Frankie stepped away and counted the months. There were seventeen. He looked toward the house and saw the Reverend walking out of it, down the steps, backward. It occurred to him that he might have fallen asleep again, might have lain down on the grass next to the fence and slipped into a dream. In trying to confirm this, as he sometimes did while actually dreaming, he squinted and then forced his eyes open wide. The Reverend walked backward all the way across the yard, then turned around at the last post to face Frankie.

“What you see is just a representation.”

“Oh, I—I understand that,” Frankie said, glancing down at the mountain of skulls.

“I’m saying, there’s more in the house.” He started across the lawn—walking forward this time—and without looking back, he motioned with a finger over his shoulder for Frankie to follow.

It was a normal house inside, save for the fact that nearly every surface was illustrated. The ceiling was a map of some alternative outer space crowded with planets, many of them triangular or square. The walls were laden with paragraphs of handwritten text framed inside a network of snakes. The coffee table was a mural of an earthquake. The armchair was rendered on fire with red and orange paint that flaked off and collected around it like dandruff, and the floor itself was painted to resemble a flood, scattered with men, women, horses, and dogs, all in the process of drowning. “You might care for this.” The Reverend tapped one of his boots against a stool covered with eyes.

“Thank you,” Frankie said, eager to sit down.

“I mean, it’s for sale,” the Reverend clarified. “Everything seen is for sale. Everything unseen is either already gone, or I won’t sell it. See this?” He took from one of his pockets what looked to be a perfectly round orb of naked wood no bigger than a tennis ball. “Giotto di Bondone was the only person that ever lived who could draw a perfect circle without even trying. I made this from a branch that fell on my house last summer. I made it with a kitchen knife. It’s perfect, and it’s for sale.”

Beneath the front window, a small plastic tape deck sat on the floor, unplugged. A hammer had been smashed into the top of it, the handle jutting out like that of a hatchet sunk into a tree stump. The Reverend noticed Frankie looking at it and said, “That’s a sculpture. It broke, so I turned it into a prophecy. All our machines will fail us.”

A small metal fan oscillated on top of a television in the corner, stirring the warm air. Frankie’s skin began to itch. He rubbed his fingertips through his hair and looked around for something to sit on that wasn’t merchandise. “Why were you walking backward outside?”

“Excuse me?”