The man shook his head. “After all these years?” he said. “He’d be a man by now. He’d be a grown man. This is just a boy.”

“It’s him, I tell you.”

“No!” the man replied, angry now. “It’s some prank. Somebody trying to break our hearts. As if they’re not broken enough.”

He started to slam the door, but Harvey’s mom caught hold of it.

“Look at him,” she said. “Look at his clothes. That’s what he was wearing the night he left us.”

“How do you know?”

“You think I don’t remember?”

“It’s thirty-one years ago,” said Harvey’s father, still staring at the boy on the step. “This can’t…can’t be…” He faltered as slow recognition spread over his face. “Oh my Lord,” he said, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper, “…it is him, isn’t it?”

“I told you,” his wife replied,

“Are you some kind of ghost?” he asked Harvey.

“Oh for goodness’ sake,” Harvey’s mom said. “He’s no ghost!” She slipped past her husband, and out onto the step. “I don’t know how it’s possible, and I don’t care,” she said, opening her arms to Harvey. “All I know is, our little boy’s come home to us.”

Harvey couldn’t speak. There were too many tears in his throat, and in his nose and in his eyes. All he could do was stumble into his mother’s arms. It was wonderful to feel her hands stroke his hair and her fingers wipe his cheeks.

“Oh Harvey, Harvey, Harvey,” she sobbed. “We thought we’d never see you again.” She kissed him over and over. “We thought you’d gone forever.”

“How’s this possible?” his father still wanted to know.

“I kept praying,” his mother said.

Harvey had another answer, though he didn’t voice it. The moment he’d set eyes on his mother—so changed, so sorrowful—it was instantly clear what a terrible trick Hood’s House had played upon them all. For every day he’d spent there a year had gone by here in the real world. Every morning while he’d played in the spring warmth, months had passed. In the afternoon, while he’d lazed in the summer sun, the same. And those haunted twilights, which had seemed so brief, had been another span of months, as had the Christmas nights, full of snow and presents. They’d all slipped by so easily, and though he had only aged a month, his mom and dad had lived in sadness for thirty-one years, thinking that their little boy had gone forever.

That had almost been the case. If he’d remained in the House of Illusions, distracted by its petty pleasures, a whole lifetime would have gone by here in the real world, and his soul would have become Hood’s property. He would have joined the fish circling in the lake; and circling; and circling. He shuddered at the thought.

“You’re cold, sweetie,” his mother said. “Let’s get you inside.” He sniffed hard, and cleared his tears with the back of his hand. “I’m so tired,” he said.

“I’ll make a bed for you straight away.”

“No. I want to tell you what happened before I go to sleep,” Harvey replied. “It’s a long story. Thirty-one years long.”

XV. New Nightmares

It was a more difficult tale to tell than he expected it to be. Though some of the details were clear in his head—Rictus’s first appearance; the sinking of the ark; his and Wendell’s escape—there was much else he could not properly remember. It was as though the mist he’d strode through had seeped into his head, and had there drawn a veil over the House and much of what it contained.

“I remember speaking to you on the phone two or three times,” he said.

“You didn’t speak to us, honey,” his mom replied.

“Then that was just another trick,” Harvey said. “I should have known.”

“But who was playing all those tricks?” his father demanded. “If this House exists—I say if—then whoever owns it kidnapped you and somehow kept you from growing up. Maybe he froze you—”

“No,” said Harvey. “It was warm there, except when the snow came down, of course.”

“There has to be some sane explanation.”

“There is,” said Harvey. “It was magic.”

His father shook his head. “That’s a child’s answer,” he said. “And I’m not a child anymore.”

“And I know what I know,” said Harvey firmly.

“It isn’t very much, honey,” his mom said.

“I wish I could remember more.”

She put a comforting arm around his shoulder. “Never mind,” she said, “we’ll talk about it when you’ve had a rest.”

“Could you find this House again?” his father asked him.

“Yes,” Harvey replied, though his skin ran with chills at the thought of going back. “I think so”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

“I don’t want him going back to that place,” his mother said.

“We have to know it exists before we report it to the police. You understand that, don’t you, son?”

Harvey nodded. “It sounds like something I made up, I know. But it’s not. I swear it’s not.”

“Come on, sweetie,” his mother said. “I’m afraid your room’s changed a bit, but it’s still comfortable. I kept it just as you’d left it for years and years, hoping you’d find your way home. Then I realized if you ever did come back you’d be a grown man, and you wouldn’t want it decorated with rocket ships and parrots. So we had the decorators in. It’s completely different now.”

“I don’t mind,” Harvey said. “It’s home, and that’s all I care about.”

In the early afternoon, as he slept in his old room, it rained: a hard March rain that beat against the window and slapped on the sill. The sound woke him. He sat up in bed with the hairs at his nape pricking and knew that he’d been dreaming of Lulu. Poor, lost Lulu, dragging her misshapen body through the bushes, her flipper hand clutching the ark animals she’d dredged up from the mud.

The thought of her unhappiness was unbearable. How could he ever hope to live in the world to which he’d returned, knowing that she remained Hood’s prisoner?

“I’ll find you,” he murmured to himself. “I will, I swear…”

Then he lay back on the cold pillow, and listened to the sound of rain until sleep crept over him.

Exhausted by his travels and traumas, he didn’t wake again until the following morning. The rain had cleared. It was time to lay plans.

“I bought a map of the whole of Millsap,” his father said, unfolding his purchase and spreading it over the kitchen table. “There’s our house.” He had already marked the place with a cross. “Now, do you remember any of the street names around Hood’s place?”

Harvey shook his head. “I was too busy escaping,” he said.

“Were there any particular buildings you saw?”

“It was dark, and rainy.”

“So we just have to trust to luck.”

“We’ll find it,” Harvey said. “Even if it takes all week.”

It was easier said than done. More than three decades had passed since he’d first made his way through the town with Rictus, and countless things had changed. There were new plazas and new slums; new cars on the streets and new aircraft overhead. So many distractions, all keeping Harvey from the trail.

“I don’t know which way is which,” he admitted, after they’d been searching for half a day. “Nothing’s the way I remember it.”

“We’ll keep going,” his father said. “It’ll all come clear.”

It didn’t. They spent the rest of the day wandering around, hoping that some Night would trigger a memory, but it was frustrating business. Every now and then, in some square or street, Harvey would say: “Maybe this is it,” and they’d head off in one direction or another, only to find that the trail grew cold a few blocks on.

That evening, his father quizzed him again.

“If you could only remember what the House looked like,” he said, “I could describe it to people.”