William Royden

We walked through the emptying streets and passed only a single person on the way to our destination, a young girl walking her dog.

We stopped only once after that to buy a flashlight.

Cording hadn't expected to be in town this late.

I got the impression that its atmosphere weakened him so greatly that his body could only tolerate a limited amount of time there, like a diver needing eventually to come up for air.

But where a diver could return to the surface right away, cording needed weeks, even months, to decompress after a day in Robinson.

I'm not sure exactly when we got to the edge of my grandfather's property.

We walked up the winding path that led to the house through total darkness.

Cording trained the flashlight ahead of us.

He did not trust fully that my grandfather had left, and so he moved with great care, trying to spot the place where the truck had been parked before we could be seen.

The truck really was gone.

We had the property to ourselves.

As scared as I was, looking at all the trees surrounding the acreage made it even worse.

They hid expanses of woods deep enough to become lost in.

I knew that my grandfather always kept his doors unlocked.

In all the time I had lived with him, no one had ever entered his house unwanted.

But now it was different.

The front and back doors would not open.

Cording pulled on them very gently, not wanting to make any sound.

To ask me if there were some other way into the place, he had to get very close to me and whisper almost in my ear.

I shuddered to have him almost touch me.