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snapped. “You
will
go, and you’ll take whatever job Stubbs offers you, and you’ll do it well. Christ, with your attitude, no wonder no one wanted to hire you.” Turning away before his son could respond, Craig left the room.
    Alone, Michael stripped off the torn jeans he’d donned that morning and pulled a clean pair of chinos off a hanger in his closet. He ran his eye over the row of shirts, then grinned, pulling out one he’d talked his mother into ordering through a catalog. It had been advertised as an expedition shirt, and had four pockets on the front, one on each sleeve, and epaulets. Until today, he’d only worn the shirt once, putting it away after someone at school had cracked that he was too skinny to try to look like a movie star. But the shirt seemed right if he was really going to work on the swamp tour.
    Dressed, he went into the bathroom, washed hisface, then began combing the unruly shock of blond hair that never seemed to want to stay where he put it. He brushed at it, then began working on it with his comb. A single lock kept falling down over his forehead, and after trying three times to make it stay up, he gave up, deciding to let it lie. He was about to turn away from the mirror when he saw a flicker of movement.
    He froze, willing it to go away, but knowing it wouldn’t.
    Instead, as his eyes remained fixed on the glass, an image slowly began to take shape over his shoulder.
    A face.
    The face of an old man, with red, rheumy eyes peering at him out of deeply sunken sockets.
    Instinctively, Michael closed his eyes against the image, but when he opened them again, the face was still there.
    Now he could see the old man’s hands reaching out toward him, as if to grasp him.
    His breath caught in his throat, and he felt his heart begin to pound, but suddenly the door flew open and his six-year-old sister Jenny glared at him, her fists firmly planted on her hips.
    “Mom says you’re not supposed to stay in here more than ten minutes,” she said.
    Michael’s eyes shifted from the mirror to his sister, but for a moment he didn’t trust himself to speak, afraid his voice would betray the fear inside him. “If you have to go, there’s a bathroom downstairs,” he finally countered.
    “But I want to use this one,” Jenny complained. “It’s not just yours. It’s both of ours, and I have just as much right to—”
    “Fine,” Michael said. “There’s the toilet. Go ahead and use it while I finish combing my hair. I don’t care.”
    Jenny’s eyes widened with outrage. “I’m going to tell Mom what you said!”
    Michael moved to the door, lifted his sister up and put her down in the hall, then closed the door in herface, locking it. As he went back to the sink, Jenny began pounding on the door, wailing indignantly.
    Michael, ignoring the pounding and the shouts, gazed into the mirror once again.
    The strange image was gone. All that he saw now was his own reflection.
    But where had the image come from? Had it really been there at all?
    He wasn’t sure.
    But it wasn’t the first time he’d seen it.
    Indeed, he couldn’t really remember when he’d first seen it. For a long time, it had happened so rarely that often he’d forgotten all about it. But now it seemed to be happening more frequently.
    Sometimes he’d barely catch a glimpse of the face; it would be no more than a flicker in the mirror.
    Other times he’d see it in his dreams, and wake up frightened.
    Recently, he’d begun seeing the face more clearly, and more often.
    For a while he’d tried to convince himself the house was haunted. Once, he’d even talked to his mother about it. She’d listened to him, but in the end she’d laughed it off.
    “As far as I know, new houses don’t get haunted. First you have to have someone die—preferably get murdered. And unless you’ve killed someone and not told me about it, that hasn’t happened here.”
    He’d argued with her a little, but not much, because the more