helping me fix my Wi-Fi router when he said, ‘I never keep one copy of anything, Rach.

People lie.

Devices don’t.’ At the time I rolled my eyes and told him he sounded paranoid.

On that road, with the wipers losing to the storm, I said out loud to nobody, ‘That house isn’t right tonight,’ and the words felt too small.

## Jeremiah was already inside…

By the time I reached Isaac’s street, two cruisers and an ambulance were painting the wet lawns blue.

I parked crooked behind the ambulance and ran up the walk barefoot in one shoe because I had left the other somewhere between my bedroom and the front door.

An officer tried to stop me.

I said, ‘I’m Rachel Lacy.

That’s my brother’s house,’ and kept moving because then I heard Sophie scream my name from inside.

The living room looked normal in all the useless ways that make horror worse.

Toys shoved under the coffee table.

A lavender candle burning by the fireplace.

One tiny pink raincoat hanging by the door.

Sophie was wrapped in a police blanket on the couch, clutching that floppy white rabbit she dragged everywhere.

Her curls were damp with sweat, and when she saw me, she reached with both arms and pressed her face into my neck so hard her words came out wet and muffled.

‘Daddy was knocking under the floor,’ she said.

‘Mommy said he went to work, but he was knocking.’

Lydia stood near the fireplace in a cream satin robe, pale but not shocked enough.

Behind her was Jeremiah in jeans and a black jacket, breathing hard like he’d sprinted there, except he lived fifteen minutes away and it was after two in the morning.

I remember looking at him and thinking, Why are you here before me?

Lydia snapped before anyone asked.

‘She had a nightmare.

She’s four.’ Jeremiah spread his hands and said, ‘This is ridiculous.’ And that was when the floor answered back.

## Then the floor answered back…

The sound came from below us, blunt and hard and real.

Three bangs, close together, traveling up through the hardwood like the house itself wanted out of the lie.

Every person in that room froze.

Then came a voice.

Hoarse, thin, barely human.

‘Help.’ I felt Sophie’s fingers dig into the back of my shirt, and one officer turned to Lydia so fast his radio smacked against his vest.

‘Open the basement door,’ he said.

She opened her mouth and got nothing out.

Jeremiah stepped in for her and said the most disgusting thing I heard that night.

‘Isaac probably locked himself in for attention.’ Even now I can hear the little laugh on the word attention.

We went down all at once, officers first, me behind them with Sophie clinging to my shoulder.

The basement smelled like damp concrete, bleach, and something sour enough to catch in the back of my throat.

At the bottom of the steps was the bathroom door, shut tight, with a new silver lock screwed onto the outside like it belonged there.

One officer touched the plate, looked at Lydia, and said, ‘Who installed this?’ She said nothing.

Jeremiah muttered, ‘It was broken.’ The officer struck the lock with his baton.

Once.

Twice.

On the third hit the