SUNDAY, NOON
Xander spun around to stare at the door. It had closed on its own.
And only after all of us had come in, he thought.
From the kitchen behind him, his dad said, “Isn’t this incredible?”
“Did you see that?” Xander asked, pointing at the door, but when he stepped into the kitchen, it was empty.
“Whatta ya think?” Dad asked.
Xander turned around to see his father coming toward him from the direction of the front door. His mouth went dry. “Weren’t you just in the kitchen?”
“I was. I walked around. You okay?”
“No, I mean . . . yes, but . . .”
His dad tilted his head. “Xander?”
“There’s something going on.” He was looking past his father to the front door.
“Going on?” Dad asked.
“Something strange. First I heard you in the kitchen, and uh . . .” Xander’s head was swimming. “Then the front door slammed . . . by itself.”
“It’s an old house,” his father explained. “Hinges start to sag and that causes doors to close on their own. Have you seen the round room, the one in the tower?”
Xander shook his head.
Mom’s voice called down from upstairs. Xander would have sworn she was in the kitchen a few seconds ago as well.
“Dad,” Xander said. “Doesn’t something about this place seem weird to you?”
“You mean the stuff, the dishes? Whoever lived here before did a poor job packing up, huh?”
“No, I mean really weird.”
“Like what?”
“Like . . .” Xander didn’t know where to start. There was the door shutting after he’d thought about it doing that very thing. His father had chalked it up to sagging hinges. But what about hearing Dad in the kitchen when he was somewhere else? And the chill he’d gotten outside, when he felt as though he was being watched?
“Ed,” Mom called again.
“Hold on a sec,” his father told Xander, holding up his index finger. He went into the foyer and started up the stairs.
Xander went to the front door and squinted at the hinges. They were dirty and rusty, but otherwise looked fine. The house creaked around Xander. He thought of the way dogs sometimes whimpered when you gave them special attention. He wondered if the house creaked all the time, maybe from constant settling or from the wind buffeting against it . . . or if it was responding to his family’s presence. Voices and footsteps streamed at him from the corridors and upper landing. He could identify each voice, but not the direction from which it came. He heard David in the kitchen again, but didn’t see anyone in there. Movement caught his eye, and he looked up to the second floor landing. A hallway disappeared to the left and right. Two doors were visible. One was open, and he saw David standing in the threshold, his familiar silhouette backlit by sunlight coming through a window behind him.
“David!” he called.
“What?” David said, almost beside him.
Xander jumped. David was standing at the foot of the stairs, having stepped out of the dining room.
“David!” Xander yelled, because he had to yell something.
His eyes snapped back to the figure in the upstairs doorway, but it was gone.
“What do you want?” David asked.
“I . . . were you just upstairs?”
“I haven’t looked up there yet.”
“But I just saw you up there.”
David gave him a funny look. “Not me. Look at this.” He stepped closer to show what he held in his hand. At first Xander thought it was a flashlight, and then he recognized it: a toy light-saber. The plastic red tube that represented the laser had broken off, but the cylindrical handle, with its decorative rings and On/ Off switch, was unmistakable. It was old.
“Some kid must have lived here a long time ago,” David said.
“Or came in to play.”
Xander heard excited voices coming from . . . somewhere.
“I really love it, Ed. I do,” his mom said.
“Even with all the work?”
“Yes, yes. How else could we afford something this big?
If we ever got into a house like this, it would have to be a fixer-upper.”
His parents were upstairs, but the voices seemed to be drifting from everywhere at once: the library, the kitchen, the second floor. Relief washed over him when they appeared in the upstairs hallway. Mom leaned over the railing. “It’s big, boys. Seven bedrooms!”
“Seven?” David said. “What would we do with that many?” “You can each have your own, for starters,” Dad said. “Your mother’s counting servants’ quarters up here . . .”
“Servants!” David said, tickled at the idea.
“That doesn’t mean we’re going to get any,” Dad said. “Besides, that room needs a lot of work, so we can’t use it. For now, anyway.”
In his excitement, David ran halfway up the stairs. “So, can we live here?”
Dad looked at Mom to answer. “We’ll see what we can do.” Xander felt his stomach roll over on itself. He wanted to get out of the house, but he didn’t like the idea of going outside alone. He thought of the shoe prints he’d seen. “Dad, can I show you something outside? It might be important.”
Dad looked at him curiously. He gave Mom a quick kiss and clomped down the stairs. “What is it?” he asked.
Mom stopped him. “Ed, where’s Victoria?” she said with that hint of worry mothers seem capable of conjuring at a moment’s notice.
Everything he felt about the house made Xander panic. Instantly, he yelled, “Toria! Toria!”
His dad gave him a puzzled look, then called for his daughter. Silence. Not even the creaking, which had seemed so loud and constant a few minutes before.
“Toria!” Dad called again. He looked up to Mom.
She said, “I haven’t seen her since we came in.”
“Check up there,” he said. He came the rest of the way down the stairs and turned into the dining room.
Xander went the other direction, through the library. He circled around and met up with Dad in the kitchen. When they returned to the foyer, Mom was coming off the last step, worry and hope etched on her face.
“Not down here,” Dad informed her. His voice had risen a notch. He appeared more concerned than Mom now.
“Ed—” she started.
Footsteps came from upstairs, running, growing louder.
All of them looked. The footsteps grew closer. They sound like Toria’s, Xander thought. A little girl’s. Please let it be her.
When the footsteps could not possibly get any closer, she still did not appear, but the pounding continued. Again, Xander glanced toward the dining room, the kitchen, the library. Considering the tricks of sound he had witnessed, he no longer assumed his sister was upstairs. And that was if the footsteps belonged to her.
“What in the world . . . ?” his father said.
“I looked up there,” Mom assured him. She called, “Victoria!”
Dad went to the stairs. He hesitated, as if fearful of what he would find at the top.
Toria emerged from the shadows of the upstairs hall. She stopped at the railing, all teeth and dimples. “Hey, guys!”
“Where were you?” Mom asked.
Toria looked confused by her tone. She pointed. “In that bedroom, right there.”
“But I looked, honey.”
“I didn’t see you either,” Toria said, shrugging. “I think the room used to belong to a little boy.”
“See?” David said, slapping Xander’s arm with the lightsaber. Dad said, “Come on down, sweetheart. It’s time to go.”
“Ahhh,” she complained.
“Come on.” Dad approached Xander. “What did you want to show me?”
“Nothing, never mind,” Xander said. They were leaving anyway, and what would Dad say about shoe prints in the dirt? Exactly what Xander already considered: that they were left by someone looking for a house, just like they were. No biggie.
At the 4Runner, Xander looked around. The house was easy to spot now that he knew it was there, but he could also see how they had missed it the first time. The woods were shadowy and so was the house. He noticed there wasn’t any trash caught in the bushes at the edge of the forest. Or beer bottles scattered around. He thought that was funny, since a dead end like this was exactly what high school kids looked for in a party place. Either there were too many dead ends in these backwoods or too few teenagers looking to party. He didn’t want his family to be the only litterbugs, so he snatched up the crumpled property listing his father had discarded and pushed it into his pocket.
All the way back to the motel—a good ten minutes, at least—the car buzzed with ideas for making the house their home. Dad said it needed, first and foremost, a thorough cleaning. Mom wanted to paint, recarpet the floors, and stain the wood. Toria knew exactly which bedroom she wanted. And David grumbled about not getting a chance to scope out the upstairs. Only Xander remained silent. If they were really going to live there, he hoped his uneasiness about it went away. He didn’t think he could feel this way—all tight inside—24/7.