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her into letting them take a look around the house.
    Seeing that each room was outfitted with a floor grate, their first thought was that the monster had been moving from room to room through the heating system. But the grates were wrought iron. Since ghosts can’t pass through iron and demons don’t like to either, they were confused. What was it? There was no way to be sure. Sam proposed they act as bait.
    With a little persuasion, they were allowed to stay the night.
    “I’ll stay up. You go to bed,” Sam said to his grandfather. He and Samuel had been given a room to share in the halfway house.
    “Naw, I’m fine,” Samuel said, though Sam could see he looked tired.
    “Okay, just saying. I don’t need much sleep.”
    “Right. Maybe I’ll just shut my eyes,” Samuel said, relenting. He lay back on the bed and moments later his breathing slowed and he began to snore gently.
    Sam held his salt-packed shotgun in his lap and stared into space, waiting.
    Then he heard it. A deep moan from the bowels of the house, as if someone was trapped within the walls, trying to get out.
    Without waking his grandfather, Sam crept out into the hallway. The residents’ rooms were all located off the upstairs corridor.
    A door slammed. Sam whipped around, but didn’t move an inch further. He listened again, and heard the same moaning noise. Sam peered into the gloom at the end of the hallway. A grey mass appeared out of nowhere and gradually took shape in the dirty dark.
    Sam trained his shotgun on the specter, but in a blink it was gone.
    Sam ran down the corridor to the spot where the thing had been. There was no heating grate, no nothing—nowhere for it to go. Above him a single bulb flickered. He moved to touch it, but the bulb suddenly got brighter and brighter until it popped.
    The thin shards of glass broke in Sam’s face. He calmly picked them out of his skin with his fingernail.
    Down the hallway underneath a door, Sam saw a light. He moved toward it and kicked open the door. A girl, about his age, stared at him, her mouth open in a silent scream.
    Without hesitation, Sam spun around and aimed his gun at the ceiling above him.
    BLAM!
    The shot missed the creature as it dropped on top of Sam.
    A shtriga, he realized. Sam struggled but the shtriga stuck its putrid face into his, and started to suck. It pulled, its beetle-black eyes rolling into its head. But there was something wrong, nothing was happening, no soul was being sucked out of Sam.
    Sam smiled and with his right arm aimed the gun at the monster’s head. The shtriga avoided the shot and skidded up the wall, still facing its unbeatable prey. Sam aimed again but it was gone.
    The girl on the bed finally let out a nails-on-a-chalk-board scream.
    “Shut up,” Sam barked.
    She did, cowering back away from Sam. Sam opened the bedroom door, but despite the screams and gunshots, the house was silent. He flicked the light switch.
    “Don’t do that. It might come back! What if it—” the girl squealed.
    “What did I say?” Sam spat. She shut up again.
    Sam closed his eyes. There were twenty people in the house. It was the perfect place for a shtriga to feed—beaten-down people who had given up on life. Easy prey. Like the shtrigas’ taste for children.
    Sam crept back into the room where Samuel still slept; somehow the noise further down the corridor had failed to wake him.
    Sam quickly loaded a couple of iron bullets into his gun—the only thing guaranteed to work on a shtriga. Then he turned out the light and leaned over his grandfather.
    Sam knew the monster would be attracted to a body that wouldn’t put up too much of a fight. He took a pillow from underneath his grandfather’s head. He held it over Samuel’s face and lightly pushed down. He needed to slow Samuel’s breathing enough so that the shtriga would be drawn to his body, on the brink of dying. Samuel’s eyes popped open. He struggled against Sam, but his strength was no match for his