And there. Straight ahead, I spotted them.

The graves. Three total.

I actually held my breath as I approached the two that stood right next to one another, one half sunken in the waist-high weeds.

WILLIAM THEOPHILUS DRAPER read the first stone, right below the epitaph of BELOVED FATHER AND HUSBAND and above the dates listed as February 18, 1859–December 21, 1903.

CHERISHED WIFE AND MOTHER was the predictable epitaph for the second, half-sunken gravestone—Lillian Angelique Draper’s.

I frowned at her grave. At the worn dates. They couldn’t say what I thought they did.

Approaching the stone, I crouched and brushed away the layer of clinging dirt. Then I traced the mossy numbers with a finger.

Born March 25, 1865. Died December 21, 1903.

Almost against my will, I glanced to the right. To the third grave.

This one was for PRECIOUS DAUGHTER, Myriam Elaine Draper.

Again, though, the listed dates had me pausing. Or date.

She had also died on December 21, 1903.

Since she’d been born August 29, 1891, she would have only been twelve. Same approximate age as the girl from the photo. Her parents. Their ages would match the photo I’d found, too.

Though there was no way to be sure—not without further research—I could only presume that whatever had killed one of them had killed them all.

In that instant, the force of the tragedy bowled into me.

Could the home’s reputation owe to the fact that the family somehow died inside the house or on the grounds? Perhaps there’d been a gas leak or carriage accident.

Of course, they must have been together. To have all died on the same day . . .

Except. What about the other figure from the photos? The blotted-out young man?

A shudder of soundless movement near one of the trees caused me to start and stand.

I walked toward the movement and spotted the source.

Another moth.

The creature, as large as the one I’d found yesterday, trundled over the trunk of the tree.

Crunching over twigs, leaves, and uneven ground, I made my way to the maple. Peering into the tree’s branches, I searched for more of the beasts.

I found a second moth only when I looked down again.

This one, a little smaller than the one Charlie had chased in the front yard, sat perched on the edge of another stone.

Another gravestone.

I dropped once more into a crouch.

The moth flitted aside as I cleared the leaves, grass, and muck that had camouflaged the stone.

“No,” I whispered at the name that had been carved there more than one hundred years ago. A name that could not really be there. “There’s no way.”

And there shouldn’t have been.

Because that name. Its presence there suggested the impossible.

That other things, things that weren’t supposed to exist at all, had really been there, too.

EIGHT

Zedok

Tick, tock, tick, tock went the mantel clock. My father’s clock. Doing its normal job of wearing through my sanity.