Water damage. He should make a note to Mol, the landlady, but everything was water-damaged in Chanlarivyè. Even if she could afford to repair the place, the stain would come creeping back within a year or two.

Pulling the door shut behind him, Eugene slipped away down the stairs. He would be a few minutes late for work, but he doubted anyone would miss him.

* * *

Murdock didn’t come in that day.

The Gazette’s reporters hesitated before plunging into their duties. Murdock had never taken a day off, not in all the years Eugene had worked there. At noon, his secretary went to his house. She returned an hour later looking shaken. Murdock was gone, she said, as was his wife and son. The front door stood ajar but the house was untouched, like a museum. She sent the police around, but there was no sign of foul play. There was no sign of anything.

"We'll keep an eye out," said the officer on duty with a tired shrug. "They probably just went out and forgot to lock the door."

The Gazette worked uneasily, one of the senior reporters stepping in to run things—only temporarily, they all agreed. This was temporary. Eugene thought about Benoit’s empty apartment, his toast unfinished on the plate, and a cold, uneasy feeling told him it wasn’t temporary at all.

That night, Eugene walked the town. He walked without thought or purpose, his mind running in circles as the frogs chirped from the gardens and the tired yellow streetlights illuminated everything in an ochre wash. The nights were only marginally cooler; the air still left him sticky and short of breath. What he appreciated about the nights was their illusion of privacy. After most of Chanlarivyè had gone to bed, Eugene paced the streets in quiet loops, up one block and down the next, admiring the houses with their fenced-in yards, the columned porches and tall windows. There was something tragically elegant about seeing such old homes slowly go to rot. Them and the whole town, besides. They had rebuilt since the flood, but it had never been the same. Rot lingered in the foundations, waiting to drag it all back down to the bayou.

He walked until his eyes began to close and his mind filled with waking dreams, shapes and shadows slinking up around him like faces in the dark. Blinking, he banished the apparitions and found himself approaching the town’s southeast border, heading past the church toward the water. The church was locked at night, though it never used to be. Father Latimer had taken an early retirement some months ago, and until they found a permanent replacement, it would be closed save for Sunday Mass. Eugene was quietly grateful for it, and didn’t ask where Father Latimer had gone.

He had wandered farther than he meant. It would take another forty minutes to walk back to his apartment, and his legs felt leaden at the prospect. Leaning against a fence to rest a moment, he patted his hand over his breast pocket, a gesture that had become a habit of late.