I only managed to say his name once.

The air’s stifling and dry and cold and damp. The room’s warm and orange and black and silver; the fire burns brightly in the cold hearth lit sporadically by lightning and shadowed by rain. The only sounds are rain and thunder and the tinkling noises from the party in the next room.

When I move my head I feel sick, my sight ripples. The clear face of a pond, broken by a pebble: submarine and surface fighting to be seen. I am here and not here.

I look down at myself: my own self in slicker and jeans superimposed over and obscured by the half-woman in dress and stays. I know I walked to The House from where we parked off the road; I know I haven’t walked since polio broke me when I was seven.

Jordan’s dead and he hasn’t been born. I don’t want this to be and know it’s true. Everything about the Maddox Diary, everything we heard about what the old man did in the barn in 1884, it’s all true, and I will never leave this house I’ve never left.

I feel tears in both worlds.