We’re starting to see some payoff for the setup of the chimeras that Amanda made. In the short story that Sarah doesn’t remember writing, “Pony,” we have a sighting of a Pony-woman that scares the main characters in equal and opposite directions, the Sarah stand-in creating artwork of the creature and the Amanda stand-in wanting to become the creature.

Later, Sarah comes across discussion in Harvey’s manuscript of werewolves. I had forgotten the story of Ames’ wife being accompanied by a large wolf, so I’m glad it was revisited. There’s apparently a history of wolf-people chimeras around the red tree. Constance seems to see a ‘coyote’ or maybe a dog around the house.

Later still, we get the story of Olney, whose lost love is apparently tortured by dire wolf-people in a cavern beneath the red tree.

And somewhere in there, Sarah has a dream about Constance as a Constance/Amanda/Wolf chimera.

We also have another recurrence of the spatial warping from Sarah and Constance’s ‘lost picnic’ when Constance gets lost in the basement. What should only be a small space in the corner of the basement gives way to a seemingly large cavern or “abscess” as Sarah calls it. Sarah wanders into the space, and Constance somehow appears behind her.

As the final section wraps up, Sarah’s spelling starts to suffer, using the wrong form of here, to, you’re and your, etc until the passage comes to an abrupt end.

I want to mention the Olney story, as I think it’s going to be important to the ending, but it seems out of place among the other happenings. We seem to have a pattern with Ames, Harvey, and Sarah losing their partners and then coming to the house and beginning to unravel with Harvey and Sarah taking their own life. Where does Olney’s story of dire beings beneath the tree holding his lost love hostage and forcing him to commit murder come from? Did Harvey commit murders that we haven’t found out about yet? Has Sarah been murdering people between journal chapters?

For next Sunday aim to finish the book.