“I tried to talk clearly. I told them what she said about me finding the island, and the promise that she drew from me, that I would find ‘what was left of her’ out there.

“Pops looked as grave as ever when he spoke. His voice was listless. ‘Don’t go looking for that island. You can pretty damn well gauge that by now that island’s gone. The swamp’s swallowed it, and if you see this damned ghost again, you make the Sign of the Cross.’

“ ‘That’s what you should have done, all right,’ said Big Ramona, ‘and she wouldn’t have had any power because she came from Hell.’

“ ‘But how could she get out of Hell to come to me?’ I asked.

“ ‘Those cameos of hers,’ said Jasmine, ‘you go put them back in the attic. Put everything back in that trunk just the way it was.’

“ ‘It’s too late for that,’ said Pops softly. ‘Just don’t let her get you again.’

“We sat there in silence. Then Big Ramona was boiling milk for our café au lait and it smelled good. I remember that, the smell of that hot milk.

“I just realized that Lolly was all dressed up because she was going out with her boyfriend, who was always trying to marry her and lure her away but never succeeded. She looked like a Hindu beauty, Lolly. And Jasmine, Jasmine in her plain shirtwaist dress of red silk was smoking in the kitchen, which was rare.

“The hot milk went into the coffee cups. I looked down into the steam.

“ ‘Everybody believes me,’ I said. ‘You all believe me.’

“Pops said to Jasmine, ‘Tell him.’

“ ‘Tell me what?’ I asked.

“Jasmine drew on her cigarette and crushed it out in her plate. Then she lit another one, just like that. ‘It was Goblin,’ she said, ‘who came in here and pointed and carried on about the curtains burning. It was Goblin, in a flash’—she snapped her fingers—‘as big as life.’

“ ‘Knocked the plate out of her hand,’ said Lolly.

“Jasmine nodded. ‘Knocked a plate off the drainboard there, too.’

“I was speechless. I was overwhelmed. All my life these very people had insisted Goblin didn’t exist, or I shouldn’t be talking to Goblin, or Goblin was my subconscious, or Goblin was just an imaginary playmate, and now they were saying these things. I had no answer. I felt amazement more than anything else.

“ ‘How could that creature knock that plate off the drainboard?’ asked Pops.

“ ‘I’m telling you, it happened,’ said Jasmine. ‘I was rinsing the dishes in the sink, and that plate went crash, and then, when I turned, there he was, and he was pointing to the door, and he knocked the plate out of my hand.”

“Everybody went quiet.

“ ‘And this is why you believe me?’ I asked. ‘Because you saw Goblin with your own eyes?’