“To do what with?”

I don’t know why I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. Maybe it had been my scientific instincts that had insisted I overturn each rock that presented itself, regardless of what horrors I might find beneath.

Lucas’s warm voice again washed through the quiet that had settled among us.

“Going back to Egyptian myth, it’s important to know that Anubis was not only the god of the Egyptian afterlife and of embalming, but he was also the deity responsible for admitting souls to the afterlife.”

“Kind of like an Egyptian grim reaper,” I said.

“Yeah,” Lucas replied. “In a sense. Only Anubis was responsible for performing the ceremony known as the Weighing of the Heart. To the ancient Egyptians, the heart was considered the seat of the soul, and Anubis was said to personally weigh each heart on a set of scales to determine whether to admit you to the afterlife. Some versions of the story state that, because Erik had removed his heart during the mummy-unwrapping party, the reanimated priest mummified Erik and removed his heart in turn, an action that then doomed Erik to walk the earth as a living corpse.”

“I thought you said Erik wasn’t the one haunting the grounds,” I said.

“I said it supposedly wasn’t Erik’s ghost,” Lucas clarified. “Since he doesn’t have a heart, he’s said to be stuck here. Along with the Egyptian priest. Both of them in . . . uh . . . tangible form.”

“So we have zombies,” Dad grunt-laughed. “This keeps getting better and better. Buildings, I can fix. Reputations?” He shook his head. “Not so easy. And you know what’s really going to be fun? Trying to get contractors on site in the spring.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything,” mumbled Lucas.

“Ah.” Dad waved a dismissive hand. “No. I’m glad you did. Better to know, right? In reality, I’ve got plenty of time to think of ways to debunk all the bull. All the same, though, you seem to know quite a bit about the woo-woo junk surrounding this house. You don’t believe in any of it, do you?”

“N-no, sir,” Lucas said. Another lie? Hard to tell this time.

“So what do you think happened?” By asking the question, I was kind of being a jerk. Because I’d perhaps already heard what Lucas believed. But this was the most sensible way to ask for the skeptic’s version of the tale.

“Well, there are a lot of people in town who think Erik killed his family, faked his death, and ran off.”

At this, my jaw dropped.

“Hmm,” mused Dad. “Any reason for that belief beyond the thought that the kid was just a psychopath?”

“A significant portion of the family fortune was never found.”

“Ah,” Dad said, like Lucas had just told him the painfully obvious answer to a riddle.

After that, conversation turned on a dime, speeding into the realm of Star Wars, rock and roll, and sports Hall of Famers.