Eight aspirins and a two-mile walk into the woods outside Stevens Point later, Zandra arrives at Herman the Hermit's home. "Home" is a loose term. It's a tiny shack choked by walls of trash like a square egg in a junkyard bird's nest.

"Herman the Hermit" is what locals call the recluse living in the dense woods adjacent to Soma Falls Park. The property is technically owned by the county, which leased it to a timber company.

Herman skipped eviction through his knowledge of the legal process and knack for never shutting up. He rarely accomplishes anything in court, just ties things up in red tape until the opposing attorney retires. In another life, Herman earned a reputation as a successful Portage County prosecutor. He left his career one day on a whim. He'd later tell the Stevens Point Journal, the local newspaper owned by Gene Carey, he "opted out." The brief comment marked the first and last time he spoke publicly about leaving.

Like Zandra, Herman picks up plenty of flak for "opting out" of the mainstream. No doubt the police interrogated him about Elle Carey. He's harmless, but that doesn't prevent Stevens Point from appropriating him as the bogeyman whenever something bad happens. In a town of 27,000, he's still one of the first to get a visit from police.

Zandra pauses next to a pile of tires outside the shack and rests. The bath and aspirin can only do so much, but she knows the hike will be well worth it. She hears Herman's voice call out to her from inside the shack. It's as seasoned with tobacco as hers.

"If you're here for a knife, I only sell them at shows," Herman says. He sounds exceptionally lucid for someone living in isolation. "No one gets to budge."

Collectors revere Herman's custom knives for their incredible aesthetics and ingenuity. Herman collects discarded metal from box springs, vehicles, appliances and other bits of Stevens Point's rusty underbelly. Using a DIY gas forge made from scrap and crossed fingers, Herman literally turns trash into treasure. His fixed blade creations fetch tens of thousands of dollars at knife shows across the country. Each is a work of art unto itself, featuring unworldly designs that wouldn't look out of place at a vivisection in hell.

Autumn's tug claimed enough leaves around the shack for Zandra to see Herman's frail face and long, gray hair poking out the front door.

"I need to talk to you. It's important," Zandra says. She moves away from the stack of tires to reveal herself. Rolls up her purple sleeves and shows her palms.

Herman steps out from the door. He wears a full-body poncho made from burlap patched with T-shirts.

"Is that who I think it is?" Herman says. He wipes a patch of crud from his eyes. "Well, I'll be. It's the psychic herself, Zandra. The Zandra. But I don't remember ordering a reading. Or did I?"

Zandra takes a shuffled step toward Herman. Her foot drags in the dirt from the pain in her ankle. She wants a better look at him, not that there's anything obtuse about Herman's persona. He looks like a haggard cross between Alan Moore, Grizzly Adams and the bottom of a Dumpster.

"Thought I'd swing by for a smoke break," Zandra says and reaches into the deep pocket of her gown. Out comes a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Back when Herman still associated with Stevens Point, Zandra spotted him outside the courthouse puffing away between hearings. "You still smoke, right?"

"You're too kind. No one brings me presents," Herman says. He fishes out two chairs from a heap of trash and drags over a plastic table. He offers a bow and a seat to Zandra. "M'lady."

They smoke and make small talk about the weather. It's the first Zandra's seen of Herman in years. Not that they had much of a relationship outside the courthouse.

Herman prosecuted, poorly, many of Zandra's swindling charges brought on by jaded Sneak Peek customers. She suspected Herman sympathized with her more than the saps upset their bullshit fortunes never came true.

Zandra waits until their polite discussion whittles down to a pause before taking out a color photocopy of Elle Carey on the bike. "You know about this?" she says and places it on the crooked table.

Herman nods without even looking. "The police give me a visit a couple times a week. Think I'm a pedophile or something, because you can't be an eccentric and innocent at the same time. They still see me as a turncoat, too. But I swear I had nothing to do with it," he says.

Zandra believes him. Guilty people don't appreciate surprise visits.

"I know you didn't," Zandra says. She watches Herman's posture relax. "Do me a favor. Pick up the photo. Look at the left shoe."

Herman complies and studies the photo. His eyes shift between the pink shoe and Zandra.

"What's this about? You working for the Carey family or something?" he says.

"No. I'm looking into it on my own," Zandra says. She uses the red stub of her cigarette to light a fresh one from the pack.

"Not sure why you'd want to help the Carey family anyway," Herman says. "Lord knows I wouldn't. They're half the reason I gave up prosecuting for the county. No difference between that family and the government. Nothing happens in Stevens Point without them saying so."

"I have my reasons," Zandra says.

Now it's Herman's turn to look Zandra over with a critical eye. He sets the photo back down and clears his throat.

"Why do you want to know about the shoe?" Herman says in a tone that tells Zandra he thinks this is a set up. But it also reveals the answer she'd been hoping to get by coming here.

Zandra waves her cigarette like a laser pointer at the mounds of trash.

"I want to know which one of these shit bails has the shoe in it," she says and watches Herman's eyes. A twitch reveals its location somewhere near a disgusting bathtub.

"What makes you think I have it?" Herman says.

Zandra thinks of the knives Herman creates. Notices how the creases of his T-shirt-and-burlap poncho seem to be hiding something underneath. She plays to his sympathies.

"I think you found it when you were out collecting trash. I see you around town with your shopping cart and oven mitts all the time. When you realized what you had, you hid it and told no one, because the police were already suspicious," Zandra says between puffs. "I'm not here to accuse you of anything. I just need that shoe."

Her theory relies on coincidence and luck, but Herman proves her right. He rises from the chair and drags himself to the bathtub. Tipping it over, he grabs an empty cardboard box. The outside label reads Point Beer, the brewery in town. Herman hands it over to Zandra and takes back his seat.

Zandra peeks through a gap in the cardboard. Sure enough, the pink shoe rests inside. She takes care to only look, not touch.

"I burn trash in the wintertime to keep warm. That's why I picked up the beer box. Found it at the Target parking lot in town. I never touched the shoe, though," Herman says. "I suppose you'll try to pick up psychic impressions from it."

"Yes, of course. Psychic impressions," Zandra says and hacks into her sleeve.

Herman lights up another smoke. Makes sure the ashes don't fall near the box.

"I'm not one of those people who ever doubted you being a psychic. I get it. I've had moments like that, too. Where you see the Truth, capital T," he says.

Zandra wants to tell him that perception is reality. Manipulating that perception, either consciously or unconsciously, can change how the world is experienced. It's an art as old as fortune telling itself, and it's totally subjective. Still, odd coincidences like the one with the shoe make her question whether that's true.

Herman seems chatty, so Zandra keeps him going. More information for the file.

"You said the Carey family was half the reason for leaving your job. What about the other half?" she says.

Herman produces a grotesque knife from beneath his poncho. It looks like Cthulu's incisor, like a cross between a chisel and a combat knife ran over by a lawnmower. A warped design of skulls and organs wraps around the handle. The sight makes Zandra jump in her seat. Herman puts her at ease by setting the knife on the table.

"I caught a glimpse, that's what. I saw the world for what it is. Some real Plato shit," Herman says and cracks his back against the chair.

"Plato?" Zandra says. She lights another cigarette.

"When I make knives, I get a little closer to perfection each time, but I never get there. The balance won't be right. The edge geometry will be off. Do you know why?" Herman says.

"Because making knives out of trash is hard?" Zandra says.

Zandra wants to leave. She got what she came for, and she gets the feeling Herman's about to launch into one of his infamous monologues. He doesn't get the chance to spout off to a willing ear all that often. This could be a while.

Herman says, "A perfect knife does not exist in the physical world, but that doesn't mean the idea of a perfect knife doesn't exist. The idea of a perfect knife can only be found in our minds, inside the only space we know for certain actually exists: our thoughts. An idea can't be measured, but it must exist. The idea of something precedes its counterpart in physical reality. Without the idea of a knife, no physical knives would exist. In that way, every knife is an echo of the original, perfect idea that becomes distorted by the confines of our three-dimensional world. That's why I can't ever create a perfect knife. I live downstream.

"But what I can do is try to look upstream as far as I can, to peek into that world of perfection that comes before this one. And one day, back when I was a county prosecutor, I did."

Herman waits for an expression from Zandra. She taps ash onto the ground and feigns further interest.

"I follow," Zandra says, although she's not sure she does. This is the kind of bullshit she likes to avoid in the books she buys for Sneak Peek. They round out the look of the place from the bookshelf, but they're short on anything practical. She gleaned more from one manual on Texas Hold 'Em than a dozen tomes from self-appointed experts of the supernatural.

Herman moves his hands in waves as he talks.

"I don't know how it happened. I was at work, at my desk typing something, and -bam - I saw the world for what it actually is. Not just knives, but the whole of humanity. And by that I mean the original idea of humanity that precedes us as a species, as it exists in the thoughts of God, if you will, of which we all are mutations of, mutilated by the indifferent laws of science that govern everything downstream," Herman says.

His eyes grow wide. He lifts his palms to the sky and closes his eyes. He makes fists and squeezes until his knuckles shake.

"And?" Zandra says, flat and unimpressed.

Herman opens his eyes and lowers his hands. Talks to the sky like it's a newborn.

"And I experienced the awe of humanity's true perfection. Perfect good. Perfect evil. Perfect jealousy. Perfect altruism. And all these different perfections flowing out and mixing like fountain soda into human beings downstream. It felt wonderful and horrifying and beautiful and terrible at the same time," he says with tears in his eyes. "My experience ended as soon as it started. I'd give anything to get back there. Art, like making my knives, is the only path that takes me the closest to that place, to that perfection. That's why I had to leave my job.

"So don't doubt yourself about being a psychic, Zandra. You might've caught a glimpse like I did."

Zandra's doubts lie more with the drugs missing from an evidence locker shortly before Herman left his post at the county. Maybe his acid-washed persona is as much a cover for something darker as Zandra's purple gown.

"Well, it's been real. Thanks for the pink shoe, Herman," Zandra says. She stands up to leave. It's a little too fast for her bad ankle. She braces herself against the plastic table.

"You're leaving already? But I haven't even made it to the best part," Herman says.

"And what would that be?" Zandra says and picks up the beer box.

Herman says, "That DNA, the building blocks of life, is an expression of information. Just as your thoughts and decisions precede you doing something like walking away from me right now, so too does information precede DNA. We know your thoughts are real, but we can't measure them, just as we can't see the information that informs DNA. But the information had to come from somewhere, from an intelligence, from God. We, as a species, were thought into existence, right along with everything else. And we, as a species, can create new worlds downstream from our own existences simply by thinking differently. Perception is reality. We are gods to those worlds as God is to ours."

Zandra stamps out her cigarette in the dirt. Hacks into her sleeve. "OK," she says.

"The farther upstream you can get, Zandra, the farther downstream you can see," Herman says as Zandra shuffles away. He cups his hands around his mouth as she passes a ramshackle gate made from shoelaces and PVC pipe. "I believe in you, Zandra. You'll find the missing girl. Paddle hard upstream."

Zandra reaches the edge of the woods and stops to rest against a tree. Her luck struck twice today: first for knowing to go to Herman, second for him finding the shoe.

Stop now while you're ahead. Walk away. Tell Charlie you're done helping.

She clears her head of the thoughts to quit. The closer she comes to finding Elle Carey, the harder she can hit her family.