Eli Blackwood sat on the porch of Blackwood Place and watched the town go by. The porch was wide and wooden and sagged in the middle, the way porches sag when no one has fixed them in thirty years. The railing was covered in ivy that had grown thick and green and tangled, and the steps were cracked and covered in moss. From up here, Eli could see everything.

Oakhaven was a small town. It had a population of two thousand three hundred and forty-seven people, and Eli knew the name of every single one of them. He knew that Mrs. Gable on Main Street had been having an affair with the bank manager for six months. He knew that Rev. Price preached about morality on Sunday and took envelopes of cash from the county commissioner on Monday morning. He knew that the sheriff's brother ran the illegal gambling operation out of the bar on the edge of town. He knew all of these things because he remembered everything, and remembering everything means remembering the conversations that happen when people think no one is listening.

Eli was eight years old. He had lived in Blackwood Place with his mother, Rose, for four years. Before that, they had lived in Atlanta, and before that—Eli remembered that part too, though he was careful never to talk about it. He remembered a different house, a different mother, a different life. He remembered a man with a kind face and a woman with a cold voice and a room full of books that smelled like dust and lemon polish. He remembered everything.

Rose Blackwood was not crazy. Eli knew this because he had watched her for four years and he had seen the exact moment when she decided to pretend. It was a Tuesday in March, four years ago, and she had been standing in the kitchen making breakfast while Rev. Price stood in the doorway and told her that the town needed to talk about her "behavior." Rose had set down the spatula and looked at Rev. Price with eyes that were very clear and very cold and said, "You talk too much, Calvin. Maybe you should stop."

Rev. Price had left. Rose had finished making breakfast. And then she had started talking to the walls.

Eli watched her do it every day. She would stand in the corner of the living room and talk to the wallpaper in a voice that was not quite a whisper and not quite a shout, and the words she said were sometimes in a language Eli didn't recognize and sometimes in English and sometimes in a mix of both. The neighbors thought she was crazy. Eli knew she was pretending. But he didn't know why.

The game started on a Wednesday.

Eli was sitting on the porch reading a book—Moby Dick, which he had found in the library and checked out under Rose's name because he was eight and the librarian, Mrs. Whitmore, didn't think to ask for identification. He was on page forty-two when Rev. Price walked by. The Reverend stopped on the sidewalk and looked up at Eli with a smile that was exactly the kind of smile a man wears when he is trying to convince you that he is a good person.

"Hello there, young man," Rev. Price said. "What are you reading?"

"Moby Dick," Eli said.

"Ah, a classic. My father used to read that to me."

Eli looked at him. He remembered something Rev. Price had said to his mother two weeks earlier, in a voice that was not quite a whisper and not quite a shout: "The girl at the diner—she doesn't need to know about the children. We'll handle it."

Eli said nothing. He went back to his book.

Rev. Price stood on the sidewalk for a moment longer. Then he walked away.

That evening, Eli sat on the floor of his bedroom with a pencil and a piece of paper and drew a map. On one side of the paper, he wrote the names of the people in Oakhaven who mattered: Rev. Price, the sheriff, the county commissioner, the bank manager, Mrs. Whitmore the librarian, Mr. Callahan who owned the hardware store. On the other side, he wrote the things he knew about them.

Rev. Price: takes envelopes from commissioner on Monday mornings. Preaches about morality on Sunday. Has a daughter in Atlanta he hasn't visited in two years.

Sheriff: brother runs gambling operation at the bar. Takes cash from commissioner in brown envelopes. Has a dog named Duke that he talks to when he thinks no one is listening.

Commissioner: has a second house in Savannah. Wears a wedding ring on a chain around his neck, not on his finger.

Eli looked at the paper. He was eight years old. He had just realized that he was holding a spiderweb in his hands, and every person in Oakhaven was caught in it. The question was not whether he would pull on the web. The question was which thread to pull first.

He pulled Rev. Price's thread first.

It was easy. Eli walked into Rev. Price's church on a Sunday morning and sat in the front row and watched the Reverend preach. He watched him talk about morality and purity and the dangers of corruption. He watched the congregation nod and murmur and cross themselves. And then, when Rev. Price paused for breath, Eli raised his hand and asked, "Reverend, what did your daughter say when you called her last week?"

The church went silent. Rev. Price's face went very still.

"I—what?" he said.

"Your daughter," Eli said. "In Atlanta. What did she say when you called?"

Rev. Price looked at the congregation. They were looking back at him. Some of them looked confused. Some of them looked concerned. Some of them looked like they were trying to figure out if this was a test.

"I don't—" Rev. Price said. Then he stopped. He took a breath. He smiled the smile he had worn on the sidewalk that morning. "That's a very personal question, young man."

"I'm just curious," Eli said.

Rev. Price smiled. The congregation smiled. The moment passed. But Eli saw the look in Rev. Price's eyes. It was not anger. It was fear.

Eli had pulled the first thread. The web was vibrating.

Over the next three months, Eli pulled more threads. He told Mrs. Whitmore about the bank manager and the affair, and Mrs. Whitmore told her husband, and her husband told the bank manager's wife, and the bank manager resigned. He told Mr. Callahan about the sheriff's brother and the gambling operation, and Mr. Callahan told the commissioner, and the commissioner told the sheriff, and the sheriff's brother moved to Charlotte. He told the commissioner that the sheriff took brown envelopes, and the commissioner stopped taking brown envelopes.

Eli sat on the porch and watched the web vibrate. Every thread he pulled sent a vibration through the town. People changed. People left. People fell out of love and out of power and out of the lives they had built. And Eli sat on the porch and watched it all happen, and he felt like a spider who had discovered that he could control the flies.

But the web was also controlling him.

Rose got worse. Or better. Eli couldn't tell the difference anymore. She talked to the walls more. She stood in the kitchen at three in the morning and whispered in a language that sounded like Latin and English mixed together. She cried sometimes. She laughed sometimes. She looked at Eli with eyes that were clear and cold and said things like, "You're doing what your father would have done," and then she would sit down and stare at the wall for hours.

Eli didn't know who his father was. He remembered a man with a kind face, but he didn't know his name. He remembered a room full of books. He remembered a woman with a cold voice. He remembered everything except the one thing he wanted to know: who was his father?

One evening, he asked Rose.

"Who was my father?" he said.

Rose was standing in the kitchen, talking to the wallpaper. She stopped. She turned around and looked at him with eyes that were very clear and very cold.

"Your father," she said, "was a man who thought he could control the world. He was wrong."

"Who was he?"

Rose looked at him for a long time. Then she went back to talking to the wallpaper.

Eli sat on the porch and watched the ivy grow. It had covered half the railing now, thick and green and tangled. He thought about the web and the threads and the way every person in Oakhaven was caught in it. He thought about his father, who had thought he could control the world. He thought about himself, who was trying to do the same thing.

He pulled one more thread.

He went to Rev. Price's house on a Thursday afternoon. The Reverend was not home. Eli went to the study and looked through the desk. He found a folder labeled "Oakhaven Development"—and inside the folder were documents about a plan to build a shopping center on the land where Blackwood Place stood. The land had been owned by the Blackwood family for generations. After Eli's grandfather died and his father disappeared and his mother moved them to Oakhaven, the land had been left vacant. And now the county wanted it.

Eli sat in Rev. Price's study and read the documents. The shopping center would bring jobs and money to Oakhaven. It would also destroy Blackwood Place. It would also destroy Rose.

Eli put the documents back in the desk. He went home. He sat on the porch. He watched the sun go down over Oakhaven.

That night, Rose stood in the living room and talked to the wallpaper in a voice that was not quite a whisper and not quite a shout. Eli listened. He understood some of the words. They were in a language he didn't recognize. They were in English. They were in a mix of both.

And then Rose said something that Eli understood perfectly.

"She knows," Rose said to the wall. "She knows what he's doing. And she's afraid."

Eli sat on the porch and listened to his mother talk to the wall and realized that he didn't know which one was real—the woman who stood in the kitchen and whispered, or the woman who sat on the couch and watched TV and made breakfast and folded laundry. He didn't know which one was real because he was becoming like both of them. He was becoming a man who thought he could control the world. And he was becoming a woman who talked to the walls because the world was too loud to listen to.

The ivy had covered the whole porch now. Green and thick and tangled. Eli sat in the middle of it and watched the stars come out over Oakhaven and he felt the web vibrate beneath his hands and he understood, finally, that he was not the spider. He was the fly.

And the web was his.

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