Paranoid

The road into Harrow Glen had only one lane going each way, and no shoulder to speak of. Nora Vance had counted the mile markers the whole way up the mountain, because counting was something she could trust.

Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three.

At forty-four, the trees opened and the town appeared below her in the fog. It was a church steeple, a water tower, and a scatter of roofs that looked like they'd been set down gently and then forgotten. A wooden sign leaned at the edge of the road.

WELCOME TO HARROW GLEN. WE'RE GLAD YOU'RE HERE.

Someone had painted the last three words in fresher paint than the rest.

She slowed the car and read it twice. It was a small thing, and she noted it anyway. Dr. Almeda, back in the city, had told her to notice things without assigning them meaning. Observe, don't interpret, Nora. She had written it on an index card and taped it to the dashboard, next to the other card that said Take them at 8.

The house was at the end of Alder Lane, a narrow two-story with gray shingles and a porch that sagged slightly to the left. The real estate agent had emailed her the key code. When Nora punched it in, the lock released at once, as if it had been waiting.

Inside, the air smelled of cedar shavings and damp paper. The movers' cardboard boxes sat taped and stacked in the front room, but Nora didn't touch them yet. She walked the perimeter the way she had walked every apartment in the city, her palm flat against the cool trim. She rattled the brass deadbolt on the front door until the strike plate clicked against the jamb, tested the swollen frame of the back door with her shoulder, and ran her thumb across the spring-latch on every ground-floor window to hear the iron snap home into the sill. She pulled open both hall closets, listening for the hollow suction of the doors, then turned around and did it all again in reverse.

Nothing. Of course nothing. The house was empty, and she was exhausted.

She set her bag on the kitchen counter and took out her small leather notebook, the one with a rubber band around it. She wrote:

Nov. 11. Arrived 4:10 p.m. House clean. All locks working. Sign at town entrance recently repainted.

She looked at the last line. She crossed it out, then wrote it again beneath, then sat looking at both.

Observe, don't interpret.

At 5:30 there was a knock at the door.

Nora went still. Nobody knew she was here. The agent had her number, and her sister in Portland had her new address, and that was the whole list.

She crossed the front room without a sound and looked through the narrow window beside the door.

A woman stood on the porch holding a casserole dish with both hands. She was perhaps fifty, with silver-streaked hair pinned up carelessly and a cardigan the color of oatmeal. She was smiling in a way that suggested she had been smiling for some time.

Nora opened the door two inches, with the chain on.

"Oh, I'm sorry, hon, I didn't mean to startle you," the woman said. "I'm Mara. Mara Tolliver, next door." She tilted her head toward the yellow house across the hedge. "I saw the car and thought, that poor girl, driving all that way and no dinner. It's only chicken and rice. Nothing fancy."

Nora looked at the dish. Steam fogged the foil.

"That's kind," she said. "Thank you."

"You must be Nora."

The chain was a thin line of cold metal against her knuckle. "How did you know my name?"

Mara blinked, and then laughed, warm and easy. "Oh, Peggy at the realty office. Everyone knows everything here, I'm afraid. You'll get used to it. Or you won't, and you'll move back to the city." She winked. "Most people get used to it."

Nora slid the chain off. It was the expected gesture, and she was working hard at being polite. She took the dish. It was heavy and very warm.

"I'll bring it back tomorrow," she said.

"No rush at all." Mara lingered, her eyes drifting past Nora's shoulder into the house, to the boxes and the dim kitchen. "You've got the same ceiling light fixtures as the last tenant. That was lovely of them to leave."

"The last tenant?"

"Mm. Well. Years ago." Mara's smile did not change at all. "Sleep well, Nora. It's very quiet up here. Some people find the quiet hard at first."

She went down the porch steps and across the dark lawn. Nora watched until the yellow house swallowed her, a lit window, then a drawn curtain.

She locked the door, then the deadbolt, then reattached the chain.

She ate standing at the counter, rigid and straight-backed, chewing mechanically and faster than she meant to. The fork scraped against the ceramic dish with sharp, rhythmic clicks until she caught herself and set it down. At 8:00 sharp she took her pill, washed it down, and wrote in the notebook:

Neighbor: Mara Tolliver. Brought dinner. Knew my name (realty office). Said "same light fixtures as the last tenant." Said "years ago."

She stopped, pen hovering.

She hadn't told Mara anything about the light fixtures. She hadn't even turned the ceiling light on yet. It was off. It had been off the entire time Mara stood on the porch, and the porch light was behind her.

Observe. Don't interpret.

Nora set down the pen and sat very still, listening to the house. It ticked and settled. Somewhere, a pipe shifted. Outside, the wind combed the dry leaves along Alder Lane.

Nora got up and walked to the front window. She checked the sash lock, pressed the heel of her hand hard against the frame to verify the seam, then walked to the deadbolt and turned it back and forth three times until the bolt seated flush into the jamb. She counted the turns under her breath. One, two, three. When the brass stopped rattling, she did the back door, then checked the front once more from across the room.

Nora carried the notebook upstairs, set it on the nightstand, and lay down fully clothed on top of the covers. The ceiling above her was bare plaster. Her eyes traced a faint hairline crack that ran from the corner toward the center.

At 11:52 she gave up on sleep and reached for the nightstand to turn on the lamp.

The notebook lay where she had left it. But the rubber band was off.

She stared at it. She was almost sure, almost entirely sure, that she had looped it back around the cover before climbing into bed. She always did. It was one of her rules.

Her breath hitched hard, catching at the back of her throat, and the muscles along her shoulders and jaw locked tight.

Observe, she told herself. Don't interpret.

She picked up the notebook and opened it to the last page. Her own handwriting stared back at her, cramped and careful. Said "years ago."

Below it, in a line she did not remember writing, in handwriting that was almost, but not quite, her own, were four words:

Don't trust the quiet.

Nora did not scream. She had trained herself out of that long ago. She sat there in the lamplight, her breath held tight in her chest, listening to the vast, dead weight of Harrow Glen's silence—the complete absence of cars, crickets, or wind, until the ringing in her own eardrums became deafening.

Downstairs, very softly, someone tried the back door.