The first time I saw him was Halloween. We had just moved in and were taking the girls trick-or-treating. My older daughter was a witch, my younger a watermelon.

When we turned left at the end of our driveway, I saw him sitting in his yard across the street with his eight-year old son. A fire was burning between them in a portable fire pit. He was speaking to his son loudly enough that I could hear him from across the street. Couldn’t make out the words, but it seemed like theater. Like he was acting.

We walked down the street in a cold drizzle. Not a good first Halloween. My older girl did fine, but the little one could barely hang on. Too many steps up porches and back down. Too many people, too much stimulation, too hard for me to hold her hand and the umbrella and her plastic pumpkin full of candy. We crossed the street and turned towards home, ringing door bells on the opposite side.

As we approached the man’s house I heard him coaching his son on how to scare kids. He said these girls coming up – my girls – were too small for him to do the thing he did with that last bunch. His eyes were on me.

In the spring, I was digging up dead bushes and the girls were playing in the yard when the man decided to fix his front door. The front door he never used. He came and went through the side entrance off his driveway. Never opened his front door at all. Not until that day he decided to fix it. While I was in the yard with the girls. He had a couple of tools. Screwdriver. Wrench. Whatever. He wasn’t doing any fixing.

When we went inside, so did he.

My wife suggested he was gay, and interested.

In the summer, I was reading on a couch near the window when I saw him on the roof with a rake. He was clearing off debris from the trees. There was a young girl up there with him. She was wearing a dress and was maybe six or seven.

“What kind of man takes a little girl onto the roof?” I said.

“You know, when you’re sitting there, he can see you,” said my wife. “I always see you when I pull into the garage.”

“Is that his daughter?” I said.

In the fall, as I was raking leaves to the curb and my girls were jumping in the piles, he crossed the street for the first time and stretched out his hand.

“I’ve neglected to make your acquaintance far too long,” he said. False smile. Sporadic eye contact. He told me his name.

His hand jiggled coins in his pockets. His knees waggled like he was jogging but his feet remained planted. He watched the girls as we talked, but that didn’t seem odd because they were running and jumping and I kept having to say no baby, or be careful honey. He asked if I was a Buckeye fan and suggested we watch a game down at Leigh’s house. He said the girls could play in the basement with Leigh’s kids and his.

I said sure, but I didn’t mean it.

In the winter, after putting the girls to bed, I sat on the couch and watched out the window as police cars lined up against his curb. No lights flashing, but every room in the house was lit up. The front door was wide open. Officers stood in the yard. A plain clothes cop was walking the perimeter, talking on a cell phone. The man’s wife was in the yard, talking with an officer.

I’d only seen the man’s wife outside once before, when she planted flowers around the enormous buckeye in their yard. My wife and I joked about her being a mail order bride. We were only half-joking. The flowers died after a few weeks.

I called my wife into the room and gestured out the window.

My wife noticed the van. The nondescript van. My wife loves her tv cop shows. I hadn’t noticed the van (it was nondescript). But my wife, she loves those cop shows.

She crossed her arms. She didn’t like the man across the street. She has a gut sense about people. I have it too, but she has it more. The one time she was in the same room with the man at Leigh’s house, the man left. Not the room. He left the house. Practically bolted. That’s how strong her gut sense of these things is. He felt it.

A plain clothes cop emerged from the house rolling what looked like a computer server on a dolly. He took it straight to the van.

I guessed child pornography. I was only half-joking. I told my wife she watched enough cop shows to know it had to be child pornography. Unmarked van. Plain clothes guys in and out. Computers being trucked out. What else could it be.

She stood there half glaring, half in shock.

Across the street, the man’s wife went back inside. The front door that never opened closed behind her. One police car left. The others remained. So did the van.

Next day, my wife called me at work. She said she was picking up my youngest at pre-school when Leigh grabbed her by the arm, her own daughter at her side. Bleary eyed, Leigh asked if anyone from the news had contacted us. My wife said no. Leigh said they were doing a story about the man across the street. He’d been arrested for child pornography.

“Why didn't they didn’t contact us?” I said.

“We never let our girls in his house,” she said.

I dreamed about Kate last night. We sat behind her, me and the family, the wife and our girls, in Poland, in an auditorium, no leg room between our hard wooden seats and the ones in front, one of which was hers, Kate’s.

As the massive crowd let out, outside, the girls ran ahead, as they do in my dreams. We lost them in the crowd, and I spent the remainder in two separate panics. One searching for my girls, one worrying about my wife, and Kate. Did Kate see us, sitting behind her, us having come all the way from the States to Poland? Did my wife know that was Kate in front of us? And would I ever find my girls again?

I woke up, rolled over, tried not to care what time it was. I’d already gotten up to pee twice. The alarm would go off soon, pretty sure. The mind woke up before I did, got me thinking, showed me my mistakes, where I went wrong, and I was letting it win lately, couldn’t laugh.

I swiped left and checked the news, laying on the pillow, bad eye blocked. Checked email, hoping for something good. Touched Twitter, knowing I shouldn’t, started scrolling, there with one eye only.

Daughter One was in the bathroom, the faucet sounding in the wall between us, the brush tapping on the sink, getting ready. Didn’t know about Daughter Two, hadn’t heard her up and about, assumed the worst. The worst can be bad on a Wednesday. There is potential for screaming, fists, spitting, overturned furniture prior to the first schoolbell at 8 a.m. We’re trying to better them, the Wednesdays, to help her. We can’t kill her Tuesday’s just yet without telling her she’s failed. Failure would be fine if it were just failure, but it’s not. It scars. It scars her. And us. Us her. We scar each other. We do damage.

There is limitless potential in the infinite. But in becoming finite, the infinite limits itself. This is its sacrifice, and we are stuck with it. We dream, relax into limitlessness, and bring with us our own limits. Then we wake up.

I found a hand-written note, folded, on paper stuck inside a card, in an envelope 16 years old, from Poland. It was in a shoebox buried in a bigger box, deep in a closet, unopened since before the move from this state to that state, years ago, then back to this state, more years ago. I’d been searching for another relic but found this note, this note from a former student who’d spoken with Kate’s sister 16 years ago. My student said Kate’s sister said Kate said I’d not wanted anything to do with her that last month, I’d stayed away. I shouted no. I was wide awake, didn’t remember ever reading the note, but knew I must have.

***

Title from the lyrics to "Via Chicago" by Wilco

Consider the arrival of a new tenant to a basement apartment. He is a young man in his late twenties. He has a goatee and sideburns, because the year is 1998, and most young men of that time had those things on their face. He wears jeans and a t-shirt, has very few belongings, all of which fit in the bed of a rusted pickup he’s backed into the drive of an old home. He turns the key in the door and enters for the first time to scope out the place he will call home. It is possible our story begins here.

It is also possible it ends here. Had we been following the previous tenant, this might feel right, as an ending. Perhaps our concern should be with this other person. He too is a young man in his late twenties, his appearance so similar as to be the same, whose departure is its own beginning. So you see, these decisions of story are arbitrary, and fallible. Mistakes might be made, wrong choices, when we attempt to decide such things.

And the question is, where to go from here. Which young man should concern us? The one arriving, or the one departing? And if we choose incorrectly, what then? I say we, but clearly it is I who must do the choosing. I must decide for us. And you must trust me.

I choose the man arriving. We will begin there. It will be our point of entry to the story, but not necessarily the beginning. Though at some point we may find ourselves back where we began. Or starting over. It all has much to do with the house.

The house has been crouched over the basement for one hundred years. It has a long history, and this history is unknown to us. The history may matter a great deal, but we cannot know how it matters, only that it does. We cannot know all the souls who’ve lived in the home, only that they have. Meals have been prepared, meat cooked in ovens, sauces simmered on stoves, bottles of wine spilled, children conceived. Wallpaper has been chosen, installed, enjoyed, become tiresome, been removed. Terrible fights have occurred. Love has been shared. And the residue of it all lingers like smoke in the walls.

People have died within these walls, and some have lived, more or less. There was word of a suicide. These details are lost to us. We know only that they must influence anyone who enters. Some people are more sensitive to these things, some less. But the house has had experiences over time, and absorbed them, as all houses do. And these things come to bear. They matter.

They matter because the basement is no longer a basement. Where once it had concrete blocks for walls and bare earth for a floor, it now has a carpeted floor, finished walls painted a neutral shade to beckon new tenants. The house above has been cut into four separate dwellings. It is no longer a family home, but home to many, some for short periods of time. People come and go now more than ever before. The life of the house has accelerated, as the house itself has aged. The older it gets, the faster it spins. It might wish to hold its weary head.

So there is risk involved in choosing where to begin, you see. But we've chosen. Or rather I've chosen, and you must trust me. Let us begin.

In his book The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle suggests a little thought experiment. He says close your eyes and say to yourself I wonder what my next thought is going to be, then become very alert and wait for that thought. Be like a cat watching a mouse hole, waiting to see what thought is going to pop out.

The first time I tried this experiment, I made it about one pico-second before a thought arose. The second time, about the same. Over time I learned to just keep asking the question over and over. Each time a thought arose, to immediately ask myself what the next one would be. After a dozen or so attempts over a few days, I finally began to experience a few seconds of walking or sitting in peace with not a thought in my head.

Never too long, though, as I’m a most obsessively compulsive over-thinker. I torture myself with my own thoughts, self-criticism, anxiety over unpaid bills or social slip-ups. Saying the wrong thing and being unable to forgive myself. Or sometimes even saying the right thing and constantly replaying the audio in my head, relishing my moment of glory. Which is exactly why I was so interested in this experiment. I need help. And the more I tried to stop thinking, and actually started to succeed a little bit, the more I started to wonder where all these thoughts were coming from.

Most of us associate ourselves with our thoughts. That is, we don’t put any distance between ourselves and our thoughts. We often don’t just fail to see ourselves as the thinker of our thoughts, we completely confuse our identity with our thoughts.

But when you challenge yourself to still your mind, to recognize when it is racing out of control, you find yourself stepping out of the wind tunnel of thought, and you realize it can be quiet in your head. At least for a moment.

Then a thought will arise.

Where do they come from? Why do they come?

If you think about it, thought is a lot like breath. You can control your breath if you choose. You can take a deep breath, or a shallow one. You can hold your breath. But when you aren’t focused on your breath, when you’re not thinking about breathing, breathe arises on its own. You don’t have to do anything.

Thought is similar. You can focus your thoughts. You can choose to think about something. You can choose to not think about something, and fail. (Try now to not think of a hairless pink monkey). You can solve a problem, plan your day, choose to place your fingers on a keyboard and type some words. But when you aren’t focused on your thoughts, thought happens anyway. It just happens.

Why?

Where do these thoughts come from?

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. And here’s what I’m thinking. Are you ready for this? You’re not. But I’m going to say it anyway.

What if… just what if… what if thoughts are perceived?

See? I knew you weren’t ready. But bear with me. What if thought doesn’t come from the brain? I know that’s a crazy thing to say. But no one has ever sliced open a brain and removed a thought. Just like no one has ever sliced open a brain and removed a sound, or a feeling. Or a sight. You can damage an area of the brain, and this will impair its ability to perceive, or process what it perceives. But these perceptions are not coming from within the brain. They are processed by the brain. They do not arise in the brain.

The sound of a dog barking is perceived by the ears. The feeling of silk is perceived by touch. The sight of a cloud is a perception made possible by the eyes.

What if thought is another type of perception? It’s not as crazy as it sounds. You’ve had great ideas before and not known where they came from. They just came to you. Scientists have made some of their greatest discoveries in dreams. Musicians wake up in the middle of the night with a song in their head and grab a guitar to record it.

Now, whatever it is that’s out there generating those thoughts that are perceived is another question entirely. It’s probably some sort of universal consciousness. Or maybe a hairless pink monkey with a dipping stick, blowing invisible thought bubbles.

She woke up like a writer full of words. An artist full of color. A wife with problems. She lay in bed, eyes shut. When she was certain, she threw off the sheets.

In darkness she walked to the living room, feeling her way with a hand against the wall. At the mantle she fumbled for a box of matches, struck one. Flame touched wick, wick caught, and she licked her fingers and snuffed out the match.

She floated the candle on her palm to the kitchen. She set it on the counter next to the fridge.

She opened the fridge and removed a bottle. With her thumbnail she cut the wrap around the top. She could have used the gadget from Brookstone, one pump to penetrate the cork and one to pull it out. But she didn’t want to rape it. She wanted sensual.

She poured herself a glass. Stood in the kitchen under the light from the blood moon falling through the skylight. She stood in the moon beam shower and kicked off her slippers, which skittered across linoleum.

His words from this morning played in her head on repeat, like a fragment of song she couldn’t kill. He’d asked about the money again. Was it in the account? Maybe it was, she said. They both knew it wasn’t. Their eyes locked, and she told him the truth, sort of. Some of it, she said. Not a lot. Not enough.

The doorknob would pop if she weren’t careful. The door would squeak. It took her a full minute to open it without waking them, a trick she’d learned as a child, to use the bathroom. She remembered waking Mother, Mother stomping her heels, screaming curses at children who made such noise that others couldn’t sleep.

She padded gently on the balls of her feet towards the bed so as not to thump the floorboards. She knelt, set her glass on the nightstand, combed the girl’s head with her fingers.

“Sweetie,” she whispered.

The girl was sleeping so soundly.

“Sweetsies,” she whispered, louder.

Nothing.

“Baby doll!” she said abruptly, teeth clenching. Relaxing. Tenderly.

The girl stirred. Blinked. Struggled to open her eyes.

“Baby doll, time to fly.”

The girl brushed her hair from her sleepy face.

“Momma?”

“It’s time to go, baby doll. Let’s go.”

She reached down and slid her hands under the girl’s warm little body, pajamas stuck to her skin.

“It’s dark outside,” said the girl.

“I know, baby.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Momma’s here.”

Her own words from this morning played on repeat, too. Electric bill, four hundred. The doctor even more. She paid all the bills, and the girls’ tuition. “I’m doing the best I can,” she said.

He took a step forward. He was not a violent man but there was violence in his jaw, molars grinding. “How much?”

She couldn’t say.

“How much is left?”

“A little.”

He stepped closer. He wouldn’t hit her, but he wanted to. Maybe not her. He wanted to hit something.

“How little?”

She struck another match, and an orange glow lit the girls’ room. Shadows danced in corners, on the bean bag, the closet door. The little girl fumbled with her sticky pajama top, then closed her eyes. Her arms fell, pajama top tangled around her face. She wobbled, a marionette asleep on her feet.

“Baby doll!” shouted the woman, and the little girl woke up again, put out her hands for balance and blinked. “Let’s go!”

She would rather have been yelled at. Yelling implied she was worthy of a response. It was the way he’d stared at her, it was hateful. Then he turned his back on her. In that one moment, he’d destroyed so much.

“Momma?”

She sucked her cigarette, blew smoke up towards the tree tops.

“Mommy?”

“I heard you.”

“The rocks are hurting my feet.”

The gravel road led them towards the bridge.

“I know baby.”

“Why do you get to wear slippers?”

“I’m the mommy.”

“When I’m the mommy, can I wear your slippers so the rocks –“

“No more questions, baby doll.”

It was the tuition. That was the problem. They couldn’t afford it. The public school would have been fine. That’s why they’d bought here. Good schools, everyone said. Worth the taxes. They reached the middle of the bridge and stopped.

“Momma why are we stopping?”

“Time to fly, baby.”

The little girl grabbed two handfuls of nightgown.

“Momma, I don’t want to fly.”

“Shhh.”

“My feet hurt.”

“Sshhh.”

“I wish my sister was here.”

“She’s not your sister, baby.”

“I wish my step-sister was here.”

“She isn’t.”

“I wish-“

“Honey shut up!” shouted the woman.

The outburst surprised the girl, who took a moment to register what had happened. Slowly, her face collapsed, and she began to cry.

The woman scooped her up and held her close, comforting, soothing, squeezing, clawing, whispering, scratching. “I’m sorry, baby doll.” The girl continued to wail, and the woman let go. Her nightgown snapped back and sank towards the rocks below.

She returned home as the sun was coming up. Her husband was in the kitchen, pouring coffee. He glanced up, said “Where have you -…” He stopped. Coffee swirling in the clear glass pot.

“Solving problems,” she said. She wanted to smile but killed it. “Cutting tuition by half.”

The first time I saw him was Halloween. We had just moved in and were taking the girls trick-or-treating. My older daughter was a witch, my younger a watermelon. When we turned left at the end of our driveway, I saw him sitting in his yard across the street with his eight-year old son. A fire was burning between them in a portable fire pit. He was speaking to his son loudly enough that I could hear him from across the street. Couldn’t make out the words, but it seemed like theater. Like he was acting.

We walked down the street in a cold drizzle. Not a good first Halloween. My older girl did fine, but the little one could barely hang on. Too many steps up porches and back down. Too many people, too much stimulation, too hard for me to hold her hand and the umbrella and her plastic pumpkin full of candy. We crossed the street and turned towards home, ringing door bells on the opposite side.

As we approached the man’s house I heard him coaching his son on scaring trick-or-treaters. He said these girls coming up – my girls – were too small for him to do the thing he did with that last bunch. His eyes were on me.

In the spring, I was digging up dead bushes and the girls were playing in the yard when the man decided to fix his front door. The front door he never used. He came and went through the side entrance off his driveway. Never opened his front door at all. Not until that day he decided to fix it. While I was in the yard with the girls. He had a couple of tools. Screwdriver. Wrench. Whatever. He wasn’t doing any fixing. When we went inside, so did he.

My wife suggested he was gay, and interested.

In the summer, I was reading on a couch near the window when I saw him on the roof with a rake. He was clearing off debris from the trees. There was a young girl up there with him. She was wearing a dress and was maybe six or seven.

“What kind of man takes a girl that age onto the roof?” I said.

“You know when you’re sitting there, he can see you,” said my wife. “I always see you when I pull into the garage.”

“Is that his daughter?” I said.

In the fall, as I was raking leaves to the curb and my girls were jumping in the piles, he crossed the street for the first time and stretched out his hand.

“I’ve neglected to make your acquaintance for far too long,” he said. False smile. Sporadic eye contact. He told me his name.

His hand jiggled coins in his pockets. His knees waggled like he was jogging but his feet remained planted. He watched the girls as we talked, but that didn’t seem odd because they were running and jumping and I kept having to say no baby, or be careful honey. He asked if I was a Buckeye fan and suggested we watch a game sometime down at Leigh’s house. He said the girls could play in the basement with Leigh’s kids and his. I said sure, but I didn’t mean it.

In the winter, after putting the girls to bed, I sat on the couch and looked out the window. Police cars were lined against his curb. No lights flashing, but every room in the house was lit up. The front door was wide open. Officers stood in the yard. A plain clothes cop was walking the perimeter, talking on a cell phone. The man’s wife was in the yard, talking with an officer.

I’d only seen the man’s wife outside once before, when she planted flowers around the enormous buckeye in their yard. My wife and I had joked about her being a mail order bride. We were only half-joking. The flowers died after a few weeks.

I called my wife into the room and gestured excitedly out the window.

My wife noticed the van. The nondescript van. My wife loves her tv cop shows. I hadn’t noticed the van (it was nondescript). But my wife, she loves those cop shows.

She crossed her arms. She didn’t like the man across the street. She has a gut sense about people. I have it too, but she has it more. The one time she was in the same room with the man at Leigh’s house, the man left. Not the room. He left the house. Practically bolted. That’s how strong her gut sense of these things is. He felt it.

A plain clothes cop emerged from the house carrying a computer tower. He carried it to the van.

I guessed child pornography. I was only half-joking. I told my wife she watched enough cop shows to know it had to be child pornography. Unmarked van. Plain clothes guys in and out. Computers being trucked out. What else could it be.

She stood there half glaring, half in shock.

Across the street, the man’s wife went back inside. The front door that never opened closed behind her. One police car left. The others remained. So did the van.

The next day, my wife called me at work. She said she was picking up my youngest at pre-school when Leigh grabbed her by the arm, her own daughter at her side. Bleary eyed, Leigh asked if anyone from the news had contacted us. My wife said no. Leigh said they were doing a story about the man across the street. He’d been arrested for child pornography.

“Why do you think they didn’t contact us?” I said.

“Probably because we never let our girls in his house,” she said.

“Winstrop?”

He was seated on a stool, sharpening a sword. He turned his head, cocked an eyebrow.

“Winstrop!”

He sighed, hung his head. He inhaled deeply, sighed again, leaned the sword against the wall. He rose from his stool to stand at attention. Lethargic attention. A disengaged civilian, not interested in standing to anyone’s attention, much less the fat man’s. He stared disinterestedly at nothing in particular. He pulled his black vest taught from the bottom, brushed steel shavings from his white sleeves.

“Where are you, Winstrop?”

“To your left, sir. And behind.”

The fat man at the table turned his fat head to the right. It didn’t much want much to turn, the head. Too much interference from the fat, and a stiff assortment of vertebrae somewhere deep within. The fat man put his thumb into his mouth, licked the grease. His molars were grinding meat from the breast in his other hand. The old couple had cooked him a pheasant.

“Where?” His breath sluiced over bird pulp and out into the kitchen, filling it with a stink.

“Your left. And behind.”

The fat man turned his fat head the other way, caught a glimpse of Winstrop standing at the ready, and grunted a very short, very effective grunt. It communicated, the grunt. It said, I’ve found you. You eluded me, but now I’ve found you.

“What are they saying about me, Winstrop?”

The breast of pheasant butted up against the fat mouth that issued the grunt. Teeth tore meat from bone, destroyed it.

Standing at the ready, arms behind his back, Winstrop replied, “What does who say about you, sir?” His jaw clenched once, then again.

“The men,” said the fat man, swallowing. “What do the men say about me?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”

“You know, Winstrop. You go about them.” The fat man gestured with his breast, to emphasize his point. The breast slipped out of his fingers and fell to the table with a thump. The fat man’s hand flapped in surprise. His jowls shook. He waggled his fingers at the breast. It was a bad breast, disobedient. He decided he was done with it, flicked fingers against other fingers and wiped them all across his chest and coughed. Phlegm rattled deep inside his fat lungs.

“I do not, sir.”

“Nonsense,” says the fat man, hacking snot onto the floor, waggling his empty goblet in the general direction of Winstrop, behind him and to the left. “Nonsense, I say.”

Winstrop leaned over the table and poured wine into the fat man’s goblet. “May I be of service, sir?”

“Yes. Yes you may.”

“It would interest me to know how.”

The fat man sipped wine, mumbled something into the goblet, made the wine bubble. He slurped. He rolled his eyes, shook his head.

“Come again?” says Winstrop.

“You insufferable shit!” said the fat man, bringing his fist down on the table. A bit of wine splashed onto his shoulder. He flapped his hand at it and squealed and coughed again.

And then, silence.

The fat man leaned back on his bench. Wood threatened to splinter and crack. The fat man drilled into Winstrop with his eyes. “I don’t know yet.”

“I trust you’ll alert me when the time is come, sir.”

The fat man blinked. “What time, Winstrop?”

“The time. When it has come.”

“Which time?”

“The one at which I might I be of service, sir.”

“Ah.”

The fat man’s eyes fell upon the old couple. The old man and the old woman sitting across the table from him. He saw them as if for the first time. It was not the first time he’d seen them. It was the first time he’d considered their presence. Acknowledged that they were, in fact, there. In the room. Sharing his air. Staring at him with disgust.

He gestured dismissively towards them. “Winstrop, who are these old ones?”

“They live here, sir.”

“You don’t say. In this house?”

“They are our hosts.”

“Do they speak?”

Winstrop addressed the couple in their own language. Asked them if they spoke the fat man’s. Literally, he asked them if they spoke fat man. Nothing about their expression quite gave them away, but they appreciated his little joke, Winstrop thought. They did not acknowledge him, only glared at the fat man, and shook their heads no. But there was the faintest of beginnings of a twitch in a corner of the woman’s mouth.

“They do sir,” said Winstrop. “But not our tongue.”

“Do they know who I am?”

“I believe they do, sir.”

“Ask.”

Winstrop asked the old couple if they knew who the fat man was. They said yes.

“They do, sir.”
 “Wonderful. Who do they say I am?”

“They say that you are the Governor of Eritrea.”

“Am I the Governor of Etruria, Winstrop?”

“As far as I know, sir. It is my understanding that you are.”

“I am, Winstrop. I am the Governor of Eritrea.”

“Erutria is pleased to have you, sir.”

“Oh, Winstrop. Shut that fucking hole in your face. Don’t patronize me.”

“Of course, sir.”

Silence.

Winstrop waited.

The old couple stared at the governor.

The governor’s eyes took a rare turn inwards. His fingers drummed on the table.

“Winstrop! I’ve a message.”

“Have you?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t say? From whom?”

“Not from, no.” The Governor shook a finger, as if scolding. “It’s not yet written.”

“I shall be pleased to convey it once conceived, sir. I await it with great eagerness.”

“I know you do, Winstrop. I know you. I know. What is the best language to write it in, do you think?”

“Who is it for, sir?”

“The men.”

“Your men?”

“Yes.”

“Theirs, then. Their own, sir. Yours and mine.”

“Yes,” fingers drummed on the table. The wisdom of this settled in. “Yes, agreed. Have you some instruments? For the writing of it?”

“Indeed,” Winstrop nodded. “With your permission.” He spun on his heels to exit the kitchen. The fat man, the Governor of Etruria, drummed away with his fingers. He studied the old man and the old woman seated across from him. They sat like carvings, unblinking, hands folded.

The fat man, the Governor of Etruria leaned to the left. He contorted his face. He produced a resonant, full bodied fart.

The old couple were unmoved.

Winstrop returned.

“I don’t think they like me, Winstrop.”

Winstrop glanced at the old couple, set paper and quill and a bottle of ink in front of the fat man. “We have occupied their home, sir.”

“Many homes have been occupied, Winstrop. All over this land.”

“Perhaps that is what offends them.”

The fat man took up the quill, poked it on his tongue, getting ready. Eyed the old couple suspiciously, as if they might pounce, the sudden. He dipped the quill in ink and began to compose his missive. He wrote slowly, breathed heavily. Wheezed.

“Message,” he stated to no one in particular while writing. He dotted some letters, crossed others. “Here. It. Is. Forthwith.” Dot dot, scribble, sign. He whisked the note towards Winthrop. “And off you go,” he waved.

Winstrop paused, scratched his chin. “At once?”

“Yes!” cried the fat man. “Yes, now! That is the message, the one we’ve all been waiting for. It is ready. Go ye forth with trumpeteers and gaily colored flags! Why do you dilly and dally, Winstrop? Begone! Ride, ride like the wind!”

Winstrop took a step, then stopped. He glanced at the old couple. In that moment, he considered many other possible situations he might find himself in. He ranked this one near the bottom. Though not at the bottom. He spun to go, and allowed the old couple who lived in the house to see how he rolled his eyes, how he glanced sidelong to display his distaste for All Things. He thought it might help them. Then he felt like an ass and wished he hadn’t. He grabbed his black overcoat from the peg by the door, swung it around his shoulders, opened the door, exited into the black night flecked with snow.

“It is for Drogan!” yelled the Governor, into the darkness beyond the door. “Take it to Drogan, Winstrop! Do you hear me? You little shit!” 

When I move in with Francis, we know it is temporary. His fiancé will be arriving from Brazil before long and I will have to move out.

When that time comes, so does the For Rent sign in the yard a few doors down. A basement apartment in an old house built decades ago. I sign the contract with the owner and walk my belongings across the street over a couple of days.

There are six inches between my head and the ceiling. I have to stoop to enter the bedroom. Hilarious, cool, the place has character. The bedroom has one small rectangle of window at street level, and a side room that’s cozy and quiet, perfect for writing.

I’m moving my computer into the side room when I notice a door, tucked away. Should have seen it before but didn’t. The way the main door to the room opens conceals this other door. I thought I was seeing the whole room when I walked the place prior to signing. I wasn’t.

I stand there with my arms around my desktop, keyboard resting on top. I stare at the door, the door at me. I bend down, set my computer in the corner. I stare at the door.

The brass knob is cool when I touch it. Clacks as it turns. The door squeaks, swings into a dark space. A musty scent swirls. The space beyond is a closet. Piled to one side are a dusty vacuum, a broom, an old pair of shoes. The floor is tamped earth. The walls are earth. The walls don’t meet the ceiling, or rather, the underside of the house. It’s pier-and-beam, and enough sunlight leaks in at the edges that I can see without a light. I can see over the earthen mounds rolling to the corners. Someone could crawl over them. Crawl to this door.

My fingers fumble over the door knob, up and down the door jamb, looking for a lock. There is no lock. I try the door knob from the outside. I don’t want it to turn, but it does.

The door is the way in. It’s my dream.

I’ve been having a recurring dream since I was a child. In the dream, I’m living somewhere for a while. Once it was the house I grew up in. Once it was a dorm room. Once it was an old, musty house, huge and ancient, not unlike this one. Each time I discover there is more to the place than I ever knew. Stairs, hallways, rooms. As I discover, I sense… evil. I explore the place and feel this present evil overwhelm me, filling my chest like ice water. And I discover ways in. Windows thrown open. Rooms missing walls, opening into pavilions full of silhouettes, creatures unseen.

Here in the closet, like in the dream, fear floods my chest like ice water. The horror of the dream, the horror that can only be felt in a dream. That I’ve never felt outside the dream. I feel it.

But I am awake.

That night, I lay in bed, eyes wide. At best, my eyes close on the border of sleep not-sleep, then pop open. Come morning, I am in a haze, exhausted.

I phone the owner. He lives upstairs. He agrees to install locks. He will come this afternoon.

He does not come.

Next night, I’m in bed. I begin to drift. I startle myself awake, hearing things on the far side of the door. I shoot up in bed, sitting in the light from the rectangle of window above, my ear towards the door.

Nothing.

Morning of the third day. I stumble to the front of the house. My apartment key opens the front door of the house and I climb the stairs to 4B. I pound on the door and it swings open, but it’s not the owner, it’s Francis. He looks through me, like I’m not there. He steps through me, sees nothing. He smiles. He shuts the door, and before it closes, he says, “Almost time.”

I pull myself down the steps, out the door, across the lawn. I can’t move the way I want to, my arms heavy, the grass wet and swampy and the muck sucks at my ankles. I cross the street and struggle against gravity to my old apartment door. Francis’ door. I ball my fist to pound on the door but it passes through, and I follow, off-balance. Inside, two bodies wrestle on the floor. The owner rolls me over and straddles me with a knife. He plunges the blade into my belly and rips me up to my throat.

My scream is faint and distant. I push hard to make it come. I scream with all I’ve got but I can barely hear it. I scream as hard as I can and –

I wake myself up, jolt upright, clenching the covers. Streetlights shine through the one small rectangle of window at street level, in the bedroom of my basement apartment. All is quiet.

Elbows on knees, face in hands, in bed I sit. I rub my face, sigh.

Clack.

The doorknob.

Squeak.

I hear movement. Crawling. Muttering. They’re coming inside.

“No!” I shout.

“Yes,” says a voice.

“It’s time,” says another.

“NO!”

“Patience.”

“Wakey wakey.”

“NO!”

They reach for my bed, pull the covers. A dozen hands, gripping, groping. They clamp on my arms, my legs. I’m pulled to floor, dragged to the door.

“NO!!”

“It’s fine, my love. It’s fine.”

“It’s time,” says Francis, who flashes before me and then is gone.

I ride their hands, rolling on their fingers into the side room, through the closet door into mustiness, over the mounds I float, their fingers under me like a bed of nails.

One of the earthen mounds is dug out. I drift toward it, fall in. I land on cool, dry earth, and they scoop the sides over my calves, my back.

“NO!”

“Yes yes, lovey. Yes.”

Earth covers my legs, my neck, but I still hear them. “Time to sleep, my love,” one says.

“Perchance to dream,” says another.

“Oh God,” I cry.

“You’re one of us now,” one says. “You sleep. Enter dreams.”

“Sleep and raid dreams.”

“Find others, make them dream. We go get them.”

My eyes are heavy, can’t keep them open. The fear I’ve only felt in nightmares. I want to wake up but I am not asleep.

“You’re one of us now.”

“Sleep.”

“Dream.”

“Find.”

“Bring.”

“Die, my darling.”

“Yes yes, my love. First you get real dead.”

I would write more, but

I search for the one, true first sentence

and scratch through it in my head

before typing a word

When I begin,

I tweak as I go.

Bit by bit

Word by word

Until I’ve killed what I want to say.

I consider what I’ve done

You moan,

Coalescing in my screen

Peering between dead words

A ghost among tombstones

Full of rage

Elbowing letters

Grasping

Fingernails scratch against glass

Fists pound

Our mouths open and scream

I switch off the screen

It flickers to black

Your hand settles on my shoulder

I lay mine on yours

And tell you I’m sorry

That I loved you

Your fingers collapse in a cloud of dust

Your ring clatters on the hardwood floor

Accelerates as it twirls to a stop

I push back my chair

Skid down the basement stairs

Whisk the blankets off the axe

Drop it in the wash basin

And scrub it clean

again