It’s like a haunted house we can’t leave,’ Neil said.A haunted house we’re afraid to leave, Tony thought.

I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.

The scratching came from the attic. At night, when Rory turned out the light I would lie awake and wait for it to skit, skit, skit lightly across the floorboards above our heads and down behind the water pipes.

As the thing came closer, what was left of Nick’s body became revealed and I could see how the dead boy’s eyes had bled from the trauma inflicted upon him; they dripped with steady succession onto the floor between his splayed legs. He looked like a rejected marionette tossed haphazardly in the corner by a frustrated puppeteer, his head drooping so low that his chin rested against his chest. His motionless arms lay at his sides, both of them squeezed into tight fists, as if he’d died futilely trying to defend himself.

Being dead does have its advantages.”-Alastor