“I have my laptop,” Spoon said. “I’ll get us everything I can on this Jared Lowell.”

CHAPTER 9

I decided to walk home because I needed to see something.

I cut across Northfield Avenue and tried to clear my head. I made a right on the next corner. I had a destination in mind, even if, in a sense, it no longer existed.

Bat Lady’s house.

I know that I shouldn’t refer to her as that anymore. The Bat Lady was the name the town kids had given to the creepy, crazy old lady who lives in the creepy, crazy old house, the one that children whispered about and made up stories about and even genuinely feared.

The Bat Lady was not crazy. Or maybe she was, but either way, she was not what any of those kids ever imagined. In a way, the reality behind Bat Lady was even scarier.

The decrepit house that had stood for more than a century was barely more than ashes now. It had been burned down last week. I had been in the house at the time. I had barely escaped with my life. I still didn’t know why that man had tried to burn me alive. I had only met him once before.

He was the paramedic who told me that my dad was dead.

I stopped in front of the remains of the house. There was yellow tape surrounding it. I wondered whether that meant that this was a crime scene, if the authorities had figured out that this had been a case of arson, not merely fire.

I flashed back to the day it all started, just a few weeks ago. I had been walking to my new high school, minding my own business, strolling right past this very spot when the front door of the scary old house creaked open.

The Bat Lady had called out to me. “Mickey?”

I had never seen her before. I had no idea how she knew my name.

She pointed a bony finger at me and said the words that changed my life: “Your father isn’t dead. He’s very much alive.”

And then she vanished back inside.

I had thought that his casket would hold the answer. Instead it just led to more questions.

I stared at the remains of the house. Signs reading CONDEMNED and PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESPASSING were everywhere.

So now what?

There were secret tunnels under the house. I wondered whether the fire had affected them. I doubted it. I tried to remember the last time—well, the only time—I had been in them. I knew that the entrance was by the garage, deep in the woods. I knew that they led to the house. I knew that there were other paths underground, a whole maze of them maybe.

Tunnels that had been closed off to me.

Was that all gone now? Or would there be clues down there?