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manuscript he was reading: an original copy of Cotton Mather’s The Wonders of the Invisible World , perhaps one of six still in existence. A tiny door on the wall sprang open, and from it a mechanical bird danced and chirped. Eight times it called out, dancing and bobbing, before disappearing out of sight.
    Little late for visitors, he thought. He slipped into his yellow cardigan, with the initials PH centered over the left breast pocket.
    Hume’s house, dimly lit and brimming with pockets of shadow, bore a greater resemblance to something out of Ole Worm’s Cabinet of Curiosities than it did to the home of Zellermann’s top insurance rep.
    Spotlights drew attention to Peter’s growing collection. Historical artifacts he called some of them. Others, he called wonders. A number of his neighbors didn’t think much of his hobby. Most weren’t sure what to think, and it wasn’t just the rank odor of antique upholstery and aging wood that got to them. Nor was it the plush burgundy wall-to-wall carpeting, which only seemed to add to the unsettling illusion that one had taken a dusty step backward in time.
    In these last few months, Peter had developed an insatiable appetite for the more macabre aspects of seventeenth-century colonial life. Pursuing disturbing relics from that era was consuming more and more of his time and money.
    On one glass shelf sat three dark bottles, each filled with urine, a pinch of hair and three bent pins—a vile concoction brewed over three hundred years ago as a protection against witchcraft. On a table nearby stood an eerily life-like bust of Jesus Christ, chiseled from solid oak, circa 1630. The man selling it was convinced that he had seen the eyes blink late one night. Said it had scared him so bad he could hardly look at it anymore. For that one Peter had paid cash. But it was when he added these last items that Peter’s wife thought he had gone too far. They were three-hundred-fifty-year-old implements of torture used to extract confessions. The breast ripper was a particularly gruesome item said to have been used in a dozen witch trials.
    Not long ago, those same strange and exotic objects had begun exerting a pull over him, a force that was growing stronger with every passing day. In a weird kind of way they were like children to him and he adored them. But their jealousy was threatening to pull his life apart. They had already done all they could to drive his wife away and what few friends he had. Before long, he would no longer be Peter Hume, salesman first class, but Peter Hume: eternal curator of living antiquities. He could feel his artifacts at night, in the darkness, watching him. Even the ones without eyes. They watched closest of all. And just yesterday he had heard one of them speak, hadn’t he? Sounded like something out of a child’s nursery rhyme and he had felt an odd sensation of pride at hearing it, as any father would, hearing his son speak for the first time.
    He’s coming …
    It was the bust with Jesus’ warm and loving face that had said the words, its eyes, half whites, peering up at him.
    “Who is coming?” he had asked, feeling a touch foolish.
    And that was when Jesus showed him Millingham, not the way it was now. The way it was hundreds of years ago. He showed him a man with a black gown and long bony fingers. Then he showed him a witch, writhing in blistering agony. Of course, Peter hadn’t believed him at first. How was any of this even possible? But since then Jesus had shown him lots of things. Things that had made it all clear and they had grown close, as any two people would who spent as much time together as they did. Because time was all Peter had, now that his wife was getting ready to leave him.
    It was Jesus, in the end, who had told him to warn Lysander. To tell him, he was who the dark man really wanted. That Peter would be safe if he just hung low.
    The bell rang again and Peter went to the door. He was alone for the moment, and because of