There was a fork up ahead in the tunnel. We stopped at it. I tried to remember when I was here last which way I went. I didn’t remember the fork but I was pretty distracted. Dylan Shaykes—at that time I only thought of him as Shaved Head—was leading me toward the house.

What way had we gone—left or right?

Right, I thought. I don’t have a great sense of direction, but right also seemed the way to the house. Plus, the bigger prong in the fork—the one you would more naturally take—was the one on the right.

I had already gone in that direction, though, hadn’t I?

I was about to shine the flashlight to the left when I heard a noise. I froze.

Ema whispered, “What?”

“Did you hear that?”

“I don’t think so.”

We stayed still. I heard it again. I couldn’t tell what it was, though. My imagination? Maybe. But whatever it was, it seemed very far away. Have you ever had that? Have you ever heard a sound so soft, so far away, so muffled that you aren’t even sure that you are hearing anything at all? Like maybe your ears are ringing and you’re just imagining the whole thing.

That was what this was like.

“Do you hear it?” I asked her.

And again, because we are so much in tune, Ema replied, “Maybe. Something really faint . . .”

We didn’t know what to do.

“It could just be an old pipe,” Ema said. “Or house noises. You know. You can barely hear it at all.”

“I know.”

“So what should we do?”

“Probably not stay much longer.”

I shone the flashlight to my left. When we both saw what was there, Ema said, “Bingo.”

Maybe, I thought.

The first thing we saw was an old television set. I don’t know how old exactly. I mean, it wasn’t ancient—not like that noisy refrigerator that broke on the Bat Lady—but it was a thick console set with a screen that couldn’t be more than eight inches. A machine that looked like a giant old-fashioned tape recorder was attached to it.

“It’s for VCR tapes, I think,” Ema said. “We still have something like it in the theater room.”

I stepped into the room. On the shelf above, there were dozens of tapes, lined up like books. I started to pull them down from the shelf.

“I don’t think they’re for a VCR,” I said.

Uncle Myron had old VCR tapes of his high school games in the house. These tapes looked slightly different. They were a little smaller, less rectangular. I hoped to find something on the labels, but the only thing written on them were numbers.

“Mickey?”