“I’ve been going over it and over it in my mind, you understand. I’m not the kind of person who sees things. I haven’t even told mywife. It was just so strange. But I’m never going back there—I know that much. Nothing could make me go.”
I had no time for this. “Who was it?”
Henry paused.
“It was a person, right? So who? Who did you see?” Was it Mom or Dad? I wondered. The thought of one of them wandering around the old house made me angry, but something told me that wasn’t it. An icy shard of cold slid into my stomach, because if it wasn’t them, it had to be— No. No.
Henry said, “Look, Mrs. Esmie—”
“Who did you see?” My voice was a hoarse shout as I cut him off.
“A boy,” Henry said. “A little boy, about six or seven, standing in front of the house.”
Something hard hit my knees. The floor. I’d fallen to my knees without realizing it. “Did he speak?” I asked.
“Mrs. Esmie—”
“Did he speak?” I shouted, my voice ringing in the dead woman’s bedroom. “Just tell me.What did he say?”
Henry sounded frightened now. He wasn’t the only one. My anger had turned into sick, nauseating fear.
“The little boy at your house,” Henry told me. “He said, ‘Come home.’ ”
2
Vail
Montana
The door clicking shut behind me was a relief. There was nothing but the darkness, the rain, and silence.
I stood there for a long minute, holding the box of files, my overnight bag at my feet. I’d spent too many hours in airports in the last two days, seen too many people. California had too much sunshine. This was much better.
I set the box on the floor and brushed my sleeve over the lid, wiping off the rain. I unlaced my muddy boots and picked the box up again, walking steadily through the darkness, weaving around the few pieces of furniture in here without needing to see them. I set the box on my kitchen table and turned on the lamp there.
I scrubbed my hands through my wet hair, rubbed the rain from my temples. I needed a shave. The cabin smelled like pine, and the floor was cold against my damp socks. I was so completely alone here that I could die and no one would find my desiccated body for weeks. That was a selling point for me.
I got a glass of milk from the kitchen, the light from inside the fridge the only light I needed. As I turned back to the table, the blinking light from the answering machine caught my eye. I ignored it. Friends? I had none. Ex-girlfriends? No, thank you. My sisters? They had no reason to call me that I could think of. My parents? Thankfully dead.
Instead of walking toward the phone, I went back to the kitchen table, sipped my milk, and pulled my notes from the file box.
Subject: Charles Zimmer
Age: Fifty-six
Status: Divorced, lives alone, two grown children
Number of encounters: At least twenty, exact number not calculated
Type of encounter: Home invasion and possible study
First encounter: 1974
Twenty encounters at least, over fifteen years. It was an interesting case, though not a completely unique one. Charles Zimmer of Sacramento, California, was an investment banker, rich and good-looking, wearing crisp tan pants and a pressed white shirt to our meeting. He did not appear to be crazy.
His house was large, decorated in painful white, with floor-to-ceiling windows and icy air-conditioning. With my overgrown hair, beard, and red-and-black flannel shirt, I’d looked like a lumberjack who’d somehow wandered into his gated neighborhood.
“You don’t look like you’re from VUFOS,” he’d said to me, looking me up and down. “I expected someone…” He trailed off.
