It is coming from inside the house. I know this even though I can’t see anything you would describe as eyes, mouth, or a face. It is trained on me. It is there, focused. Impossible to see. Impossible not to feel.

I am not welcome. Somehow I know that. In a sixth sense we must have unlearned as a human species. It doesn’t want me here. It is angry with me, or maybe anyone, being here. In this place. On its territory. All of that, those facts, in a great sudden sweep across the yard from the house. How do I know that—in an instant—in a way you never could know, really?

It’s impossible. But there they are. Clear as a bell.

Whatever that being is in there, it wants me out.

What will happen when I go back in?

Because I will go back in.

I, quite literally, can’t afford not to go back in.

I want to close my eyes. I want to close my eyes and open them again and have whatever that thing is be gone. But I can’t. Because I’m suddenly filled with a cold fear that causes goose bumps to rise in a wave over my body—a fear that when I close my eyes and then open them again, that thing will be closer. Right upon me, just next to me.

A deep shiver racks my body.

Yes, I know, all of this cannot be happening.

Is this a hundred years we are standing here? A month? A week? A day? Or is it just a second, a momentary flash? Is time stopped in this endless moment?

Is this a standoff?

A confrontation on a kind of pause?

I tell myself, firmly this time, that if I close my eyes, if I just close them, I will then open them again and it will be gone. Because the thing is not real. It will not be closer. It will not be right next to me. It will not be in me. (This last thought comes from some unexpected place and makes my stomach roll.)

This is a kind of prayer I’m saying to myself, so loud in my head but not out loud. Please be gone please be gone please be gone. . . .

And I close my eyes.

Then snap them open.

Chapter 8

Have you ever been in a car accident? Do you know that feeling, that feeling of time slowing down even though time has not slowed down but you could just swear it had, it had to, because every moment seemed like a minute?

That is the time it takes for me to close my eyes and open them again.

A century.

Decades. Whole lifetimes come and go in the time it takes me to shut my eyes and then open them again.

And when I open my eyes again it is . . .

gone.

No feeling. No presence. No malevolence. No form.

As if it had never been.