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    The boy was back again, standing outside the porch of the house, staring at the brilliant night sky. The house had not seen this particular boy since a summer long ago. No one had entered its walls since the boy had left. It was an empty ruin, a splinter bleached white amidst the dry fields of Illinois, happy to be forgotten.

   The boy was a man now, tall, his tawny hair curling around his ears. The first time he had walked the ancient floors, his head had barely reached the top of the dusty marble countertops, his muscles not so hard. The house watched him now, knowing he would be drawn in, just like the last time…

   The farmhouse was dusty in the sun, bleached dirty white from a century of standing in the middle of this unforgiving land, surrounded by cornfields and dry pastures. It was a hot day, made worse by the sun beating down from the top of the sky.

   The house watched a boy bike up its dirt driveway. He stopped in front of the porch and let his bike fall against the peeling white railing, then he pulled off his white tank top and threw it around his neck. A large pocket knife stuck out of the back pocket of his jean shorts. His skin was dark from the relentless sun of summer, his hair bleached golden brown, his body lean and tight. The summer heat had dried up the swimming hole, and scared the adults inside, to lay on couches and drink lemonade. The boy wanted none of that. He was bored. And what better to do when bored, than explore?

   He ran up the porch steps, his bare feet slapping the hot wood. The shredded screen door stood open a few inches, glass cracked and half missing. The boy pulled it open and stepped across the threshold. The house shuddered, and the boy felt it.

   He looked around at the empty place. On his right, a high doorway led to a dimly lit room full of dark shapes and bookshelves. On his left was a kitchen, empty of everything but a single dusty teapot on the stove. A mouse ran across the linoleum. Wind whistled through the cracked window panes above the white sink.

   The screen door tapped against the frame. The boy turned around slowly. Dry leaves crunched under his feet.

   The house knew the taste of this boy, knew the blood that ran in his veins. His ancestors had built this house, shaping its timbers and planning the fields around it. They had filled it with people, and books, and strange tales.

   Then they had left.

   People said the old house devoured them, and didn’t dare walk inside its walls.

   The house knew better. It had nothing to do with it.

   The boy walked across the dirty linoleum to the stove, and leaned closer to the teapot. His chin rested on the edge of the stove.

   The screen door slammed against the frame with a crack. The boy jumped, and ducked behind the table. When nothing horrible happened, he stood up and glared at the door, then walked out of the kitchen and into the library room. The smell of old paper and dust surrounded him like a cloud. A large grandfather clock stood in a corner, the spindly hands stuck at a quarter past five.

   The boy knelt down and peered under a dusty red couch. A solitary blue slipper stared back. The boy poked it, then stood up again.

   On the far side of the room, between a large couch and a bookshelf full of red spines, a squat cabinet stood. The boy walked over and crouched in front of it. Grime covered the wood, so the boy unwound the shirt from around his neck and rubbed it across the doors.

   Dust rained down onto the already caked carpet, and covered the boy with a century of filth. He sneezed, and scrubbed his face against his shoulder.

   The wood of the doors were intricately carved, covered in scrolls and curling dragons. The boy rubbed his hand across the wood. It was blacker than any wood could possibly be, but the boy didn't know that. The boy spit on his hand and wiped it across the carved knobs, then he pulled on them. The doors didn't budge.

   He yanked again, and the house shuddered.

   The doors flew open, and struck the boy on the head. He fell to the side with a muffled thud.

   A pale hand reached out of the dark space, touching the floor and the doors of the cabinet, then brushing against the boy. It grabbed his arm, and pulled him toward the dark space. Another hand grabbed his other arm, and his head thunked against the wooden lip. The sound of clothes against wood drifted through the house, then the slight rasp of wood against wood.

   The house was empty again.

   The boy opened his eyes.

   Darkness surrounded him. He sat up and blinked quickly. A sliver of moonlight slipped through a window, falling on his face.

   He looked behind him. The cabinet stood there, doors closed.

   He frowned.

   He’d opened the doors.

   The boy stood up and rubbed his head. A large bump stood out on his forehead. His fingers came away wet, so he scrubbed then against his shorts. Mama was going to be mad. But the cabinet doors had been open. He knelt down again, and frowned again. The knobs were gone, smooth wood left where they had been.

   He looked around on the floor, but there was nothing but dust and mouse droppings. A cool breeze flowed across his skin, and he shivered.

   Where was his shirt? He rubbed his bare shoulder, and leaned against the cabinet. The doors collapsed behind him, and he fell backwards. His head cracked against something hard as sunlight flooded the room.

   He blinked.

   He was looking at an upside down living room, a mirror image of the dark room he was in. The lip of the cabinet dug against his spine. He squirmed around until it pressed against his belly instead. There was the clock, the books, the fields. He could hear the dry wind tapping the screen door against the frame.

   His torso was in a daytime room, his legs in a nighttime room. He drew in a strangled breath.

   A few inches in front of his head lay his shirt, covered in dust. He snatched it and wriggled back into the night room. Something out the door caught his eye, and he leaped to his feet.

   Was that...water?

   He ran to the door and pushed it open. A white path led directly from the porch stairs around patches of dark grass, and down to a silvery rippled sea, the moon shining and setting the water with diamonds.

   The boy stepped out the doorway. A cool breeze swirled around his arms, and pulled him out. Something inside of his chest beat strangely. It was as if he’d always known this beach was here, that the old house had not been what it seemed.

   He walked off the porch and his feet sank into cool dry sand.

   The feeling in his chest deepened and spread. It wasn’t happiness, it wasn’t curiosity, it was something he could hardly describe. Pain was the closest companion to it. Pain, and longing satisfied. Like when he finished a book that he really loved, but didn’t understand. Or when a dark and terribly beautiful storm raged across the fields, and he watched as the wind beat against him.

   The boy ran down the path and to the silver foam at the water’s edge.

   The sea heaved itself against his legs, icy cold, then drew back, pulling the white sand with it. He looked back at the house, small and dark and out of place against the white cliffs that rose behind it.

   The boy took a deep breath of fragrant air. Lilacs. He could smell lilacs.

   The boy smiled.

   The boy had come back through the strange cabinet into his own world again, the house remembered, a bloody knot on his head and a knife in his side. A girl had been carrying him, a girl whose blood tasted of other. She had carried him across the floor, tears flowing down her cheeks. She’d carried him down the dirt driveway, laid him on the edge of the gravel road, and left. A farmer had found him there, six months after he’d disappeared on a hot afternoon.

   In the hospital, he’d told them where he went, and they’d taken him to therapists, to psychiatrists. No one would believe the tale of a land full of monsters and beauty. They said he’d been on drugs. Kidnapped. Beaten.

   So he learned to keep his mouth shut. He went on with his life. He went to college, played football.

   But he couldn’t forget, no matter how many times he told himself it had been a dream, that he’d been kidnapped and drugged. There had been a scrap of paper in his pocket when he had been found by the farmer. They had let him keep it. In red ink, in a language only he could read, were the words Come back if you live. In the farthest reaches of his memory, he remembered a girl. A girl with long red hair and pale arms. And a whisper of the deep longing pain would drift through his mind.

   The boy who was now a man took a last look at the stars stretching out over the sleeping fields, then turned to look at the house.

   It was to be burned, his uncle had decided. Once his father had died, the house had passed from father to uncle, and that businessman wanted nothing of the family house.

   He took a last breath of the heated night air, and pulled the screen door open. There was the teapot, the spindly table, the dusty bookshelves (one with only red books), the shrouded assortment of furniture, the dark cabinet, even darker in the night.

   He let the screen door slam behind him and walked slowly around the dark shapes. His fingers ran lightly across a red couch.

   Then he knelt in front of the cabinet. The deep longing in his chest flared, stealing his breath.

   “I’m coming.” He whispered, and smiled.

   The boy who was now a man opened the carved doors, and crawled through them.

   On the other side, a girl who was now a woman waited in darkness. The boy had promised to come back, but that promise had been many years ago.

   But still she waited.

   And the doors opened.

   The boy crawled through, and took her hand. She pulled him to his feet, and they ran out of the house together, down the path and to the water.

Dying stars shone down weakly from the deep blue sky, all the more beautiful in the coming dawn. Gold touched the clouds strewn across the horizon. The sea pulled at their feet, and the girl looked at the boy, and he laughed.

   He was home.