In that light, her eyes were only a dark shade of brown.

She was reading to me. It had been her idea. I don’t think I’ve had anyone read to me like that since I was a girl. But, like the light, and like the simpler brown it made of her eyes, it was comforting, and I listened while she read from an old Ray Bradbury paperback I’d brought with me from Atlanta, A Medicine for Melancholy. She has a good, strong reading voice. She was halfway through “The Day It Rained Forever,” and I broke in and told her so.

“It’s hard to find people with even halfway good reading voices,” I told her, “and most times, when you do, they come off like they’ve been practicing for some sort of slam-poetry thing.”

“Thank you,” she said, then went right back to reading to me about Mr. Terle and Mr. Fremley, Mr. Smith and Miss Hillgood in that hotel in the desert. The light coming in the west-facing window seemed perfectly suited to the story, and, mostly, I lay still and listened, concentrating on her voice more than the words, watching dust motes caught in that sunlight, rising and falling at the whim of whatever forces govern the movement of dust motes.

Later, though, when the sun had set, and after I’d eaten the dinner of ramen noodles and wasabi-flavored rice crackers Constance had made us, I began to grow antsy. I told her I needed to do something,that I was probably as rested as I was going to get. She asked me if I meant I needed to write, and I think I laughed.

“Are you going to finish it, the stuff you were writing about what happened down there?” She glanced at the floor, as though I needed any clarification.

“Do you think I should?” I asked her, and Constance didn’t answer right off. When she finally did, she turned her head away, towards the Currier and Ives print and the west window. I could still see her face reflected in the dressing table mirror. She closed her eyes while she spoke.

“I know you didn’t have to come after me,” she said, and there was more, but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t already said — Constance thanking me again for finding her and getting her back upstairs, thanking me for bathing her and washing the mud from her hair, for getting a Valium and some hot soup into her, and so on.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said, at the risk of seeming less than gracious. She opened her eyes, and I saw that she saw me watching her through the looking glass.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t, did I?”

“Do you wantme to write the rest of it?”

“Part of me does,” she said. “I think it’s the same part of me that’s glad you never got rid of the manuscript. And the same part of me that wanted to reach the tree and that was angry when we couldn’t.”

“The part of you that had to see the cellar?”

“Yeah, more than likely,” and she turned towards me again, though I kept my eyes on the mirror, which now showed me only the back of her head, her black hair pulled tightly into a high ponytail.

“And what about the other part of you?” I asked. “What does it want?”

“It wants to go back to my paintings,” she said. “It wants me in the attic, working like a fiend. I suspect it really doesn’t care what you write and what you don’t write.”

“Well, then, maybe that’s the part you should be listening to,” and I asked her for a cigarette.

“We smoke too much,” Constance said. “Both of us. We’re both gonna die of emphysema or lung cancer or something if we keep it up.”

I laughed, and she told me she was serious, but then she laughed, too.

“Personally, I don’t think I need to write the rest of it down,” I said. “I know that I certainly don’t wantto. So, perhaps it’s best if we keep it between us.”

“But we’re not talking about it.”

“We’re talking about it right now, Constance,” and she scowled again. She told me not to be an ass, that I knew damn well what she meant.

“I don’t have answers,” I said. “If that’s what you mean, I don’t have any more answers than you do.” And, frankly, I was thinking that maybe I had quite a few less. There were questions that I wanted to put to Constance, questions about what she’d seen down there, below the floorboards, about the things she’d said to me, and where those oak leaves had come from, for starters. But, the few questions I haddared to ask, she’d been unable, or unwilling, to answer.

“Do you think we should stay?” she asked.

“I can’t afford to leave,” I replied. “I simply don’t have the money. But if youdo, I would understand if you found another place, Constance.”

“I wouldn’t leave you here alone,” she said, and I think maybe she said it a little too quickly, too eagerly, as though she’d practiced the line beforehand. I wished that the sun were still up, the room still bathed in that buttery late-July sun that the twilight had stolen. By the lamp beside the bed, Constance’s eyes had taken on their old reddish tint.

As for today, well, it was almost as if the whole thing never occurred. She’s gone back up to her garret, and I’ve hardly seen her since breakfast. I’ve gone back to my reading and the television and this typewriter. Earlier, I sat here and just stared out the kitchen window at the red tree for the better part of an hour. Maybe I’ll try to reach the woman at URI again. Maybe I’ll talk to Blanchard. I dreamed of Amanda last night, and it was not a pleasant dream. She’s something else that Constance wanted to talk about, but I told her I thought we had plenty enough ghosts to deal with, thank you very much.

“Besides,” I added, “Amanda is my own privatehaunting. She’s nothing I want to share. And she’s nothing you need to hear about.” And Constance nodded, but it was more of a if-you-say-so sort of nod than anything else.

I’m thinking of getting a combination lock for the cellar door, next time I go into town.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I honestly believed I was finished with this journal. Over the past six days, I allowedmyself to start believing that. Certainly, I’ve wanted nothing more to do with it, or with Harvey’s manuscript, or that goddamn tree. And those six unrecorded days were remarkable only in their consistent, unwavering sameness. I read, watched television, and took a couple of long drives, one as far as Providence. Constance stayed in the attic, appearing only rarely, once more distant, and taciturn, and stained always with paint. I began to imagine this is how the remainder of the summer would proceed. And possibly the autumn, as well. Just yesterday, I sat here and thought how July seemed like some long, thoroughly ridiculous nightmare, but that now it was finally over. Two days ago, I packed Charles Harvey’s unfinished book back into its cardboard box and put it at the bottom of the hall cupboard, under some spare blankets. I had planned to do the same with his typewriter, but, for whatever reason, had not yet gotten around to it.

And then, late this morning, I opened the back door, the kitchen door (I can’t recall why), and found neon green fishing line tied about the porch railing near the bottom step. It was drawn taut, suspended maybe a foot above the ground, and led away into the briars and goldenrod and poison ivy, north, towards the red tree. I stared at it for a few minutes, I think. It seems now it took me a moment to fully process whatthe fishing line signified. I was startled that it was so very green, and couldn’t recall ever having seen that sort of fishing line before. And then I was shouting for Constance, and when she didn’t answer, I went back into the house. I went directly to the attic stairs. I knocked and asked her to please open the door. Then I tried the knob and discovered that it was locked. I banged on the door again, hard enough to hurt my knuckles. But no response came from the attic, and the door remained closed.