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"Because they had to leave in a hurry," I said

Ee of Mr Crumbley’s tarp I didn’t want to look but couldn’t help h split fingers I had expected a withered corpse, but Mr Cru, perhaps only forty or fifty years old, his black hair graying just around the teht’ve just been sleeping Could he really have aged forward, like the leathery apple I took frorine’s loop?

"Hullo, are you dead or asleep?" Eed the man’s ear with her boot, and the side of his head caved and cruasped and let the tarp fall back Cruile that a strong wind could blow hi Mr Crurasped the knob and turned it The door opened and we stepped through it into a laundry roo clothes in a ha neatly above a sink This place had not been abandoned long

The Feeling was stronger here, but was still only residue We opened another door and cahtened Here was clear evidence of a fight: furniture scattered and overturned, pictures knocked off the mantel, stripes of wallpaper shredded to ribbons

Then Horace aze upward, to a dark stain discoloring a roughly circular patch of ceiling So awful had happened upstairs

Emma squeezed her eyes closed "Just listen," she said "Listen for the birds and don’t think about anything else"

We closed our eyes and listened A eon I opened my eyes to see where it had coently, trying not to creak them under our feet I could feel my heartbeat in my throat, in my temple I could handle old, brittle corpses I wasn’t sure if I could take a murder scene

The second-floor hallas littered with debris A door, torn froh the broken dooras a fallen tower of trunks and dressers; a failed blockade

In the next room, the white carpet was soaked with blood--the stain that had leaked through the floor to the ceiling below But whoone

The last door in the hall showed no signs of forced entry I pushed it open warily My eyes scanned the room: there was a wardrobe, a dresser topped with carefully arranged figurines, lace curtains fluttering in aThe carpet was clean Everything undisturbed

Then my eyes went to the bed, and as in it, and I stuainst the doorjaly asleep--and between theed forward," said Horace, his hands tre at his throat "Two of them considerably more than the others"

The men who looked asleep were as dead as Mr Crumbley downstairs, Horace said, and if we touched theave up," Eave up" She looked at theht they eak and cowardly--that they’d taken the easy way out I couldn’t help wondering, though, if these peculiars sihts did with their captives Maybe ould choose death, too, if we knew

We drifted into the hall I felt dizzy and sick, and I wanted out of this house--but we couldn’t leave yet There was one last staircase to cliined peculiars who’d withstood the initial attack on this house gathering here for a last stand Maybe they’d tried to fight the corrupted with fire--or maybe the corrupted had tried to smoke them out Either way, it looked like the house had coh a low doore entered a narrow, slope-walled attic Everything here was burned black Fla holes in the roof

Emma prodded Horace "It’s here soic, bird-catcher"

Horace tiptoed into the eon, pigeon …"

Then, froled chirp We turned to see not a pigeon but a girl in a black dress, half hidden in the shadows