Randy pulled his hands into his sleeves, and scanned the property with a lazy, unfocused gaze. Everything seemed so bare—the Big-Toothed Maple, the Black Ash, and the American Dwarf Birch—all skeletal and leafless. So he caught the wink of a light being turned on immediately. He hadn’t turned his own porch light on, stuck on the foolish notion that it would ruin the aura. Given the illumination in the darkness and the fact that the trees on the surrounding property were bare, Randy was awarded enough of a view to make out Vaughn’s shape and form as Vaughn stepped through his own front door. Randy walked to the end of his porch and leaned against the railing.
Distance diminished Vaughn’s size and presence, but that only served to make Vaughn seem, somehow, more human. Vaughn disappeared, a
