In the dimming light, David carried the stepladder down through the meadow that had reclaimed the land from the ruins of the old vine rows. He took up a position behind a bushy mass of mountain Pieris, about twenty yards from the house, and waited there until night had fully settled.

When after fifteen minutes no light appeared in the residence—he had expected none—he carried the stepladder to the back porch and put it down near the door.

He was reluctant to smash a window and leave evidence of his visit. Anyway, it might not be necessary. He went around to the west side of the house. The previous Saturday, after Ulrich had admitted him, as David had stood in the living room, getting a feel for the place, he noticed a long-neglected ill-fitted window. Years of rain, leaking under the bottom sash, had rotted the sill and damaged the floor below. It was unlikely that such a warped window could be locked.

It wasn’t. The meeting rails of the upper and lower sashes were so far out of alignment that the swivel latch could not be engaged.

Nothing remained here worth stealing, and Ulrich had no reason to install a security system. Nonetheless David steeled himself for a siren when he raised the bottom sash, but there was no alarm. He clambered into the living room, wind billowing the rotted draperies around him, and closed the sash as best he could.

He stood listening to the vacant rooms. Because the night was moonless and the stars were bedded behind a thick layer of woolpack, the windows could hardly be discerned, limned by a vague ghost light reminiscent of the barely visible glow that sometimes haunts a screen for a short while after a TV has been turned off. Darkness seemed to pool deeper in this place than elsewhere, a distilled blackness, but that was a false perception arising from what he knew of the house’s evil history.

From a side pocket of his backpack, he removed one of his three flashlights. Masking part of the lens with two fingers, he switched it on. The room resolved in its remembered drabness, and he made his way to the kitchen. He brought the stepladder in from the porch and locked the back door.

The two-inch-thick door to the cellar stood ajar, as it had been when he’d taken the tour for which he had paid Ulrich. The two deadbolts were blind set and, once locked, could not be opened from the cellar side.

He wanted to search the ground floor and upstairs before going to the lower realm, to be certain no one lurked at his back. But if someone waited in the house, he ought to have responded to the noise David made. Anyway, a search would take too long and abrade nerves already raw; the sooner that he was out of this place, the better.