Through the foggy glass Maxine was able to discern a single stout room. A small pallet mattress lay on the floor, framed by brittle leaves. A canvas tarp had been draped over whatever else was stored inside. Maxine could just make out a tall sheeted form, like a ghost in a children’s storybook. The sight of it unnerved her, and she wondered if this was why the image of the shrouded figure endured throughout the ages. Perhaps there is some profound quality in the shape seen-and-yet-unseen, a quality that touches us at our core.

The milder day allowed the key to fit into the lock much easier for Maxine than it had for Mrs. Whitlock that morning. Maxine knew that her time was limited. For all she knew, Xavier was calling for her from the games table, or perhaps he was standing in the empty kitchen at that very instant, worried or furious over her absence. But she would not allow her fears to dissuade her. Instead Maxine stepped into the cramped cabin and shut its door.

The first thing Maxine experienced inside the cabin was heat. It was the kind of arid, leeching warmth given off by cheap electric heaters. She could feel the static electricity building on her clothing, feel the sweat developing under her arms and at the back of her neck. Being in here put Maxine in mind of a hothouse, but instead of offering her the fragrance of orchids, this space assaulted her olfactory sense with an appalling stench.

The air within was not simply stale, it was thick with the stink of accumulated filth. Dust had not merely gathered here, it seemed to have been cultivated. Great grey mounds of it stood in the corners and along the baseboards. Spiders had been left to weave their silk freely; their creations hung in sweeping cascades from the low ceiling like fishnets. Particles of dust rode in on Maxine’s breath. She felt them lining her nostrils. She sneezed loudly several times.

Was this Mrs. Whitlock’s grand secret, the fact that she used this cabin as a receptacle? Maxine felt disappointed, but also faintly empowered. It was strangely reassuring to realize that all the matriarch’s obsessive cleaning meant that she simply shooed every speck of her family’s filth from the great house to here. This shack was the proverbial rug under which Mrs. Whitlock swept everything she did not want others to see. But if dirt was the worst thing the old woman was hiding, Maxine felt ashamed for suspecting something worse. What was dirt anyway but tiny specks of the past? The hair and skin and other substances of the living, ones that time flenses from us with metaphysical patience, pecking away at us until we ultimately become…nothing.

The morbidity of this line of thought weighed heavily on Maxine until she heard someone sigh inside the cabin. At that instant, her melancholia slipped into icy fear.