Back in the Focus, Dakota was listening to folk rock with predictable harmonies, but at least the songs didn’t fade out. They ended on a specific note, the way songs should end. The band was singing about ghosts. Maybe she was playing this on purpose, to scare him.

The car tunneled through low-hanging trees, and the road turned from pavement to gravel to dirt. A green bird spun and plunged toward the windshield. Lance jerked back, and the bird slipped past them, spinning in the updraft of the car. Not a bird, a leaf. The trees all around them were distorted, like fun-house mirrors.

“Bigleaf maples,” Dakota said. “Aren’t they cool?”

“Whoa,” Lance said. That was it. “Those leaves are enormous.”

“Bigger than car tires,” Dakota said “You should see them in autumn. Golden kites, all over the road. It’s amazing.” Dakota drove too fast, but it felt good and a little out of control, like a raft spinning down the rapids.

Aux Sable was impressive. It took them five minutes to drive its fenced perimeter—a big graveyard for such a small town, like the whole population had died and been buried there a hundred times. They parked near the front gate.

The air here felt cooler than it had near Whiggley’s. Maple leaves rustled like the hiss of drum brushes, and the sky was putting on a good show. A silver crease tore through a mass of cotton-topped, lead-bellied clouds, spilling chutes of light. Golden puddles lay in the hills. They looked good enough to swim in.

Good job, Sky Team, his father would’ve said. Remember this, Lance. It’s the most important thing you’ll see all day.

But the sky was hard to remember, exactly as it was. Could you pin it down with notes? Capture it with a song?

Dakota was looking at him. She’d just said something.

“What?” he asked.

“I like how you look at things.”

Goosebumps sleeved his arms and he walked quickly, unsure of what to say. She stopped at the front gate.

“Remember your cemetery etiquette,” she said, pausing at the threshold. “Thank the dead for allowing you to visit. When you leave, remember to say: I truly appreciated our time together. I must ask that you please don’t follow me home. Then spin three times.”

He laughed. “And that works?”

“It has so far.”

Inside, the cemetery was incredible. A silent city of monuments and obelisks. One fifteen-foot marble statue of a woman spreading her arms. Two men riding tall black horses. A gravel path snaked up through the grass, taking them close to what resembled small stone homes in a medieval village. Glass doors and walls. Knobs and keyholes. Some had chairs inside. One had a stack of magazines and a coffeemaker.

“Lots of rich people buried here,” Dakota said. “Their relatives come to visit and just sit inside the mausoleums, like they’re getting used to the idea.”

“The idea of what?”

“Being dead.”

Dakota had done a headstone rubbing project, and knew things about the cemetery. Names and dates. Information you have to research and remember: family histories, the reason some markers faced the sun and others faced the shade. As they walked farther, she grew quiet. She was ahead of him, and he remembered something his father said:

If it’s five miles into the woods, it’s five miles out.

Every step, taking him further from Bend. Complicating Lance + Miriam with two new variables: time and footsteps. How long had they been walking. Ten minutes? Twenty? They should probably turn around.

“Dakota,” he said. “Dakota.” But he had that breathless feeling, when the words wouldn’t come, and Dakota was too far ahead, already climbing the cemetery’s tallest hill.

When Lance reached the top, he paused to catch his breath. Dakota stood waiting for him. The breeze was cool, and all four sides of the surrounding iron fence were visible from where they stood. Carved into the distance, a straight line of stone and steel. Railroad tracks.

“Can’t escape the train,” she said.

“Enjoy the trainsong,” he said. “Thanks for that little tip.”

“Ha!” Dakota said, punching his arm.

“I almost died. It literally knocked me out of my bed.”

“Happens,” Dakota said. “My dreams have all made room for the whistle. I have a banshee dream, a giant teakettle dream. There are more.”

“Does it come every night?”

“Two twenty-six a.m.,” she said. “You could set your watch by it.”

“Don’t people complain?”

“People complained when they tried to stop it.”

“What!”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Five years ago, a neighborhood association tried to get a noise ban and people came crawling out of the freaking woodwork. I mean, a hundred people. The Float turned into the King County Fair. Grandmas and grandpas and broke-down lumberjacks all trucked in from the woods to save their precious train whistle. Folks got straight-up weepy, Lance. I do not lie.”

“Why?”

“They grew up with that whistle. It was in all their best memories and two a.m. teakettle dreams. It’s like a part of them.”

“That is the single dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Lance said.

“Kind of makes me love people,” Dakota said. “Kind of makes me hate them.”

She was looking off to the right, toward the cemetery’s bad neighborhood. The grass was bunched and twisted. Stubby headstones poked up from the ground like molars. In the center of a loose ring of stones stood a giant willow tree. Spaghetti branches dangled to the ground.

“Outlying graves. Most old cemeteries have them, for the dead who don’t belong,” Dakota said. “Atheists. Suicides. Murderers.”

“I should probably go back,” Lance said.

She smiled. “Are you scared, Lance? You’re totally scared.”

“I’m not.”

“Then come on. That’s Unger’s Willow. It’s a rite of passage. It’s why I brought you.”

They kept walking and the ground sloped down toward the willow. Tablets and wedge stones turned blank, their letters wiped clean. Bindweed caught the tips of his shoes, making him stumble. They were near the willow when the sound came, a piercing squee, squee, squee.

Lance froze. Craned his neck slowly. To his right, a small clawed thing on a headstone. On its hind legs, chest puffing.

“What the hell is that?” he whispered.

“A chickaree,” she said.

“Are they native to Washington?”

“A squirrel, dude. It’s a squirrel.” The rodent dropped on all fours and looked more like a squirrel. It scampered down the backside of the headstone, then followed them all the way to the edge of the willow’s green curtains, chittering and scampering, claws clicking over headstones. Dakota pressed her right hand through the willow’s limp branches. Her fingers disappeared inside.

“It’s haunted in there,” she said.

“Dakota.”

“It is,” she said. “Our best ghost story is in here. Come on.”

She parted the branches. Vanished.

Greenery tickled the back of his neck as he followed her inside. The whisper of small, rattling leaves. The space beneath the willow was cool and dim, an emerald dome supported by its beam of a trunk. The bark, malformed. Like someone had turned the wood to taffy and twisted hard to the left.

“The guy who built the railroad died here,” she said. Dakota’s eyes stole snatches of color from wherever she was looking. In the filtered half-light, they looked green and unnatural. “Here we remember Lawrence Unger.”

The air was too still. No breeze. Only the squirrel, still scampering overhead. Rustling branches in sudden, uneven bursts.

“Is that true?” Lance asked.

“Yes. Lawrence Unger was rich and lived alone in the East Hills. Had some guy bring him groceries every morning. The guy showed up one day and Lawrence wasn’t home. It took them a week to find his body.” She stepped forward, tapped her foot beside the trunk. “They found it here.”

Lance took a step back. “How did he die?”

“Hunting knife,” she said, dragging her fist across her neck. “Slit his own throat.”

“Oh god.” Lance touched his bare neck.

“He carved a note into this tree,” she said, fingers brushing over wounded bark. Dim slashes, still visible. “A question.”

“What did it say?” His voice barely came out.

“Can you see me now.”

“Can you see me now?” Lance said. “What’s that mean?”

“We can’t ask him.”

“What do you think it means?”

Her lips came together. She pressed her palm to the bark.

“I don’t think anyone knew Lawrence Unger,” she said. “He was like a ghost, all by himself in a big, lonely house.”

“And now he is a ghost,” Lance said. More rattle-scampering. He looked up, but couldn’t find the squirrel.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s a problem, wanting to be seen. That’s got to be why ghosts haunt. You spend all day with living, breathing people, but no one notices you. Maybe if you’re a ghost you try to whisper first. Or sit on the edge of someone’s bed. But after a while, you’d have to scream. Throw things around. I think you’d be willing to scare the living shit out of someone just so they’d finally see you.”

The space beneath the willow constricted. It felt like they were standing in one of those small stone buildings. Stippled sunlight fell on Dakota’s cheeks.

“You have to put one hand here.” She pressed her hand to the trunk’s wood. He placed his hand beside hers, but their skin did not touch. The bark was warm and taut as the belly of a garter snake. Beneath it, Lawrence Unger’s words. Carved letters, surfacing.

“With your other hand, reach up into the tree,” she said. She raised her right arm, tangled it in long, slender branches. “Then you close your eyes and say three words.”

She closed her eyes.

“I see you.”

Her mouth formed the words carefully, sculpting them. Her jaw clenched—a panicked moment, like she was about to be bitten. She jerked her hand back and exhaled, eyes open.

“What happened?” Lance asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “I escaped the curse.”

“What curse?”

She looked up.

“You really have to see Lawrence Unger in your mind. If you don’t see him, he’ll keep you here. Trap you. You’ll never leave this place.” Lance pictured Lawrence Unger at Dakota’s feet. Blood pumped from his throat. Sightless eyes.

They were underwater. Lance couldn’t breathe.

You can never leave.

Danger he could feel in the back of his throat. If he spoke the words or touched Dakota’s skin here, under this tree, there would be a green flash and he’d bolt up in bed at the Trainsong Motel, forty years old. Working for Cheri Front Desk. Still waiting for his Buick.

He faked a laugh.

“I should really go.”

“Right now?” she said. “But you haven’t done it.”

“You did it,” he said. “It was good to see. I’ve really got to go.”

He clawed his way out from the willow. Breathing hard, he kicked through the weeds, walking back toward the entrance and Dakota’s car. If her car was still there. If the willow didn’t snap shut like an umbrella and jerk down into the dirt and drag her and him and the rest of Baring with it. In the ground, like they were never there at all.

At the top of the hill he looked back toward the willow and could not find Dakota among the headstones. A faraway wail. In the distance, a patchwork line of boxcars pushed themselves through the trees. A single yellow car. A parade of browns and grays. The train kept going. Ten more cars. Twenty. The train could run forever, and there would never be another yellow car. He wanted to see one more. It felt like good luck.

“C’mon,” he said. How could there be just one?

Then Dakota was coming up the hill. He’d been holding his breath and when he inhaled he smelled Darren, which meant Dakota smelled like pot. Her eyes were glassy and bloodshot and he couldn’t smell any citrus. None of the smells he liked. Lance shook his head.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“No, what?”

The train was gone. No more cars.

“Do you ever get used to the train whistle?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “You never get used to it.”

They walked down the hill and Lance made a deal in his head. If he saw that squirrel again—the one from before—the Buick would be fixed and he’d make it home okay. Halfway down the hill, he changed the deal so it could be any squirrel. Not necessarily that one. But the cemetery was silent all the way down through the gate and across the parking lot.

Dakota stopped at the gate and spun three full circles.

By the time they both got into her car, they hadn’t spoken in a long time.

“Lawrence Unger,” Dakota said, staring straight ahead.

“What about him?”

“That guy had a lot of marshmallows.”