The House at the End of the World

Katie contemplates her painting again, wondering how she will manage some of the technical details that will give the painting its symbolism. Then, she arms herself and circles her house, looking for evidence. Despite the day’s fog, she finds a patch of grass that has been torn up and smells of ammonia. By the dock, there are dozens of dead fish rotting on the beach. While she tries to convince herself that everything is normal, she hears the motor of a boat cutting off near her island.

In a flashback, Katie is meeting her therapist for the last time before moving to Jacob’s Ladder. Her therapist tries to convince her not to become a hermit and to keep up with her painting career, but Katie does not want to live around people or paint for anyone else. The therapist argues that the past is the past, but Katie sees the past—her own tragedy and 20th-century human history—as evidence that something is wrong with humanity.

Katie circles her island, noticing its beauty while remaining attentive to change. She finds a fox that she has seen before, naming him Michael J. Fox. Michael J. is visibly agitated by something on the island. As Katie continues her search, she sees a boat pulled up on the beach.

Katie finds footsteps leading to the grotto, a natural cave that Joe Smith, the original owner of Jacob’s Ladder, embellished with patterned bricks. She enters the grotto and calls for the intruders to identify themselves. Two dangerous-looking men, armed and dressed in black uniforms, reveal themselves.

The men, Robert Zenon and Hampton Rice, identify themselves as members of the Internal Security Agency (ISA), an organization of which Katie has never heard. They have a warrant to search Jacob’s Ladder for someone but will not tell Katie who. They demand that she return to her home, which she does, telling herself that she can still keep her promise.

Katie walks home along trails that she knows but that feel subtly changed by the knowledge that people have intruded onto her island. When she gets back, gulls draw her attention to the water and she sees Michael J. sitting on the end of the pier, shivering with tension while he stares across the water at Ringrock. Thinking about the ISA agents’ search, Katie reasons that they cannot be looking for a person and wonders what the fox knows that she doesn’t.

In a flashback, Katie visits an attorney in the city, hoping that he will argue her case and help her get money from powerful people who have injured her. He counsels her about the risks of going against such people and suggests that she use the money she has from insurance to buy Jacob’s Ladder. The mention of the island—which she has not told him about—makes Katie suspect that the attorney is not on her side. He confirms this by threatening her with death if she pursues legal action. The threat is repeated by one of his colleagues, who escorts Katie from the building.

In the present day, Katie watches for Zenon and Rice leaving by boat. However, she hears gunshots instead and theorizes about what the men might be shooting at, wondering if it was an escaped chimpanzee used in experiments. She paces, keeping watch, until she hears the boat’s engine again.

Katie sees a boat in the distance with three figures on it. She supposes that Zenon and Rice have captured someone whom they were hunting. She plans to read or paint that afternoon, reasoning that peace and order have returned to Jacob’s Ladder. First, though, she decides to confirm that the boat has left.

Katie walks back through the woods, thinking about the three men on the boat. They lead her to think about three other men, whose names she recites to herself: Lupo, Hamal, and Parker. She has studied these men—even fantasized about killing them. When she comes to the cove where Zenon and Rice’s boat was beached, the boat is gone, and she feels relief. She then climbs up to the grotto to see if she can learn anything about the gunfire that she heard. She finds nothing, but from this angle above the beach, she can see that the boat Zenon and Rice used is underwater just off her island. It has been intentionally sunk and hidden, meaning that Zenon and Rice are still on her island.