Something about a dog, she thought suddenly. I remember something about a dog in those woods, something about a dog and it was hurt and I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I know something did. Or maybe I’m just recalling some ancient, forgotten dream.

The car twisted along through the woods for perhaps another ten minutes. Soon, the forest receded and a series of squat houses, almost hut-like in appearance, materialized through the fog. These were new; Kelly did not remember them from her youth…although there was a lot she could not remember about her childhood. Like the memory of the dog—and what had that been about?—everything seemed like just a half-memory, like a memory that was not truly hers, but maybe someone else’s she had been allowed to borrow.

"Who lives here?" she asked Rotley. "I don’t remember houses being here."

"I’m not familiar with anyone around here," was all the driver said.

Thanks, Shaft, you’ve been real helpful. Much obliged.

And then—there it was. Leaning forward in her seat and peering through the Cadillac’s windshield, Kelly could see the looming monstrosity atop its grand sloping precipice, brooding and haunted against the backdrop of the pitch-black night. The compound, she thought, hating that word even as her mind brought it up. It was almost surreal, this Frankenstein image, this postcard from a distant world, and she found she could not take her eyes off it as they approached. The house’s silhouette was all spires and points and arrowhead roofs—something out of an architect’s nightmare. Like a clawed hand ripping out of the ground, reaching for Heaven.

It became difficult for her to breathe, and the inside of the Cadillac no longer seemed cold. Rather, she’d broken out in a sweat, could feel droplets of perspiration running from her armpits and down the sides of her ribs.

Rotley maneuvered the Cadillac around a dirt turnabout and passed through an open iron gate. Rocks popped and snapped beneath the crunch of the car’s tires. Slowly, as if the climb were too strenuous for the vehicle, Rotley urged the Cadillac up the face of the precipice.

Ahead in the darkness, and like an unavoidable illness, the compound grew closer.