“How old were you when you lost your babysitter?”

  It’s been years since I’ve gone to the basement.Remembering where the door is located takes most of my concentration. I consider. “A long time ago.”

  Things in Morecroft Manor aren’t always where you left them. Not just things like car keys or your cell phone. Entire rooms, doors, hallways. One time I snuck down after bedtime and went looking for cookies and nearly got locked inside the basement stairway. Wrath had to come find me. The next morning the door was replaced by a giant cupboard filled with cookies and treats.

  Then I remember it being across from the stairs to the second floor. But again, I must have snuck down there for some reason, because a few weeks later the stairs up moved to the front of the house, and the spot with both stairwells became the Gallery of Morecrofts.

  “But how many years ago was that? A person couldn’t just live down there indefinitely. You said you can still hear her sometimes.Did you keep her in a well or something?”

  I slow to a stop just before the trophy room and turn around. “You think I’m auditioning for Extreme Makeover: Serial Killer edition or something?”

  Some of the arrogance returns. “I don’t think you’re that interesting. I’m actually wondering how long the house has been active.”

  Active. Like someone left the house plugged in and all the supernatural issues are because the power was left on. We carry on, and I head the back way towards the rest of the house. I don’t want to take him through the Gallery if I can help it. “And you think I, what? Broke into the haunted house and just started living here unbeknownst to the owner?” I realize I’m putting words in his mouth again, making an argument for him.

  “Did you?”

  “If your house is anything like mine, I think you’ll understand what it’s like to live here very soon.And then we’ll see who’s interesting.”

  Nico makes himself taller.“I don’t scare so easily.”

  “Let’s test that theory.Morecroft Manor isn’t like other houses. It has it’s own rules. And sometimes it even likes to break them.”

  Just as I suspect, the kitchen doesn’t have any new doors leading down into the basements. Neither do any of the other rooms.

  “We’re just going around in circles, now,” Nico interjects. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  The problem with the basement door is that it doesn’t always have to look like a normal door. The house could be hiding it as anything. A loose panel. A painting on hinges. A doggy door. So I search each room we walk through, never knowing what exactly I’m looking for.

  Nico is oddly quiet, though, while I search. Every so often I catch the sight of him watching. Like he’s taking it in. Maybe so he’s better equipped with his own hell house. Nothing has turned up in my search, though, so I don’t have time to worry about that.

  I turn to him. “How… do you feel about ghosts?”

  Nico eyes me. “I don’t know how you expect me to respond to that.”

  “It’s probably in the basements, but unless we can find the basements, it might as well be in Arkham.”

  “Does the house move the basement or something?” he tries for sarcasm, but my expression is unmoved.

  “Try living here,” I reply acerbically. I stop outside of the Gallery of Morecrofts, girding myself for what’s to come. “There’s a reason why I don’t go down there.”

  “Yeah, it ate your babysitter.” He definitely doesn’t believe me.

  “Something ate my babysitter, but left enough behind that can still scream,” I correct.

  A long pause. “Are you okay?” It isn’t a question about my health. It comes out like Are you mentally competent?

  “Are you kidding? That’s the charming, whimsical part of things. We haven’t even brought the Morecrofts into it yet.”

  Nico peers into the Gallery of Morecrofts, and sees the doorway at the end of the hall. “So that’s where we’re going? What’s going to happen, are they all going to leap out of the picture frames and try to attack us?” There’s a hint of bravado in his tone now, and I realize that his sarcasm might be a defense mechanism.

  I give him an incredulous look. “Try not to be so dramatic.”

  “Your house is trying to kill us, there’s an apocalypse machine somewhere, and your basement eats strangers,” he mutters. “You’re right, though. I’m the one being dramatic.”

  “That’s the door to the library. So unless you want to read about old white men running pervy cults, that’s not going to be worth your time. Then again, that might be exactly your thing.” I take a deep breath, gather myself, and then head into the gallery.

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  Immediately on stepping forward, it’s like they know. The entire hall of dead Morecrofts all seem to turn towards me - their eyes following as I approach.

  “It’s like they’re watching me.”

  Little Violet Morecroft, all of ten years and with a shark’s smile watches him as he passed. She’s one of the creepier of the Morecrofts - all of the children are - but normally her expression is more bland and refined. Now though, she looks to be thoroughly enjoying my misfortune.

  I hurry past her and along a line of Morecroft siblings who all look like slightly Facetombed versions of the other that came before, each slightly less real looking.

  “Does it sound like someone’s moving?” Nico asks absently. “Do you hear that?”

  There’s an echo of tiny feet and a gasp of childish laughter.Most of the Morecrofts stay where they are.Some of them get…antsy. It’s not just the sound of movement, though, there’s also the sound of paint cracking and pressing against the canvas, moving and stretching instead of remaining still.Bulging and retracting, almost like it is breathing.

  “It’s fine.”

  I pass the stern-eyed woman with streaks of gray painted into her bun, and something that was either an artist’s hesitation or a drop of blood captured just at the corner of her mouth, and then another mostly balding, fire-and-brimstone preacher sort with zealot eyes. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were all the same set of eyes, carved out and handed off to the next generation. A pair of predator’s eyeballs squelched into every Morecroft skull.

  Then I come to the end of the line. Across from the space for the empty portrait where the last remaining Morecroft should have been is the very first Morecroft, and the only one who has his named placarded along the bottom of his portrait.

  Solomon Andronicus Morecroft.

  The only thing the room seems good for, besides a way to the library, is the fact that they’re all so good at judging me. It’s like the Morecrofts barely have any energy left at all, but they’ve saved up enough to pass judgment on me and my choices.

  Next to the painting, I carefully raise my hand and knock slowly on the wall once, then twice more. Then I wait.Nothing happens.

  “Morecroft Prime… wake up!” His name is just so stuffy and arrogant. Who names their kid Solomon? His initials are S.A.M. I should really start calling him Sam.

  The man had been the primogenitor of the Morecroft bloodline. He looked like he never had a happy thought in his entire life. It’s the dark eyes, pinched expression, sallow skin, thinning black hair and weak chin that he’d passed to generation after generation of dark-eyed clones. No wonder he was miserable.

  A sharp sound cracks in the air, immediately followed by Nico’s, “Sonofabitch!”

  I turn to see a faint red line welling across the other boy’s face. It’s a long, straight cut — more of a welt, really — that runs just below his cheekbone. Behind him, I see Violet Morecroft with one side of her head still in a pigtail braided with a ribbon, while the other side now dangles free, ribbon missing. She’s every bit as severe as the rest of her family, but now she tucks a faint smile away while one arm is hidden behind her back.

  “Don’t give her the satisfaction,” I chide him.“She’s trying to scare you.”

  “A mean girl. Boring.”

  I shrug.“She doesn’t like you.”

  “I’ve devastated,” he says deadpan. But then a quieter tone. “Is it really this dangerous for you all the time?”

  I don’t answer. I also don’t have time to worry about him getting into slap fights with tiny, dead debutantes. We’re here for a reason. I shake my head slightly. I need to focus. “What do you actually know about a Doom Clock? You called it something earlier. A psychic scream?”

  “It’s counting down from thirteen. That was just the welcome wagon.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I heard about it on that podcast, This Apocalyptic Life.”

  I stare a moment, trying to decide if he’s serious or not.I decide to let it drop before I turn my attention back to Morecroft Prime. “You need to let me into the basements. And get the rest of your family back in line. It’s not like we’re stealing any of your secrets. My parents brought the Doom Clock here. It had nothing to do with the Morecrofts.”

  If possible, the man’s expression became more stern, the lines of his face growing more pronounced as the paint cracks, exposing more shadow to the canvas.

  Morecroft Prime slowly, but definitely, shakes his head in rebuke.

  “Yes,” I say, “I don’t have time for this.”

  He’s not looking at me, though. His eyes are trained on the man behind me, the stranger who just moved into the Wakefield Manse.

  “Something wrong?” Nico asks, his voice faint.

  No, his voice isn’t faint. It’s being drowned out. The next wave starts to build in the ground, ozone crackling in the air.

  “Open the damn door!” I snarl, slamming my fist against the wall just as the next gong of the Doom Clock rips through the house. I hurtle forward into the painting of Morecroft Prime, and for a long moment of equilibrium, I worry that I will hurtle into the painting and whatever reality the Morecrofts now inhabit.

  But the painting was hammered into the wall thirteen times with cold iron nails, and it will take more than a Doom Clock to untether it, or me. Gravity shifts in the room until Morecroft Prime is the ground and I’m sprawled atop him. Surprisingly, I see Nico pinned to the wall across from me, what has now become the ceiling.

  The force presses me into the wall just to make sure I know it can subvert gravity whenever it wantsThe pressure increases until I’m not laying on top of a Morecroft as I am being juiced on him. Soon the world won’t be the only thing to split like a grape.

  Whispers in my ear. More than one voice, and each of them sounding like old paint crackling, of torn paper, and a bubbling like acid. The words crawl along the ridge of my ear like ants, hesitant to step inside. I hear the cautious tone, the worry, the distrust. The Morecrofts were never fond of outsiders, but it’s like they make an exception for me. Me they don’t mind. Nico, though, they do not trust in the slightest.

  I struggle against the force pinning me to the wall to no avail.

  The words continue like a gentle susurration against my skin. It’s a quiet plea, a careful request, but no matter how many times the sound repeats, I don’t understand the words. Wrath has always been the linguist - I know a few, but none that sound like this, like a snake learning to speak German.

  I feel the ocean surface again deep inside of me, plunging down into nameless depths inside. Deep under the midnight sky and hidden from the twisted stars that battle strange aeons and rock away the worlds below there’s… something. It calls to me. It fills my mouth with a taste like salt water, souls, and blood.

  The scale of it—eternal, stygian, vast—makes something new bloom in my chest: fear. It pulls me back to myself, and rather than think on it, I shout the first thing I can think of. Anything to distract me from… what is below…

  “Open the door or I will hose you all down with paint thinner!” The threat tastes like brine on the way out. The ocean surges underneath me but the pressure holding me against the wall suddenly releases. Both Nico and I tumble to the ground. Nico manages to twist himself so that he lands on his feet, but I tumble ass over teakettle and lay at a sprawl beside him.

  In front of me between Morecroft Prime and one of his daughters, is a door that wasn’t there a moment before. The door creaks open like a gaping maw waiting to be fed.

  I pick myself up off the ground, dust off my jeans, and gesture.

  “After you.”

  “After you.”