She counts up until the 12th stone and then pauses, because this is where the cold snakes through the brown grass, there in the beating summer sun. It's the briefest of shivers, a sudden shudder, and it passes. The hair prickles at her neck and stays until the 16th stone, where she gets the feeling that the world has gone hazy, and this is brief, too, and she keeps going -- even though now everything is in sharp focus and too quiet, and there is the steady, ominous buzz of cicadas sounding from all around.

The 29th stone brings her to the front steps of the old building, and she is staring at the big yellow NO TRESPASSING sign, and the spray-painted red X on the door, and the jagged jaws of the building's stairs hanging open, ready to swallow a foot, an ankle, her whole self if she's not careful.

A normal person would not go inside, she thinks, before she climbs the stairs with ease born only from lots of practice, dodges the weaker parts of the porch, then plunges inside the feral building, daring it to eat her up.