Tourism is big, a boon to the economy, and yet I wonder if the locals don’t resent people like us for coming into their town, for using their lakes and woods as our summer playground. Nearly all of the houses around here are unmaintained, situated on large, heavily wooded lots with rusted, if not wrecked, cars on the lawn beside things like hot water heaters and washing machines that decorate the property like yard art. At some of the homes, people sit outside, on sunken front porches (a manon one, smoking what I think, at first, to be a cigarette, until I see the bulbous end of a crack pipe) while other homes look like they’ve been abandoned or are uninhabitable. It’s unsettling and strikes me how very different rural poverty is from urban poverty. It’s out of view, tucked away on backwoods streets as opposed to homeless people living on city street corners and in slummy housing projects with boarded-up windows that are infiltrated by gangs. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less prevalent.
I reach Moon Road, which is narrow and potholed. Above me, trees overhang the street, blotting out the sun. I drive slowly, leaned forward in my seat, searching for Daniel’s house. Eventually I find the address on a rusted mailbox that sits at the end of a driveway, its post becoming uprooted and pitching forward toward the street: 126 Moon Road.
My stomach tightens. By instinct, I lift my foot up off the gas. I press lightly on the brake and the car slows to a stop at the end of the driveway. I feel my breath change as I take in his house, which is some type of depressed manufactured home with a detached garage that’s just barely bigger than a shed.
I lift my foot from the brake. I press lightly on the accelerator and ease the car over the curb and into the driveway where I stop again, sliding the gearshift into Park. I sit, leaned forward in my seat, eyeing the single-story house through the windshield, with its low-slung roof and the tiny, jalousie windows that must allow almost no amount of light or air to get into the home.
I imagine the darkness inside the house. I imagine the stale, unventilated air.
He’s like a cat you let outside to roam. It’s gone so long, you think it’s dead—that a car or a coyote got it—but then one day, he just reappears as if no one was ever looking for him.
I tell myself to leave, to go back to the cottage, to Elliott and the kids.
But instead, I let go of the gearshift. I turn the engine off. Ibring my hands to the seat belt, which I unbuckle, slowly feeding it into place.
I set my hand on the door handle and pull on the lever, opening the door to get out.
The house sits on dirt and is surrounded, like everything else around here, by trees. Outside, I get assailed by mosquitoes, thousands of them that must breed in the dense woodland and leafy debris that surrounds the small home. I close the car door quickly, but still, some get in. A chill runs through me, the outside temperature colder in the shade. My senses are heightened; I’m overcome with a profound sense that something isn’t right, though I tell myself it’s nothing. The police were already here. They came to look for Daniel and he wasn’t home.
It’s not intuition. It’s just fear speaking.
Daniel Clarke, I remind myself for a third time, isn’t here.
I move away from the safety of my car. The world around me smells damp, earthy, dirt-like. Outside the house, a firepit filled with ash sits cold beside cigarette butts, beside empty cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and cheap plastic lawn chairs that are knocked over and lying on their sides on the dirt. There is no grass to speak of, which makes the land feel depressed and neglected. The ground is soft, the sun unable to penetrate the trees to ever dry the earth fully. With every step, I leave footprints.
I circle the exterior of the house. There is litter strewn on the ground from garbage cans that have been knocked on their side, their contents scavenged by wildlife. There are tire tracks in the dirt, like from a bike or an ATV.
My chest feels heavy, a weighted blanket lying on it.
I imagine Reese here, her desperate screams going unanswered.
I make my way to the back of the house, which butts up against the woods. There is no porch or deck to speak of; on the back of the house, the sliding glass door drops down to theearth, where more trash—more cigarette butts, more beer cans—has been left on the ground.
I go toward the door, to see what I can see through the glass. I close in on it, cupping my hands around my eyes for a better look.
But then I stop. Because the door, I realize, is open, an eighth-inch gap running between the frame and the glass panel.
My jaw goes slack in disbelief. I lower my hands to my sides and stare at that gap.Don’t, I tell myself—willing myself to turn around, to go back to the car, to drive back to the cottage and forget all about the open door.
But instead, I reach out. I set my hand on the handle, feeling the splintered wood against my skin. I pull without thinking, and it’s reckless and impetuous. The door slides easily open along the track, the cool summer breeze whooshing in and moving the broken vertical blinds just inside the open door so that the vanes clang into one another, making noise like a dull wind chime.
It’s not too late, I tell myself. I can still close the door, turn around, go home.
I do none of those things.
Instead, I climb the stoop and enter Daniel Clarke’s home, sweeping the blinds away with a hand, moving past them. I leave the sliding glass door open behind me.
I don’t think about the fact that I’m trespassing or about getting caught.
I only think about finding Reese.
The smell that greets me is rancid, like rotting meat in a trash can. It stuns me at first, stinging my eyes. Standing there in the kitchen, trying to ascertain the source of the smell, I wonder if the police entered the house when they came to look for Daniel, or if they just knocked on the door and then left when no one answered it.
What if Reese is here?
I want to call out for her. But instead I keep quiet. I hold my breath, practically gagging on the smell, dragging myself across the room, my heartbeat drumming in my ears.
The ceilings of the house are low. The walls are a wood paneling from some other generation. Stained high-pile brown carpeting lines the floor except for in the kitchen, which is a faux brick linoleum. Everything is brown and dreary. As expected, there is almost no natural lighting coming in through the small windows. There is no air.
