“Jeanie.” Dropping a hand from the wheel, he caught his kid by the ankle and gave her a light squeeze. “Jeanie, wake up.”

Jeanie exhaled a muted groan, her fingers prodding at her still-closed eyes. “What?” she mumbled, her voice dry with sleep.

“We’re here.”

“We are?” She sat up, her hair wild and luminescent with the glow of the dashboard. “This isn’t it, is it?” She squinted at the place, yawned, then gave her father a dubious look through the shadows of the truck’s cab. Lucas leaned back against the U-Haul’s bench seat and let his hands drag across the thighs of his jeans. “Dad?” Her attention bounced from the house ahead of them to her father’s face.

He had seen it online, photographed in the daylight with sun shining off of its wood-paneled, stone-covered front. It had reminded him of the Brady Bunch house, complete with its front double doors and badly worn shingle roof. In the sunshine, the place looked welcoming. But now, it was nowhere near what he imagined.

“Hang on . . . Dad. It isn’t even near anything.” She was twisting in her seat, getting a good look at nothing but trees. “You said it was close to town. Close to the movies, to something . . .”

Lucas chose to ignore his daughter’s complaints and nodded toward the house instead. “Come on, let’s check it out.”

Jeanie let out a dramatic sigh and shimmied across the long seat toward the passenger door. She was unhappy, not to mention cranky from being woken up, but it was too late now. They were here, and Lucas wasn’t putting another mile on the odometer tonight.

They dashed through the rain and across the gravel driveway, the truck’s headlights illuminating their way. Ducking beneath the awning above the front doors, Jeanie shivered and pretzeled her arms across her chest, impatient to get inside. Her trepidation had buckled beneath the cold.

“I bet there’re going to be bugs everywhere. It’s going to be like a haunted house inside, isn’t it? Spiderwebs and everything?”

“There aren’t any bugs.” Lucas pulled a silicone key chain from his pocket and slid the key into the lock. From his research on a few real estate sites, he’d learned that the property had been on the market for years. It had only recently been purchased by someone who, lucky for Lucas, had decided to use it as a rental.

After a few seconds of struggle, he got the dead bolt to slide back and pushed open one of the doors. Jeanie ducked inside before he could hit the lights. He slid his hand along the wall while she stood in silhouette, the truck’s high beams at her back. Finding a dimmer switch to the left of the door, he turned the little plastic wheel and the overhead lights faded on.

“Oh God.” She breathed the words while stepping farther into the foyer, rain water spattering the redbrick floor at her feet.

The living room was recessed, nested a good eight inches into the floor with steps leading into it from both the foyer and kitchen. The interior was a weird mishmash of colors and textures. Green-painted wood paneling and gray stonework gave the place an undeniable retro feel. The red brick skirted the living room in a raised L shape, stopping at the foot of a staircase that led to three upstairs rooms. A stone fireplace butted up against the brick walkway, giving way to a sea of ugly beige carpet that looked recently replaced.

A distinct hint of bleach hung acrid in the air, more than likely wafting out of the recently scrubbed bathrooms. Lucas had made it clear to the property management company that he expected the place to be move-in ready. He didn’t have time to play housemaid with his impending trips to Lambert Correctional, and with all the research he had to do. What Lucas hadn’t told them was that he knew the history of the house, and it was only now that he realized that had been a risk. If there was graffiti somewhere on an outside wall—a 666 or someone’s idea of a clever throwback to the murder/suicide that had occurred—Jeanie was bound to find it. But despite this worry, and the relative cleanliness of Audra Snow’s former home, he couldn’t bring himself to look away from the low-pile rug. He wondered if the carpet had been the same shade of tan in 1983—the same color, at least, until it had been soaked in blood.

“This is bigger than our house back home,” Jeanie said, trying to make the most of the place. “It’s, like, totally disgusting-looking, but it’s definitely bigger.”

Before Lucas had the chance to note that they now had two bathrooms instead of one, she ducked into the shadows of the kitchen. He followed after her in silence, his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans.

The kitchen was trying for sixties mod, but it looked far more sad than fashionable. The brown cabinets clashed against an ugly orange backsplash and Formica counters to match. And while someone had updated the appliances in recent years, they were still in questionable shape. But the place was perfect for Lucas’s purposes. Sitting quietly among the trees, the house was a time capsule. Preserved by former owners and tenants, it was as if the house had been waiting three decades for Lucas to arrive and reclaim his career.

Jeanie fiddled with the dials of a countertop stove, then flashed her dad a look. “I’m gonna go pick out my room.” She stepped across the kitchen and back into the living room, making a beeline for the stairs.

“Not the master, kiddo,” he called after her. “That belongs to your father.” Her Converse sneakers stomped up the risers beneath the patter of rain. He leaned against the island and exhaled, his attention drifting over the foreign details of the room.

He wondered how many people had lived at 101 Montlake Road without knowing what had happened in the past. Who had been given the job to pull up the carpet that had grown tattered with age? Had they seen the blight of blood that had seeped into the very foundation of the house?

Did you recognize what it was? he wondered. Did you stand over it with an appropriate sense of dread? Of course not, especially if the carpet installers hadn’t known the significance of the address. They would have dismissed the stain as something unremarkable and mundane, something as innocent as grape juice or wine. What a party. Lucas’s skin crawled at the thought.

It was at that moment that, as if picking up on his manner of thinking, the house groaned on its foundation. A series of loud pops came from deep within one of the kitchen walls, the entire room sighing at its lack of emptiness. And while anyone would have written off the popping as nothing but wood expanding and contracting with fluctuations in temperature and humidity, it still gave Lucas the creeps.

On edge, he pushed himself away from the counter and coiled his arms across his chest. There was an odd energy here. Something didn’t feel right. He flipped off the lights, ready to leave the dated kitchen behind, but it was the shadow in the corner, not the weird vibe of the place, that stopped him in his tracks. There, in a dark corner of the kitchen, was a shadow within a shadow. For a moment he was convinced he could see the curve of a shoulder, the outline of an arm. What the hell is that? Hesitant, he took a couple of forward steps to close the distance between himself and the light switch, inadvertently cutting the space between himself and the figure in half. The silhouette faded with his every step.

Lucas hit the lights. The corner came up empty.

“Okay,” he murmured to himself. “Keep that imagination in check.”

But he nearly yelped in surprise when Jeanie yelled from the upper floor.

“Dad!”

Her abrupt calling down to him assured him that this was a bad idea. She’d found something. Goddammit, not even an hour into their first night and it was over. He should have never considered living here a possibility.