It used to be that going green felt like a dream, but more and more it feels like reality. The roots still tremble beneath his feet and the woods still whisper in his ears, as if calling to him, asking him to come back, come back, even as he blinks hard and nods along to whatever Director Ricketts is saying to him. Yes, they should continue to excavate the area. Yes, they should transport the gray door off-site. Yes, he will personally accompany it, just in case anything should happen along the way.

The web of connective tissue is severed—and Peaches feels something like knives shrieking together, a sharp pain from below—and then a hammock of ropes is arranged beneath the growth and it is hoisted out of its crater with a small crane. Its shape is roughly that of a cocoon or sarcophagus, its weight comparative to an upright piano at four hundred pounds.

They place it inside of a windowless trailer hauled by a Tahoe. A DOD agent will drive, with Director Ricketts and Peaches riding along. Two vehicles, one in front and one behind, both armed, will escort them. “Well, I don’t know about you,” Director Ricketts says as they slam shut their doors and the engine growls to life, “but I surely am excited to cut that thing open and see what’s inside.”

Isaac grew up in Boise, raised by a single mother. Agatha worked as a receptionist at a dental office, and though she loved him, the love sometimes felt like a hug that could suffocate. They lived in a small ranch home with plaster saints and gnomes in the garden and peach-colored carpeting covering every inch of floor—even the kitchen and bathroom—because she hated for her feet to be cold. Throughout the house hung photographs of him as an infant and a toddler wearing blue satin jumpers and red velvet suits she had sewn for him. He can’t remember her ever taking a photograph of him after the age of four, and that’s where he seemed frozen in her mind. She demanded, even when he was a teenager, that he sit on her lap in her living-room recliner or cuddle in her four-poster bed at night. She would stroke his hair and talk about her day, and often their conversations would bend toward the Bible. She wasn’t strictly religious, but she did have a fondness for crosses and saints. There was one story in particular she loved to share about Saint Julian.

As the legend goes, Julian was hunting in the woods when he came upon a stag. He notched an arrow and took aim, but before he released the bowstring, the stag turned to study him. Julian saw wisdom in its eyes and lowered his weapon. The stag spoke to him, offering a sinister prophecy: he, Julian, would be responsible for his parents’ death.