The Spaceship Next Door

¹¹ MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN

The phone call that was supposed to come from the hospital the next morning—the one notifying Annie that her mother was being released momentarily—didn’t come. Not that there was no phone call, only that the one she received involved a very different conversation.

Annie didn’t realize exactly how much she failed to pay attention to the information being recited over the phone until it came time to repeat it to others. Ed, and later Violet, and after that her father, all received partial bits of things that didn’t entirely add up to a comprehensive whole. It didn’t fit into her head that way neither, so that was only fair.

The short version was that Carol wasn’t coming home and she wasn’t staying at Harbridge. She was being transported to Boston, where a medical facility with first-class oncology support was located. There, she would be tested and an approach would be devised, and the question of chemo came up, and phrases like as comfortable as possible and managing the condition were bandied about, and just about all of it made Annie’s eyes burn.

As she explained to the doctor—his name was either “doctor Benson” or “doctor Ben Song”, she couldn’t tell—Carol did a round of chemo before, when she was first diagnosed, and it nearly killed her. It was Annie’s understanding that there would be no more chemotherapy. Her mother would rather die on her own terms than live on theirs, and that was that. She asked the doctor if Carol repeated this declaration.

She had, but doctor Bensomething had a lot to say on that point, along the lines of therapeutic changes and options and the importance of thorough diagnoses, and Annie gave up trying to figure out how it all ended up playing out because at the end of the call her mother was still heading off to the city, whether she wanted to or not.

Annie was tacitly not going to Boston.

She could have. Even though she was only sixteen and had neither the money nor the wherewithal to get a hotel room, and even though she had no relatives in the Boston area, there were options. She’d done this before, the last time Carol ended up in the city for a chemo session. The hospital had a program in place that could put her up short-term in something like a halfway house that was a cross section of people going through outpatient cancer screenings and their family members. When she did it, a guardian was appointed to keep an eye on her, and she hated every second of the experience.

It was terrible to admit, but when her mother exited chemo and swore she would never go back, Annie was glad to hear it. Carol was essentially saying she’d rather die at home sooner than in a hospital later, but all Annie could think was that she’d never have to go back to that halfway house again.

She was being incredibly selfish, and she knew it. If she had a therapist, that therapist would undoubtedly be all over her. Nonetheless, the reality was unchanged: Annie had no intention of going to Boston. In the event she had to get to the city—for instance if Carol took a “turn for the worst” (this was her least-favorite euphemism for dying) Annie could always reach out to Desmond Hollis, who would probably send her into town by helicopter if he had to.

Annie deciding to stay in Sorrow Falls created a whole new set of problems, though.

In hindsight, the whole issue could be placed at the feet of Carol Collins, because sometime after the last chemo session and the current emergency, Carol decided to eradicate all negative thoughts from her life. In a very basic way, this made sense, because there was some evidence to suggest cancer patients with positive outlooks tended to do better. The idea of being healthy could impact the health, essentially.

But there was a difference between trying to be positive and refusing to anticipate a circumstance in which that positivity would be inadequate. Specifically, Carol made no concrete plans for her daughter in the event she wasn’t there to perform her duties as The Adult.

Anyone who met the two of them in the past two years would have drawn the entirely appropriate conclusion that Annie was playing the role of The Adult, but the problem was that this wasn’t in any real way a legal designation. If her mother was unavailable to perform her duties as guardian, the task fell to her father, but when she spoke to him about Carol’s condition he made it clear he would be unable to return to Sorrow Falls in anything like a reasonable period of time. (He said he was in Manitoba, which wasn’t just north of them but considerably west. Annie wouldn’t have time to appreciate this until later, but clearly Hollis’s paper trees made quite a circuitous route to the mill.)

All of this meant she had no available adult to pretend to tell her what to do and make sure she didn’t set herself on fire or subsist on chocolate bars and vodka, or wander into traffic, or whatever it was she was supposed to end up doing if unsupervised. It was completely crazy, because anyone who knew her at all knew she could take care of herself perfectly fine.

Her initial efforts, then, were to deflect the concern of the people holding themselves responsible for her.

At first, the hospital was pretty easy to fool. Doctor Ben asked if there was an adult guardian, and Annie said yes of course, her father lived with them, and this was technically not a lie because he had a room there. Carol backed her up, too.

Someone blabbed. Annie thought it was probably Lee, the paramedic, although just about anybody from Sorrow Falls could have been the source, as it wasn’t exactly a secret. So then they told her she had to have an adult in the house when the ambulance people came by with Carol, to verify that a legal adult was there, even if that adult wasn’t her father.

The adult ended up being Ed, which turned the day into possibly the most awkward thing in the history of awkward things. Because when Annie asked Ed to come into the house she didn’t tell him he was donating his services as guardian, right up until someone handed him a document to sign.

He did sign, which was great, because that meant one set of adults was going to leave her alone. But as with many of the things that made sense in her head, this did not solve Annie’s problem.

“I’M SORRY, did I just adopt you?”

“Don’t be so dramatic. Of course not. I just needed to get rid of those guys. You can take off now, I think they have a big enough head start.”

“No, I can’t.”

It was Saturday, and they had no plans to continue the interviews again until Tuesday, at which time they would be visiting City Hall, talking to some of the long-term resident/owners of the area businesses and, at the end of the day, Desmond Hollis. Annie was expecting it to be far less interesting than, for example, talking to the picketers at the end of Main might be, because those guys were entertaining as hell. Although Desmond was always worth the time.

Anyway, they had no place to go for the weekend, so he had no reason to stick around.

“I have plenty of food and everything, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said. “We keep a well-stocked freezer. We pack for long winters around here.”

“I’m worried that I just agreed to make sure a minor is being taken care of. If something happens to you, I’m in a ton of trouble.”

“Okay. A little self-centered, but okay.”

“In addition to it being bad that something happened to you. Annie, you just maneuvered me into being your legal guardian until one of your parents gets back, did you even read what they made me sign?”

“Well yeah, but, I mean, c’mon, do you know how long I’ve been taking care of myself? Ask anyone.”

“Your degree of self-governance was something arranged by your mother, and I guess your father, if he’s… wherever he is. Now I’m the one who gets to make sure you don’t die in a fire or fall through a hole in the floor. And no, you cannot stay on the base, and you definitely can’t stay in the B&B with me.”

He had clearly visited the part of the house where there were holes in the floor.

“I wasn’t going to ask to. I’m fine.”

“You can’t stay here, Annie.”

“You can’t make me leave.”

“Actually, I just signed some documents that say I can do exactly that.”

Annie sighed. “Well that’s not gonna work. Do you want to stay here? I’ll show you where all the holes in the floor are.”

“That’s not going to work either. You keep telling me everyone in town knows you, and so far that’s ended up being true. There must be someone you can stay with.”

And that was how she ended up at Violet’s house.

THE HANDOFF WAS a lot stranger than it should have been, mainly because, somehow, Annie never spent the night at Violet’s house before. Vi spent many a night at Annie’s, hanging out with her and Carol and watching movies, and doing things girls did, like talking about quantum theory and orbital mechanics.

And boys, sometimes. Especially before the ship landed, when there wasn’t much else going on in Sorrow Falls aside from The Coming Puberty.

This was not to say Violet had anything particularly compelling to offer when engaged in a discussion of boys and girls and how they might interact socially, sexually or academically. It was perfectly understandable for someone home-schooled to have effectively no opinion on boys she’d never met, met only once, or only seen from a distance. At the same time, her lack of interest in developing a more robust understanding of the available local options seemed to go beyond her innate social awkwardness. At times, in other words, Annie wondered if her friend might be gay.

As explanations went, it was a pretty good one. She’d never asked, in part because she wasn’t sure if Violet even knew yet. It also seemed sort of rude. It was one of those things you waited for the other person to bring up.

The ship was sort of a welcome icebreaker, in that sense. Once it landed she and Violet had a ream of other things to discuss. It was an almost bottomless pool of things, actually, because Vi was some sort of genius. This was another thing Annie didn’t really come out and just ask, but unlike the gay thing, the genius aspect of her friend was more or less assumed.

In home-schooling their daughter, Violet’s parents decided early on to concentrate on science and math to the virtual exclusion of all other disciplines. How they got away with this, Annie didn’t know—she was pretty sure the state required some sort of testing for the home-schooled, and could only assume Vi tested out okay since she’d not heard otherwise. Anyway, it didn’t seem as if Violet had any issues with reading and writing, and if her grasp of history was a little general (aside from movies) it was still good enough to convince whoever regulated these things to let her slide.

Her understanding of science—physics, more so than biology—was, in Annie’s opinion, the coolest thing about her friend. It was also incredibly helpful; Annie learned way more from Vi than from school or from her friends at the campers. It was Violet’s information that helped Annie sort out the good theories from the bad.

While it was true their conversations about applied and theoretical science were frequent, they didn’t generally take place in Violet’s home, a place Annie had only been inside of a few times. She’d seen the kitchen, the living room, and Vi’s bedroom, but only in passing.

Carol probably should have made arrangements for Annie for this kind of thing. Carol met Vi’s mom—Annie always called her Susan, as this was one of those households which eschewed titles like ‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.’—two or three times and had nice things to say about her and all, but at no point did anyone discuss an emergency plan. This was (again) pretty much Carol’s fault, as her think positive! attitude sometimes precluded a but plan for the worst! corollary, but Mrs. Susan Jones could have also stepped up and volunteered.

This was what Annie was thinking as the parties Edgar/Annie and Violet/Susan met in Vi’s kitchen to work out the care and feeding of Annie Collins, Defenseless Child.

“You want her to stay?” Susan asked. She was literally repeating what Ed just asked, right after the two of them went through the hospitalization of Carol and Ed’s accidental guardianship. Susan came off as dully shocked at his temerity, which was a little odd given anyone could have figured out why they were there before they even made it to the kitchen table.

“Yes, you see… if that’s all right…” Ed stumbled.

“Of course she can stay,” Violet said.

“Yes, of course,” Susan said. She smiled.

Then nobody talked for a few seconds. It was incredibly awkward.

Annie had little direct experience with Susan. She was a thin woman with—according to her daughter—an enthusiasm for macrobiotics coupled with vitamin supplements that pushed her body somewhere past healthy and into so-healthy-she-might-be-unwell territory. There were moments, in speaking with her, in which she sometimes seemed to check out a little, as if her mind were on something more important. This happened at the oddest of times, such as this particular one.

“I’ll go get the room ready,” Violet said.

“I’ll help,” Annie said, very much ready to get out of the room.

“No, you stay. I’m sure you have to work out everything with… Edgar, isn’t it? It’s nice to meet you.”

“And you,” Ed said. “I’ve heard a lot.”

This was just him attempting to be polite, as he’d heard almost nothing. He was only slightly less socially awkward than Violet’s family.

Annie tried to shoot Vi a please don’t leave me here alone look, but Violet was already gone.

Ed was gamely trying to keep the conversation at the table going as he pulled the documents from his jacket pocket. “I understand Annie and your daughter have known one another for a long time, and…”

“Yes, yes, sorry,” Susan said. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Somerville, I was thinking about poor Carol.” To Annie, she said, “Are you all right, dear?”

She’d never called Annie dear before, or anything even distantly maternal. It was jarring.

“I’m okay, thank you.”

“Well of course, you can stay as long as you need. Violet will set you up in the guest room.”

“That would be great.”

“Good,” Ed said. He was visibly relieved.

“Do I need to sign something?” Susan asked.

“Yes, actually, I have a form here. I’m still her guardian and all, but… let me just add a little legalese at the bottom here. If you could sign it, that would be great.”

“Absolutely.”

Ed jotted a few words under his own signature, probably along the lines of, if something happens to me, check with these people for Annie. Then he drew a line on the bottom and handed it over.

Susan skimmed what he’d written, signed it and handed it back.

“Great, thank you so much, Mrs… Jones?” He was reading her signature.

“Susan, please. We don’t concern ourselves with formal titles around here.”

“Susan, then. And you can call me Ed.” He slipped the paperwork back into his pocket, and stood. “Annie, are you okay with all this?”

“Sure, Ed, I’ll be fine.”

“Great. I’ll be back Tuesday, usual time, but call me if anything… you know, with your mom. Or anything at all.”

“You’ll be by to pick her up?” Susan asked.

“Yes, on Tuesday. We have a busy day ahead.”

Already, Annie was thinking of ways she could continue to live at her house but get picked up at Violet’s when Ed needed her, but she couldn’t come up with an uncomplicated way for that to work. At minimum, she would need Susan to be complicit, which was a pretty big ask.

Ed stepped around the table to say goodbye to Annie, which was another species of awkward because he wasn’t sure what halfway between a handshake and a hug was supposed to look like, so it managed to be a little of both. Then he saw himself out.

“Thanks for this, Susan, I appreciate it.”

“Don’t worry yourself. I just hope everything will be okay with Carol.”

“I’m sure it will. I… I’ll need to go home and pick up some things, though. All my clothes and stuff are there. And my bike.”

“Of course,” Susan said. “Violet can take you. She needs to run to the store today as it is.”

“I’M SORRY,” Annie said, as soon as she and Violet were alone. They were in the car and on the way to the grocery store, as it turned out one of the things Vi’s family didn’t have enough of was food. Guest bedroom, yes. Food for guest, not so much.

“It’s fine.”

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

“It’s okay, I understand. A call ahead would have maybe been cool. A text, even.”

“It happened fast. I didn’t know what else to do. One minute I was like, looks like I’m dipping into the frozen pizza stash for the next few weeks, the next minute Ed was looking to make me a ward of the state or something.”

“He’s just looking out for you. He seems like a good guy.”

“You talked to him for all of ten seconds.”

“Are you saying he is not a good guy?”

“No, no, just you didn’t have a lot of time.”

“I’m a quick judge. Mom seemed okay with him.”

Annie didn’t want to point out that Violet’s mother was perhaps the most inscrutable person she’d met in her life, as that seemed rude. But it was impossible to tell, without employing precise scientific equipment, what reaction Susan had to Ed, good or bad. Perhaps her dad was the expressive one in the family.

“Well I don’t want to disrupt anybody or be a burden or whatever. I’ll stay out of everyone’s way, so you guys can do… you know, whatever.”

Violet laughed.

“Yes, the goat sacrifice at midnight is really a family thing.”

“I mean… I don’t know. Whatever home-schooling you’ve got going on.”

“It’s summer.”

“I know, but still.”

“Is this your way of saying you think my family is a little weird?”

“No, no. Not a little.”

“I’m scandalized! I’ve a mind to just bring you right back home for that.”

“And that’s where I wanted to be in the first place.”

“Okay, forget that, Brer Rabbit. No guest bedroom now. You can sleep under the stairs.”

“All right, I take it back. Your family isn’t weird.”

VI LIVED in an actual cabin in the woods. To get to her place one had to head down Liberty Way to a left turn at an unmarked, well-hidden dirt road, right to the point where you reach the conclusion that you’ve made a navigational error and decide it’s time to turn around. Her place was another two hundred yards past that.

The road extended beyond their house, up into the hills. Annie didn’t know where it ended: possibly Narnia. She never tried finding out.

To get to the grocery store meant going back down the dirt road to a left on Liberty, then a trip through farmland—staying north of the traffic on Patience and Spaceship Road—until reaching Durgin Ave. Durgin went east-west across the northern part of Sorrow Falls, hooking up (indirectly) with the north end of Main. It would have been a viable route for Annie to take on her bike if she wanted to avoid the mess caused by Shippie, but Durgin was a narrow, shoulderless road people treated like a highway. Legally, she could have biked on it. Intellectually, it seemed a foolish idea.

At the western edge of Sorrow Falls, right off of Durgin, was a shopping plaza that had a Super Shopper; a chain pizza place everyone despised and still ate at; a home goods store; and an empty storefront that used to have a steak house, and still had a lot of the signage up for it.

The plaza was kind of typical for the region, which was to say it was a pavement-heavy consumer oasis that made everyone a little sad about capitalism. The Super Shopper was the largest grocer in the area, though, and while the locals had a lot of good things to say about farm stand produce—of which there was a lot—most of them got the bulk of their goods (food and otherwise) at the Super.

Annie knew it well. Carol hadn’t been strong enough to make a proper meal more than a couple of times a week for a year or two, but she was strong enough to shop at least one Saturday a month, so on that Saturday she and Annie stocked up on frozen food, canned food, food that came in kits requiring only water and perhaps the addition of ground beef, and so on. It was all processed foods all the time: the anti-macrobiotic diet.

Violet and Annie ended up filling a shopping cart with the kind of goods that only made sense for a frat house freezer, and then Violet paid for all of it, which was incredibly embarrassing. There was cash sitting in a box in Carol’s bedroom, and that money was for exactly this situation, but Annie forgot all about getting it before leaving. She still couldn’t believe she wasn’t going to be spending the night in her own bed, which may have been part of the problem.

Annie didn’t recognize Dougie at all until he said hello while bagging their one-week supply of tater tots.

“How’s it going?” he said, with that half-nod guys their age thought was cool and affecting. It was almost a shrug, almost a nod, almost nothing at all, as if to say I do not wish to expend the effort to fully acknowledge you but I can do this.

“Oh, hey!” Annie said. “I didn’t recognize you, sorry!”

He smiled and rubbed his hand over his head. It was not, as claimed by the gossipers of the Oakdale Experience, a completely shaven head. He had stubble up there. It was army-standard crew cut, more or less. Still, it was a very different look.

Doug Kozinsky—Dougie—was the same age as Annie, and in a lot of ways was a kindred spirit, in that he was a town kid of limited means, eclectic tastes and above-average intellect. But where Annie could merge with just about any clique, Dougie could barely handle eye contact. She knew him pretty well because his dad was a long-haul trucker for Hollis, and worked either with or under Annie’s father. Growing up, when her dad and Carol and Annie did things together like going to family barbecues and whatnot, they usually ended up with Dougie’s family. That made them bona fide ‘childhood friends’.

They no longer hung out, which was more of a reflection of the change in Annie’s family dynamic than in anything Dougie did or didn’t do. She was pretty sure he saw it differently, but there was little she could do about that. She always said hi, and took the time to chat with him when he was around, and that was a lot more than most.

“What do you think?” he asked, regarding the haircut.

She thought he was spending too much time idolizing the local army men.

Rude, she wrote in her imaginary sociology field notes.

“Looks good!”

“Thanks.”

He blushed. Dougie was an extremely white young man, and with his light brown hair no longer fully disguising his scalp it was possible to answer the question: does blushing happen over the whole head or just the face? (The answer: yes, the whole head can blush.)

Violet finished paying, and Dougie finished bagging and placing the bags in the cart. Annie was struggling with the question as to whether or not she should introduce him to Vi, when he grabbed Annie’s elbow.

“Hey, you have a second?” he asked.

“Sure, what’s up?” Annie’s eyes darted to the register and then along the bank of registers; communicating the obvious don’t you have work?

“I’m on break in a minute, meet me out front?”

She looked at Vi, who shrugged.

“Sure thing, Doug.”

They loaded the food in the trunk of the car and reconnoitered at the entrance. A few seconds later, Dougie appeared and quick-walked them around the corner, as he pulled out a cigarette.

“You smoke?” Annie asked.

“Yeah, you want one?” He extended the pack. Annie shook him off. He offered one to Violet, who also declined.

“So I, uh, I don’t know how up to date you are on things, but something’s definitely up with the base,” he said.

Annie considered herself remarkably up-to-date in that regard, but didn’t share.

“Yeah, how so?”

“Well here’s what I heard. I guess there was an attack the last night.”

“An… attack? What, did the Russians arrive?”

“No, no, no. On the base. Some grunt went nuts, and now he’s dead, and I think they’re covering it up.”

“How do you know this?” Violet asked.

“I know,” he said. He addressed Violet as if she had been a part of the conversation from the outset. “She knows how.”

“Doug’s house is near the base,” Annie said.

This wasn’t a fully adequate explanation, but it was okay for the moment. A more complete version of the story would be to say that Dougie’s back yard terminated at the army base fence on one side and at the fence to the Winterhill graveyard on the other side. According to some of the more reputable gossip, Dougie also spent an unreasonable amount of time hijacking army radio frequencies and taking notes about what he heard. A couple of years ago he got in a little trouble for marching along the perimeter of the base and pretending he was a soldier too. It would have been cute if he was still eight—they’d both played “army” when they were eight, coincidentally in the same field that now housed the base—but he was doing this at fourteen.

“So what do you think’s going on?” Annie asked. She did not, truly, think anything was, but he did, and that was what counted for the moment.

“Space flu,” he said.

“I’m sorry, space… flu?” Vi asked.

“It’s what they call it when… never mind, I’ll explain later,” Annie said.

“Yeah, I think it’s starting to affect them, like, badly. What I hear, this guy went nutso in the barracks, and they ended up choking him or something. He was trying to kill people with his bare hands.”

“So we should be thankful the space flu hasn’t inspired anybody to use their service revolver, you’re thinking.”

“I’m dead serious, Annie, you should be careful. They’re already talking about a change in their training protocols. They’re also tightening things. Altering shifts and stuff. This morning they were running drills on the base I haven’t seen them run since the base went up. The bad kind of drills, like, suppression fire, crowd control, those sorts of things. I think things’ve been changing for a while only we didn’t really notice. Do you know Tina?”

“Sure.” Tina Henneker was a classmate who’d been driving since March and was unofficially voted by the class as Most Likely To Lose Her Life Texting While Driving. It was unlikely she said anything to Dougie Kozinsky directly, but news traveled a lot of different ways.

“She got stopped at a checkpoint, a couple of days ago.”

Annie laughed. “C’mon, Doug, nobody gets stopped at those. I don’t think the arms on the gates even come down.”

“I’m serious. Ask her yourself. They’re getting ready to close off the town, I’m telling you.”

“I’ll keep my ear to the ground, dude.”

“Look I…” he looked around in case one of the pigeons or trashcan rodents in the nearby Dumpster were feeling curious, then leaned forward and took his voice down to a whisper. “I know you were there. On the base. I saw you.”

“Oh, that, I was just—”

“I don’t wanna know. I’m sure you had reasons. I just want to warn you, you know. Be careful. Whatever you’ve got going on in there… I think they’re hiding a real problem. And I don’t want anything happening to you.”

“Aw, thanks, Doug. That’s sweet. Thanks. Don’t worry, I’ll stay aware. And hey, let me know if you hear anything else.”

DINNER WAS CHICKEN nuggets and fries, two popular frozen delicacies in the Collins household, rendered slightly less edible in Violet’s home by the absence of ketchup or any other species of condiment. It was something they hadn’t considered needing when at the Super, because as far as Annie was concerned every house had ketchup or at least a jar of prepared barbecue sauce or vinegar, or something that would pair effectively with fried things, while Violet didn’t usually eat like this at home and so hadn’t considered it.

Susan didn’t join them. Annie assumed she’d eaten already or had plans to eat later, and until then elected to remain in the house’s study, reading a book by lamplight.

The study was the most impressive part of the house, and Annie resolved to spend more time in it. If her own living room was an unconscious homage to old Hollywood, Violet’s study was a paean to unusual books. Annie spent a lot of time around books as a library volunteer, but Susan and Todd’s collection (Todd was Violet’s nearly-always-absent dad) had stuff she never heard of before. It was like an alternative history Twilight Zone library, covering a lot of less-than-respectable subjects, like cryptozoology and nutso assassination theories. There were also books on since-debunked scientific ideas and books on subjects that would never make it into the public library, like eugenics. It was, in short, a vast collection of wrong things. Annie couldn’t wait to jump in.

After they ate and cleaned up—dishes were done by hand in Annie’s household, so when it turned out that was the standard in Vi’s house as well she was already prepared—and then retired to the guest bedroom, where Annie tried to get used to the idea that she was going to be spending the evening there.

The room was small, but clean. It smelled like an alien room, though, and the sounds were all different, the air blew wrong, and basically this whole thing sucked.

Violet seemed attuned to her friend’s discomfort.

“Maybe we can work something out,” she said. Violet was sitting at the foot of the bed across from Annie at the head. It was a queen-sized mattress, bigger than the twin in Annie’s own room. If this were a hotel and she were there under different circumstances, she’d be pretty happy with the larger bed. “You can sleep over there on weekends or something. I’ll stay over too.”

“You’re the same age as me.”

“Sure. But we’ve been there alone before.”

“Look, I’m probably gonna be pissed at Ed about this for a while, but that doesn’t mean I want him to get in any trouble, either. If he says I need to stay here with you and Susan, I probably have to.”

“Yes, I guess you’re right.”

ANNIE COULDN’T FALL ASLEEP, which was more or less as expected. After Violet left, she talked to Carol on the phone for a half an hour or so. This was a challenge, because only one part of the bedroom got any cell phone reception, and it was a part with no place to sit. It was good to hear her voice though. Annie imagined her mother was at home and Annie was the one on the trip, and that idea made it easier for some reason.

Carol found a channel running Bringing Up Baby and the two of them spent a good amount of time quoting lines to each other. But then her mother had to get some rest, and Annie was left alone in the big strange bed with the wrong noises and smells and breeze.

Sometime around midnight she decided to stop staring at the ceiling and tried staring out the window instead. The window was on one side of the bed, so it was possible to look through it while still retaining the comfort of being in bed, which was nice.

The isolation of the cabin was jarring. Her own bedroom window faced the street, and while their street was essentially empty—she looked out on farmland on the other side, with the nearest neighbors to the left and right on the same side of the road—there was still a paved road there with a line down the middle and an expectation of periodic traffic.

Violet’s place was completely secluded, and until midnight, looking out into the dark woods and listening to alarmingly loud insect and animal sounds, Annie didn’t entirely appreciate what true seclusion really was. This was Stephen King-level isolation. Cujo was surely about to emerge from the brush.

No sooner did she have that very thought when something large moved in the trees on the other side of the clearing in front of the porch. In a mild panic—mild because she was pretty safe where she was—she ran through all the obvious options from wolf to deer, then drifted to less obvious ones, like bear, moose, and (on loan from one of the cryptozoology books in the study) Bigfoot.

Then a man emerged from the trees, and Annie’s heart stopped for a solid five seconds. He stood at the edge of the clearing, this man: motionless, like statue-motionless, like she couldn’t even see him breathing.

The terrifying possibilities regarding who he was and what he was doing there were only beginning to churn through her already-over-imaginative brain when he moved again, two steps, enough for his face to be seen in the moonlight.

It was Todd, Violet’s dad.

Why he was wandering around in the woods at midnight was only one of a hundred questions. Another was, what was he even doing in Sorrow Falls, when as far as Annie knew he traveled for his job? And where was his car?

She turned away from the window and went back to staring at the ceiling again.

“I take it back again, Violet. Your family is really weird,” she said.