I’d like to tell her that this is nothing at all like that, but I don’t. Instead I squeeze her hand reassuringly and turn back to them.

“So where’s the house?”

And of course, they glance at each other like that was exactly what they wanted to hear.

CHAPTER SEVEN

We leave the falls and drive back toward Thunder Bay, coasting beneath amber streetlights and going too fast through blurred traffic signals. Chase and Mike are laughing with their windows rolled down, talking of Anna, making her legend grow larger. The blood in my ears sings so strongly that I’m forgetting to look for street signs, forgetting to map my way.

It took a bit of finesse for them to leave the party behind, to convince the others to keep on drinking and enjoying the edge of the world. Carmel actually had to pull a move that was essentially “Hey, what’s that over there?” on Natalie and Katie before diving into Will’s SUV. But now we’re just streaking through the summer air.

“Long drive,” Will says to me, and I remember that he was the designated driver last year at the Trowbridge Falls party too. He makes me curious; his DD status makes it seem like he’s hanging out with these knobs just to fit in, but he’s too smart, and something in his demeanor makes him seem like he’s the one moving the pieces without the others knowing. “She’s out a ways. To the north.”

“What’re we going to do when we get there?” I ask, and everyone laughs.

Will shrugs. “Drink some beers, throw some bottles at the house. I don’t know. Does it matter?”

It doesn’t. I won’t kill Anna tonight, not in front of all these people. I just want to be there. I want to feel her behind a window, watching, staring out at me, or maybe retreating deeper inside. If I’m honest with myself, I know that Anna Korlov has gotten into my mind like few ghosts have before her. I don’t know why. There is only one ghost aside from her that has occupied my thoughts like this, that has brought up such a stirring of feeling, and that is the ghost who killed my father.

We’re driving close to the lake now, and I can hear Superior whisper to me in waves about all of the dead things she hides beneath her surface, staring through the depths with murky eyes and fish-bitten cheeks. They can wait.

Will takes a right onto a dirt road and the tires of the SUV grumble and lurch us back and forth. As I look up, I can see the house, abandoned for years and beginning to tilt, just a crouching black shape in the dark. He stops at what used to be the end of the driveway and I get out. The headlights flash on the base of the house, illuminating peeling gray paint and flat, rotten boards, a porch overtaken by grasses and weeds. The old driveway was long; I’m at least a hundred feet from the front door.

“You sure this is it?” I hear Chase whisper, but I know that it is. I can tell by the way the breeze moves my hair and clothes but doesn’t disturb anything else. The house is tensely controlled, watching us. I take a step forward. After a few seconds, their hesitant footsteps crunch behind me.

On the drive up they told me that Anna kills anyone who enters her home. They told me about drifters who stumbled in looking for a place to sleep, only to be eviscerated when they lay down. They couldn’t have possibly known this, of course, though it’s probably true.

There’s a sharp sound behind me followed by fast footfalls.

“This is stupid,” Carmel snaps. The night has gotten colder and she’s put on a gray cardigan over her tank top. Her hands are stuffed into the pockets of her khaki skirt and she has her shoulders hunched. “We should have just stayed at the party.”

Nobody listens. They’re all just taking swills of beer and talking too loud to cover their nervousness. I creep toward the house with careful steps, my eyes moving from window to window, anxious for movement that shouldn’t be there. I duck as a beer can goes winging past my head to land in the driveway and bounce up toward the porch.

“Anna! Hey, Anna! Come out and play, you dead bitch!”

Mike is laughing, and Chase tosses him another beer. Even in the growing dark I can see that his cheeks are flushed with booze. He’s starting to waver on his feet.

I glance between them and the house. As much as I’d like to investigate further, I’m going to stop. This isn’t right. Now that they’re here and afraid, they’re laughing at her, trying to turn her into a joke. Crushing their full beer cans against their heads feels like a great idea, and yes, I feel the hypocrisy in my wanting to defend something that I’m trying to kill.

I look past them at Carmel fidgeting from foot to foot, hugging herself against the chill lake breeze. Her blond hair is wispy in the silver light, strands of spider web around her face.

“Come on guys, let’s get out of here. Carmel’s getting nervous, and there’s nothing in there anyway besides spiders and mice.” I push my way past, but Mike and Chase grab me by each arm. I notice that Will has gone back to stand with Carmel and is talking to her quietly, leaning down and gesturing toward the waiting car. She shakes her head and takes a step toward us, but he holds her back.

“No way we’re leaving without looking inside,” Mike says. He and Chase turn me around and walk me up the driveway like prison guards escorting an inmate, one at each shoulder.

“Fine.” I don’t argue as much as I maybe should. Because I would like to get a closer view. I’d just rather they not be here when I did it. I wave to Carmel to tell her everything’s fine and shrug the guys off.

When my foot hits the first moldy board of the porch steps I can almost feel the house constrict, like it’s breathing in, awakening after being so long untouched. I walk up the last two stairs and stand, alone, before the dark gray of the door. I wish I had a flashlight or a candle. I can’t tell what color the house used to be. From a distance it seemed like it was once gray, that the paint peelings were slivers of gray falling to the ground, but now that I’m closer they seem rotted and black. Which is impossible. Nobody paints a house black.

The tall windows on either side of the door are caked over with dirt and dust. I walk to the left and rub my palm across the glass in a quick circle. Inside, the house is mostly empty, except for a few pieces of furniture scattered about. There is a sofa in the center of what must’ve been a living room, covered in a white sheet. The remains of a chandelier hang from the ceiling.

Despite the dark, I can see the interior easily. It’s lit with grays and blues that seem to come from nowhere. There is something strange about the light that I can’t process initially, until I realize that nothing is casting a shadow.

A whisper makes me remember that Mike and Chase are here. I start to turn to tell them it’s nothing I haven’t seen before, and could we please get back to the party, but in the reflection in the window I see that Mike is holding a piece of broken board, aiming at my skull with his arms raised above his head … and I get the feeling that I’m not going to be saying anything for quite some time.

*   *   *

I wake up to the smell of dust and the sensation that most of my head is lying in shards somewhere behind me. Then I blink. Each breath I take sends up a small puff of gray across aging and uneven floorboards. Rolling onto my back, I realize that my head is still intact, but my brain hurts so badly that I have to close my eyes again. I don’t know where I am. I don’t remember what I was doing before I got here. All I can think of is the fact that my brain feels like it’s sloshing around in there unattached. An image pops into my head: some Neanderthal oaf swinging a board. The pieces of the puzzle start falling into place. I blink again in the strange gray light.