INTRODUCTION

The idea for "Tenants" had been wandering through the back of my mind for years. A simple little story about an escaped killer who thinks he's found the perfect hideout from the law in a remote house. The old coot who lives there is crazy: He keeps talking about his tenants, but he's alone in the shack. Or is he?

I could have set it anywhere, but I chose Monroe. Not only because I'd set "Feelings" there but because I was squeezing out these stories between sections of Reborn; that novel is also set in Monroe and I saw a possible connection. I'd envisioned Reborn as the first part of a long roman-fleuve that would unite my three previous novels, The Keep, The Tomb, and The Touch, into a six-book cycle. But why were all these strange things happening in Monroe? Why had the Dat-tay-vao been drawn to Monroe in The Touch? Was it all random, or was there a reason? I realized Reborn contained that reason. So if the old guy in "Tenants" has some strange boarders, maybe they too wound up in Monroe for a reason. The locale had no direct effect on the novelette itself, but it gave me a little extra kick to know I was connecting it to the cycle.

Gus and his tenants surface again briefly in Nightworld.