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.Her fetal pose is that of a thumb-sucking toddler, only her hands are balled against her chest and trembling.Blake fears there’s a very real chance Nova Thomas might not come back from all this.It’s an irony so cruel as to be vicious—she was the one who tried to convince him something terrible had awakened underneath Spring House, after all.Blake jumps when he hears footsteps outside.Nova is still.The screen door whines on its hinges, and a pleasant smell hits Blake.It can’t be anything as ordinary as cologne, he thinks.It must be the cloying musk of some impossible new creature composed of flowers and insects.But then Willie is standing in the living room with them.Something about him seems different, and Blake finds himself perfectly willing to accept the man before him as a hallucination.The smell of cologne is stronger now.The older man’s chest is heaving with frightened breaths, and Blake realizes Willie Thomas looks different because he is scrubbed and coiffed and dressed to impress.A powder-blue long-sleeved dress shirt, the top few buttons undone, showing off his shaved chest, silk pants the color of café au lait.He’s come from a night on the town, Blake realizes, and he looks like he’s had a good time.But one glance at his daughter and he’s down on one knee next to the sofa, stroking her forehead.Nova clutches his shoulder, but this isn’t enough to reassure Willie that his daughter still walks among the living and the sane.He grips her face in both hands, studies her as if the secret to her condition will be written in her sclera.“Where were you?” Blake asks.“She didn’t answer her phone.I was callin’ and callin’.”“Your sister said you came here.”Willie shakes his head.“I got a lady.in N’Awlins.Nova, she don’t.I don’t like to talk about it in front of.” It’s clear Willie isn’t sure whether or not his daughter will hear these words even now.“I didn’t tell my sister where I was, ’cause I didn’t want her in my bidness.She jes thought I came back here, but I was at Dooky Chase with a lady.That’s all.That’s all.” His final words become a gentle cooing assurance his daughter can’t seem to hear.“Willie.”“What happened here?”“I—have you been to the house?”“No.No.I came right here.Then I saw your cars, so I—Mister Blake, what happened here?”Nova is crying silently.It’s her father’s voice, no doubt, and her father’s gentle touch.The feel of both have pulled her back inside her body, and while the return might be painful for her, Blake is relieved to see it.“Willie, I need you to tell me everything about this place.Everything you wouldn’t tell me today when we were in the shed looking at those holes.”He can see the resistance again in Willie’s furrowed brow, in the long and deliberate way he looks back at his supine daughter.“Spring House is falling apart, Willie.You don’t need to carry it on your back anymore.”“What did she do?” Willie whispers.“Nova? She didn’t—nothing.She’s a—”“Miss Caitlin.What did she do?”Only when his vision of Willie wobbles and splits does he realize his own eyes have filled with tears.He blinks them back, listens to his shallow breathing as if it is the gentle ticking of a clock and he’s all by himself, trying to meditate.“I ain’t got no secrets ’bout dis place,” Willie finally says.“It was like she said today in the shed.More of a feelin’ than much else.”“A feeling?”“Plants never act right ’round here.They move when you ain’t looking.”“Those are events, not feelings.”“Maybe.Maybe not.But they always happen when you ain’t looking, so it’s not like they can be proved.But what they gave me—dat was the feelin’.”“What kind of feeling?”“I ain’t never seen no lady in a white dress floatin’ over da yard or some slave draggin’ her sad old behind ’round the attic singin’ some kinda spiritual.But maybe.It makes me think, maybe ghosts, they don’t act like they do in the movies
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