As I bend to pick up my phone, I grab a piece of scrap wood to throw at the creature.

“Go away!”

The bird dodges and screams back at me, rising toward the rafters.

When I look at my phone, the screen is broken.

Great. Just something else for Mom to get upset about.

After the commotion, I wait in the silence at the door, thinking that whatever’s in the basement might move again, but I hear nothing.

If it’s another bird, I swear I’ll hit it with a board.

Gingerly, I turn the knob. It’s cold and gritty, and when I open the door, the air around me changes—thickens—and it’s tinged with the faintest chemical smell. I stand at the edge of the darkness, using my phone flashlight. For a long moment, I can’t move. I guess I’m waiting for something to creep out of the shadows.

But nothing happens.

And yet I get the sense that something’s happened here. Something dark. It sticks to my skin like dust, seeps into my pores, spreading unease. I should turn around and leave this place, but I can’t help thinking that this feeling is guiding me to my coin.

I take a deep breath and step into the dark, shutting the door behind me so that damned raven can’t follow.

As I come to the end of the steps, I find a light switch on the wall beside me. The buzz of electricity sounds overhead, but the lights don’t come on. Instead, I rely on the pocket of light my phone creates as I move forward. Columns run along each side of the room. Between each column are metal shelves and a collection of glass jars. It isn’t until I move closer that I see something inside them. Brushing a thick layer of dirt from the glass, a dead crow stares back at me. My breath catches in my throat, and I jump away from the shelves. Shining my light from this distance, I can tell the other jars are full of dead things too.

And then I hear a familiar laugh.

It rushes into my ears like water and suffocates my lungs.

I twist toward the sound—that glorious baritone—and smell him.

Pipe tobacco.

Life Savers.

Poppa.

And when I turn, he’s standing there at the center of this horrible basement amid all the dead things in his flannel shirt and high-waisted pants. He smiles at me, and his skin, thin like paper, crinkles.

This can’t be real. I close my eyes and open them. He’s still there.

“Poppa?”