Marion Burton reached a hand sticky with hound-slobber for the bottle on the shelf. The scotch washed the bitter taste from his mouth. Almost. His sister had spoken to him again while he was out visiting the kennel, her voice bright with cheer and disdain. His sister, always keen to see him keeping company with mutts. He hoped she was happy underground.

His house stood nestled in the crook between the East Ward and the courtyard. No more than a shack really, but it suited him well enough. He had a genny, old and gas powered but still able to turn the single room where he slept, ate, drank—and shit—into an oven in the winter. In the summer he sweat like that guy Stooley the other guards were always poking fun at. Poor sob didn't even realize he was a game to them, not a friend. Marion had been picked on his whole life for his name, which was a woman's, and for his face. He had too much forehead and too little chin. His nose pulled back to reveal his nostrils. Worse than that though was the way the appendage reared closer to his left eye than his right. The kids at school called him Little Miss Piggy, but his sister preferred 'ugly as sin' or 'ugly as a dog.'

Were dogs and sin equally ugly? he had asked her one day. That stumped her. So did the tree she wrapped her car around a few years later, when he started as groundskeeper. If she were still breathing, he thought she'd be easier to live with, possible to push away and forget. Three hundred crowded acres of woods pressed up against his home—plenty of space for some escaped nutter to dehydrate in a hole or freeze to death like Nicholson in that haunted hotel movie—but even when Marion wandered out there for hours with the hounds, he couldn't lose her. She had his scent, his sister.

At ten, Marion set his bottle on the table and stumbled out for the evening rounds, pausing a moment on the doorstep to let his eyes adjust. The dark was greedier in the country than the city, more overbearing, fattening itself on every unguarded inch of mud and bark and stone. When midnight came and the hallway lights within the wards shut off, it would be the one true resident of Harbrook Hill.

Athos, Porthos, and Aramis howled a greeting as he exposed the kennel with his flashlight. "Quiet!" He whipped the leash against the cage. The hounds whined, tripped over one another, thumped and rustled against the walls, their great brown ears seeming to wave at him atop their heads. His mouth softened. The three musketeers? He should have named them after the three stooges.

He was working the collar around Athos' thick neck when Aramis inched too close and earned a snap on the leg. God, how Marion hated bullies. Marion yanked the leash off Athos, put it on Aramis instead, and the two of them set off counterclockwise around the property, Marion pulling on the neck of his t-shirt, craving something heavier than cotton. Get yourself a collar like your friend there, said his sister. Gooseflesh prickled on his arm. Each night was nippier than the last, the wind growing abundant with leaves. Soon he would have to wear a coat. But not yet. He had a stubborn streak, Marion, and he also had scotch pitching a fire in his gut.

A path made of his own footprints curved around the base of a huge stone pillar, which belonged to one of the two floodlights that gazed over the courtyard. The lamps at the top were round and dull, blind eyes atop concrete stalks. In all his time he had never seen them bright. He was wondering if they could even turn on anymore when the leash tensed. Aramis stood utterly still, head cocked at the trees. He began to growl—a low, tentative sound that reminded Marion of creaky hinges.

"What is it?"

The growl deepened.

Marion pointed his flashlight into the woods. There was something rustling, or creeping, in the dark beyond the touch of the beam. Aramis took a step back, quiet, and looked up at Marion with yellow eyes. "What do you think?" Marion said, his voice small. He glanced from the dog to the woods. The ranks of trees were silent. He swallowed. "Let's get going."

Marion wasn't the type to talk to his pets. It was one of the few things he took pride in about himself, but tonight he had forgotten that.

Aramis heeled beside him as they moved on. Twice Marion paused to look over his shoulder, and twice he felt foolish. No doubt it had only been a raccoon out there, sharpening its claws on bark for an early night forage. Or a fox—weren't hounds bred to hate foxes?

The dirt turned lumpy at the northern corner of the West Ward, where the musketeers had made their squatting grounds. Marion slowed to let Aramis take care of business, but the thin dog pushed forward, dragging against his collar, his breath a ragged whicker in his throat. The woods were rustling again, wind seeming to pace them through the branches. Marion could feel the shadow of the West Ward even though it was night. Most evenings someone would watch him pass from one of the windows; on rare occasions, a patient might even wave. He looked up, in need of a friendly face. All he saw was a flicker on the third floor, blackening one side of it briefly. He would have to settle for a stiff drink instead.

His courage, or his senses, returned to him when he reached the front. A pallid stain low across the sky marked where Kolewood lay hunkered beneath the trees. Dim and distant as it was, the town's glow felt like company. He walked lighter through the parking lot and the dozen or so cars arranged there, among them Sir Hudgins' pickup. At midnight there would be a shuffle of vehicles as the evening shift swapped out for the graveyard. But the pickup? Like the owner, it wouldn't budge. Marion drummed his knuckles on the battered hood of his own car, which hadn't moved lately itself, and wondered what else he had in common with the knight. "Bet he takes a nightcap, too," he said with a smirk.

Then he glanced down, saw Aramis' ink-dipped tail curled between his rear legs, and the humor drained out of him.

A cold gust greeted them as they stepped around the East Ward. Marion stopped, shivering despite his buzz, and stared down the length of the old building. The woods on this side of Harbrook Hill crept so close that the path became a corridor, one wall solid, the other shuddering. Far ahead the branches appeared to reach all the way to the East Ward and scrape against the stone, choking the passage into a dead end. But that was a trick of perspective. There was plenty of room to get through—he had walked this route just hours ago, and countless times before that. So why were his toes curling in his boots?

Marion started forward, the heat of Aramis pressed against his leg. The flashlight's beam bobbed on the ground, showed snatches of brown and slivers of dried grass. Showed a stubby finger reaching up from the soil—the root he had chopped short yesterday afternoon. He unclenched his jaws. Something scurried toward him from behind, and he twisted around. Then he leaned his forearm against the East Ward and laughed obscenities as the leaf continued its dry crawl past. He was still laughing when Aramis let out a long, wavering whine.

Marion turned.

The night seemed to hold its breath, a break in the wind settling the trees. Branches creaked slowly, whispering. His hands began to tremble. Reaching out into the woods, the flashlight's beam wavered over an immense shadow, stiller than the rest. Marion felt a tug on the leash. He let the hound lead him away and then shivered again, this time not from the cold.

No man was that tall.

No man.

Marion hunched his shoulders. He began to walk faster, faster, his feet bumping. A little lower to the ground and you'll be on all fours, said his sister, then he saw how far he had stooped toward the ground, heard how the wheeze in his throat matched the panting at his thigh. He straightened himself in an attempt to regain his dignity, lifted his head, and looked up. At the East Ward.

He wished he hadn't.

Word traveled quickly around Kolewood, and the same went for Harbrook Hill. Rumor was Walter Hosler did not use a knife removing his wife's head. Rumor was, he simply pulled. "Do you know how far the skin can stretch before it tears?" the guards had asked Marion. No, Marion didn't, but he knew Walter Hosler had arrived today and that he had a gray-black beard that covered all but his eyes, like the man staring down from his cell on the fifth floor.

That decided Marion. He broke into a run, first dragging then being dragged, the leash whipping ahead as Aramis overtook him around the corner. The kennel was shaking, a howling black box in his yard. Marion paid it no attention. He tramped up the steps into his house and threw the deadbolt in place on the door. The bottle of scotch seemed to reach out and grab him from the table. After he drained it, he slumped into his chair and pulled Aramis close. "Poor boy, poor buddy," he said, working his fingers under the pinched collar. Then he picked the hound up and carried him, staggering, to bed. Marion had never shared his sheets with anyone in his life, animal or human, but he needed to feel some warmth next to him tonight.

Only when the blaze in his stomach settled into a smolder and left him exhausted did he realize. The gaze, Walter Hosler's gaze, had not been fixed on him. Safe-Man had been watching the woods.

Marion fell asleep with the lights on.