“I dream about the bayou, now,” Nancy said. “That’s all I dream about. Every night . . . I can’t remember the last time I dreamed differently.”

“Are you worried about the floods?”

She shook her head. She moved strangely, as if she were sleepwalking. Something trancelike in her motions. “We’ll be gone before it reaches the house.”

“I need to go back to town. I know it was only a dream, but I can’t shake this feeling that something terrible is happening. I know people who disappeared, like Todd said . . .”

“You hear that?” she asked again, as if he hadn’t spoken. She tilted her head, like a bird listening for some invisible crawling thing. “That sound . . .”

Eugene listened. He imagined a murmur from behind the trees, almost crooning. But he couldn’t be sure. “I don’t hear anything.”

Nancy stepped into the yard, her bare feet sinking into the tangle of weeds with a soft, wet sound. She didn’t look back. Eugene turned and went back inside, letting the porch door swing shut behind him. He stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water, but it tasted bitter on his tongue, as if something had gotten in the reservoir. Maybe the bayou had seeped into the pipes, all thick algae and smothering moss. Had he ever woken from his dream? He felt like he had been dreaming for days now. Years, maybe. Ever since—

When he returned upstairs, Walker was sitting on Eugene’s bed in the dark. His undershirt was white, his suspenders hanging slack around his hips.

“I wasn’t running.” Eugene's voice carried gently in the dark, like it was made for whispers.

“I knew you wouldn’t. Never had a doubt.”

It was the first time Eugene had seen Walker without his suit, and he looked softer without its sharp lines, almost human enough to approach. Eugene put his hand on the doorframe to anchor himself.

“It’s a strange place, isn’t it?” Walker didn’t look at Eugene. He smoothed his hands over the bed sheets, still warm from where Eugene had been before. “It inspires strange dreams. The farmhouse. Chanlarivyè. I haven’t been here in years, you know. You were just a boy, last time I was around. Louisiana is so different from where I was before. Seems the kind of place made for haunting, doesn’t it?” He looked up.

“I dreamed Chanlarivyè was gone." Eugene's throat was tight. "Something isn’t right. The bayou . . .”

“The bayou,” Walker agreed. “You ever hear the story of Roanoke?” He shifted to pull a cigarette from his pocket. “Back when the English were first sending people over to settle the New World, there was one colony in particular that disappeared.”

“They moved camp?”

Walker lit the cig and took a drag. The cherry tip flickered bright in the dark. “No one knows. If they moved, no one ever found them.”

Eugene’s stomach turned uneasily.

“No note, no explanation. Nothing but the word ‘Croatoan’ carved into a tree. The English figured that was the name of the island the Roanoke settlers went to, but when they tried to follow, they got pinned down by a storm and never made the crossing. Like the earth itself wanted Roanoke to stay gone.” Walker leaned over to tap his cigarette against the ashtray on the nightstand. The tip crumbled to dust and he lifted it again. “But that’s just stories. It happened so long ago that no one knows anything, not for sure. Maybe the natives wiped them out. Can’t blame them, if that were the case. They were here first, after all. I never did like colonizers.”