He was baffled. “What’s going on? I have to get back in.”

The police officer with the flashlight was firm. “The whole town is cordoned off until daybreak. No one gets in until we can get a handle on the blackout and the student rioting.”

“But I live here!”

The officer would not yield. “Sorry, pal. No one gets in or out.”

Frustrated, Michael returned to his open car door and considered what if any options he had. A gravel road a quarter of a mile back had him connecting the first of several vague lines in his head. He made a u-turn to retrace his tracks, and, on pulling onto the side road, was quickly snaking his way into the outskirts of town. The police had closed off the road leading to the meadow, although a spiraling plume of smoke was easy to spot rising against a light rain and dark sky. Michael drove the long way round to his neighborhood, yet could get nowhere near it for more barricades. He parked down the street and cut through yards to cover the remaining distance, taking care to stay away from the exposed street. As he approached the Quadrangle, he shuddered at what he saw. Beyond a row of police cars and yellow tape stood what remained of the old house. A flash of lightning revealed the full extent of damage to the back of the property. The resident fell back into the shrubbery to latch onto something real. A police officer was abruptly behind him; both men were startled by the encounter.

Drizzle drubbed the rim of the policeman’s hat, punctuating his words. “What do you think you’re…?” He froze in a moment of recognition. “Say!” he barked. “Aren’t you him? The guy they pulled out of this house?”

Michael was about to bolt when another officer came up to help restrain him. Despite his vehement protests, his handlers hustled him down to a squad car at the curb and spirited him away.

“What the hell is going on?” he exclaimed. “What happened to my house?”

The officer on the passenger-side was unexcited. “Meteorite or something. You’re damn lucky to be alive.”

“Where are you taking me?”

The officer doing the driving was equally low-key. “Back to the hospital. Where do you think?”

“Hospital?”

“You’re an amnesia victim, buddy. You’re a danger to yourself out wandering around.”

The hospital loomed ahead, and was the only building in the vicinity to have electricity. A towering construction crane, set off in a floodlight, dominated its unfinished roof. A slender joist dangled from its harness and tolled dully as it swung against a black, starless clearing in the clouds. Michael shriveled under its oppressive view, though his dead weight was no obstacle in getting him through a backdoor and handed off to other men in white lab coats. They in turn escorted him up a flight of stairs to a room where he was stripped, dressed in a gown, and strapped to a bed. The unwilling patient listened to the knell as it radiated down through the walls. It was as though a wasp were on the roof thumping bark for soft-bodied grubs. Paint buckets sat in the floor around the bed, though going by sanded patches of putty, the drywall was still waiting for its first coat. The hospital was only half-built, which made him think he was being held in a make-do interrogation room.

A scowling shadow turned up in the doorway; the man attached to it was slower slithering into view. He circled from one side of the dazed man’s bed to another, as if on a stage, with his arms behind him and head affectedly tilted down. His dark face softened after the first impression found its mark. “Ah, Mr. Louden-West,” he said.

Michael puzzled at the theatrics. “Who are you?”

Harrod was glum in reply. “Amnesia now, Mr. Louden-West? Come, come...”

“Is this a psychiatric hospital?” the restrained man interrupted. “Are trying to convince me I’m crazy?”

The detective drew in a long breath. “In absence of a better explanation, sir, perhaps you are only trying to convince yourself of that.”

The banging joist sounded again just when two police officers appeared at the door. Pincher gestured broadly and they unstrapped the man from the bed and set him on his feet. Together they followed the inspector to the door and down a stairwell to a basement. On entering a morgue, three tables, draped with white sheets, took on a decided chill under fluorescent lights. The dark detective stood at the opposite end of the room and snapped his fingers; an assistant pulled away a crisp sheet from the first table to uncover the petrified remains of a hobo. His gouged-out eyes were decorated with trickles of dried blood, which formed nearly perfect starburst patterns on his sunken face. A second assistant, following the first, yanked away the next cloth; the grey body of dwarf took its place along side the derelict.

The mysterious inspector walked up to the diminutive corpse and lifted the end of a noose, which had fused to a purplish neck. The stiff head creaked like a desiccated branch before dropping back to the metal table with a thud. “Mr. Cretier’s best performance, yet. Wouldn’t you say, sir?”

Michael did not know what to make of the macabre presentation, or the strange man. But it was third table—the one closest to him—that terrified him most. The assistant was waiting for the appropriate cue before whipping away the remaining sheet.

The police detective opted for a bit of theatre by way of prelude. “All men are haunted by demons of some sort, Mr. Louden-West. And most men, being simple creatures of frank instinct, face their fears in one place, whereas the imaginative man—the man who cultivates elaborate screens—becomes ensnared in his own cleverness.” He inched up to the remaining table and stared at its razor creases. “You see, sir. We found the remains of a child in the reservoir not far from your house. Only it is not the child we are seeking. The child we want is only using this child as a decoy.” The detective waved the assistant away from the table. He made another gesture and the same man moved over to a white curtain partition that stood at one unassuming end of the room. On wheeling it aside, a black box-like object reminiscent of a coffee grinder was revealed; a stack of yellowed papers sat on a table beside it. Pincher placed his hand ponderously on top of the contraption. “This is a telephone, sir. A rather peculiar telephone uncovered in the rubble of your house. We can make no sense of the blueprints connected to it. They are too idiosyncratic and redundant to piece together in any coherent way. We also suspect one very crucial page is missing for how to extrapolate what we desire from the box.” He whirled the rotary crank with a gloved finger and static poured out it:

“--- -- -- ---- - - -- -- ---- ------ - - - - -- ------ - -- -- -- -- -- ------”

The sound crept down into Michael’s ear and dusted off long neglected synapses. He dropped to his knees on hearing it, even as his gaze remained fixed on the last covered body.

The detective watched him for a long, curious moment, yet either did not have the heart to pull away the last sheet or never intended to do so in some cunning calculation. He was plainspoken. “The ghost child we want has been ingeniously wired into this box, Mr. Louden-West. And it is only you who can fetch the dear out for us. This will invariably dredge up more memories than are needed, I’m afraid.” He paused. “But what was it Oscar Wilde once wrote: ‘He who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die’?”

The two assistants, seeing an end to the presentation, scraped the pathetic man off the cold floor.

Inspector Pincher was disposed to be more sympathetic. “Stories are all in some sense misrepresentations of the world as it truly is, Mr. Louden-West. A good story, especially one with a happy ending, is merely a trite homily that marries reason and emotion together in an appealing way that life, with its moral ambiguity, its tedious minutia, and forward-rolling inevitability, cannot. This being said, however, I hope yours will be a happy ending.” He turned away. “I have no directive for you, sir! You are free to go!”

The officers carried the limp man out of the morgue and back up the stairs. Before he could catch his breath, he was tossed out into the lobby where a frantic mob had assembled. What looked like mass hysteria was flowing in unimpeded through the revolving door. Michael was promptly carried off in the current of bodies churning its way back into the feeding end and coughed out onto the sidewalk. He peered up at the top of the hospital on hearing a loose chain clang dissonantly in a gust; the crane’s harness was now empty. The same stiff breeze snagged his sleeve and pulled him up the block. Halloween revelers passed him by, but none thought it strange to see a man wearing a hospital gown on such a night. One faintly familiar street after another came and went under his bare feet until he was back at his car.

Michael returned to his crumbling house and passed through its front door: this time unmolested by police. Videocassettes and candy corn covered the still intact living room floor, but like everything else they were in fragments too small to be easily reassembled in memory. He ascended the stairs with its listing banister, clinging only to the bare essence of the house itself. The bedroom door was hard to push open, yet on moving inside he found this room also in one piece.

A relit candle provided enough illumination to see his way toward re-nailing a numinous painting back up in the hallway. The act was more than tempting fate. It was a provocation bordering on a summons. A solitary light shone from across the rooftops of the Quadrangle at the windowsill, and though it was impossible to say from which house it emanated, Michael saw destiny in it. A blanket was needed to blot it out, for what little peace he still required, so the spread was stripped off the bed and draped over the curtain rod. He stumbled over a bottle of Eszopiclone on the bathroom basin, and without deliberation swallowed a handful of the pills. The house was now emptied of all but its shadows, leaving the resident to wedge the door with a chair and blow out the candle. He was preparing for something he could hardly fathom with his actions, so reclined on the dark bed to discover what it would be.

The groaning timbers of the old house talked among themselves around his sinking body, but were of a divided mind on the subject of their being company.