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door of the house.”
    “Should we get Dad? What should we do?”
    “He doesn’t want Dad. He wants us.”
    “But I—you said he didn’t have a—a signal.”
    “He doesn’t. But he still communicates.”
    She didn’t want anything to do with it. It was giving her a sickening feeling.
    TAKE CARE OF THEM ….
    Who? Jax? Max? Who else could it be?
    “Why should we talk to him? It’s night, Jax. It’s scary!”
    “I have to. He calls and calls, Cara. Into my head. It’s like someone’s yelling at me. He won’t stop till we go down to him.”
    “It’s not safe, Jax. Let’s wait him out, just wait until he leaves. You can go up to Dad’s room. Or stay in here tonight. With me.”
    She patted her coverlet.
    But Jax shook his head.
    “I can’t. He’s blaring at me.”
    Maybe Jax is making this up, she thought hopefully. After all, we’re talking about Jax here: a pretty weird kid. Maybe this is all in his head, and if I’m supposed to take care of him, then it’s my job to listen. And watch him.
    “OK,” she said slowly. “What do you want me to do, then?”
    He turned, and she got up and followed, shutting Rufus in her room so he wouldn’t bark and wake everyone.
    Outside her room she flicked on the hall light, then the light over the stairs. Every light switch she saw, she flicked. Anything to make it brighter and more everyday.
    Down they went, Jax padding ahead of her in his sock feet.
    Their front door was old, thick with multiple coats of paint; the top half had a rectangular window with diamond-shaped panes.
    “Is it locked?” she whispered.
    Jax nodded.
    “It’s too high up for me to get a good view,” he said.
    So she stepped in front of him. She stood at the door and reached over to the wall, to the light switch for the porch.
    She flicked it upward.
    And gasped, jumping back and banging into Jax.
    There he was.
    The glass in the door pane made things blurry, but it was definitely him. He stood on the porch steps, facing right at them, his arms hanging at his sides. He had the same dark coat on, with the hood, but now the hood was back so she could see his face—sort of. It was long and pale, with dark hair plastered down on the forehead, soaking wet. She couldn’t make out the features on the face that well; he might be young or old or somewhere in between.
    He was dripping, it looked like. Or maybe that was just the distortion of the glass.
    The worst thing was that his lips were moving. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his lips were moving. And as they moved she felt a kind of coldness come over her, moving up from the soles of her feet like it was radiating from the floor.… It was a sick cold, the cold of lonely graves, the cold of a hospital bed that you knew, in the pit of your stomach, you would never leave….
    “You have to open it,” whispered Jax. “He won’t leave otherwise.”
    “No way, Jax,” she whispered back. “No way, no way, no way.”
    “You have to,” he said.
    “Jax, honestly,” she said. Her teeth were chattering, her feet were freezing, and she hugged herself. “I always believe you. But this is some guy on our steps in the night. He could be a murderer.”
    “He could,” said Jax. “But he’s not here for that.”
    “Well, that’s a comfort,” she said.
    “He’s like all the dark things,” said Jax. “He can’t come in unless you invite him.”
    “You promise?”
    “Well … I think so. OK, so I’m not a hundred percent sure.”
    She hesitated, conflicted. Then she looked down at his worried face and thought of him by himself in his bed, hugging his knees to his spindly chest and waiting for their mother.
    This was about showing Jax she trusted him. And that he hadn’t been abandoned.
    Reluctantly, squeezing her eyes shut, she turned the lock and pulled open the door.
    And when she opened her eyes again, she had to clap a hand to her mouth to stifle a shriek.
    The screen was still closed, but there was only the thin mesh