This had originally been her habit, yet he seemed to have inherited it as he had her material goods. Kolkamitza had discovered this quirk about Erin on their first date, when he’d found himself standing awkwardly beside Erin as they’d called on what he’d assumed to have been Erin’s friends or relations, only to discover after they’d responded to her rapping that they were all perfect strangers to one another. The first time this occurred had been mortifying. Kolkamitza had stood on the porch of some random townhouse, his face smoldering with humiliation while his lover rushed through introductions, explanations, questions. Love had allowed him to be fooled into this same scene many times afterwards, to the point where it had become a kind of game for him; waiting to see how long it would take before the resident or residents would shut and bolt their alien door.

It surprised him how rarely this had occurred. More often the occupants would answer Erin’s genial questions and offer a few of their own. Mutual acquaintances would sometimes be sussed out, or common interests. More than once the pair of them had been invited in for coffee, even asked to stay for dinner. Kolkamitza had found these meetings interminable. He did not possess Erin’s charm, nor her fascination with other people.

Initially Kolkamitza had assumed that Erin had dragged him along for those encounters to illustrate some point about people being inherently kind, or fundamentally alike, or some such.

But as time wore on, Erin had begun leading him further and further from the beaten paths of the city, into areas that he found unsettling, even menacing. He’d finally asked Erin how she had ever come to develop such a queer habit and was told, somewhat brusquely, that as a girl she had been obsessed with Drawing the Sortes. “On my seventh birthday, I flipped the Book open to Matthew 7:7. You know, ‘Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’ I’m still searching for the proper door.”

Their last two visits had truly tested Kolkamitza’s mettle. Each adventure had occurred on a Friday evening and ultimately led to a weekend of bewilderment and fear.

The penultimate visit had been to a plank cabin that sat by the rim of a quarry known colloquially as the Bone Cauldron, where pale stones cupped a pool of noxious water. When Erin had led him onto the cabin’s sagging porch and rapped upon the flimsy excuse for a door, Kolkamitza was convinced that the whole ordeal was some grotesque joke. He’d been loath to experience the punchline.

The abode had consisted of a lone room. The window was a cut-out square over which plastic sheeting hung by wafer tape. This sheet pulsed noisily, like an infected lung. His surroundings seemed septic. The upper corners of the room were marred by patches of mould.