The road was narrow, barely wide enough to accommodate a car, with crevices carved by water, and gnarled roots sticking out. Trees lined each side, merging overhead to create a canopy that shaded the sun. Shafts of light shot through like ethereal columns, landing as gold coins on the ground. My instinct was to avoid these columns of light, which worried me. Superstition would make me susceptible to manufactured fears. I forced myself to walk through a shaft of light and half expected it to trigger some booby trap like in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I survived.

I went to the nearest cabin and peered in through the dusty window. The wood floor was caving, the mildewed walls warped and peeling, exposing the studs behind. There was a moldering Raggedy Andy doll sitting in a small rocking chair in the corner with its stuffing spewing out. A spider of some kind skittered across its face as I watched. Then another. I felt something crawling up my leg and leapt away, resisting the urge to scream. I looked down expecting to see a spider, but saw black ants instead, streaming from a mound where I’d been standing. I brushed them off and shivered. “Jesus, this place is creepy.”

“It’s not inviting.” Cassie shivered, too. “Not at all.”

My skin still felt like it was crawling with ants even after I’d wiped them all off. Phantom ants, like an amputated limb. We continued up the road, peering in windows as we went along. Baby toys in each of them, long abandoned. A Big Wheel covered in spiderwebs. A toy drum set folded in on itself like molted skin. Deflated soccer balls holding stagnant water for mosquitos to breed. I wondered what these houses had held for Malia. For Priscilla, if she’d even come this way. None of this was in the book I’d read.

All of this for me.

I looked ahead and saw what appeared to be someone sitting on one of the two benches on either side of the depot entrance. A rigid man wearing a wide-brim hat with his legs crossed. I nudged Cassie and pointed.

“It’s a statue,” she said. “Of the original owner, I think.”

I still approached cautiously until we got close enough for me to see that it was indeed a statue cast in copper or corroded steel. A man wearing a suit from the Fifties with thin-rimmed spectacles, looking stern, if not proud. Smooth skin splotched with grime. Folds in his clothes frozen in place. There was an iron plaque on the backside of the bench that was too dirty to read, but appeared to display the man’s name and offer a tribute of some kind. The importance of this man and his make-believe mountain depot was beyond me, and didn’t matter. We passed him and walked inside.