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Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.

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Let's get into it. The Lees kept her hands fixed

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at ten and two, nearly white, knuckling the wheel as

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her car cut through the misculling off black route lake.

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The dust made everything ambiguous. Headlights dissolved against the fog,

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and the road swallowed her in a darkness that felt

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denser than mere nightfall. She slowed and squinted at the

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narrow drive that the directions insisted held her near dress,

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then crept onto gravel. The taz crunched too loud in

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the hush. As the cow eased toward the vast shape.

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She glimpsed in real estate phetous for weeks. There it

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was at last the manner. Three sawers perched atop a

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gentle rise, colonal bone straining beneath layers of peeling paint,

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windows staring out, half shut out and blackened with age.

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Creepers tangled over the porch balustrades, their leaves gome brittle

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with autumn. The lake beyond head and nail pressed to

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chill up her arms as she killed the engine and

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stepped into ethic with woodsmoke and white earth, she wasn't

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sure if she expected a greeting, but the only movement

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came from a hunch figure, gray hair faded Denham waiting

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on them steps, Miss Rowin his voice rasped more than echoed.

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He said about it suitcase beside her boxes. Care Diacer's

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what they call me, but you can call me Saul.

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His handshake was equally brief. Town left me to see

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you're saddled. Saul pressed a ring of heavy keys into

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her palm. Doors have peculiar ways here, keep them locked,

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especially at night. He said nothing more about what those

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ways might be. His boots thudded over Plank's. He loaded

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her remaining suit case onto the porch. By the time

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Elise managed to thanks, he was half way down the steps.

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The menose front door groaned, swinging inward under her touch.

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These braced his shoulder against it, heart curiously quick. She'd

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come for the escape, and you start something at the

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edge of Noah to bury what came before. It should

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feel promising. Instead, every inchine side felt like someone holding

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their breath when pressed at the shutters. As she explored

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the foy mold blotched wallpaper and oval mirre reflect with

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black a winding staircase, vanishing above her heels, clicked on

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warp wood, breathing deep lees inhaled the sense of disuse, dust,

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grocy rose water with the lingering cold, She busied herself

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with the little ritual, setting suit cases by the banister,

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a lining butt by the umbrella, stand lighting her phone

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for confidence, She flicked her new keys through her fingers,

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searching for something like assurance. Instead, she watched Soul's battered

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pickup disappear into murk, leaving her utterly alone. Dinner was

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two crisp apples from a paperback and a bottle smoothly

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eaten cross like it in the living room floor. She

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watched the guttering candle phone bright beside her first messages.

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Her sisters made it their safe. Her friends raised string

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of encouragements. The lies replied, lies, gentle as perfume. Yes,

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it's beautiful. I'll be fine, and then added a photo

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of her knees in the parquet, lighting the candlelight disguise

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the sullen gloom around her foxes and packed folded tease

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sketch pads a battered hard back novel. She undressed and

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showed by the pale glow of her phone screen, avoiding

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her eyes in its small, fogged up reflection. As she

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zipped herself into a cold sheet, the house growned and settled,

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new sounds creaking through floorboards and wainscoting. She told herself

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she was only tired, long'stight from the cold, drive and

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dim light. Surely the sense of a presence of watching

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was only suggestion. But sometime around two in the morning,

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as drizzlebet a tattoo of the window panes, something not faint,

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somewhere distant, A dry tap, tap, then silence, Blize curled

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into herself, promising that old pipes did things like this. Still,

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she pressed the covers tighter, heart stuttering in her chests,

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and lay perfectly still until the dawn. By morning, the

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last of the night it operated with the mist, Blize

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cracked the window of looking the lake still veiled in

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a silvery band of fog that seemed reluctant to leave

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the water's face. She padded down stairs, her feet bare

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and chilly, and made instant coffee in a crap muk

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rescued from a moving box. The house felt different in daylight,

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if not exactly. A lively and old dog stretching into

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activity after long sleep, desmot swirled through some beams where

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they could worm past heavy velvet curtains. Bilie swept through

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the lower rooms, humming to herself a defensive little tune

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whilst she mentally mapped the house's strange geometry. The grand

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staircase beckoned her upward. The rails were sticky, with polish

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scure work chipped, but every step was sturdy. Up Stairs,

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LEAs found three bedrooms, one furnished an ancient four poster

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bear dressed in paisley, the other two in various states

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of neglect. One poked into a turret, its floor banged

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under the weight of old boxes. Half the doors were locked.

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She tried each key, one caught and turned, revealing a

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sewing room, chirped with sunlight and dried lavender bundles. A

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palete knife set in an unfinished canvas, rested on an easel,

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The image beneath a thick dust and distinct, perhaps a

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rowboat on the water. The line of family firthographs ran

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along the upper landing glass streaked with centers of thumbs.

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She looked closer. In every picture, faces blurred or erase

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by time, some marred by deliberate scratches gouged into the emulsion.

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The effect was unsettling. Groups gathered for birthdays or weddings,

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but no smile remained intact. One at the end of

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the row had apertures where a woman's eyes should be,

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as if the gaze itself had been clawed free. She

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intended to laugh it off, but the air was colder here.

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The lees moved on, hot, moving with her. At the

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end of the corridor, she paused at a door hung

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with a faded sign the nursery. The handle was cold

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and sticky as she pressed down. Inside, the chamber blushed

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blue with shadow, toys bounded in heaps, a shelf of

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porcel and dull sagged against the wallpaper, their faces cracked,

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eyes set and fixed parody of kindness. On the floor,

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a wooden train was still of mid journey, bowing beneath

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a colapstarch. An old rocking horse gleamed with years of fingerprints.

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Its made snarl of real hair, not on a wool,

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but something brittle and pale. She closed the door, quickly,

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drawing and her lower lip. As she moved on back downstairs,

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she circled the room's PAULA kitchen window walls, larium bristling

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with dead house blunts, the kitchen clock, elaborate brastwork, and

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tiny birds wood in time with her footsteps. She ran

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a wet cloth over sticky condows and covered her bread

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books filled only with cinnamon dusted crumbs. Her phone vibrated

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with another check and text, which she dismissed, setting it aside.

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Determined to make the first day her own for IROs,

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she cleaned. The ordinary motion of scrubbing, dusting, and heaving

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boxes grounded her. She opened wide doors for the wind,

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aired out faded curtains, sang tunelessly as she cleared cobwheps.

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For a while, the strangeness of last night seen an invention,

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a trick of nerves and unfamiliar walls. But by afternoon,

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the chill sat back in and the sunlight didn't reach

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every corner. Silence scattered in the shadows, holding back barely

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at the edges of each room, Bilies readed for bed.

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Early tied by physical work in the house's subtle resistance

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to change, she double checked every latch and bolt, circling

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twice in the uncertained dusk. The wind rattled the panes

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after she brushed teeth and killed every lamp. She hesitated

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before sleep and knees prickling her skin. She didn't remember dreaming,

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but woke uneasily before dawn, a sense of absence rather

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than prisons troubling her. When she descended the stairs, she

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stopped cold at the bottom. Muddy footprints curve threw the

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foy not hers. Her shoes checked automatically, were lined up

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in the bedroom. Yet here was a preyed small prince

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as if a child had patted him from the rain,

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and stood baffort at the threshold of every room, lees

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not touching one with a cautious finger, cold slick, neither

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dry nor terribly fresh. She followed the trail to the

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back door, but the latch was sound. Only when she

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looked closer did she spot a single small hamprint high

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on the gas. On the inside, the pungence of earthy

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water rose in her thoughts. She made herself believe local

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kids must have slipped in a dare gone wrong, though

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no one admitted to knowing the old house when she'd

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asked in town. She cleaned the mess, scrubbing hard enough

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that the skin on her knuckles tingled the kitchen cock.

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She noticed over her toast had lost four IROs midnight,

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forgotten the hand stuck. At eight, she tapped the face.

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No change outside. The lake chopped with a steady wind,

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and the fog belowed to move by the sun's weakess ent.

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That afternoon, she drove into Hallowfield, the nearest village, all

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crooked lanes and slate roof slick with damp. The Lees

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bought groceries and hardware, a new flasklight, dead bolts, lawn screws.

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She prowled a small shop for tea and exchanged pleasantries

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with a clerk, but the conversation drifted into silent Whenever

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she mentioned a manner at the pub, the barton did

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nodded tightly at her order. When she explained she'd move

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into the lake house, his mouth tightened. You say you've

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inherited blackbirt, he asked, polishing a glass. That's right, I

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suppose it's called that a lie's offered, her voice trailing

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last owner left sudden way I heard one day, no

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trace place has always been touchy. He set the glass down,

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then gave her a sidelong glance. Keep your doors locked

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if you know what's good, she laughed, uneasily, reminded of

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Saul's words, you mean recent Breaking's not what I mean.

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The man leaned in just enough that she caught the

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heavy groceries and of beer on his breath. You hear

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odd things out by the water. Best not open up.

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Don't listen, no matter what you think you here at night.

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He straightened. Another customer called for a pint. The exchange

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was over as quickly as it began. Lees considered pressing,

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but the other pigeons gave her nothing except the polite

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remove given to the unfamiliar. A barmaid tapped her shoulder

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and said, almost too quietly, they say someone always comes looking.

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Don't be that some one. Lees went home by an

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unfamiliar route, saving the groceries for morning. Her mind turned

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with fragments, goosebumps racing in their wake. The night, she

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set every bolt on every door, tested the front and

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backyard latches. The house was quiet as she moved from

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room to rumor, storing, she told herself agency over rooms

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that pressed too close. Upstairs, she turned down the bed

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and flicked through the battered paper back until her eyelids

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grew heavy. Sleep was shallow, restless, scraping whispawing. She swore,

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half conscious that something drifted in and out of her dreams,

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a thread of childish laughter or a song sung out

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of key. A click snapped her. A week before dawn.

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She reached beneath the mattress for her phone three seventeen

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a m and swung her legs to the floor. The

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bedroom door was ajar, though she couldn't remember opening it.

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The air was colder than before. She forced herself down

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two flights and into the kitchen. Life flickered under the

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pantry door vanished when she opened it. When she checked

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the living room, curtains were drawn open and not in

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their length, as if some one had peered out, Twisting

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the fabric tight, she double checked the locks and touched.

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Retreating to her room, she tried to reason it all out.

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All buildings moved and shifted. The breeze could are knock curtains,

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but she reset the furnishings before sleep, tucking the flashlight

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within reach. Morning came gray and sullen. The lake was

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invisible behind a wall of mist, but she thought she

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saw movement for gaps in the trees, dark shapes flitting

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from one knolt or another. Trying to bring sense back.

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A filled her next day with poor decks. She swept

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the rooms she hadn't yet entered. Found a sunken drawing

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room with dustint bookshelves and a piano tuned half step flat.

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She fixed the faucet in the downstairs bathroom, the rhythmic

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drip now stilled all day. The house felt mutely complied

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to no one settling knock. No way would foot prince

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until she returned from holding old newspapers out to the bin.

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The bedroom window was unlocked. She stopped corrosories craddled awkwardly

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to her chest. She checked every window as a matter

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of ritual, had even forced the latch extra type before leaving.

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She checked again, no sign of the force opening, so clean,

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just unlocked. Night pressed sooner than she prepared for saucer eyed,

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Elise made soup in the kitchen, the Twin Bites. She

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read passages from a tattered guide to look a legend

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she'd found in the study stores of lights flirting over

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the water. Forces found in morning, miss and secret spurred

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under the man a lawn before the first stone was laid.

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She set it aside, dreams clouding her senses. That night,

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when she woke. The curtain was now tied the other way,

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a perfect bow at its hem. Suspicion mixed with dread,

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she wondered about soal could he come and go noticed?

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Or was there something else at work? And uninvited presents

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testing her vigilance. The next afternoon, as she swept under

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the window seat in the study, she uncovered a series

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of small pebbles lined precisely along a crack beneath the

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base boat. None matched the gravel in her drive. When

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she ran fingers over the shelf above, she felt the

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faintest pulse of vibration barely there, like a humming wire

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below her skin. It faded as quickly as it began.

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She found herself talking aloud to the walls, beseeching the

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silence for acknowledgment, but the house only answered with its

233
00:11:28,799 --> 00:11:32,279
own brand of flickering, creaking gurglin. Quite something moved in

234
00:11:32,320 --> 00:11:34,480
the mirrors, or seemed to, at least caught at the

235
00:11:34,480 --> 00:11:37,120
periphery of her vision. Not herself, but another, shoulder hunched

236
00:11:37,120 --> 00:11:39,399
where none should be, eyes black and glimmering through grime.

237
00:11:39,960 --> 00:11:43,080
When she spun round, only her reflection stared back, wide

238
00:11:43,120 --> 00:11:47,320
eyed and pale. Sleep grewuel as if another morning. Kitchen

239
00:11:47,320 --> 00:11:50,639
clock now lost nearly six hours overnight. The lake's surface

240
00:11:50,639 --> 00:11:52,519
shivered in the gray. Not a bird in the water.

241
00:11:53,240 --> 00:11:55,879
When snapped at the loose shinkles in the porch. In

242
00:11:55,960 --> 00:11:58,360
the back of her mind, days slowed together, each identical

243
00:11:58,399 --> 00:12:00,000
done to the dicks of the ground for the clock.

244
00:12:00,159 --> 00:12:02,759
The aches and her wrists from over vigorous grubbing. She

245
00:12:02,840 --> 00:12:05,919
tried another visit to Hallowfield. This time the gross of

246
00:12:05,960 --> 00:12:08,000
a hollow eyed woman with silvered hair met her gaze

247
00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:11,200
without the amateur's wariness. You are the new lady, a blackbirute, eh,

248
00:12:11,320 --> 00:12:14,360
she asked, passing over brown bread and cabbage. That's me.

249
00:12:14,440 --> 00:12:19,080
Elise agreed it peaceful. The woman tolted her head, considering

250
00:12:19,679 --> 00:12:22,240
there was a professor years ago lived there with his wife.

251
00:12:22,240 --> 00:12:24,399
Interested in lakes and local stores, he asked about the

252
00:12:24,480 --> 00:12:27,399
light over the water. Harold was his name. She tapped

253
00:12:27,440 --> 00:12:30,399
the counter, her voice dropping for roat journals, claimed there

254
00:12:30,440 --> 00:12:32,519
were things in the manner shadows. We found his car

255
00:12:32,559 --> 00:12:34,879
idol at the train station. He never came back. No

256
00:12:34,919 --> 00:12:38,360
one has not for long, Elise felt her skin prickle.

257
00:12:38,919 --> 00:12:41,799
Has anyone ever found what happened to him, just doras

258
00:12:41,840 --> 00:12:44,639
crawling into people's heads. The woman set the change in

259
00:12:44,679 --> 00:12:47,679
Elise's hand. If I were you, I'd leave it alone.

260
00:12:47,679 --> 00:12:50,879
Bad memories breed more shadows, and a households on to them.

261
00:12:51,120 --> 00:12:53,159
On the drive home, the road track behind her as

262
00:12:53,159 --> 00:12:55,600
the trees crowded in for she thought she saw some

263
00:12:55,639 --> 00:12:57,440
one standing at the edge of the woods, a smaller

264
00:12:57,440 --> 00:13:00,519
shape poised just out of sight. By the time she sopped,

265
00:13:00,639 --> 00:13:04,519
nothing was there. That night, she resolved enough wondering, she

266
00:13:04,639 --> 00:13:08,240
checked the house top to bottom. First the attic, it

267
00:13:08,320 --> 00:13:12,799
yielded little, only suitcases, crack trunks, moth wing shawls. Still,

268
00:13:12,960 --> 00:13:16,320
she searched, lifting every box, peering into corners. At the

269
00:13:16,360 --> 00:13:18,480
last she found her own calend up in beneath a

270
00:13:18,480 --> 00:13:21,200
pile of books, pages marked with red circles on dates

271
00:13:21,240 --> 00:13:24,320
she couldn't recall. One of them was to day. She

272
00:13:24,480 --> 00:13:28,559
paused house bristling along her form outrey again the ken

273
00:13:28,559 --> 00:13:31,840
of peaches, half a loaf of breadigone. She tore her cabinets,

274
00:13:31,960 --> 00:13:35,120
noting other small things missing a teaspoon, four matches, her

275
00:13:35,120 --> 00:13:38,200
favorite green munk. All the while the lakes wind batted

276
00:13:38,200 --> 00:13:41,120
against fogged glass and somewhere below the pipes whispered in

277
00:13:41,159 --> 00:13:44,919
their own metallic language. That night, lying awake, Lees heard

278
00:13:44,919 --> 00:13:48,200
her name, not spoken aloud, but unmistakable, drifting in with

279
00:13:48,240 --> 00:13:52,919
the windows. If caught on laughter alize. She sat boldepright, heart,

280
00:13:52,919 --> 00:13:56,519
hammering against rupes. The lake hidden behind the wall of night,

281
00:13:56,679 --> 00:13:58,720
pressed against the house's foundation as if it were a

282
00:13:58,720 --> 00:14:02,480
living thing, all gllecked at the lowest windows. Every nerve

283
00:14:02,519 --> 00:14:04,840
told her to listen closer, that the voice was almost

284
00:14:04,960 --> 00:14:08,960
almost familiar. But Saul, the shopkeeper, even the bartender, don't listen,

285
00:14:09,039 --> 00:14:12,720
no matter what you hear. She crawled to the window aside,

286
00:14:12,960 --> 00:14:15,840
shadow pulled beneath the black trunk trees, she saw she

287
00:14:15,840 --> 00:14:19,039
could have sworn a figure standing at the lake's edge, tall,

288
00:14:19,840 --> 00:14:23,519
distorted by mist. She blinked, and it was gone. She

289
00:14:23,600 --> 00:14:26,600
didn't sleep again until dawn bled pale through the nursery window.

290
00:14:27,279 --> 00:14:31,399
Days blurred food vanished from her cupboards. His sketch pencils

291
00:14:31,440 --> 00:14:35,600
left where she'd arranged them, reappeared, blunted, graphite snapped datamasked

292
00:14:35,679 --> 00:14:38,600
on her stolen calendar, so marked with strange curling letters

293
00:14:38,600 --> 00:14:41,200
she could not read. Whispered love to drifted through the

294
00:14:41,240 --> 00:14:43,519
upper floors. Always just as she passed the closed door,

295
00:14:44,159 --> 00:14:47,720
sleep deprivation gnawed at her. She snapped at nothing, yelled

296
00:14:47,720 --> 00:14:50,360
at the shadows. When the wind mowned too loud, her

297
00:14:50,360 --> 00:14:52,679
face hollowed up with tiredness, as dark as moss. Pulls.

298
00:14:53,120 --> 00:14:56,320
By instinct or hope. Elise ran sack closet Francis, a

299
00:14:56,399 --> 00:15:00,039
boarded up warder yielded nothing but moths. At last, a

300
00:15:00,120 --> 00:15:02,639
sewing room closet. Hidden beneath the boxes of tangled thread

301
00:15:02,679 --> 00:15:04,840
and a moth eaten colt, she found a battled wooden crate,

302
00:15:04,879 --> 00:15:08,559
islock already rusted open. Inside, curled like a fossil, was

303
00:15:08,600 --> 00:15:11,320
a thick water sane journal. She carried it to the

304
00:15:11,399 --> 00:15:14,360
light and pied it open. Hard angular skirt filled the

305
00:15:14,399 --> 00:15:18,240
opening page, labeled eighth Kelson, June nineteen eighty nine. She

306
00:15:18,360 --> 00:15:21,639
paged through Pole's quickening. The entries began forsake a complaint

307
00:15:21,639 --> 00:15:26,240
about weathered about salary, but soon inscription sired. Shadows seen

308
00:15:26,320 --> 00:15:28,840
creeping along the floors of voice calling at night, lafted

309
00:15:28,840 --> 00:15:32,200
behind the clock, There's something in the lake, Chelson wrote.

310
00:15:32,720 --> 00:15:35,120
At night it stirs calls me with my mother's voice.

311
00:15:35,600 --> 00:15:40,720
Pages catalog, more disappearing, time vanished, food objects rearranged, Then

312
00:15:40,960 --> 00:15:44,159
more frantic entries, handwriting, sprawling sideways. It knows what you regret.

313
00:15:44,240 --> 00:15:46,840
Don't trust the mirrors, they aren empty. Here the last

314
00:15:46,840 --> 00:15:49,679
interest bled and can scratch lines blurring down the page.

315
00:15:50,279 --> 00:15:52,679
The heart is beneath that waits for me. Night a longer.

316
00:15:52,759 --> 00:15:55,559
Now I must go. Lees traced her finger over the

317
00:15:55,559 --> 00:15:59,360
impression left by the pen denie. She flipped the back cover,

318
00:15:59,399 --> 00:16:01,639
tucked in. All with age was a faint drawing the

319
00:16:01,679 --> 00:16:04,840
cellar steps, a circle scratched at one side, the lantern

320
00:16:04,879 --> 00:16:07,399
in the cellar. She had never gone that far, Spooked

321
00:16:07,399 --> 00:16:10,639
by cold, now though, she had to see. As she

322
00:16:10,639 --> 00:16:13,200
stepped beyond the kitchen, the clock stop pendulums stilled mid

323
00:16:13,240 --> 00:16:15,879
to wing. Her flasklight's beam shuttered over stone steps, descending

324
00:16:15,919 --> 00:16:19,320
into earth. The air grew colder with each footfall. The

325
00:16:19,360 --> 00:16:22,080
smell of mud and metal choked her foot. A distant

326
00:16:22,120 --> 00:16:25,399
roll of thunder shipped the water pipes. She paused, listening

327
00:16:26,080 --> 00:16:28,679
far below, soundless and deep, She thought she heard water

328
00:16:28,759 --> 00:16:32,519
lapping at hidden walls. Night fell with sudden violence. The

329
00:16:32,600 --> 00:16:34,840
Lees watched through the kitchen windows. When pressed, the pines

330
00:16:34,879 --> 00:16:37,759
to unnatural angles. Rain sky are in the porch. The

331
00:16:37,840 --> 00:16:40,159
lake itself, out beyond her line of sight, pulse with

332
00:16:40,159 --> 00:16:44,519
blue white flashes, lightning, but the color seemed drawn otherworldly,

333
00:16:44,600 --> 00:16:47,519
thick as by a luminescence. A single glimmer flicked at

334
00:16:47,559 --> 00:16:49,879
the shore, not lightning, but a steady pulse, as if

335
00:16:49,879 --> 00:16:53,159
the lake itself drew breath. She pulled on boots, wrapped

336
00:16:53,159 --> 00:16:55,480
herself in a raincoat, and stepped out into the dampoor.

337
00:16:56,159 --> 00:16:58,799
It felt like a compulsion, some deep urging she couldn't name.

338
00:16:59,320 --> 00:17:01,519
The grass was slow underfooto She edged down the slope,

339
00:17:01,519 --> 00:17:04,960
flashlight jerking with her heartbeat. The wind keen across the water,

340
00:17:05,160 --> 00:17:08,200
sending ripples capering up the bank. As Lese neared the

341
00:17:08,200 --> 00:17:10,119
shore of the pulsing light, bright and shining, three thick

342
00:17:10,160 --> 00:17:13,359
fog dancing on the black water. Beside an old jetty,

343
00:17:13,400 --> 00:17:16,000
A lone figure stood, a moving illuminated by the glow.

344
00:17:16,599 --> 00:17:18,680
It was impossibly still, taller than any one she had

345
00:17:18,720 --> 00:17:21,519
ever known. It contors blowed by the unsteady air. She

346
00:17:21,599 --> 00:17:23,440
choked on a gasp and raised her light, but the

347
00:17:23,480 --> 00:17:26,519
figure didn't move. The light flared a blue, then green,

348
00:17:26,599 --> 00:17:29,440
then a sickly why. The figure turned toward her, face

349
00:17:29,480 --> 00:17:31,880
lost in the shimmer, and the least staggered backward, slick

350
00:17:31,960 --> 00:17:34,640
boots sliding in the mud. She thundered up the slope,

351
00:17:34,680 --> 00:17:37,680
hearts grumbling in her chest. The man of windows watched her,

352
00:17:37,680 --> 00:17:40,759
every one a blank, unblinking eye. She slammed the door

353
00:17:40,799 --> 00:17:44,480
shut behind her and through every lock, barricading herself inside.

354
00:17:44,519 --> 00:17:47,160
Breathing ragged, she calnged to the railing the storm, screaming

355
00:17:47,160 --> 00:17:49,599
at the glass. Her skin burst with energy that was

356
00:17:49,640 --> 00:17:52,799
adrenaline or fear, but something older, darker, a certainty that

357
00:17:52,839 --> 00:17:54,720
whatever she had seen on the water could follow her

358
00:17:54,759 --> 00:17:58,319
if it so chose. She remembered Kelson's last line, echoing

359
00:17:58,319 --> 00:18:01,799
through her mind. The heart is beneath A fresh draft

360
00:18:01,799 --> 00:18:04,720
slithered under the kitchen door, curling around her ankles like

361
00:18:04,720 --> 00:18:08,279
a living thing. Above, something walked the upstairs hall. No child,

362
00:18:08,400 --> 00:18:12,400
no burglar, but heavier, deeper. The house's very bones responded.

363
00:18:13,079 --> 00:18:15,599
She knew now she was not alone, never had been.

364
00:18:16,160 --> 00:18:18,279
She could not trust her own sense. The entity, the

365
00:18:18,279 --> 00:18:22,599
presence was awake, stronger with each passing night. Outside, the

366
00:18:22,680 --> 00:18:27,519
rain relented fogs like the earth rising higher than before inside.

367
00:18:27,599 --> 00:18:30,839
Aleise pressed her palms together, knuckles bone white, and realized

368
00:18:30,839 --> 00:18:32,720
with a deep shudder that this was only the beginning.

369
00:18:33,160 --> 00:18:35,480
And as the wind shifted, it carried her name, drawn out,

370
00:18:35,559 --> 00:18:39,400
gentle and utterly inescapable back from the lake, Blize couldn't move.

371
00:18:40,039 --> 00:18:41,640
She stood at the base of the stacies for a

372
00:18:41,680 --> 00:18:44,319
long time, Paul's trying to slow every muscle, ready to

373
00:18:44,359 --> 00:18:46,200
bolt again if that thing, whatever she'd seen by the

374
00:18:46,240 --> 00:18:48,839
lake appeared at the door or window. The old house

375
00:18:48,880 --> 00:18:51,200
did not go silent, not any more. She could pick

376
00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:54,319
out the new music of its immersed soft tapping up

377
00:18:54,359 --> 00:18:57,160
above and intimittent rattles sweeping down the corridors, the very

378
00:18:57,200 --> 00:19:00,000
bones of black croop manner shifting in answer to the storm.

379
00:19:00,160 --> 00:19:03,480
Lightning flashed outside. The glass shimmered, and for split secondly

380
00:19:03,599 --> 00:19:06,799
saw the whole Foy illuminated in coal blue rainwater streaked

381
00:19:06,799 --> 00:19:09,759
down the panes in heavy wriggling trails. She caught her

382
00:19:09,759 --> 00:19:12,279
own shadow doubled and redoubled in the mirror before the stairs.

383
00:19:13,000 --> 00:19:15,759
Her skin seemed thinner of in, showing ghost blue. A

384
00:19:15,799 --> 00:19:18,759
second flush revealed behind her reflection a gray shape at

385
00:19:18,759 --> 00:19:20,839
her shoulder and necho a shadow bloom gone. When she

386
00:19:20,839 --> 00:19:24,480
spun around. She needed to move, letting the urge for

387
00:19:24,559 --> 00:19:26,880
action override every bit of reason. She flicked through her

388
00:19:26,880 --> 00:19:30,759
found keys, racing up stairs, passing the nursery she swore,

389
00:19:30,799 --> 00:19:32,480
she felt a draft, a trickle of air that smelled

390
00:19:32,519 --> 00:19:35,079
faintly of what stone in the lake, sire Mott. She

391
00:19:35,160 --> 00:19:37,200
pressed her hand to the wall, shuddering at the chill

392
00:19:37,720 --> 00:19:40,200
from down the corridor. A soft creak snapped her attention.

393
00:19:40,319 --> 00:19:42,720
The sewing room door, which she shut herself, now gaped

394
00:19:42,759 --> 00:19:46,200
open by hand's breadth. Lies approached on tiptoe feet, sinking

395
00:19:46,240 --> 00:19:49,240
into the carpet with each nervous step. Her flashlight barely

396
00:19:49,240 --> 00:19:51,799
cut a tunnel across the seam in the door. Something

397
00:19:51,839 --> 00:19:54,799
metallical into done the sewing table. For a second, she

398
00:19:54,839 --> 00:19:56,599
convinced herself it was just a loose pin, a trick

399
00:19:56,640 --> 00:19:59,359
of the light, nothing more. But as she drew closer,

400
00:19:59,519 --> 00:20:01,079
she could see it was her own house key, the

401
00:20:01,119 --> 00:20:03,079
spare she left on her keyring, the ones she hadn't

402
00:20:03,079 --> 00:20:06,960
touched since arriving. She stared, skin prickling with cold realization.

403
00:20:07,519 --> 00:20:09,799
Had someone come inside while she was at the lake edge.

404
00:20:10,279 --> 00:20:12,160
She backed out of the room, shutting the door carefully,

405
00:20:12,240 --> 00:20:15,160
heart beating in her foot. When she descended, she left

406
00:20:15,160 --> 00:20:17,799
half the dance stairs lights on, reckoning. Electricity bills were

407
00:20:17,839 --> 00:20:20,559
a lesser evil. Grabbing her phone, she tried to pull

408
00:20:20,599 --> 00:20:22,799
up perception of one bar, barely functional, but as she

409
00:20:22,839 --> 00:20:25,839
died Soul's number. The line clicked, then filled with quiet static.

410
00:20:26,519 --> 00:20:29,920
She closed her eyes, fighting impulsive anger and fear, the

411
00:20:30,039 --> 00:20:32,400
urge to make noise, slam, dogs, shout, prove her own

412
00:20:32,400 --> 00:20:34,759
presence to whatever else inhabited this house, battle with the

413
00:20:34,839 --> 00:20:36,880
instinct to go silent, vanish into a hole in the

414
00:20:36,880 --> 00:20:39,880
wall like a rabbit. Instead, she retreated to the kitchen,

415
00:20:39,880 --> 00:20:42,279
poured herself cold water from the tap, and huddled by

416
00:20:42,319 --> 00:20:45,160
the window. She forced herself to watch the lake through

417
00:20:45,200 --> 00:20:48,079
the glass, searching for another sign of movement. The pulsive

418
00:20:48,079 --> 00:20:50,400
blue had gutted out. For now, the shore sea empty.

419
00:20:50,920 --> 00:20:52,960
The only shape in the darkness was her own. Caught

420
00:20:53,000 --> 00:20:54,960
between rain streak panes and the yellow wash of the

421
00:20:55,039 --> 00:20:58,839
kitchen lamp. She barely registered the passage of minutes, then IROs.

422
00:20:59,519 --> 00:21:01,519
The house went tight on the skin of an ease,

423
00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:05,240
finally relaxed as wind died toward dawn, When she did sleep,

424
00:21:05,319 --> 00:21:08,240
head cradled unfolded arms atop the kitchen counter. Her dreams

425
00:21:08,240 --> 00:21:10,440
were shallow and quick cut, shadowed with scrambling things and

426
00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:12,920
walls that closed in as she ran. It was nearly

427
00:21:12,960 --> 00:21:14,920
mid day when she woke to the persistent knock at

428
00:21:14,920 --> 00:21:18,359
the door. Wood echoed with slow deliberation, heavy, not the skittish,

429
00:21:18,480 --> 00:21:21,559
uncertain wrapping she remembered from that first strange night. The

430
00:21:21,640 --> 00:21:23,599
lees is hot dove in her chest, but she made

431
00:21:23,640 --> 00:21:26,279
herself cross the foy, Peering through the warps in the glass.

432
00:21:26,880 --> 00:21:29,000
Saul shape hunched and thick set loomed on the porch

433
00:21:29,039 --> 00:21:31,880
in silhouette. Before she could force her relief, a flash

434
00:21:31,920 --> 00:21:33,960
of caution flickered up. She left the key inside, and

435
00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:37,240
after last night nothing felt certain. She unlocked the door

436
00:21:37,279 --> 00:21:39,839
with trembling hands, keeping her body breeze behind it. As

437
00:21:39,839 --> 00:21:42,960
she cracked it open. Saul peered in brows, overshadowing his

438
00:21:43,039 --> 00:21:45,079
eyes the flannel at his collar. Soudumn from the walk

439
00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:48,000
or drive. Should have checked sooner, he muttered, as though

440
00:21:48,000 --> 00:21:51,920
already chastising himself. Storm was bad last night. You are right,

441
00:21:52,640 --> 00:21:56,440
Elise hesitated. Should she tell him part of her wanted

442
00:21:56,440 --> 00:21:59,000
nothing more than to blurt every shadow, every impossible shape.

443
00:21:59,039 --> 00:22:02,200
But something held her quiet, suspision or shame. She settled

444
00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:04,680
for there was someone by the lake, I think a

445
00:22:04,720 --> 00:22:07,160
person or She stopped, letting panic speak for itself in

446
00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:09,880
her type voice. He steadied her for a moment longer,

447
00:22:09,960 --> 00:22:13,599
then nodded. People come round, sometimes just passing through. Most

448
00:22:13,640 --> 00:22:16,279
don't stay. There was a subtle shift in his posture,

449
00:22:16,359 --> 00:22:21,000
a closing off anything gone, missing, doors forced, just some food,

450
00:22:21,039 --> 00:22:24,079
little things. She didn't say what truly shook her about,

451
00:22:24,079 --> 00:22:26,440
spare key, a calendar, the sense of being hunted by

452
00:22:26,440 --> 00:22:30,640
her own reflection. Saul grunted, nudging back his cap. Don't

453
00:22:30,680 --> 00:22:32,839
leave the courtains open at night. Best to froom, stay

454
00:22:32,839 --> 00:22:35,079
in shadow after sunset. That's how they can see. In

455
00:22:35,720 --> 00:22:38,960
his eyes flickered upward toward the attic. Something stirs this

456
00:22:39,039 --> 00:22:41,960
time of year. When she flinched, he spoke more softly,

457
00:22:42,039 --> 00:22:45,079
almost an apology. I'll check the grounds, make a round

458
00:22:45,119 --> 00:22:48,279
after the storm. Folks round here. While some say weather

459
00:22:48,279 --> 00:22:52,200
wakes things up. He stepped off the porch, brutes thudding

460
00:22:52,200 --> 00:22:55,240
through mud. Blise watched him vanish between the trees marked

461
00:22:55,240 --> 00:22:57,880
black by last night's tempests. Comforted at least by his

462
00:22:57,960 --> 00:23:01,119
living presence. When soul was gone on she runed the

463
00:23:01,119 --> 00:23:04,519
house nervously. She counted doors a game almost then checked

464
00:23:04,519 --> 00:23:07,519
the windows. In every pane. She found water trails, the

465
00:23:07,559 --> 00:23:11,039
spatter of mud, but no footprints inside. She moved quickly,

466
00:23:11,160 --> 00:23:14,480
energy feeding on itself, needing to prove the house ordinary again.

467
00:23:15,039 --> 00:23:17,599
In the solarium, she noticed a patch of condensation in

468
00:23:17,599 --> 00:23:19,119
the glass, a smudge to a vale, as if a

469
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:21,720
face had pressed there from outside. The height too tall

470
00:23:21,759 --> 00:23:24,480
for a child. While rose in her throat, she scrubbed

471
00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:26,480
a clean with sleeve of her sweater, refusing to look

472
00:23:26,519 --> 00:23:29,440
too closely out the shape the fog had left outside.

473
00:23:29,480 --> 00:23:32,680
The light was then grayzed dishwater. Fog clung to the lake,

474
00:23:32,839 --> 00:23:36,079
shifting in silence whirls. The well trank to the boundary

475
00:23:36,079 --> 00:23:38,119
of house and shore. Theater for one the audience was

476
00:23:38,200 --> 00:23:40,920
looking as the thing she'd glimpsed the night before. She

477
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:44,319
distracted herself with real work, fixing a loose banister, patching

478
00:23:44,359 --> 00:23:46,400
a few cracks in the plaster, anything to keep her

479
00:23:46,400 --> 00:23:50,319
hands busy. Periodically, she checked her phone. The signal, as before,

480
00:23:50,440 --> 00:23:53,000
was a quivering promise, wavering between nothing in a single

481
00:23:53,039 --> 00:23:57,519
fleeting bar. By late afternoon, Saul returned, mud caking his boots.

482
00:23:58,079 --> 00:24:00,000
Some light caught the bits of gravel in his hair.

483
00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:03,680
He wiped his face with a bandanna and shook his head.

484
00:24:03,960 --> 00:24:06,599
Didn't find sign of anyone out there, ma'am. If this

485
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:08,960
keeps on, may be best to get a dog or

486
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:10,559
go to town and wait out the worst of it.

487
00:24:11,119 --> 00:24:13,319
Do you think the last owner did he see things?

488
00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:18,039
Was he? The question faltered? Was he afraid? Saul's face

489
00:24:18,079 --> 00:24:20,359
pinch Joe clenching as he looked to the ceiling, as

490
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:22,519
though the right answer lived in the beams above them.

491
00:24:22,799 --> 00:24:26,319
Professor Kelson, he said, after a pause, he was curious.

492
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:30,200
That's all too curious, maybe, he hesitated, as if the

493
00:24:30,240 --> 00:24:33,480
words themselves cost him. Lake's always been strange. Don't let

494
00:24:33,519 --> 00:24:35,799
its stillness fool you. And those who come here sometimes

495
00:24:35,839 --> 00:24:38,000
they bring things with them. The households on like the lake,

496
00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:41,039
hard to leave when you want to. Saul gave a hulf,

497
00:24:41,079 --> 00:24:44,039
as if dismissing his own superstition. He left as abruptly

498
00:24:44,079 --> 00:24:46,880
as he'd come, promising to stop by again within the week.

499
00:24:47,519 --> 00:24:49,720
Lease locked the doors after him, sliding each bolt with

500
00:24:49,799 --> 00:24:52,720
more care than before the ire is before nightfull drag.

501
00:24:53,400 --> 00:24:55,680
She kept to the kitchen and parlor, bathed in lamplight,

502
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:58,079
thumbing the crap journal she'd found test in each account

503
00:24:58,079 --> 00:25:01,400
in Professor Kelson's entest against her own. Sleep when it

504
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:04,359
came was a jittery undertaking. She left all the doors

505
00:25:04,400 --> 00:25:08,119
to her bedroom open, wanting to see whatever approached that night.

506
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:10,119
At the hour between midnight and first light, the house

507
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:13,720
changed again. The lee's half awake, heard a scraping, and

508
00:25:13,759 --> 00:25:15,559
then her name is so off his breath drawn through

509
00:25:15,559 --> 00:25:18,440
the nursery floor. The pitch was not her mother's, not

510
00:25:18,559 --> 00:25:20,799
quite her own. Yet to summon every ache of childhoodspent

511
00:25:20,839 --> 00:25:24,400
tiptoing puss closed doors on sleepless nights. She got up,

512
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:27,160
wrapping a cardigan around thin shoulders, and padded to the

513
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:30,160
landing dance stairs. The glow of the solarium beckoned a

514
00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:32,920
pale line at the door's edge. Had she left a

515
00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:36,359
light on. She hovered in the hall. The nursery door,

516
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:39,480
which she latched earlier, was open, rocking slowly behind her,

517
00:25:39,519 --> 00:25:42,319
as if pushed by child's unswerred in hand from within,

518
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:45,039
the wooden horse creaked back and forth. The dolls on

519
00:25:45,039 --> 00:25:47,240
the shelf, watched in the faint spill of hallway light,

520
00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:50,200
seemed to lean forward, ice shining pinpoints in their cracked faces.

521
00:25:50,880 --> 00:25:54,119
Trying not to blink. Alee's edge forward. The horse jerked

522
00:25:54,119 --> 00:25:57,440
once more, then shivered to a stop. As she stepped inside,

523
00:25:57,480 --> 00:25:59,839
the room's temperature plummeted, a chill so profound she saw

524
00:26:00,079 --> 00:26:02,920
chick's hailed falk in the gloom. Then from the floor

525
00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:05,359
beneath the far wall, she heard something writhing, a scraping,

526
00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:08,200
as if dull shoes dragged a lawnward. She swung her

527
00:26:08,279 --> 00:26:11,039
flask light over the carpet, nothing only dust and the

528
00:26:11,079 --> 00:26:13,680
long shadow of the old rocking horse. But in a

529
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:16,319
dull gleam of the train's painterck, she saw shape reflected

530
00:26:16,319 --> 00:26:18,519
a two tall smeared at the edges, bent in proportions

531
00:26:18,519 --> 00:26:22,319
a child could never possess. She fled, nearly tripping on

532
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:24,000
her own robe as she bolted into the hall and

533
00:26:24,039 --> 00:26:26,400
back to her bedroom, slamming the door, pressing her back

534
00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:29,640
against it for long, trembling minutes, tears came at last,

535
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:32,720
a furious animal response, bitter relief at being alone, regret

536
00:26:32,799 --> 00:26:36,119
for not leaving months ago, the house fell quiet, yet

537
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:38,359
Elise could sense, for the rest of that endless night,

538
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:41,039
something pacing the upper floor, moving between the nursery and

539
00:26:41,079 --> 00:26:44,279
the attic. As a searching from misplace treasure. She pressed

540
00:26:44,279 --> 00:26:46,680
her hands over her ears, blocking out the sand, and

541
00:26:46,759 --> 00:26:49,480
only when the birds announced dawn did she let herself collapse,

542
00:26:49,559 --> 00:26:53,319
dizzy with sleeplessness when she finally surface slate the next day,

543
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:55,799
her throat rough and heart thudding unevenly, she opened every

544
00:26:55,799 --> 00:26:58,480
window she dared it, pacing the perimeter with shaking steps.

545
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:01,799
The air was cleaner, but the shadows would not be banished.

546
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:05,039
Her reflection, familiar, then subtly wrong, stroved at her from

547
00:27:05,039 --> 00:27:08,480
each mirror. By noon, she resolved on a plan. The

548
00:27:08,559 --> 00:27:12,319
journals hinted the cellar in nodder, promising something beyond dread,

549
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:16,640
something tangible. She gathered a lantern, a wind up flashlight, gloves,

550
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:19,440
and a crob was wiped from Saul's gardening shed. If

551
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:21,200
there was an answer to be found, it was down

552
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:23,799
there in the bone cold dark. She crossed to the

553
00:27:23,839 --> 00:27:27,839
basement stairs. Reins started again, steady and relentless. The first

554
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:31,480
steps groaned like warning. She pressed on, swinging her lantern ahead,

555
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:34,839
heading light across stone, walls, ridge with roots, cobwebs crawled

556
00:27:34,839 --> 00:27:37,920
in the corners, dust netting the banisters at the bottom.

557
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:40,000
Dimp seeped through her boots. The earth was colder than

558
00:27:40,039 --> 00:27:42,839
any room above, but breeze seemed to breathe through the cellar.

559
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:46,240
Pushing pulling, the lee scanned for anything she'd missed before

560
00:27:46,319 --> 00:27:49,200
a hatch, as the professor wrote of some unnatural hollow.

561
00:27:49,839 --> 00:27:52,440
Shining her lantern. Along the back wall, she spotted a

562
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:55,240
faint line a seemed surrounded by rough placid stone, half

563
00:27:55,279 --> 00:27:58,480
lost to mildy. She tried the crowbar, jamming it between

564
00:27:58,519 --> 00:28:01,559
stone's heart, Racing as the metal tree against mortar. Bit

565
00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:04,720
by bit, she levered the section outward. Earth crumbled on

566
00:28:04,759 --> 00:28:07,839
to her shoes. A panel gave way at last, revealing

567
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:11,200
a cavity shrouded in rancair inside a set of narrow

568
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:14,279
stone steps spiral downward, slick with lichen, vanishing into darkness,

569
00:28:14,319 --> 00:28:17,359
and touched by her light. Cold, almost joyous fear pulsed

570
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:20,319
in her throat. She set her jaw and crushed inside

571
00:28:20,400 --> 00:28:23,559
longer and held high. The walls closed in rough with

572
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:28,039
hand out furrows. Roots dangled overhead like grasping fingers. At

573
00:28:28,079 --> 00:28:30,000
the base of the spiral, the space wadd into a

574
00:28:30,039 --> 00:28:33,000
chamber of mud caked also dominating its center, carved symbol

575
00:28:33,039 --> 00:28:36,880
swirling in patents indecipherable, old as the stone itself personal

576
00:28:36,920 --> 00:28:38,680
to try to sletter the niche a cracked pair of

577
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:41,400
glasses strung with dirty twine, a chom bracelet too thumb

578
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:44,759
nail sized pebbles painted with the child's clumsy scenes. Blise

579
00:28:44,799 --> 00:28:47,119
felt the air move, thick and cool, as if someone

580
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:50,880
seeing persons exhaled against her cheek. She forced herself forward,

581
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:53,880
heart hammery on the altar. The patch of late mud

582
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:57,759
was still wet, fresh against stone. Smaller objects are rusted rain.

583
00:28:57,880 --> 00:29:00,759
A filigree perch sank, half buried in the muck, her

584
00:29:00,759 --> 00:29:03,279
breath clouded. The only sound the drip of condensation down

585
00:29:03,319 --> 00:29:07,720
the wall, then from behind, a gentle slush, water moving

586
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:11,200
where water ought not be. She whirled land and beam, mobbling.

587
00:29:11,799 --> 00:29:14,160
Something brushed her calf, a cold, wet pressure like the

588
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:16,720
touch of her hand. She choked back a sob as

589
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:19,319
her land and jittered and nearly went out. In its

590
00:29:19,359 --> 00:29:21,720
flickering radius, she saw, for a heart beat a long

591
00:29:21,799 --> 00:29:24,440
chadow rising at the edge of the steps. It was

592
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:26,880
formless at first, the looming presence that thickened and drew,

593
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:29,920
the bitter metactane of lake water choking the air. She

594
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:34,039
stumbled backward, nearly dropping the lantern. Whispers filled the little chamber.

595
00:29:34,079 --> 00:29:36,440
Word she could not understand, but the cadence the grief

596
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:40,839
rang itchingly familiar. She heard again her mother's voice pleading apologies,

597
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:43,319
and her own, the echo of young regret woven through

598
00:29:43,319 --> 00:29:46,279
the cacophony. The house moaned above, and the roots trembled

599
00:29:46,319 --> 00:29:49,160
with each word. Elise spawn and clawed her away up

600
00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:51,880
the steps, the lantern clattering against the wall, knees and

601
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:55,319
palms bruising as she crawled behind her. The whispering swelled,

602
00:29:55,799 --> 00:29:58,480
rising to a chorus, then snapped off with a natural silence.

603
00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:01,319
She sound the pan all behind her, oppressing her full

604
00:30:01,319 --> 00:30:03,720
weight against the cold stone, eyes wild in the lantern's

605
00:30:03,799 --> 00:30:07,759
ratic glow upstairs above, the crushing quiet rain battered the world.

606
00:30:08,359 --> 00:30:10,319
The house was not only haunted by the dead or

607
00:30:10,359 --> 00:30:12,480
whatever dwelled in the lake, but by the gathering repetition

608
00:30:12,559 --> 00:30:15,119
of sorrow, of things left and finished in words never spoken.

609
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:18,599
She felt seen, charged and horribly expected, as if her

610
00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:20,680
arrival was merely the ticking of a clock toward a

611
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:24,000
preordained ere. The lantern's light windowed as she limped back

612
00:30:24,039 --> 00:30:26,960
up into the kitchen, leaving shadows behind for now. Blise

613
00:30:27,039 --> 00:30:29,400
pressed herself against the warmth of the stove, daring not

614
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:31,960
to listen to the soft, beckoning hush that rose from below,

615
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:34,720
The muffled sound too much like her own name. Lee

616
00:30:34,799 --> 00:30:37,200
spent that morning in a waking fever, Wrapped tightly in

617
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:39,519
a wal blanket, she dragged from the guest bed, hugging

618
00:30:39,559 --> 00:30:42,279
herself on the kitchen floor. The house was quiet, not

619
00:30:42,359 --> 00:30:44,440
comfortingly so, but hanging in a kind of hush that

620
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:48,039
pressed her ears, making her doubt even her own breeding. Outside,

621
00:30:48,119 --> 00:30:50,279
the wind had backed off for now, leaving a row

622
00:30:50,319 --> 00:30:53,039
stillness where the churning rain had battered against glass all night.

623
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:55,960
Not even the usual bird call stirred, as if every

624
00:30:55,960 --> 00:30:58,160
creature that might have once flitted through the lake sidewards

625
00:30:58,200 --> 00:31:00,000
had retreated as far as possible from the dead hud

626
00:31:00,039 --> 00:31:02,759
USh that no grit bluckered. She wasn't sure how long

627
00:31:02,799 --> 00:31:04,680
she sat there. She blinked, and the light had shifted,

628
00:31:04,720 --> 00:31:08,160
panting the kitchen yellow then gray, long stripes crossed grimy tiles.

629
00:31:08,839 --> 00:31:10,799
The memory of the cello was stuck in her jaw,

630
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:13,079
a soreness, as though she'd been biting down all night

631
00:31:13,079 --> 00:31:16,960
to stop herself screaming. Her hands, she realized were shaking

632
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:19,640
cold despite the blanket, the feeling of that wet hand

633
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:22,400
still lingering at her uncle, liking a welcome brand. The

634
00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:24,759
compulsion to move warmed in her bones, so she forced

635
00:31:24,759 --> 00:31:27,519
herself upright. She filled the cattle, letting the sound of

636
00:31:27,559 --> 00:31:30,400
water mask even the quiet when it boiled. She poured

637
00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:32,160
it over a half stale tea bag and griped the

638
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:34,680
mug tight enough she'd have broken the china in another life.

639
00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:38,119
Her other hand, more ba accident than resolve, retrieved Professor

640
00:31:38,160 --> 00:31:41,279
Kelson's journal from the table, fingers smoothing over its battered spine.

641
00:31:41,319 --> 00:31:44,039
She reopened the final entry, searching lines she'd already read

642
00:31:44,079 --> 00:31:47,640
for something she'd missed, but no revelation leaped out. The

643
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:50,960
heart is beneath pages before it were west frantic scrolls,

644
00:31:51,039 --> 00:31:53,079
fragments that suck the heat right from her. It calls,

645
00:31:53,119 --> 00:31:56,039
using my own voice, wants me to follow. Never go alone,

646
00:31:56,279 --> 00:31:59,359
Never answered the voice, Never let soro take root She

647
00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:03,119
pressed herums hard on that last word, take root. The

648
00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:05,319
roots down in the cellar, she had felt them moving,

649
00:32:05,559 --> 00:32:08,240
entwined in stone and mud. Had they grown towards or

650
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:11,079
left intended? Always? The house only of her meant to

651
00:32:11,079 --> 00:32:13,319
pull in the lonely, the broken people like her, who

652
00:32:13,319 --> 00:32:15,400
came carrying the kind of wounds that ach louder. With

653
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:17,799
every creak and sigh of a place like this, the

654
00:32:17,839 --> 00:32:21,160
tea burned her tongue, left her tissing nothing. Whatever was here,

655
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:23,599
it didn't seem interested in leaving. Now that she disturbed

656
00:32:23,599 --> 00:32:26,359
the altar. Maybe she should have packed up, left the

657
00:32:26,359 --> 00:32:29,079
house for all to watch, driven anywhere with running water

658
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:31,759
and walls that didn't pres him from all sides. But

659
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:35,000
something inside her refused the idea. If she ran away,

660
00:32:35,039 --> 00:32:37,839
the thing beneath black root wouldn't stop following. If she

661
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:39,920
left it and challenged, it would keep drawing the next

662
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:42,119
person in. Some of the solitary, self fooled by cheap,

663
00:32:42,119 --> 00:32:44,079
reole estate and their own need to escape us fear.

664
00:32:44,759 --> 00:32:47,079
She thought of Saul's warning, the gross's pinched face, a

665
00:32:47,119 --> 00:32:49,559
stories that clustered around the edges of town like mist.

666
00:32:50,279 --> 00:32:53,640
Someone always comes looking. Don't beat at some one, But

667
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:56,599
now she was was She drawn straight to the heart

668
00:32:56,599 --> 00:32:59,519
of the house, to the altar. In the cellar, her

669
00:32:59,599 --> 00:33:03,119
funds OLOKX screen flared, the signal flicker, then vanished. For

670
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:04,920
a moment. She couldn't be sure. The ghosts and the

671
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:07,079
dumb mirrors had made her imagine plenty. For a moment,

672
00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:09,000
she thought she saw a face she didn't recognize in

673
00:33:09,039 --> 00:33:11,680
the reflection of her battery icon just at her shoulder.

674
00:33:12,039 --> 00:33:15,160
Mouth twisted as if whispering, She shut the screen off fast,

675
00:33:15,279 --> 00:33:18,480
hands suddenly sweaty. Decision pressed up heavy as a hand

676
00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:21,279
on her shoulder. There would be no help from outside.

677
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:24,359
In the journal's margins, in more careful script than the rest,

678
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:26,599
Kelson had written, don't let it find you alone with

679
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:29,319
your regrets. If it does, it will use them to

680
00:33:29,359 --> 00:33:33,839
open doors. Don't listen, no matter how kind it sounds. Outside.

681
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:35,799
The fog that had only hugged the water was now

682
00:33:35,839 --> 00:33:38,519
building slow swall, snaking high out the shore, pushing toward

683
00:33:38,599 --> 00:33:41,480
the garden wall. Bleise watched it through the scum window,

684
00:33:41,519 --> 00:33:44,119
knuckles bown wide in the sill. She could feel it,

685
00:33:44,319 --> 00:33:45,960
not just see it. The chill and the stone, the

686
00:33:46,039 --> 00:33:49,119
damp in the hollow for colobums. If she squinted, she

687
00:33:49,119 --> 00:33:51,880
thought she saw movement, something dark, lean, lind, shifting just

688
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:54,000
inside the mist, waiting for the house to let it in.

689
00:33:54,559 --> 00:33:57,759
A rattle snapped her forcus. Upstairs, a door slamed, not settling,

690
00:33:57,759 --> 00:34:01,519
but sharp with force. She flinched, watching dust drift down

691
00:34:01,519 --> 00:34:04,519
from the parlor's crack ceiling. For a long moment, she waited,

692
00:34:04,559 --> 00:34:08,800
hoping for sunlight, for anything ordinary, but nothing changed. The

693
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:11,920
silence that returned was jagged, the raw end of a scream.

694
00:34:12,079 --> 00:34:15,360
She forced herself to move, checking latches and locks. Her

695
00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:17,159
feet traced the lap she had already worn into the

696
00:34:17,159 --> 00:34:21,679
board's kitchen, hallway, parlor staircase back around. When she tried

697
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:24,239
to front door, she found it stuck, not locked, not jammed,

698
00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:26,000
but as if something on the other side was leaning

699
00:34:26,039 --> 00:34:28,800
its weight into it. She rattled it harder, and a soft,

700
00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:31,480
answering shudder came from the glass, but it didn't give.

701
00:34:32,199 --> 00:34:34,760
Not wanting to break more things, not yet, she turned away,

702
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:37,679
heart thumping. She left a lamp burning on every level,

703
00:34:37,719 --> 00:34:39,920
every room with an exit, and retreated to the kitchen

704
00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:41,719
with a window faced what used to be the parlor

705
00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:45,480
garden and beyond it the lake. The fog was thicker still,

706
00:34:46,119 --> 00:34:48,440
it had pressed up almost to the porch, now dulling

707
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:50,960
the world to a few silent yards. It made her

708
00:34:51,039 --> 00:34:53,559
think absurdly of cotton packing. A wind aw way cat

709
00:34:53,599 --> 00:34:56,960
the world out, but also kept infection in. As she watched,

710
00:34:57,000 --> 00:34:59,400
certain she was awake and not dreaming, the shapes began

711
00:34:59,440 --> 00:35:02,199
to form out of the FOG's undulations. At first it

712
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:05,519
was only one, tall and stooping, indistinct, then in the

713
00:35:05,559 --> 00:35:09,239
next long minute, more smaller, childish lynsed too long or

714
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:11,239
bent to the wrong places, flickering in and out of

715
00:35:11,239 --> 00:35:14,119
body in the gaps between fogbanks. They didn't move like

716
00:35:14,159 --> 00:35:18,119
animals or people, just stood expecting. Facing the windows. She

717
00:35:18,159 --> 00:35:21,000
couldn't see faces, only the slack suggestion of ice orkus

718
00:35:21,039 --> 00:35:23,800
caught in the gray. They're not real, she told herself,

719
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:26,440
but the words refused to root. Her breath came and

720
00:35:26,519 --> 00:35:28,440
choked SIPs. As a taller shape, the one from the lake,

721
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:30,760
she was sure, took too slow, impossible steps toward the

722
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:33,800
porch and stopped folk gathering at its knees. She closed

723
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:35,960
a curtain, pressing her forehead to the cold tile of

724
00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:39,000
the wall. Her mind stuttered and skipped, refusing to process

725
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:41,719
what she'd seen. A knock sounded in the kitchen door.

726
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:46,039
She scrambled away, knocking over a chair. The knock came again,

727
00:35:46,079 --> 00:35:49,000
slow and patient, the exact rhythms all used when he visited.

728
00:35:49,760 --> 00:35:51,679
For half a second. Hope dug its claws in her

729
00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:53,880
chest head said he'd tried to come by within a week. Right,

730
00:35:54,599 --> 00:35:56,320
that the rational part of her, the one that had

731
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:59,039
survived things much crueler than fog and cold, insisted that

732
00:35:59,039 --> 00:36:01,079
nobody could cross the ground now with the mis thick

733
00:36:01,119 --> 00:36:03,440
as milk in the shape still hovering out there, a

734
00:36:03,559 --> 00:36:06,159
voice called, low and soft, muffled by wood and fog.

735
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:10,880
Elise it sounded like soul, but also didn't. She pressed

736
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:13,840
a hand over her mouth, heart pounding her rips. The

737
00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:16,480
professor's notes robbed in her mind. Don't listen, no matter

738
00:36:16,480 --> 00:36:19,679
how kind, no matter how familiar. Don't open the door.

739
00:36:20,440 --> 00:36:22,880
Knowing with an animal clarity that the voice wanted her

740
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:24,639
to answer to greet it or worse, let it in,

741
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:27,280
she forced herself to sit back to the door, hands

742
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:30,119
clamped hard on her knees. The voice tried again, a

743
00:36:30,119 --> 00:36:32,360
different note in its timber and she recognized her own

744
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:35,679
nameless time, the syllables gentle pleading is cold. Please, Lise,

745
00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:39,000
I'm scared, Let me in, Please. Her mother's voice grained

746
00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:41,960
for grain. She jammed her fingers into her ears, willing

747
00:36:41,960 --> 00:36:45,199
herself not to shake, not to weep. Eventually, after what

748
00:36:45,360 --> 00:36:47,760
might have been minutes or whole hours, the knocking faded

749
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:50,239
and the voice trailed off, echoes spinning through the house

750
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:53,039
as if done along empty hole. Then the smell came

751
00:36:53,079 --> 00:36:55,559
thick and immediate. Pond water wrought, the stink of things

752
00:36:55,639 --> 00:36:58,880
raised up from black mud. Lee's gagging ran to the

753
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:01,800
sink and wretched up the last of her. When she straightened,

754
00:37:01,800 --> 00:37:04,599
she saw the footprints not muddied as time, but wet black,

755
00:37:04,679 --> 00:37:06,719
as if someone not quite human. Its log through pete

756
00:37:06,719 --> 00:37:09,840
and lay contract up onto her kitchen tiles. They suckled

757
00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:11,800
the island, then let down the hall toward the cellar,

758
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:15,159
each step gleaming. A decision grew round her heart. Wherever

759
00:37:15,199 --> 00:37:17,320
the heart of this thing was, it was stirring now.

760
00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:20,000
It wanted to coax her out, keep her shifting on

761
00:37:20,039 --> 00:37:22,000
the threshold of her own dread, until there was nothing

762
00:37:22,039 --> 00:37:25,000
human left to protect. She didn't know what drove her

763
00:37:25,159 --> 00:37:28,400
reckless or resigned, but the thought burned clear. She couldn't hide,

764
00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:31,280
couldn't shut herself off and hope the storm past. She

765
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:34,239
had to face it. Still shuddering, she washed her mouth,

766
00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:37,039
braced herself, then stalked through the swinging door and started

767
00:37:37,039 --> 00:37:39,760
down the cellar steps, the air and jeal cold of

768
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:42,079
the deeper she move passed the everyday chaos of mice

769
00:37:42,119 --> 00:37:44,039
and damp to the threshold, where she broken through to

770
00:37:44,039 --> 00:37:46,840
the secret chaff the day prior. As she descended, the

771
00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:49,599
voices began again. This time they didn't belong to anyone.

772
00:37:49,599 --> 00:37:54,119
She recognized fragments of speech soved syllables, help, let me go?

773
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:58,119
Are you sorry for it yet? And sometimes embedded in

774
00:37:58,119 --> 00:38:01,000
the whistling wind, her own name again drawn out until

775
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:03,760
it was more moan than word. The winding stairs led

776
00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:07,320
her deeper than she'd expected. Half Way down, a lantern guttered,

777
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:09,079
as if the air had gotten too thick for flame.

778
00:38:09,719 --> 00:38:12,079
She twisted the wind up flasklight, letting the whet beam

779
00:38:12,119 --> 00:38:15,000
jump along the walls. Hand dug scars roots as thick

780
00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:16,960
as her wrist, Runes that flickered in an abs if

781
00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:19,519
scrolled in a livene shifting ink at her feet. The

782
00:38:19,599 --> 00:38:22,559
mud was slick, studded with bone chips and debris. She

783
00:38:22,599 --> 00:38:26,159
made herself push forward through the chamber's bottleneck. The altar

784
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:29,480
was waiting, still cromed with wet roning earth. Only now

785
00:38:29,519 --> 00:38:33,000
as she drew closer, the carve's whirling seemed to pulse, faintly, breathing,

786
00:38:33,159 --> 00:38:35,480
like the surface of the lake at dawn. As sound

787
00:38:35,599 --> 00:38:38,400
rose beyond the threshold, Not quite footsteps, but something dragging,

788
00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:40,360
a limb, a chain, a heap of something so soft

789
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:43,079
in it nearly dissolved as it moved. Lee's bit done

790
00:38:43,119 --> 00:38:45,559
on the inside of her cheek hard until copper bloomed

791
00:38:45,559 --> 00:38:49,360
and her vision sharpened. Why me, she whispered, It was

792
00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:51,920
to plea just a request, as tired as anger, after

793
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:54,360
all these nights alone, What do you want from me?

794
00:38:55,079 --> 00:38:57,880
She didn't expect an answer, but the thing that emerged

795
00:38:57,880 --> 00:38:59,760
from the far side of the altar was almost human,

796
00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:02,280
eute enough that the brain insisted on trying to map

797
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:04,800
a face onto the slick, luminous patch where her head belonged.

798
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:07,480
Its eyes were blue as drown light mouthed too wide,

799
00:39:07,519 --> 00:39:09,880
body hung with rags of old clothes, bark things from

800
00:39:09,880 --> 00:39:12,840
the water. Mud ran off at in renolds, pulling behind

801
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:16,639
its steps. It paused when she spoke head listening. The

802
00:39:16,679 --> 00:39:20,119
whispers grew sharper, overlapping, till her thoughts could barely surface

803
00:39:20,119 --> 00:39:22,760
above them. It took another step, and amidst the babble,

804
00:39:22,840 --> 00:39:27,400
she heard lonely, angry, come closer, give us your heart

805
00:39:27,519 --> 00:39:30,320
and we rest. One of its hands stretched toward her.

806
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:34,239
Too many joined the nails black. The lee staggered back, gasping.

807
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:36,880
She pressed her palm to the broken altar stone, felt

808
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:39,639
again at sick trema, a livingford pulsing up her arm,

809
00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:43,079
the roots alive and nodded, ride just beneath, longing for

810
00:39:43,119 --> 00:39:46,159
something else to feed upon. The spare built thick and drowning,

811
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:48,559
and for a moment she felt herself slipping, willing in

812
00:39:48,599 --> 00:39:50,320
some dimp place to lay down and give up, let

813
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:52,159
the house have her sorrow, her regrets, to feed the

814
00:39:52,199 --> 00:39:55,079
thing beneath. But then, from somewhere not just inside her

815
00:39:55,119 --> 00:39:57,559
own mind, a memory vivid, a sunlight on a riverbank,

816
00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:00,000
laughter with Ray and her sister, the taste of sigeh,

817
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:02,239
the warmth of someone else's arm around her during the

818
00:40:02,239 --> 00:40:05,440
hardest night, something tugged her back. She remembered who she

819
00:40:05,519 --> 00:40:08,000
was before, she tried to outfrun herself, before This house's

820
00:40:08,039 --> 00:40:11,199
shadows grew inside her, until that was all she carried. No,

821
00:40:11,519 --> 00:40:15,840
she choked, louder No. The thing reared back, visage twitching

822
00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:18,239
between sprites of childhood, figures and people she'd loved and

823
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:22,000
left and mourned. Its mouth grew impossibly wide, the least

824
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:24,840
spun or, calling Kelson's words, don't let it use the mirrors,

825
00:40:24,840 --> 00:40:27,679
don't let it borrow your soreer. She tore the flasklight

826
00:40:27,679 --> 00:40:29,760
from her pocket, shone the light straight into its eyes,

827
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:32,440
or what passed for them. In a flash, the ship

828
00:40:32,519 --> 00:40:35,360
locker fragments appeared, dissolving from child to love, to parent

829
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:38,440
to friend, too fast to pinned them down. The voices faltered,

830
00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:40,880
then tore out in a screech. You don't get to

831
00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:43,760
take any more, she spat. She leapt for the steps.

832
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:46,800
The thing held a storm of loss and lowning, collapsing

833
00:40:46,840 --> 00:40:50,079
into an animal yelp. Brutes lashed at her ankles, cold

834
00:40:50,079 --> 00:40:53,440
and sticky. She kicked free, battered up the spiral, climb,

835
00:40:53,519 --> 00:40:56,360
hot thundering above her. The door had closed, but she

836
00:40:56,400 --> 00:40:58,760
pried at the seam, shoving with every last trembling muscle.

837
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:02,960
The sounds below followed her a crescendo of whales, stay, Stay,

838
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:05,960
we are so lonely, Stay with us. The volumes biked

839
00:41:05,960 --> 00:41:08,480
like a thousand hands clutching at her thoughts. But as

840
00:41:08,480 --> 00:41:10,840
she finally burst through the panel back into the main cellar,

841
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:14,000
the racket cut off. She snapped the trap close behind her,

842
00:41:14,039 --> 00:41:17,000
shoving boxes, broken chairs, anything a hand on to the

843
00:41:17,039 --> 00:41:19,639
hull until it felt sufficiently waited, sweat icing her temples,

844
00:41:20,280 --> 00:41:23,000
she staggered upstairs, slamming the door at the top, embraced

845
00:41:23,039 --> 00:41:26,880
against it, listening to the deep, unnatural silence. For a moment,

846
00:41:27,039 --> 00:41:29,480
all she heard was her rasping breath, the birdless wind,

847
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:32,360
the faint hum of the failing fridge. But then a pulse,

848
00:41:33,119 --> 00:41:35,880
not inside her, but through the house itself, a living recoil.

849
00:41:36,599 --> 00:41:39,079
She ran to the nursery, grabbed the antique mirror there,

850
00:41:39,119 --> 00:41:42,440
and using the crowbars, smashed it to spinning shots in

851
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:45,039
a pollor the tall gilt mirror her horn to double shattered,

852
00:41:45,039 --> 00:41:47,679
and the second blow each time a mirror broke the

853
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:49,880
air ease pressure lift in the smallest fraction, as if

854
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:53,280
a stone rolled off her gut. She kept moving on, principal,

855
00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:56,840
on raw fury. Another in the sewing room gone splinters everywhere.

856
00:41:57,440 --> 00:42:00,280
One in the hallway closet. She held a count stick

857
00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:03,159
into the bathroom glass and watched her reflection dissolve to fragments.

858
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:06,719
As she destroyed each reflection, those voices dimmed, no laughter,

859
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:09,960
no lapping syllables at the periphery, only to shudder of

860
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:13,679
wind outside, only her own fierce gasp inside. When she

861
00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:16,079
was done, she collapsed in a parlored chair among dust

862
00:42:16,159 --> 00:42:19,280
and silver debris, hands ringing, knees slick with cold sweat.

863
00:42:19,800 --> 00:42:22,199
She thought she might be sick, or saw or simply

864
00:42:22,239 --> 00:42:25,079
full sideways and let herself sleep no matter what. But

865
00:42:25,159 --> 00:42:27,559
as her breath finally slow, she felt a change gathering

866
00:42:27,599 --> 00:42:29,360
through the house, as if for the first time since

867
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:31,239
she set foot here, it had let go its choke

868
00:42:31,239 --> 00:42:33,440
hold in the air. She peeked through a tier, and

869
00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:36,559
the curtain outside the fog had thinned. She could see

870
00:42:36,599 --> 00:42:38,519
the tops of the cypress trees by the lake, the

871
00:42:38,559 --> 00:42:40,920
water reflecting a pale, honest sky for the first time,

872
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:43,840
and days a sudden exhaustion, heavy than all the cold

873
00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:46,719
before threatened to drag her under. She supposed she could

874
00:42:46,719 --> 00:42:49,320
sleep on the sofa. Her body thrumbed with something like

875
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:52,639
adrenaline and dizziness at once. But one more thing needed

876
00:42:52,679 --> 00:42:56,320
to be checked. Shoulders tight, crowburn hand shinched back down

877
00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:58,679
to the kitchen and gently tried the front door. This

878
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:02,079
time it swung open. No were resistance from outside, no

879
00:43:02,199 --> 00:43:05,440
atmospheric pressure hurling dregs of night against the frame. The

880
00:43:05,519 --> 00:43:08,840
porch was deserted, the gravel path clear. She stepped out.

881
00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:11,719
The crobe were jangling, faint in her grip. At her feet.

882
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:13,519
The porch was still slick wid dew, but there were

883
00:43:13,519 --> 00:43:15,719
no new foot prints, no hand prints left were a

884
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:18,400
child or shadow might have pressed longing against the withered boards.

885
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:21,000
For the first time, Lees heard a sound that made

886
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:23,440
her tremble, not with fear, but with acknowledgment. A crow

887
00:43:23,440 --> 00:43:26,800
caught out over the water rough an insistent then another

888
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:29,360
joined in. She could not bear to cross the garden

889
00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:32,440
to the lake's ouge, not yet. Her legs wobbled at

890
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:34,599
the very idea of passing the spot where the figure

891
00:43:34,639 --> 00:43:37,599
stood inside the pulsing fog. So she stood at the

892
00:43:37,599 --> 00:43:40,679
porch rail and sucked in a lungful of jail, ordinary air, reel,

893
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:43,000
laced with the memory of rain in the returning warmth

894
00:43:43,039 --> 00:43:45,400
of autumn. The rest of the morning drifted. At some

895
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:47,920
points she lost time waking on the floor in the parlor,

896
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:50,800
sunlight painted to carpet. She drank a glass of water,

897
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:53,119
and then another, and let herself take comfort in the

898
00:43:53,159 --> 00:43:56,360
visible emptess of the house. No wet prints, no restless knocking,

899
00:43:56,480 --> 00:43:58,440
not even the sense of some one else breathing inside

900
00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:02,719
the walls. She wandered through, testing every lock, every window,

901
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:06,159
all untouched. By afternoon, a brisk tap on the glass

902
00:44:06,159 --> 00:44:09,119
startled her. She froze, then looked up to see Soul's

903
00:44:09,119 --> 00:44:11,920
a mistakable frame. Hunched in the step. He held up

904
00:44:11,960 --> 00:44:15,159
his hands, palms open, his expression concerned. I thought, I

905
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:18,400
check in, he called, his voice muffled but real. Fod

906
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:21,559
finally lifted. Rhodes are clear. Downstream. Postman came before noon.

907
00:44:22,079 --> 00:44:24,280
He let her open the door. She noticed the politeness

908
00:44:24,280 --> 00:44:27,119
of this, the faint bow of respect and dedifference. There

909
00:44:27,159 --> 00:44:29,599
was no pressing, no eager stepping inside, as if Soul

910
00:44:29,679 --> 00:44:32,719
sensed the danger had receded, but the wind was still fresh.

911
00:44:33,199 --> 00:44:36,199
You all right, he asked her, searching her face. She

912
00:44:36,280 --> 00:44:38,960
tried to laugh and heard her own voice craver, I

913
00:44:39,039 --> 00:44:42,639
will be. I think it's good, soulsa quietly, looking past

914
00:44:42,639 --> 00:44:45,920
her into the echoing space. That's good. Sometimes that's all

915
00:44:45,960 --> 00:44:48,960
anyone can hope for here, he hesitated, then nodded toward

916
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:52,079
the horizon, where the fog was already burning away. They say,

917
00:44:52,079 --> 00:44:53,679
once ye see the thing in the lake, it doesn't

918
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:55,519
follow if you don't let it looks like he did

919
00:44:55,559 --> 00:44:58,960
what ye needed. It's not gone, Elisee replied, surprised by

920
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:02,079
her own sodainty. It's just not here, not for new.

921
00:45:02,679 --> 00:45:06,679
Soul's gaze lingered on hers. Things stick Sometimes you'll carry

922
00:45:06,679 --> 00:45:08,440
a piece with you. But I don't mean it has

923
00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:12,039
to decide who you are, he shrugged, backing away. If

924
00:45:12,039 --> 00:45:13,920
you want to talk, we need the house locked up.

925
00:45:14,039 --> 00:45:15,840
Just come find me. Don't try to fix up all

926
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:18,639
the old bits at once. After he left, the world

927
00:45:18,679 --> 00:45:21,960
tilted back towards something resilient. Lalise bent the rest of

928
00:45:22,000 --> 00:45:25,400
the day, packing idle belongings, methodical but not frantic. She

929
00:45:25,480 --> 00:45:27,840
left Kelson's journal next to one of the shattered mirrors,

930
00:45:27,880 --> 00:45:30,280
took a photo on her phone for a record. The

931
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:33,119
groceries she'd lost were found in the cellar. Moses boiled,

932
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:34,880
but it made her smile that the house gave them

933
00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:37,719
back as if an apology. That night, she tucked herself

934
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:40,639
into the least haunted bedroom, crowding every square in tripolows

935
00:45:40,639 --> 00:45:42,840
in the quill she'd found in the sewing room. The

936
00:45:42,840 --> 00:45:45,239
wind shifted through the eaves, but nothing called her name.

937
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:49,000
The shadows for once stayed put. When she drifted off

938
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:50,719
to sleep, it was with the knowledge that she might

939
00:45:50,760 --> 00:45:53,800
finally rest not in peace, not easy, but in devidance

940
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:56,480
of the thing that wanted her suffering. As food weeks

941
00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:59,320
slept past, she sold the house after a lawyer in

942
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:01,599
town helped set the estate and paid Soul twice to

943
00:46:01,599 --> 00:46:03,960
close it up and let it rot. She found an

944
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:06,159
apartment in the city of a neon lit restaurant, where

945
00:46:06,159 --> 00:46:08,679
noise never quite stopped and the hot water never ran cold.

946
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:12,239
At night, sometimes when the plumbing gurgled, or when misclunged

947
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:14,599
to the city's towers, Lees lay on her narrow bed

948
00:46:14,639 --> 00:46:18,639
and listened for voices. Most nights, nothing came on. Others

949
00:46:18,760 --> 00:46:20,719
in the hush before dawn, she swore she heard a

950
00:46:20,719 --> 00:46:22,559
far off echo of her name, or a memory of

951
00:46:22,559 --> 00:46:24,840
a child giggling just outside her window, soft as the

952
00:46:24,840 --> 00:46:27,760
slip of fog over quiet water. But here the walls

953
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:30,679
held firm, And only once, when she flicked off the

954
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:32,639
bathroom light and looked quick at the mirror, did she

955
00:46:32,679 --> 00:46:35,039
see a shadowy echo behind her shoulder, tall, blue lit

956
00:46:35,159 --> 00:46:38,440
mouth stretching wide. But it receded when she turned, banished

957
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:40,760
by nothing more than her own stepfast refusal to look

958
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:44,159
too long to let herself answer back, she started walking

959
00:46:44,239 --> 00:46:46,760
river trails by day, letting sun fix the animal darkened

960
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:49,840
side her mid new friends, real ones, and told only

961
00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:52,119
what she needed about Blackbroot Lake, that she had inherited

962
00:46:52,119 --> 00:46:53,719
a house she could not keep, and that she had

963
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:56,599
left before winter's firstener. She did not say how the

964
00:46:56,639 --> 00:46:59,079
sorrow clown, nor how close she come to giving in.

965
00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:01,960
After the move, she found a clipping posted on the

966
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:04,880
local webside, the dechanging hands again, black crew transferred to

967
00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:06,760
a young couple eager for their own start. At the

968
00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:09,880
water's edge. The lee stared at the photo, fog pulling

969
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:12,159
in early morning, the house shadow stayed, set for a

970
00:47:12,159 --> 00:47:15,639
new beginning or repetition. She closed the laptop, drew the curtains,

971
00:47:15,679 --> 00:47:18,440
and listened as dust thickened in the pipes. The city's

972
00:47:18,480 --> 00:47:20,480
fog rolled in, quiet and gentle, But she did not

973
00:47:20,519 --> 00:47:23,519
open the window, and she did not listen. Instead, she

974
00:47:23,559 --> 00:47:25,360
settled onto the rug with a book and a thermos

975
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:27,159
of tea and let life go on. The story of

976
00:47:27,159 --> 00:47:29,400
black Root Lake re seeding behind her, never vanquished, but

977
00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:32,559
no longer invited in a thumb jolted her out of revery.

978
00:47:32,599 --> 00:47:36,199
Something in a neighbor's flat, perfectly ordinary. She smiled at

979
00:47:36,199 --> 00:47:38,239
herself in the glass, noticing for the first time in

980
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:40,360
months that her own eyes met her gaze, without distortion,

981
00:47:40,519 --> 00:47:43,800
without anything lurking in the edges. The fog thickened just

982
00:47:43,840 --> 00:47:47,360
outside the window, silent and watchful. The Lees drew another breath,

983
00:47:47,519 --> 00:47:49,920
steady and true, and left fold the rest of the shadows.

984
00:47:50,599 --> 00:47:52,840
Lees left the lights burning as the city turned blue

985
00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:55,320
and gold outside her window, the color of evening settling

986
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:58,079
everywhere except in her head. She tried to read the

987
00:47:58,119 --> 00:47:59,840
words on the page in her lap of found herself

988
00:48:00,039 --> 00:48:02,400
staring straight through them, her knees still pacing the edge

989
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:04,039
of her thustle like a dog. At a closed door.

990
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:07,760
She could hear her upstairs neighbor's television alft track looping

991
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:10,159
over muffled dialog, and the hum of traffic passing under

992
00:48:10,199 --> 00:48:14,800
her window. Ordinary sounds. She clung to them. Each note

993
00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:17,239
was award against the lingering, hollow hush that had belonged

994
00:48:17,280 --> 00:48:20,400
to Bluckart manner and its parasite of shadows. At half

995
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:23,440
past eight, craving ordinary company, she texted Ray, the only

996
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:25,280
person in the well. She dared tell a fraction of

997
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:29,400
the truth. Want to come over, I'll order dumplings. Raey's

998
00:48:29,440 --> 00:48:32,480
reply was instant and reverent, gif and a line, yes, please,

999
00:48:33,239 --> 00:48:36,119
I need tea. In high ceilings, Blise set about the

1000
00:48:36,159 --> 00:48:39,480
minuchie of hosting, straightening the sofa, boiling the kettle, tucking

1001
00:48:39,480 --> 00:48:41,679
straight books under cushions, and checking twice that all the

1002
00:48:41,679 --> 00:48:45,000
windows were locked. Her own caution almost amused her now,

1003
00:48:45,159 --> 00:48:46,599
But as she went to ad just the curtain, her

1004
00:48:46,599 --> 00:48:49,039
finger tips lingered on the edge, waiting for some trick

1005
00:48:49,079 --> 00:48:51,320
of reflection, a wisp of a natural fog to write

1006
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:55,000
itself against the pane. Nothing, only a piskol of moon

1007
00:48:55,039 --> 00:48:58,440
behind the glass and below the city's jittering lights. She

1008
00:48:58,519 --> 00:49:00,880
pressed her forehead to the cool window one sharpen hail,

1009
00:49:00,960 --> 00:49:03,239
then pulled back and forced herself to focus on the prison,

1010
00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:05,400
to the scent of jasmine tea, the scuff of her slippers,

1011
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:08,199
a faint tongue of night air. Ray Ba's up at nine,

1012
00:49:08,360 --> 00:49:11,239
arms full of supermarket pastries and her usual noisy energy.

1013
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:14,679
Earhood always smells like burnt sugar, she said, barreling in

1014
00:49:14,719 --> 00:49:18,079
and dropping her back. Balise laughed at the sound, real

1015
00:49:18,199 --> 00:49:20,559
and immediate, as if clearing a blockage she hadn't known.

1016
00:49:20,719 --> 00:49:23,760
Was there city Special, it's the factory down the block.

1017
00:49:24,280 --> 00:49:27,239
Ray shot her a sly glance, better than ode haunted

1018
00:49:27,239 --> 00:49:31,960
twempland the flinch must have shown, because Ray's face softened. Sorry,

1019
00:49:32,079 --> 00:49:34,760
I know, silly wrought topic. Blee shook her head as

1020
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:36,920
they sat wordless, comfort in the clatter of mugs and

1021
00:49:36,960 --> 00:49:39,559
the warmth pressed between knees seam ghosting over the table.

1022
00:49:40,159 --> 00:49:42,559
I've had enough ghosts to fill a ledger, Elie said,

1023
00:49:42,559 --> 00:49:46,039
at last, just barely managing a smile. I keep expecting

1024
00:49:46,039 --> 00:49:47,960
to hear things at night, or see something move when

1025
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:51,159
I'm not looking. It's nothing, really, not any more. She

1026
00:49:51,280 --> 00:49:55,159
twisted her lips considering. I just sometimes I dream about

1027
00:49:55,159 --> 00:49:57,719
the fog. Ray angled her head the way she did

1028
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:00,400
when listening required more than hearing. Is it the same

1029
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:03,960
every time? No, Sometimes I'm back at the lake, sometimes

1030
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:06,159
in some version of this place, doors in the wrong spots,

1031
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:08,400
windows looking out in the woods. But the feeling's always

1032
00:50:08,400 --> 00:50:10,480
the same, like something's pressing me to listen, Like if

1033
00:50:10,480 --> 00:50:13,400
I turn around, it'll be waiting. Ray sipped her tea,

1034
00:50:13,519 --> 00:50:17,320
searching her friend's expression. But you don't turn around, and

1035
00:50:17,360 --> 00:50:20,119
not in time, Elise answered, voice barely more than a thread.

1036
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:24,079
But then I wake up. The conversation drifted to mondane things,

1037
00:50:24,079 --> 00:50:26,360
a project Ray was struggling with at work, the recent

1038
00:50:26,400 --> 00:50:29,679
cold snap where the cats really could see ghosts. Elise

1039
00:50:29,719 --> 00:50:33,519
found herself relaxing in increments, timing breaths to raise cheerful digressions.

1040
00:50:34,159 --> 00:50:36,239
For a while, she almost managed to shed the sense

1041
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:39,400
of something trailing her. After Ray left, Elise lingered in

1042
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:41,719
a living room, letting the television play quietly to stave

1043
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:45,800
off sleep. Midnight tacked over, she debated a nightcap, fingered

1044
00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:47,760
her phone, and stared at the calendar and the wall

1045
00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:50,320
of bright, clean square, no strange marks or vanish days.

1046
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:54,679
Wind rattled the glass. She sat perfectly still, ears pricked

1047
00:50:54,679 --> 00:50:56,559
for a note of the old things, the anomalous, harsh,

1048
00:50:56,639 --> 00:50:58,880
the press of pondward are sent a voice calling her name.

1049
00:50:59,440 --> 00:51:04,239
Nothing the city brethed around her. Wide and alive, she slept, eventually,

1050
00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:06,960
tangled among pillows, conscious of her own racing heart. In

1051
00:51:06,960 --> 00:51:09,719
the moments before dreams claimed her. She dreamed not of

1052
00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:12,239
fog or water, but a voices, blurred and indistinct, but

1053
00:51:12,320 --> 00:51:16,320
not kind and cooxing any more, ungraer in the small eyres,

1054
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:18,199
A tap came at the window, so soft it might

1055
00:51:18,239 --> 00:51:19,760
have been the claws of a naprid or a flicker

1056
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:23,760
of wind. She lay frozen, adrenaline inserting. The street lamp

1057
00:51:23,800 --> 00:51:26,000
outside painted a faint pattern on the curtains, and for

1058
00:51:26,039 --> 00:51:29,360
a moment a shadow waved, something impossibly tall, stooping its outline,

1059
00:51:29,400 --> 00:51:32,320
fluxing in and out with each blink. She closed her eyes,

1060
00:51:32,440 --> 00:51:34,039
counted as she had learned to do, listening to the

1061
00:51:34,039 --> 00:51:36,079
breath in her lungs, the tick of pipes, the distant

1062
00:51:36,119 --> 00:51:38,840
thunder of the subway. When she looked again, only the

1063
00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:42,159
narrow tracks of rain marked the glass. Morning came gray

1064
00:51:42,199 --> 00:51:45,360
and drizzling. She brewed coffee and dared to walk outside,

1065
00:51:45,400 --> 00:51:48,320
turning her color up against the wet. She watched mis

1066
00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:51,039
gather in the gutter, pulling and tiny swelling eddes around

1067
00:51:51,039 --> 00:51:53,719
her feet. Her reflection in a puddle was her own,

1068
00:51:54,039 --> 00:51:57,960
no looking imitation with stretching lips. Yet inside some soft

1069
00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:00,519
place remained warry. It felt as as if the manner

1070
00:52:00,559 --> 00:52:02,639
had left a pressure behind the way a finger pressed

1071
00:52:02,639 --> 00:52:05,320
into skin. Lisa pale, shallow pit before the blood returns.

1072
00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:08,960
But the world here was relentless in its ordinariness. Horn's blaring,

1073
00:52:09,039 --> 00:52:11,480
children skipping, but on their way to school, a neighborhauling

1074
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:14,719
recycling to the curb. The Lees bought groceries, pausing in

1075
00:52:14,760 --> 00:52:16,760
the produced aisle when she saw crate of apples, green

1076
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:19,079
and polish, nothing like the ones she'd eaten. Hunched on

1077
00:52:19,119 --> 00:52:22,599
black roots, echoing floor, she picked two, feeling their cool, solidity,

1078
00:52:22,679 --> 00:52:25,519
their human scale. Back home, she cleaned and played a

1079
00:52:25,519 --> 00:52:28,679
podcast for setting the apartment to casual disorder. The day

1080
00:52:28,760 --> 00:52:32,199
passed takes Warky Mills a moment's frustration when her laptop froze.

1081
00:52:32,239 --> 00:52:36,800
Nothing supernatural, just cheap hardware. Evening arrived without incident But

1082
00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:38,840
that night, as she washed her face in the bathroom

1083
00:52:38,840 --> 00:52:40,760
and peered into the mirror, she felt the old tickle

1084
00:52:40,800 --> 00:52:43,719
at her shoulder. The glass, streaked with steam, offered her

1085
00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:46,119
only half a face aunt behind a blow that might

1086
00:52:46,119 --> 00:52:47,760
have been a cut left swing on a pego the

1087
00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:51,199
way her own hair fell an angle. She stayed perfectly still,

1088
00:52:51,440 --> 00:52:54,920
neither flinging nor inviting, until the steam cleared. The next

1089
00:52:55,039 --> 00:52:57,320
night she dreamed of the lake, but this time, instead

1090
00:52:57,360 --> 00:52:59,199
of being drawn to its edge, she watched from hig

1091
00:52:59,199 --> 00:53:01,440
above a bird's view, the fog sweeping low, the shape

1092
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:04,280
at the shoreline shrinking with distance. In the dream, the

1093
00:53:04,280 --> 00:53:07,039
house was shrinking, too, with every breath she took, until

1094
00:53:07,079 --> 00:53:09,800
it was only a gray thumprint against endless water. She

1095
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:11,960
awoke with a scratch of warmth beneath her breastbone, and

1096
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:15,400
memory not of fear but of refusal. A few days later,

1097
00:53:15,639 --> 00:53:17,760
Lees felt the tension that had stoked her since leaving

1098
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:21,320
Blackhroot receipde, replaced by wary gratitude. The ache in her

1099
00:53:21,360 --> 00:53:23,800
jaw faded, her hands stayed steady even in the quiet

1100
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:26,840
moments before sleep. The apartment was no longer a ruin

1101
00:53:26,920 --> 00:53:29,320
to defend, but a shelter that belonged to her, unburdened

1102
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:32,039
by ancestral rot or in Satside hung There, she met

1103
00:53:32,079 --> 00:53:34,440
Raphael lunch rank cider and laughed at a joke that

1104
00:53:34,519 --> 00:53:37,320
did not trail often to dre. When she returned, the

1105
00:53:37,360 --> 00:53:41,079
world was turning sharply towards spraying bulging cloud's promising another storm,

1106
00:53:41,119 --> 00:53:43,679
but nothing more. Her phone rang late a number she

1107
00:53:43,719 --> 00:53:47,800
didn't recognize area code from upstate. She almost didn't answer it,

1108
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:51,239
then did a crackling delay. Then a young voice, awkward

1109
00:53:51,280 --> 00:53:55,440
and uncertain. Hi, Yah, is this a Lee's roan, Yes speaking,

1110
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:58,360
this is Jamie co ay. Ah. I'm sorry to bother you,

1111
00:53:58,639 --> 00:54:00,199
but I think he used to own a property up

1112
00:54:00,199 --> 00:54:03,039
in Hallowfield Black croup maner. Elise put a hand over

1113
00:54:03,079 --> 00:54:06,559
her chest, forcing herself calm. I did, yes, I sawd

1114
00:54:06,559 --> 00:54:09,719
it last year. Why are you there was a hestant laugh, strain,

1115
00:54:09,840 --> 00:54:14,119
perhaps forced. Yeah. My partner and I just finished moving in. Sorry,

1116
00:54:14,199 --> 00:54:16,119
we're still going through old paperwork and I found your

1117
00:54:16,199 --> 00:54:18,199
number in a file. You left some old journals in

1118
00:54:18,239 --> 00:54:22,000
a box. Elise's mouth went dry, memories crowding to the surface.

1119
00:54:22,719 --> 00:54:25,079
That's right, I meant to pass those alarm Did they

1120
00:54:25,119 --> 00:54:28,880
help it to history? Jamie hesitated a bit. Yeah, I

1121
00:54:29,039 --> 00:54:30,679
just this is going to sound weird. But do you

1122
00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:35,440
remember ever hearing things there? Leees didn't reply immediately, She

1123
00:54:35,519 --> 00:54:38,000
pictured the new coupled, happy and eager, maybe fighting over

1124
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:40,599
paint colors, by now already wondering about each creek in

1125
00:54:40,639 --> 00:54:44,400
the dark. I did, she said, carefully. It's an old house.

1126
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:46,920
The wind plays tricks. Best advice I can give. Don't

1127
00:54:46,960 --> 00:54:48,719
let the place make you forget who you are. And

1128
00:54:48,800 --> 00:54:54,199
keep the mirrors covered at night. Jamie laughed awkwardly again flustered. Yeah, okay,

1129
00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:56,599
on one more thing. There's a weird hatch in the cellar.

1130
00:54:56,719 --> 00:54:59,960
Should we I'm seal it up. She'll slick to Lise's palms.

1131
00:55:00,719 --> 00:55:03,639
Keep it closed, she said, voice low, but even, and

1132
00:55:03,719 --> 00:55:05,639
if you hear any one calling your name from outside,

1133
00:55:05,719 --> 00:55:08,039
don't answer. Don't open the door, no matter what voice

1134
00:55:08,079 --> 00:55:11,960
you hear. A long pause followed, All right, thanks, I

1135
00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:15,159
guess let us know if you remember anything else, I will,

1136
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:17,960
the Lease promised, because anything else would have sounded cruel.

1137
00:55:18,559 --> 00:55:21,239
After the call, she walked through her apartment, covering mirrors

1138
00:55:21,280 --> 00:55:23,960
with whatever towels and sheets she could find. It was

1139
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:27,239
an old ritual, one she hadn't needed since leaving that place,

1140
00:55:27,320 --> 00:55:30,519
but necessity lingered in her bones. That night, her dreams

1141
00:55:30,519 --> 00:55:32,840
were heavy, waited by the voices of strangers, Jamie and

1142
00:55:32,880 --> 00:55:36,559
their partner perhaps, or others who've come before. She watched,

1143
00:55:36,679 --> 00:55:39,079
powerless as the fog crept up the newly pinted porch

1144
00:55:39,079 --> 00:55:41,480
of black root, brushing the stones, winding through the garden,

1145
00:55:41,519 --> 00:55:45,079
sleeping always toward the open doors the uncovered glass. Morning

1146
00:55:45,079 --> 00:55:47,679
brought sunlight, only sunlight, and the leeese worked dry eyed,

1147
00:55:47,760 --> 00:55:50,679
not torn from sleep by course of lawning. She dared

1148
00:55:50,679 --> 00:55:53,679
the mirror found her face alone. In the weeks that followed,

1149
00:55:53,679 --> 00:55:56,440
she noticed a difference in her city walks, when the

1150
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:58,639
clouds pressed loow and mist hung between the buildings. Her

1151
00:55:58,639 --> 00:56:01,880
hot sped a familiar dress nipping at her footsteps, but

1152
00:56:01,960 --> 00:56:05,960
nothing ever followed. She passed shop windows, their reflections crisp,

1153
00:56:06,039 --> 00:56:08,159
and on days when rin sweat the world weigh in gray,

1154
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:11,039
she kept to the crowded places, pressed into warmth and conversation,

1155
00:56:11,199 --> 00:56:14,320
clinging to the noise of belonging. Sometimes she thought about

1156
00:56:14,400 --> 00:56:16,639
Jamie and the partner, wondered if they'd learn as she had,

1157
00:56:16,679 --> 00:56:18,599
whether the house would hunger for new wounds or settle

1158
00:56:18,599 --> 00:56:21,920
into silence. She thought of the pattern repeating over time,

1159
00:56:22,119 --> 00:56:24,480
how each inhabit and brought their own pain, their own lowning,

1160
00:56:24,599 --> 00:56:27,360
and how somewhre deep below the thing, beneath poles and waited.

1161
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:30,280
Once she wrote an email to Jamie, intending to warn

1162
00:56:30,320 --> 00:56:33,079
them more explicitly, but the message sat in her drafts

1163
00:56:33,079 --> 00:56:37,239
for days, then weeks. She never sent it. Instead, she

1164
00:56:37,280 --> 00:56:39,480
offered a silent hope that they, or some one after them,

1165
00:56:39,519 --> 00:56:42,079
would prove stronger. Refused to answer break the mirrors. When

1166
00:56:42,079 --> 00:56:45,760
the time came, the Lees returned to her life, friends,

1167
00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:48,679
city urns, long eros at the desk, laughter ringing out

1168
00:56:48,719 --> 00:56:51,440
above city sirens. She felt the ache of the man

1169
00:56:51,480 --> 00:56:54,880
of feite, replaced by cautious peace. Yet on certain nights,

1170
00:56:55,079 --> 00:56:57,159
when the city's fog pressed thick against her window and

1171
00:56:57,199 --> 00:56:59,239
the hiss of ties on wet street minics so from

1172
00:56:59,280 --> 00:57:02,639
the shore, les pause, holding her breath and listen. There

1173
00:57:02,639 --> 00:57:05,360
would be nothing, usually nothing but the world's ordinary whisper.

1174
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:08,559
But every now and then, just as sleep overtook her,

1175
00:57:08,679 --> 00:57:11,199
she would hear a single yearning voice call her name

1176
00:57:11,199 --> 00:57:13,519
from very far away from beneath the roots of things,

1177
00:57:14,159 --> 00:57:16,679
and Elise would turn away, breathing in the safe dark,

1178
00:57:16,880 --> 00:57:21,280
and let it go unanswered. And that is the end.

1179
00:57:21,840 --> 00:57:23,559
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in

1180
00:57:23,599 --> 00:57:32,199
the next one.