Devil House

by John Darnielle

I remember, before I finally fell asleep, feeling like there wasn’t all that much to say about my life. I’d had several satisfying relationships; they hadn’t amounted to much. I’d gotten better at my work, and been rewarded for it, but I sometimes felt like life had run out of surprises for me. I did what I did, and got the results I expected. I kept up my practice and it paid my way. My wheels made an agreeable noise when they spun. The

There is ample space in the brain for several worlds to occupy at once.

At the same time, you don’t want to make saints out of everybody: there are plenty of murder victims who, while they certainly didn’t deserve to die any more than anybody else does, weren’t exactly blameless in their lives. Everybody’s complicated.

children have greater powers of observation than many people suspect, and are often perfectly capable of drawing good conclusions from the information available to them, information not volunteered by anyone in particular but circulating openly, effortlessly, in the very air that they breathe.