There was a low insistent tapping on the other side of the wall.

She bolted upright. Moonlight shone through the sheer curtains. Lane was nowhere to be seen, and her first impulse was to call out his name, but the tapping in The Room and the silence in the rest of the house motivated her to remain quiet.

How had she gotten here?

She had no idea, but she was terrified and wanted only to escape. Some sort of supernatural force had brought her back, though for what reason she could not conceive. On the wall in front of her, where the tapping came from, she saw a shadow, a shadow that undulated as though it were underwater. She stared, trying to make sense of it, but its shape confused her. There were three arms, and a giraffe-like neck topped by a giant head with jagged crown, all emerging from an ordinary man’s body. To her mind, it resembled some sort of primitive deity with its amalgamation of human and animal characteristics, but, again, it was a shadow, and she glanced around the darkened room trying to locate a figure that it could be the shadow of.

Nothing.

It corresponded to nothing that she could see, almost as though it were its own separate entity, and that made its undulating movement seem suddenly more sinister.

She needed to get out of here. She wanted nothing to do with the house, especially not The Room, and she jumped to her feet and dashed out of the bedroom before whoever—whatever—had brought her here discovered that she was awake. She was in her pajamas, but she didn’t care, and she ran down the hall, through the living room and out the front door.

Outside, all of the houses on the street were for sale, and identical signs posted in each yard, visible by moonlight and streetlamp, were for The First People’s Bank Realty. In the driveway, her Accord was in the process of being towed, and painted on the side of the tow truck in blue letters was: The First People’s Bank Repossession Company. Through the cab window of the truck, Jen saw a driver with a very long neck whose spiky-topped head seemed far too big for his undersized body.

Then she really woke up, it was morning, and she was in her bed in her apartment and Lane was snoring next to her. Heart still pounding from the events in the dream, Jen awoke with a huge sense of relief, but the uneasiness engendered by the nightmare stayed with her as she got out of bed and went to the bathroom. Usually, she could tell she was dreaming even when she was in the dream—a byproduct of dealing with night terrors as a child—but this had seemed utterly real, and she could still feel the coolness of air on her face from running outside to get away from the house.

The house.