I think of the woman Mary started seeing, first on that Halloween night in the field, then over and over again after that. But I don’t know what to say to you. Could something like that be genetic? Can visions pass from one generation to the next, like black eyes or arthritis?

I go get a cup of coffee and sit back down at the table.

“Are you excited to go home?” you ask me, light in your eyes.

I give a wry grin. “I don’t know,” I say, and it’s true. The closer we get to my old hometown, the more questions I have about why I thought this was the thing to do, why I thought this was a good idea. I think again about what the old man said. Drownings. Ghost town.

“Well,” you say, “I can’t wait.”

I’m glad. But your visions of the woman have unsettled me.

I can’t help but wonder if this time she has come for me.

No Trespassing

Tom’s driving slowed uncharacteristically, and I glanced at him to see what was going on. In the back, Mary had fallen asleep, her head on Shirley’s lap, and Shirley’s head nodded as she drifted off. It was only thirty minutes or so after we had left Mary’s house.

“I know it’s here somewhere,” Tom mumbled to himself, sitting up straight in the driver’s seat, his eyes scanning the woods on either side of the back road we were on.

“What’s here?” I asked.

But he refused to say. When I was ready to make some kind of threatening statement about boxing his ears if he didn’t tell me what was going on, his eyes lit up, and he fell back into his seat with relief.

“There it is,” he said. And somehow the simple proclamation woke Mary and Shirley. Both of them stuck their heads into the area between the front seats. I could smell Mary’s shampoo, and I closed my eyes, took it in. I thought I might collapse under the weight of my infatuation.

“There’s what?” Shirley asked, and that’s when I saw the break in the trees and the metal livestock gate blocking the way, and on it a sign: “No Trespassing.”

There was enough length of driveway between the shoulder and the gate so that Tom could pull off the winding back road, get out, and walk over to the chain that held the gate closed. He wiggled his eyebrows up and down at us, the way he always did when he knew something spectacular that we weren’t yet privileged enough to know, and proceeded to untangle the chain from the gate.

“What is he doing?” Mary asked.

“Just Tom being Tom.” Shirley sighed. She leaned her head out through her window. “Tom, what in the world are you doing? You’re going to get us all arrested.”

But Tom kept at it until the length of chain was pulled clear of the gate. There wasn’t even a lock. He walked the gate open and propped a rock against it, then came back. He hopped into his seat energetically.