I didn’t have a set plan in mind as I headed out to Hooperton. I’d never driven farther than a few miles, always in the city, and generally to the hospital and back if Mom had gotten hurt, or gotten drunk after a shift somewhere, or whatever. I was absurdly excited to leave the city, though, even if I was going to some batshit crazy house in the middle of nowhere.
I was still going somewhere. Anywhere but here.
The drive rambled along without incident: three hours of highway bleeding into farmland, then the town of Hooperton itself—five quaint blocks that looked like they’d been frozen in 1950—then dissolving back into estates and empty fields. By the time I turned onto the final two-lane road, I was surrounded by nothing but orchards, crops, and isolation. The Graham house had no neighbors for at least five miles.
Nothing creepy about that, especially not to someone who’d lived in a city her entire life. The entire countryside felt abandoned.
Finally, I crested a small rise and saw the house proper.
“Whoa.”
It looked exactly like the pictures. Minus the horses of course.
The building soared like some sort of historical monument, all white brick with green shutters and an enormous door. Despite its proud façade, though, the place seemed to sag a little under its own weight. I felt it, then—families layered on families had lived in this house, each more broken than the last.
“Get a grip,” I muttered to myself. I only needed to care about the current family, and the demons apparently creeping around them. And I had to say, the place looked exactly like an Airbnb designed for vacationing evil.
As I stared, one of the upstairs windows caught the light, then went dead black—not curtains closing, but a darkness that seemed to press against the glass from inside. A shadow? I blinked, and it was just a window again, reflecting the afternoon sky. My hands tightened on the steering wheel.
There were woods surrounding the house, rolling away on two sides, but they’d been cleared enough to give you an unobstructed view of the back field, the now super-empty back field, which ran a quarter-mile easy before giving way to more woods. A couple of huge barns stood at the opening of another stretch of farmland, with more long grass fluttering in the breeze.
There was no one outside.
My anxiety ratcheted up as I drove toward the house, so I repeated my mantra to myself. “I’m not staying. I’ll look, I’ll say haunted, I’ll collect my ten grand, and I’ll leave. That’s it. That’s all he wants, and I can give him that.”
Icouldgive him that too. Because there was something definitely fucked up with this place.
I drove up and parked on the wide, curving drive, and there still was no one moving in the front yard or in the paddocks. I didn’t look at the windows, because I didn’t want to see anyonestanding there. I sat there for a second, debating, and then the door opened. It wasn’t Max, though.
It was a little boy.
I felt the curl of recognition swirl through me, making my heart hurt. Kids were theworst. The fact that demons picked on children always seemed particularly cruel to me, because kids were so open. So forgiving. So tolerant of the other that sought to share space with them that they sometimes didn’t even know it was there.
Behind the boy, another figure emerged, and this one I did recognize. Max raised his hand to wave at me, and I forced myself to shut off the car and pop the door open. He wanted actual results for his ten thousand, dammit. More than me just wanting to pee myself. I had to give him something useful. Something like Mordechai would say.
I got out of the car, my hand snaking for my backpack. I didn’t want to leave anything behind, anywhere. Part of that was being nervous that I’d somehow be stuck here. Part of it was wanting something to hold onto.
Either way, I got out of the car and walked up to the front porch, which was one of those massive veranda things, with wicker furniture that actually still looked new. None of it rocked on its own, thank God. There wasn’t enough breeze for that.
“Delia, I’d like you to meet my brother Sam.” Max’s voice was a little strained. His brother—who had to be twenty years Max’s junior, easy—looked at me with eyes way too old for his face and didn’t smile. Still, he didn’t start screaming obscenities at me, so: bonus.
“Hey there, Sam,” I said. I looked up at the big house. Outside the car, it didn’t seem so bad.
“So.” Max was watching me, expectation clear. “Where do we start?”
I blinked at him and realized: I had no idea.
Fortunately for both of us,thenSam started screaming.
Chapter
Thirteen
“No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!”
“Sam!” Max grabbed for him, but Sam lurched away from Max and barreled into me, half-knocking me back before running down the stairs and away. Max jerked forward to catch me before I fell down the wide country stone steps as well, and we both turned to watch Sam race toward one of the huge barns that stood, doors open, at the far end of the yard.
When Max didn’t shout after the kid again, I squinted at him. “Does he, um, do that a lot? Or is that a normal kid thing?”
