But God was good. He had finally answered her prayers. She—and her boys—had been delivered. This dark pall of violence had been lifted from their home.

She went to the bottom of the stairs, looking up to the second floor and the trapdoor in the ceiling there, its rope pull hanging down.

The raccoons. They were back. Hermann, he’d first trapped one in the attic. He’d taken the fear-crazed intruder out into the backyard and made an example of it in front of her boys…

No more. She had nothing to be afraid of now. The boys wouldn’t be home for at least another hour, and she decided to go up there now. She had planned to start going through Hermann’s things anyway. Trash day was Tuesday, and she wanted to have it all gone by then.

She needed a weapon, and the first one that came to mind was Hermann’s own machete. He had brought it home some years ago, and kept it wrapped in oilcloth in the locked plastic toolshed against the side of the house. When she asked him why he would ever want such a thing—a jungle tool here in Sheepshead Bay, of all places—he’d just sneered at her, “You never know.”

These constant little insinuated threats were part of his daily menacing. She pulled the key from the hook behind the pantry door, and went outside and sprang the lock. She found the oilcloth buried under yard tools and an old, splintered croquet set they had received as a wedding gift (which she would use for kindling now). She took the package into the kitchen and set it on the table, pausing before she unwrapped it.

She had always ascribed evil to this object. Had always imagined it would be somehow significant in the fate of this household, possibly as an instrument of Glory’s own demise at Hermann’s hands. Accordingly, she unwrapped it with great care, as though unswaddling a sleeping baby demon. Hermann had never liked her touching his special things.

The blade was long, wide, and flat. The grip was formed of wrapped leather straps worn to a soft brown by the hand of the former owner. She lifted it, turning it over, feeling the weight of this strange object in her hand. She caught sight of her reflection in the microwave door, and it scared her. A woman standing with a machete in her kitchen.

He had made her crazy.

She walked upstairs with it in her hand. She stopped beneath the ceiling door and reached for the bottom knot of the dangling white rope handle. It opened down to a forty-five-degree angle on groaning springs. That noise should have scared any lurking critters. She listened for scattering sounds, but there were none.