A man should run toward death not away from it. This is how Skad sees it. But after losing a son, it was only natural he would need a moment to rest and reflect. To shade his eyes from the looming darkness, while he recovers the strength to move forward again.

He deems Lake Sauvage the best place to do this. The dull, quiet land of his youth has none of the distractions of the city. People would not be ringing at his bell and dropping by unannounced. No one would be phoning him to ask him for an interview, or to create a piece for charity, or to teach a seminar. Not even his agent has his number at the old cottage.

Skad chooses to ignore the spell of the place even though he experienced it on earlier visits. On the shores of that lake, the past lingers like mist. Nostalgia is a miasma rising off the water, infecting all who come near. The decaying sickness of bygone days withers and stunts the residents.

Certainly, it pollutes the blood and clouds the mind of the woman behind the cash.

Perhaps this is why she recognizes Skad right off.

Her name is Meryl or Melinda. Something that starts with an M. She'd been working at Brickle's gas station for almost as long as Skad and Ed first started making the long trip from the house into town. They were scabbed kneed brats back then. She'd been there, selling them penny candy and baseball cards, but on those early visits she existed as a background figure, little different than the pumps outside. Clearer is the memory of those summers when they'd been gangly adolescents and she'd been a teenager with her blonde hair in a ponytail. The image of her stocking the shelves in cutoff shorts over a marine blue one-piece bathing suit is vivid. Her tanned legs stretching. Her bare shoulders with a hint of sunburn peel constricting and revealing a bulge of muscle with each can she lifted. Her turning to tell them she'd be right with them. Her right areola rising like a small golden-brown sun, peeking out of her top.

Skad can't look at the waddle under her chin or the liver-spotted hands bagging his groceries, so he eyes the corpulent cleavage her tank top displayed. It's only a slightly better view. Constellations of freckles spread across the expanse as dense as the milky way and stretch marks gives the skin a withered looked.

She says, "Just can't keep you Skadding boys away."

He nods to indicate he's heard. The daft broad must think he and Ed still ran in here every other day buying licorice whips and bubble gum as an excuse to ogle her. There hadn't been a Skadding living year-round on Lake Sauvage for thirty years. Normally, even Skad only visited for a couple of weeks each summer. Mostly to ensure the caretaker wasn't pocketing his checks and letting the old place rot.

"You in for the season?" she asks.

Skad came a month earlier this year. How long he'll actually stay is a mystery even to him. Instead of answering, he points to the shelves behind her, "And a pack of Marlboros."

She grabs the cigarettes, not needing to turn and look. She's practiced the motion her entire life.

"I hate seeing what's happening out by your place. It's a disgrace. An eyesore, I say. And everyone on the lake has to look at that... thing. All because some rich foreigner wants to show off." She shakes her head as though grieving the loss of a distant but not unknown relative.

"Well, I hope the town makes him feel real welcome," he says. With the way her mouth twitches into a smile, it's not hard to imagine the future malice she's contemplating. Whether she'd had the idea before Skad came in or not, now when the newcomer came in to fill up on gas or buy a loaf of bread, he'd experience true Sauvage hospitality.

He takes his bags back to his car. One of those fellows they bring up to pick apples is getting out of Mercedes. He shouldn't even be here this time of year and the car was obviously stolen. On the wall, a phonebooth is perched below the ess in the faded paint of the "Brickle's" sign. Skad could call the police, but why should he bother. If they were too lazy to be out checking for these problems, he's not going to break a sweat to do their job for them.

Skad shakes his head at what the world is coming to and pulls away.

The house is another four miles down the country highway and a mile and a half down the dirt road that extends from the five driveways on the nameless bay. Except, the first quarter of it is no longer dirt. Fresh asphalt coats it, gleaming black and sparkling in the sun which escapes the net of dense foliage. The new road turns away up the hill, where no drive ever used to exist. The car's front wheels drop to meet the old well-tread surface, bottoming out the suspension.

"Asshole." Skad directs the epithet at the crew who laid the new road, the builders who erected the new house, and especially the asshole who they all work for.

Anger tightens his jaw and his fingers on the wheel. It quickens the old ticker and burns a needle-sharp point in the center of his skull. Were he not engaged with his dark thoughts, he might find himself being lulled back in time. So little has changed. Every rut and stone in the road might not have moved in sixty years. New summer branches slap emerald leaves against the windscreen, and if he were driving a '72 Volvo stinking of grease and sun-baked vinyl seats, it would all be indistinguishable from the first time he came home to spend the summer with his folks from college.

Thank Christ he was heading toward that bit of hell today. They were both long dead and under the ground.

Trees hug the road closing off the sky, but all at once they break and a curtain raises revealing the cottage. It's nestled in a shaded bower. The whiteness of the walls almost glow. Its simple shape is similar to many of the churches found around the countryside, although absent of a steeple. The angle places the black lake, it's water dappled with gold coins of sunlight, behind it and opening out on its left. A wide swath of brilliant green lawn fills the distance from it to the trees and the drive circles around it to a garage that's never had a car parked in it.

Bring twilight to the scene and put a few lamps in the windows and it would be a picture Kinkade might paint. That hack would have a field day with it in all its banal glory.

The car slows and Owen Greene comes into view. His back is stooped and twisted into a symbol of pain. He looks up from his gardening at the sound of the engine. With creaking arthritic movements, he walks to meet Skad by the garage.

"The annuals like this heat. Got everything arranged like always." He speaks the moment the car door opens without greeting, as though continuing their last conversation from a year ago. He points to the house. "Lil' Carol put some fresh flowers inside when she cleaned."

Owen's suggestion that his daughter was little might be mistaken for lowbrow humor, of the type when someone calls an obese man "Slim," but the caretaker had been calling her "Lil' Carol" since she was a red-haired girl with a penchant for reading Nancy Drew. Carol was now well past fifty with a physique that would've made her a formidable prison guard.

Ever since Skad had hung his own art inside, the house had been her domain. Owen, the superstitious fool, was too timid to cross the threshold. Probably worried one of the paintings would come to life and bite him on the ass.

He went on to explain to Skad the repairs he had done to the place. Sitting so close to the lake wore the cottage down more than if it were inland, and every spring brought a host of new problems. But Owen took it further than keeping the roof from leaking and porch for rotting. He and Lil' Carol ensured the place was preserved with the exactness of a museum exhibit, a grotesque diorama of Skad's childhood, right down to the same flowers his mother used to plant.

Surveying the property, everything is as it's always been, except for on the hill behind the house.

Skad spits. Phlegm moistens the dusty drive and Owen stops talking. He follows Skads gaze up to what had once been a bald hill, but where now stands a monstrous house. It's perched on stilts, leaning out over the peak, reaching for the lake. Floor to ceiling windows fill the sweeping circular wall and gives it the appearance of an invading flying saucer.

"They finished it last fall," the caretaker says.

"Corrupt bastards." The zoning committee for the lake had been bought off, paid well to rubber-stamp everything through. Skad had tried to bribe a few members as well, but the son-of-a-bitch had beat him to it. "I hope he rots in there."

Owen asks, "Who?"

"Vladimir Smirnoff. Or whatever the hell his name is." He takes out a cigarette and places it between tight, bloodless lips.

"Oh, he don't live there." Owen Greene steps up beside him. "Don't you know, Bobby? He rents the place."

No one has called him Bobby since he was eighteen.

Owen notices the glare leveled at him and shrinks, his hunched back bending lower. "Mr. Skadding, sir, he rents it out to folks from the city."

"Maybe he has some sense after all." Skad turns away and heads toward the cottage. "I wouldn't be caught dead in that soulless crypt."

In this manner Skad returns to his childhood home, and despite his longing for a breather it's only another way to race toward the inevitable.