Daddo says the Big Lake is more than one hundred miles from our house, and that the trip is going to feel really
long for me.
He’s right.
But Lois has been talking a lot in the car and that helps. She’s in the backseat with me. Daddo called the trainers
and they came and got the dogs and they seemed upset they had to do it so late at night, but Mommy and Daddo
said an emergency happened and so that was that.
Before we left, Lois said, We need to go somewhere where maybe it can’t hear us. You haven’t tried to go far
away yet. I understand why. You have a house. This is all new. It’s followed you wherever you’ve gone. But this
thing, it must have a limit too. Can it travel a hundred miles to Lake Michigan? Will it? And where will it hide if
we’re out on the sand, if there’s no house for it to haunt?
It can hide in the sand, Mommy said. It can hide in the air.
But Lois felt like hope to me.
She’s right that we haven’t tried anything like this, Daddo said. Goblin isn’t far.
Lois was right to take that st ep back from Mommy before she said her plan.
Mommy st epped toward her with a growl and Daddo grabbed her and eventually calmed her down. They talked
for a long time out in front of our house. Neighbors watched. Some were on their phones while they watched.
Like they were describing it all to their friends.
But Mommy and Daddo don’t have any other plan. And Lois talks with hope.
I think she came at just the right moment.
What might’ve happened upstairs if she didn’t?
You gotta give us more than just that, Daddo said, meaning about the innocence. A lot more.
Then Lois said something that really got Mommy and Daddo’s attention.
She said, Russ, when the four of us were at the motel, Ruth asked to speak with me out on the balcony.
Yeah, I remember, Daddo said.
What did she tell you? Mommy asked.
She told me everything, Lois said. She felt I could only help if I knew everything.
Mommy and Daddo got quiet then.
Then Lois talked a lot about how I needed to learn the truth of the world and my life in the world and that was
“revoking innocence” and Mommy was mad and Daddo was mad at Mommy and I didn’t look up to the windows
in our house because I didn’t want to know if Other Mommy was watching from one of the rooms.
I could smell her. Even when we were outside I smelled Other Mommy in the house.
I wonder if I’ll ever not feel like she’s near.
It’s near Glen Arbor, Lois says now in the car. I know several spots along Sle eping Bear Dunes where we can stay
out on the beach.
This is insane, Mommy says.
But we’re doing it.
It is, Lois says. All of it.
My God, Daddo says suddenly. We tried to stab it... He’s talking like he’s been thinking about this the whole time
in the car.
I was thinking about it too.
Other Mommy in the dark second pantry.
Distance, Lois says. That’s first. And we’ve already got some.
Hopefully.
But how do we know what it wants? Daddo says. We don’t know it has anything to do with innocence.
Whatever this is, Lois says, it’s attracted to Bela either because it wants to corrupt something, anything, or it thinks
Bela’s not strong enough or mature enough to know she’s being tricked. It wants to trick her. It’s trying to trick
her. What we’re seeing here is a magnifying glass, held above the entity’s attempt to possess. All of this has been
the entity’s attempt to get in.
We’re all quiet for a while, like if what Lois said was still being said.
Are there bears at the lake? I ask Lois.
No, she says. It’s called that because the hills of sand look like a bear lying down. Sle eping.
Still. I think of us running from Other Mommy and running into bears instead. I’m thinking of Mommy and Daddo
with their kitchen knives trying to fight.
It’s going to be all right, Daddo says. It simply cannot continue.
Then Mommy looks back at me like she’s thinking hard about something.
We’ll have to tell her, Mommy says. If it’s what we’re going to do, then we have to do it.
Daddo shakes his head silently.
Tell me what? I ask.
But nobody answers. And when I look at Lois to see if she knows, she’s just looking out the window, her eyes big
and worried.
First, distance, she says. Then the talk.