectly ordinary and unremarkable piece of granite, and some paperback books, mostly Stephen King and Michael Connelly. No family pictures, nothing sentimental or which might indicate the kind of person who lived here.

Andy set up his printer and his research material on the table. Then he took his small assortment of clothes and toiletries upstairs. There were four bedrooms. The two at the front of the house were smaller, the beds and curtains made up in cheerful floral fabrics, one red and white, the other green and blue. In the green and blue bedroom there was an amateurish painting of some sort of creature standing on two legs beside a river. So, a bear, perhaps? Were there other animals that stood on two legs? But then again, bears didn’t have long and luxuriant tails, did they. In the red and white bedroom, instead of a painting there was a framed cross-stitch that said: “WEST EAST HOME IS THE BEAST.” He would have to google that.

Above the bed in each room were two dainty bells, mounted just below the crown molding. A wire attached to the canon disappeared into a small hole drilled into the wall. They were called servants’ bells, weren’t they?

“Much to think about!” Andy said, and went to see the other two bedrooms. These were larger than the front bedrooms and the ceiling sloped down over the headboards of the beds. Here, too, were the bells, but no paintings, no vaguely Satanic cross-stitches. He decided to claim the left-hand bedroom, the one Hannah had suggested. The bed had been stripped; he found the sheets in the dryer.

Andy made himself a grilled cheese for dinner and had what turned out to be pasta salad out of a Tupperware container. There was a half-bottle of white wine in the refrigerator. He finished that and was sampling the tap water, which was a little musty but perhaps would get him high, when Hannah finally called.

“You’re there,” she said.

“Eating your pasta salad,” he said. “Not sure about the raisins.”

“It’s my mom’s recipe,” Hannah said. “You grow up eating something, it’s comfort food.”

“Mine is grilled cheese,” Andy said. “But it has to be Swiss cheese.”

They were both silent for a minute. Finally, Andy said, “Sorry I didn’t get here in time to see you.”

“Never mind,” Hannah said. “At least you’re there. I started thinking you weren’t going to show at all. What do you think?”

“I think I should have brought some sweaters,” Andy said. “So what’s with the rules? I’m supposed to let everyone in except for Skinder, who is the one who actually owns the house?”

“That’s pretty much it exactly,” Hannah said.

“So anyone can just show up and I let them in? But then, what if I accidentally let Skinder in? It’s not like I’ve met him.”

“Oh, wait, no,” Hannah said. “Shit. This would have been so much easier if I’d been able to explain this in person. Look, Skinder’s friends show up at the back door. The kitchen door. So, someone shows up and knocks at the kitchen door, let them in. The only person who will knock at the front door is Skinder. It’s actually pretty easy. Don’t let anyone in if they knock at the front door.”

“Doesn’t he have a key?” Andy said. “To his own house?”

“I know,” Hannah said. “It’s freaky. If it makes it easier, think of it like a game. Like Settlers of Catan. Or Red Rover! Or, whatever. There are rules and everyone has to follow them. If you think about it that way, then you just do what the rules say and you’re fine.”

“Okay, but what happens if I mess up and I let Skinder in?”

“I don’t know,” Hannah said. “I lose my summer job? Look, I signed a contract and everything. I’d have to give back what he paid me, which means you’d have to give me back the money I passed on to you. Just don’t let him in, okay? If he even shows up, which he probably won’t do. I’ve done this for a while and he only showed up three times, once the first summer, and then twice the summer before last. He knocks on the front door and you don’t let him in. I didn’t let him in. He asked me to let him in and I didn’t and so he went away again. It was a little weird, especially when he came back the second time, but it was fine. You’ll be fine. Just don’t let him in.”

“Okay,” Andy said. “So what does he look like?”

“Skinder?” Hannah said. “Oh, boy. You’ll know it’s him. I’m not going to try to explain it because it will sound crazy, but you’ll know. You’ll just know. For one thing, he always has a dog with him. It’s this little black dog. So if you see the dog, that’s him.”

“What if he doesn’t bring the dog? Or what if the dog’s dead? You didn’t see him last year. The dog could have died.”

“It really doesn’t matter,” Hannah said. “You don’t have to know what he looks like to know it’s him. He only comes to the front door. Just don’t let anyone through the front door and you’ll be fine.”

“Don’t let anyone in the front door,” Andy said. He took another swallow of musty water. Perhaps he would acquire a taste for it. “But if anyone knocks on the back door, then I have to let them in, right?”

“Right,” Hannah said.

“I don’t really understand any of this,” Andy said. “I’m kind of feeling like you’ve gotten me into something here. Like, I thought this was just a housesitting gig. You didn’t mention all of this other stuff on the phone the other day.”

“Yeah,” Hannah said. “I was pretty sure that if I brought all this up then you’d pass on the golden opportunity I was holding out to you. And I really, really needed you to come up so I could get out to my sister.”

“And this is in no way a hilarious prank,” Andy said.

“I’m paying you nine hundred dollars to stay in a secluded house in the country where you can finally get some real work done on your dissertation,” Hannah said. “Does that seem like a prank?”

“Much to think about,” Andy said.

“Much to think about, asshole,” Hannah said. “I’ll call you in a day or two, okay? I have to go catch my flight.”

“Safe travels,” Andy said. But she had already hung up.

There was a six-pack of some fancy IPA at the back of the fridge, and a jar of Red Vines on the counter beside the sink. He took a couple of those and one of the beers through to the living room and sat at the farm table. He turned on his laptop and put aside thoughts of Hannah and rules and the person who owned this house. He set aside, too, thoughts of Bronwen and the thing she said followed her. Regardless of whatever she felt or thought, it wasn’t real. Nothing was following anyone. He had felt nothing. And if there had been something, well then, it wasn’t here, was it? It was her ghost, not his, and so it would be wherever Bronwen was, waiting for the moment when Lester wasn’t there.

Andy worked for an hour, comparing penalized splines in various studies, until at last the edible kicked in, or perhaps it was the tap water smoothing down his splines and his thoughts and all the strangeness of the day. He watched TV and at nine he went upstairs to bed. He slept soundly through the night and only woke up because he had forgotten to close the blinds and sunlight was coming through the windows, turning all of the room to auspicious gold.

* * *

For the next two days he did not return to his dissertation, though he told himself that he would tackle it after breakfast. After lunch. Before dinner. Instead of doing this, he took naps, got stoned, played Minecraft, and did his sets and reps. After dinner he watched old science fiction movies. He left the television on when he went to bed. It wasn’t that he was lonely. It was just that he was out of the habit of being alone. On the third night, when he looked out of his bedroom window, threads of mist were rising from the ground below the trees. As he watched, these threads wove themselves into pallid columns, and then a languorous, uniform cloud, blotting out the patio. The Adirondack chair shrank away until only its back and arms remained, floating in whiteness. Andy went to the red and white bedroom at the front of the house and saw that the driveway had already vanished. If Hannah hadn’t told him this would happen, he supposed he would have found the phenomenon eerie. But it was perfectly natural. Creepy but natural. Natural and also quite beautiful. He tried without success to get a good picture with his phone. No doubt it would be possible to get better results if he left the house to take a picture at ground level, but he dismissed this idea when it came to him. He preferred not to go stand outside knee deep in something called Skinder’s Veil, natural phenomenon or not.

Instead he went to bed and had two hours of sleep before he woke. One of the bells above his head was ringing, ringing, ringing.

* * *

No one was at the front door. The TV was on: he turned it off. The bell was still ringing and so he went to the kitchen and turned on the lights. A woman stood at the back door, peering in. She must have had her finger on the bell and Andy, against his better judgment, did as Hannah had said he must and unlocked the door to let her in.

“Oh, good,” she said, stepping into the kitchen. “Did I wake you up? I’m so sorry.”

“No,” Andy said. “It’s fine. I’m Andy. I’m housesitting here. I mean, my friend Hannah was housesitting, but she had a family emergency and so now I’m filling in.”

“I’m Rose White,” his visitor said. “Very nice to meet you, Andy.” She opened the refrigerator and took out two beers. She handed one to him and then headed into the living room, sitting down on one of the chintz sofas and dropping her leather carry-all on the floor, plopping her muddy boots upon the coffee table.

She couldn’t have been much older than Andy. Her hair, longish and dirty blond, looked as if it hadn’t seen a hairbrush in several days. Perhaps she had been backpacking. In any case, she was still extremely attractive.

“Have a drink with me,” she said, smiling. One of her front teeth was just a little crooked. “Then I’ll let you go back to bed.”

Andy opened the beer. Sat down in an armchair that faced the fireplace. Hannah had said he didn’t have to hang out, but on the other hand, he didn’t want to be rude. He said, “Mist’s cleared up.”

“The veil? It usually does,” Rose White said. “Don’t recommend going out in it. You can get lost quite quickly. I was quite surprised to find myself right on Skinder’s doorstep. I thought I’d been going in another direction entirely.”

“You live nearby?” Andy said. It didn’t seem polite to ask why she was out so late at night. “Hannah comes and housesits every summer. Maybe you’ve met her?”

“Phew,” Rose White said. “The big questions! Haven’t been through in years, actually. Let’s see. The last housesitter I met was an Alma. Or Alba. But I see nothing’s much changed. Skinder’s not much for change.”

“I don’t really know much about Skinder,” Andy said. “Anything, really.”

“A complicated fellow,” Rose White said. “You know the rules, I suppose.”

“I think so?” Andy said. “If he comes to the house, I’m supposed to not let him in. For some reason. I don’t really know what he looks like, but he’ll come to the front door. That’s how I’ll know that it’s him. But if anyone comes to the back door, then I let them in.”

“Good enough to get by,” Rose White said. She began to unlace her boots. “Aren’t you going to drink your beer?”

Andy set it down. “I might just go back to bed, unless you need me for something. Going to try to get up early and get some work done. I’m working on my dissertation while I’m here, actually.”

“A scholar!” Rose White said. “I’ll be quiet as a mouse. Leave your beer. I’ll drink it for you.”

But she was not, in fact, as quiet as a mouse. Andy lay in his bed, listening as she rattled and banged around the kitchen, boiling water in the kettle and pulling out various pans. The smell of frying bacon seeped under his closed door in a delicious cloud. Andy wished he had his noise-canceling headphones. But they were on the table beside his laptop, and he did not want to go downstairs and get them.

He thought, Tomorrow I really will get some work done, visitor or no visitor. Otherwise all the time will just melt away and in the end I’ll have accomplished nothing.

Without meaning to, he found himself listening for the sound of Rose White coming up the stairs. It must have been after three when, at last, she did. She went into the bathroom beside his bedroom and took a long shower. He wondered which room she would choose, but in the end it was his door she opened. She didn’t turn on the lights, but instead got into the bed with him.

He turned on his side and there was enough moonlight in the room that he could see Rose White looking back at him. She had not bothered to put clothes back on post-shower. “Do you have a girlfriend?” she said.

“Not at the moment,” Andy said.

“Do you like to fuck women?”

“Yes,” Andy said.

“Then here’s my last question,” she said. “Would you like to fuck me? No strings. Just for fun.”

“Yes,” Andy said. “Absolutely, yes. But I don’t have a condom.”

“Not a concern for me,” she said. “You?”

Yes, a little. That was the problem with knowing a fair bit about how statistics worked. “No,” Andy said. “Not at all.”

But afterward, he wasn’t quite sure what the etiquette was. Should he try to get to know her a little better? He didn’t even know how long she was going to be staying at the house. It would have been easier if he’d been able to fall asleep, but that seemed to be out of the question.

He decided he would pretend to be asleep.

“Not tired?” Rose White said.

“Sorry,” Andy said. “A lot to think about. Think I’ll go downstairs and watch TV for a while.”

“Stay here,” Rose White said. “I’ll tell you a story.”

“A story,” Andy said. “You mean like when a kid can’t fall asleep. So one of their parents tells them a story? A story like that?” He wasn’t a kid. On the other hand, there was a woman in his bed he’d just met, and they’d had sex and now she was offering to tell him a story. Why not say yes? If nothing else, it would be something, later on, that would be an interesting story of his own. “Sure. Tell me a story.”

Rose White drew the covers up to her neck. She was lying on her back, and this gave the impression she was telling the story to someone floating on the ceiling. It felt strangely formal, as if Andy were back in a lecture hall, listening to one of his professors. She said, “Once, a very long time ago, there was a woman who wrote books for a living. She made enough from this to keep not only herself in modest comfort but also her sister, who lived with her and was her secretary. She wrote her novels longhand and it was the sister who read the manuscript first, before giving it back to the writer to edit. This sister, who was a romantic with very little outlet for expression, had a peculiar way of marking the parts she liked best. She would prick her finger with a needle and mark the place with her own blood to show how good she thought it was. A little blotch over a well-turned phrase, a little smudge. She would return the manuscript, the writer would do her revisions, sparing the lines and scenes that her sister had loved, and then the sister would type everything up properly and send it along to the writer’s agent.

“The writer’s books were popular with a certain audience, but never garnered much critical favor. The writer shrugged this off. She told her sister the merit of the books was that they were easy to produce at a rate which kept a roof over their heads, and they served a second purpose, which was to entertain those whose lives were hard enough. But, the writer said, she had in her a book of such beauty and power that anyone who read it would be changed by it forever, and one day she would write it. When her sister asked why she did not write it now, she said that such a book would take more time and thought and effort than she could currently spare.

“As time went on, though, the writer’s books became less popular. The checks they brought in were smaller, and their lives became little by little less comfortable. The writer determined that she would at last turn her attention to this other book. She labored over it for a year and into the next winter, and slept little and ate less and grew unwell. At night while she worked her sister would hear her groaning and coughing, and then one morning, very early, the writer woke her sister and said, ‘I have finished it at last. Now I must rest.’

“The sister put on a robe and lit a fire and sat down to read the manuscript at once, her needle in her pocket. But upon reading the very first sentence, she drew out her needle and pricked her finger to mark it. And the second sentence, too, she marked with her blood. And it went on like that as she read, until at last she had to go down to the kitchen to fetch a peeling knife. First she cut her palm and then she cut her arm and each line and every page was marked with the sister’s blood as she read, such was the power and beauty of the narrative and the characters and the writer’s language.

“Many days later, friends of the writer and her sister grew concerned because no one had heard from them in some time. Upon forcing their way into the house they found the sister exsanguinated in her chair, the manuscript in her lap all glued together with her blood. The body of the writer, too, was discovered in her bed. She’d died of an ague she’d caught from overwork and too little rest. As for the book she’d written, it was quite impossible to read even a single word.”

“That was really interesting,” Andy said, just as awake as he had been at the start, possibly more so. In a minute he would say so, get dressed, and go downstairs. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Rose White said. “Now go to sleep.”

* * *

He woke at the table downstairs, his laptop beside his head.

Rose White was on the couch. “I built a fire,” she said. “Thought you might catch cold. Vermont weather is unpredictable, summer or not.”

She’d done this, Andy realized, because he was entirely naked. His shoulders ached and his ass was unhygienically stuck to the rattan seat of the chair. “What time is it?” he asked her. “How long have I been here?”

“You were gone when I woke up,” Rose White said. “Discovered you here when I came down this morning. It’s past noon now.”

“I must’ve been sleepwalking,” Andy said. His laptop was open, and when he woke the screen, a prompt appeared. Save changes?

“Get dressed,” Rose White said. “I’ll make you a sandwich. Then you can get back to it.”

He dressed and ate, reading over what he’d written the night before. It was rough, but it was also a reasonably solid foundation for revision. Moreover, there were four thousand words that had not been there the night before. This seemed like enough work for one day, and so, at Rose White’s suggestion, they spent the day in bed and the evening drinking bourbon they procured from a locked liquor cabinet. Rose White knew where to find the key.

The next few days and nights were pleasant ones. Andy took leisurely naps in the afternoon. He shared his stash with Rose White. They took turns cooking, and let the dishes pile up. Rose White had very little interest in his life, and no interest at all in explaining anything about herself. If, after sex, she enjoyed telling him her strange little stories, at least they were mostly very short. Some of them hardly seemed to be stories at all. One went like this: “There once was a man possessed of a great estate who did not wish to marry. At last, beset by his financial advisors, he agreed to be married to the first suitable individual he encountered upon setting into town, and when he came home with his fiancée, his friends and advisors were dismayed to find that he had become engaged to a tortoise. Nevertheless, the man found a priest willing, for a goodly sum of money, to perform the ceremony. They lived together for several years and then the man died. At last a distant relative was found to inherit the estate, and on his first night in his fine new home, he had the tortoise killed and served up as a soup in its own shell. But this is not, by any means, the worst story about marriage that I know.”

Another story began, “Once there was a blood sausage and a liver sausage and the blood sausage invited the liver sausage over for dinner.” None of Rose White’s stories were cheerful. In all of them, someone came to a bad end, but there was nothing to be learned from them. Nevertheless, each time she finished and said to Andy, “Go to sleep,” he promptly fell asleep. And, too, each morning he woke up to find that he had, in some dream state, produced more of his dissertation, though after the second time this happened he moved his laptop and his notebooks up to the vanity in the red and white bedroom.

The groceries were left on the porch on the appointed day, and the dissertation progressed, and in the afternoons when it grew warm Rose White sunbathed topless on the patio while Andy did reps. Hannah called to check in, and to report her nieces would eat nothing but sugar cereal and mozzarella sticks, while her sister was camped out on a blow-up mattress in the dining room because she could not get up and down the stairs, and needed Hannah’s help getting onto the toilet and off again.

“Everything’s great here,” Andy said.

“Any visitors?” Hannah asked.

“Yeah, some lady named Rose White. I don’t know how long she’s staying.”

“Never met her,” Hannah said. “So, what’s she like?”

“She’s okay,” Andy said. He didn’t really feel like getting into the details. “I’ve been really focused on the dissertation. We haven’t really hung out or anything. But she’s done some of the cooking.”

“So, pretty normal, then,” Hannah said. “Good. Sometimes the ones who show up are kind of strange.”

“How so?” Andy said.

“Oh, you know,” Hannah said. “Some of them can be a little strange. I’m gonna go make lunch now for the two small assholes. Call if you need anything. And I’ll check in again later. As soon as I know when I can head back, I’ll let you know.”

“No rush,” Andy said, looking out the window to where Rose White lay, splendid and rosy upon a beach towel. This was wonderful, yes, but what if she were developing feelings for him? Did he feel something for her? Yes, possibly. This was very inconvenient. They didn’t really know each other at all, and she was, as Hannah had said, kind of strange.

The whole thing made him uncomfortable. Much to think about. He had a gummy and pretended to be working when Rose White came back in. But she’d only come into the house to use the bathroom and put her clothes back on. Then she was off for a hike, not even bothering to ask if he wanted to come along. She came back at dinnertime with a pocketful of mushrooms. “Psilocybe cubensis,” she said. “I’ll make us tea. The water here has some excellent properties of its own, but there’s no such thing as too much fun.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Andy said. “I mean, what if you haven’t identified the mushroom correctly?”

Rose White gave him a withering look. “Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs,” she said. “Are you a man or a chicken, Andy?”

It was, again, the study of statistics that presented the problem. Nevertheless, Andy had some of the tea and in return shared his vape pen. It was the first time he’d ever tried mushrooms, and only pieces of the night that followed were accessible to him later on.

Rose White, sitting astride him, her hands on his biceps, the feeling that her fingers were sinking into his flesh as if either he or she are made of mist.

Rose White saying, “I think my sister must be quite near now.” Andy tries to say that he didn’t know she had a sister. He doesn’t really know anything about her. “I’m Rose White but she is Rose Red.” When he looks at her, her hair is full of blood. Rose Red!

The realization that Skinder’s house has no walls, no roof, no foundation. The walls are trees, there is no ceiling, only sky. “It’s all water underneath,” he is explaining. Rose White: “Only the doors are real.”

Later, he is seated in front of the vanity in the red and white bedroom. The bell on the wall is ringing. When he leaves one bedroom, Rose White is coming out of another. Andy has to sit down on the staircase and bump down, one step at a time. Rose White helps him stand up at the bottom. His head is floating several feet above his body and he has to walk slowly to make sure he doesn’t leave it behind.

Two deer are arranged like statuary upon the flagstone patio. Are they real? Did these deer ring the doorbell? Do they want to come in? He finds this hysterically funny but when he opens the door, the deer approach solemnly on their attenuated, decorative legs. One and then the other comes into the kitchen, stretching their velvet necks out and down to fit through the door. Inside the velvet-lined jewel boxes of their nostrils the warmth of their breath is gold. It dazzles. Andy’s head floats up higher, bumping against the ceiling. He stretches out his hand, strokes the flank of an actual fucking deer. A doorbell-ringing deer. A moth has flown into the kitchen, he’s left the door open. It blunders through the air, brushing against his cheek, his ear. He opens his mouth to tell Rose White to close the door and the moth flies right in.

* * *

Rose White says, “Once upon a time there was a real estate agent who made arrangements to show a property. When she arrived at the property, she realized at once that her new client was none other than Death. Suspecting that he was there for her, she pretended she was not the agent at all, but rather another prospective buyer. Claiming she had been told to meet the listing agent around the back, she lured Death around the side of the house and told him to look through the French windows to see if anyone was there to let them in. When he did this, she picked up an ornamental planter and bashed in his head. Then she dragged the body of Death into the full bathroom and cut it into twelve pieces in the bathtub. These she wrapped in Hefty bags and, after cleaning the bathtub thoroughly, she parked her Lexus in the garage and placed these bags in the trunk. Over the next week, she buried each piece deep on the grounds of a different listing, and each of those houses sold quite quickly. Decades went by and the real estate agent began to regret what she had done. She was now in her nineties and weary of life, but Death did not come for her. And so she visited each of the properties where she had disposed of his corpse and dug him up, but perhaps her memory was faulty: she could not find the last two pieces. She is still, in fact, searching for Death’s left forearm and his head. The rest of him, badly decomposed, is in a deep freezer in her garage. Some days she wonders if, in fact, it was really Death at all. And what if it really had been Death? What if he had only come to see a house? Isn’t it likely that even Death himself must have a house in which to keep himself?”

* * *

Andy woke in his own bed with a dry mouth but no other discernable effects from the night before. In the red and white bedroom, his laptop was open. When he looked to see what he’d written, it was only this: How to work? Deer in house. Not sanitary!!! WTF. He deleted these.

When he went downstairs, though, there were no deer and no Rose White, either. She’d left a note on the kitchen table. “Headed out. Finished off bacon but did a big clean (badly needed!) so think we’re even. Thanks for the hospitality. Left you the rest of the mushrooms. Use sensibly! Take care if I don’t see you again. Fondly, Rose White.”

“Fondly,” Andy said. He wasn’t really even sure what that meant. It was one of those signoffs like “kind regards” or “best wishes.” A kiss-off, basically. Well. “Summer loving, had me a blast.” Lester’s acapella group liked to sing that one. He didn’t even have her phone number.

While he was microwaving a bowl of oatmeal, he inspected the tile floor of the kitchen. He actually got down on his hands and knees. What was he looking for? Rose White? Some deer tracks? The rest of his dissertation?

He gave himself the rest of the day off. Texted Hannah: There are a lot of deer around here, right? Do they ever come up to the house?

She texted right back: Lots of deer, yes. Bears too, sometimes.

Well. He didn’t feel like explaining that he’d had shrooms with a houseguest he’d also been having sex with, and that possibly he had let some deer into the house. Or else hallucinated this.

Without Rose White in his bed, he found he did not fall asleep easily. Neither did he work, in his sleep, on his dissertation. He made some progress during the days, but it was much like it had been in the apartment in Philadelphia, except here he had no excuse.

About a week after Rose White had gone, the servants’ bell rang again. It wasn’t midnight yet, and he was in bed, skipping to the end of a Harlan Coben novel because the middle was very long and all he really wanted was to see how it all came out.

He put a pair of pants on and went downstairs. At the back door was a wild turkey. After deliberating, Andy did as he was supposed to do and let it in. It did not seem at all wary of him, and why should it have been? It was an invited guest. Andy went into the living room and sat on the couch. The turkey investigated all the corners of the room, making little grunting noises, and then defecated neatly on the hearth of the fireplace. Its cheeks were violet, and its neck was bright red. It flew up on top of the cord of stacked wood and puffed out all the formidable armature of its feathers. Andy’s phone was on the table: he took a picture. The turkey did not object. It seemed, in fact, to already be sleeping.

Andy, too, went up to bed. In the morning, the turkey was waiting by the back door and he let it out again. He cleaned up the shit on the hearth and two other places. This was when, no doubt, he should have called Hannah. But she was probably waiting for him to do exactly that, and really, she should have been up front with him. And also, he realized, he was having a good time. It was like being inside an enchantment. Why would he want to break the spell? The next night the bell rang again, though to Andy’s disappointment it was neither a beautiful girl nor a creature at the back door. A grayish man of about sixty in Birkenstocks, a Rolling Stones T-shirt, and khaki shorts nodded but did not speak when Andy opened the door. He did not bother to introduce himself. He didn’t speak at all. Instead, he went straight upstairs, took a long shower, using all the towels in the bathroom, and then slept for two days in the blue and green bedroom. Andy kept his bedroom door locked while the gray man was in the house. It was a relief, frankly, when he was gone again. After that, it was an opossum, and the night after the opossum, the mist was on the ground again. Skinder’s Veil. When the bell began to ring, Andy went down to let his guest in, but no one was at the kitchen door. He went to the front door, but to his relief, no one was there either. The bell continued to ring, and so Andy went to the kitchen door again. When he opened the door, the mist came swiftly seeping in, covering the tile floor and the feet of the kitchen table and the kitchen chairs. Andy closed the door and at once the bell began to ring again. He opened the door and left it open. The guest was, perhaps, Skinder’s Veil itself, or perhaps it was something which preferred to remain hidden inside the Veil. Andy, thinking of Bronwen’s ghost, went up to his bedroom and shut the door and locked it. He rolled up his pants and wedged them against the bottom of the door. He left his lights on and did not sleep at all that night, but in the morning he was the only one in the house and the day was very sunny and bright. The door was shut tight again.

The last human guest while Andy was in Skinder’s house was Rose White’s sister, Rose Red.

* * *

When Andy opened the kitchen door, it was Rose White who stood there. Except, perhaps it was not. This person had the same features— eyes, nose, mouth—only their arrangement was somehow unfamiliar. Sharper, as if this version of Rose White would never think of anyone fondly. Now her hair was exuberantly, unnaturally purple-red, and there was a metal stud in one nostril.

“Rose Red,” she said. “May I come in?”

This was the sister, then. Only, as she spoke Andy saw a familiar crooked tooth. This must be Rose White, hair colored and newly styled. And would he even have noticed her nose was pierced previously? Not if she’d not had her stud in. Well. He would play along.

“Come in,” he said. “I’m Andy. Filling in for the original housesitter. Your sister was here about a week ago.”

“My sister?” she said.

“Rose White,” Andy said. It was like being in a play where you’d never seen the script. He had to give Rose White this: she wasn’t boring.

“We don’t even have the same last name,” Rose Red said. She looked very prim as she said this. She was, it was true, a little taller than he remembered Rose White being, but then he saw her ankle boots had two-inch heels. Had she really come up the path wearing those? Mystery upon mystery.

He said, “My mistake. Sorry.” After all, who was he to talk? He’d managed not even one complete paragraph in two days. Maybe he’d do better now that she was here again.

Rose Red (or Rose White) went rummaging through the kitchen cabinets. “Help yourself,” he said. “I was just about to make dinner.”

Rose Red was regarding the plate beside the sink where Rose White’s mushrooms were drying out. “Yours?” she said.

Andy said, “Happy to share. You going to make tea?”

“What if I made some risotto?” she said.

And so Andy set the table and poured them both a glass of wine, while Rose Red made dinner. The risotto was quite tasty and, Andy saw, she had used all of the mushrooms. Once again, he tried to discover more about the owner of the house, but like Rose White, Rose Red was an expert at deflection. Had he hiked any of the paths, she wanted to know. What did he think of the area?

“I’ve been kind of busy,” Andy said. “Trying to finish my dissertation. It’s why I’m here, actually. I needed to be able to focus.”

“And when you’re finished?” Rose Red said.

“Then I’ll defend and go on the job market,” Andy said. “And hopefully get a teaching job somewhere. Tenure track, ideally.”

“That’s what you’ll do,” Rose Red said. “But what do you want?”

“To do a good job,” Andy said. “And then, I suppose, to be good at teaching.”

Rose Red appeared satisfied by this. “Have you been on the trails at all? Gone hiking? So much to explore up here.”

“Well,” Andy said. “Like I said, I’ve been busy. And I don’t actually like trees that much. But the Veil is pretty interesting. And people keep showing up. That’s been interesting, too. Rose White, the one I mentioned before, she had all these weird stories.” He wasn’t sure whether or not he should bring up all the sex.

After dinner they had more wine and Rose Red found a puzzle. Andy didn’t much care for puzzles, but he sat down to help her with it. The longer they worked on it, the harder it grew to fit the pieces together. Eventually, he gave up and sat, watching how his fingers elongated, wriggling like narrow fish.

Upstairs, one of the bells began to ring again. “I’ll get that,” Andy said, excusing himself from the puzzle of the puzzle. In the kitchen he could perceive, once again, that it was not a kitchen at all. Really, it was all just part of the forest. All just trees. The puzzle, too, had been trees, chopped into little bits that needed arranging into a path. It was fine. It was fine, too, that a brown bear stood on its hind legs at the door, depressing the bell.

“Come in, good sir, come in,” Andy said.

The bear dropped down onto all fours, squeezing its bulk into the kitchen. It brought with it a wild, loamy reek. Andy followed the bear back into the living space where Rose Whatever Her Name Was sat, finishing the puzzle. You could see the little fleas jumping in the bear’s fur like sequins.

Rose Red jumped up and got the serving bowl with the remains of the pasta. She placed it before the bear, who stuck its whole snout in. Andy lay down on the floor and observed. When the bear was done, it leant back against the couch. Rose Red scratched its head, digging her fingers deep into its fur. They stayed like that for a while, Rose Red scratching, the bear drowsing, Andy content to lie on the floor and watch them and think about nothing.

“This one,” Rose Red said to the bear. “He’s going to be a great teacher.”

“Well,” Andy said. “First there’s the dissertation. Defend. Then. Go on the job market. Be offered something somewhere. Get tenure. There’s a whole path. You have to go along it. Through all the fucking trees. Like Little Red. Little Red Riding Hood. You know that story?”

“I don’t care much for stories,” Rose Red said.

“Oh, come on,” Andy said. “Tell me one. Make it up. Tell me one about this place.”

“Once upon a time there was a girl whose mother died when she was very young.” It wasn’t Rose Red, though, who was speaking. It was the bear. Andy was fairly sure that it was the bear, which he felt should have troubled him more than it did. Perhaps, though, it was all ventriloquism. Or the mushrooms. He closed his eyes and the bear, or Rose Red, went on with the story.

* * *

“Once there was a girl whose mother died when she was very young. They lived on a street where almost every house had a swimming pool in the backyard. Not the girl’s house, but the house on either side did. There was an incident, the girl never knew exactly what, and the mother drowned in the swimming pool that belonged to the house on the left. It was a mystery why she was in it. It was late at night, and no one knew when or why she had come over. Everyone else had been asleep: her body wasn’t discovered until morning.

“When she wasn’t much older, the girl’s father remarried a woman with a daughter of her own. Don’t worry, though, this isn’t a story about a wicked stepmother. The girl and her stepmother and the stepsister all got along quite well, much better, in fact, than the girl got along with her own father. But all through her adolescence, there were stories about the pool next door; that it was haunted. The family who had lived there when the mother drowned moved away—the new family loved their house and their pool, but it was said that they never went swimming after midnight. Anyone who went swimming after midnight ran the risk of seeing the ghost down in the deep end, long hair floating around her face, her bathing suit losing its elasticity, her mouth open and full of water.

“The girl sometimes swam in the neighbor’s pool, hoping she would see her mother’s ghost, and also afraid that she would see her mother’s ghost. All the girls in the neighborhood liked to swim in that pool best. They would dare each other to swim after midnight, and the rest would take turns sitting on the edge of the pool, facing away, in case the ghost was too shy to appear in front of them all. Sometimes one of the girls even saw the ghost—a thrill, a ghost of their very own!—but the girl whose mother had drowned never saw anything at all.

“Eventually, she grew up and moved away and made a life of her own. She had a husband and two children and thought that she was quite happy on the whole. The path of her life seemed straightforward and she moved along it. Her father died, and she grieved, but her stepmother was the one who had been her true parent. Her mother she hardly remembered at all. Life went on, and if the path grew a little rockier, her prospects a little less rosy, what of it? Life can’t always be easy. Then, one day, her stepsister called to say that her stepmother, too, was dead.

“The daughter left her children with her husband and flew down for the funeral. Afterward, she and her stepsister would sort out their childhood home so it could be put on the market. The economy was in a downturn, and the daughter was not sure she would have her job for much longer, so half the proceeds from the sale of the house seemed fortuitous. But the real estate market was not good, and she saw that over half of the houses on her old street were for sale, including both houses on either side. Several others were vacant, or seemed so. It seemed to her possible the house would not sell at all, but she and her stepsister gamely went on for three days, making piles for Goodwill, piles for the trash, and piles that were things they might sell or keep for themselves.

“They reminisced about their childhood, and looked through old photos, and confided in each other their fears about the future. They wept for the loss of the two mothers and drank three bottles of wine.

“Now, the house on the left was vacant, and so was the house on the right. The swimming pool of the house on the left had been emptied, and the swimming pool on the right had not. Twice, in the middle of the day, they climbed over the chain-link fence and went swimming when they needed a break from sorting. The last night, tipsy and wide awake, the daughter left the childhood house where her stepsister lay sleeping in the bottom bunk of their childhood room, putting on one of the old-fashioned bathing suits from the pile they were taking to Goodwill. But instead of climbing over the fence to the right, she climbed the fence to the left.

“She found that the pool, which should have been empty, was instead full of clear blue water. The lights along the edge of the pool had been turned on and she could smell the chlorine from where she stood as if it had just been freshly cleaned. Little bugs, drawn to the lights, flew just above the water. Some of them had already tipped in and struggled. They would drown unless someone scooped them out.

“The daughter walked down the steps at the shallow end of the pool until she was waist deep. The water was pleasantly cool. The elastic of the suit had long ago crumbled, and so the pleasant and impossible water came creeping up the skin of her thighs.

“For a while she floated on her back, looking up at the stars and trying not to think about the future or why the pool was full of water. One was uncertain and the other was a gift. She floated until she grew, at last, cool and tired enough that she thought she might be able to sleep. Then she turned on her front, to wet her face, and down at the bottom of the pool she saw her mother at last. Here was the face she barely remembered. So young! The long, waving hair. It even seemed to her that her mother wore the twin of the suit she was wearing now. It seemed to the daughter that she could stay here in the pool, that she could stay here and be happy. Step painlessly off the path as her mother had done. It seemed the woman in the pool wanted for her to stay. They would never grow old. They would have each other.

“She could have stayed. She was very tired and there was still so much of her life ahead of her. There were so many things she needed to do. But in this story, she got out of the pool. She went back to the house of her childhood and she woke up her stepsister and told her what she had seen. The stepsister, at first, did not believe her. Wasn’t the pool empty? Perhaps, intoxicated as she was, she’d gone to the other pool, the one that was full, and hallucinated seeing her mother.

The daughter argued with her. Her mother had been wearing the bathing suit that she’d drowned in, the very same one the daughter was wearing now. Couldn’t the stepsister see how her bathing suit was wet? She was dripping on the tile floor.

“The daughter insisted she’d gone swimming in an empty pool. She had finally seen the ghost. Okay, her stepsister said, what if you did? But you didn’t see your mother. There is no ghost. Your mother wasn’t even wearing a bathing suit. She had a cocktail dress on. That’s what my mother told me. And even if she had been wearing a bathing suit, it wouldn’t be that one. No one would have kept the bathing suit your mother drowned in.

“No, the daughter said. I saw her. She was so young! She looked exactly like me!

“Come on, said the stepsister. She brought the daughter down to the room where they’d been sorting keepsakes. She spread out photographs until they found one of the mother. It was dated on the back, the date of the mother’s death. Is that who you saw? said the stepsister. She doesn’t look much like you at all.

“The daughter studied it. Tried to think what she had seen. The closer she looked, the less sure she was that she had seen her mother. Perhaps, then, all along she had been the one haunting the swimming pool. Why should hauntings happen in linear time, after all? Isn’t time just another swimming pool?

“Now, Andy, it’s time for you to go to sleep. But if you like, though I don’t care for stories, I’ll tell you one more.”

* * *

Rose Red says, “Once upon a time there was a house that Death lived in. Even Death needs a house to keep himself in. It was indeed a very nice house and for much of the year Death was as happy there as it is possible for Death to be. But Death cannot stay comfortably at home all year long, and so once a year he found someone to come and keep it for him while he went out into the world and made sure everything was as it should be. While he was gone from his house, it was the one place that Death might not come in. He knows this, even though, at times he wants nothing more than to come home and rest. And while Death was gone from his house, all of those creatures who, by one means or another, had found a way so that Death might not take them yet, might come and pass a night or two or longer in Death’s house and not worry he would find them there. In this way many may rest and find a bit of peace, though the one who follows them unceasingly will follow them once more when they put their foot onto the path again. But this isn’t your story. As a matter of fact, those who come and stay owe a debt of gratitude to the one who keeps house for Death while he is away. Even Death will one day pay his debt to you as long as you keep your bond with him.”

* * *

Andy sleeps. He sleeps long and wakes, again, before his laptop. Has he written what he reads there, or has someone else? Well. Bears can’t type. It’s morning and there is no one in the house but Andy. There’s a pile of bear shit beside the farmhouse table, cold but still fragrant. The puzzle is back in its box.

* * *

And now the story is almost over. Andy continued to work in a desultory and haphazard way on his dissertation. No one else came to the kitchen door while he stayed in Skinder’s house, but one night the bell woke him again. He went first to the kitchen, thinking he might see one Rose or the other, but truly this time there was no one there. It came to him that the bell he still heard ringing was not the same bell as before. He went, therefore, to the door at the front of the house, and there, on the porch, stood Skinder with his dog.

How did Andy know it was Skinder? Well, it was as Hannah had said. You would know Skinder, whether or not the dog—small, black, regarding Andy with a curious intensity—had been beside him. What did Skinder look like? He looked exactly like Andy. It was as if Andy stood inside the house, looking out at another, identical Andy, who was also Skinder and who must not be allowed inside.

There was a car in the driveway. A black Prius. There was a chain on the front door, and Andy kept it on when he opened the door a crack. Enough to speak to Skinder, but not enough for Skinder to come in, or his dog. “What do you want?” Andy said.

“To come into my house,” Skinder said. He had Andy’s voice as well. “My bags are in the car. Will you help me carry them in?”

“No,” Andy said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you in.”

The black dog showed its teeth at this. Skinder, too, seemed disappointed. Andy recognized the look on his face, though it was a look that he knew the feel of, more than the look. “Are you sure you won’t let me in?” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Andy said again. “But I’m not allowed to do that.”

Skinder said, “I understand. Come along.” This to the dog. Andy in the house watched Skinder go down the steps and down the gravel driveway to the car. He opened the door and the dog jumped up onto the seat. Skinder got in the car at last too, and Andy watched as the car went down the driveway, the little white stones crunching under the tires, the car silent and the headlights never turned on. The car disappeared under the low, dragging hem of leaves and Andy went back upstairs. He didn’t attempt to sleep again. Instead, he sat in the red and white bedroom, in a chair in front of the window, watching in case Skinder returned.

* * *

Hannah came back two days later. She sent a text before her overnight flight: Margot’s still in a cast, but we’ve agreed it’s better if I go. No

one happy and house is too small. Neighbor going to help out. See you tomorrow afternoon!

He hadn’t finished his dissertation, but Andy felt he was well on the way now. And he was going to see Hannah again. They’d catch up, he’d tell her a modified history of his time in the house, and maybe she’d ask him to stay. There were plenty of bedrooms, after all. She could even take a look at what he had so far, give him some feedback.

But when she arrived, it was clear that he wasn’t welcome to stay, even to Andy, who wasn’t always the quickest to pick up on cues. “I’m so grateful,” she kept saying. Her hair was blue now, a deep rich sky-blue. “You were such a lifesaver to do this.”

“I was happy to do it,” Andy said. “It was fun, mostly. Weird, but fun. But I wanted to ask you about some aspects. Skinder, for example.”

“You saw him?” Hannah said. All of her attention was on Andy, suddenly.

“No, it’s fine,” Andy said. “I didn’t let him in. I did what you told me to do. But, when you saw him, I wanted to ask. Did he look familiar?”

“What do you mean, exactly?” Hannah said.

“I mean, did you think he looked like me at all?” Andy said.

Hannah shrugged. She looked away, then back at Andy. “No,” she said. “Not really. Okay, so I’ve already paid the fare back on the Uber. It’ll take you to Burlington and you can catch a Greyhound there back to Philly. But you have to go now, or you’ll miss the last bus. I already checked the schedule—there’s nothing if you miss that one until tomorrow morning. Don’t worry about cleaning anything up or changing the sheets. I’ll take care of it.”

“I guess if you’re sure,” Andy said. “If you don’t need me to stay.”

She gave him an incredulous look at that. “Oh, Andy,” she said. “That’s so sweet. But no, I’ll be fine. Come here.”

She gave him a big hug. “Now go get your stuff. Do you need a hand?”

He left the ream of paper behind. He hadn’t really needed to print out anything. That got rid of one of the canvas bags, and he lugged everything else out to the Uber. Hannah came down the steps to give him a sandwich. She took a look at his Klean Kanteen and said, “Is that tap water?”

“Yes,” Andy said. “Why?”

“Ugh,” Hannah said. She took the canteen from him and opened it, pouring the water out. “Here. Take this.” This was bottled water. “It’s from the fridge, so it’ll be nice and cold. Bye, Andy. Text me when you get home so I know you’re there.”

She hugged him again. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. The way she smelled, the feeling of her hair on his cheek. “It’s really nice to see you again,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I know. It’s been such a long time. Isn’t it weird, how time just keeps passing?”

And that was that. He turned to get one last look at the yellow house and at Hannah as the car went up the driveway, but she had already gone inside.

* * *

When he was at last back at the apartment in Philly, it was morning again. Andy was tired—he had not slept at all on the bus, or in any of the stations in between transfers—and he could not shake the idea that when he opened the door, Skinder would be waiting for him. But instead here was Lester on the futon couch in his boxer shorts, looking at his phone and slurping coffee. It was much hotter in Philly. The apartment had a smell, like something had gone off.

“You’re home,” Lester said without much enthusiasm. “How was Vermont?”

“Nice,” Andy said. “Really, really nice.” He didn’t think he’d be able to explain what it had been like to Lester. “Where’s Bronwen?”

Lester looked down at his phone again. “Not here,” he said. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

From this, Andy gathered they had broken up. It was a shame: he felt Bronwen might have been a good person to talk to about Vermont. “Sorry,” he said to Lester.

“Not your fault, dude,” Lester said. “She was not the most normal girl I’ve ever been with.”

Occasionally over the next week Andy noticed how Lester sometimes looked as if he were listening for something, as if he were waiting for something. And after a while, Andy began to feel as if he were listening too. And then, sometimes, he thought that he could almost see something in the apartment when Lester was there. It crept after Lester, waited patiently, crouched on the floor beside him when he sat at the table. It was mostly formless, but it had a mouth and eyes. It reminded Andy of Skinder’s dog. Sometimes he thought it saw him looking. He felt it looking back. But Lester, he thought, could not see it at all.

It wasn’t entirely bad to have it in the house. It meant Andy worked, at last, very hard to finish his dissertation. Or perhaps it had been Vermont that had gotten him over the hump. All that had really been needed was for him to get out of his own way. When he was nearly done, Andy began looking for higher ed listings, and then, very soon, he was defending, and he was done, and he had graduated at last and had his first interview. He was very ready to leave the apartment, and Philly, and Lester, and Lester’s ghost, behind.

The job interview did not go as well as he’d hoped. There were other candidates, and he was quite surprised when, in the end, the job was offered to him. But he took it gladly. Here was the path which led toward tenure and a career and all the rest of his future. Years later, one of the older faculty members who had been on the hiring committee got very drunk at a bar they all frequented, and told Andy that he had almost not gotten the offer, in fact. “The night before we met to discuss, Andy, I had the most peculiar dream. In the dream I was in the woods at night and lost, and there was a bear. I couldn’t move I was so scared. The bear came right up and I knew that it was going to eat me, but instead it said, ‘You should hire Andy. You’ll be glad if you do and you’ll regret it if you don’t. Do you understand?’ I said I did and then I woke up. And then at the meeting no one wanted to say much; there was a very weird feeling, and then someone, Dr. Carmichael, said, ‘I had a dream last night that we should hire Andy Sims.’ And then someone else said, ‘I had the same dream. There was a bear and it said exactly that. That we should hire Andy Sims.’ And it turned out we had all had the dream. So, we hired you! And, in the end, it turned out for the best, just like the bear said.”

Andy said that this was extremely peculiar, but yes, it had all turned out all right. When, later, he went up for tenure and got it, he wondered if the committee had been given another dream. In any case, he was content to have what he had been given. He caught himself, once, at the end of a lecture, saying, “Much to think about.” But there wasn’t, really. His students gave him adequate ratings. It seemed to some of them that Professor Sims really looked at them, that he seemed to see something in them (or perhaps near them), none of their other teachers did. What exactly Professor Sims saw, though, he kept to himself. It was, no doubt, an unfortunate after-effect of the water he’d drunk so much of one summer.

There was this, too: although his children asked him over and over why they could not have a dog, Andy could not bear this idea. Instead, he got them guinea pigs, and then a rabbit.

As for Hannah, he ran into her once or twice at conferences. He went to both of her presentations and took notes so he could send her an email afterward with his thoughts. They had drinks with some of their colleagues, but he didn’t ask her if she still housesat in the summer in Vermont. All of that seemed of another life, one that didn’t belong to him.

Lester had dropped out of the program. He went and worked for a think tank in Indonesia. Andy didn’t know if anyone had followed him there.

And then, years later, Andy found himself at a conference in Montpelier, Vermont. It was fall and very beautiful. He found trees quite restful, actually, now that he’d lived on the East Coast for so long. The last day of the conference, he began to think about the parts of his life that he hardly thought about at all, now. He’d given his panel, had heard the gossip, talked up his small college to fledgling Ph.D. candidates. Back in his hotel room, he looked at maps and car rentals and realized it would not be unrealistic to drive home instead of flying. It would be a very pretty drive. And so he canceled his plane ticket and picked up a rental car instead. He thought perhaps he might try to find the yellow house in the woods again, and see who lived there now.

But he didn’t remember, as it turned out, exactly which highway the house had been on. He drove down little highway after little highway, all of them lovely but none the road he had meant to find. And, toward dusk, when a deer came onto the road, he swerved to miss it and went quite far down the embankment into a copse of trees.

He wasn’t badly hurt, and the car didn’t look too bad, either. But he thought it would require a tow truck to get it back up again, and his cell phone had no reception here. He went up to the road and waited some time, but no car ever came past and so he went back down to his rental, to see what he had to eat or drink. He saw, close to where the car had ended up, there was quite a well-trodden trail. Andy decided he would follow it in the direction he felt was the one most likely to lead toward St. Albans.

The trail meandered and grew more narrow. The light began to fade and he thought of turning back, but now the trail led him out to a place he recognized. Here was the patio and here was the Adirondack chair, grown even more decrepit and weatherworn. Here was the comfortable yellow house with all the lights on inside.

He went around to the front door. Well, why not? He wasn’t a bear. He knocked and waited, and eventually someone came to the door and opened it.

The other Andy stood in the doorway and looked at him. Where was the little dog? Surely it was dead. But no, there it was in the hallway.

“Can I come in?” Andy said.

“No,” Skinder said and shut the door. Andy waited a little longer, but all that happened was that the lights in the house went off. It was dark outside now and the wind was rattling all the leaves in the trees. There wasn’t much he could think of to do, so after a while Andy went back to find the path again.