DRY - by Neal Shusterman

28) Henry

I have found that the elderly can be either deranged or sagacious. It’s a complex equation made up of their life experiences, the advanced nature of their years, plain old genetics, and how pissed off life has left them. The Water Angel is of the sagacious variety – wise beyond her years, which says a lot, considering how old she is. She has figured out a simple, brilliant way to collect water – water that’s been right under everyone’s noses all along, but is so far out of most people’s boxes that they could die of thirst inches from the source and never consider it.

Washer fluid.

Not the actual fluid, but the containers that hold it, which are in every car. Most of the time people fill them with that blue Windex-y stuff, which is positively toxic – but every once in a while people can’t be bothered with the good stuff, and use water instead. Who would have thought it would be that lazy substrata of society that would save us? Even if the Water Angel isn’t willing to share with us, having the knowledge is enough. Teach-a-man-to-fish kind of thing. Of course, our truck doesn’t have either water or washer fluid. It’s completely empty, as I discovered when I tried to clean bugs off the windshield earlier.

We’re sent in teams of two to search cars on the northbound side of the freeway, maybe a quarter mile up, because all the closer cars have already been inspected. We’re accompanied by a paunchy pair of twenty-something identical twins. Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dumber. There’s a nagging mother and her seemingly mute child, and an older couple who have been married for so long they’ve morphed into near identical androgynous versions of each other. Each team is given a backpack, a flashlight, a coat hanger, and a crowbar. Many of the cars are locked, which means the hoods are unable to be popped, so we use the coat hangers to try to pop the locks, and if all else fails, use the crowbar to smash a window.

“It’s not like we’re destroying property that matters anymore,” Charity told us before we left. “Chances are these cars will be bulldozed to clear the freeway when this is all over.”

Although we’ve been instructed to be on the lookout for items that may benefit the greater good of the collective, I’ve been more interested in a wider variety of things.

See, in the heat of the moment, when people were escaping these freeways – something truly interesting happened. There was a cataclysmic shift in values. Kind of like a market crash. External events combined with mob psychology and generated a positive feedback loop. Well, not positive for them. Their only goal was to survive – which meant people were quick to forget items of high value that didn’t improve their immediate chances of said survival. Watches, jewelry, cash – you’d be amazed by the things that turn up in cup holders and glove compartments. Not that these things were left on purpose, but stuff simply got forgotten because they were no longer on the radar of critical possessions. Sure, most cars contain nothing but junk, but I manage to acquire a few unexpected assets that would otherwise go to waste.

“Look what I found,” says Garrett, looking in the rear window of a hatchback. Garrett indicates a bag of diapers in the back seat. “I remember there was a woman with a baby sitting back by the fire.”

“Good thinking,” I tell him, because value comes in many forms. “She’ll appreciate that.” And, I realize, so will the rest of us.

The door is, of course, locked, and multiple attempts to unlock it with the coat hanger are less effective here than elsewhere.

“I guess we’re just going to have to break the window,” I say.

To that, Garrett almost involuntarily gives a mischievous smile. That smile speaks volumes. It says he wants to break things, but never had permission. He wants to be wild, but has never been off the leash. I know that feeling – and I realize that I can save him years of future therapy by one simple action.

I hand him the crowbar. “You do it,” I say.

He looks a little scared. “Are you sure?”

I shrug. “Charity said we could if it was the only way in, right? Go on, give it a shot.”

Garrett hefts the crowbar, gives that involuntary smile again, and swings it at the window. It shatters with the first blow – not an explosive sound, more like the popping of a light bulb, followed by the patter of safety glass pellets. I’m actually surprised by how much force he put behind it. I thought the first swing might be timid.

“Well done!” I tell him. “Try another.”

Without hesitation, he turns to the car behind us and swings again, smashing the closest window.

“My turn,” I tell him. I see a Mercedes with a hood ornament. The car looks like my asshole neighbor’s, who sued us for building a retaining wall two inches onto his property. I take a swing at the ornament, fully prepared to see it fly off like a golf ball, but instead it gets knocked over and pops back up into place. Darn. I forgot that Mercedes ornaments do that – so they don’t get ripped off in car washes. I take a second swing, and it pops up again. It makes Garrett laugh.

“It punked you!” he says.

“Oh yeah? Take that,” and I smash off a side mirror.

Suddenly there’s one of the Tweedles lumbering up to us. “Hey!” he yells. “You’re supposed to be looking for water!”

“We couldn’t get in,” I inform him. “Had to smash the window.”

He glances at the dangling side mirror. “That’s not a window.”

“Guess I missed.”

Garrett snickers, and the Tweedle glares at me. “Stay on task!” Then he lumbers back to his brother, who has been gingerly trying to get into a Buick for five minutes.

I turn to see Garrett grinning at me – and I realize he’s looking at me in a way that he doesn’t his sister. He’s clearly never had an older brother figure in his life. It puts me in a unique position.

I lean against the car and speak casually. “Your sister would kill me right now if she saw what we were doing.”

“Who cares?” He reaches for the crowbar, but, as a surrogate big brother, I hold it out of reach, indicating that’s enough. For now.

“Funny how she treats you like you’re just a kid,” I tell him, “even though you’re the one with most of the good ideas.”

He looks to me, just a little bit wide-eyed. “You think that?”

“Are you kidding me? If it weren’t for you we wouldn’t have found the aqueduct. And aren’t you the one who found these good people? Thanks to you we have a safe place to spend the night.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“We all have our skills. Yours is seeing things that the rest of us don’t.”

It’s true, and I can tell he appreciates that I’ve noticed what others overlook – just like him. It’s a nice bonding moment. One that serves a purpose…

“So tell me,” I put to him, “what other things do you see that the others don’t?”

He considers it, then says,“Well, I don’t think Jacqui is as horrible as Alyssa makes her out to be.”

“Really, what makes you think that?”

“Well, it’s like the girls on her soccer team. Alyssa always trash talks about the ones she kind of sees as a threat. I’ll bet Jacqui and my sister could be friends if they weren’t both so set on hating each other.”

A sharp observation. Useful, too. If I can keep them turned against each other, they’re not turned against me. Or at least, Alyssa isn’t. After nearly stranding Jacqui at the evac center, I doubt I’ll ever win her over, but I may not have to. “How about Kelton?” I ask him.

He laughs. “He’s just glad to be in the same car with my sister. Kelton’s had a serious crush on Alyssa since, like, forever!”

I feign shock. “Get out of here!”

“No, seriously. When they were in elementary school, he’d hit balls into our yard on purpose, and when they were in eighth grade, I caught him spying on her with one of his helicopter drone cameras. He paid me ten bucks not to tell her!”

Not quite the information I was fishing for, but when you catch a boot, you never know what else might be lurking inside.

“Spying how?” I ask.

And he sits on the big pack of diapers to spin me a nice little story.

We return to camp to join the others about an hour later – and though Garrett and I didn’t find any washer reservoirs that contained water, some of the others did. But we pulled our weight in other ways. We found some painkillers, a Bluetooth speaker fully charged, binoculars, and of course, the diapers.

Charity travels around, picking and choosing who is most in need of the water she has, while our little group is brought to five cars near the guarded perimeter, the back seats of which have been spread with linens. Someone has left a MoonPie on each pillow. Real concierge service.

“There you go, Garrett,” Alyssa says, “didn’t you always want a car bed?”

Garrett is not amused.

Jacqui looks at her MoonPie. Banana flavored. “How can we even digest these without water?” she says. “And how do I know I won’t die of thirst in my sleep?”

“You won’t,” Kelton says. “You’d have to be a lot worse off. You’ll feel more and more tired – but then, right before the end, you’ll get a sudden burst of energy. It’s the body’s last stand. After that, it’s all over.”

“TMI, Kelton,” she says, not wanting to think about it. “TMI.”

We should all call it a night, but we’re at that state where we’re too exhausted to sleep, and none of us is looking forward to sleeping in this heat – which seems only a few degrees cooler than the day. I take my acquired letterman jacket off and set it on my lap, wishing that its manufacturers could have had the good sense to use a fabric that breathes.

The five of us now hang out in a small clearing in between the cars to wind down. The trash can fires are out, and the moon paints everyone in blue shadows.

“I really don’t get it,” says Jacqui. “How are these people not tearing each other apart, like in every other place we’ve been?”

“They created a system,” Alyssa says. “Not everyone can do that.”

I feel a need to enlighten them. “Communism only works in theory, and goes against human nature. This place won’t last.”

“It doesn’t have to,” Alyssa points out. “Only until the crisis is over.”

“They’ll turn on each other,” Jacqui says. “Everyone does eventually.”

Alyssa throws her a glare. “Everyone like you, maybe.”

“Oh, are you gonna tell me your neighbors weren’t like these people? Fine, upstanding citizens, until they started eating their young?”

I glance to Garrett, who just shakes his head knowingly at me. Jacqui and Alyssa will never agree on anything.

“People suck,” Kelton says, adding his own two cents. “Always have, always will.”

“I don’t see it like that,” Alyssa says. “People might do whatever they can to survive, but once they don’t have to worry about that, they’re different.”

“Sometimes,” Kelton argues. “Sometimes not. Some people are always like that and just pretend to be civil.”

He says that looking at me. I’m not sure if that’s intentional, but it still pisses me off.

Jacqui bounces her knees, amused. “Ooh, looks like we’ve got ourselves a classic Hobbes versus Rousseau philosophical quandary.”

It catches me off guard to hear Jacqui make such a reference. Especially because I don’t precisely know who Hobbes and Rousseau are – but not knowing and admitting you don’t know are two completely different things.

“Yes, that’s one way to see it,” I tell them. “But I think you’re both wrong. People are nouns, actions are verbs. Apples and oranges.”

“Ding! Ding! Ding! And we’ve found our Machiavelli!” Jacqui announces, like a showman. And then suddenly, as absurdly and unexpectedly as she pulled philosophers out of her ass, she pulls a gun out from God knows where. A gun. A real. Freaking. Gun.

We all jump out of our skin, but maybe me more than the others. Did she have that all along? And now I’m thinking back to the dozens of times she could’ve shot me today – like when I pulled that airsoft gun on her. Not my best move.

“Dammit, put my gun away!” Kelton says, adding one more layer to this crazy cake. Did he say his gun?

She just ignores him, marveling at the weapon, turned on. Invigorated. “Tell me, Henry, if I put one of these bullets right into your head and got your brains all over Kelton and his MoonPie, would I be a noun or a verb?”

“Jacqui, put that away before anyone else sees it!” Alyssa growls.

But it only energizes Jacqui. She will not be controlled, and now I get why Alyssa sees her as a threat. Because she is.

“C’mon, Henry,” Jacqui taunts. “I thought you were the captain of the debate team – or at least pretended to be.” Then she points the gun at me. “Convince me that I am not my actions. That doing something bad doesn’t make me bad.”

I talk fast, trying to pretend I’m not a thumb-pull away from oblivion. I don’t know if that gun has a safety on it. Hell, I don’t even really know what a safety is. “You wouldn’t be good or bad, right or wrong, because concepts are fluid, and subjective, and it would flip depending on whether or not killing me was the right thing to do, but it’s not – it most definitely is not!”

Jacqui holds there. Everyone else is frozen. No one wants to jump in and maybe accidentally set the gun off. Finally, she withdraws her arm and tucks the gun away, suddenly disinterested. “You’re no fun,” she says.

Jacqui goes back to eating her pastry, speaking with a full mouth. “You’re a bunch of scaredy-cats anyway – there was no bullet in the chamber,” she says. “Or was there…?”

Mental note: There are now two confirmed psychopaths in our party of five. Kelton and Jacqui will have to be taken down if I am to assume my rightful place in charge, and protect Alyssa and her brother.

 

 

29) Alyssa

I lie in my makeshift bed, eyes peeled open. At least I think they are. I don’t have the energy to sleep, or to be awake. So I toss and turn, in and out of consciousness in a delirium of anxieties that haunt both states. Thoughts of Jacqui. The gun. My parents. Mixed with nightmares of marauders raiding the freeway like they raided Kelton’s home – led by Hali on my soccer team and her mother, who’s now fifteen feet tall and steals everyone’s water. Then it starts to rain blood, and Kingston is there, lapping it all up. The rain resolves into a tapping noise… My eyes snap open. It’s Henry, and he’s standing just outside my car, tapping on the half-open window. It’s still dark. I’m not sure whether it’s somewhere around midnight, or closer to dawn.

“You were talking in your sleep,” he says. “I could hear you from my car.”

“Oh. Sorry.” To be honest, I’m glad he woke me up. As tired as I am, I’ll take him over the hallucinations, so I open the door and get out, stretching.

“Have you noticed that it’s snowing?”

“What?”

Sure enough, there are snowflakes settling gently around us. But it’s got to be almost ninety degrees. Now I know the world has gone crazy.

“Don’t catch them on your tongue though,” Henry says. “I don’t think they’ll taste very good.”

I catch one with my hand, and rub it between my fingers. It’s ash.

“The brush fires have grown up,” he tells me. “They’re full-fledged forest fires now. Pretty far east of us, but the Santa Ana winds are bringing the ash our way.”

As I look around, the cars are beginning to grow a fine layer of gray dust.

We lean against the side of my Cadillac, watching the “snow” settle.

“It’s so quiet now,” I say. “It almost makes you forget what’s out there.”

“Nothing out there but people,” Henry points out.

“People can be monsters. Whether it’s just their actions, or whether it’s who they really are, it doesn’t matter. The result is the same.”

Henry shrugs, as if it doesn’t bother him. I wonder if he’s really so nonchalant about it, or if it’s just an act for my sake. “Sometimes you have to be the monster to survive,” he says.

I shake my head at the thought, then grimace at the pain that comes with moving my head. “I could never be that kind of monster,” I tell him. “No matter what.”

Rather than commenting on that, he lets another “snowflake” land on his palm, studying it for a few moments.

“I wanted to apologize,” he finally says, “for not telling you the truth about not being the guy my jacket says I am – but with all that was happening, there didn’t seem to be a right time.”

No apology is complete without its “but.” Well, at least he’s trying. So I decide to let him off the hook. I know it’s stupid of me to trust him, but I decide to do it anyway.

“I get it. Common courtesies have gone the way of running water,” I tell him. “No one’s acting the way they usually would.”

He smiles. “You’re a very forgiving person.” His smile seems genuine, and I look away from his gaze. I wonder if it’s possible to see a blush in ashen moonlight.

“Not really,” I tell him. “I just don’t hold grudges.” Which isn’t entirely true; I hold plenty of grudges. But right now it would be a waste of valuable energy.

“But you are forgiving,” he insists. “You let me come with you, even after acquiring your uncle’s car. And it looks like you’re beginning to forgive Jacqui for … well, for just being Jacqui. You even forgave Kelton after the whole drone thing.”

I get caught on that last part. “What?”

“You know. How he used to spy in your window with his drone?”

But I don’t know. I have no idea what he’s talking about. My stomach begins to fill with a weird, greasy feeling.

“Who told you that?”

“Garrett may have mentioned it in passing. But don’t get him in trouble. I only bring it up to add evidence to my argument about your forgiving nature.” Then he grins. “I did pretend to be captain of the debate team, you know.”

But right now, I don’t feel forgiving at all. I feel stupid. And embarrassed. And violated. My face must be turning a much more visible shade of red now, because Henry says —

“Wait – you mean you didn’t know?”

Why should I be the one who feels embarrassed? Kelton’s the creep here! And before I know it, I’m abandoning Henry, and I’m storming over to Kelton in his stupid little hatchback, pounding on the door, then kicking it, until he pops his nasty little orange head up and opens the door.

“What? What is it? What’s happening?”

“Did it feel good, Kelton?” I growl. “Did it? Was it fun? Was it everything you thought it would be?” I know, in the midst of everything going on, that this is not the highest priority right now, but it feels like it. It feels huge.

“What? What are you talking about?” he stammers as he scrambles out to face me.

“Did you or did you not spy on me with your drone!”

He hesitates. That’s all the answer I need. I push him back against the car. “You lousy! Stinking! Creep!”

“Alyssa, it was in eighth grade!”

“There is NO statute of limitations on being a certified DOUCHE!”

“And I only did it once!”

“It doesn’t matter how many times you did it! The fact is you did it!”

“Alyssa…”

“Don’t you say my name!” I yell at him. “Don’t you even think it. Ever !”

I storm away from him, because I know if I stay I’m just going to keep on screaming, and that will wake up half the people here and make them come running, and I don’t want this to be any more of a federal case than it already is. There’s a battle in my head now. Part of me wants to file this away and deal with it when we’re not in a crisis. His brother is dead. There are more life-and-death challenges we have to face. Yet there’s the other part of me that will not be silenced or ignored. The normal part, which won’t let such an unacceptable act slide just because there are bigger things to worry about. No matter what else is going on, I have every right to what I’m feeling!

I go back to my car. I’m thirsty, and I’m angry, and I think maybe I’d rather face the nightmares than this, after all.

Henry appears at the window. “Alyssa, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you…”

“Well you did!” I snap. Then I feel guilty about it. So I speak a little more gently. “I know I shouldn’t blame the messenger, but it’s hard not to.”

“I understand.” Then he puts his hand on the door handle. “Can I come in?”

I actually consider it. But right now I want to keep all of humanity at a ten-foot-pole distance. “I’ll see you in the morning,” I tell him.

“Okay,” he says. “Sleep well.”

But we both know there’s zero chance of that.

 

 

PART FOUR

BUG-OUT

 

 

DAY SIX

THURSDAY, JUNE 9TH

30) Kelton

Alyssa isn’t talking to me, Garrett won’t look at me, and Jacqui seems to find that amusing.

Henry says nothing, silently smug behind the wheel.

Garrett confessed what he told Henry, and Henry didn’t waste any time sharpening it into a weapon to use against me. I occupy my mind thinking of all the painful moves I can inflict on Henry once we reach the bug-out. Dislocate his other shoulder, snap his arm, kick out his kneecap. I know the moves, and am pretty confident I can execute them. All he has to do is give me a reason. Exposing my middle-school creepitude to Alyssa should be reason enough, but that was really just my own karma coming back to bite me. As much as I want to, I can’t make any sort of move against Henry until he proves himself to be the clear and present danger I suspect he is. But I can’t act on a feeling. Especially when Alyssa trusts him a whole lot more than she trusts me.

It’s been half an hour since we left Charity’s little freeway commune. We cleaned up our camp at dawn, folded the linens and returned them. It felt good folding the linens. It felt decent. Funny how that used to be my least favorite chore. We said goodbye to some of the friends we made during our brief stay, like Max the handy biker. Then the Water Angel sent us off with more of those marshmallow sponge cakes, and then gave each of us hugs. Standing there in her embrace, in a weird, childish way, I didn’t want to let go.

I know that Alyssa didn’t want to leave. I was actually surprised that she didn’t decide to stay, just to be rid of me. I mean, she would have gotten water there. Or at least she would when she got dehydrated enough. Maybe she couldn’t bear the thought of me getting to the bug-out, and getting water before she did. Or maybe she didn’t want to part with Henry. Why bother breaking a limb? I could jam the heel of my hand into his nose and drive his nasal bone into his brain.

We had to move the ÁguaViva box back to the bed of the truck to make room for all of us in the cab – which was hard to do without raising suspicion. There was a quiet discussion as to whether or not we should pull a couple of bottles from it to drink now – and this time, even I was willing to do it … but there was no way to open the box without revealing to Charity and her freeway folk that we had water.

“If they know about it, you know what’ll happen,” Jacqui said. “She’ll claim it’s community property, divvy it out to her minions, and there goes our emergency supply.”

I expected Alyssa to argue, because she’s the only one of us altruistic enough to be okay with that. But she didn’t. Maybe her anger at me has spread to the rest of the world.

We agreed that we would pull over and open the box when we were far enough away, but now that we’re moving, Henry flatly refuses to stop.

“We’re almost there – why stop now? We can all hold out for another hour, right?”

“Yeah, we can wait,” says Garrett, who suddenly became Henry’s lapdog when no one was looking.

And since no one wants to show less self control than a ten-year-old, we all accept it.

“But if it’s more than an hour, I’m kicking you in the head until you stop the car and let us get water,” announces Jacqui. I’d be happy if she started kicking him in the head right now, but I keep that to myself.

I look through the car window. There’s a haze that hangs in the air, thick and caustic. All of Southern California is blanketed in wildfire smoke. The dawn is angry crimson, and the sun – which has now risen enough to peer out from behind the mountains – is practically maroon, looking more like a blood moon than the sun.

We haven’t put music on the radio this morning. Instead we switched back from satellite to the standard stations. Most stations are either offline or have triggered the emergency broadcast network, so it’s the same thing almost everywhere. Mostly stuff we already know. Evac centers are at capacity – people are to go straight to overflow facilities, blah blah blah.

We keep listening to the broadcast, because I need to know about the fires. Three are burning far to the east – one completely blocking the road to Big Bear Lake. Two are burning in Castaic, more than fifty miles west of us, threatening access to Castaic Lake – which millions from Los Angeles are trying to reach.

One report talks about relief coming to beaches again sometime today, but there’s no way to know how successful this second wave will be. I imagine World War II and the Allied forces storming the beaches of Normandy, but with water instead of weapons. An operation like that would take months to organize. Whatever they’re planning today, it’s doomed to fall far short of what’s needed.

“If there’s fresh water at the beach, maybe we should go there instead,” Henry says, having no idea what the rest of us have already been through.

“Just drive,” Alyssa says, not wanting to explain.

We’re only down in the aqueduct for half an hour before we emerge and follow a foothill road far enough from civilization to be beyond most roadblocks. Finally we come to a sign that says NOW ENTERING ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST, with a red placard that says FIRE RISK: HIGH. Big duh.

It looks like there actually had been a roadblock here – cones and plastic barriers – but they’ve all been pushed aside and the site is unmanned. Apparently, the personnel were needed elsewhere. We keep driving, and the road begins to wind.

“It’s not far now,” I tell everyone. “About ten miles up, look for a dirt road off to our left. Drive slow, because it’s easy to miss.”

“I have a headache,” announces Garrett. As if we all don’t have headaches.

“It’s from the smoke,” Alyssa tells him, although it’s probably more from the dehydration. “I’m sure there’s Advil at the bug-out.”

“There is,” I tell her, but she doesn’t even acknowledge that I spoke. She’s disgusted to be in the same car with me. I guess I would be, too. Of course, if it were the other way around – if she had a drone and looked in my window – I’d be flattered. Unless she was laughing. No, I guess I’d feel just as creeped out. I should probably just let her beat the crap out of me, and get it over with. But I suppose in our current situation, crap-beating is not a priority. And now I feel stupid for even worrying about it. As if my humiliation means anything in the big picture we’re facing. And yet in my moronic head, it does. Stupid.

“Is that the road we’re looking for?” says Jacqui about fifteen minutes later.

“Yes,” I say, although to be honest, I’m not a hundred percent sure. But we’ll know soon enough. “Turn here.”

Henry veers off the paved road and onto the narrow dirt path. The truck barely fits between the trees, and the road is rugged. The truck’s suspension absorbs the worst of the bumps, but it can only do so much. My brain rattles against the walls of my skull. Garrett moans, telling Henry not to go so fast, but he’s not going fast at all.

“What are we looking for?” Henry asks.

“We’ll go over a ridge, then back down into a valley,” I tell him. “Eventually we’ll come to a dry, rocky wash. Once we’re there, turn right and follow the wash for about three clicks.”

“Exactly what is a click?”

“A kilometer.”

“And then we’ll see it?”

“We won’t see it,” I tell him. “That’s the whole point of a bug-out.”

Ten minutes later we come to the wash, and I breathe a secret sigh of relief, because it means this was the right dirt road after all. Henry turns right, and we follow the rocky path, avoiding the boulders and ditches along the way. Finally we come to an upturned tree stump with a red ribbon caught in its dead, gnarled roots. Only it’s not caught, it’s tied there. It’s our marker.

“Stop,” I tell Henry. “We’re here.”

We get out of the car and I lead everyone up the embankment of the wash, and back into the forest. About a hundred yards in, I stop.

“We’re here,” I tell everyone.

“We’re where?” asks Jacqui. “I don’t see anything but a whole lot of trees.”

“Is it underground?” asks Garrett.

“Nope.” Then I just stand there, waiting, wondering who will be the first one to notice.

Alyssa’s the first. I was betting she would be. She gasps and points. “There!” she says. “It’s mirrored!” She runs a dozen yards ahead, and the rest of us follow. As we get closer, the illusion weakens, but only because the glass has gotten dirty.

Our bug-out is a small A-frame structure – the mirrored side walls slope so that they reflect the higher reaches of trees, instead of reflecting people who might be approaching. It’s an exceptionally successful camouflage.

“I suddenly love your seriously disturbed family,” Jacqui says.

Just like at home, there’s a hidden key. It’s in a knothole in a tree, although it takes me a few minutes to find the right tree, then a couple of minutes more to poke into the knothole, dislodging a spider and a bunch of other unpleasant critters that have taken up residence there. Finally, I reach in and pull out the key.

I stride triumphant to the door – which is also mirrored – and slide the key into the deadbolt lock.

“Welcome,” I say, “to Castle McCracken!”