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There had been a little girl, reaching up with both arms for Willa to hold her. There had been a naked man with thick thighs and a beard. There had been a plate of sugar-dusted cookies. An old pot filled with pencils. It seemed that if she could find a shape or a pattern, then she might take hold of their meaning, but written down, they were just words, and had none of the shimmering tenuousness of the visions themselves. The list had made them all seem fake, like moving the pointer on a Ouija board or lifting up a girl with your index finger at a slumber party, saying, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.”
    Her dad knocked lightly on the door and ducked in his head. “Your mom’s got steak going. About finished with that?”
    She pulled the notebook to the edge of her desk. “Yeah.”
    His face looked tired, distant, as if he were still thinking of work. “T-bone and potatoes. Go on and put that book away.” He winked and went back down the hall.
    What would happen if she showed him the list? Most likely, he’d send her to see Pastor Sparks, who had surprised eyes and a woolly voice. He would say a demon had manifested from the television or the Internet, something she’d been staring at so much, it had found a pathway to her heart.
    Just a year ago, she and her dad used to go running on the old golf course in the early morning, light pinking over the brown grass, and only a few people out, maybe an elderly couple drinking coffee on their back patio or a girl practicing herkie jumps in her yard. The sweat would drip off the tip of her dad’s nose and chin, and he’d only talk in short bursts between breaths, but he’d ask what she’d been doing in school, and whether she thought she might like to run a marathon someday, and what she thought of the new houses over on Palm Street. And if they’d still had that habit, she might have told him on one of those mornings about the things she’d seen lately. But sometime last year, his schedule at work changed and he didn’t have time anymore, and she’d noticed he’d also stopped looking directly at her face, as if it somehow embarrassed him.
    She went downstairs for dinner, and her little sister, Jana, was wearing a headband with red felt devil horns glued to it. “Ha!” said Willa. “Finally dressing the part.”
    Willa’s mother shot her a look, then set down the bowl of mashed potatoes.
    â€œI don’t like that fooling around with Satan, myself,” said her father, and he reached over and lifted the horns off Jana’s head.
    Jana covered her bare, blond head with her hands. “It’s just pretend, Dad.”
    â€œBe careful what you joke about,” he said.
    There seemed to be a lot of reverence for Satan at their new church,where Pastor Sparks gave prophecies of the Apocalypse in a fierce, cheerful voice—because everyone in that room would be saved, he said—and as he read the verses from Revelation, Willa lost his meaning in the surge of images—locusts like horses with human faces, the Wormwood star falling from the sky to the sea, a ten-headed dragon with horns and diadems. Her father seemed particularly alive to these sermons, as if he wanted certainty in the face of coming danger.
    After her father said grace, and everyone had cut their steaks, he started talking about Lee Knowles. “I heard she’s just gotten stranger about the old Rosemont site. Made a scene last month at the city council meeting. And when did she start wearing men’s shirts?”
    â€œThose are Jack’s,” said her mother. “She started that up years ago, after he left, don’t you remember?” Lee Knowles had been her mother’s good friend, back when they were still in high school. Willa wanted to know what had caused the falling out. She couldn’t imagine not being best friends with Dani, and she guessed that whatever had happened