Ed grasped the brass handle of the front door and pulled it open. The interior of the house was dusty, and a plume of white smoke emanated from the opening. It was dark. Ed found three light switches by the door and tried each of them, but of course, they didn’t do anything. He took two small steps into the house and let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

This was a family room in the front, with a dust-bathed sofa and a television that looked like it was from the 1980s in the corner. A red-stone fireplace was tucked into the back wall, flanked by two rocking chairs. A handful of portraits decorated the wood-strip walls. Two people and a young girl figured in most of them. Ed looked closer at the man in one of the photos, wiping away the grey sheen to get a better look. It was John, no doubt. He was younger, with jet-black hair and fewer lines in his face, and he sported a bright smile that Ed had yet to see in person. It must have been taken fifteen years earlier.

Ed wandered to the left of the door, into a dining room with a round wooden table and four slat-backed chairs. The table was empty, and the chairs pushed in, as if the family had tidied up just before they left forever. This was Vera’s family’s house, Ed knew. It didn’t take much sleuthing to put that together. The little girl in the picture was her. The woman, Ed wasn’t sure. John hadn’t mentioned ever having a wife or a family, but the woman in the picture was clearly his partner. Ed would have to ask him about it later.

There was a small kitchenette with an old green refrigerator and a little serving window facing into the living room, and a small hallway toward the back of the house led to a bathroom and a small flight of stairs, headed up. The sound of the clatter came again from somewhere on the second floor. Heavy clomps sounded on the ceiling, as if someone upstairs were redecorating. Ed reached the bottom of the staircase and looked upstairs. It was dark, though a dim light from a window fluttered from around the corner. He waited, hoping the source of the noise would reveal itself, but it didn’t.

He started up the stairs, letting his weight settle carefully on each step to prevent it from creaking. Each time, it made a small noise, but the clamor from whatever was moving around was loud enough to drown out his quiet ascent. It was probably just Vera, cleaning out a second-story room to prepare to move back in. At worst, it would be a raccoon or some other small creature that had made a home in the abandoned house. He’d be able to get away.

And at the very worst, he thought. He shooed the thought away, the same as he would a raccoon. That kind of supernatural thinking was no good for him. Nothing strange was happening in Crowheart. He needed to get his head clear again.

He looked around the corner at the top of the stairs but saw nothing in the narrow hallway that greeted him. There were two doors on the right, and two on the left. A side table with a pot filled with dead flowers marked the end of the hallway. The sounds were coming from the last door on the right side, which was open. Ed took a deep breath and slinked into the hallway like a house burglar. This was stupid, he knew. To surprise whatever was in here would more likely endanger him than whatever it was. But he needed to know.

He peered slowly into the bedroom, his heart leapt, and cold relief cascaded throughout him. John was in the room, sifting through cardboard boxes that had been stacked on a king bed’s frame, the mattress removed. He set the items he pulled from the boxes carefully on the wireframe. Blankets, binders, pictures, and books all went onto the bed.

“Jesus, John, you scared the shit out of me,” Ed said. “How’d you beat me here? I thought you were going home.” John didn’t respond. He just kept pulling things from the box.

“John?” Ed asked. John shook his head, setting the box aside and dragging another over to him. He didn’t have a cutting tool, so he ripped the top of the box open, the tape distorting as he pulled on it until it looked like a wire.

“Where the fuck are my keys?” John asked, looking into the box.

“Are you serious? You think your keys are here?” Ed asked. John had seemed very cogent to him in the hours they had known each other. Ed hadn’t noticed anything about John’s behavior that had seemed unusual, but this was very unusual.

“They were right there,” John said, pointing to the nightstand by the bed. All that was on it was a lamp with a ripped shade and a clock radio. “They’re always right there.”

“You used to live here,” Ed said, “And that’s where you put your keys?”

“Every night,” John said.

“They’re probably down at your house, John,” Ed said. “Let’s step outside and get some fresh air, maybe?”

John finished rifling through the second box and leaned over it for a long moment, sighing deeply. He turned slowly, his hand on his brow. He was frustrated. Ed hadn’t really seen dementia – his own parents had never suffered it – but his wife’s parents had. She used to tell him stories about her mother, about how she could seem fine for an entire morning, only to come loose from reality without warning. John hadn’t seemed so bad, but he’d also seemed incredibly worried. Maybe Ed just caught him in a long moment of clarity – or not so much, he thought. All that talk about curses. Ed had taken John seriously about it, but maybe it wasn’t serious at all. Maybe it was the symptom.

Movement caught the corner of Ed’s eye, and he glanced out the window to see Vera approaching the house with a gun in her hand.

“Shit, she doesn’t know it’s us,” Ed said. How often, he wondered, does she catch John in the old house, looking through old boxes? “I’ll go talk to her.”

“Vera’s coming?” John asked.

“She must have heard you rummaging around,” Ed said.

“She might have my keys,” he said. “She’s always taking them.”

“I don’t think that’s true, John,” Ed said, “She’s got her own truck and her own house. I think you’re a little confused. You should sit down.”

“She’s not old enough to drive, though, her feet don’t even reach the pedals,” John said.

“I’ll be right back, John, you just wait here,” Ed said. Her feet don’t reach the pedals. That was how his wife had described it, too. Becca’s mother would tell her long stories about her daughter Rebecca, about how she was starting middle school in the fall, never realizing that her daughter was grown and sitting just across from her. John must lose track of time sometimes, Ed thought, as he walked back down the hallway to the top of the stairs.

“Vera?” He called down the stairs. Vera was also trying to keep quiet, but it was impossible to sneak into the house if someone knew to listen for you.

“Jesus Christ,” Vera yelled, punctuating the words. He heard the click of her gun – was that cocking it, or uncocking it, Ed wondered – and the shuffle of her steps as she jumped in surprise. “Ed Easton, what the fuck are you doing in here?”

“I was sitting on the front porch waiting for you to wake up,” Ed said, realizing for the first time just how creepy even that sounded. “I heard someone in here. John’s up here, Vera. He’s having an episode.”

Vera appeared in the staircase. She tucked her revolver into the back of her jeans. She’d pulled on a baggy t-shirt that advertised the Riverton Stock Show and Rodeo, with two American flags framing a cowboy riding a bronco, flanked by clowns in barrels. It was a very busy shirt.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“John’s confused,” Ed said. “He thinks he left his keys here. It might help him to see you.”

“What?” Vera asked, rubbing her eyes. “What do you mean? Why would John think his keys were here?”

“I think he doesn’t know when it is,” Ed said.

“What? It’s today,” Vera said, pushing past him.

“Well, I know that, and you know that, but John might not,” Ed said.

“Are you… Ed, do you still feel a little lightheaded?” Vera said, pausing at the door at the end of the hallway. She was looking into the room where John was rifling through boxes. “Well, shit, that’s a mess.”

“It happens,” Ed said. “My wife’s mother had episodes like this.”

“Where she looted someone’s house?” Vera asked, stepping into the room. Ed joined her at the end of the hallway and looked inside. It was only Vera in there. The boxes were all torn open, but John wasn’t there anymore. Vera started packing all of the items back into the boxes haphazardly, groaning to herself as she did so.

“Ed, this isn’t cool,” she said. “You shouldn’t have done this.”

“I didn’t do it,” Ed said, his heart rate accelerating. “Vera, believe me, I didn’t do it. There was someone else in here. I could have sworn it was John. He was confused.”

“Yeah, John doesn’t get confused,” Vera said. “He doesn’t get episodes. So, nice try. Trying to pin the blame on the guy who fixed you up and took you in.”

“I’m not blaming,” Ed said, “It’s what I saw. He was here, he said his keys were here. He said he put them on the nightstand every night. That’s what he said.”

“He said what?” Vera said, pausing in her cleanup to turn and face him. “He said his keys were always on the nightstand?”

“Then he said you might have taken them,” Ed said, “But that you weren’t old enough to drive and you wouldn’t be able to reach the pedals. That’s just what he said, Vera. Where the hell did he go? There’s not another staircase, is there?”

“Does this place look like there’s another staircase?”

“Well, could he have climbed out onto the roof and jumped down?” Ed asked. The windows in the room were closed, and they looked like they’d require some force to pry open. Vera shook her head.

“John’s got a bad leg,” she said. “He couldn’t have done that.”

“Vera, you’ve got to believe me,” Ed said. “I know we don’t know each other well, but I wouldn’t come snooping around in here for no reason. There was a guy here, and I thought for sure it was John. He lived here with you a long time ago, right? This was his bedroom, and he’s in the pictures downstairs. I just assumed he was confused, that he forgot when it was or something. We walked together up Kiowa; I thought maybe it brought back some old memories and he just went on autopilot.”

“John never lived here,” Vera said, leaning against the boxes and tracing her finger atop the bedside table.

“Then who’s in the pictures?”

“That’s my dad,” Vera said. “John’s brother. They looked exactly the same. This was my dad’s room, and right here on his bedside table is where he always left his keys.”

“And your dad lives nearby?” Ed asked.

“My dad died in a motorbike accident when I was kid,” Vera said. “He was riding on the interstate in Nevada when a truck clipped him knocked him over.”

“Oh, god,” Ed said. “Vera, I’m so sorry.” A long silence hung in the air.

“Who the hell did I see, then?” Ed asked.

“A memory,” Vera said. “It’s cool, Ed. It happens.”

It’s cool? Ed’s desperation fumed as Vera walked out of the room and back down the hallway. In what sense was any of it cool? He stumbled after her, the house spinning around him. John didn’t have episodes; Vera’s father was dead. Who was in the room?

“I don’t understand,” Ed said, “How can you say it’s cool? It’s not cool, Vera. There was a guy up here, and now he’s gone. He’s got to be around here somewhere, hiding in a closet or something, and you’re just walking around like it’s all fine. That’s just stupid, we should be looking for him.”

“Look all you want, I don’t think you’ll find him again,” Vera said.

“For real? You actually, really don’t intend to look, do you?”

“I won’t find anything,” she said. “Ed, you saw my dad. That’s all.”

“But your dad is dead,” Ed said.

“His spirit,” she said. She stepped out of the door and into the shimmering light of the morning. Ed followed, shielding his eyes. Vera wasn’t going back to her mobile home but was instead walking deeper back onto her property. It was shining so bright that Ed had trouble looking at it, but there was a building back here made of corrugated metal, at the end of a long concrete driveway. Vera was a pilot with a plane, Ed remembered. This must have been where the plane lived.

“Just like that?” Ed asked. “No big deal, just a ghost, right?”

“Not a ghost, a spirit,” Vera said.

“You’re telling me you believe in spirits,” Ed said. “Plain and simple.”

“Yup.”

“You’ve got no desire to explain any further?”

“I don’t need to,” she said. “It is what it is. That was his house, and my mom’s, when I was a kid. I’m not surprised there’s still ripples of him in there. He’s not hurting anyone, though. If he’s digging through the boxes, whatever. It’s his stuff.”

“Whatever?” Ed asked. “Vera, you think it’s your dead father’s ghost, and that just doesn’t bother you at all? I mean, that’s fucking crazy.”

She turned, her body stiffening. He could see the hardness in her face. She didn’t appreciate being called crazy. For a moment, Ed thought she might punch him, just to drive the message home. But she didn’t.

“Yeah, that’s what I think,” she said. “And no, I don’t think it’s crazy. I believe in spirits, Ed. Before you go calling everyone who does crazy, you should remember you’re in our town, not Indianapolis. People here are allowed to believe what they believe, whether you approve or not.”

“That’s not at all what I meant—”

“It’s what you said, though,” she said. “Go ahead, Ed. Go back in there and look in every closet, every cupboard, under every bed, you won’t find anyone. Go back down to John’s – it’s Saturday morning, so he’ll be sitting on his porch drinking beer and listening to football on the radio. Tell him you saw him going through boxes up at Vera’s dad’s house, and then he’ll be the one calling you crazy.”

She turned away from him, walking fast toward the hangar. He imagined she was right. If he ran down to John’s as fast as he could, he would find John unperturbed and sitting on his front porch with a beer in hand. He had seen something – the flicker of a memory – and it had vanished. It was nuts, of course. Worldview-altering crazy. The kind of hallucination that a nasty smack on the head might create. He’d love to say that was all it was, except that Vera had confirmed details he had no reason to know.

He quelled the complete panic that threatened to overtake him. If he bowed down to that, he might never straighten himself up again. The world could snap like a dry twig under a heavy boot. If Ed let reality fall apart, there was no putting it back together. And so, there was no point thinking about it further. Chalk it up to a bumped head, a nervous state, a weird noise… of course, that wasn’t all it was, but it was enough to pave over the truth.

Ed followed Vera to the hangar, his limbs weak, his hands shaky. Vera had unlocked a large padlock by the ground and was pushing the large door sideways and open. She locked it into a new position on the other end. The open door revealed a plane. Not an exceptionally large plane, but not a tiny prop plane either. It had a nose propellor and two long floats for landing on water. It was painted, strangely, to look like exposed chrome, though it was clear in places that the chrome finish overlay a drab white paint job underneath. Written across the side in sizzling letters was a name, Inferno.

“How are your hands? Think you can lift something?” Vera asked. Ed nodded, though his hands still hurt.

“A little real work might help you clear yourself up,” she said. “There’s a bunch of empty gas cans behind the hangar – bring them all around here and then we’ll load them up into the truck. If we’re headed into Riverton, might as well pick up the cheap gas while we’re over there. Once you’re done with that, there’s a pump over there—” she gestured toward the start of the runway, where the rusty red pump head stuck up slightly higher than the disheveled grass – “with a big heavy hose attached to it. Drag it over here and we’ll see if the Inferno needs a little top off.”

“Of water? I thought you needed chemicals to crop dust,” Ed said. “Don’t they do all the watering with those big, trawling sprinklers?”

“It’s not for crop-dusting,” she said. “It’s fire season, so Inferno is a fighting plane right now. I like to keep her all watered up in case I need to act fast. Filled her up two days ago, but as you can see, she’s got a little leak.” He noticed only when she pointed it out; a lot of water was draining onto the floor under the plane, forming a little flowing stream that proceeded off the edge of the far side of the runway into a bog of dead grass and weeds.

“I’m going to try to patch the leak while you get everything else,” she said. “If I can figure it out, at least I can try to pick up some stuff in Riverton.”

“Why would it have a leaky tank?” Ed asked.

“Because the tank ruptured a couple of years ago,” Vera said. “Well, ruptured isn’t quite the right word. It sort of split in two. Half of Inferno’s tank is the original, the other half I bodged together with some parts I could get. I’d ask Rose – town mechanic – to come up and have a look, but I don’t want her telling me about all the other shit that’s not quite right when I don’t have the money to pay for it to be fixed.”

Ed had questions, but he figured he shouldn’t ask them right now. He’d already accosted her in the middle of the night, and broke into her childhood home the following morning. He started the work and was happy to find that Vera was right: It did seem to take his mind off of things. It hurt – particularly the palms of his hands, which abraded nearly everything he grabbed – but it felt good to work with something solid, to do something that stretched his muscles and put weight on his bones. It felt real. Even dragging the hose, which was a large cord of firehose and very heavy, seemed to tether him back to the world as he slung it over his shoulders and heaved forward, ripping it to the hangar. When he got there, the stream of water was reduced to a trickle.

“You fixed it?” He asked.

“No, it just finally ran out,” Vera said. “Going by that, it’s losing about 20 gallons every hour. Fuck.” She stepped away from the plane, running a hand through her hair and thinking. “I hate leaving it empty. Feels like bad luck, you know? I kept her full at all times for the last five years, so it feels like if I decide not to fill her today, then today will be the day something bad happens. But 20 gallons every hour’s tough to swallow. The well’s never given up, but it’s not infinite either. I’d hate to tap it out on a leaky tank.”