In January 1996, my cousin Beth took a temp job organizing the estate of a reclusive collector on the outskirts of a small town called Merton. The house was a Victorian that had been locked up tight for years, and the job was simple — catalog books, sort papers, make piles for donation or auction. But in the study, behind a false panel in the wall, she found a room that wasn't on any floor plan. Inside: a desk, a single lamp, and a compass. Not the kind that points north. This one had a single needle that never stopped turning, and a face engraved with names she didn't recognize — until she did. When she looked up from the compass, the room was different. The window looked out on a different yard. The clock on the wall had stopped, but the second hand was moving backward. And the door she'd come through was gone. We sat in her kitchen that spring while she told me the whole thing. Her hands shook twice — once when she described the silence in that room, and once at the end, when she said she still has the compass. She keeps it in a velvet bag in her nightstand. And sometimes, late at night, she takes it out and watches the needle. It always points the same direction now — toward the back wall of her bedroom. She's never told anyone what's on the other side of that wall. But she checks the lock twice before she sleeps.