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By Root 698 0

divided the foyer from the rest, it was enormous. It became a loft that seemed to be at least 2000 square feet or more, with exposed brick along one long wall, and a factory-like skylight above. It was oddly furnished—the lamps all seemed to be huddled at one end, while a broad leather sofa, love seat and two chairs were arranged alongside the far wall. The furnishings seemed years out of style, and pushed around as if intended for storage. Copper pots hung from the ceiling along the kitchen area, with a central marble island, and a bright rectangle of clean wall where the refrigerator should have been settled. There was a long butcher block table just under the enormous loft-length opaque window that was divided, factory-style, into several casements. A paleness to the room, as if it had not been dusted—or entered—for a long time.

For just a second, she thought she heard a noise behind her, and she glanced back for a second in case the woman who owned the apartment had come home— what the hell are you doing here, Julie?—but there was no one. She turned back around the corner of the hall, to the foyer, but no one had entered.

“Someone’s here,” she said aloud, as if it would make her feel safer.

What the hell are you doing here, Julie?

It was not her voice, within her mind, saying this.

She couldn’t identify it, but she had a sudden feeling as if someone nearby had whispered this.

What the hell are you doing here, Julie?

And then she smelled something. Something that became overpowering—not just a smell. A stench. It was the smell she knew from childhood when a dead animal had lain in a ditch for days. Her mind flashed on the image from Matt’s video of the dead dog in the road. It was growing—the smell was growing. She glanced at the walls of the apartment as if they held something threatening, as if she half expected to see bloody handprints.

Then she was sure she heard something move in the room beyond the living room. Someone was in the bedroom.

Something moved there.

She heard the tap, tap, tap of shoes on a floor. Someone was coming.

Her heartbeat seemed too noisy, as if it were not inside her at all, but outside of her body, a clock, ticking too fast.

The voice in her head grew louder, pounding within her mind: What the hell are you doing here?

She saw the shadow of the person, first, in the open doorway across the room.

Then, she saw: a man standing there, only something was wrong. Something was messed up about his eyes, because it was as if his face was a blur of movement.

4

Julie took one step backward, then another.

He stood in the doorway, his face a fast-motion blur, his hands moving in what seemed like slow motion.

Then, she turned and hurried down into the foyer, and out of the apartment, shutting the door behind her, not bothering to lock it. Her heart beat rapidly—it felt as if it were thudding against her ribcage—and she pressed her back up against the hallway, looking back at the apartment.

She didn’t feel safe again until she was out on the street, out among the throngs of people along Hudson Street, moving as if they were fish in a murky sea.

She went into the Chelsea Clearwater movie theaters, and just sat through a movie she barely noticed, trying to erase the image of the faceless man from her mind. Then she felt that maybe it had been her mind, playing tricks, that it had been her fear, within her, perhaps building something up—and she was sure that there was no man there at all. That it was like a flash of seeing someone. Not a person at all. It was impossible for it to have been a person.

“The human mind cracks more easily than we suspect,” Eleanor had told her, in her first session after Hut’s death. “You need to be aware of it. Your brain is opening and closing doors. Some of them get slammed. Some get torn off their hinges. You bottle up too much, Julie, you don’t find a healthy way to let some of this out, it’ll rupture inside you. Just be prepared for when it happens.”

5

She left the movie before the halfway point, and, feeling better, called up Joe Perrin, and they met