“Theft.”

“That’s right. Blackwater’s personality was the sort not to take chances. To him, Goblin, or the land that was to become Goblin, wasn’t a place anybody should settle. The land was sacred and the rain suggested great power. I agree. I feel it, too. This land wasn’t for dwelling, Mrs. Doris. It was for…”

“Spirits.”

They stared at each other across the small table. Kamp looked over his shoulder, to the many corners and doors of his landlady’s apartment.

“Yes. Spirits.”

They sipped wine at the same time.

“They say Blackwater went nuts up in the North Woods. Rumors of a witch spread quick, and his tribesmen spoke of her quietly when he wasn’t around. About how he met her in those woods and she stole the remains of his sanity. They saw a void in his gaze, upon exiting those woods, when he declared all of Goblin off limits to any human being. That included the indigenous people, too. It would be years before anyone would step foot here again.”

Mrs. Doris smiled and her eyes became two youthful slits behind her own pink-rimmed glasses.

“Then the Original Sixty came,” she said.

“The first sixty settlers,” Kamp said, nodding. “The arrival of the white monsters Blackwater had anticipated. The kind that wanted to stay. At first he and his tribe watched from a distance. He instructed them to wait. And so they did, in the marshy banks of the West Fields. Let the pale shades settle in. His term, I’ve read. Let them get lazy first. Then?”

“Then?” Mrs. Doris asked, her eyes wide open again. But she had heard this story many times.

“Well, what happened next is a hotly contested point in Goblin history, Mrs. Doris. One book will tell you something a little different than the next.”

“But what do you say happened next?”

“Me? What do I say?” Kamp leaned back in the kitchen chair. The wood groaned in retaliation. “I tend to believe the story about a woman, a wife and a mother, who set out to retrieve a horse that had broken a fence and run away. She tracked the animal out to the far southern entrance to the North Woods, where she came face-to-face with Blackwater himself.”

Mrs. Doris wiggled her eyebrows.

“Bet she wasn’t expecting that.”

“Indeed. Before she could say ‘neighbor’ he’d scared her so thoroughly, she turned whiter yet. Blackwater did such a good job running the rest of the settlers off that, two months later, when two male explorers came through, they recorded in their notebooks that the land they’d discovered was being seen for the first time by human eyes. That’s how completely the Original Sixty had fled.”

Outside, the sound of police sirens caused both Kamp and Mrs. Doris to get up from the table and go to the window. Down on Lily, four cruisers passed fast, their lights spinning red and blue, turning each drop of rain into a prism.