Devil House

by John Darnielle

California has a way of erasing its own history;

But few things, at any rate, are more powerful than expectations. Blunt force, maybe. Firepower, certainly. Sword and steel. But even those have their limits. The imagination has none.

Reporters are like the police. It’s in their interest to tell you whatever you need to hear as long as it makes you cooperate. The

That’s the nature of luxury. You become accustomed to its presence.

It’s the feeling that, not so long ago, there were hills and dirt roads here: in Southern California, you have to strain to imagine such days, but up north their aura has a half-life.

“It’s an adjustment, to a native Californian, to feel like you’re part of a longer conversation with the ground underneath you.”

sometimes you get just enough of whatever it is that you need in order to go on to the next thing, no matter how bad it is.

Seeing old friends address nagging questions about which we sometimes otherwise feel uneasy: Am I the same person I was when I was young? Are my earlier selves still safe somewhere inside me? Is there a thread somewhere that connects the past to the present, or is everything more chaotic than we’d like to think?

Like many abandoned spaces, it’s an indicator of where somebody once saw some possibilities.