It was, he'd finally decided, the Twin Thing, that strange, almost mystical connection he and his sister had always felt.

Today, though, he saw nothing that could have terrified Kim to the point of a scream. Not like that.

As if she'd read his mind-the Twin Thing again-Kim's eyes fixed on him. "Jared, what's going on? I swear, I didn't call you!" She paused, then spoke again, and he knew she truly had read his mind. "And I didn't even call you in my mind, like I did at the lake that day."

Jared hesitated, then shrugged. "Hey, if you don't remember, why should I?" he finally said. "And maybe it wasn't you at all-maybe it was a ghost!" He scanned the hallway, gave an exaggerated shudder, then fixed his sister with the most mysterious gaze he could muster. "Want to see if we can find one? If ghosts are real, this sure is where they'd be."

A moment later, the strange sensation she'd experienced all but forgotten, Kim set out with Jared to explore the second floor. Half a dozen bedrooms opened off the mezzanine-two of which had small parlors attached to them-along with three bathrooms. There were a few more rooms that were locked, but none of the keys their father had seemed to fit.

On the third floor, tucked beneath the huge oaken rafters that supported the slate roof, were half a dozen more rooms, each with a dormer window, those on the west side looking out over the town, the others over the wilderness to the east.

Finally, after they'd seen as much of the house as they could gain access to, the family gathered on the front porch.

"Well, what do you think?" Ted asked as they made their way back to the car. There was an excitement in his voice that immediately put Janet on her guard. A thought had come to her fifteen minutes ago-a thought she had instantly rejected. The electric note in his question told her the same thought had also occurred to Ted. Before he even spoke, she knew what he was going to say. "It would make a great little hotel, wouldn't it?"

At least a dozen answers to Ted's question popped into Janet's mind, every one of them negative. Instead of voicing even one of them, she slowly turned around and looked back at the immense derelict of a house that had sat abandoned for the last forty years.

She thought about Ted, and what his future in Shreveport might be. Though neither of them had talked about it yet, she knew there would be no job offer, not for a very long time.

Which meant there was nothing to hold them in Shreveport; she had no family there, and neither did he.

In the last few years most of their friends had drifted away, unwilling to deal with Ted's drinking.

Even the kids' friends didn't come over anymore.

Though she had never been a particularly religious person, it occurred to Janet to wonder if it was truly a coincidence that Cora Conway had died and left them this house at the very moment when their own lives had come to a crossroads.

"I hate to say it," she finally replied as she got into the car, "but you might just be right."

From the backseat Kim, too, peered out at the house.

Once again her skin began to crawl, and she felt a terrible chill.

And a single thought came into her mind: No! Please, God, no! Don't make us live here!

Two pairs of eyes-each of them unseen by the other-watched as the dented and dust-covered Toyota disappeared down the road. When it was finally gone, and even the dust it kicked up had settled, both sets of eyes shifted back to the great hulking shape of the house that had stood empty for the last four decades.

Now, both of the watchers were certain, it was about to be occupied again.

Still unseen by one another, their gazes shifted once more, and fixed upon the huge magnolia tree. From its lowest branch George Conway had hanged himself.

One of the watchers began silently to pray.

The other-equally silent-began to curse.

Three days later they were back in St. Albans. As their father pulled the car to a stop in front of the Gothic facade the church of St. Ignatius Loyola presented to the street, Kim and Jared looked at the school that stood across from it.

The school they would be attending, starting the next day.

"Maybe it'll be all right," Jared muttered, though neither he nor Kim had any real idea of what to expect. "I mean, how much different can it be?"

"It's going to be a lot different," he heard his father say, making Jared wish he'd kept silent. "For one thing, you'll get a decent education. They don't coddle the kids in parochial school the way they do where you two have been going. And they don't put up with any nonsense, either."

Jared knew it would be useless to remind his father that both he and Kim had always gotten straight A's, and that neither of them had ever been in any trouble. After all, his father hadn't listened to a word either of them had said for the last two days.

They were moving to St. Albans because some uncle who had died before he was even born had left them a house and enough money to fix it up and turn it into a hotel.

And he and Kim were going to parochial school because that same uncle had wanted it that way, including in the trust a clause directing that any children benefiting from it would attend St. Ignatius Loyola School.

"But we don't want to go to parochial school," he'd objected, speaking for Kim as well. "We haven't even gone to church since we were little kids. None of us have!"

Nothing they said had made a difference. For two days they listened to their father talk about what a great opportunity they were being given, and how much they should appreciate what they were being offered.

And they watched him drink.

Jared suspected that none of the great opportunities his father kept talking about would materialize. Even if his father stayed sober long enough to get the work done and actually open a hotel-and Jared was sure he wouldn't-why would anyone want to stay there? And if the customers stopped coming, his father would drink even more. The day before yesterday-after his father had passed out-he'd talked to his mother about it, and for the first time he heard exactly how bad the situation was.

"He's not going to be able to get another job," his mother explained. "We have a little less than one hundred dollars in the bank. When that's gone, I don't know what we'll do."

"I'll get a job-" Jared began, but his mother shook her head.

"For now, you'll go to school. If you keep your grades up, you'll be able to get a scholarship for college. But if you get a job, your grades will slip."

"But it won't work!" Jared protested. "Dad will just sit home and drink all day!" The pain he'd seen in his mother's eyes made Jared wince, and for a moment he thought she was going to cry. Instead, she'd taken a deep breath and put both her hands on his shoulders.

"If that happens," she told him, looking steadily into his eyes, "I promise we won't stay. I don't know how we'll do it, or where we'll go, but I'll take you and Kim and Molly, and we'll leave. But we have to give him a chance. We have to let him try."

So yesterday they had loaded a U-Haul with everything they owned, and this morning they'd driven down from Shreveport, his father driving the truck while the ' rest of them-including his dog and Kim's cat-packed themselves into the Toyota. Fortunately, Scout was even more placid than most golden retrievers, and had long since decided that Muffin, not being another dog, wasn't worth bothering with. While Muffin curled up in Kim's lap, Scout had fallen asleep between them, waking up only when Molly, strapped into her own seat, managed to grasp his tail and give it a good yank.