When class is over, I sit briefly in the emptied classroom, thinking how different it looks with its unpeopled desks—how different everything is when those who are meant to be there have vacated. Then I make my way down the long corridor toward the exit, passing small clusters of students, rooms filling up for the next period of classes, colleagues who offer a polite, indifferent nod. I am nearly to the end of the hall and the double doors that will expel me into the late-morning sunlight when I see, to my left, just beside the bathrooms and the custodian’s closet, a door that I have never noticed before, that does not match the others in this hallway. It is a large, heavy door of a dark wood with dizzying grain patterns that draw the eye to its bronze handle and lock.

There is no room number. When I put my hand against the wood, it feels cold, and when I put my ear against the wood, I hear nothing. I grasp the handle and try to turn it, but the door is locked.

And here is the bronze key, burning a hole in my pocket.

Perhaps, instead of unlocking the door and unleashing whatever lives inside, I should peer through the keyhole?

It is a large, old-fashioned keyhole, and I bend down and press my eye to it. Darkness within, but if I close my other eye and focus, I can just begin to make out a figure standing there, on the other side.

I stand up quickly, unnerved by the figure. I know it is impossible, but I wonder if my key will open this door. I consider taking it out, sliding it into the keyhole, stepping through … and where will I come out?

Footsteps pass behind me in the hallway. I ignore them.

Maybe Elizabeth is right. Maybe I am crazy.

Thinking this, I turn to leave the door behind me, and nearly step straight into one of my students, Valerie.

“Oh, sorry, Professor Wakefield,” she says, catching her balance. She peers at me through thick glasses that magnify her eyes to insectile proportions. “I was actually looking for you. I hope you don’t think I’m a snoop, but I heard you live near the Great Dismal Swamp.”

My attention is torn in two—half to the door, half to her. The school is not in Shadydale, it is far outside that little town, in its own college world, and yet for a moment I recoil in horror, thinking she must be one of them, thinking that Shadydale has bled its boundaries over to the school and has come to spread its sickness here.

“Yes?” I say, my throat tight with dread that I may have to abandon my post here and find some other position to make ends meet, that it is no longer safe for me here with this Shadydaler finding me, pinning me to a corkboard, identifying me as one of those Wakefields.

“I’ve always been curious about the area. Have you followed any of the archaeological work done there? Or have you done any?”