Its breath smelled of dead things.

I closed my eyes, and struck. Something screamed, and the skull broke with a hollow, wet sound like the opening of a melon. The creature fell back, hissing, and I slammed down the lid. At my feet, Eleanor lay unconscious, the final traces of the red vapor coiling slowly between her teeth. Just as Gray had done years before, I took the crowbar and used it to jam the lock. From within the box came a furious hammering, and the crowbar jangled uneasily where it rested. The thing screamed repeatedly, a long high-pitched sound like the squealing of pigs in a slaughterhouse.

I placed Eleanor over my shoulder and, with some difficulty, climbed the ladder to the ground above, the thudding noises from the casket slowly fading. I drove her to Bridesmouth, where I placed her in the care of the local hospital. She remained unconscious for three days, and remembered nothing of the folly, or Lilith, when she awoke.

While she was in the hospital, I made arrangements for us to return permanently to London, and for Norton Hall to be sealed. And then, one bright afternoon, I watched as the hole in the lawn was lined with cement strengthened with steel. More cement was poured into the hole, three containers of it, until the maw was almost half full. Then the workmen began the task of building a second folly to cover the hole, larger and more ornate than its predecessor. It cost me half a year’s income, but I had no doubt that it was worth it. Finally, while Eleanor continued to convalesce with her sister in Bournemouth, I watched as the last stones of the folly were set in place and the workmen set about removing their equipment from the lawn.

“I take it the missus didn’t like the last folly, Mr. Merriman?” said the foreman, as we watched the sun set upon the new structure.

“I’m afraid it didn’t suit her disposition,” I replied.

The foreman gave me a puzzled look.

“They’re funny creatures, women,” he continued at last. “If they had their way, they’d rule the world.”

“If they had their way,” I echoed. But they won’t, I thought. At least, not if I have anything to do with it.

A THOUSAND MILES FROM NOWHERE by LORENZO CARCATERRA

The tall man sat with his back resting against the thick glass window. His eyes were shut, three fingers of his right hand holding down a long-neck bottle of lukewarm beer. On a radio murmuring somewhere in the distance, the Dixie Chicks were working their way through “Give It Up or Let Me Go.” The man took a deep breath and ran his free hand across the top of his left knee, trying to ease the pain that too many years of medication and three operations had failed to lessen. He was tired, lacking the patience to wait out yet another winter snowstorm, the din of what had, only hours earlier, been a bustling airport terminal, reduced now to the quiet scrapings of cleaning crews and the fitful sleep of stranded passengers.

He was supposed to have been in Nashville four hours ago, finished his job three hours ago and been halfway through a smoked rib and baked bean dinner by now. Instead, here he was, sitting in the back of a bar whose name he didn’t know, manned by a middle-aged bartender who cared less about his next refill than he did about the tape-delayed lacrosse game coming down off the soundless TV above him. The tall man opened his eyes, turned his head and looked out through the steam-streaked glass. The snow was coming down at an angle, thick flakes building up on silent runways and against the wheels of stalled Boeing jets. An airport ground crew was spraying down an American Eagle jet with yellow foam, in a vain attempt to keep its engines from freezing in the midst of an unforgiving wind. The tall man turned away from the window and lifted his bottle of beer, finishing it off in two thick gulps.

There would be no flights tonight.

“You can blame me, if you want,” the woman’s voice said. “Happens every time I fly. I leave the house and the bad weather follows.”

She stood facing the long window, watching the flakes land and slide down the thick glass, a gray satchel resting against the points of her black boots, long blonde hair shielding half her face. A black leather coat stopped at the knee and did little to disguise her slim, shapely body. Her voice was cotton soft and her white skin shimmered off the glow from the low-watt lights that lined the room and the heavy floods that lit the outside runways.

“Make it up to me,” the tall man said to her.

She turned to look at him, her dark eyes giving off a glint of red, a cat caught in the glare of a flashlight. “How?” she asked.

“Let me buy you a drink,” the tall man said. “Thanks to the weather you brought in, it looks like there’s little else to do but wait. And I don’t much feel like reading the paper-again.”

The woman kicked aside her satchel and undid the buttons on her leather coat. She tossed the coat on an empty chair between them, swung aside strands of hair from her eyes, pulled back a chair and sat across from the tall man. “Bourbon,” she said. “Glass of ice water with lemon on the side.”

The tall man gave a hint of a smile, pushed his chair back, grabbed his empty beer bottle and walked toward the bar. The woman watched him leave and then turned her look to the raging storm, swirling gusts of powder and ice particles dancing in circles under the hot lights.

“You’re gonna have to make do with lemon peel,” the tall man said, resting the drinks on her side of the table. He sat back down and tilted a sweaty bottle of Heineken in her direction. “Cheers,” he said with a smile and a wink and downed a long swallow from the cold beer.

The woman nodded and sipped her bourbon, the familiar burn in her throat and chest as welcome as an old friend. She sat back and looked across the table at the tall man. He was in his mid-forties and in shape, hard upper body chiseled by daily workouts, his white, button-down J. Crew shirt tight around the arms and neck. His face was tanned and handsome, set off by Greek olive eyes and rich dark hair. His gestures and movements were deliberate, never rushed, his body language calm and free of stress, the habits of a man at ease in his own skin. “What city aren’t you going to tonight?” he asked.

“ Los Angeles,” the woman said, glancing down at the silver Tiffany watch latched around her thin wrist. “If the skies were clear, would have been in LAX twenty minutes ago.”

“What’s there?” he asked.

“Warm weather, palm trees, movie stars and an ocean you can swim in,” the woman said.

“What’s there for you?” he asked, leaning closer toward her, the beer bottle still in his right hand.

“All of that,” she said. “Plus a home where I can walk to the beach, a car that loves winding hills and two cats that are always happy to see me.”

“The beach, a car and two cats,” the man said. “That usually means no kids and no husband.”

“You can’t have everything,” the woman said.

“That depends on what you want everything to be,” the man said.

“What’s it for you?” the woman asked.

The man sipped his beer and shrugged. “This, right now,” the man said. “Having a beer, sitting across from a beautiful woman in an empty airport. Being in the moment and enjoying it. Not having to huddle in a corner and burn out a cell phone battery to say goodnight to kids I never see enough to make a dent or listen to a wife complain about something I never even knew was a problem and could care less that it is. No mortgage, no bills, no worries. Live the way I travel. Light.”

“You need money to live like that,” the woman said. “And either a job or a rich father to hand it over. Which belongs to you?”

“If I’m going to open my heart, it’d be nice to know who it’s going to,” the man said, revealing a handsome smile.