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“—be canny—”

Mind made up, I start to run, not giving my body a chance to protest. I rush up the stairs, across the second-floor hallway, up another set of steps. I’m still running when I reach the third floor, the study door shut and looming before me.

“—and careful—”

I hurtle toward the door with my grip tight around the knife, letting out a scream as I go. Part of it’s self-defense. Trying to catch whoever’s inside off guard. The rest is fear, bursting out of me the same way I’m bursting into the room.

“Baby, you’re on the brink.”

The study is empty, even though all the lights are on and the record player on the desk blares at full volume.

“You are sixteen—”

I flick the needle away from the turntable and, pulse still thrumming, survey the room, just to confirm it is indeed empty. Whoever had been up here must have left as soon as they started the record player, ringing the bell on the way out.

Which means it was a ghoul. Some punk-ass kid who’d read the Book, heard I was back here, and now wanted to reenact part of it.

The only wrinkle in my theory is that I’d closed and locked the gate after Brian Prince left. I also closed and locked the front door when I got back to the house. If it was a House of Horrors prankster, how did he get inside?

That question vanishes when I take another look at the desk and notice something off.

Just like the letter opener in the parlor, the teddy bear Dane and I had found in the closet is now gone.

JULY 1 Day 6

“He says we’re going to die here.”

Until then, the day had been notable for not being notable. No ringing bells or rogue snakes or new, unnerving discovery. If there had been a thud at 4:54 in the morning, I slept right through it. It had simply been a normal day. Our first at Baneberry Hall.

Then my daughter uttered those words, and it all went to shit.

I immediately fetched Jess, knowing this was a job best handled by the both of us. Even then, I wasn’t sure what we should do. One of my daughter’s imaginary friends was telling her she was going to die. That wasn’t covered in any parenting handbook.

“Mister Shadow isn’t real,” Jess said as she climbed onto the bed and took Maggie into her arms. “And he’s not a ghost. He’s just a piece of your imagination with a mean voice telling you things that aren’t true.”

Maggie remained unconvinced.

“But he is real,” she said. “He comes out at night and says we’re going to die.”

“Do your other friends say stuff like that?”

“They’re not my friends,” Maggie said in a way that broke my heart a little. Basically, she was telling us that she had no friends. Not even imaginary ones. “They’re just people who come into my room.”

“Just how many people have you met?” Jess said.

“Three.” Maggie counted them off on her fingers. “There’s Mister Shadow. And the girl with no name. And Miss Pennyface.”

Jess and I exchanged concerned looks. Whatever this was, it wasn’t normal.

“Miss Pennyface?” I said. “Why do you call her that?”

“Because she has pennies over her eyes. But she can still see. She’s watching us right now.”

Maggie pointed to the corner by the closet with the slanted door. I saw nothing but an empty space where the angled ceiling began its sharp descent. Jess didn’t see anything, either, because she said, “There’s no one there, honey.”

“There is!” Maggie cried, once more on the verge of tears. “She’s looking right at us!”

She was so convincing in her certainty that I continued to stare at the corner, searching the shadows there, looking in vain for something I couldn’t see but that my daughter could, even if it was just in her mind’s eye.

Then I heard a noise.

Tap.

It came from somewhere down the hallway. A single rap on the hardwood floor.

“What the hell was that?” Jess said.

“I don’t know.”

Tap.

The noise was louder that time. Like whatever was causing it had moved a few feet down the hallway, closer to Maggie’s bedroom.

Tap-tap.

These were louder still, the second sounding nearer than the first.

“Do you think it’s the pipes?” Jess asked.

“If it is, why haven’t we heard it until now?”

Tap-tap-tap.

Three that time, growing in volume until they were right outside.

Maggie pressed against her mother, her wide eyes unblinking.

“It’s Mister Shadow,” she said.

Jess hushed her. “Maggie, stop it. He’s not real.”

Mister Shadow might not have been real, but the tapping certainly was. The only explanation I could think of was the most obvious one: an intruder had entered Baneberry Hall.

“Someone’s inside the house,” I whispered.

The noise was now an unbroken stream, so loud and so close. It seemed to pass right by the bedroom door, even though no motion accompanied it.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

The sound began to recede as it continued down the hall, seemingly heading to the steps that led to the third floor.

I bolted from the bed, determined to follow it. “You and Maggie stay right here.”

Jess protested. “Ewan, wait—”

If she said anything else, I didn’t hear it. By then I was already running down the hallway, trying to locate the source of the—

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

I looked up and down the hallway. Nothing was there. Certainly nothing that could have caused something as strange as that—

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

The sound had become quieter, almost as if it had moved to another section of the house. I heard one last tap before it died away completely, leaving me standing in a silent hallway.

It didn’t last long.

Within seconds, I heard something else.

Music.

Coming from directly above me.

“You are sixteen, going on seventeen—”

I bolted up the steps to the third floor, taking them two at a time. When the door to my study edged into view, I saw that it was closed, a thin strip of light visible just beneath it.

“Baby, it’s time to think.”

I knew I should have turned back, but by then it was too late. Whoever was behind that door had heard me coming. Besides, momentum kept me moving. Up the rest of the steps, through the door, into the study.

“Better beware—”

Just like the other night, the study was empty. It was just me and the record player and the damn album spinning and spinning and spinning.

“—be canny—”

I turned it off, the song mutating as the turntable slowed to a stop. I then examined the study, wondering where the intruder had gone.

And how he had caused those taps.

And if it was going to happen again.

Because it had already happened once before. Two nights ago, when I’d first heard the record player. That hadn’t been Jess or Maggie or a goddamn mouse.

The realization that our home had been broken into twice now rattled me. With shaking hands, I removed the record from the turntable and stuffed it into its cardboard sleeve. I saw no need to give the intruder a chance to play it a third time. I then unplugged the record player and put it back inside its case. Both cases were then put back in the closet where I found them.

Then I went downstairs to call the police.

• • •

The policewoman who came to our house, Officer Tess Alcott, was so young I at first didn’t believe she was a cop. She looked like she had barely finished Girl Scouts, let alone a police academy. Officer Alcott probably got that a lot, for she presented herself with a gruffness that felt forced.