I push it open, and it is solid under my palm—real, then. And within a descending blackness, releasing an abyssal cold. I am at the door to the basement, though I cannot fathom how I’ve gotten here. I am turned around, and it so unsettles me that I feel on the verge of panic at every moment, thinking I may never find my way out of this rat’s maze. At least, not until dawn, which seems so very far away.

Julian is much closer than the sun.

No, I do not want to go into the basement, but I can hear him following me through the rooms as he rustles through hiding spots—the shift of a curtain, the opening of a large cabinet, the tossing of blankets off couches—all done in methodical silence rather than the boisterous animation one might expect of a child playing hide-and-seek.

Away from the basement door, I move on, across to the billiards room inhabited by a very old pool table, never used even though sometimes you can hear the faint clicking of balls when you walk past. Now three-quarters of the balls are missing, and there are only two sad lonely cues left, splintered and long forgotten, against the wall to watch over the green domain of the table. At the other end of the room are another sitting area, a china cabinet, and a small card table.

Shall I hide beneath the pool table? That is a terrible spot, as there is no real cover—but does it matter, in this kind of darkness? I could simply stand in the corner and I doubt he would find me, for he wouldn’t be able to see. Though now, as I think it, I am getting the strange sensation that perhaps he has the capacity to see in the dark. Certainly it is absurd, but I cannot shake the idea, and as I stumble around the room, seeing it only in my mind’s eye, from memory, I slam my hip into the corner of the pool table and let out a yelp of pain and surprise.

As soon as I do, I freeze, listening.

At first I do not hear anything. Then, footsteps, moving quickly now toward the billiards room. I stumble and feel my way to the next room, thinking how ridiculous it is that there should be so many rooms with so many names and functions, so many layouts I have had to memorize, and for what? So that I can get lost in my own house as it pushes me from one room to the next, daring me to forget, forget where I am, until I am locked in a black hole with no escape?

I make my way to the back of the house, through the kitchen, and now I am in the laundry room, a cold concrete space that seems to lack the warmth of the rest of the house. This is it, I think, and for a moment I contemplate climbing into the washing machine, but the thought of locking myself in that tiny space unhinges me and I instead ensconce myself in the linen closet, which unfortunately has slats in the doors and only so much room that I must stand right up against the doors when they are closed. From the dingy window, the moon washes gray over the little room.