The neighbor’s house was only a minute’s drive down the same dirt road. The man’s driveway snaked twice into an s shape through the trees and opened up to a finished concrete pad. A towering pole barn loomed to one side, and a much smaller, attached garage was straight ahead, the door closed. Eli squinted at the front windows of the two story, grey clapboard house, trying to discern whether anyone was actually there. He wasn’t sure what he expected. The hope that his car would somehow be conveniently sitting in this man’s driveway, was, he had to admit upon seeing it empty, ridiculous. Of course it’s not here. Unless this Sullivan person had stashed it somewhere out of sight. But why?

Nadine also seemed to be searching the windows for a sign of movement. She sounded a little less confident than she had in the cabin, saying, “I suppose we should knock. Introduce ourselves.”

She got out and he trailed after her. The shades were open, though he couldn’t see anything but the vaguest impression of a sofa and shelves as they rounded the front walk and mounted the porch. The storm door hung a little off it’s frame. She rapped on it, waiting. After a moment, she tried again, louder this time. Eli tilted his neck to look past the glazing bars in the front windows before leaning toward the door to give his own, sharp knock.

“He’s not here,” he said.

“Maybe.” She tried calling out. “Mr. Greer! Sullivan!” In a quieter voice, she added, “I’m not a hundred percent sure if that was his last name.”

Straining to hear anything within over the faint breeze, they waited.

“Someone must live here,” he said, gesturing toward the lawn. “Look at that fresh cut.” He pulled the screen door open and gave the inner door four hard knocks, hoping to be heard all the way upstairs, just in case. Nadine stepped back from the narrow porch to look to either side, as if he might appear from the wings.

The lock slid from the catch and the door wrenched open all at once. An incredulous grizzled face squinted out at them, distrust and suspicion drawing his bushy eyebrows down. His short dark hair was peppered grey, but still thick. He couldn’t have been much over sixty-five, if that. His still solid build became more apparent as he shifted to face Eli squarely, taking up much of the entrance. Eli wasn’t short, but this man managed clear him by several inches. His scowl didn’t lighten when Nadine approached, obviously nervous, but with a friendly tone.

“Hello, sir, my name’s Nadine Watowski. I own the cabin down the road there. Uhm, are you Sullivan? I think my father knew you, right?”

His look barely shifted, but a slight decrease in the angle of his brow indicated recognition. 

“Is he ok?”

“No, I’m sorry to say. He passed away.”

He sighed, and stepped out onto the porch. He crossed his arms and widened his stance to stare out at the yard, as though the sunlit grass were the topic under discussion.

“How?”

“He took his own life.”

He nodded, seeming to take it in as a matter of course. His gaze flicked toward her.

“Would you like to come in?”

“No, uh, we were just here to ask you a question. You live pretty close to the cabin, and, well, my tenant here, his car disappeared last night. We were wondering if you saw anything unusual, or if you’ve had any similar problems.”

Eli was taken aback when the man scowled challengingly in his direction. But he then turned quickly back to Nadine to offer a brusk, but more congenial invitation.

“You should come in. I’d really like to talk to you, Nadine. It won’t take long, I promise.”

She stared at him a moment, very much like a deer in headlights.

“Ok,” escaped her lips reluctantly. Eli found himself inwardly wincing at her survival instincts, but he followed silently as they entered the house. Apart from his disagreeable attitude, Eli felt that something was off about the guy, or so his gut informed him. The interior did little to reassure him. The initial impression was of a light dusting suspended in the air and spread evenly on every surface of the living room, which seemed to be plunged into a kind of eternal dimness. There was something preserved about the whole room. Museum-like. Ornaments of porcelain angels decorated the shelves, along with books, and over the mantel, a stark painting of Christ’s bleeding face, his anguish looking out at the room.

“Have a seat.” His arm stabbed toward the sofa. “Something to drink? I have water, milk, or bourbon.”

“No thanks,” Nadine and Eli murmured in turn.

A strange look crossed Sullivan’s face as they settled themselves on the couch, but he quickly turned away with a slight shake of his head to lumber into the kitchen, his gait somewhat hitched.

“Interesting aesthetic,” Eli whispered.

“I told you he was religious,” Nadine breathed, her voice almost inaudible.

As Eli listened to the sound of running water in the other room, he leaned over on his cushion to see the framed photo on the end table next to him, rotating it a few inches to get a better look. A significantly younger, smiling version of Sullivan was standing in front of this same grey house, his arm wrapped around a middle-aged, redheaded woman’s waist.

“You said he lives here alone, didn’t you?” Eli said in a hushed tone, but not quietly enough. Sullivan had already come back in with three glasses corralled together in his hands. He set the glasses on the coffee table, slid a water in front of each of them, and kept the soft brown liquid of the third in his hand. He sat back on the upholstered armchair. His stained white t-shirt was wrinkled, and Eli deduced that he must have been asleep when they’d knocked. There was no trace of that happiness implied in the photo.

“I do live alone here, kid. I do and I don’t.” He smiled grimly. “With Christ, we’re never truly alone, are we.” He raised his glass toward the portrait above the mantel and took a sip. “So tell me, Nadine, how was your father, really? Before the end, I mean? I haven’t seen Tom in quite a while. Several months, actually. The last thing I expected today was to see you again, all grown up.”

“Have we met?” asked Nadine, surprised.

“When Tom purchased that cabin from me, let’s see, I was just a couple of years out of the navy. I’d bought too much land, you could say. More than I could chew. No,” Sullivan stopped to correct himself. “To be honest, that’s not quite it. Matter of fact, I just wanted to cut that old place out like a bad tooth. I remember he brought you with him on one of his first trips out, and he and I went deer hunting together. My wife stayed over there to watch you while we were out. You must have been five or six years old.”

“I never knew that.”

“That’s really what I’d like to talk to you about. But first, tell me, how was he doing? Leading up to his death, I mean?”

“He seemed fine.” She said the last part evasively, and Eli wondered if there was something more to it. Perhaps she hadn’t been in contact with her father and felt guilty about it. Or ignored some kind of warning sign.
“Hm, ok.” He didn’t sound convinced, either, but he didn’t press her any further. “Here’s my proposition to you. I’d like to buy that cabin back, and of course, all the land. Last time I talked to him, we were discussing about him selling the place, so it’s not something out of blue or anything. He just never got the chance to close the deal.”

“Oh, maybe. It’s something we can talk about another time. Right now, there’s a tenant, and I’m really just trying to help him.”

His attention swung to Eli, and the menace underlying his response was impossible to miss.  

“You shouldn’t be staying there,” he said to Eli directly. “It’s dangerous. And neither should you, Nadine.”

“Why’s that, exactly?” Eli demanded. He took Sullivan’s words as a kind of threat, and the idea of it annoyed him, especially if it was over some petty land dispute that had nothing to do with him.

Sullivan spoke slowly and deliberately, as if he were choosing his words with great care. 

“Because there’s things on this world that feed on certain people.”

“Wow, well, that’s incredibly vague, thank you.”

The man appeared completely unfazed by Eli’s snide tone. He was taking his time, as if searching for a way to convey something he’d never had to say out loud.

“Things in this world aren’t always the way they’re supposed to be. A place isn’t always the way it seems. Like a hole, or a soft spot in reality. Maybe there’s demons that come through it. Or maybe the demon makes the place that way, I don’t know. On the other hand, that patch of land could be the only place like it in the entire universe, who’s to say.” He was watching Eli’s reaction critically. “And maybe you’ve already felt it. For your own sake, I pray that you haven’t.”

“Are you suggesting a demon stole my car?” Eli asked him combatively. He was unable to resist a condescending smirk at the thought. The man was clearly out of his mind. One panic attack wasn’t about to undo a lifetime of certainty about reality, and certainly not at the say so of a crazy old man. Besides, he was starting to suspect a man like this was capable of anything, even car theft.

“What I’m suggesting,” he growled, “is that staying there, you, her, or anyone, it would be the height of stupidity.” He paused, taking a deep, steadying breath. “My wife, she used to lay just there, just exactly where you two are sitting now. She’s the one in that photo you were looking at. She’d take naps here in the afternoon. Nobody except myself and the police have touched that couch since. Everything in here is in the exact same spot. For fifteen years. Now why would I let you sit here, moving that photo on the table, wrinkling those cushions, if this wasn’t for something of extreme importance. Something she would want me to…” Emotion choked out his voice. Eli, feeling distinctly uncomfortable, glanced at Nadine, whose expression had become immobilized. Her brows were knitted as though every facial muscle were in a state of anxiety. “If you don’t want to call it a demon, call it a monster. But something lives there. It doesn’t just stay put, either. It attaches to those who are vulnerable to it. It’s like you can never get free of it…” Again, his voice was choked by the constriction of his grief, or, for all Eli knew, of something else. All he could think to do at this moment was leave the house. He’d talked to enough people in his life to know that trying to out-crazy a crazy person wasn’t a good strategy.

“Look,” Eli said, trying to introduce some sense back into the conversation, “I only signed a six-month lease. I’ve stayed a night. At this point, I just want to find my car and be on my way. I don’t care if you buy your ‘cozy summer home’ back, it’s really not my concern. No offense, I don’t want anything to do with this kind of out there religious stuff you believe in—”

“It’s nothing to do with belief. Are you listening to me? This thing killed my wife! It killed Tom Watowski, too. I don’t know why it hasn’t bothered to kill me yet.” He voice broke as he said this last part, but he stabilized it with a bitter edge. “It won’t even show itself to me.” 

Eli looked to Nadine, hoping she was ready to walk out then and there, but found her transfixed, either unwilling or unable to speak out.

“Ok, I’ll bite. Let’s say this cabin, or the land it’s on, is a cesspool of evil, or whatever you just said. Why wouldn’t you have just burned it to the ground?”

“I did. I tried.”

Eli could only roll his eyes at this.

“There’s no winning with you, is there? Do you have my car, or not?” He said it rudely, accusingly. “It’s a black, 2012 Toyota Camry. Do you have it?

Sullivan’s gaze had dropped. H shook his head, but it wasn’t clear whether it was in answer to the question or in resignation. 

“Ok, then” Eli announced loudly, “I guess it’s time for us to get going.” He stood up and waited for Nadine, whose expression was tense, but unreadable. “Unless you have anything you’d like to add?”  

She shook her head silently and followed him to the door. He held it open for her. Nadine paused there, turning to Sullivan, who still sat there, now facing away from them, unmoving.