“I guess we’ll soon find out what kind of bastard he was,” Finch said to an oblivious Feral. Feral was looking up at the wall. Mesmerized by Sidle’s stalking of the spiraling moth. Finch wondered how many Sidles Feral had caught over the years.

Finch forced the second bulb into his mouth. Chewed it into a dull paste as he moved from the chair to the couch. Lay down. Swallowed.

The room spun a little. Righted itself.

The ceiling had a few odd discolorations but nothing to suggest infiltration. Invisible spies. Who lived upstairs, anyway? Sometimes lately he had heard a person pacing across the floorboards in the middle of the night.

After a minute or two, Finch sat up. Nothing seemed to be happening. Nothing at all.

The dead man sat in the chair next to him, smiling.

“Uhhh!” Finch leapt to his feet.

The man was flanked by a Feral grown large as a pony. A Sidle grown as large as a Feral. They both looked at him the way Sidle had been looking at the moths.

“Sit down,” the man said. An order, not a suggestion. In a strange accent. The man looked much younger than he had on the floor of the apartment. Had lost the fungal beard.

Finch sat down slowly. Didn’t take his eyes off the man. Left hand groping across the cushions. Where was his gun?

“I’ve been waiting for someone like you,” the man said. “You won’t understand it, but I’m going to give you what I know. Just in case.”

The window behind the man no longer showed the city. What it did show was so impossible and disturbing Finch had to look away. And yet the image entered into him.

The man said Finch’s name. Except he didn’t say “John Finch.” He used Finch’s real name. The one buried for eight long years.

Finch tried to slow his breathing. Failed. Chest felt like something was going to explode.

He must be inside the man’s memories.

Then why is the man sitting across from you?

“Who are you?” An obvious question. But it kept pounding against the inside of his skull. So he had to let it out.

The man laughed.

“I didn’t say anything funny.”

“More to the point,” the man said, “who are you? And who are you with?”

“Shut up. This is just one of your memories. Manifesting in me. It isn’t real.”

Blindingly, unbelievably bright, a light like the sun shot through the window. The night sky torn apart by it. Through the tear: a turquoise sea roiling with ever-changing patterns.

“You don’t have to understand it. Not now,” the man said.

Didn’t know if he was inside a mushroom or outside the universe. Glimpses of the city from on high: each street, each canal, an artery filled with blood. Hadn’t known there could be so many shades of red. Spiking into his eyes.