She smiles properly, just a small one, but the tension has left her shoulders. She reaches forward for the remote, then pauses. “Oh, I meant to say, that cat was out there again. I saw it while I was on the phone. It’s getting kind of weird. Though no stone-throwing that I could see, at least.”

“Did it come in the garden?” The cat comes by most evenings. I’ve never seen it set even a single paw on the lawn.

“No, it stayed on the wall, looking into the garden. The same as before.”

I know what it was looking at: the injured bird. Sometimes I see it, sometimes I don’t. The first time—well, the first time I saw it again, hopping desperately in exactly the same spot, still unable to take off—I couldn’t believe my eyes. And I know I’m right not to believe them. I know the bird’s not there, it’s never there, because Carrie has never seen it. The cat is there, though, since Carrie has seen it, too. And the cat sees the bird, so how can the bird not be there? But still, I know it’s not. And if the bird’s not there, were the flies ever there? Was the figure with triangular hair ever there? But if they were there . . . if they were there, what does that mean? Are they part of a larger whole? Are they connected to the newspaper and the stone-throwing? Is this all I have to face, or are these incidents just a portent of what is to come?

Then Carrie presses play and I force my overtired brain to drop this feverish endless loop.

•   •   •

The next morning, I open the front door to take Carrie to the station and find a raven on the doorstep.

At first I think it’s the injured bird from the garden, the one that I might or might not have seen. But it’s much bigger, probably over a foot tall, and most definitely dead. I stop short and lean forward to take a closer look and then have to grab the doorframe to stop myself nose-diving into the carcass when Carrie cannons into me, her face in her phone.

“What’s the—oh!” she exclaims. “Yuck!”

“Yep.” I’m irrationally enormously relieved that she can see it too, even though it’s not the injured bird. “I think it died a while ago. Look, there are maggots.” Part of the belly of the bird has been torn open, and there are pale yellow bodies squirming in the opening. A shudder runs through me.

“Well, that’s fucking disgusting.”