Was it? Whatever it was, whatever lived here, whatever made this house its home, had found him, over distance, over time, and it had reached out to his son, to Tony, had introduced the boy to Billingsly and Doneen, had taught the boy how to make the doll.

It was crazy. All of it.

But there was nothing there he doubted.

He got out of the car, stared up at the dark building, taking it all in. The twin chimneys. The gables. The high window of his mother’s corner bedroom. The wraparound porch where he and his friends had so often played, remaining always in the front because they were afraid of the sides and back of the house.

Where were his friends? he wondered. What had happened to them? What did they remember?

Something caught his eye. Movement in one of the lower windows. A dark face?

A dust doll?

He wanted to leave, wanted to turn tail and run, and if it had not been for Margot and Tony, he would have done exactly that. But he was not here only for himself. He was here to find out what was infiltrating his life and put a stop to it, to intercept and end the supernatural harassment of his family.

Supernatural.

He hadn’t thought of it in precisely those terms before, but that was exactly what was going on.

He supposed, on some level, he’d always been subtly aware that despite his comfortably normal mainstream existence, there was more to the universe than the material, physical world, that despite the life he had made for himself, there was something else that was somehow… influencing him, guiding him. He’d repressed all memory of his childhood and had never seen any overt example or evidence of the supernatural, but all along there’d been small instances of déjà vu, coincidences and coordinations that did not make any kind of logical sense but nonetheless bespoke Truth. It was as if he were a cog in a great machine and every once in a while he was allowed to glance over and see nearly identical cogs performing nearly identical functions. There were connections he could not understand but knew existed, and he knew now that it was all tied to whatever existed inside that house.

Another small dark face at another low window.

His entire body seemed to be covered with gooseflesh and his heart was pounding harder than he’d known it could, but Daniel steeled himself and pressed forward. Night appeared to be falling quicker than usual, sundown and dusk fairly speeding by, and if he had learned that this was a phenomenon which only happened here, that the power within the house somehow had the ability to influence the sun, he would not have been surprised.

He walked up the porch steps, knocked on the heavy oak door.

It was opened instantly.

By Billingsly.