July 26. After breakfast. I am not quite sure when the change began, but I think I began to feel different from the first moment I entered this house. I had a sense of belonging here, of having been here before. When I first came upstairs, the feeling was very strong. I seemed to remember all the rooms and even some of the furnishings. For instance, before I entered my room, I knew there would be a window directly opposite the door and that through the window I could see the front of the barn. I also expected to see a shelf in the corner with an oil lamp on it. The lamp would be sitting on a cracked blue plate. There was a shelf in the corner but no lamp or plate on it. However, today I discovered the very lamp and plate I had anticipated on the floor in the storeroom.

July 27. This is all mixed up. I meant to say something in the last note about Dad’s accident, but then I remembered what happened with Franny and I didn’t want to talk about that. However, now I feel I should say that I didn’t intend for any of it to happen. I, Duff Caine, I mean. Someone screamed upstairs, but it wasn’t Duff, I don’t think. I mean I could hear the screaming—could even see the man screaming and grinning as he screamed—and I know that screaming was what caused Dad to fall. Likewise, I could see someone—it wasn’t quite the man yet, but more like Duff—trying to undress Franny. But Duff didn’t want to do it. He really didn’t, Mother.

July 28. Sometimes he doesn’t like to come in the house. He calls to me to meet him outside. At first, I was afraid of him, but I’m not afraid anymore.

July 29. Now I don’t see him anymore. He comes and then he is Duff.

The last penciled entry ended a page. It was almost two months since the date of that entry. Had he given up keeping the journal—or had he been told to give it up by whoever was in control of him?

And was the man I had seen in the car the man Duff was referring to in his notes? Could he have been hiding in the back, crouched down behind the seats, ready to suddenly switch places with Duff? But how could it have been done without my seeing it—unless my attention had been diverted the way a magician does it, or unless I had been hypnotized? Hypnotized by whom? Duff? But if Duff had done it, perhaps there had been no other person. Maybe Duff had merely caused me to think he was someone else.