Heph lingered behind me a few moments more, as if to make sure he had gotten through to me. Then he continued on his way. I waited until he had collected his supplies and returned to the cellar, and then gathered myself and walked out to my car.
I hadn’t intended to make much of my trip into town. But, as it happened, the closer I got to Milan, the more excited and enthusiastic I became. Heph’s words rang in my head — it was time to stop preparing and start living. It was cold today, but soon the warm spring weather would arrive, and I would go out into nature, and be a part of it. I found a sporting goods store and picked out a tent and sleeping bag, a modest fishing rig, and a pair of lightweight, waterproof boots — a far cry from the heavy, bulky footwear I was accustomed to. I then treated myself to a lunch at the local Chinese buffet, where I discovered that I was hungry beyond measure. Time and time again, I loaded my plate with steamed white rice, sweet orange-flavored chicken, fried pork dumplings, and spicy beef and vegetables, only stopping when I literally could no longer consume another bite. It occurred to me that I had been neglecting my nutrition, and had probably lost a great deal of weight over the past two weeks. As I sat there digesting, in a slightly dirty booth near the slightly dirty window, beneath a buzzing neon sign, those weeks seemed like a mere hiccup in time, a transitional period that had now come to a close. This greasy, sumptuous meal was the line that divided that period from the rest of my life, which, for the first time in recent memory, I was ravenously eager to begin living. I staggered, packed with food, out to my car, then drove to the grocery store and bought enough provisions for two weeks. I also bought seeds, tools, plastic fencing, and posts at the garden center, and arranged to have the junk in my yard hauled away. I have a very large car, but the rear was full, all the way to the ceiling.
I arrived back at my house as the sun was setting. Heph’s van was gone from the lot, and his bill, complete with a self-addressed envelope for payment, was wedged into the crack between the door and its frame. Inside, the house was warm and inviting, and filled with slanting evening light. It was dinnertime, but I had eaten enough to last until dinnertime the next day. I realized suddenly that I did not want to leave — that I was going to sleep here tonight, for the first time. I called my motel and settled over the phone; I had left nothing in my room. When I hit END, I realized that I had made the break. I was living here now, in my house on the hill, and felt, at long last, that I was ready.
I have to admit that I had great difficulty getting to sleep that first night. A mind accustomed to stimulation, and left without, will create its own — and in my empty house, in the moonless, deathly silence of night, mine was madly racing into the early hours. The house creaked in a wind, and the furnace shuddered and clanked as it regulated the temperature. I thought that I smelled flowers, and then gunpowder, and then burning wood. Ghostly flashes burst at the edges of my vision. I believed, several times, that someone was walking stealthily through the rooms, and I crept downstairs, knife in hand, to investigate. But no one was there, and I never discovered the source of the sound, if there had ever really been one.
Worse yet, when at last I did fall into an uneasy, shallow sleep, my dreams were strange. I stood in a desert as a sandstorm swirled around me. I collapsed in exhaustion, cupping my hands around my mouth to keep the sand from my lungs. Then I was digging, digging like a dog with both my hands, and I uncovered a wooden trapdoor, which led to an iron ladder. I climbed deep into the ground, eventually dropping into a tunnel, lit by bare incandescent bulbs and supported by thick wooden beams, like an old mine. The walls slanted, the ceiling sagged, and I walked through the maze of corridors in search of the source of the voices I heard — familiar voices, those of people I knew, though I couldn’t tell who. And then, suddenly, the voices were behind me. I was leading those people somewhere, but I couldn’t turn to see who they were. They chatted and laughed: only I understood the grave danger we were all in, that death lurked around every blind corner, and I tried in vain to quiet them. There was light ahead, and heat, and terrible peril, and the rifle I carried had turned to rubber, and then to something like licorice, because I was eating it, ravenously, as I had eaten my lunch at the Chinese buffet. I woke before dawn with tears in my eyes and my hand in my mouth, having actually drawn blood in a semicircular pattern of marks, like the rough stitching on a rag doll.
But daylight soon began to trickle through the windows, and the dream faded away into abstraction. The terror and madness that made it so real now seemed like ridiculous clichés, the scar on my hand a small embarrassment. I sat on the floor, rested my arms on the sill of the east-facing bedroom window, and watched the sun come up over the trees. The forest was still gray, but green had begun, ever so faintly, to creep across its surface, like a mold. The sight of it filled me with determination and excitement. I rolled up my sleeping bag, put on my clothes, and packed a bag with fruit, trail mix, dried meat, and a bottle of water. It was time to go for a hike.
Considering the amount of time that had passed since the house had last been occupied, the edge of the forest where it met the yard was strangely well defined. The house gave way to hard-packed gravel and dirt, which sloped down into rough, woody weeds and shrubs; then, about forty feet from the northeastern corner of the house, the treeline began, a wall of tightly packed maples, birches, ashes, and pines. The trunks were high and narrow, the light beyond them dim despite the scant foliage. Peering into the forest, I could make out a tangled canopy of thin branches overhead. Heph was right — it was indeed rough. I walked back and forth along the treeline, searching for, if not a path, then perhaps the ghost of a path that must certainly once have existed. The deer, at the very least, had to have a way in and out. But no entry point looked better than any other, and so I took a deep breath, raised a leg high into the air, and stepped in at random.
Almost immediately I became tangled in a thicket. Thorns and burrs caught at my pants, and saplings snapped against my face. I half-closed my eyes and ventured forth, my boots ripping and cracking the tangle below. I gripped the tree trunks and pulled myself along.
After about ten feet, the going became easier. The heavy shadows of the woods discouraged low brush, and I was left with only deadfall to contend with. To be sure, the deadfall was a problem — variegated, chaotic, and covered over by dead leaves and moss, it formed a second ground surface above the real ground, which was visible only in small patches. It would have been impossible to step from one of these areas to the next, as with rocks in a stream; they were too haphazard, and too far apart. Instead, I was forced to make my way by balancing on broken branches and slick patches of slime. The potential to trip, fall, or twist an ankle was very great, and my frustration quickly grew. I was forced to direct 90 percent of my attention toward the problem of staying upright and not hurting myself, when what I really wanted was to get a sense of the geography of my woods. Imagine my surprise and anger when I turned to find that I could still see the house behind me — the treeline was barely thirty feet away!