Instead, I peer around the curtain to see out the window. From here, I can’t quite make out the gate, even with the porch light still on. My breathing is annoyingly loud. I wait, searching out movement in the stillness, for a moment that seems painfully long.

Maybe he has gone, I think.

Then I see the shape of him moving slowly up the driveway toward the house. My heart leaps and I flick the switch to turn off the porch light, realizing belatedly that he will know I am standing here when he sees the light go out, realizing also belatedly that now I cannot see him out there, cannot watch his progress to the front door, cannot know how close he is, knowing that at every moment he is closer still, and even though the door is locked, I drop the curtain and back away.

All the house seems strange and unfamiliar to me. I have to feel my way blindly from the foyer into the sitting room, where I trip over something hard and land roughly on my knees. The offending object is Nathaniel’s camera. He must have left it when he ran from here. I pick it up and pull the strap around my neck to carry with me.

Just when I think I have passed into the dining room, I realize I am actually in the library, and I’ve not a clue how I got there. Panic rises in me, reminding me of the time I became lost in the dark as a child, running through the house in a frantic bid to find my way and finding, instead, tucked away in a corner of the library, the old woman in the chair, the old woman with Xs for eyes, who froze me fearfully while her gnarled fingers trembled as she lifted them into the air, who chuckled behind closed lips, who vanished when I threw on the light. It is as if the house must mutate in the dark, changing and transforming itself when it cannot be seen. As if it becomes malleable, uncertain.

I hear the front door click and swing open.

Maybe it is Julian making the house like this, making it shift into different shapes. Maybe Julian is like a tumor, a cancer, driving the house insane.

The twisting in my gut tells me to hide. Whatever happens, I don’t want him to find me.

There is nowhere to hide in this room. The walls are lined with bookcases, and the only furniture is a set of ancient moth-eaten chairs and a chaise lounge. It’s possible I could elude him by slinking along the towering bookcases, making sure there is always one between me and him, but eventually he would find me. In the foyer, I can hear his footfalls creaking slowly across the floor, and I pad on silent cat feet, carefully distributing my weight so as not to make a sound.

Now I am in front of a door where I do not think there was one before—or maybe only the memory of a door, the house remembering something that once was here but is no longer. Can I open the door if it is only a memory? And where would it lead? Into memoryscape, dreamland, the impossible space between dimensions?