He looks so familiar. I stare down at the man comatose on the hospital bed, trying to place him. I try to imagine his lips less purple, his skin if it weren’t so pallid, his hair if it weren’t soaking wet and clinging in waterlogged strands to his forehead. But every time the heart rate monitor beeps it breaks my focus. I shake my head. Maybe he just has one of those faces.

“When was he found?” I ask. Dale, the sergeant on this case, has been standing behind me patiently, waiting for me to speak.

“A couple hours ago. 9:40 AM, give or take. An old couple saw him while taking a walk—he was floating in a pond. This was all that was on him.”

Dale picks up a tray and shows it to me. On it, there’s the clothes they changed him out of—a folded-up collared shirt, khakis, muddy shoes and black socks. Next to them is a watch filled with pond water, a soggy card, and a twenty-dollar bill and change.

“What’s this?” I gesture to the card.

“A tarot card. The Wheel of Fortune, I think.”

“This was all that was on him?”

“Nothing else. No cell phone, no credit cards. A proper John Doe.”

“Tough.” I look back at the man on the bed. His eyelashes flicker slightly. “You’ve got the Pineal?”

Dale hands me a smooth metal case, shaped like a pine cone. I open the top and take out the two discs inside. Taking a seat next to John Doe, I lean over and place one of the discs to his temple, and then press the other one against mine.

I get out my journal from my jacket and close my eyes, clearing out my thoughts, letting his mind impress itself on mine. 

“Who are you?” I murmur. Then, I start writing whatever comes into my head first. Another man’s stream of consciousness.

there’s only you who doesn’t like cockroaches you and the ocean neck deep wine black you’re swallowing it now you’re going down now I sailed so far to find you but you are playing with cockroaches that cook themselves into soup that you down down down I am going to burn this house down the fire is in my throat the water is in my eyes leave me to my empty bottles please i’ve never been human I’m red like blood like a split lip like a cockroach like a candle blowing out again and again and again and look out now break out now GET ME OUT

I yank the disc off with a shudder. I hate the Pineal. Thinking someone else’s thoughts—it’s not right.

“You got something?” Dale asks. I shake my head. 

“I don’t think we’re going to get anything concrete out of him,” I say, as I struggle to read the scrawl of my handwriting. “Except maybe he was an alcoholic? Let me know as soon as his blood test results come back.”

I shake off the remaining fog of another person’s mind and get up. I pull on my jacket. 

“Now where’s the couple who found him?”

○

“Here we are.” Mrs. Bailey walks out of the kitchen holding a tray with a plate of biscuits and three cups of tea, clattering in their saucers. I get up to take it off her hands, bringing it to the table while she sits down on the couch next to her husband.

“This smells wonderful, ma’am, thank you.” I pick up a cup of tea and a biscuit and sit back down into my floral armchair opposite the two of them.

All the furniture in Bailey's living room is floral. It also smells distinctly of old cats. A grandfather clock stands in the corner, ticking softly underneath our conversation. Seconds feel slow here.

I smile at them. “I wanted to talk to you about the man you found in the woods this morning. Can you walk me through how you found him? Any observations at all could be very helpful.”

Mrs. Bailey grimaces. “Nothing much for us to say, I’m afraid. We take a walk to the pond every day, and when we took today’s walk, there was a floating body waiting for us.”

Mr. Bailey takes his wife’s hand. “I thought he was just a mossy log or mound of mud, at first. But Martha went closer and shouted over to call 911. And eventually you folks came.”

“Did you hear anything strange on your walk, or see something? Anything you noticed could be important.”

They look at each other and then turn to face me, shaking their heads at the same time.

I exhale. “That’s alright.” I reach for a biscuit and sit back. I look around the room, at the framed photographs of grandchildren that fill the walls.

“You have a lovely family, both of you.”

Mr. Bailey smiles and squeezes Mrs. Bailey’s hand. “Youngest is leaving soon for college. Couldn’t be prouder.”

“Do any of them live with you?”

Mr. Bailey shakes his head. “Just the two of us now. We’re learning to like the quiet.”

Mrs. Bailey gives me a smile. “You know what it’s like, I’m sure.”

“How do you mean?”

“It must’ve been hard, when your wife left you. The quiet.”

I put down my tea. “My wife?”

“She tried to make it work, though, didn’t she? But after such a loss…when a couple can’t stick together through something like that, no one can be blamed.”

Mr. Bailey shakes his head. “No one at all.”

“I… I don’t — ” I feel hot. I unbutton my collar. “I don’t have a wife.”

“Night after night–”

“Waiting for you to talk to her–”

“Be there for her–”

“Until she couldn’t wait any longer.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” It’s sweltering. Florals on the walls blaze red like warnings. They crowd my vision and my heartbeat quickens. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

Mr. Bailey blinks at me. “Dylan? Our youngest? He’s heading to Berkeley.”

“No, my wife. You said I had a wife.”

A silence stretches for five clock ticks, until Mrs. Bailey hesitantly speaks up. “We don’t know anything about your wife, dear. We don’t know anything about you.” She frowns. “Are you alright, detective?”

“Night after night… What did you say?” The details of the conversation are suddenly foggy, like I’m pulling them from a dream. “You said she left me. Why did you say that.”

“We haven’t said anything like that, detective.” Mrs. Bailey’s frown deepens as she looks back and forth from me and her husband, concerned. “Do you need to lie down?”

I look at the two of them as they watch me, cautiously, as if I’m an injured animal about to lash out. I shake my head. “No, I’m fine.” I take a deep breath and laugh. “Sorry, I’m fine. I don’t know what came over me.” I finish the dregs of my tea and stand up. “Thank you for your time.” 

They smile back at me, only slightly less concerned. They get up to show me to the door.

I walk out, trying to hold onto the visions that had appeared in my mind in the middle of the conversation. Tearful arguments over the kitchen sink. The smell of wine staining the carpet. Locked doors. An empty garage. The images are fading away with every step I take. I turn around, and see the Baileys still both standing at their front door, watching me.

○

I stand in front of the vibrantly painted, bow-topped caravan. Bright yellow vines interlace over a deep purple backdrop, blooming into star-shaped flowers. A sun and a crescent moon with serene faces gaze over the scene on either side of the door. All the ornate details are so easy to get lost in, and it takes me a while to realize I don’t know where I am. I take a step back and look around. There’s nothing but pine trees, looming large and stretching on and on until they fade into the fog. The woods—I’m in the woods. 

I look back at the caravan and I remember. I came here to interview the woman who lives in the woods, to determine if she saw anything related to the John Doe case. Of course. I adjust my jacket collar and tell myself to get a grip, before walking up the caravan’s stairs.

“Hello?” I open the door and step in. A chime twinkles as the door closes behind me. 

The caravan complains as I walk forward, creaking under my weight. It’s a miracle it hasn’t collapsed under the weight of everything inside already, the shelves filled with leather books and bundles of dried sage tied up in twine and candles dripping down. I bend down to avoid the pieces of colored glass hanging from the ceiling, glowing red and blue and purple in what little light comes through the small window. On a round table there is a crystal ball and smoke rising from an ashtray.

“Is anyone here?” I try again. Gauzy curtains start shifting like shadows in front of me, and a weathered face peeks through them. 

“Madam Duval, darling.” A woman steps out from the curtains, holding a cigarette. She looks at times fashionable or exhausted, depending on the light. Her thick makeup paints sockets of her eyes. Her hands are full of iron rings, and purple stones hang heavy from her ears. She’s wearing a satin robe as black as a shroud, flowing like the curtains she just stepped out from.

“Madam Duval, I’m a detective with the Surrey police department. We’re currently undergoing an investigation into an unidentified person's case. Have you seen this man before?” I showed her the picture of John Doe.

She flicks her eyes down to the photo for less than a second. “Yes, I have.”

My brows raise. “Where did you see him? Do you remember the day? The exact time, if you have it.”

She only waves a hand. “Sit down.” She gestures to a precarious wooden chair holding a macramé pillow twice its size.

I sit down, and she takes the seat on the other side of the table. She places a deck of cards down and spreads them out. I start to protest, and she exhales a long stream of smoke.

“You are looking for answers, yes?”

“Did he come into your shop, Miss?”

“Madam.” She takes out three cards from the spread and turns over the first one. I look down. On it, a boy in a medieval tunic is smiling up at the sky, his arms outstretched, joyful, carefree. But he’s on the edge of a cliff—if he takes one more step, he’ll fall. The card is facing away from me, but I can still read the upside down letters printed below him: The Fool.

“Ah,” Madam takes a drag from her cigarette. “Children. They are so happy. So blind. They think life is kind, they think the world is safe, because they can’t see the dangers.” She taps a painted nail to her temple, to the corner of her drooping eyes.

“Madam, if we could please stay on topic, I—”

“But you’re no fool, detective. You know: life is kind to no one. The dangers, they’re all still there, waiting. You know how it is.” Her mouth twists into a smile, but her eyes keep staring at me, cold and hard and haunted. “One day you’re up, and the next you’re buried deeper than the worms go.”

The crystal ball moves. Or, no, the crystal ball doesn’t move—something in it does. A tousle of hair. A face turning towards me. Freckles. Eyes, laughing. It’s a boy. I know him. I know him. 

I seize the crystal ball so urgently I nearly lose my grip and let it shatter to the ground. I can’t explain why, but suddenly nothing matters now besides this boy, this second of laughter. The visions of the boy shake in my trembling hands as I hold him.

Madam Duval looks at me closer, tilting her head. “You are haunted, detective. Yes, a ghost haunts you.”

I barely hear her. The crystal ball is empty now. My own face stares back at me, desperate and distorted. “Who was that?” The more I try to remember what the boy looked like, the faster the memory slips away. “In the ball—who was that?”

“But ghosts are just the questions we’ve left unanswered.” She ignores me. She turns over another card, and I’m compelled to look. This one is full of shadow. A woman sits up in bed, hiding her head in her hand. I think I see her shoulders shaking as she cries, but it must just be a trick of the light. Nine swords hang on the wall behind her. “A mystery haunts you. It clings to your back, it hangs from your shoulders. It keeps you up when the sun comes down.”

“Please, you’re not answering me, I just–”

She leans in, necklace hanging over the crystal ball. I can see the mauve lipstick bleeding into the wrinkles around her mouth. She whispers. “It will drive you mad.”

My voice comes out in a whisper, too. “Please, Madam, just answer me. Where’s James?”

“James?” She sits back into her chair. “Who’s James?” And then she starts to laugh, a hacking, heaving laugh. I try to respond but she only laughs louder until it sounds more like a coughing fit, but even that doesn’t stop her. Smoke comes out of her mouth, more and more. It starts filling the room. Everything overwhelms me and I have to get out. I grab the last of the three cards and nearly topple my chair over as I run away.

○

I calm down the farther I get from the caravan. I take a breath. The forest air is cool. I’ll go back and question her about John Doe properly tomorrow. Once I’ve come to my senses.

After a while of walking, though, I see a flash of yellow and realize I’ve come upon the crime scene. Caution tape flutters all around the pond, like it’s some beast that needs caging in. But the water is silent and murky and still.

I step closer, and then I spot a dark figure floating near the shore. I duck under the tape to lean in and pull it out. It’s a jacket. I hold it out in front of me and stare at the weathered checkered lining, ink-stained from pens exploding in pockets. The jacket drips mud all over my shoes, but I don’t care, I keep gaping at it. This is mine. My jacket, I’m sure of it, only dripping wet and algae-covered. I look down at my sleeves–it’s the exact one I’m wearing now.

There should be a reaction. I’m supposed to do something, I know, panic or solve this or both. But I only feel strange. Soft at the edges. It’s like I’m dreaming, like I’m floating above everything. I drop my jacket back into the pond and step away. I watch the ripples it makes in the water, how it chops the reflected pines into pieces and puts them back together again all wrong. 

Then I get an idea, and it’s insane, delirious, but I think I must be, too. I fumble for the Pineal in my pocket and attach one disc to my forehead. I stumble back over the caution tape and nearly crash into the nearest tree. Pushing away my feelings of foolishness, I place the other disc on the center of its trunk.

“What did you see?” My voice is breathless, barely a whisper. Still, I hear the question echo around me as if I had yelled it. I open my journal, close my eyes, and start to write.

We saw the fossils break against the shoreline and the girl sang a line that broke my heart we saw the bullfrog swallow a sword and drive it home we saw the clouds break and the worms rise and time spill like sap like sunlight coming down in sticky honey thats love and loss and love again we saw the storm pull up the forest and they found bones in the roots you know we saw yes we saw the moon melt and the night turn to stone yes but where were you you you you why weren’t you here

When I open my eyes again, my heart skips a beat. The boy with red hair is standing behind the tree, staring back at me. But as soon as I see him, he turns and runs.

I start to chase after him. “Hey! Hey!” I’m following the red blur of his hair, until it goes behind another tree and I lose sight of it. “James!” James? Who’s James? John Doe. I slow down. I’m not looking for James. I'm looking for John Doe. 

I stop. 

where were you

I look around at the empty woods. Someone’s watching me. The trees are laughing at me.

why weren’t you here

I squeeze my eyes shut and breathe, in and out until my heartbeat starts to slow, and I calm down. I should go home now. I put my hands in my pockets and turn to walk back home, fighting the urge to start running.

○

My door swings open to darkness. It’s barely 5:00 PM, but the sun set early. When I flick on the kitchen light, it does little to push away the shadows of the rest of my small apartment.

I glance at the bare walls, the small TV in front of the simple couch, the recycling bin overflowing with cereal boxes. Mrs. Bailey’s voice reappears in my mind, as vividly as if she was whispering in my ear. You know what it’s like. The quiet. 

 I am so tired. I collapse into a chair by my breakfast table. My head falls into my hands. A crinkle comes from my front pocket, and I remember the card I grabbed from the caravan. I pull it out, and then drop it to the table as if it bit me. From the little rectangle, a wheel full of symbols floats in the sky. Its name is written in cursive below: The Wheel of Fortune.

I take out my journal to find the notes I’m sure will confirm that Dale said the Wheel of Fortune was on John Doe when he was found. I flip to a random page and rub my eyes. Then I flip to another one. And another one. I tear through the whole journal. They’re all insect sketches. Moths, ants, caterpillars, with tiny handwritten notes between the drawings. Like my journal’s been replaced with a field guide. On the page I’m on, a cockroach sketch twitches, and then it starts to wriggle. As I watch, frozen, it nearly crawls off the page. 

I slam the journal shut. I step away. None of this is real, none of this is happening. I get up to go to my bedroom. Sleep, I just need sleep.

When I walk into my bedroom and my eyes adjust to the darkness, I freeze. Old clothes droop over the lampshade, the bed is unmade, the tangle of sheets looking like a body contorting in its sleep, and bottles, tens of bottles, some broken, are sprawled across the floor, empty, glinting in the muffled lamplight. 

But then I blink, and the bottles are gone. The room is its normal mess, tossed-aside clothes making up shapes in the gloom. I rub my eyes and try to laugh at myself. Never say this job doesn’t get to you. I’m so, so tired. I shrug my jacket onto the floor and crawl into bed.

○

“Careful with that fire, detective.” A gruff voice makes me open my eyes with a start. “Don’t let it die.”

I blink away my sleepiness a couple times and try to get my bearings. There’s a small campfire in front of me. Beyond the small island of light the fire gives off is complete darkness–only the thick chorus of frogs croaking in the distance tells me that I’m back in the woods, that there are trees beyond the few I can see and not just an endless void, a gaping mouth.

I rub my eyes, but when I open them the fire is still there. The log I'm on feels rough beneath my fingers. On the other side of the flames, an old man sits on another log, leaning over a stick he holds in his lap, carving at it with a knife. I can’t see his face — a hat falls over it. 

“Did you hear me, detective?” he says, still not looking up. “I don’t say things twice.”

“Sorry,” I rub my eyes again and hold my head. Fires always give me a headache. “I’m afraid I don’t remember how I got here.”

“Words are like rivers, you understand.” he continues, as if he hadn’t heard me. He goes on whittling the stick.

I notice that there’s a stick in my own hand. I poke the couple black logs that have fallen to the edges of the pit back into the center. The fire leaps onto the runaways—it’ll consume them right this time.

“There it is.” A little pleased exhale comes from under the man’s hat. “Now we’ve got ourselves a fire fit for a ghost story.”

“How did I get here?”

He looks up at me then, tough eyes appearing from under his hat. His face. It’s so familiar. But with the dancing light of the fire, I can’t place it. The flames play across his wrinkled skin. It looks weathered and thin as paper–one stray ember and it might catch on fire.

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” He glances up and down at me, and chuckles, “The detective is lost, friends. The detective always finds the lost people. But who finds the detective? There’s a mystery, right there.” He chuckles again. “Now, did you want to hear my side of things in this case of yours, or not?”

“The case? Oh, yes.” I feel for my journal in my jacket and pull it out, shaking the smoke from my head. “Yes, yes. Go on.”

The corners of his mouth turn up slightly: half-smile, half-secret. “But, first, a ghost story.” 

The man puts down his knife and stick and claps both hands together, pressing them against his mouth. He leans in closer to the campfire, and stares into the flames in silence, suddenly expressionless, before speaking. “You can never keep a boy away from the woods. But you should always bring him back.” 

I notice the frogs have gone silent. The man continues. “There was a boy who loved bugs. He knew all the names: katydid, treehopper, red admiral. Names you couldn’t say on a playground.”

He looks up at me suddenly, like he had forgotten I was here.

“His father knew the names, too. They’d spend hours in the forest, finding the things. Catching bess beetles, bark beetles, sketching them in journals. Swallowtail, walkingstick, weevil, rove.” He lowers his gaze from the fire to my journal, open in my lap. I look down to a larger-than-life sketch of a moth, each wing taking up its own page. I can see every hair. I feel them brush against my cheek.

“Maybe the boy lost track of time one day. Lost himself in the tall trees. Maybe he fell and cried for help, and only his echoes found him.”

My heart quickens as I watch the moth beat its wings, once, twice.

“Maybe the cops found a body, or they didn’t. It didn’t matter to the father either way. He kept looking. Day and night, he kept looking.”

The moth flies off the page and starts fluttering towards my face and I swat at it in panic, but when it falls, I’m yanked down and I fall with it, hitting the ground with a grunt.

“Some say, in the forest at night, you can still hear him, crying out the names. Cicada, horntail, scarab.”

I watch the moth twitch in the dirt next to me. My arms and legs start jerking with it and I can’t control them, I can’t do anything — I can only strain my eyes upwards when I hear the man approaching. He bends over me and I recognize him now. My own face leans closer, twisting into a grin. It whispers. “Ground pearls, mantids, chewing lice, sucking lice…”

○

I wake up with a start. I look at the time. I need to go to the woods. I need to find James. No, I need to find out who John Doe is. Who is James? John Doe, damn it, who is John Doe?

I try to jump out of bed, and nearly fall on my face. The lamp crashes to the floor as I clutch onto my bedside table for balance. Not a hangover, it feels worse than a hangover–I feel hungover and under and over again, an infinite loop of nausea and vertigo, a snake that’s eating itself while also being slammed against my head every time I so much as twitch.

James. I grab my jacket, and I force myself to move towards the door. When I open it, the kitchen light screams in my head, but I can still make out someone standing there, filling the frame–a dark silhouette of a hat, a holster, a perfect cop cut-out. I fall back as Sergeant Dale steps into the room.

He exhales. “I hate this part.”

“Dale?”

“You know when you can trust an alibi?” He looks around my shambled room, and shakes his head. “The person’s mumbling and fidgeting and acting guilty as all hell, but then they look you in the eye and you just know. They tell you, and suddenly you can see just how much they wish they were lying.”

“Dale, I’ve got to go.”

“Their kid is gone and they need an alibi, and they have to look you in the eye and tell you they have no idea what happened. That they were at home the whole day.”

“Get out of my way.”

“They were at home, drinking like a goddamn fish.”

“Get out!” I lunge to shove Dale past, but end up throwing all my weight against a pine tree. I lose my balance and I pitch, crashing into a wet mess of leaves. Once I manage to pull myself up, I start walking. 

“James!” 

I’m trying to run now, faster and faster, but it’s hard. The sun glares through the leaves and my head screams louder.

“Jamie!”

John Doe is everywhere. He hangs from the branches of trees, sits on stumps, soaking wet, his hospital gown clinging to his skin. I chase after him, but when I reach him he’s not there anymore. I keep stumbling forward, crashing into more trees, trees crashing into me. John Doe, climbing up a trunk like a squirrel. The head pain reverberates into my teeth, and every stomp against the ground shakes the world into double vision. Two John Does, lying in the leaves. Moths fly into my face, fill my mouth, I slap them away. John Doe, running after a bird. I’m lost, everyone’s lost, where am I, where is he. Madam Duval steps out from behind a tree and traces a wheel in the air, and the whole world starts to spin. The ground rotates until branches hang above me like roots and I’m upside down and I’m tumbling face-first into the sky. 

I keep spinning and spinning like that through the woods for a long time. I don’t think it’ll ever end, the woods, until it does, until the trees finally part, revealing a space, a clearing, a still pane of water, calm as glass. The pond appears over my head, then to my side, then slows to a stop in front of me, and, for one moment, everything settles. And then I fall.

○

Flashes. The branch falling to the side. My body hitting the water. 

○

The trees above me, and a blurry face full of wrinkles. Mrs. Bailey. An old man shouts in the distance.

○

A white corridor. Fluorescent lights flashing by above me as I’m sped through.

○

A heart rate monitor. Beep. Beep. Beep.

○

A detective with a question on his face. He touches a cool metal disc to my forehead. He looks so familiar.