But the urgency persisted. He had to see it.

Only he couldn’t. He was unable to move in the dream. Unable to step closer. Unable to stoop and swing his arm to clear the way. The weeds swayed in the summer wind but offered no glimpse of the stone.

Then a hand came into view. A slender hand with pink fingernails. It swept the weeds aside, revealing the stone marker in full.

Sam sat up in the darkness of his room. His heart was beating just noticeably faster than usual.

He sat very still and thought through the details. The answer to the riddle wasn’t one simple thing. It was a combination of things. Like a little jigsaw puzzle. He let it fall together in his mind, and considered it from all sides until he was sure he had it.

Dani had been telling the truth: it was very, very weird.

He didn’t sleep after that. He sat awake for another hour, thinking about Echo House.

Then he heard footsteps outside the window.

He tensed and held his breath. The nearest crickets went silent.

The footsteps came closer. Someone approaching across the yard, moving carefully through the dark.

A sudden, irrational panic came to him:

It was Mr. Pierce.

Somehow he’d found his way home after all this time.

Then the footsteps came to a stop, right outside the window.

“Sam?”

Dani’s voice, just above a whisper.

He breathed out, shaking his head at himself. Stupid. He pulled off the covers, stood and crossed to the screen. Dani was just outside, barely visible, a silhouette against the lights of town.

“Yeah,” Sam said.

“You figured it out, didn’t you.”

“How’d you know?”

“Because you answered just now. Which means you were wide awake. Which means something was keeping you awake.”

“Yeah, I figured it out.”

“Can you come outside? I don’t want to wake up your dad.”

“Sure, hold on.”

He pulled his shorts and a T-shirt on, then found his socks and shoes. It took him a moment to find the screen’s release tabs, by feel. He pulled them and eased the screen outward until it came loose from the frame. Dani took hold of it and set it down against the outside of the house. Sam slipped out onto the dew-damp grass.

“This way,” Dani whispered.

He followed her across the yard, into the high grass beyond, out onto the open stretch of the slope. He saw within seconds where they were going: the abandoned picnic table he’d seen before. It was probably a hundred yards out past the edge of the lawn. They’d covered half the distance when Sam happened to look up.

What he saw brought him to a dead stop. He nearly lost his balance.

“Holy shit…” he whispered.

Dani stopped and turned back. Sam heard her laugh softly.

“They look pretty good,” she said, “when you get away from city lights.”