“Even this one has nice storage, though.” Stacey pointed at the rows of shelves and small cabinets along two walls. “That's handy when you barely have enough space to turn around in.”

  “Our room is this way.” Nicole opened the door beside it and took us through a short, narrow throat of a passageway to the master bedroom.

  The compact, L-shaped room was built around the glass double doors to the upstairs porch, capturing the porch access. The Browns' queen-sized bed took up a lot of the space.

  “Is this the mirror?” I stepped toward the armoire, which was taller than me and had a full-length mirror built into its main door. The armoire was crafted from dark, heavy wood, adorned with little scalloped flourishes at every drawer pull and corner like a giant jewelry box. It was the centerpiece of a furniture-scape that ran all the way along the wall, full of drawers and small ornate doors, almost like a consolation for the room shrinking so much from its original size.

  “That's the one.” Nicole adjusted the throw pillows on her bed as if trying to make the room look perfect for us outsiders. The room was already spotless and neat, down to the framed family pictures on the dresser. One showed Nicole with a multi-generational group of women who resembled her, possibly sisters, cousins, and aunts, like in the H.M.S. Pinafore song. All wore matching blue blazers. They stood under a wall sign that read PAGONIS REALTY, the logo a stylized blue peacock.

  I gazed into the armoire mirror. No shadowy phantoms came leaping out; the glass faithfully reflected the room around us. Maybe I'd have better luck if I looked into the mirror while alone, perhaps late at night, repeating the words Bloody Mary. Or maybe Cabinet-Door Jack.

  “Did this armoire come with the house?” I asked.

  “It is the house. I mean, it's all built in, like downstairs. It seems like an extreme commitment to a design scheme, locking everything into place, but fortunately it looks nice. And it has some useful features.” Nicole unfolded a small writing table from one end of the dresser, revealing a row of pigeonholes full of envelopes and folded paperwork.

  “Have you experienced anything else unusual?” I asked.

  “Besides what I already said, I just feel a lot of uneasiness. Like someone's watching me. I sometimes felt that in our old house, too. Especially when it was messy. Constance, our old ghost back home, liked everything neat and clean. And so do I, of course, but you have to be realistic with four kids. I don't think Constance understood that.”

  “Where have the younger kids reported seeing things? Like this Jack character?”

  “I'm not clear whether they've even seen him, exactly, or they're just scared of him because of that graffiti,” Nicole said.

  “What about your younger daughter's imaginary friends?” I asked. “Where does she see them?”

  “They're wherever she is, usually the playroom,” Nicole said. “You don't think Sunny and Rainy could be real, do you? Andra always makes up friends. She puts on little shows with her stuffed animals and dolls, too.”

  “I don't know anything for sure yet, but I did have a case where the imaginary friends were actually ghosts of dead children, and they wanted the living child to become their playmate forever. By dying in the house.”

  “Could that happen to Andra?” Nicole looked ill.

  “That's not a common scenario, but you can see why I worry,” I said. “If you decide to go ahead with the investigation, it might be helpful if I spoke to Andra.”

  “As long as you can do it without making her more frightened,” Nicole replied.

  “I'll be careful. I have a degree in psychology.” I hoped this tidbit helped put her at ease, but to be honest, I've never been that great with kids.

  “She may try to rope you into watching one of her shows. She hung an old sheet in the playroom as a theater curtain.”

  “Sounds cute!” Stacey said.

  “Whatever gets her talking.” I nodded.

  “She's the one kid who still talks to us,” Nicole said. “Jason's always been quiet, even as a baby, but now he's even more so. And the changes in his art are disturbing.”

  “We'd probably want to speak to him, too, or at least look at the drawings.”

  “I can show you those right now.” Nicole stepped back out into the windowless room of doors around the staircase. Another door brought us into an elementary-age boy's room, the small bed neatly made, everything in order except for a card table by the window, where pens and markers, mostly black, purple, and blue, were scattered over several sheets of drawings.

  More hand-drawn pictures hung on the walls, some of them lovingly framed. Superheroes and animals were heavily featured in these works, as well as an attempt at a cityscape that was better than anything I could have done.

  “Did he draw all of these?” Stacey asked, leaning to study a squirrel etched in pencil on a ragged-edged spiral notebook page.

  “Yes, Jason's always been a busy little artist. We had to hide the crayons when he was a toddler because he'd graffiti the walls. But lately…” She flipped over a sheet of paper on the card table and grimaced before turning it toward us. “A lot of this.”

  The drawing showed an irregular door with a sloping, diagonal top, about halfway open. Jackets and coats hung inside, with a row of shoes on a shelf along the bottom and assorted hats and caps on a shelf above. A particular central arrangement of hat, coat, and shoes suggested a man standing inside the closet, with scribbled shadows where his face would have been.

  “It looks like the coat closet under the stairs,” Nicole said. “This one's not so bad, but then there's things like…” She slid it aside to reveal another drawing full of dark, slashing pencil strokes.

  Here, a man slid out from a square cabinet door, levitating, lying stiff on his back like a corpse floating headfirst out of an open morgue locker, only no metal rolling tray held him up. He held some kind of hatchet or sharp tool in one hand. He wore a flat cap like an old-timey workman. His face was just scribbles, except for a wide, toothy smile.

  “Is that Jack?” I asked.

  “I think so,” Nicole whispered.

  Another drawing showed a face peering out from behind a rectangular cabinet door that was three-quarters closed. One eye was visible, large and light-colored. A lock of white hair was visible over the eye, but perhaps meant to be blond or gray; it was hard to know when it was sketched in black ink.

  “What does Jason say about these drawings?” I asked.

  “He says they're things he sees. He's vague and won't really talk about it. But he's obsessed with closing the doors. You can help him and Andra check the cabinets at night, that will get them on your good side.”

  “And he says Jack is the one who comes out at night?” I looked at the sideways figure, irrationally sliding out of a small cabinet where a person couldn't possibly have fit inside.

  “Andra does most of the talking,” Nicole said. “But Jason's right there with her, on the same wavelength, as if closing doors to keep the boogeyman out is just something all people ought to do each night before brushing their teeth and getting into bed. The first time it felt like a game. But it's been every night for weeks now. It's the consistency that scares me, the fact that they didn't just move on to something else after a day or two. I told them Jack isn't real and can't hurt them, but I might as well have tried to tell them the moon was made of ice cream.”

  “So, they're both scared of Jack? What else have they said about him?” I asked.

  “Andra says Sunny and Rainy help her look out for him.”

  “How does she describe those imaginary friends?”

  “I think they're supposed to be other children,” Nicole said. “Andra's a little short on playmates, unfortunately. Jason prefers to keep to himself. Penny used to play with her, but she's getting into that moody, rebellious teen stage now and mopes around uselessly—”

  Someone gasped, or maybe hissed.

  Stacey and I looked at each other, then at Nicole.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “It wasn't me. I heard it, though.” Nicole stepped out of the bedroom and looked among the rooms of doors. “Who's there?”

  A thump sounded in Jason's closet, which was barely ajar, showing an inch of darkness inside.

  Stacey and I looked at each other, confirming we'd both heard it.

  I stepped over to the boy's closet door and took the knob, wishing I had my flashlight so I could spear any nasty dark entities with white light, but I hadn't strapped on all the bulky gear for our first meeting with this hesitant potential client.

  I swung open the closet door.

  Inside, a yellow hooded slicker swayed on a hanger, as did a flannel jacket beside it, as if something had jostled them. It was possible the clothes had moved because of the door displacing air as I swung it open, but I hadn't pulled the door with all that much force.

  I slid the jackets and sweaters aside. The closet was deeper than it was wide. A cavity extended beyond the clothes rack, its ceiling sloping low toward the back, as if we were underneath a stairway, maybe to the attic. Assorted shoes were scattered on and around a low shelf at the back—boots for winter, black shoes with fake buckles for formal occasions, Spider-Man flip-flops for everyday casual wear.

  “I didn't see anybody out there. What's, uh, going on in here?” Nicole asked, having returned to the room's doorway behind us.

  “We heard something in the closet. But it looks like nothing's there.” I backed away and closed the door tight, like the younger kids would have wanted. “I didn't mean to get nosy.”

  “It's easy to hear things in this house,” Nicole said. “Especially at night. Though half the time it's just Penny rummaging around. She sleeps half the day then stays up at night, staring at one screen or another—”

  “Seriously, mother? Telling everyone my personal life?” The girl who'd spoken stood outside the door. She looked like a preteen mirror image of Nicole, not much shorter than her mother, though her black hair was much longer, falling in rumpled cascades over her shoulders. She had the same bright blue eyes and similar fatigued bags under them. She wore a very out-of-season sweatshirt hoodie and a pair of shorts. “Are these the wackos Dad called?”

  “That's rude and crude, Penelope,” Nicole said. “You were supposed to be watching your brother and sister.”

  “Well, Jason wanted to draw, and Andra wanted to go work on her magic show with her schizo voices inside her head. So I took a nap.” Penny looked us over, clenching her small jaw. “What exactly are these people going to do?”

  “We'll talk about it later.”

  “More like you'll yell at me about it later.”

  “Penny, your room!”

  “Like I even want to be out here.” The girl trudged off down the hall, and a door slammed.

  “Just to be clear, that's the moody one?” Stacey asked.

  Nicole gave a short, tired laugh. “We used to call Penny extra-extroverted. She was like Andra with her energy, only less of a whirlwind and more of a freight train, relentlessly on track. At her old school, she was in student government, spirit squad, and some other things, but she insists she won't join any activities at her new school. I'm hoping she'll change her mind once the year begins in August. She was really upset about moving away from her friends. It'll be some time before we're forgiven for that. And for now, we've lost our best babysitter.” She shook her head. “I guess you should meet the younger ones, but I wouldn't start out by mentioning Jack and the cabinets.”

  “Of course. We'll go gently.”

  We returned to the front parlor downstairs, which the family had made into a living room. A TV hung over the fireplace. Board games, kid-made decorations, photo albums, and other family memorabilia occupied the bookshelves. The extensive bookcases and wainscoting gleamed with a fresh coat of white, reflecting sunlight from the porch windows, creating a brighter atmosphere than most of the rooms had.

  Dave and eight-year-old Andra occupied a minimalist IKEA-style couch, leaning over a Monopoly board on a square coffee table. Ten-year-old Jason sat in a matching armchair, shaking the dice, preparing to roll. The furniture didn't really match the room, but it was too neutral and simple to truly clash with anything.

  “Andra,” Nicole said, “our guests were asking about your magic show.”

  Andra gasped and jumped to her feet, visibly panicked. “But I haven't scheduled a show today!”

  “You could schedule one,” Nicole suggested.

  “I'm not ready! Everyone wait here!” Andra raced past us and opened a door at the back of the room. She hesitated at the sight of the narrow, dark hallway beyond. “Dad, can you walk me through?”

  “Of course.” Dave stood up to join her. “Jason, I'll be right back so we can keep playing.”

  “I don't really care.” Jason set the dice down without rolling. “I'm hungry.”

  “Andra's a little scared of the hallway,” Nicole told us, in a low voice.

  “No, I'm not!” Andra argued, but stuck close to her father as they stepped away into the hall, deeper into the old house.

  Chapter Six

  Stacey and I followed Nicole and Jason into the kitchen through that dark, unwelcoming back hall, which was clearly carved from portions of three original rooms, with abrupt transitions in the hardwood floor pattern and the crown molding. A couple of side rooms had claimed the windows, leaving the hallway dark.

  The back hall crossed somewhere behind the front stairs, by my calculation, and dead-ended near two facing doors. One was closed with a DO NOT ENTER!!! sign written in red crayon thumbtacked to it, presumably the playroom door where Andra was hurriedly preparing her show.

  We passed through the other one into the kitchen.

  Stacey and I sat at the kitchen table and finished our tea while Nicole made Jason a peanut butter sandwich. He ate it solemnly and silently while staring at us with his huge brown eyes, as if we were aliens who'd just landed.

  “Your mom says you like to draw,” Stacey said. “That's really neat.”

  He looked at her, chewing slowly.

  “I went to art school, you know,” she continued. “I did more painting than actual drawing. But I mostly studied photography and film. Do you like to paint, too?”

  He blinked.

  “What kinds of things do you like to draw?” Stacey asked.

  He shrugged. “Usually pictures,” he finally said, very quietly.

  “Pictures, huh? That's great.”

  He kept eating his sandwich, staring at her.

  I could see the playroom door from where I sat at the table. It opened slowly, and then we heard the girl's voice.

  “You go announce us, Sunny,” Andra whispered from the space behind the open door, that last-minute go-to spot for desperate hide-and-seekers. After a few seconds, she whispered again, “Okay, I'll do it if you're too scared.”

  “I think there's an announcement coming,” Nicole said.

  “Ladies and everyone! Now presenting…Grizalda, the Magic Witch! Hooray! Yay!” Andra leaped out through the playroom door, dressed in a cone-shaped paper hat with HAPPY BIRTHDAY in glittering silver letters, as well as a snarling Incredible Hulk mask and a long, drooping black shirt that had to be her father's, the loose sleeves bunched around her wrists. She waved a rainbow-spiral toy broom like a magician's wand.

  “A witch!” Stacey gasped.

  Andra lifted the green mask to show her face. “It's just me!” she said in a loud whisper.

  “Oh, okay,” Stacey whispered loudly back to her.

  Andra lowered the mask again. “But really I'm Grizalda! This way to the stage!” She raised her broom with a flourish, spun around, and marched back into the playroom.

  Stacey and I followed her, along with Nicole. Jason took the rest of his sandwich and walked off in the other direction.

  “Wow, this really is a room for plays,” Stacey said as we stepped through the door. The overhead light was off. Folding chairs and beanbags faced a curtain of two old bedsheets that hid the back half of the room, illuminated by flashlights placed on end tables like spotlights. A card table draped in an unzipped sleeping bag stood in front of the curtain.

  Andra dashed behind the curtain while we took our seats.

  “Now comes the magic show!” Andra announced, popping out through the curtain with the short toy broom in one hand and a beach bucket decorated with cartoon crabs in the other.

  Stacey clapped, so I did, too.

  Andra set the bucket on the covered table and raised her mask. “You're supposed to clap at the end, not the start,” she told us.

  “Oh, sorry,” Stacey replied.

  “It's okay.” Andra pulled her mask back down. “Now, you will be amazed!” She pulled a plush rabbit toy from under the table and waved it around. “As you can see, this is a perfectly normal rabbit. His name is Carrots. And there's nothing up my sleeve right now. So watch!” She placed the rabbit out of sight inside the bucket, but kept her hand in there with it while she waved her little broom. “Presto, change-o!”

  “I wonder what's going to happen,” Stacey whispered.

  Behind us, Nicole was looking at her phone, hand wrapped around the screen to dampen the glow it cast in the dim room.

  “Wall-la!” Andra removed her hand from the bucket, her oversized sleeve bulging suspiciously. She turned the beach bucket toward us to show it was empty. “Oh, no, Carrots disappeared! Where-oh-where did he go?”

  Stacey and I made a show of looking shocked while Andra made a show of searching the room's numerous shelves and low cabinets for the missing rabbit, her bulging sleeve pressed against her stomach the whole time.

  Finally, Andra reached the bulging sleeve into a cabinet, shook it around, and pulled it back out holding the little rabbit again.

  “I found him!” Andra announced. “He's fine, everyone. He doesn't need to go to the vet. Carrots, are you ready for your next trick?” She did a squeaky voice and waved the stuffed rabbit so its head bobbed up and down at a neck-breaking speed. “'Oh, yes, please! I love tricks!' Okay, get ready, then!”

 

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