Dark Specter

8

The chance discovery of Sam’s phone number sparked an idea which firmed up into a project over the course of the next few weeks. The more I thought about it, the more excited I became. I had always wanted to visit the Pacific coast, but had never been farther west than St. Cloud. Now was the ideal opportunity to indulge in a prolonged bout of white-line fever. I had plenty of leisure and no other plans or commitments. And if I needed further justification, I could always claim that it marked another essential stage in my quest for full citizenship, a kind of personal manifest destiny. What have Americans always done, given half a chance, but head west?

I bought maps and guide books, then a car. This was also a Chevy, but a very different animal from the Nova, one of those elephantine gas-guzzlers which Greg had been driving that night we were pulled over by the traffic cop on the way back from the Commercial. I found it both comforting and exciting, but couldn’t be bothered to figure out why. That was another sign of the way I had changed. Analysis once again seemed as irrelevant and misguided as it had back in the seventies, a futile attempt to understand what can only be seized and lived. Understanding hadn’t saved my wife or my son. Why should it save me?

The day I left was mild and sunny. I surged through the commuter traffic like a whale through minnows, heading for deep water. I found a country and western station on the radio and cranked up the volume. My classical records and tapes were in storage, along with the whole way of life they represented. I was heading north to Grand Rapids, then west on to Highway 2, the old route to the coast which I had chosen in preference to the sterile efficiency of the interstate.

I felt deliciously light of head and heart, like a teenager again. I had no idea where I was going, still less what would happen when I got there. That was the idea. For years I’d done nothing which had not been scheduled, priced and planned down to the last detail. Even a trip to the movies had become a major logistic exercise involving extensive coordination and consultation. And yet we might just as well have thrown a dice for all the good it had done us. Now I was prepared to take my chances. What had I got to lose, after all? I had already lost everything.

Calling in on Sam was a minor aspect of the trip. I didn’t think about him once during the drive across the agricultural grid of North Dakota and the badlands of northern Montana, past innumerable isolated farmsteads, each with its pickup and barn and satellite dish and gaunt tree from which a tire swing dangled like a noose, through innumerable small towns whose most memorable feature was their name: Niagara, Petersburg, Devils Lake, Palermo, White Earth, Wolf Point, Wagner, Harlem, Kremlin, Galata, Cut Bank. The road had led me on across the mountains and out on to the plains of eastern Washington, then through another chain of mountains to the ocean and a town called Everett.

Everett is not a pretty place. In fact it was one of the uglier towns I’d seen on my trip. The chatty motel clerk gave me the whole story. Originally built to serve the pulp mill industry, it was now a big naval base, a status for which the local citizens had lobbied long and hard. If that hadn’t worked out they’d probably have tried to get a nuclear power station, or have the state pen moved there. It was that kind of place. It was also the end of the road, where Highway 2 meets the Pacific.

I stopped at Dairy Queen on the outskirts of town and ordered a cheeseburger and rings to keep my indigestion up to speed. At the table across from mine, a couple of economy-size women in muumuus and elaborate perms were loudly discussing a friend’s colostomy in graphic detail. On the other side of the divider, next to me, a trio of teen tarts were rehashing their Saturday night live.

“So he goes, ‘No fucking way!’ and I say, ‘Way!’ And it’s like I’m getting weirded out, OK? And I’m going, uh-oh! You know? So I tell him, ‘I’m outta here,’ ’cos I’m getting like majorly, majorly stressed. So I’m home later, and I’m like, wow, this is totally out there.”

It was then that I remembered Sam. For the first time since leaving home, I had to make a decision. I could go north, or south, or I could turn back, but I had to decide. My week on the road had been interesting, but it had also been enough, at least for now. I couldn’t face the prospect of any more meals in truck stops where everyone was either on the move or wished they were, or any more nights in motels where I woke at three in the morning with images of David and Rachael swarming in the darkness all around me, and got up and sat on the tweed-upholstered sofa and watched CNN until it grew light outside.

Now darkness had fallen again, and Dairy Queen was filled with happy families who thought of themselves as unhappy, who squabbled and whined and bitched and left in tears, little knowing their luck, their incredible, unearned good fortune at simply being able to go home together. It was not their happiness that I envied so much as their unhappiness. I too wanted the luxury of carping and complaint, the safe thrill of sniping at sitting targets, of taking your distance from the place where “they have to take you in.” But I had no home to go to. The only person I knew for a thousand miles in any direction was Sam. In retrospect, it was inevitable that I would call him.

A man I didn’t know answered. Sam wasn’t there, he said. He’d try to contact him and have him call me back. I was at a pay phone outside Dairy Queen. It had started to rain, a fine persistent enveloping drizzle which furred my clothes and skin. I gave the guy the number, went back inside and had another cup of coffee. It was another forty minutes before the phone outside started to ring. It was Sam. He sounded preoccupied, and not particularly pleased to hear from me, as if I represented a problem of some kind.

“So where are you at?” he demanded.

“Everett. You know it?”

“Yeah. You’re pretty close.”

There was a pause.

“Want to come tonight?” he said.

“Well, is that OK? I mean I don’t have any other plans, but I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“It’s OK,” Sam said flatly. “I just got to think.”

Another pause.

“You got wheels?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“What are you driving?”

“An old Chevy. Kind of a blue-green color. It’s got Minnesota plates and a big antenna on the back.”

“OK. Here’s what you do. Take 1–5 north to Highway 20, then turn off for Anacortes. Go into town and park on Main Street, across from the clock. Aim to be there in about an hour and a half. It’s less than fifty miles, so you can take it easy. I’ll send someone to meet you.”

“Hey, are you sure this is not a problem?” I said, slightly disconcerted by his abrupt tone. “I mean I didn’t let you know I was coming or anything, and …”

“I knew you were coming, Phil.”

I smiled at this hint of the old familiar bullshit.

“You did? That’s interesting. I didn’t know myself until a week ago.”

“I don’t mean I knew you were coming today,” Sam replied a little sharply. “It could have been any time, next month, even a year from now. But I knew you’d come in the end.”

I smiled secretly.

“You’ll really like it here,” he went on, seemingly making an effort to sound a little more enthusiastic. “You’ve got your own room and everything. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, Phil. Believe me, it’ll be just great.”

“Sounds good,” I replied unconvincingly.

Traffic was heavy on the concrete ribbon of the interstate. Headlights slashed through the curtain of rain, passing trucks plucked and tugged at my old Chevy. I was glad to reach the exit.

Anacortes turned out to be a sprawl of modern homes and shopping malls surrounding the original town center. It was right on the water, and must have been a fishing port at one time, but its Main Street looked almost identical to many of those I had passed through on my way to the coast: a core of sturdy two-story brick business buildings with a scattering of big wooden houses. I had no problem finding the clock that Sam had mentioned, one of those models with Roman numerals and a double face standing on a wrought-iron pillar which jewelers used to put up outside their stores as an advertisement.

I sat there for over half an hour, getting colder and colder and wondering how reliable Sam and his friends were. There was hardly anyone around. By now it was after nine o’clock, and the citizens of Anacortes were presumably hunkered down in front of the TV or tucked in with a cup of cocoa. So when the headlights appeared behind me, I noticed them at once. The only vehicle which had passed me so far was a cruiser with a cop in a Smokey the Bear hat who had given me the beady eye, as if I were casing the jeweler’s premises across the street.

A VW van pulled up alongside me. I could just make out the silhouette of a man sitting in the driver’s seat. He seemed to be looking in my direction. The van was covered in garish magic-bus artwork, amateurish swirls of color depicting naked bodies in various poses surrounded by stars and flames. There was a brief peep from the VW’s reedy horn, then it revved up and proceeded down Main Street. I restarted my motor and followed.

We drove in tandem out of town along the highway I had come in on, then turned off down a narrow road winding through dense woods. The rain had ceased by now, and the clouds were breaking up, allowing glimpses of the almost full moon. After several miles, the VW slowed down and signaled left. A battered mailbox with a number crudely painted in white was nailed to a post at the entrance.

We turned on to a dirt road which zigzagged steeply downhill. It was pitted with potholes filled with water and ruts formed by the runoff. The Chevy scraped painfully several times, and I had visions of losing my muffler. After about five minutes the ground leveled out, the woods dropped back, and we emerged onto a patch of level grassland. Up ahead was an isolated house. As we approached, an external light high on the eaves came on, the door opened and a figure appeared in silhouette. I assumed at first that it was Sam, but as my headlights passed the doorway I saw that it was a man I didn’t know.

The VW drew up beside one of the barns. I parked behind it and got out, savoring the odors of pine sap and salt water. I could hear the ocean somewhere close by. Sea gulls circled invisibly overhead, screeching intermittently. A light breeze stirred the tall, seemingly impenetrable barrier of conifers all around.

The man who had emerged from the house walked over to the VW and spoke briefly to the driver, then they both came over to where I was standing. The driver was in his late thirties, short and chunky, with a soft beer gut. His face was chubby and battered, and he had a droopy mustache and long hair pulled back in a ponytail. The other man was taller and sparer, with the kind of leanness which looks like the result of malnutrition or bad genes, not diet and exercise.

“I’m Rick,” the driver said. “This is Lenny.”

“Phil,” I replied. “Good to meet you.”

“We’ve got some stuff to unload,” Rick remarked, jerking his thumb at the VW. “You want to give us a hand, it’ll go quicker.”

“Sure thing.”

When I looked more closely at the kitschy designs painted on the VW van, they reminded me of something I had seen before, although I couldn’t place it-an album cover, maybe. Rick opened the side door, lifted out a large package and walked off with it. Lenny did the same, and then it was my turn. The inside of the van was filled with shrink-wrapped multipacks and rows of institutional-size drums and jars. There were packs of canned spaghetti and wieners and nukable chicken noodle soup and industrial desserts and containers of peanut butter and ketchup and Coke like characters from a child’s nightmare, the familiar form and features swollen to monstrous proportions.

I chose the lightest-looking item, a plastic bag containing sixty packs of cheese-flavored corn snacks, and set off the way the other two had gone, following a barely visible path in the rough grass. The sound and scent of the ocean grew stronger. Then the moon glowed from behind the clouds and I saw it, a seething dark surface stretching away on all sides. The house, I realized, was built on a promontory. The next moment the ground beneath my feet turned hollow and I stumbled on something, almost falling.

“Take it easy,” said Lenny. “We don’t want to lose any of that stuff.”

I discovered that I was standing on a narrow pier of wooden slats built out into the water. There was a boat alongside, and what I had stumbled on was the heavy metal ring to which it was moored.

“Just set it down here,” Lenny told me. “Rick’ll load her.”

He brushed past, heading back the way we had come, his lanky figure outlined against the yard light on the house.

It took us another twenty minutes or so to lug all the groceries down to the water, while Rick manhandled it aboard the boat and stowed it away.

“You got any baggage?” he asked when we were done.

“Just an overnight case.”

“Better get it.”

I finally understood.

“You mean we’re going in the boat?”

Lenny chortled.

“You’d have one heck of a hard time driving there!” he said.

He walked back with me to the house, where I got my case out of the trunk of the car.

“Leave the keys with me,” Lenny told me. “I’ll put her in the garage later.”

I wasn’t particularly happy about giving my car keys to a total stranger, but presumably Sam’s friends weren’t going to rip me off. With a weak shrug, I handed them over. A diesel motor gurgled into life down by the water.

“Better get going, you don’t want to be left behind,” said Lenny, turning back into the house. A moment later the light went out. The moon was obscured again. I made my way slowly back to the pier, trying to dilate my eyes to the point where I could distinguish grass from rocks and land from water. The lights inside the boat were on, and once I found the pier I got aboard without difficulty. It was a surprisingly roomy old motor cruiser, with an enclosed wheelhouse.

While I stowed my overnight bag below, Rick untied the ropes and pushed us off from the pier. He put the engine in reverse until we were clear of the shore, then revved up and spun the wheel to turn the boat around. I peered out through the windshield. I could see nothing whatever. We appeared to be heading out into an expanse of total darkness.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

Rick stood grasping the wheel and staring straight ahead.

“Heading due wrest right now,” he said. “Once we get out into the strait we’ll turn north until we clear Orcas, then head on in.”

None of this meant anything much to me, but that’s usually the way I feel when I talk to boat people.

“So how do you know where you are?” I asked. “I can’t see anything out there.”

Rick tapped a circular glass inset in the dashboard. I leaned over and saw a white line revolving slowly around a screen. In its wake, a ghostly outline faded slowly until the line passed once again, refreshing its vigor.

“Didn’t use to be able to do this run at night,” Rick remarked with satisfaction. “Not till we got this baby. Cost plenty, but it’s doubled our mobility.”

The gadget was some kind of radar, I supposed. The ghostly outline was an image of the shoreline apparently moving past the boat, which remained eternally stationary in the middle of the screen. For some reason I thought of David, the still center of a world which seemed to move around him, safe and navigable, and something gave way inside me. “It will only get better,” the psychiatrist had advised me. “You will have bad patches for a long time to come, but they will be farther and farther apart.”

I was having one now. It was not just his death I was grieving for, I realized, but the brief life which had preceded it. Children are vectors aimed at the future. All the doubts and anxieties about how they will turn out are balanced by the knowledge that their course and final destination are ultimately out of your hands. Whatever happens to them will happen when you are different, or dead, and the world an unrecognizable place. But no such perspectives existed in David’s case. The only things that would ever happen to him had already happened. His death seemed to make a mockery of his ever having existed at all, and of my continuing to do so. For the first time, I understood why Rachael had decided that she could not go on.

As we emerged into the open channel, the waves grew steeper. We passed a large unladen oil tanker coming the other way, its high sides towering over us. Later a car ferry crossed our bows, decked out in lights from stem to stern. It was almost eleven o’clock by my watch when Rick finally eased the throttle and the roar of the motor died away to a gentle gurgle. The boat wallowed lazily on the slight swell. A few moments later, I made out a light in the darkness up ahead.

“Are we there?” I asked.

Rick’s head moved in what might have been a nod. He had hardly spoken a word to me the whole way. If the rest of Sam’s friends were as much fun as Rick and Lenny, this was going to be a visit to remember.

The boat crept imperceptibly toward the beacon. It was impossible to tell how far off it was, and I thought we still had several hundred yards to run when the light suddenly loomed overhead and we bumped heavily against something. The boat tipped, the door of the wheelhouse opened and Sam was there, flinging his arms about me.

“Phil! It’s so great you’re finally here, man!”

His manner couldn’t have been more different from his cool response on the phone. He stood there slapping me on the shoulders and grinning delightedly. I smiled at him with real pleasure. Sam’s was the first familiar and friendly face I had seen in what seemed like a very long time. My earlier doubts about the wisdom of coming were swept away.

As we stepped off the boat, I saw that there were three other men standing on the pier beside some kind of hand-truck.

“Get the stuff unloaded, guys,” Sam told them casually. “Bring Phil’s bags too. I’m going to take him straight up to the hall. He must be wiped out.”

I was slightly surprised at this peremptory tone, but the men obediently climbed aboard the boat and set to work. I also thought it kind of strange that Sam made no attempt to introduce me. Still, this was his scene, not mine.

We walked along the pier to a trail winding up a wooded hillside. The only sound was our footsteps, the only light the faint glimmer of the moon behind a screen of high cloud. Superficially, Sam had hardly changed since we met in Minneapolis. His body was as spare as ever, his features as sharp, his hair as long. But something was different. He had a new poise, a gravitas, a centered, controlled energy. The very exuberance of his greeting revealed a confidence that had been lacking on that previous occasion, when he had been so stiff and guarded. Now he could permit himself what seemed like a genuine and spontaneous display of affection. In all our previous dealings, I had always felt older and more mature than Sam. Now the relationship seemed to have been mysteriously inverted.

“How come we had to take a boat to get here?” I asked.

“Because it’s an island.”

I stopped and looked at him.

“An island? You never told me that.”

Sam’s smile was visible even in the half-light.

“There’s a lot of things I haven’t told you, Phil. This way, you get to find out for yourself.”

This sounded more like the old Sam.

“So where the hell are we?” I demanded.

“We don’t usually use the boat to go all the way to the mainland,” he said. “But Rick was doing a Costeo run anyway, so we figured we might as well do it this way instead of hassling around with the ferries.”

I couldn’t decide whether he’d evaded my question deliberately, or was just continuing his earlier train of thought.

“So anyway, how’ve you been doing?” he asked suddenly.

The question startled me. Stupidly, I hadn’t given any thought to how I was going to answer it. The last thing I wanted to do was to discuss what had happened and “how it felt,” but I couldn’t very well avoid the subject. Or could I? Sam’s question had sounded casual enough.

“Oh, not so bad,” I replied.

“Really?”

This time I thought I caught a little edge to Sam’s tone, but I decided to bluff it out.

“And how about you?” I demanded.

He laughed.

“Just great. Everything’s going according to plan.”

“And what plan’s that?”

“God’s plan,” he replied.

I decided this had to be a joke.

“You aiming to crack the televangelist market, Sam?”

“How do you mean?”

“Those smoothareno sleazebags with toops and bad dye-jobs you see on TV They’re always talking about God’s plan for humanity and stuff like that.”

“We don’t have TV here, man. That shit just fucks up your head.”

This was a great relief. It now made perfect sense that David’s kidnapping hadn’t penetrated this lost colony of born-again hippies. I could remain anonymous, instead of having to play the hackneyed role I’d been dealt by fate.

“But there’s a plan all right,” Sam added softly. “It’s just that those suckers don’t know what it is.”

“And you do?”

“That’s the only thing I know,” he replied in the same quiet tone. “And the only thing I need to know.”

“Keats,” I retorted pertly. “‘Ode to Beauty.’”

Sam stopped and turned to me. For a moment I thought he was angry. Then he smiled.

“Still the same old Phil. You were always so fucking smart, man! I was amazed at the stuff you knew. Like just then. I didn’t even know that was a quote, but you spotted it right away. Awesome, man!”

I felt embarrassed by his effusiveness, embarrassed for him.

“Everything we say these days is a quotation,” I replied. “Just like everything we think is a rerun of an idea someone’s had before. These are the latter days, Sam, the end of history. The new’s all mined out. All we can do is recycle postconsumer materials.”

“Right!” he cried. “That’s so right!”

He clapped his hands together in his enthusiasm.

“Jesus, I can’t tell you how happy I am to have you here, Phil! You’re someone I can talk to about this stuff. You really get it. The latter days, the end of history, that’s it exactly!”

My embarrassment redoubled. I had meant the whole thing as a joke, but Sam had taken it literally. I shrugged.

“That wasn’t original either. The idea that everything’s been said before has been said before.”

Sam leaned toward me and touched my chest with his forefinger.

“But what if there was something that hadn’t been said before? What if there was something which no one had ever even thought before? Imagine the power of something so fresh and original in a world where everything else is grubby and secondhand! It would be like a nuclear explosion!”

He gave a sharp laugh and started to walk again. To the right, a light had become visible through the trees.

“I care not whether a man is good or evil,” Sam remarked in a stilted voice. “All that I care is whether he is a wise man or a fool.”

He looked at me expectantly.

“Another quote?” I murmured.

Sam smiled and nodded. I’d traveled a long way that day and was in no mood for party games.

“Beats me,” I said.

Sam didn’t reply. We had emerged onto a gently sloping clearing. I could just make out what seemed to be a number of huts and other buildings. We made for the largest of these, a long structure made of roughly hewn tree trunks with a steeply pitched roof. The light I had seen, a dull yellow glow, came from two small windows in the wall facing us. We walked around to the other side, where there was an imposing doorway with three steps leading up to it. Sam pushed the door open and ushered me inside.

The interior of the building seemed at first sight to consist of one huge room. The flooring was worn wooden planks and the walls made of the same tree trunks as outside, only painted white instead of dull red. The only light was provided by two naked bulbs which dangled on their cords from the ceiling some twenty feet apart. At the back of the room, opposite the door, a wood fire smoldered in an enormous fireplace made of beach rock. The air was drenched with the pungent smell of cedar smoke.

I took in all this at a rapid glance, but the feature of the room which most struck me was a large television set standing against the right-hand wall. A group of about five men and three women were sitting and lying in front of it, watching a movie featuring Sylvester Stallone blasting away with a weapon the size of a rocket launcher. They mostly looked to be in their early thirties, and were wearing the sort of cheap and durable clothes you can see on any street in the country. I was relieved to see that there was no sign of homespun fabrics or hippie regalia.

Sam picked up a remote control unit from the arm of a chair and stilled the video. Instead of protesting, the people who had been watching it all greeted him loudly, breaking into wide grins. Sam waved like a star restraining excess adulation with a mixture of appreciation and hauteur.

“This is Philip,” he said, turning to me. “He’s an old friend of mine. An old, old friend.”

They all stood there, studying me with expressions I could not exactly gauge, envy perhaps, or awe.

“Phil’s going to be staying with us,” Sam went on. “I’m really happy he’s here, and I want him to be happy too.”

The men and women all got to their feet and came toward me, smiling and holding out their hands.

“It’s great!” one of them said.

“Fantastic!” echoed another.

“We’re really happy you’re here!”

“Cool having you around!”

“Good to meet you!”

It all sounded crude and forced. Why were they coming on so strong to someone they’d only just met? They reminded me of salesmen welcoming a newcomer to the “team” under the beady eye of the manager.

“Way to play!” cried a tall man, gripping my hand forcefully. “You’re the man!”

Sam’s smile broadened.

“Andy used to be a baseball coach,” he said. “He treats everyone like they’re in the Little League.”

The others laughed uproariously at this quip.

“Hey, some of us are playing in the Majors now!” the tall man remarked in mock protest.

One of the men had stayed behind, munching on a package of corn chips and drinking beer from the bottle. He was staring at the frozen frame from the video, which showed Rambo in midburst, trembling as though from the pent-up frustrations of this enforced coitus interruptus.

“Hey, Mark!” called Sam. “Come and say hi.”

Mark got up with obvious reluctance and shambled over. He looked older than the others, more Sam’s age. He was a big guy, six one or two, and built to match. He wore a long beard divided into nine tiny pigtails tied up with silver bands, while his head was shaved almost bare, leaving just a dark stubble showing on the scalp. He wore a silver ring in his right ear and another in his left nostril, and glowered at me in a way I found physically intimidating.

“Hi,” he said with deliberate flatness.

Sam slapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey, loosen up, man!”

He turned to me.

“Mark’s kind of pissed because I kicked him out of his room so you’d have somewhere to sleep.”

“You didn’t need to do that!” I protested. “I could have slept anywhere. I don’t want anyone to have to give up …”

“Hey, it’s OK!” Sam replied. “Not a big deal. Right, Mark?”

Mark shot him a look, shrugged and walked back to the TV. I wasn’t the only person who was embarrassed by this, I realized. Several of the others shuffled about and looked at the floor as though they wished they were somewhere else. I found myself looking especially hard at one of the women.

I hadn’t noticed her the first time around, but now something about her struck me. She seemed different from the others, in a way I couldn’t quite pin down. She was dressed equally shabbily, in a pair of old khakis and a baggy gray sweater, but she managed to suggest that this was meant to conceal a great body, and had almost succeeded. Her face looked tired, but her brown eyes had an intelligent wariness which contrasted strongly with the flat, vapid expressions all around.

Our eyes met briefly. There was definitely a flicker of interest there, an intensity that made me realize that the facile smiles of the others had been directed at Sam, not at me. If I existed for them, it was simply as an extension of him.

“Come on, Phil,” Sam said, putting his arm around me. “I’ll show you where to bed down. We can talk in the morning.”

He led me around a massive rectangular dining table to a door at the end of the hall. The small room inside was furnished with a bed, a chair, a chest of drawers and an empty bookshelf. There was no window, and the air felt cold and damp.

“The Hilton it ain’t,” said Sam wryly. “This place was an old summer camp used to belong to some nutty sect. We’ve made a few improvements, but everything’s still kind of basic.”

“It’s great,” I murmured. “I just wished you hadn’t inconvenienced that guy for my sake.”

“It wasn’t just for your sake,” Sam replied, lowering his voice. “Truth is, Mark had it coming. He’s been getting out of line lately. This’ll be a good lesson.”

I wondered which line Mark had been getting out of, and why such a mean-looking dude would let someone like Sam push him around.

“Anyway, it’s just for now,” Sam went on. “Later on we can make other arrangements.”

“Oh, I won’t be able to stay long,” I said quickly “I’ve got to be getting back in a week or two, and there’s a couple of other places I want to see first.”

I wanted this established right away. I planned to stay a few days, a week at most. It would be something to look back on later as an “interesting experience.”

“If you need the can, there’s one across the yard,” Sam continued, ignoring my comment. “It’s kind of primitive, but you’ll get used to it.”

He stepped forward and grasped my hand.

“You’re going to find happiness here, Phil. A happiness you never dared dream would come to pass. I know that may seem kind of strange now, but it’s true. I’ll prove it to you.”

I smiled weakly and nodded.

“Great. Thanks a lot for inviting me.”

Sam turned in the doorway. He shook his head solemnly.

“You invited yourself, Phil. Everyone who comes here invites themselves. They’re the only invitations we accept.”

He turned and walked out, closing the door behind him. I undressed quickly, turned out the light and got into bed, pulling the covers over my head just as I had as a child in our badly heated house in Holland. Shivering with cold, I lay there sorting out stray sounds which seeped in through the cracks in the walls: a flurry of indistinct voices next door, rapid spasms of gunfire from the video, the dull thud of the Costeo goodies being stashed away, and then the disturbingly familiar sound of a child crying somewhere in the distance. That was the last thing I was conscious of, and when I thought it over in the morning I wasn’t sure if I had really heard it or if it was part of a dream.

Over the next few days, I explored my new home and fell in love.