“Looks like Christmas out there,” Mrs. Doris said.

“No,” Kamp said. “Only Lily.”

“Tell me about Perish Park, Walter. Unless you’re ready for bed.”

Walter turned and looked into her eighty-eight-year-old eyes. For the first time all night he had the sneaking suspicion that Mrs. Doris had asked him over with the intention of calming him down. But the thought was fleeting and it vanished before he could consider it.

In his mind’s eye he saw the historical marker at the gates of Perish Park. Mrs. Doris probably thought of it, too.

PERISH PARK. WHERE COLONEL WES FARRALINE CHEATED CHIEF BLACKWATER’S SON WITH A CONTRACT MADE OF DUST.

“Pretty soon other settlers and soldiers south of Goblin got wind of the unflappable indigenous chief who wouldn’t allow anybody to step foot in what is now our beloved Goblin,” Kamp said, still eyeing the wet street below. “It had been twenty-five years since the Original Sixty. George Carroll, who, as you know, is one of the two Sherman topiaries that greet people upon entering our city today, mustered a couple hundred men, women, children, and dogs to follow him north to a ‘unique land’ he’d discovered where it ‘rains all the time.’ He wasn’t afraid of the rumors. I think he might have been crazier than Blackwater.”

“Come,” Mrs. Doris said. “Let’s sit again. I’m too old to stand up for a story.”

Kamp followed her to the table.

“By then,” Kamp said, “Chief Blackwater was sick. He was getting older and he was getting ill. But that didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to protect this land. When he got word that a group of white people were trying to settle all over again, Blackwater instructed his tribe to let them. To wait. Just as he’d done a quarter century before. But as you know, Carroll was a bit of a…”

“Kamikaze?”

“Yeah. A kamikaze. My God, you can almost imagine him parachuting right into Blackwater’s anger, can’t you?”

“Yes, you can.”

“Carroll’s community had been living here three months when the indigenous people emerged from what one boy called the rippling space. I’ve always loved that. He was no doubt referring to the waves we’re all so used to seeing, walls of rain, walls of water. But it sure gives the scene a science-fiction nod, doesn’t it?”

“Indeed, it does.”

“They were working on a schoolhouse then. A battle ensued.”

“How bad was it?”

“Both sides lost lives. Carroll’s more so than Blackwater’s, but the natives were faced with the reality that this group of white people would be more difficult to get rid of than those sixty from years back. From his sick-cot, Blackwater demanded his tribe gather these white men from their beds before things escalated any further.”

“Because of the spirits.”

“What’s that?”

“Blackwater didn’t want these men or any men bothering the energy, the spirits that live here.”

“Live…or lived?”

“Oh, lived, I suppose.” Then, “Why didn’t he just warn them? About the spirits?”