The tall man and the woman with the long hair stood side by side in the doorway of the old house.
"There used to be a Turkish rug there," she said, indicating a patch on the floor that was slightly darker than the warped wood surrounding it.
"What a mess," he muttered, his eyes roving over the peeling wallpaper and sagging ceiling.
He walked into the kitchen and she followed. The counter where she used to make bread was gone, ripped away from the linoleum. Mouse droppings drifted along the baseboards. There was no sign of the wooden high chair.
He sighed heavily, hands on his lean hips. She liked the way he looked, standing there in his leather jacket with a beam of sun falling across his face.
"Upstairs is better," she said.
She followed him as he went up. He clung to the banister as the creaking staircase swayed slightly. Something larger than a mouse scrambled inside the wall, startled by the noise. The man's long legs skipped the last two steps and arrived safely on the landing. He looked around the large room at the top of the stairs.
"This is the parlor," she said. "This is where we used to throw parties."
"This isn't so bad," he said softly, walking to a tall arched window and looking out. "This room has potential."
"The piano!" she said. Somehow, improbably, the piano was still in its usual spot near the fireplace. It gleamed, still brand new, not a speck of dust. "I used to play," she said to his back.
She sat at the bench and opened the lid that covered the keys. As always, she was pleased by the orderly rows, black above white. She ran a quick scale. Still in tune. She took a deep breath and began to play Chopin, the golden notes filling the room. The man turned slowly, an amazed look on his face. He squinted as though she was too bright to look at.
She smiled and stopped mid song. "You didn't expect that, did you?"
He started to say something, and that was when the door to the master bedroom burst open so hard it banged off the wall. A wild-eyed man barged into the room. He was dressed all in black, with a white collar. "What is the meaning of this?" he yelled.
"Hello?" the man by the window said. "Who's here?"
The priest ignored him, storming to the piano and slamming the lid shut with an echoing bang.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't realize--"
"We were sleeping!"
That was when she heard the baby, crying from the nursery. She stood quickly to go to him, but the man in the leather jacket was going back down the stairs. The priest went back to his room, closing the door behind him.
"Wait!" she called, not wanting to be left alone in this place. She followed him back to the kitchen where he stood in front of the open back door, breathing deeply.
"What the fuck is going on here?" he said.
"Ignore him," she said. "He's mean."
The man stepped out onto the back porch into the bright afternoon light. She followed. He looked over the back yard, a vast stretch of green run rampant, rosebushes untrimmed, herb garden grown amok into a riot of color and smell. He went down the steps and onto the grass. She wanted to follow him, but there were dead animals at the bottom of the steps, a mouse, a lizard, a baby bird, arranged in a row as though left there by an orderly cat. She frowned at them, feeling like crying, but the man stepped over them without a word.
"I can't go down there," she said. But a cold wind from the open door behind her changed her mind. The man was getting far away and she wanted to feel him near. She gingerly stepped over the row of dead, broken animals. Her bare foot sank into the grass, indented the soft earth beneath.
That's when she heard it. A low, rumbling growl from the bushes to her right. She froze with one foot on the ground, the other on the step. Her head turned, slowly, and saw a pair of eyes glowing from within the tangled branches.
"No," she whispered.
The eyes moved closer and light fell onto the face, like that of a dog but bigger, meaner, more ancient. The growl grew louder as the animal's massive shoulders came into view. It crouched as if to spring.
"No!" she screamed.
The man, halfway across the yard, spun around.
She fell backward onto the steps, screaming. "The wolf! It's the wolf!"
As soon as her foot left the earth the growling stopped. The eyes dimmed as the beast backed into its lair.
Sobbing, she backed into the house. Upstairs, someone was playing a song on the piano, jangling, out of tune. Behind the music she could hear the baby crying, ceaselessly, hungrily. The sound pulled her up the stairs, through the parlor where the demented priest sat behind the piano, and into the nursery. She hovered over the crib and there he was, swaddled in a cotton blanket, crying out for her touch. She picked him up, hushed and soothed him, and he quieted down.
She heard the front door slam. She drifted to the window and looked down. The man in the leather jacket hurried down the front walk, his collar turned up against the cold.
"Wait," she said, putting her hand to the glass. "Don't leave us here."
The man stopped and turned around, looked up at the nursery window, his hand shielding his eyes from the sunlight. After a moment he shook his head, turned around, and hurried on. She watched him go, sadly. The baby voiced a small cry.
"Shh ... everything's all right," she said. "Mama's here."
