Now I find out that wasn’t the real problem. Or only a part of the real problem.

The real problem is that locked away inside my head are two little girls who are still dealing with the nightmare: the girl I created from a fairy-tale book, and the one I was. Mattie and me. Poor Mattie, made real by me when I didn’t even know what I was doing.

So there’s that, and then there’s this place where Del’s still running free, where all my hard-earned bravery and courage have just drained away, turning me back into a victim.

This must be what blocked the healers from helping me.

And the thing is, I haven’t even seen Del yet. I don’t have a shred of evidence that he’s actually here. All Mattie said was “he” and I just assumed it was Del. “He” could be anyone. But I know who he is. Del was only the first of many for me, but he was Mattie’s first and only, so who else would be here?

I look around myself.

I could wait here for Mattie to come back and tell me if she’s decided to turn me over to Del. Or for Del himself to show up.

I walk off instead. Not to avoid the problem, because how can you avoid what’s locked up in the deepest part of your own head? It’s just that I need to be moving. Doing something.

So I press on through the woods and they start to seem familiar. I don’t realize why until I see the house.

It stops me cold. I haven’t seen that place since I went back to Tyson with Geordie, but I couldn’t forget it if I tried.

That’s where it all began.

In an old clapboard house without indoor plumbing on the edge of Tyson—the part of town that people called Hillbilly Holler when I was growing up. A shabby, unkempt place, the overgrown yard dotted with junked cars, machinery debris, and other rubbish half-swallowed by the vegetation. It looks as abandoned as it did when Geordie and I came here years ago in the World As It Is. Maybe it always looked abandoned, even when my family lived there. It’s not like anybody ever took any care of it except for me, and what did I know about gardening or the upkeep a house needs? But at least I tried.

The county road still runs by it, here in this world inside my head, but the house stands all alone, the neighbouring houses and shacks gone like they never existed.

I guess in this place they never did.