I was eager to change the subject. “Here, look at this.” I googled the Thomas England Hospital, scrolled through some of the images, enlarged the ones of the soldiers, the men who returned home missing limbs, doing stretches on a sundeck.

“That’s the hospital?” She stepped closer to the monitor.

I nodded. “There are people who say that Resorts is haunted by the souls of soldiers who died there. Noises, voices.” I had read reports online of guests waking to see the hems of hospital gowns trailing around corners, to hear moans in the middle of the night. I didn’t believe it, but there was something affecting about the idea that this hospital had loomed over our beaches, all those souls that circulated through its halls. Other photos showed platoons of soldiers in dark uniforms and heavy boots thrusting their bodies through drills on the beach. Camp Boardwalk, it was called.

“Well, that would explain a lot. Maybe they’re the ones setting fires around here. There was another one last night,” Emily said.

“Another one? Wait, how many is this now?”

“Three, I think. Things are getting biblical-level bad around here.” She made her voice deep and somber. “By water also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”

“Uh. Yikes.”

“You wouldn’t believe how much of that shit is still rattling around in my brain.”

“I guess so.”

There had been a series of blazes in the city—empty houses, mostly. A boathouse that had been abandoned on one of the creeks after Hurricane Sandy. A stretch of dry brush near the entrance to the Revel. The police and the fire department suspected it was arson, but they didn’t have any leads yet. I’d driven past one of the sites on my way home from work: a two-story house near the bus depot, its façade charred black, its roof collapsed. I thought of the wildfires in California, the way that sometimes they would burn to reset the soil, to restore nutrients to the forest. I knew it wasn’t the same, but I wondered if these fires might have been like that—the city’s way of restoring itself, of regenerating through destruction. It was a nice alternative to the reality—that someone was setting fires just because they liked having something to ruin.