“Sammy’s making up stories again,” she would tell Mother, who would in turn tell me there was no Nothing Man, just as there was no woman with Xs for eyes—that the house showed only memories, not fantasies, and certainly not nightmares. Surely what I claimed to see was only that: a nightmare made manifest.

Now I’m not so sure. I didn’t believe them then, and I don’t know that I do now. But then again, I am in a dream, after all. This isn’t the Nothing Man, though; this shape is smaller. A Nothing Boy. A boy without a face.

I feel along the wall for the light switch, knowing that it must be somewhere nearby, frantic for its light as the realization swarms over me like a scourge of mosquitoes—the Nothing Boy, the Nothing Man.

The future is all around us.

The laughter burbles out of the shadow again like boiling water, like hot muddy swamp water gushing out from between his teeth and through the tender black holes where baby teeth have fallen out, submerged creepers dangling from his open laughing mouth—

My spidering fingers snag the switch, and yellow light floods the hallway.

There is no one there.

But on the floor, leading off down the hall and around the corner that gave birth to the disembodied laughter, is a trail of wet, muddy child’s footprints. I step carefully around the wet patches soaking into the diseased wooden floorboards, toward the end of the hallway where it makes a sharp turn, sensing that someone is standing just around that corner. Somewhere around the edge comes the low creak of a floorboard, the sound of shifting weight. My heart lurches into my throat.

Carefully I ease myself to the edge and hesitate there, feeling the presence just on the other side of the wall, the breathing, and it is only when I turn the corner and see the man standing there that I realize I am not dreaming at all.

I am awake. I have been awake this whole time.

“Don?”

“Sam?” His eyes are frantic as he grabs me by the shoulders. “Where are we?”

“What do you mean?”

Sweat rings the arms of his gray shirt. “This house is a fucking maze,” he mutters, almost to himself. He lets go of me and steps away, hands fishing in his pockets. “Doesn’t make any sense.”

“What are you doing?”

He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, slides one free, and sticks it in the corner of his mouth, unlit. “I can’t find the door. Just these hallways—two, three miles long. Shapes and shadows moving around, like there are other people here. Did you lock the front door?” He doesn’t wait for my answer. “I went through so many rooms. There can’t be this many. A hundred. Maybe more.” He flicks a lighter a few times against the trembling cigarette.

“Can you not smoke in here?”

The cigarette catches the flame. “You’re playing some kind of trick,” he snaps. “You’re playing me, aren’t you? Trying to fool me with that bullshit story about Mad Catherine. What’s really going on here?” He starts laughing, that terrible laugh of his, which manifests in a cloud of smoke. “You don’t have a candle, do you?”