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oars in and let the boat drift soundlessly over the top of them. “S’all right,” he whispered. “Not after you. Not tonight, anyway.”
    Away from the mouth of the stream, he began rowing again, and a few minutes later he came around the end of a point. The house was ahead now, on the far end of the gently curving bay formed by the point he’d just rounded and the next one, but still hidden by the thick woods that bordered its lawn.
    Just a few more strokes of the oars and he would be there.
    Yet when Pinecrest came into view, Logan sensed that something was different.
    Something had changed.
    Then, as he shipped the oars to let the boat drift silently, he saw them.
    Three boys.
    Three boys sitting on the front lawn.
    But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the house.
    The house was different.
    The house looked as if it were somehow expecting something.
    As the dog tensed in the bow, the old man dipped the oars once more and turned the boat so the cross mounted in the bow stood between him and the looming stone structures that were Pinecrest.
    What was going on?
    Had Dr. Darby come back?
    No—that was impossible—it couldn’t happen!
    Could the house have been sold? Were people moving in?
    These boys, maybe?
    But that could never happen, either.
    He couldn’t let it happen.
    Nobody could ever live here again.
    Using the oars so gently there was no sound at all, Logan slipped the boat closer to shore, careful every foot of the way to keep the big wooden cross between himself and the old estate.
    The dog sensed his apprehension and shifted restlessly on his nest of rags.
    “Easy,” Logan whispered. “It’s okay. We just have to figure out what to do. That’s all. Just figure it out.”
    He peered through the failing light as the three boys rose from the lawn, dusted off their pants, and started toward the house. A moment later they were gone, disappearing toward the driveway. Soundlessly, Logan moved forward until the bow of the boat touched the shore.
    He could feel it now—someone was coming to live in the house.
    And it was as if the house itself were excited.
    As if the evil knew it was about to be released once more.
    Logan crossed himself and backed away with the oars, keeping the cross in the bow between himself and Pinecrest until the entire property began fading into the gathering night then finally disappeared behind the point around which he had come only a few minutes ago.
    “It’s all going to start up again,” he whispered, as much to himself as to the dog.
    Falling silent, he turned the skiff toward home and rowed into the dark of the night.

T HE DAY HAD finally arrived, and after the first excitement of leaving Evanston behind for the summer died away, and the first three of the six hours it took to drive to Phantom Lake passed, a silence had fallen over the Brewsters.
    Merrill was paging through what she thought of as her mental worry book, examining each item, assessing its current threat level. In the privacy of her own mind, she rarely lowered a level, while publicly she did her best never to admit they existed at all.
    Did her best, but usually failed.
    Still, for today at least, the calm of the rolling Wisconsin farmland was lulling her a bit, and none of the current worries seemed overwhelming.
    If she’d left the iron on—had she turned it on at all?—Marguerite would turn it off and put it away.
    If she’d forgotten sunscreen, there would be a store in Phantom Lake where she could buy some.
    If she’d failed to pay a bill, Dan would take care of it when he got home.
    If she forgot to pack—What? What could she have possibly forgotten to pack? The LX470 was filled to the brim with suitcases, pet carriers, blow-up water toys, kids, and…
stuff.
Stuff that would probably prove useless, but that she couldn’t resist taking along anyway. There were even bags of food wedged in the backseat between the kids, in the unlikely event that somehow supermarkets didn’t exist in