Where the Dead Keep Watch

Previously

…For the first time, a sliver of doubt, cold and sharp, pierced his carefully constructed pragmatism. The scent of old paper and something else, something faintly metallic and sorrowful, seemed to fill the room. He looked at his family, their faces illuminated by the flickering lamplight, and a primal fear, deeper than any he’d admitted, began to stir. He opened his mouth to speak, to dismiss it all, but no words came. The echoes of the past, Clara’s nightmares, Thomas’s innocent pronouncements, and Eleanor’s unearthed truth, had finally begun to chip away at the solid foundation of his denial. The house, and its spectral inhabitants, had made their presence undeniably known.