Chapters 2, 3 and 4 Summary and Analysis

"Great-Great Aunt Dixie"

In this brief chapter, the author writes of her Great-Great Aunt Dixie, famous in America and Europe in the late-19th and early-20th century for apparent spiritual powers. Dixie, the author writes, died "sometime in the 1920s, alone, forgotten, and a pauper," but not before she had predicted someone in the author's generation of the family would inherit her talent.

"The Intruder"

The first part of the chapter is taken up with the author's narration of a night when she and her younger sister were left alone in their suburban Mexican home. She describes how she thought she heard the sound of parents' return, how she realized that she had heard something that hadn't happened, and how she heard deep, sinister laughter in her head. Finally, she describes how "the being" that had moved into...