On Christmas morning, my 9-year-old daughter opened a present from her grandfather, my father-in-law. Just seconds later, she let out a terrifying scream, clutching her face and crying that it was burning.

The entrance hall was swallowed by a gloom so thick that the late-afternoon sun dying behind the trees barely penetrated three feet past the threshold. I reached into my jacket, pulled out the small tactical flashlight I kept in the first-aid kit, and clicked it on.

The beam cut through a swirling haze of dust and airborne spores.

The cabin had not been abandoned; it had been dismantled.

The wall paneling had been torn away in long, jagged strips, exposing the rough-hewn studs and the yellowed fiberglass insulation behind them. Piles of yellowed legal pads, empty chemical canisters, and shattered glass lay strewn across the pine flooring.

The dripping sound was coming from the center of the main living room.

I moved forward, my boots crunching on broken glass, the gun leading the way. The beam of my light swept across a stone hearth that had collapsed inward, then dropped down to the floor.

In the middle of the room, a six-foot section of the floorboards had been cut away with a circular saw, leaving a gaping, rectangular hole that opened into a dark, stone-lined crawlspace below.

Resting beside the edge of the pit was Brian’s leather messenger bag, overturned. Its contents—bank statements, travel receipts, and a small leather notebook—were scattered across the sawdust.

"Brian?" I whispered, my throat dry as sand.

A faint groan drifted up from the darkness beneath the floor.

I approached the edge slowly, keeping my center of gravity low, and angled the flashlight beam down into the hole.

The crawlspace was roughly five feet deep, walled with rough fieldstone that glistened with seepage. In the center of the dirt floor, half-slumped against a wooden support post, was Brian.

His jacket was gone. His white dress shirt was soaked in dark, viscous blood across the right shoulder, and his hands were bound behind his back with heavy, yellow zip-ties. A strip of gray duct tape hung loose from his chin, wet with saliva and sweat.

"Claire..." he croaked, squinting against the glare of my flashlight. His face was gray, his lips cracked and blue around the edges. "Get out... get Tessa... he didn't die..."

My breath hitched. "What are you talking about? Who did this?"

"Harold didn't die in the hospital," Brian rasped, a cough racking his frame, bringing up a fleck of dark foam to his lower lip. "It was... it was Uncle Thomas. They switched the records... they used his brother's body from the hospice in Bangor... Harold’s here, Claire. He’s been here the whole time."

The air in the room suddenly dropped ten degrees.

"He wanted you to bring her here," Brian whispered, his voice trembling with a terror I had never heard in a grown man's voice. "He needed the bloodline clean. He thinks the fire... he thinks the fire didn't finish what he started on Christmas."

Behind me, the front door of the cabin swung open with a long, agonizing groan.

I spun around, bringing the revolver up, the flashlight beam sweeping across the empty entrance hall.

Nothing.

Just the tall grass outside swaying in the rising wind, and the empty clearing.

And then I saw the car.

The passenger door of my Subaru was wide open.