Chapter 1: The House at the End of the Road

The summer before eighth grade should have been the best of my life. Instead, it turned into the weekend I have never been able to forget. My name is Jack, and back then I was twelve years old, a skinny kid with a football under one arm and not many friends. I never really minded. I had my cousin Ethan, and that was enough.

Ethan lived with his mom, my Aunt Linda, in a tiny apartment across town. There was barely room for the two of them, so he spent most of his weekends at my house. We had a whole basement to ourselves there, a fridge full of snacks, and nobody telling us to turn off the TV. For a couple of twelve-year-olds, it was paradise.

Then, in July, my aunt and her fiancé, Mark, bought a house. Ethan called me the night they got the keys, so excited he could hardly breathe. "Jack, you have to see it," he said. "It's huge. It's got a field in the back, and then a forest behind that. There's actually enough room for you to sleep over now." I begged my mom until she gave in. The plan was simple: the whole weekend, just the two of us, with video games and more junk food than any human should eat.

On Friday afternoon, Mom picked me up right after work. The drive took forty-five minutes, which felt like forever. At first we passed gas stations and grocery stores, but slowly the buildings thinned out. Then came farmland, and then a narrow road squeezed between tall trees whose branches met overhead like a green tunnel. My phone lost its signal somewhere along the way. I remember thinking that this was the middle of nowhere, and I remember thinking that it was awesome.

Then the trees opened up, and there it was.

The house sat all by itself at the end of a long gravel driveway. It was enormous, three stories of tired gray wood with peeling white trim and windows so dark they looked like closed eyes. Parts of it stuck out in odd directions, as if different builders had added rooms over the years without ever asking each other. A crooked porch wrapped around the front. Behind the house, I could see a wide field of tall yellow grass, and past the field stood the forest, a solid black wall of pine trees.

"Wow," I said quietly.

"Told you," Ethan yelled. He came sprinting off the porch before Mom had even stopped the car, his sneakers kicking up gravel. He yanked my door open and grabbed my backpack. "Come on, come on, I'll give you the tour!"

The tour took forever, and I loved every minute of it. The house really was a maze. There were three different staircases going up and two more going down to the basement. I lost count of the rooms after twenty. Some were empty, with nothing but dusty floors and bare light bulbs. Others were stacked with boxes and old furniture that the last owners had left behind. The floors creaked in every hallway, and every door had a heavy brass knob that felt cold in my hand, even in July.

"Your side of the house is way cooler than mine," I told him, and I meant it. Ethan's bedroom was on the second floor at the end of a long hallway, and it was almost as big as our living room back home. He had a bed on each side of the room, so I would not have to sleep on the floor. His computer sat on a desk in the corner, glowing with a soft blue light. And between the two beds, built into the wall, was an old wooden closet with a brass handle.

"You get that bed," Ethan said, pointing to the one right next to the closet.

I looked at the closet door for a second longer than I meant to. It was nothing special, just dark, worn wood. But something about it made the back of my neck feel tight, the way it does when you walk into a room and know somebody just stopped talking. I told myself I was being silly and dropped my bag on the bed.

Downstairs, the grown-ups were in the kitchen. Mom and Aunt Linda were laughing over cups of coffee. "Honestly, it's way too much house for three people," my aunt was saying. "But we couldn't pass up the deal." Mark walked in with two giant pizza boxes and a bag of chicken wings, and the smell hit me so hard that I stopped listening. I didn't care why the house had been cheap. I only cared that I was hungry.

I should have cared. I should have asked.

Mom hugged me goodbye and told me to behave. Ethan and I ran outside with the football and played until the sun sank behind the forest and the whole field turned the color of orange juice. The trees grew darker and darker. When I finally turned to head for the porch, I glanced back at them one last time, and for half a second I thought I saw a shape standing at the edge of the woods. It looked small and thin, and very still.

I blinked, and it was gone. Just a shadow, I told myself.

That night we ate until we were sick and played video games until our eyes burned. Around midnight, Ethan yawned so hard his jaw popped, and we shut off the TV. I climbed into the bed beside the closet, and Ethan climbed into his. The last thing I saw before I fell asleep was that closet door, closed tight, with the brass handle catching a little of the blue light from the computer.

I didn't know it yet, but that door would not stay closed for long.