Swiftly, she lifts the briefcase, rises, and leaves the room.

At the cellar door, she stops and listens. She hears no movement from the dining room. The cellar door opens quietly and slowly, but she can’t help the whine of the hinges. It sounds louder than it usually does. As if the whole house is slowly creaking open.

And with just enough room to enter, she slips inside. The house is silent again.

She slowly descends the stairs down to the dirt floor.

She’s nervous; it takes her too long to find the string for the lightbulb. When she does, the room gushes with bright yellow light. Too bright. Like it might wake Cheryl, sleeping two floors above.

Glancing around the room, she waits.

She can hear her own labored breathing. Nothing else.

Her body aches. She needs to rest. But right now, she wants only to see what Gary brought with him.

Stepping to the wooden stool, she sits.

She clicks opens the briefcase.

Inside she sees a worn toothbrush.

Socks.

T-shirts.

A dress shirt.

Deodorant.

And papers. A notebook.

Malorie looks to the cellar door. She listens for footsteps. There are none. She pulls the notebook out from under the clothes and sets the briefcase on the ground.

The notebook has a clean, blue cover. The edges are not bent. It’s as if Gary has kept it, preserved it—in the best condition he could.

She opens it.

And reads.

The handwriting is so exact that it frightens her. It’s meticulously crafted. Whoever wrote it did so with passion. With pride. As she flips through the pages, she sees some sentences are written traditionally, from left to right, others are written in the opposite direction from right to left. Still others, deeper into the notebook, begin at the top of the page and walk down. By the end, the sentences spiral neatly, still perfectly crafted, creating odd designs and patterns, made of words.

To know the ceiling of man’s mindis to know the full power of these creatures. If it’s a matter of comprehension, then surely the results of any encounter with them must differ greatly between two men. My ceiling is different from yours. Much different from the monkeys in this house. The others, engulfed as they are in hyperbolic hysteria, are more susceptible to the rules we’ve ascribed the creatures. In other words, these simpletons, with their childish intellects, will not survive. But someone like myself, well, I’ve already proven my point.

Malorie flips the page.

What kind of a man cowers when the end of the world comes? When his brothers are killing themselves, when the streets of suburban America are infested with murder . . . what kind of man hides behind blankets and blindfolds? The answer is MOST men. They were told they would go mad. So they go mad.

Malorie looks to the cellar stairs. The light from the stove shows through the thin slit at the bottom of the cellar door. She thinks she should have turned it off. She thinks about doing it now. Then she flips the page.

We do it to ourselves we do it to ourselves we DO IT to OURSELVES. In other words (make note of this!): MAN IS THE CREATURE HE FEARS.

It’s Frank’s notebook. But why does Gary have it?

Because he wrote it of course.

Because, Malorie knows, Frank didn’t tear down the drapes at Gary’s old place.

Gary did.

Malorie stands, her heart racing.

Tom isn’t home. Tom is on a three-mile walk to his house.

She stares at the foot of the cellar door. Light from the stove. She expects shoes to suddenly obscure it. She looks to the shelves for a weapon. If he comes, what can she kill him with?

But no shoes obscure the light, and Malorie brings the notebook closer to her face. She reads.

Rationally speaking, and in the interest of proving this to them, I’ve no choice. I will write this a thousand times until I convince myself to do it. Two thousand. Three. These men deny discourse. Only proof will change them. But how to prove it to them? How to make them believe?

I will remove the drapes and unlock the doors.

In the margins there are numbered notes and corresponding numbers are written painstakingly across the top. Here is note 2,343. Here is 2,344. Ceaseless, endless, brutal.

Malorie turns the page.

A noise comes from upstairs.

She looks to the door. She’s afraid to blink, to move. She waits and stares.

Her eyes on the door, she reaches for the briefcase and slips the notebook back under Gary’s things. Is it facing the right way? Was this how he had it?

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know.

She closes the briefcase and pulls the lightbulb’s string.

Malorie closes her eyes and feels the cool earth beneath her feet. She opens her eyes. Absolute blackness is cut only by the stove light from under the cellar door.

Malorie watches it, waiting.

She crosses the cellar, her eyes adjusting to the darkness as she climbs the stairs carefully and presses her ear against the door.

She listens, breathing erratically. The house is silent once again.

Gary is standing at the other end of the kitchen. He is watching the cellar door. When you open it, he will greet you.

She waits. And waits. And hears nothing.

She opens the door. The hinge creaks.

Briefcase in hand, Malorie’s eyes dart into the kitchen. The silence is too loud.

But nobody is there. No one is waiting for her.

Hand on her belly, she squeezes herself through the doorframe and shuts the door behind her.

She looks to the living room. To the dining room.

To the living room.

To the dining room.

On the tips of her toes, she passes through the kitchen and enters the dining room at last.

Gary is still on his back. His chest rises and falls. He groans softly.

She approaches. He moves. She waits.

He moved . . .

It was only his arm.

Malorie watches him, staring at his face, his unopened eyes. Hastily, she kneels over his body, inches from his skin, and places the briefcase back against the wall.

Is this the way it was facing?

She leaves it. Standing, she rushes out of the room. In the kitchen, in the glow of the light, someone’s eyes meet hers.

Malorie freezes.

It’s Olympia.

“What are you doing?” Olympia whispers.

“Nothing,” she says breathlessly. “Thought I left something in there.”

“I had a terrible dream,” Olympia says. Malorie is walking toward her, reaching for her. She leads Olympia back upstairs. They take them together. Once at the top, Malorie looks back down at the staircase.

“I have to tell Tom,” she says.

“About my dream?”

Malorie looks at Olympia and shakes her head.

“No. No. I’m sorry. No.”

“Malorie?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

“Olympia. I need Tom.”

“Well, he’s gone.”

Malorie stares at the foot of the stairs. The stove light is still on. Enough of it splashes across the living room’s entrance that if someone were to enter the kitchen from the dining room, she’d be able to see their shadow.

She is staring fervently into the dim room. Waiting. For the shadow. Certain it’s coming.

As she watches, she thinks of what Olympia just said.

Tom is gone.

She thinks of the house as one big box. She wants out of this box. Tom and Jules, outside, are still in this box. The entire globe is shut in. The world is confined to the same cardboard box that houses the birds outside. Malorie understands that Tom is looking for a way to open the lid. He’s looking for a way out. But she wonders if there’s not a second lid above this one, then a third above that.

Boxed in, she thinks. Forever.

thirty-five

It has been a week since Tom and Jules left for the three-mile walk with the huskies. More than anything, right now, Malorie wants them home. She wants to hear a knock at the door and to feel the relief of having them back again. She wants to hear what they encountered and see what they’ve brought back. She wants to tell Tom what she read in the cellar.