Free Deception by Lee Nichols

reminded me of neighborhoods in San Francisco with Victorians snug up against each other like they were huddled for warmth.
    The houses in Echo Point were less ornate, but still cozy and colorful, in yellows and blues and greens. Piles of leaves stood beside swing sets and kitchen gardens, and half the houses had plaques dating them to the 1700s, built by men with names like Elbridge and Jeremiah and Abner. Antiques were everywhere. Maybe that’s why I felt so at home, winding through cobblestone lanes toward the harbor.
    Or maybe it was more than that.
    I passed an upscale toy store, an Italian restaurant, and a corner grocery before my feet stopped outside the Black Sheep Bakery. I don’t know why I paused; maybe I identified with the name.
    The door swung open with a jingle, and a wave of nostalgia hit me as I stepped inside. Before I could stop it, my body began to tingle, my vision blurred, and I felt the whooshing.
    Then the bakery spun around me, and I found myself standing in the center of the store, but not in the present time. I didn’t panic — maybe because I was still in my school-slut uniform instead of a corset — but I did examine the room carefully. A wooden counter had replaced the glass case, the floor was covered in sawdust, and the walls were white instead of the lavender they’d been when I walked in. And there was a different woman behind the counter than the girl I’d seen before. She had rosy cheeks and a flour-covered apron, and smiled brightly before offering her help.
    But I was too panicked to answer her. I backpedaled, overwhelmed by sensations. I shut my eyes, willing away the memories, willing myself back to the present. When I opened them again, the girl frowned at me from behind the glass case of pastries.
    “Are you all right?” she asked.
    I glanced around the shop. The walls were again lavender, the floor polished pumpkin pine. “Was this always a bakery?”
    She pointed to a plaque on the wall. “Two hundred and fifty years. We’ve still got the brick oven in back. What can I get you?”
    “Nothing,” I croaked. “I don’t want any of this.”
    I shoved through the front door and stumbled down the steps, racing blindly along the crooked narrow streets. I didn’t stop until I reached a pretty little pond not far from the harbor, with ducks paddling near a spindly sculpture. I flopped onto a bench and stared at the rippling water. This had to stop. I couldn’t keep running. Something was seriously wrong inside of me, something deeply broken. Whatever I’d survived as a child, whatever I’d overcome, had returned with a vengeance.
    And this time, I didn’t have anyone to protect me. Not my father. Not my mother. Nobody.
    After a while, I wandered over to inspect the sculpture. It wasn’t a sculpture at all, but a heavy wooden chair latched to a beam that pivoted over the water, to rise and fall into the pond. A plaque underneath read:
    Welcome to Redd’s Pond, named for Echo Point resident Elizabeth Redd, accused in 1682 of “detestable acts of Witchcraft and Sorceries wickedly, mallitiously and felloniously used, practiced & exercised.” Redd and four other women were executed on this spot, 1682–1697.
    The whole thing was chained shut for safety — but just looking, I felt a charge in the air. Had they used this chair to torture those women? Drown them? I shivered and walked on, trying to shake the feeling of death. I walked for hours through the old winding streets of Echo Point, until the sun dipped toward the rooftops, and the shadows turned to an inky black.
    And in the growing darkness, the world suddenly changed. My body tingled with fear as black shadows crept toward me from every corner.
    I pushed on, pretending the shadows didn’t remind me of the smoke creeping toward me from my father’s urns in the hallway back home. The wind rose from the harbor and tossed a mass of leaves against a garage door. The rustling sounded like a strange hiss. Eossss .
    A