Devil House

by John Darnielle

The future feels dramatic when you think you see a little of it cresting the horizon, the more so if the present feels routine.

Languishing in obscure details until they reveal their deeper secrets may not be wealth, but you’re fooling yourself if you think it isn’t luxury.

Evelyn Gates was standing flash-frozen in genuine horror at the sights that surrounded her, the thousand loving touches that illuminated the magnitude of her miscalculation, the innumerable things she didn’t know or care enough to learn about the people who lived or did business in the properties she’d inherited from her father.

How strange to stand like a child, and tremble At a headless body—one more head To stuff and smoke and set on an empty stake; And if in the long nights of the long winter It still stares at you with its aching smile, And when you name it, and lean to it longingly, Its eyes seem to cloud in the firelight And it turns from you, slowly, in the stinging smoke— What is it but one more head?

The world felt like a movie set, or like a carbon copy of itself with fewer people and cars gumming up the works and getting in the way.

Seth, in this moment, you are exactly who you think you are—a helper, a minister almost. The keys to the fortress are yours; in the right light, to the weary traveler, the luster of their gleam is almost holy.

Over time, sleep deprivation changes the texture of sunlight into a mild narcotic, a lilting force of such gentle, persuasive power that it can cause the terrors of night to withdraw their attack.