Upstairs, Benji fishes his pistol out from under the mattress as I watch the door. It scares me that he has that thing, but I couldn’t make him get rid of it if I tried. Dad gifted it to him before we moved away. I grab the bat from the closet in my room.

As we creep down the hallway to Mom’s room, my chest suffocates with this fear of dying forever and ever. A man will jump out of the linen closet and kill me, and the back of my brother’s sweater vest, flashing under the lightning, is the thing I’d see on loop as blood seeped out of my throat.

Benji bangs on the laundry-room door, and I flinch. It leaves vibration in the silence—a backdrop for his voice.

“WHO THE FUCK IS IN HERE?!”

Silence is the only thing that responds to him. The house must be empty, but it doesn’t feel like it is.

“We should turn on all the lights,” I whisper.

“Good idea.”

He goes right and I go left, to flip switches, crank knobs, and pull strings—laundry, hallway, Mom’s bathroom. Her vanity, with the jewelry stands draped in necklaces, is still full. If this were a burglar, they would have destroyed that . . .

I meet Benji at the top of the stairs. The house seems safe now, so we let out the breaths we were holding. I awkwardly laugh and let the bat loosen in my wrist.

And then, as if someone has been watching our every move from a power box, the lights all go off.

Benji and I huddle like two shadows under the all-encompassing shadow of our house. The rain beats at the roof like it’s angry we exist.

“It’s a ghost,” I mutter.

Benji rolls his eyes. “It’s not a ghost. It’s a killer is what it is. Whoever killed our neighbor.”

“Are you kidding or serious?”

Benji pulls out his phone, clicks on the flashlight, and raises the blinding beam right in my face. “Why would I be kidding?”

I squint against it, raise my hand.

We don’t know how Matteo died. It could have very well been a sadistic serial killer on the loose in our neighborhood. I can’t figure out which is scarier.

Benji calls the cops and then Mom. In the span of an hour, my house breaks out into an episode of CSI.

I step outside, walk over by the mailbox, and let Benji do the talking.

The cold, fresh air sticks in my throat as the fog and ecto-mist seethe around my house and Matteo’s. Two ghouls are lying on the lawn, which is quiet now that the crime scene has moved to my house. They’re lying side by side, their arms crossed over their chests, like a married couple in one coffin.