Sam said now, “Haunted house.”

Tyler was pouring cereal into a small bowl for his son. He looked over at Becca.

She said, “You could be right, Sam. It was a bad storm and that old house shook and groaned. I was scared to my toes.”

Sam began eating his Cap’n Crunch cereal his father put in front of him.

Tyler said, “Sam’s too young to be scared.”

Sam didn’t look up from his cereal bowl.

It was nearly eleven o’clock that morning when Becca drove back to Jacob Marley’s house. It no longer looked frightening and menacing. It looked bedraggled, very clean, and the hemlock with its branch sticking through her second-floor window no longer looked like a ghostly apparition, but like a tree that was dead now, nothing more. She smiled as she walked around the house, assessing damage. Not much, really, just the branch in the window. They’d have to haul the tree away.

She called the real estate agent, Mrs. Ryan, from a working public phone in front of Food Fort, who told Becca she would notify the insurance company and the tree-removal people and not to worry about a thing, everything was covered.

Becca went back to the house and toured for the next twenty minutes, not seeing any damage anywhere inside. The electricity flickered on, then off again. Finally, when it was nearly noon, the lights came on strong and bright. The refrigerator hummed loudly. Everything was back to normal. Then, with no warning, the hall and living room lights went off. The circuit breaker, she thought, and wondered where the devil the box would be. The basement, that was the most likely place. She had to check down there anyway. She lit one of her candles and unlatched the basement door, which was at the back of the kitchen. Steep wooden stairs disappeared into the darkness. Great, she thought, now to top it all off, maybe I can fall and break my neck on these rickety stairs. They were wide and felt sturdy and strong, not so dangerous after all, a relief. There were a dozen steps. The floor was uneven, cold and damp concrete. She raised the candle and looked around. There was a string hanging down and she gave it a pull. The bulb switch clicked but nothing happened. This light must be on the same circuit. She began at the right of the stairs, lifting the candle to light up the wall. It was dank down there, and she smelled mildew. Her toes sloshed in a bit of water. Yep, leaks from the storm. On the wall facing the stairs she finally found the circuit breaker box. Beside it were stacks of old boxes, everything dirty and damp. She flipped the downed circuit breaker switch and the bulb overhead blossomed into one-hundred-watt light. Stacks of old furniture, most of it from the forties, perhaps some even earlier, were piled against the far wall. So many boxes, all of them very large, labeled with faded and smeared spidery handwriting.

She started forward to look at the writing on one of the labels when there was a low rumbling noise. She stopped cold, fear spiking through her. Where was it coming from? Where? All the nightmares from the night before tore through her. Sam’s words—“haunted house.” Shadows, the damned basement was filled with shadows and damp and rot.

She whipped around at the crash not thirty feet away from her, in the far corner of the basement. She watched as the wall heaved and groaned and spewed brick outward onto the basement floor, leaving a jagged black hole.

She stood there a moment longer, staring at the hole in the wall. She was surprised. The house was very old, sturdy. Why, suddenly, would this happen? The storms over the years must have gradually weakened this particular wall and now, finally, the one last night was the final blow. Perhaps all the damp contributed, as well.

She walked to the corner, dodging crates and a huge steamer trunk that looked to be from the nineteen twenties. The light didn’t reach quite that far. She raised her candle high and looked into the black hole.

And screamed.

7

That black gash in the basement wall had vomited out a skeleton mixed with shards of cement, whole and broken bricks, and thick dust that flew through the air to settle slowly, thickly, on the basement floor.

The skeleton’s outstretched hand nearly touched her foot. She dropped the candle and jumped back, wrapping her arms around herself. She stared at that thing not more than three feet from her. A dead person, long dead. It—no, it wasn’t an it, it was a woman and she couldn’t hurt anybody. Not now.

White jeans and a skimpy pink tank top covered the bones, many of which would have been flung all over the basement floor were it not for the once-tight jeans holding them together. One sneaker was hanging off her left foot, the white sock damp and moldy. The left arm was still attached, but barely. The head had broken off and rolled about six inches from the neck.