The house was unchanged. It sat perched upon its hill, under the shade of its protective wall of trees, and it loomed over him like a dark cloud. In its shadow again. He felt very small.

“I’m home,” he said, just loud enough to hear himself. Yet he found it was a struggle to kill the engine and step outside the warm comfort of the car.

He started up the hill.

The house itself had not changed even a bit, far as he could tell. The yard was a different story. He was passing a wooden wall built into the bottom of the property, where the grass sloped toward the road.

That’s new.

And the Japanese maple his sister had always adored, purple-red leaves like summer grapes, no longer sat just outside the covered spot at the top of the driveway. There was more blacktop in its place. Unnecessary.

Careful, he told himself. It only burdens to be possessive, especially of that to which we do not own.

He looked around. Inhaled slowly, counting to three, pulling air deep with his diaphragm.

One…two…three.

He exhaled at the same pace. Three in. Hold for three. Three out. Hold for three. Square breathing. It didn’t settle him as well as usual.

It was true: Feelings of possession, of ownership, only served to bog him down, to assign responsibility and catch his mind on a track, one that looped around and around in perpetuity until the tracks rusted, snapped, and the whole train went off the rails. None of this was his. Not anymore. Not even the car sitting at the bottom of the hill (only halfway parked on the small grass plot that separated the wall and the road, certainly not in the driveway, no). That was a rental. A free upgrade at the Westchester County Airport had determined that his homecoming tour would take place in a 2017 Ford Mustang GT, candy red.

“And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.”

He looked down at his hands and smiled. No sword. If he brought War it wasn’t to share.

It was time to move. If there was someone home—as the lonely, somehow monastic car parked at the top of the hill seemed to suggest—they’d probably already called the cops for the strange man standing in their driveway.

He’d been back to the house, twice, but never alone. And the driveway had always been empty. They’d felt comfortable walking up the hill (it still felt like their hill then, only two years out of the house—still feeling familiar even six years out, the way conversation with yourself can feel like talking to an old friend) and checking out the backyard. Turning and gasping, pointing to favorite spots—their spots, with their memories.

Look, it’s Dinosaur Rock! I could swear it used to be so much bigger!

And the tree with the forked branches! There was a bees’ nest in there when we were kids, remember the time I got stung?

Oh, I remember. You cried and cried until Lydia gave you the last ice pop, the one she was saving for the last day of summer. How lucky you were to have such a good big sister.

But a woman with two children appearing in your backyard was much different than a man by himself, especially one with an oversized purple hoodie and black sweatpants—plane attire—a dark beard, and restless eyes. None of this was lost on him. It was front of mind in fact, and precisely the reason he’d had trouble stepping from the heated interior of the Mustang into the drab October air. Part of the reason, at least.

If anyone’s home, I’ll just leave. That simple. Even if the driveway is empty, I’ll only take a quick look. Just poke my head around back and see the yard. That’s enough. That’s what he’d told himself again and again on the redeye across the country; it’s what he said in his head as he picked up the keys to his rental at the small Enterprise desk buried in the corner of what seemed to be New York’s smallest airport; it’s the mantra he repeated like a monk, ignoring the XM radio and whatever they were playing on Hot 97, throughout the short yet transformative drive upstate to the top of Westchester county.

Yet when he parked the car and saw the house, different words left his lips.

I’m home.

And now here he was, standing in his old driveway—by himself—for the first time in fourteen years. Mom wasn’t getting in until tomorrow; even then, she had no interest in ever seeing the house again. That meant he had to see it by himself, or not at all. He couldn’t remember ever making that decision, which meant, he thought, maybe there never was a decision to be made.

He thought once, very briefly, of bypassing his front door—the front door—and walking past the silver Toyota sitting where his aunt had always parked, and seeing the backyard. It was the place he’d lived his happiest moments and it was right there. He was a few steps away from seeing it, from being in it for the first time in over a decade. What stopped him was the news, which he read compulsively no matter what they had to say about that. It seemed every day there was another shooting, most of them in schools or malls or concerts, but those were the ones that really grabbed the headlines. Buried beneath, in the fine print, the part most people only glossed over—if that—were plenty of stories of homeowners defending their castles. He could easily see his own picture ten pages deep in Westchester Weekly alongside the headline, LONELY MAN SHOT DEAD IN CHILDHOOD BACKYARD.

He counted one…then two…then three…and waited for that image to leave. Don’t fight it, don’t acknowledge it. Let it through. Let it come and then let it go. That’s all.

Then he turned and walked along the stone path that led to the front door. To his left was the redbrick wall he saw so often in his dreams, no matter how many years he’d been away. The white bay windows jutting out like a transparent section of an octagon. Just ahead, the end of the path, the white screen door, the one that always slammed shut and rattled like tin. Directly to the right of that was the window to his old bedroom. He paid careful attention to his shoes as he walked; the last thing he needed to do as he approached the door of a stranger was peer through the windows, and if his head was up, if the windows that would show the inside of his childhood home were right there, he didn’t know that he’d be able to stop himself.

Without thought he opened the screen door and knocked on the equally white wooden one beneath it. While he waited for a response, he practiced his lines, hoping there’d be no answer and he’d never have to speak them. Then he would feel safe enough to poke his head around back and leave. For good.

Hi, I’m Andrew. (Do I offer my hand, is that weird?) I just got into town. I grew up here. I just wanted to see your backyard if you don’t mind.

No.

Hi, I’m Andrew Stephens, how are you?

No.

Hello, my name is Andrew Stephens, I grew up here. If you don’t mind would it be all right if I looked around?

No.

Hi, I’m Andrew. This used to be my house. I dream about it a lot and I really need to see it so please don’t call the cops, please, I’m not any trouble.

Stop. Stop. One…two…three…one…two…three…one…two—

The front door opened. He was expecting a man, someone intimidating, holding a shotgun maybe, someone who’d tell him to get the fuck out of his yard and never come back. Instead he found himself looking into the white, sullen face of a woman, maybe forty years old, with mousy brown hair that was comfortably disheveled. Her eyes seemed cautious. He took an instinctive step back and lifted his hands to his waist. He looked like a man who’s come upon a bobcat in the woods and is trying to signal that he means no harm, he just wants to leave, please.

“Hi, sorry to bother you. My name is Andrew Stephens and I grew up here, actually, in this house. I don’t want to intrude but I was hoping I could just walk around out here for a bit and look at the yard? Sorry if that’s weird. I live across the country and it’s not often I’m back here. I can leave if you want me to.”

The woman stared at him through the screen door a moment longer, her face frozen in the same worried, thoughtful gaze. Judging by the lines across her brow and stretching from her lips, it was a look she wore often.

“Oh, feel free. That’s no problem.”

“Are you sure?” Andrew could feel his face growing flushed. Despite the chilly autumn air, he felt stifled, heated from inside.

“Of course.” Her face warmed. She smiled and the lines disappeared. The cautious fear was still in her eyes, but there was something else there now. Excitement? Hope?

“Great, thank you. Sorry to bother you again. I hate knocking on someone’s door unannounced, but I figured that would be better than just walking into your backyard and scaring you.” He laughed. It sounded disingenuous, even to him.

“Oh, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed.” Her smile grew. “You said your name was Andrew?”

“Yes. Andrew Stephens.” This time he did stick his hand out, and immediately felt like an idiot. She was still standing behind the closed screen door. She looked down at his hand for a moment, puzzled, like she’d never seen one. In those few seconds her face was as blank as an unfurnished apartment. Then the smile returned and she opened the screen door and took his hand.

“I’m Laurie. Schreiber. It’s wonderful to meet you, Andrew.”

“Likewise.” He let go of her hand and turned away, happy to be done with the interaction. He hoped she wouldn’t pop her head out of a window or offer him a drink while he was walking through the back. He’d never been back at the old place by himself and thought it might be nice to spend a few minutes with his memories. Might be meditative, almost. He wouldn’t have minded company if it were the right company—mom, Lydia—but since neither of them were coming, he wanted to be alone.

He was two steps down the pathway when she called to him.

“Andrew?”

He turned.

“Why don’t you come in?”

A heavy sickness rose from his stomach. Andrew had never been comfortable with strangers, but this was more than that. He’d seen the house a few times since moving, from the outside. He’d seen the yard. He’d never gone inside and had accepted years ago that he never would again. The only time he saw the inside of 92 Hilltop Lane was in his increasingly distressing dreams.

“Oh, I don’t want to intrude. I couldn’t. Thank you, Laurie.”

“No, no intrusion. None at all. I should have invited you in. I mean, how often is it we get to step inside the house we grew up in now that we’re adults?”

Warning bells dinged in his head. He thought about therapy, about coping techniques, but he had none for this. An intrusive thought he could push away, a compulsion he could stifle, but this was none of those things. It felt wrong. Simply wrong.

“That’s okay. Really. It would feel wrong, showing up at your door, making you feel obligated to invite me in. Seeing the yard is enough for me. I promise.” He turned and began to walk.

“Don’t be silly, that’s not what you’re doing. I want you to come in. It’s a bit messy, you’ll have to excuse me for that, but a home that’s lived in is never really clean. At least that’s what my mother used to say. Please, come in.” She was standing outside the door now, at the end of the stone path.

Paranoid would have been a very gentle word one could use to describe Andrew Stephens. He read the news compulsively—the newspaper, Google News, Reddit—it didn’t matter where he got it, all that mattered was that he knew what was going on. That he knew more of the world he lived in. And he had read enough, obsessed over enough bad news to know that going into a stranger’s home was rarely the best idea, especially one who was so insistent that you do.

But still. It was right there. And would he ever get this chance again? To see the inside of the Hilltop House, to walk on its wooden floors, smell its smells, step foot in his old bedroom? His sister’s bedroom? Likely not, and even giving it those odds was generous. This was a once in a lifetime chance. And was it really the same as stepping into a stranger’s house? Was it not his house, too?

Laurie stood at the end of the path smiling, waiting for his answer. His mind told him no, absolutely not, see the yard and leave. For good. Like we said. But he had a lot of experience ignoring what his brain told him. The thought was there; that didn’t mean he needed to acknowledge it. To legitimize it. To give it dominion over him.

“Okay,” he said, and followed her in.

What struck him first was the light. It wasn’t yellow, like sunlight drifting through an open window in the spring. It wasn’t gray either, the way it should have been this time of the year, coming in through the sliding glass doors in the dining room. It wasn’t any color at all, not really; it was washed, old, somehow used. It was as if the light that they’d shone all those years ago, when this really was his house, was being recirculated, passed through some strange filter, cleaned, separated, like the climate control system inside a car when you’re driving behind a truck with no muffler, a truck spewing toxic black clouds in your face, and you press the little button on your dash.

Fittingly enough, the smell was still there. Wooden and old.

Laurie ushered him through the foyer, toward the kitchen. He paused there and looked down the long hall to his right. Mom’s room was close to the end, on the left. His was almost directly across, on the right. Lydia’s was straight ahead. The door was ajar, quarter open. All the others were closed.

“Sit a moment, I’ll make coffee.”

“Oh, no, really.”

“I have tea if you prefer?”

“No, it’s not that. I have to get to Connecticut—I really shouldn’t stay long. You’ve been kind enough already, Laurie, really.”

“You should really stop apologizing for existing, Andrew. It’s tiresome.” She smiled. Her lips barely moved, her eyes not at all. She walked into the kitchen. He followed, instinctively turning to his left, expecting to see his mother’s circular oak table with the small wraparound bench, the place she always drank her coffee. There were boxes stacked along the wall instead. Most were in bad shape. Stacks of paper overran the top and littered the floor in the few that were open. There was a small plastic table across from the boxes and one chair pulled up to it, facing the direction of the wall.

“Actually,” Laurie said, standing over the sink, her back to him, “why don’t you take a look around? The stove takes quite some time to get warm—perhaps you remember that from the halcyon days of your youth.” When she turned around Andrew saw the kettle she’d been filling in the sink, but not before being drawn to her smile once again. He realized what was so odd about it: two teeth barely poked over her bottom lip, two small white spots peeking from either side of the cracked, flaking pink of her mouth. The sharp ones. It was a nervous smile if he’d ever seen one (and he didn’t need the broken skin on her lips, a clear indication that she spent most of her time biting down on them—something he’d seen in plenty of his sessions—to tell him that).

“I’d give you the tour,” she said, reaching across her stove, firing the front right burner, “but you know the place, after all.” She returned with her coy smile, the one that said I get it, I’m relatable, aren’t I?, and said, “Besides, I imagine you’d rather have a moment to yourself with the house.

“Go ahead, look around. I’ll call you when the coffee is ready, in case you’ve gotten lost.”

Andrew tried to return her smile but what came out was much more strained, something that hurt the muscles of his face. He couldn’t stand to see those two teeth poking through her innocent-and-welcoming grin anymore, so he exited the kitchen and started down the hall.

One thing he was confident in was that he wasn’t going to get lost, not in a physical sense. The whole house was within eyesight from where he stood. Behind him was the living room, the jutting bay windows that decorated the front of his house set to his left. To the right from that same room was the dining room—at least it was when they lived there, he had yet to see how Laurie occupied the space—with the sliding glass doors leading to the back porch. From that room you could enter an open arch and be in the kitchen. Another open arch at the other side of the kitchen would take him to where he was, the foyer, and the entrance to the hallway. Three bedrooms and a bathroom straight ahead. A small coat closet too. That was it, besides the playroom, which connected to the dining area, and let on to a small laundry room and a staircase that led to the upstairs. He didn’t think there was a need to see the playroom.

So, no, the only way he’d find himself lost was if he lost sense of time; if simply being in the Hilltop House could somehow take him back to the late-nineties, turn him back into the boy he’d been when they lived here.

He counted one…then two…then three. Better. He walked.

The floor creaked in the same spots. Of course it would—it was the same floor. The same long strips of mahogany, warped or stained in the same places. The hallway felt much shorter, much more narrow than he remembered.

You were small then, that’s why it seemed so big.

That’s what Lydia had said last time they were in the backyard, marveling over the small plot of land that had seemed bigger than the observable universe to them as kids. It had been an entire world then—worlds, multiple—a place of infinite reach and possibilities. How many hours had they spent chasing each other up and down the hill, around the far side of the house, pretending to jump from world to world to evade the pursuit of some imagined horde?

More hours than there are days, Bucky.

Something Lydia said because it was something mom said because it was something grandma said. He never got that one.

Just call to me, if you’re lost. If the house gets too loud. I’ll hear you no matter where you are. Even if you can’t scream with your mouth, you can scream with your mind.

He reached up to wipe eyes that were suddenly wet and was alarmed to feel his hand shaking.

Haven’t even opened door number one yet. Are we sure this is a good idea?

He breathed in, slowly…one…two…three; held it in…one…two…three.

His room was first, going down the line, and it only made sense to start there. He opened it and was only mildly surprised to see it had become a storage room. The much bigger surprise was how small the room was. He’d known it was small then (the way a child knows anything, only vaguely, mostly through overheard bits and pieces), but looking at it now it seemed absurd that the room should even have a closet. It was a closet! His carpet had been ripped up, replaced with a newer, lousier carpet. There were more boxes in here, as well as a vacuum, and a mattress standing against the far wall.

For me to sleep on.

Stop it.

He closed the door hard. Luckily, it seemed the door was still hanging on its hinges upside down, which meant it still didn’t latch. Saved him the sound of a slammed door and the pallid, questioning face that would have surely poked out from the kitchen arch.

No latch, no lock. Would have been a real issue if I’d have made it past eleven here.

He crossed the hall and placed his hand on the doorknob to the master bedroom. Above him he heard feet, someone walking down the upstairs hall. The houses had near identical layouts, stacked on top of one another. As a kid his aunt and uncle had lived up there with their young son, his cousin Ben. Andrew wondered if Laurie knew the people upstairs. It was likely she did in a two-family home like this. He was sure he’d have time to ask her as they drank their coffee.

There was only one car in the driveway.

He paused again, hand on the knob.

Maybe they just got home. Maybe a family with one car. Stop it. Stop. Let it go. Let it come and then let it go.

One…two…three…

He opened the door and for a second it was 1998, he was six, he was scared, he couldn’t sleep. He crept across the hall and opened the door to his mom’s bedroom, walked quietly in, standing on the balls of his feet, climbed into bed with her, hoping she wouldn’t wake up and tell him to go back to his dark bedroom.

Except he was standing in Laurie’s room. The layout was similar—that was all. Her bed was in the same position at the top of the room, but it was smaller, less elegant. The tv stand across from it was also smaller, the tv on top bigger and much nicer than the huge, staticky box with the turn-knobs his mother had kept. He looked around for a moment before growing acutely uncomfortable. He didn’t want Laurie to pop her head around the corner of the doorframe, to walk into the bedroom with him—her bedroom. There was only one way in and he didn’t like being trapped. He noted the thick black curtains hanging over the windows as he stepped back into the hallway.

Were there curtains like that in my bedroom?

Door number three was to his left, still hanging open like the mouth of someone who’s caught themselves just before saying something utterly foolish. There was gray light inside, brighter than the rest of the house. He pushed in.

There were no curtains in Lydia’s room—her old room. Both windows were uncovered and open. It was chillier in here, but also fresher, more alive. The room was completely empty. Ugly wallpaper covered the walls: dancing butterflies and swaying flowers on a backdrop the color of old skin. It seemed as if Laurie had gone to work removing it; the far corner had been stripped from the ceiling almost down to the wood trim that ran across the walls horizontally like a belt, halfway up from the floor. Underneath the wallpaper the walls were pale yellow. Lydia’s walls. He looked at his feet. Lydia’s carpet. It was beaten and stained in the same places.

He counted one…counted two…

He opened his eyes and the room was the same. Andrew turned and looked down the hallway. It wasn’t his living room—no black leather couch, no white pipe tv stand. It was Laurie’s house still. Which meant Lydia’s walls were really under there, buried alive, screaming through a closed mouth that had been stuffed with hideous, turn of the century, cheap fucking wallpaper.

Andrew ran to the corner behind the door to a spot where the wallpaper was peeling. He dug his finger under and tore a strip, reached his hand under and lifted, ripping a whole sheet off.

There they were. Her flowers. Small hand-drawn violets. He could see her light pencil marks, the ones she’d planned to erase after she painted the flowers a soft lavender purple, but never did. Those painted pencil violets lined the room, sat just above the wood trim that sliced the straw-colored walls in two. He dropped his head against the wall and traced one with his finger.

A memory: They’re up late in her room. It’s 1999 or 2000 or 2001. She’s small but he’s smaller, which makes her big, makes her strong and fearless. The tv is running in the living room, they can hear occasional dialogue, something old-fashioned, one of the black and white channels mom loves so much. But mom is in her room, or the bathroom, or somewhere. They’re not supposed to leave their rooms this late but there’s something they want. There’s something they need to get in the

(no stop)

playroom. He’s looking at the gentle yellow walls and the pretty pencil flowers, and he’d prefer to stay. He doesn’t want to break the rules, doesn’t want to leave their rooms this late. It’s bright and kind and inviting and warm in here. He wants to learn how to draw perfect flowers like his sister. But Lydia opens the bedroom door, slowly, checks to see if the coast is clear. She turns back and smiles, her awkward mouth full of braces stretching into a grin. And then she’s creeping out of the room and holding his hand, so he follows, walking on the balls of his feet, wondering which door is going to open, what mom is going to say when she sees these two tiny marauders sneaking through the night.

Lydia turns and holds one finger to her pursed lips, giggles, and now he’s smiling too, trying not to laugh. The tv is silent now but a black and white scene plays beneath the screen. There’s a man, or something that looks like a man; he’s tall and bald and gangly, and his teeth, they’re so sharp, and he’s creeping silently through a castle, and he’s so long, and Andrew realizes why kids aren’t supposed to leave their rooms at night, he realizes there are bad things, terrible things that can happen to kids at night, and he’s scared and wants to turn back, but Lydia’s leading him past the horrible thing on the tv, leading him through the dining room, and she’s opening the door to the playroom, and he sees the red and black carpet that looks like tv static and always makes him think of hell like they talk about in CCD on Wednesday nights, and then it’s buzzing, there are bees in his head and it’s buzzing so loud, buzzing all over—

The sound of his own fingernails scraping the wallpaper pulled him back. His forehead was pressed against the wall, his arms outstretched above his head, scratching and clawing. Andrew realized he was hyperventilating, his face was wet, so he breathed, deep in, deep out, and he talked to himself, he said, use your diaphragm. In…one…two…three…hold…one…two…three….out…one…two…three, and slowly he came back into himself, he fell back into his body from wherever he was floating, drifting away.

“Andrew, coffee!”

He pushed off the wall and looked at his mess.

Let’s hope she really was stripping this wallpaper and not putting it up.

But of course she was. The walls told him. They told him when he pressed his head against the house and breathed with it.

Andrew wiped his face clean with the sleeve of his hoodie and walked to the kitchen.

“Sit, please.” Another cheap plastic chair had appeared in the kitchen during his walking tour, this one backed close to the wall lined with boxes. Two steaming mugs sat across from each other. She smiled and guided him to his seat with her eyes.

“So, how was it?” Laurie’s eyes were wide and glazed; there was something avaricious in the way she watched him.

“Oh,” Andrew said, clearing his throat, forcing his voice to be even, “it was good. I guess. Weird, more than anything.”

“Hmm, I bet it was.” She sipped her coffee. Andrew tried his and burnt his lips. Heavy footsteps plodded overhead and he stared at the ceiling, tracing their path, imagining his aunt and uncle’s house as it was back then.

“Do you—”

“So what brings you back to Mahopac?”

“A wedding. Cousin’s getting married.”

“You have family here?”

“Uh, some. Close, at least. Not Mahopac but in the area. These ones are in Connecticut though, like I said earlier.”

“Right, Connecticut. So, I ask again, what brings you to Mahopac, Andrew?”

He chuckled, tried his coffee again, still found it too hot. He was holding a cup of boiling black water. The heavy black curtains were hanging in the kitchen, too. If he could have bent his head far enough to see into the dining room without alarming Laurie, he would have. Judging by the shadows that hung through the distant arch, the sliding glass door was wearing a similar decoration. This conversation was beginning to feel like an interrogation.

There was one brief, panic-causing moment when his brain told him—screamed at him—you’re in the old house! what are you doing? and he could almost imagine himself forcing his way into an old, boarded over, dilapidated structure. He could see it clearly in his mind. A temporary lapse in sanity, it happened often, especially to people in the program. Wouldn’t be too surprising. It was quite simple, really: he drove to his hometown, years removed, found his way to the house he grew up in. It was all too much. His mind broke. Psychosis. He was imagining this conversation, this woman. No one lived here. No one could live here. It forced people out, pushed them away. There were no black curtains, just dead pieces of plywood sealing shut the windows (the eyes blacking the eyes), and he was alone in the kitchen, smiling, staring into the darkness and nodding, talking, to no one, to the house.

His chest hitched. He forced himself to breathe in slowly, to count. Then he answered.

“Well, this probably sounds kind of crazy, but I came to see this place. I drove straight here after getting off the plane. It’s been…gosh, almost a decade since I’ve seen it. I have a little time before my family is expecting me, I figured I’d see the old house, the old town. Might drive by my old elementary school or go to Downey Park. I don’t know.”

Laurie smiled, bit her lip, looked down at her cup. When she lifted her head her face was younger, almost girlish. “I get it. Familiar haunts, right?”

“Um, yeah. Sure.”

“Something I read in a book once, don’t mind me. Just like the way it sounds.” She stood suddenly, taking her empty mug to the old metal sink underneath the darkened window. Andrew tried another sip. This one he managed to get down, burning his throat in the process.

“You said you came from across the country. Florida?” Her back was to him as she ran the sink.

“No, Oregon actually. Portland. It’s funny you should say that though, we did move to Florida after we left this place. Mom’s still down there. Not for me, really. Too hot.”

“I see. What do you do out there?”

“Real estate. Commercial. A lot of buildings going up downtown. I help coordinate the deals between a few different brokers.”

“Do you enjoy that?”

“Eh. It pays well enough I guess.”

“That’s good. The economy here isn’t doing so great. I’m still looking for a job myself. Haven’t been here that long, as I’m sure you guessed after taking a look around. Still getting the place set up.”

Laurie shut the faucet and stared at the black curtain for a moment. When she turned she was smiling her toothy smile. Andrew made a gesture of checking his watch and stood up.

“Well thanks so much for inviting me in.”

“You’re leaving?” She looked puzzled, alarmed.

“Yeah, like I said, can’t stay long, I have to drive over to—”

“Connecticut, yes. I heard. You also said no one was expecting you for some time. What’s the rush? You’ve hardly touched your drink.”

He looked down at his cup of hot black oil.

“I’m not much of a coffee guy. Makes me anxious.”

“Oh, I thought that was all the rage out there in those hip west coast towns.”

“Yeah, not for me though.” They watched each other over the table.

“Besides,” he said, “want to spend some time driving around town. I’ve got a few places I want to see before I leave. Probably won’t be back this way for a long time.”

“Oh, well there’s not much to see, Andrew. Not out there.”

She walked across the kitchen lightly, her soft loafers whispering on the dirty linoleum. The same black and white linoleum from his childhood. She sat back down in her chair.

“Go on, sit, I can tell you all about the town. Truthfully not much has changed since 2004. Maybe a few less video stores, ha-ha!” She laughed suddenly, forcefully, like a robot trying to be human. “In fact, the Hollywood Video up Route 6 is gone, empty actually. And the Video Source just down 6N has been gone quite a while, I’m sure you know. The J.V. mall is barely hanging on—it’s a sad place, I find. Full of ghosts. And the D’Agostino’s has become a DeCicco’s.” She crossed her arms on the table and raised her lips. “Like I said, not much to see.”

Andrew found he was sitting again. Sitting across from Laurie, looking into her glassy, manic eyes. His heart started to run.

“Stay a bit,” she reached over and touched him, and yes, she was real. This was real. He was really in the Hilltop House again, and he wasn’t dreaming. He was in his childhood home, the place he thought he’d never see again, not from the inside. A lyric popped into his head, something he’d heard on his drive up while staring through the Mustang’s tiny windshield, not listening but still absorbing pieces of it like a child hearing adult arguments through thin walls.

Trapped in the belly of the beast and it’s hungry.

He tried to breathe and found he couldn’t and that was fitting, too. It was when he was eleven years old, the Christmas before they moved from Hilltop down to South Florida where the sun always shines and winter never makes an appearance, when he first found he couldn’t breathe. It was a normal day until it wasn’t. He was playing Mario Kart Double Dash with his best friend and there was snow coating the frozen Earth and he took a deep breath and found it didn’t go down deep enough and once you noticed a thing like that you really couldn’t un-notice it. And from then on it hung over his head, it woke him up in the morning and kept him up at night and it whispered in his ear, saying the most horrible things. It told him: I’m here! I’m here and I like it here! I think I might stay, I might never go away! And from that moment on, until they fled the goddamn white board and redbrick tomb on Hilltop, anxiety and depression were his closest friends, his best buds, and only the relentless equatorial sun seemed to wipe it away. And he was good, for a while, until Lydia, and oh God, why did it have to be Lydia? Couldn’t it have been someone else? Anyone else?

He gasped, sucking in a stomach full of air. He started counting, closed his eyes, lowered his head. When he felt more himself, he looked up. Laurie was unperturbed.

“Okay,” he said.

Her smile grew. “Wonderful. I don’t get too many visitors. My family is all gone. It’s nice just to talk with someone sometimes.

“Like I said, I just moved in. I have big plans for this place. Big plans. The Moreno’s made a lot of changes, but I think I can fix them. I’m not much of a do-it-yourselfer, but I have time now, if nothing else I have time.”

Laurie talked, quickly, excitedly, and after the first minute Andrew found he could no longer listen. His mind was caving in on him and he needed to escape, to breathe, to be with himself. Sometimes that was the only way to calm down.

It’s all too much, all too fucking much. What am I doing here why did I come here?

Breathe. Just breathe. Your thoughts are not you. Let them go. Let them come, and then let them go. That’s it. It doesn’t need to be more than that. Let them come, then let them go.

He was on the verge of hyperventilating and that wasn’t good. He hadn’t had an attack in almost a year. He found himself counting things, the letters of the words she spoke, touching the table with each finger in the same spot until it felt right, all the while counting 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, starting over with the other hand, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Tapping away like a restless drummer. He was coming unraveled again, he’d been doing so well, and dear God why did he step inside of the fucking house?

You’re okay. It’s okay. You can leave whenever you want. No matter how it feels you’re not dying, you’re okay. Your brain is tricking you. Breathe in, slowly, count to three. Yes, do it. One…two…three. Now hold it in. One…two…three. Now exhale. One…two…three. Now hold again. One…two…three. In again, use your diaphragm. One…two—

He was coming back down, slowly. Breathing methodically, forcing his stomach out as far as it could go, making sure not to suck deep gusts with his lungs but instead use his diaphragm to pull air calmly in. Each trip around the square slowed his pulse, and it was okay, it was nothing, he beat it, he—

I never told her when we lived here. When we moved.

The other voice—the calming voice—was radio silent. Because it had heard her, too. Not much has changed since 2004.

He smacked back into his body at a hundred miles per hour and looked around. Through the two kitchen arches the rest of the house seemed very dark. There were heavy footsteps above them again. Laurie was no longer talking. She was staring at him with her dead eyes.

“I have to leave.” But he didn’t stand up. His legs seemed to be made of playdoh.

“Is that what you want, Andrew? Really?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me then, why did you come here? Why is this the first place you came? You hopped straight off a plane from Oregon and drove to your old house. Doesn’t that seem odd?”

“I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“Why I came, I don’t know why I came. I just…it seemed like…I don’t fucking know! I thought I could…if I came here then maybe…”

He stopped. His breath was fast and ragged now. He tried to slow down, to regain some of his mental footing. It seemed all the techniques he’d learned the past few years had been erased from his memory. He was sinking again, trying to keep his head above water.

“It’s just…” He lowered his head, palmed his face. When he spoke again, he spoke slowly, deliberately. “I don’t know, Laurie. I don’t. There’s just something about this place. I had to see it. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe not. That’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot lately. I mean, isn’t there something about the place you grew up? Something that doesn’t leave you? You don’t get that? I’m sure you can relate, you grew up somewhere.”

“Here.”

She leaned forward, her face incredibly grave. Goosebumps rose over every inch of his flesh like reanimated corpses.

“What?” He heard his voice coming from somewhere far away. He was on the verge of derealization. He hadn’t floated away from himself like this in over a year; he’d managed the anxiety well enough to avoid it.

What did she say?

“It called you too.” It wasn’t a statement, wasn’t a question; something in between but also outside of both. Her voice was flat, inflectionless. He could only look at her with his jaw hanging open like a fly trap.

“The house.” She was nodding now, her eyes shining like polished glass, the wrinkles returned to her sullen, serious face. “It called to you too. Didn’t it?”

A strange thing happened. The anxiety that was sinking over him, surrounding him like a toxic bubble, popped. It shattered and flew away. He was clear and back in his head. Perhaps it was some ancient survival instinct, something that forced his clear, lucid mind to return to the party because it sensed that things were beginning to get dangerous. Or perhaps some part of him knew that this was too absurd, too ridiculous, and simply reduced it to a dream, something that could not be real, and that left him free to do as he pleased.

The fear; that didn’t leave. His hairs still stood on his neck, his arms were still rocky and pebbled, he still felt as if he might vomit. But the overwhelming, blanketing anxiety disappeared. He could breathe.

“What are you saying, Laurie?”

“This is my house, Andrew. Yours too. See, I didn’t recognize you at first. You look so much different than your LinkedIn picture—I guess it’s the beard. But when you said you grew up here, I thought about it. The Moreno’s only had one kid, and she’s still little. And she’s a she. The people before you, the ones after us—the Gardener’s—they didn’t have any kids. Older couple. A rarity in this place, I’ve found. I think it likes kids.”

“You lived here before me?”

“Yes. We were before the Gardener’s. I don’t expect you remember them, you were young when you moved in. Four, I think? Your sister had to be almost nine by then.”

The feeling that he might vomit all over Laurie’s plastic table was rising, pushing into his throat.

“And before us was the Wyatt family, and their kids—the surviving ones—are all much older now. So it had to be you. There was no one else.” She said this like a child proudly reading the concluding statements of her science fair poster board.

“You’ve been stalking me?”

“Stalking? Andrew, don’t give yourself too much credit. I keep up with everyone who’s lived here. I’m looking for patterns, see, trying to figure out what it wants. When I saw it was up for sale again, I dropped everything, sold everything, and pleaded with as many banks as I could find to help me get a mortgage. Surely you understand. The way it calls to you. Do you still dream about it? I never stopped. No matter how long I was gone.”

“You’re fucking crazy.”

“I don’t think you mean that.”

He wanted to refute her but couldn’t. She was right. He didn’t mean it. He understood. And he hated the “C” word, was embarrassed to even use it.

“There’s something about this house, Andrew. I knew it when I was a kid. It used to talk to me. No one believed me. My mother and father thought I was playing, they thought it was just some imaginary fun that I made up. The only one who listened to me was my brother Ronnie. He didn’t see what I saw, didn’t feel it the way I did. But he believed me. I know he did.”

“Why isn’t he here with you?” But he thought he might know the answer.

“Ronnie killed himself. When we still lived here. He drove down to Tibbets Park in Yonkers and shot himself with dad’s .38. It was just me after that. I think that’s what it wanted.”

Andrew swallowed hard.

“I know about your sister, so I’ll excuse you for not saying sorry to me. I know you understand the pain. You don’t have to tell me you do. It’s all over your face.”

“Lydia didn’t kill herself.”

“I know. She drowned in Lake Alice. Hit her head jumping off a rope swing. Terrible tragedy, to die so young. I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, Andrew.”

Andrew wiped his eyes.

“In the end it’s no different, you know. It separated you because it chose you. It only wanted one of you, just like it only wanted me, not Ronnie. It gets rid of what it doesn’t want. And then it pulls you back. Look at us. I bought the place, I live here now. You came running back as soon as you had the chance. Now we’re both here. You don’t find that strange?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “If this fucking house wanted anyone it was Lydia, not me.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It’s like what you said about you and your brother, same shit. I never saw what she saw or felt what she did. She used to tell me…all sorts of craz—weird shit. But I barely felt it. Sometimes I think all I felt was what she told me, like she put it in my head or something. How come I’m not the one who’s dead? She should be here with you. You sound just like her in a way.”

Laurie was nodding along wide-eyed, her face serious. “This is good, Andrew. Tell me more. What did she see and feel?”

“She used to tell me the house breathed. She told me that she could hear it breathing at night. And sometimes she could see it, too. Rippling and moving. Breathing. That’s how she always put it. At first I thought she was trying to scare me, but she was scared herself. And she wouldn’t do something like that to me, she wouldn’t take it that far.”

“What about you? What did you feel?”

“I told you, not much.” He was crying now, barely. Thin tears precipitating down his cheeks. “I mean, it was creepy here sometimes, but I was little. What little kid isn’t scared of the dark? Especially when his only friend keeps telling him that she feels something looking over her shoulder when she uses the living room computer, or that she sees shadows moving in the corners of her eyes.”

“You never saw anything?”

“I mean, we had these little glass trinkets or ornaments I guess you could call them. Maybe they were ceramic actually. Little figurines. Angels. My mom kept them in her china cabinet. Sometimes we would wake up and they’d all be turned around, pushed to the back of the shelf. Up against the wall. That’s pretty much it.”

“Pretty much?”

He looked at the ceiling. “There was one other thing, but…I don’t know. I was so young. I don’t even know if I remember this the way I think I do, or if I just remember remembering it, like I remember telling the story of it, you know?”

Laurie was staring, rapt. “Tell me.”

“I was little. Really little. My aunt and uncle used to live upstairs. Them and their son. One night they drove down to Pennsylvania to see my other uncle—my mom’s got a big family. And my mom was worried about them coming back that night because it was supposed to snow. My mom and my aunt are really close. So it gets late and they don’t show up. We assume they stayed the night to be safe, and we go to bed. Not long after we closed the lights and lay down, we heard footsteps up above us—you know how well you can hear people upstairs.”

Laurie was nodding slowly, not blinking.

“We heard them walking down the hallway, going into their rooms. We heard dresser drawers opening and closing, closets rolling along their tracks. Really noisy, really late. I even heard my little cousin Ben bouncing on his big pink bouncy ball he had. You could always hear it down here—thoomp, thoomp—over your head. Eventually I fell asleep. Anyway, the next morning we get up and my mom goes into the laundry room. She looks out the door from there—you know how you can see the carport from that room—and it’s empty. My aunt and uncle’s car isn’t there.

“So she calls them and says something like, ‘Early morning huh? You all must’ve gotten in late last night, surprised to see you up already.’ And my aunt asks her what she means. Says they never came home last night. They stayed with Uncle Liam down in PA. That spooked us for a while because we all heard it. We all heard them up there, and none of us said a word to each other. Not until the next day.”

Andrew lifted his coffee halfway to his mouth and set it back down. He stretched the hair on his chin. “This place…it’s always felt wrong to me. I do dream about it. At least once a week. And I’m twenty-six now. It’s been a decade and a half since we moved. Is that normal?”

“Nothing about this house is normal, Andrew. That’s why I’m here. I think that’s why you’re here, too.”

Laurie shot up, her chair sliding backward into the stove. She walked to where Andrew sat and rooted around in one of the open boxes. She pulled her chair back to the table and sat down, reading from the paper in front of her.

“This house was built in 1956.”

“Same year my mother was born,” Andrew added quietly.

“I’ll make note of that.” She scribbled something quickly on the page he couldn’t see.

“There have been seven owners in that time, if you don’t count me. The original family, the Donnelly’s, lasted the longest. They had three kids. One died while they lived here, not in the house. Like Ronnie. The other two didn’t do so well after moving out. Only one is still alive and he’s comatose down in St. Vincent’s where that crazy writer guy is.

“You can follow the path—I have—of every family that has come and gone in the years that this house has stood. No family leaves whole. No family with kids, that is.”

“We did. We left the same way we came in.”

“You’re not the only ones. But what came of your family, Andrew? It’s the same story, on these pages. If you escape intact, you don’t stay that way for long. It gets rid of what it doesn’t need, this way it can focus on what it does. That’s you, me, Joe Donnelly, Sally Meyers, Ally Lutz, Lisa Wyatt. It’s isolated each and every one of us.

“But we’re together now. We’re both here. That’s good.” Color had bloomed on Laurie’s face, she was breathing hard. She could have just stepped in from a cold, morning jog.

“Unless that’s what it wants.”

“Right,” she agreed. “Unless that’s what it wants.”

“Tell me then,” Andrew said, “where’s everyone else? All the people you just named? If it isolated them so that it could…could…what? Feed off of them? Why aren’t they here?”

“Who’s to say they aren’t? Or they haven’t been? Check this out.” She flipped a few more pages. “In 1979 the Lutz family called the police. Ally’s little sister Debbie saw a bald man standing outside her window, smiling. It was the middle of the night. When the police came, they didn’t find anyone. But they smelled gasoline. The house was soaked. They found a few empty canisters. They also found a couple of struck matches laying in the puddles. They told the Lutz’s that they were lucky the house didn’t go up in flames. If you ask me, they weren’t lucky at all.”

“You think…”

“Joe Donnelly has been bald since his early twenties. You tell me.”

“Fuck.”

There was more pacing upstairs. It was growing frantic now, back and forth, back and forth over their heads.

“Do you know the people that live upstairs?” Andrew asked.

“There’s no one up there.”

“You don’t hear that?”

“What do you hear?”

“Someone walking back and forth. You don’t hear it?”

“That’s interesting.” Laurie made more notes on her helter-skelter stack of papers. “You hear people walking, just like when you were a kid.”

“There’s really no one up there?”

“I live here alone, Andrew. We can go upstairs, if you’d like. But it’s empty. It’s always empty. I think you believe me, too. You want to know what I hear sometimes, mostly at night, when it’s dark outside and the wind is talking against the walls? I hear bouncing. Like there’s someone on a pogo-stick up there. You know who loved pogo-sticks? My brother Ronnie. Sometimes I think maybe he’s up there. First few times I heard it I went up to check it out. But all I found was a dark house. Empty. Nothing. Then I’d go back down and hear it again. I like to think he’s up there, that he’s still here—that’s why I keep the mattress in his old room. I’m hoping one day I’ll wake up and he’ll be sleeping in there, still a teenager, long, stringy hair like he had when we buried him. But mostly I know it’s the house. Fucking with me. Trying to break me. But I won’t let it. Nuh-uh.

“I’m going to figure this out, Andrew. This is how I spend my time. I’m committed to it. I don’t think it can be destroyed, not physically at least. And I bet if we went down to St. Vincent’s and found a way to talk to old Joseph Donnelly, he’d tell us the same. What I want is to figure out what’s wrong with it.”

What’s wrong with it. Chills convulsed Andrew’s body like a wave.

“My mind went to all the clichés at first. Indian burial ground, but nope. This is clean land. I thought about the nuclear power plant out near Peekskill, but that was grasping for straws. Doesn’t make sense. That’s when I began my research. I was sure I’d find someone who died here, inside the house, someone who was haunting the place, looking for a companion. But nope. No one has ever died inside of the house on Hilltop. Not one. And really, once I thought about it, that made sense. Does it feel like a person? The presence or whatever it is that you feel? Not to me. I’ve never seen a ghost here. It doesn’t feel human, or demonic, or ghostly. I can’t personify it. It’s the house, Andrew, the house. That’s what’s wrong.”

“But why? How can a house be wrong?”

“Who knows. But it is. I know it is. You do too. I think there are some places that just aren’t meant to be. Who’s to say? Maybe it’s just the wrong combination of brick and wood and glass. Maybe the boards were never meant to come together this way, not here, not on this square of land. I think you could try a million times to build a ‘haunted house’ or whatever, and you’d fail. But no one tried here. It just happened. Something happened.”

Andrew worked his jaw, tugged at his hair. How much time had passed? It was impossible to tell with the dark curtains. He checked his watch. He’d been inside over an hour.

“So what do we do? I think we should leave, both of us. You shouldn’t be living here alone like this.”

“That’s not good enough, Andrew. If I leave, someone else will move in. I can’t let that happen. If it’s going to hurt anyone, let it be me. It’s already taken from me. I have no family left. It can’t hurt me anymore.”

“You don’t even believe it can be destroyed, Laurie. What the fuck are you gonna do?”

“I’m going to figure it out, for starters. The first step is understanding why it is this way, what it wants. I’m getting closer. I can feel it.” She paused, looked distant. “Matter of fact, I have something I should show you. Wait here.”

She rose and walked down the hallway. Andrew heard the familiar squeal of the wood boards beneath her feet. He couldn’t believe he was hearing Hilltop House’s cry again. This was insane. She went into her room—the master bedroom. He could identify the sound of his mom’s door opening.

He bit his lip and stared at his laced knuckles while listening to her root around in the bedroom for whatever it was she planned to show him. Above him phantom footsteps continued to pace and knock against the wood, mocking him. He thought of Lydia. He missed her. Every day. Was she why he came back? He didn’t think so, but the mind had an odd way of directing the body, of making it do things without realizing it was doing them.

Or was it the house that did that? Did the house call him back? Was sitting here in this kitchen, waiting for Laurie, exactly where it meant for him to be? He had the sudden urge, stronger than anything he’d ever felt, to stand up and leave. To walk out the front door without saying a word, get into his rented Mustang and drive away. While he still could. He never meant to come inside. Just see the yard and leave. For good.

Laurie screamed. The sound was like a cougar shrieking in the mountains. It was loud and high and piercing, and it hurt to hear. Not just his ears. It hurt his heart. There was too much pain, too much fright in that scream. He bolted up, knocking the plastic table back against the fridge and raced down the hallway.

What he saw when he slammed into his mother’s old bedroom would never leave him as long as he lived.

Laurie was inside the walls. She’d been swallowed by the house. Her muffled screams fought through plaster and drywall. He could see her impression moving and shifting (breathing) behind the foundation. The shape of her face bulged from behind her bed. It raced along the wall until it was by the doorframe, where he stood, and her fists stretched the plaster, reaching out for him. He touched one small hump, tried to squeeze it. Then it collapsed backward, it was just a wall, and he heard her screams coming from somewhere inside. They got smaller and smaller and lower until he could hardly hear them.

Andrew ran down the hallway. He reached the foyer. The front door was gone. Where it had sat throughout his childhood (and just seconds before) was now just more wall. Beige, unimportant, obdurate wall. He ran into the living room. The bay windows were gone. More wall. He sprinted into what used to be his living room, what Laurie had used as additional storage space for her boxes of research. He fought through heavy layers of black curtain, hoping to find the sliding glass door. More wall.

He stepped backward, breathing heavily. All thoughts of therapy were gone. Diaphragm breathing was a fool’s task. He hyperventilated, breathing in short, raspy gasps. His hand went to his chest. His heart skipped and jumped rope beneath his ribs.

He wasn’t breathing but the walls were. Andrew looked at the living room wall, the wall that used to have a wide, beautiful window that showed the low Westchester mountains. It pulsated rhythmically, breathing in and out, in and out, one, two, three, hold, one, two, three, hold. It laughed at him. It closed in and forced him in the direction he least wanted to go. Above him something stomped and jumped, bouncing wildly across the floor.

He stepped into the playroom. It was exactly as it had been before he moved. Red and black carpet like static. So much like hell. His head buzzed. He screamed and cupped his ears, falling to the floor in the center of the room. Tears streamed down his face. He couldn’t breathe. He thought of Lydia.

One last memory came to him, the last he’d have of his sister and their old house. They were playing hide and go seek. Ben was looking for them. They were crouched in Lydia’s closet, huddled close. All around them was the darkest black. He was scared. She held him and told him it would be okay, just relax, breathe, let it come and let it go. She told him if he ever felt overwhelmed while in the house, just call to her. No matter where she was, even if she wasn’t home, just call to her. It was her house. She knew these walls, how they inhaled and exhaled. Just call to me, she said, and I’ll make sure you’re safe. Even if you can’t scream with your mouth you can scream with your mind. Just call to me and I’ll make it okay.

He called to her. With his mouth and with his mind. He screamed and he begged. He asked for his older sister to please, just one last time, please just protect him, help him, please take these walls and push them away, stop them from closing in and shutting his airways. All around him the house groaned. It shook and rattled and moaned. It wanted to consume, to take what belonged to it. Andrew shut his eyes tight and covered his ears. He sat in the middle of the playroom floor and cried, closing in on himself like a rollie-pollie bug.

Something grabbed the collar of his hoodie. For a moment he expected to see Laurie’s strange, damaged face, but there was no one there. He was stood up and forced through the playroom door, into the laundry room. There was a door there, one that looked out upon the covered carport in the driveway. He was driven through it, into the cold October air. Once outside he didn’t look back. He ran down the driveway, past the wall, to the small sliver of yard that separated the road from the property. He climbed into his red Mustang and pressed the ignition button. It growled alive like a big cat hungry for asphalt.

Andrew shifted into drive and pressed the gas, his vision wet. The tires spun for a moment, digging up chunks of Earth like an excavator and spraying them backward. Eventually they found traction and he was moving, jolting away from Hilltop, tires screeching almost as loud as he was.

He drove around the curve that would take him from his childhood street, still shouting. While leaving he was careful not to look at his rearview; he didn’t want to see Hilltop House heaving and hitching, breathing soundlessly, screaming his name, trying to lure him back with all its ghosts.

I’m home, he had said.

It called you too, Laurie had said.

Yes. It did. It had been calling his name most of his life, just the way it had called Lydia’s name. Had it taken her? Was she there, a piece of her, always? Is that why he’d come back? He didn’t know. Didn’t think he ever would know. He would never see it again, not in person. If it came to him in his dreams, well, he supposed he couldn’t control that. But even if he did find himself walking that long, narrow hall in his sleep, listening to the floorboards creek beneath his steps, even if he did find himself being drawn inextricably toward the bedroom of a ghost, he knew what to do. Who to ask for help. Who to call.

Most importantly, he remembered how to breathe.

And as he drove, he counted one.

Counted two.

Counted three.