“I stopped, felt the dizziness again, and then I heard the humming of bees. I wiped at my face but my gloves were dirty and I probably got my face dirty, and though I had a linen handkerchief in my pocket, along with lots of paper tissue, it was no time for that.

“I walked on, making sure the land was solid, and realized I was climbing upwards onto a mound. At last a clearing broke in front of me, a very large clearing surrounded by immense cypress—in fact, it seemed then that the cypress had anchored the clearing and made an island out of it by their knees and their hateful sprawling roots.

“And in the midst of this clearing rose the house, some six to eight feet above ground atop its log foundations, a seemingly circular structure of two stories, each of connecting arches and in a rising succession of smaller sizes, like the two layers of a wedding cake. Adding to this impression was a cupola on the very top.

“A solid wooden stairs rose from the earth to the front doorway, and affixed above this front door was a rectangular sign with deeply etched and plainly readable letters:

PROPERTY OF
MANFRED BLACKWOOD
KEEP OUT

“If I’d ever felt as much triumph before, I didn’t remember it. This was my house, this was my island; I had discovered what was only legend to other people, and it was all mine. I’d reclaimed Manfred’s tale. I’d seen what William never saw, what Gravier never saw, what Pops never saw. I was here.

“In a heated delirium I surveyed the building, almost incapable of any true reasoning and not even remembering Rebecca’s plea to me, or the deep simmering pain which I had just heard inside my head.

“The droning of the bees, the rattle and flapping of the giant palmetto leaves, the soft crush of gravel under my feet—all these things sort of embraced me and upheld me and seemed to wrap me in an incalculable fascination, as though I’d come into the paradise of another man’s faith.

“I was also dimly aware, unwillingly aware, that though the ancient trees might have created this clearing, the clearing itself could not have remained free in any natural way. The swamp should have swallowed it up a long time ago. As it was the blackberries were eating at it, and the wicked, high-toned wisteria had a claim on it, sprawling out to shroud the undergrowth to the right of the house and to the back of it, coming up over the high two-story roof.

“But somebody was living here. Probably. But then maybe not. At the idea of squatters or trespassers I was incensed. I regretted that I hadn’t brought a handgun. Should have. And might whenever I came back. It all depended upon what I discovered in the house.