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has passed, the narrow strip between the surf line and the enshrouded slope is still damp and firmly compacted.
    After I have gone perhaps a hundred feet without catching sight of my quarry, I realize that I have passed her by. I turn back and make my way south, studying the dark hillside for some path by which she might have ascended through the vegetation.
    Instead of a trail, I discover the dark mouth of a culvert that I hadn’t noticed in my rush to pursue the girl. It’s immense, perhaps six feet in diameter, set in the embankment and overhung in part by vines.
    Backlit as I am by the westering moon, I assume that she can see me. “I don’t mean you any harm,” I assure her.
    When she doesn’t answer, I push through the straggled vines and take two steps into the enormous concrete drainpipe. I now must be a somewhat less defined silhouette to her, but she remains invisible to me. She might be within arm’s reach or a hundred feet away.
    I hold my breath and listen for her breathing, but the rumbling pulse of the sea becomes an encircling susurration in the pipe, sliding around and around the curved walls. I can’t hear anything as subtle as a child’s respiration—or her stealthy footsteps if she is approaching me through the blind-black tunnel.
    Considering that she is a young girl and that I am a grown man unknown to her, she will surely retreat farther into the pipe as I advance, rather than attempt to bowl me off my feet and escape—unless she is feral or dangerously psychotic, or both.
    Years of violent encounters and supernatural experiences have ripened the fruits on the tree of my imagination past the point of wholesomeness. A few steps farther into the pipe, I am halted by a mental image of a blond girl: eyes glittering feverishly, lips peeled in a snarl, perfect matched-pearl teeth, between several of which are stuck shreds of bloody meat, the flesh of something she has eaten raw. She’s got a huge two-tined fork in one hand and a wicked carving knife in the other, eager to slice my abdomen as if it were a turkey.
    This is not a psychic vision, merely a boogeygirl sparked into existence by the rubbing together of my frayed nerves. As ridiculous as this fear might be, it nevertheless reminds me that I would be foolish, pistol or not, to proceed farther in such absolute darkness.
    “I’m sorry if I’ve frightened you.”
    She abides in silence.
    Reason having dismissed my imagined psychopathic child, I speak to the real one. “I know something is very wrong in Harmony Corner.”
    The revelation of my knowledge fails to charm the girl into conversation.
    “I’ve come to help.”
    The claim of noble intent I’ve just made embarrasses me, because it seems boastful, as if I believe that the people of Harmony Corner have been waiting for none but me and, now that I am here, can rest assured that I will set right all wrongs and bring justice to the unjust.
    My sixth sense is peculiar but humble. I am no superhero. In fact, I screw up sometimes, and people die when I want desperately to save them. Indeed, my primary strange talent, the ability to see the spirits of the lingering dead, has not come into play here, and I am left with only uncannily sharp intuition, psychic magnetism, a ghost dog that keeps wandering off somewhere, and an appreciation for the role that absurdity plays in our lives. If Superman lost his ability to fly, his strength, his X-ray vision, his imperviousness to blades and bullets, and was left only with his costume and his confidence, he would be of more help to the Harmony family than I am likely to be.
    “I’m leaving now,” I inform the darkness, my voice echoing hollowly along the curves of concrete. “I hope you’re not afraid of me. I’m not afraid of you. I only want to be your friend.”
    I am beginning to wonder if I might be alone. Perhaps the figure I’d seen had found a way through the brush and up the embankment, in which case the timid girl to whom I now