“What does that have to do with me?”

“Nothing, asshole! I just want to get out of the house and get away from here! Is that all right with you?”

“Jesus, bite my head off.”

“Do you want me to come or not?”

“Of course I do. That’s why I called.”

“Then when are we going to go?”

Norton looked up at the clock. Seven-ten. “I’ll pick you up in an hour. Bring a suitcase and a couple days’ clothes just in case.”

“I’ll be ready.”

There was a click on the other end and Norton gingerly put the receiver back on its hook. Hal sounded shaken, and he found that a little disconcerting. He also didn’t like the fact that Hal believed the ghost of his wife had returned. It was too close to be unrelated, and he didn’t like the idea that whatever supernatural forces were trained on him had also focused their attention on his friend. Hal was frightened, and he didn’t think he’d known Hal ever to be frightened.

Oakdale loomed before him. And the house.

He knew that whatever had happened there was bad, that its horror was so overpowering and overwhelming it had erased any trace of its existence from his mind, blanking out his memory. Within the past weeks, his worldview, his belief system, the rational tenets of thought that had supported his intellectual life for the past half century, had been turned upside down, and now he was seeing ghosts and encountering evil children and witnessing unexplainable events, but he had the feeling that that change was minuscule compared to what lay ahead.

He was terrified by the thought of returning to Oakdale, and only the fact that Hal was accompanying him, would be there to offer moral, intellectual, spiritual, and, weak as it was, physical support, kept him from feeling totally incapacitated in the face of his fear.

But Hal was being targeted. By telling Hal what had happened, by bringing him into this, Norton had quite possibly put his friend in danger. A danger that neither of them understood.

Maybe he should call it off, wait it out, see what transpired. There was no real reason for him to go back to Oakdale, to the house.

Yes there was.

He didn’t know what that reason could be, but it was there, and Norton could not let his own cowardice prevent him from doing what he knew was right, what he knew had to be done. He’d spent his entire professional life lecturing students about history, going over the past and second-guessing, making moral judgments about decisions that were made, and telling both his students and himself that they should have been made differently.

Well, now was his opportunity to put his money where his mouth was. He had a decision to make here, and he knew what needed to be done. Did he have the guts to do it?

Yes.