Free People of the Dark by T.M. Wright

ostentatious, and were arranged in a nearly complete ring around a circular park that was all but totally overgrown by weeds and thickets crowding into the roadway.
    I expected to see children playing, men pruning hedges, heads turning as a new and strange car entered the little community. But Granada was empty, and it had clearly been empty for more than a few years. It had the unmistakable patina of abandonment and de-cay about it. It smelled of the earth—which was shouldering back—not even faintly of car exhausts and driveway sealer and chemical fertilizer. And there were no noises of children or pets or stereos. Only the quick putta-putta of my Toyota, the high keening sound of the snow tires on the rutted blacktop. Nothing more. The place had a tense stillness to it, like a drawing done in hard, quick strokes with pen and ink.
    I stopped the car in front of a big pastel blue house because its front door was standing open. I got out of the car, stared at the house a moment, expecting momentarily that a curtain would be drawn back slightly—there still were curtains in some of the windows—and that half a face would appear and disappear. But that didn't happen. If it had, it would have scared the hell out of me.
    I saw an FBI warning poster nailed to the left of the front door, a pile of feces halfway up the concrete walkway to the house, an empty plastic Pepsi bottle in the yard to my left, and near it, a small black wheel, like a lawnmower wheel. The grass was matted, wet, and very short.
    Along the edge of the walkway, there was a strip of mud six inches wide. I saw footprints in this mud.
    I went to the front door of the house, stuck my head in, and said "Hello" several times. There was no answer. I could see the foyer, a part of the living room, an open dining area. Most of the furniture in these rooms had been removed, except for a pine kitchen chair lying on its side just ahead of me, in the foyer. The blue striped wallpaper was peeling from the top and the hardwood floors were wavy—here and there some of the boards stuck an inch or so above the level of the others. The ceiling, which had been done in swirls of a thick beige paint, was home for dozens and dozens of flies. Some wandered about, but most were still; and as I watched them, I became aware that I could smell them, faintly.
    I went into the foyer, stopped, said "Hello" again. At the other side of the living room, directly opposite me, a huge picture window, intact, overlooked fields and woods behind the house.
    I didn't think that anyone was living in the house. I thought it was possible that transients camped out in all the houses in Granada. "Is anyone here?" I said, and because I heard nothing except the low humming of the flies, I made my way into the living room.
    A woman was asleep there. She was in a dark blue sleeping bag, her head on a green knapsack. She had short, dark blonde hair, and high cheekbones.
    I said "I'm sorry," though she was still asleep, and started to back out of the room.
    Her eyes fluttered open. She saw me, looked momentarily stunned, a little embarrassed. Then, as she sat up, a smile appeared on her thin, red lips. "I'm Sarah," she said, shrugged out of the sleeping bag, and stood. She was tall—almost six feet, I guessed—and gracefully thin. She was wearing a pair of gray overalls, a long-sleeved white cotton shirt with a turtleneck collar, and thick white socks; I saw a pair of Sorrel boots near the sleeping bag. She came over to me, her hand extended.
    I took her hand. "Hi," I said. "I'm Jack Harris."
    "Hello, Jack." She looked to be in her early forties, and surprisingly, considering the circumstances, had a distinct air of refinement about her. "You surprised me."
    "Yes. I'm sorry." I glanced about, and grinned questioningly. "You don't live here, do you?"
    She waved the question away. "No, Jack. Of course not. No, I live in Brighton." Thirty miles east of Rochester. "I come here from time to time. It's an