Shadows shift through the windshield. Something looms ahead of us—large like another mountain to climb. Except it’s not a mountain. It’s a house. No, more than that. It’s a mansion. Don’t stop, I think. Don’t stop here. There’s something forbidden about this place. I’m too practical to believe in ghosts, but this place feels somehow haunted.

The car skids to a stop, the brakes pumping in some automated fashion to stop the slide. The man already has his blinker on, ready to turn around in the small space as soon as I’m out the door. I peer through my window at the mass of slick night-blackened stone.

“Listen,” I say, my hands shaking as I pull up my phone. It still has no signal. The map of Maine has no little dot to show where I am. It only spins and spins. “Are you sure this is the right place? I don’t see a street number written anywhere.”

“This is the Coach House,” he says, impatient now. He still doesn’t turn. I’m talking to the back of his head. To the side of his shoulder.

“Okay. Okay.” He doesn’t want to talk to me anymore, and maybe that doesn’t matter. It’s not really for him. I’m pumping myself up. For someone who never set foot outside Harris County her whole life, this trip has been like shaking up a goldfish in a bag. “I can do this.”

No answer to that.

“I’m going to walk in that house. And work there. And live there. For a year.”

He turns the radio on. The Weeknd vibrates through the tinny speakers. It’s not precisely reassuring, the way the music fights with the storm for dominance and loses. I open the door. Wind tries to keep it closed, but I use my body weight to half-step, half-fall onto the soggy grass. I drag the carry-on luggage I picked up from Walmart last week with me.

The car inches forward, the door hanging open, rain pooling on the dark fabric, and I jump forward to slam the door so he doesn’t end up driving down the mountain that way.

Tires slide against wet ground. Mud flings against me in a hard splatter.

Great.

I head to the front door, which naturally does not have much of an overhang. Rain slicks my clothes to my body as I ring the electronic doorbell, trying to school my expression to one of calmness in case anyone’s watching with their phone. A bong reverberates from inside, but no one answers the door. I count to twenty in my head. Then thirty. Then sixty.

I ring again. Nothing.