THEY SNEAK IN without much difficulty. Well, they don't sneak in. Marzia knows about David. It was remarkable, how easily she believed in Hadley's shoddy cover story for David—parents kicked him out over some argument, nowhere to go—after David offered Marzia a smile full of charm and earnestness. How easily she was swayed once David turned his mouth in the right way.

            Still, it feels a lot like sneaking in. Hadley's parents aren't home. As for his sister, he's even not sure if Philippa's here.

            Which he's grateful for, in a way. If there's one thing he doesn't want to see today, it's Philippa's face.

            "This is the place," Hadley says, his hand resting on the doorknob on the door to his room.

            David looks around the corridor. "You know, when we were back in limbo I thought your house wasn't actually as spooky as it was in limbo. I guess I was wrong."

            Hadley pats his pockets, pulls out the key to his room. "It's not that bad. It's got its own kind of gothic charm. Or something."

            "No wonder you keep having so many nightmares." David shudders. "This whole place is creepy as is."

            Hadley unlocks the door. "Like I said, not so bad once you get used to it."

            "Would you live anywhere else, if you had the choice?" David asks, lightly knocking on Hadley's door.

            "Of course I would," Hadley says, as he opens the door.

            "Where would you live? A little cottage in the middle of nowhere? A high-rise in Dubai?"

            "Tough question," Hadley says. "How about I don't answer?"

            David rolls his eyes.

            They enter Hadley's room. He wonders how his room must seem to David, whose own room more or less overflowing with his presence, with color and posters and books and other bric-a-brac. Hadley's room looks like a hotel room—comfortable and neat, but nobody's lived in it. The only decoration he ever put up was some Aivazovsky print over his desk, and the poster—all raging ocean and light caught in the waves and ship about to wreck—adds, somehow, to the vacantness of the room. No comfortable mess here, not like in David's room.

            "Make yourself at home," says Hadley. "Only one who comes in here is Marzia, so you should be good."

            David's already taken his shoes off and thrown his bag down onto the floor.

            "Christ, your closet is big," David says, going around Hadley's room. "I could sleep in here."

            "Be my guest," Hadley says.

            "I think," David says, "I'll just take the floor. You got extra blankets and pillows in here?"

            It takes little time for David to set himself up in Hadley's room. He chooses a spot right next to Hadley's bed, and by the time he's done laying out blankets and pillows, he manages to make the floor look more comfortable than Hadley's own bed.

            Hadley thinks it might not be that bad having David around. He's been pleasant so far. Hadley offers David a tour of the house. David accepts. Hadley shows him all the rooms—the library, the study, the foyer, the kitchen, the laundry room, the basement—they spend about half a minute in there—a few of the guest rooms, the living room, the piano room, and finally, the attic.

            It smells overwhelmingly of mothballs and wood-polish, and it takes Hadley a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the low light. The only source of light is a window that could do with some cleaning, but it's enough to make out all the contents of the room. Cupboards filled with old, worn-down clothes; boxes filled with pictures of Hungarian grand-aunts and American grand-uncles; clothes from the seventies that Hadley's father still clung to out of sentimentality; Hadley and Philippa's old toys. The air here is heavy with the past.

            "I used to come in here," Hadley says, "as a kid. All the time. It's never the right temperature. Either balls-freezing cold or balls-melting hot."

            "There's a lot of junk up here," David says, inspecting a child's rocking horse. "Is this like, a family mansion?"

            "Yeah," Hadley says. He picks up an album of off a relatively clean table. "My grandfather died in this house. So did his father. And his father before him."

            "No goddamn wonder why this place feels like it's haunted."

            "I never thought it was haunted." Hadley opens the album. The pictures are ancient. All sepia-toned and grainy.

            "Course you wouldn't. What're you looking at?" David asks.

            "Old pictures," says Hadley. "Pictures of dead people."

            "You're begging to be haunted," David says. Hadley can hear the creak of floorboards as David approaches. "Who's that?" he asks, pointing at a woman with a stern brow and a sterner nose.

            Hadley shifts a little to the left, making space for David. "My great-aunt Francine. Woman next to her is my grandmother."

            David taps the photo. "They look a lot like you."

            Hadley frowns. "No, they don't."

            David turns the page over.

            "What the fuck," says Hadley, "happened to these pictures?"

            Hadley's seen these pictures before. A hundred times before, and every single time, they used to be the same. Little children playing with a ball. A family portrait. A woman sprawled over a couch. Their faces used to be grainy and blurred out, like in all old pictures, but they were there.

            In these pictures, none of them have faces. It's not that they've been cut out, or blotted out—they just aren't there anymore.

            David stares, his mouth agape.

            Hadley, unsure of what to do, turns the page.

            These pictures are worse. There's an inky blackness creeping in from the corners of the photos. It's not ink, though. It looks like it's from within the picture, rather than from outside. The subjects in the photo are blissfully unaware. Hadley's grand-uncle lifts his rifle, his mustachioed grin wide, completely oblivious to the black cloud that looms over his head.

            Hadley turns the page. The photos alternate between facelessness and darkness, each and every single one of them. But whatever that blackness is, it grows with each picture, larger and larger, till it blots out faces, bodies, landscapes, the entire photo. And the facelessness devolves into something else, some kind of erasure—with each picture, a part of the subject's body slowly fades out, until pictures that were just portraits of people sitting in chairs or couches, become pictures of the furniture themselves. Empty and dark.

            The last few pictures are pure black.

            "Still not haunted?" David asks.

            Hadley closes the album, sets it back on the desk. This means something, Hadley thinks. This is a threat. This is what could become of Hadley, if the curse goes on. Only, the question is, who would want to do this to him? What did Hadley do to warrant all of this?

            "That was an experience," Hadley says, his voice shaky.

            "I'll say," says David, as he picks up the album again and flips through it.

            "Was going through it once not enough?"

            David frowns. Squints a little at the pictures. "Look at these."

            Hadley looks.

            The pictures are normal, old pictures again. No black clouds. No faceless people. Hadley's breath hitches in his chest.

            "Hold this," says David. He hands the album to Hadley.

            Nothing happens. Hadley's grandmother stares petulantly at the both of them.

            "Okay," David says, a little doubt in his voice. "Close it and open it again."

            Hadley closes it and opens it again, to the same page. Nothing happens.

            With a scowl, David says, "That didn't work." He lifts the album out of Hadley's hands. "Do you mind me tinkering around with this?"

            "Go ahead," says Hadley. "I've been through the album enough times to memorize those damn pictures anyway."

            "You," says David, flashing a grin, "have way too much free time."

            "What can I do? I'm a rich white boy," says Hadley. "Time is just one of the few things I have in excess."

            David laughs, and Hadley feels a little better.

            As they leave the attic, Hadley thinks that they might come out of this as friends.

            It's not an unpleasant thought.

***

            AT NIGHT, AFTER Hadley brings up David's dinner, and after he clears away the debris of David's meal, and after Hadley knocks back a few beers, and after they pore over the album together and Hadley points out every great-aunt and great-uncle, and after David pushes a slightly drunk Hadley to swear in Hungarian, and after they both laugh themselves silly over how Hadley trips over the words, Hadley thinks, this isn't so bad. He thinks, I could get used to this.

            It's two A.M when he goes to bed, still drunk on beer and laughter, and he says, "Good night, David."

            He's asleep by the time David replies.

            "Stay safe," David says, his words hollow. David turns over onto his side, closes his eyes, and plunges into sleep.

            And while they sleep, something else—something distant and far away and older than the ground on which Hadley's house stands—wakes up.