She says these things to hear her own voice. She understands that, if the man who claimed to be from the census was actually in this bunk, if he was, say, crouched upon one of the beds she pokes beneath, he could easily kill her. But the kids say he left. And she has to believe that much.

Cabin Eight clean, she exits and takes the rope that leads to Cabin Nine. It’s hot outside, the hottest day she can remember, but she isn’t taking the hoodie off.

She thinks of Annette.

The kids don’t believe you can go mad by way of touch. But the kids don’t make the rules around here.

Malorie can still see the red-haired woman turning the corner of the bricked hall. The blue robe like blue wind, Annette’s mouth contorted in a way only madness can shape. Malorie can still see the knife.

Her own knife touches the door to Cabin Nine before she does. She uses the tip to push it open.

She smells the air at the threshold.

All senses now, it seems. Sight, smell, touch. The creatures have rearranged how a person experiences reality. This is not new, of course, but Malorie, ever a child of the old world, will never get used to it. And if it’s a matter of not being able to comprehend the creatures, as Tom the man once hypothesized, if it’s a matter of going mad at the sight of something our minds simply cannot assimilate…why not the same fate by way of touch? Wouldn’t any encounter by way of any of the senses constitute an experience with an impossible thing, a thing our minds cannot fathom?

She imagines wearing nose plugs, headphones to cancel sound.

She shudders as she enters the cabin. She thinks of Gary. How can she not? There was a time on the river when the fold was pulled from her eyes. And while she believed it to be a creature at the time, an unfathomable being wading in the water, what if it was Gary instead? It’s not hard to imagine the man, shirtless, up to his waist, having tracked her for four years, having camped outside the home in which she raised the kids. It’s not hard to imagine Gary in that river just like it’s not hard to imagine him here, standing in this cabin she will not look into.

Maybe he waves.

Malorie uses the stick to poke under the bunks. The tip of it connects with something and, because she’s piqued, because she’s thinking of the dramatic, bearded demon from her past, she’s chilled by the unknown object before realizing it’s only a visor. Part of a helmet Tom had been hell-bent on making last summer.