The House

The gate clicked shut behind him, small and ordinary, the way it clicked every day of his life, and it was the worst sound Cass had ever heard. It meant he was inside now. It meant the tide had him. On the far side of the gate the town went on being a wet Tuesday, and on this side the whole world had gone bright and slow and silent, and the two were only a latch apart. He went up his own front path through water he could not feel. It came to his chest, then his shoulders, cool-looking and clean and utterly still, and where it touched the low box hedge his mother was always meaning to trim, the…