Finally, she is still, but I’ve taken her trembling into myself.

Julian drops the stone and looks at the girl; his face is blank, a nothingness.

Then, from out of the swamp, a woman dripping with brown water, vines and soaked foliage tangled in her hair, slogs over to him, trailing her sodden dress on the ground. She walks stiffly, her limbs moving in a way that suggests they are rusty with disuse or with rigor mortis, her skin moving wetly as if disconnected from the bones beneath.

Clementine approaches Julian and takes his hand in her own. She gazes down at the body of the girl. She breathes a long, slow death rattle of air into drowned lungs and exhales.

“Bury her deep,” she says. “They took my daughter. We’ll make it so they don’t find theirs.” She looks to a spot in the shadow of a red maple, nods.

After a moment, Clementine and Constance vanish, but Julian remains briefly afterward with his arm still outstretched as if he continues to hold her invisible hand, staring out in my direction but giving no indication whether he can see me, whether he knows I can see him.

PART THREE

MIRRORS AND DOORWAYS

8

Over the centuries, many people have lived in the swamp, and several determined archaeologists have managed to find fragments of their existence—reworked arrowheads, clay pipes, and the like—but do you know what no one has ever found in the swamp?

Human remains.

What happened to those who died in the swamp? Surely, there are many who have perished there. Hundreds or thousands once occupied its remote interior. And, just as surely, those who died were not removed for a dry burial; many never had any contact with the outside world. Is it possible that the acidity of the swamp literally disintegrated the skeletons, ate away any remnants of human existence? Or is there another explanation? It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

When Mother asked me what I was doing, I told her it was part of my archaeological work. I was digging for artifacts.

“Well, just don’t tear up the whole yard. And be sure to close up those holes when you’re done.”

“Of course.”

By now I am thigh-deep in my third hole, hillocks of moist earth piled up around me. The first, empty. The second, empty. Perhaps what I saw was only a dream. Perhaps it didn’t happen at all, and Constance Wakefield lived to a ripe old age. And I am digging holes, endless holes, like a lunatic.

But I have to know.

I am on my fourth hole, the sun bearing down through the cold air, through the exposed branches, their red leaves scattered and curling in their death throes, when my shovel strikes something hard and unyielding. Kneeling to dig with my hands, I find it is only a tree root.

Despite the cold, I’ve removed my jacket. My skin has a sheen of sweat. I lean my back against the maple, my arms aching, torn between frustration and relief. One more hole, I decide. Five is a nice round number; I will dig one more hole, and that will cement it for me.