I get up from the floor where I’ve been crouching and go out the door into the familiar hall beyond. I know this house so well. Too well. It’s been decades since I’ve set foot in it, but I know its every inch. I can detail every horror that happened to me in it and where it took place.

I see Del at the head of the stairs with that shotgun in his hands.

I see a little red-headed girl . . . Lizzie, I realize, putting the name of the adult woman I knew to those child-sized features. Lizzie at the bottom of the stairs, a blank expanse where her mouth should be.

Between them, I see a yellow dog. Some kind of bull dog—no, pit bull. Charging up the stairs toward Del.

Del aiming the shotgun.

I have a flash of recognition when I see the dog. No, it’s more like I know I know that dog, but I can’t remember where.

It doesn’t matter.

Right now, all that matters is that I wasn’t lying to Del. I really don’t care anymore. I’m not scared of him because there is no worse he can do now that he’s taken Geordie away from me. Poor, sweet Geordie, always there, my best friend, my soul mate through thick and thin, my should-have-been true love except we were both too stupid—maybe just too scared—to recognize it.

I’m right behind Del. I know he’s about to shoot the dog. I know he can turn around and work his ugly mojo on me with a wave of his hand, with a word, with a look in his eye, and I’ll be changed into dust, or deformed like Lizzie, or simply killed like Geordie was.

I don’t care.

I’m not scared.

I give Del a push, just as he fires. His shot goes wild, spraying a blast of buckshot into the walls. There’s no time for a second one. He doesn’t turn on me to work the mojo. He doesn’t turn the dog into a newspaper, or mushrooms, or a pile of dirt.

My ears are deafened by the blast of the shotgun in this confined space.

In an eerie silence, filled with the ringing of bells, I watch the dog tear out his throat. Blood sprays everywhere. The two fall on the stairs, man and dog. The shotgun goes clattering down the risers. Del’s body follows, blood fountaining from his throat, splattering on the walls, the dog, the risers, Del’s clothes.

The dog stumbles, but catches its balance.