The previous day’s rain had given way to gentle autumn sunlight.

I drove with the windows down, steering my way through frisco’s Main Street. Catching sight of an open parking space right in front of the Next Page bookshop, I decided to stop in, not that I needed any more books, but frisco was much more my speed than Vail. I lingered in the bookstore, picking up three novels and a hiking guide for the region. I’d stared at a book titled Coast to Coast Ghosts: True Stories of Hauntings Across America, but I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up.

I kept heading east and toyed with the idea of going all the way to Denver and spending the night there instead of returning to Vail.

But it wasn’t like I knew anyone in Denver either. I doubled back but drove right through Vail without stopping. I did withhold the string of curses I wanted to shout out the window at the town that was getting under my skin. No reason to start a rumor that I was the new local crazy dude living alone in the weird mansion.

Man, what if I am that guy?

I was pulling into the parking lot of Avon’s Wal-Mart—the only place I thought I could find a cheap instant camera—when my phone buzzed. I didn’t recognize the number.

“Shay?” I didn’t recognize the man’s voice. He spoke my name in a clipped, nervous fashion.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Are you in Vail? Have they moved you into Rowan Estate?”

I killed the engine. “Who is this?”

The line went dead. What the hell?

I found the number in my call log and pressed the call button.

A tinny voice answered, “The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check the number and try again.”

The tension that had eased out of my limbs the farther I drove from Vail dug its way back into my shoulders. I slammed my fist into the steering wheel and took a few deep breaths before I went into the store.

I hated that it was already dark by the time I got back to Rowan Estate, but that was my own doing. I had stayed in Avon for dinner, reading my novel and listening to the conversations of people around me. People who weren’t exiled from their friends. I wanted to punch myself in the gut for all the internal whining I was doing.

It was pathetic. Several hours of reading about Katniss Everdeen’s problems made me decide my life was pretty damn good. I was tired of feeling sorry for myself, and I was also just plain tired.

It might have been smart for me to go to bed early, anticipating being woken at five in the morning again, but I wanted to finish up my experiment. Using the Polaroid I’d dug out from one of my boxes, I snapped photos of the statues and waited for them to develop. Blurry. No image. I snapped more photos with the instant camera I bought, wondering if it was even worth getting them developed. Time for manual labor.

I started sketching and lost track of time. It was 1 a.m. when I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. I dragged my sorry ass to bed, hoping I’d sleep through the night.

No such luck.

Seven

Lack of sleeP mAde me feel like a man possessed, and possession wasn’t something I wanted to think about, but I was trying my best not to let that show up on facebook. I didn’t want my new online friends to decide I had multiple personality disorder.

Once I’d posted the sketches, the buzz was all about defining what they were. I had no idea, but Victoria and Liz had some interesting theories. None of which made me feel better about my living situation. I resisted the temptation to ask Liz if she’d accept a transfer student when she mentioned she was a teacher. I’d take mountains of homework over the stuff I was dealing with.

When Victoria loaded that clip about the assassin angels from Doctor Who, I ran around the mansion double checking that none of the statues had moved. for a few minutes I’d been convinced that each night, when the crash woke me up, it meant the statues were systematically closing in on me. But all the winged, marble people were in the same places they’d been the day I moved in. I pretty much felt like an idiot after sprinting around the house.

Other theories: gargoyles, but there were gargoyles like the ones I’d seen all over Europe on the outside of the house. These statues seemed different.

That was all I could take of the house for that day. The sun spilled in through the windows, ridding the dark hallways of their gloom and beckoning me outside. At first I thought I’d take a stroll through the gardens, only to discover they were filled with more creepy statues. Some of the sculptures were the winged men and women that I’d seen in the house, but others looked like mad scientist experi-ments. In the back of my mind I knew they were creatures of myth: chimeras, griffins, Stymphalian birds, but they only looked like monsters to me.

The gardens stretched for what looked like a mile until they disappeared into a dense pine forest. Abandoning the idea of exploring the grounds, I headed to my truck and escaped into the foothills for my first hike in Colorado.

At 5:30 a.m. I sat in the middle of my bed. All the lights were on and I’d turned the hallway lights on too. Radiohead was cranked up so loud that I doubted I’d hear myself even if I shouted. My eyes burned, and it wasn’t the blasting music that made my teeth rattle. I couldn’t take this. How was I supposed to live in a place that wouldn’t let me sleep and was slowly convincing me that poltergeists had rented out the room right above mine?

Something in the house had to be causing the noise. Supernatu-ral, electrical, whatever it was I had to find it and stop it. If I didn’t, I would be driving back to Portland within a week. Still bleary eyed, I grabbed my video camera and headed into the hallway, watching the screen as I walked. Sure enough, when I reached the statue at the corner, the picture began to wave and then turned to static. I kept walking, gazing at the screen as it flickered back to life like nothing strange had happened. Each time I neared another statue, the screen gave out again. I was passing through the balcony of the foyer, heading toward the west wing, when the screen skipped and went black.

Not static this time; no image at all.

I checked the camera, its glowing red light telling me it was still on, still working. The black screen crackled and went still, crackled again. I stood still, staring at the image. The crackle came again and again in a steady pulse. Each time it happened, the camera vibrated in my hand like I was standing next to a speaker putting out a loud, super-low bass line.

I looked up to see where I was. The double doors of the library loomed in front of me. My mouth went dry. The library. The place Bosque told me I couldn’t go.