Chapter Five
It had been almost a week since Ben found the bundle of mail by the front porch. In that time, he’d traveled back and forth to the hardware store for three shifts, had a breakfast at a truck stop that he was sure had given him mild food poisoning, finished patching the roof a day after a nasty storm, insulated the new back wall a day after a severe cold snap, and lay awake every night, trying not to think about the Alistair book pages. Everything that went wrong back in New York City had started with someone sending him stories in the mail. Fevered, obsessed, nonsensical stories that, looking back, had been the literary equivalent of the tide pulling miles out from shore just before a tsunami. It didn’t feel like disaster at first, and then—
He chalked up the pages arriving
