Lucas pushed the front door open and braced himself for what was to come, but the group was gone. All but one remained.

Echo stood in the center of the room. A mug was cupped in her hands.

“Hello, Lou,” she said. “Welcome.”

Lucas shook his head at her. “What the—where’s Jeanie?” he asked. “Where’s my daughter?”

“She’s fine,” Echo said, her tone dreamy. “She’s so close.”

“Close . . .” He didn’t know what that meant. “Close to what? To where?”

“Close to here, to forever. Close to what you try to create with your books, Lou. In some ways, writing books is like giving yourself eternal life, isn’t it? We all want it—we just go about it in different ways.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” He spit the words at her, not in the mood for stupid riddles. “Where’s my kid? What is this?” And for a split second, he honestly believed that she could explain it all away—the house, the furniture, the fact that he’d stepped out of night and into day. The entire world had shifted and it had taken him and Jeanie, and now Echo, with it.

Echo gave him a thoughtful smile. She approached the couch in her bare feet, then took a seat and faced the blank TV.

Upstairs, a door swung open and hit the wall behind it.

Lucas’s gaze darted back to Jeanie’s room just in time to see a young Jeffrey Halcomb step into the hall.

INCIDENT/INVESTIGATION REPORT

AGENCY: Pier Pointe Police Department

CASE NO: 83-138

REPORTING OFFICER: Barrett, Albert J.

INCIDENT INFORMATION

DATE/TIME REPORTED: 03/14/83, 09:45

DATE/TIME OCCURRED: 03/14/83, 09:20

INCIDENT LOCATION: Pier Pointe Public Health Center

REPORTING PARTY: Alana Seawell

VICTIMS

NAME: Audra Snow

DATE OF BIRTH: 02/09/63

AGE: 20

OFFICER’S REPORT

Dispatchers received a concerned phone call from Alana Seawell of Pier Pointe Public Health concerning a patient in suspected trouble. Ms. Seawell, a nurse at PPPHC, states that Audra Snow entered the facility at a little after 9 AM with a man and two women. [Man: dark hair, late-20’s to early-30’s, approx. 6 ft. tall, leather jacket. Woman #1: blond, early-20’s, thin, patchwork skirt. Woman #2: brunette, long hair, mid-20’s, patchwork skirt.] Ms. Snow proceeded to explain to Ms. Seawell that she was there to pick up a prescription. When Ms. Seawell checked her files, she noted that Ms. Snow had not renewed her prescription with her physician, Doctor Cornish of Pier Pointe. Ms. Seawell also noted that Ms. Snow was with child. The medication the patient was requesting is not approved for pregnant women. Ms. Seawell discreetly voiced these concerns to the patient. Ms. Snow became anxious. Ms. Seawell assured the patient that they would sort it out, but Ms. Snow continued to grow increasingly agitated. Ms. Seawell reports that the patient looked over her shoulder multiple times at the three individuals who had accompanied her to the clinic [see above]. At one point, the two women described above stepped outside while the man remained. Ms. Seawell sensed that the man was about to pull Ms. Snow away from the counter due to her growing agitation. Ms. Seawell slid a scrap piece of paper across the counter to Ms. Snow, where Ms. Seawell had jotted Do you need help? Ms. Seawell states that Ms. Snow did not confirm in the affirmative, but that her expression convinced her that Ms. Snow was, in fact, in some sort of trouble. The man then led Ms. Snow out of the clinic after she told Ms. Seawell they would come back later. After their exit, Ms. Seawell called the police to report possible child endangerment and suspected domestic abuse. I radioed in a 150 to dispatch at approximately 10:20 AM. Dispatch stated they’d send someone to check on Ms. Snow later that afternoon. The call was tagged as low priority.

54

VIVI CLUTCHED TO her chest the cross she’d found in her father’s study, and for a moment that felt like forever, she didn’t know what to do.

Every corner of the room was frightening in its foreignness. The yard sale paintings that hung against a backdrop of yellow wallpaper brought a sour, almost fruity taste to the back of her throat. She felt that if she touched the wrong thing in this house that shouldn’t have been, she’d set off a chain reaction. She’d never be allowed back into the real world again.

She decided to focus her attention on the door that had shut behind her. It should have led out into the upstairs hall and to her dad’s ground-floor study. Some promise of the familiar. But all it did was give her the sense of being trapped in some impossible dream. She didn’t make a move for it. Escape wasn’t the point. She was here to meet her new family—one free of anger and yelling and negligence. A family that would finally make her feel part of something better, who knew what being forgotten felt like. Jeff will fix everything, she reminded herself, trying to keep her nerves in check. Jeff will make it better. You just have to have faith.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t scared. The cross bit into her fingers while she held it against the front of her shirt, as if to fend off the devil himself. The rectangle of black paper beckoned her from the foot of the bed.

YES. NO. GOODBYE.

The coin she had been using as a makeshift planchette was missing, but she didn’t need it. The cross would work better than any coin could.

The thudding of her heart assured her that now, finally, all the pieces were in place. This was exactly what they wanted, exactly the way it was supposed to happen.

The cross is the answer.

She had no idea how it had gotten in her father’s desk drawer, didn’t know how he had gotten such an artifact. Had Echo brought it to him with the photographs? Had it been in the house all along? It didn’t matter. A trigger object, she thought, and with a sense of fearful conviction, she kneeled in front of her closet altar and slowly moved the cross away from her chest.

Being overtaken by such fear earlier had been confusing. Running away from the strange woman in the kitchen and into her father’s study had been reflexive, an instinct, a reaction that she knew was counterproductive, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. She wanted to meet the family, so why had she run? But the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. The woman in the kitchen had scared her on purpose. She’d done it so that Vivi would find that strange silver relic in her dad’s study. And then, in some inexplicable way, Jeffrey’s faithful had ushered her up the stairs and back into her room. Everything was happening for a reason. Every move was calculated. She was a puppet, and Jeff Halcomb was tugging her strings.

The Ouija board. The cross. This was what would truly bring Jeffrey back from the dead.

“Jeff . . .” She whispered the name into the silence of the room, into the stillness of the closet. “Are you here?” She laid the cross onto the black paper, her fingers just barely grazing its silver surface.

As she knelt there, the familiar sense of not being alone began to crawl across her skin. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She squeezed her eyes shut as the sensation grew. There was a whooping outside, like kids on a playground, reminding her of how she and her best friends had gallivanted around the neighborhood only weeks before. She opened her eyes, abandoned the makeshift board, crossed the room, and paused at the window.

A group of men and women ran together across the yard.