No place or thing can exist in such a way that violates the First Law of Thermodynamics. Energy, it coldly states, can be transferred from one form to another, but never created or destroyed. To all who knew it, The Warwick House was a place of ceaseless transfer. It hunched toward the street as it had for more than one hundred and thirty years, pushing aside the gnarled oak trees crowding it until their roots ruptured the dying sidewalk. Its brown shingles were warped and speckled with green, and generations of paint peeled through one another, making the house’s true color unknowable. Neighbors swore they felt its presence pricking the backs of their necks as they neared it. It was said the house alone knew what had happened to the souls of its former occupants. Because what is a soul, after all, if not a consciousness? And what is consciousness if not the electrical energy residue of the brain? And energy, as we know, cannot be destroyed.

The name on the house’s old mailbox no longer read Warwick. Some time ago, but still in living memory, that name changed to Gray, one of whom was now dead. The body of Helen Gray laid still but not at rest in a simple, woodgrain casket in a formal living room bordered outside by a veranda porch. Helen had a slender frame and straight, ash-brown hair grown past her elbows she hadn’t cut in the two years she’d been ill. Her birch white face was plain and gentle, though a furrowed brow suggested something unfulfilled had followed her into death. Her body rested atop several bags of ice arranged within the casket so that each part of her stayed cold. Photographs from her youth, pieces of jewelry, an antique doll, and a well-worn children’s novel coming apart at the spine were arrayed beneath the casket. She had turned forty the month before.

Six-year-old Caleb Gray sat on the front steps under the porch awning. He was small for his age with the downturned face of a fledgling introvert. His nose leaked over his upper lip and a light crust clung to his cheeks below his vacant eyes. In his left hand, he held a lightweight, white cane with a strap strung loosely around his wrist. Caleb used the cane to trace shapes in the dirt—a series of imprecise circles, squares, and triangles he could feel but never see—because Caleb was blind. He heard his father’s and sister’s voices carry from inside. He’d rather not be in there with them. It was easier being alone. But their conversation reminded him there was still something he had to do, so Caleb stood up and went inside.

Forty-three-year-old Allan Gray stood in the formal living room. He watched Caleb pass down the hall, tapping his cane as he went. Allan and his fifteen-year-old daughter, Emma, both dressed all in black, were in the midst of a disagreement. Allan paused, taking his hand off the rim of his wife’s casket, and lowered his voice.

“You still haven’t decided?” he said to Emma.

“I changed my mind. It’s dumb,” she said back, arms crossed. She was seated on one of the twenty-one padded folding chairs in rows facing the casket. Potted floral arrangements bookended each of the three rows of chairs. They were orchids, her mother’s favorite.

“We all agreed to do it. Everyone. But now you change your mind? Emma, I don’t get it with you. The entitlement of it.” Allan searched his daughter’s face.

Emma raised her eyes. “That’s what you call it now? Entitled? Even she wouldn’t have wanted to do it.” Her father had come up with an idea for everyone to put keepsakes they shared with Helen in the casket for burial. Her body, as Emma bemoaned, would not be buried. The idea seemed hollow to Emma, like it was mostly about making themselves feel okay.

“Look,” Allan said. changing tact, “it’s just that I still need your help with Caleb. It’ll be easier for him if you do it too.”

Emma did not react.

Caleb listened in the hallway, then he entered his parents’ study. He set aside his cane and let his fingertips guide him along an oak desk, a bookshelf, and an old and dented aluminum filing cabinet. He was looking for something, but finding it was difficult among the piles of books and stacks of sheet music. He paused over a violin and felt the space around it for the stick his mother played it with. He felt around a cluttered closet, under the desk, and reached as far as he could into the gap between the filing cabinet and the wall. The stick was what he wanted to place in her casket, and being unable to find it was beginning to frustrate him. With his mother gone, finding even this little piece of her felt truly, crucially important.

Then something startled Caleb. It was breathing, but it wasn’t his. It was a loud, raspy exhale from elsewhere in the room.

“Dad?” he froze and asked. But no reply came. Caleb grabbed his cane and felt the space around.

There were many old photographs in The Warwick House. They filled its walls, shelves, and box after box in the attic. One particular black and white photograph faced Caleb now, one of the house as it was many decades ago not long after it was built. Caleb, of course, could not see it. Nor could he see the subject visible in the glare on the photo glass. It was the reflection of a face—that of an intense, full-bearded man of perhaps fifty. The man’s eyes were what stood out. They were like white-hot coals in the darkness of the photo and they gave the full-bearded man a quiet, terrifying fury. Caleb lowered the cane, assured he was alone. Then he heard another sound. Tick-tick…tick-tick…. Caleb stiffened. He sensed something there, something that shouldn’t be, and it was accompanied by the subtle, rising hum of static electricity. Unsettled, Caleb left the room.

In the formal living room, Emma rotated one of the potted floral arrangements next to her chair to align it with the one on the other end of the row. Allan sat down, leaving a seat open between them. He decided to try with Emma one more time.

“What were you thinking about putting in it? Before you changed your mind,” he asked her.

Emma didn’t answer. She eyed the same floral pot again and turned it back exactly how it had been.

“I thought we were past this,” Allan said.

“Past what?”

“This.” He watched, waiting, knowing she would use the flowers to avoid him again.

She looked back at the pot and checked its position against the one on the row behind them, but never quite reached out to adjust it. It was truly testing Allan’s patience.

“People are almost here,” he spoke up. “We have to figure this out now.”

Emma didn’t acknowledge him. Instead, she reached out and adjusted the flowers by the subtlest amount.

“It’s too late, Emma.”

The bluntness of it resonated. Emma looked down, her eyes caught in the brown and green swirls in an old rug. “I just thought I’d be ready,” she said. “But I’m not. I want to bury her. We just should.”

“It’s too late,” Allan repeated.

Emma wiped her nose. They heard the tapping of Caleb’s cane coming back down the hallway. He passed by and went back out the front door.

Allan turned toward Emma. “We’ve talked, and talked, and—.” He cut himself off as Emma turned her back to him. Allan looked down. It wounded him.

“Can you help me?” Emma asked.

Allan looked back up. Emma had pulled a necklace over her shoulders and was waiting for him to grab the tiny, gold clip. A small, jade turtle dangled in front.

“It’s hers,” Emma continued. Turtles were Helen’s favorite.

Touched and relieved, Allan helped her fasten it from behind. “I always liked this one…. Look, I get why you want a burial. But it’s not what she wanted, and you’ll still have a place to remember her.”

“It’s just a plaque. She won’t really be there.”

“It’s what she decided.”

“And it saves you eight thousand on a funeral home.”

Allan was not used to his daughter’s cutting comments. They were new. He would have gotten angry if he wasn’t so worn out. “We all agreed on this. Even her. To bury a casket with her favorite things and everyone would pick something we shared with her to put inside.”

“Why, though?” Emma asked.

“You know. Because she’s donating her body to the institute.”

“But why does it have to be her?”

Allan sighed. Going over it once more wouldn’t make a difference. “Because her body makes rare antibodies that attack the connections between nerves and—”

“—between nerves and tissue . . .” Emma finished, looking sideways, and probably, Allan thought, holding back a tear.

He slid to the empty seat between them and put his arm around her.

“Please, pick something to put in her casket.” Allan waited, thinking he had finally broken through.

Instead, Emma reached to the side and made another miniscule adjustment to the floral pot. Allan stood up. He’d had it with her.

“People are almost here. I have to check on Caleb.” He walked out onto the porch where Caleb had returned to tracing his cane in the dirt.

“You doing alright, buddy?” Allan asked, sitting on the step beside to him.

Caleb rubbed the crust from under his eye and nodded. “Are my cousins coming soon?”

“Yeah. They won’t be long. Have you thought of a thing for your mom yet?”

Caleb stopped tracing, giving his father’s question his full attention. “The little metal turtle on her desk. Or her violin stick.”

“The bow.”

“I can’t find it.”

Allan put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll help you. The bow is a great choice. You understand why we aren’t burying her, right?”

“To help other people like her?”

“That’s right. You’re pretty smart, bud.”

Caleb resumed tracing in the dirt. “Why is Emma mad and I’m just sad?”

Allan sat for a moment, genuinely forced to ponder it. “I guess there’s a funny thing about grief for adults, which your sister is becoming. When they’re hurting, sometimes it’s easier to get mad at whatever caused it because part of you inside still hopes you can change it if only you can show whatever it is how much it hurt you. But after a while, the angry part of you gets smaller and smaller. Then you think more and more about what you lost. The happy things. Then it feels okay to be sad.”

Then Allan felt something, a faint sensation in the air like static electricity. He dreaded that sensation. He hoped Caleb hadn’t noticed it.

Caleb took a long breath. “Dad, I think I’m mad too.”

Allan patted him on the back. “You don’t have to be, but it’s okay if you are.” His phone buzzed in his pocket. He read the text and slid the phone back in. “Your cousins are almost here. Let’s go inside and get you cleaned up.”

He guided Caleb inside. “I’ll be right up,” he said, nudging him up the stairs toward his room. In the mirror, he noticed the multiplying creases in his face. Allan Gray was tired, tired from the drudgery of settling his late wife’s affairs, tired of struggling to appear strong when he felt anything but. And he couldn’t rest. On recent nights, the house itself seemed to delight in disturbing his sleep. Maybe the house too was mourning, Allan wondered. Maybe it didn’t know how either.

His phone buzzed again. Another relative, another imminent arrival. He adjusted and buttoned his suit in the mirror. It was tighter than he remembered. He exhaled slowly. “Thank you, everyone,” he said then stopped, taking a moment to practice. “Thank you for coming, everyone. It means a lot to us for so many of you to make this trip on such short notice.”

The funeral went on without incident. Caleb played with his cousins and Emma distracted herself by chatting with her aunts and grandparents. Still, she would not choose an item to place in the casket. By the time night descended and the funeral of Helen Gray had ended, some in attendance knew all was not as it was supposed to be in The Warwick House. The indoor lights felt especially bright and the air itself, some noticed, was buzzing. And while no one spoke of it outright, the guests thought the soul of The Warwick House seemed especially alert.

When the lights finally went off and everyone had gone home, Allan spent a moment with Helen’s casket. There were more items placed beneath it now. People from the institute would be there to take her body in the morning. He replaced the ice bags surrounding her as he had every four hours. One under her head and neck, two on either side of her torso, and two more supporting her legs. Then he shut the lid.

Allan loosened his tie, hung up his jacket, and went to the study. He had not found Helen’s violin bow for Caleb yet. He moved aside the books, stacks of sheet music, and framed photographs. He paused on a particular photo. It was the oldest photo in the home, a picture of a middle-aged, full-bearded man wearing a tall opera hat and black dinner jacket. Even with the grainy, ethereal quality of the antique black-and-white image, there was an eerie intensity in the man’s eyes that felt threatening. Allan thought he could finally put some of these old photos away for good now. And he’d start with this one of the full-bearded man in the opera hat. But that was another day’s chore. For now, he needed to find the bow. He pulled the dented filing cabinet back from the wall. He stuck his arm behind it and his fingertips grazed the bow.  

Allan placed the bow under Helen’s casket. Now he only had Emma’s item to worry about. Or maybe he’d just let it go. Tick-tick…tick-tick…. A sound interrupted his train of thought. It wasn’t loud, but the abruptness of it in the stillness of night was startling.  He looked up at the window. Something stood there, in the space between the curtain and the glass—a broad silhouette with the sharply tapered shoulders and long coattails of an old-fashioned dinner jacket. Allan’s mind went to the photograph of the full-bearded man, but the dark figure here did not wear a hat. He straightened his spine and blinked. Tick-tick…tick-tick…. The sound evoked that of watch hands and tracked with the movement of Allan’s eyelids. By the time his eyes could refocus, the dark figure had vanished.  

The figments of shadow Allan saw in The Warwick House always disappeared quickly. So quickly, in fact, that it became comfortingly easy to dismiss them. They vanished so cleanly that it only reinforced a sense of normality. And death, he reasoned, was perhaps the most normal thing of all. It was just hard to cope with. And that difficulty could present itself to the mind in any number of unusual ways.

By the time Allan retired to his bedroom, Emma and Caleb were sound asleep. Emma lied on top of her bedspread, still in her dress. Allan did not disturb her. Caleb lied tucked in his bed sheets just the way his mother had always done for him. Allan went down the hall and shut the door to his bedroom. But something else was occurring at the far end of the long hall that divided the second story. Halfway down its length, the hall jogged to the side to clear a staircase. Past that and two doors down was a walk-in closet. The closet door was open and cast a long shadow across the moonlit wooden floor. Inside the closet, it was as if a black orifice into The Warwick House had opened. If Allan had glanced behind him, he might have seen a pinprick of white light by itself in the closet, its source a mystery. And had he looked a little longer, he would have seen a second pinprick appear beside the first. Sometimes, neighbors and visitors said, The Warwick House had a way of looking right at you.

In Caleb’s room, the house had begun to do more than just look. A full glass of water stood on the nightstand beside his bed. As Caleb turned over in his sleep, the glass chilled and beads of water ran down its side. The doorknob twisted, then snapped shut. Still asleep, Caleb curled up and clutched his knees. The doorknob twisted again, further this time, until the door eased open. But no one stood in the doorway. There was only a sound—a soft, repeating sound—in then out. As Caleb edged closer to waking, his mind recognized the sound—breathing—and its source had moved from the doorway to right over Caleb’s bed. His breaths fell in sync with the unseen presence…in then out. His hair suddenly moved. Strands pulled together and lifted off his scalp, first just a few, but then more. Caleb stirred and as he turned back over, caused a sharp pinch and a tug, jolting him awake.

“Dad?” Caleb said, sitting up and wiping his nose. He felt the spot on his head where his hair had been pulled and he reached for his cane where he always left it—resting against the nightstand. But it wasn’t there. “Dad?” Caleb asked again, still able to hear the breathing. When no response came, he climbed out of bed and felt along the wall and the side of his bed for the cane. His bare foot rolled over it on the floor. Caleb fell and landed hard, but he wasn’t alarmed. Navigating his young life without sight had helped make him accustomed to such things. But something about the situation unnerved him. He would never have left his cane on the floor, and neither would his father. Caleb grabbed it and stood up. The sound of breathing ceased. He probed the darkness in front of him with the cane, finding nothing. He needed to use the bathroom. After that, he hoped, he could sleep. But when he reached for the door, it was already open—something that, again, neither he nor his father would have done.

Caleb lightly tapped the cane down the hall. He was quiet in the bathroom besides the splash of water and flush of the toilet. On his way back, he paused at Emma’s door and was startled to discover that it too was wide open.

“Sis?” he whispered and waited. “Emma?” There was no answer, but Caleb heard something else—two sets of breathing in tandem. It was the same thing he heard upon waking, and one set certainly wasn’t Emma’s. “Dad?” he tried meekly, again to no response. What he couldn’t see was a dark presence, a silhouette darker than the shadows crouching at bedside. Its upper body loomed over Emma, moving closer to her face. He walked inside and probed around the foot of her bed with his cane, registering nothing. The silhouette stood. It was tall and lean, with long limbs, pointed elbows, and lacking the shape of hair. The bed creaked. The sound made Caleb’s stomach leap to his throat and he fled the room.

Caleb wanted his father. As he walked back down the long hallway, something approached him from the opposite end. It came out of the dark, walk-in closet, rolling silently in his direction. It was an antique wheelchair, empty, and seemingly moving under its own power. It had a wicker backrest, a frayed seat cushion, and wheels rimmed with crumbling, century-old rubber. It neared Caleb with a preternatural quietness that eluded even him. A wheel missed the tip of Caleb’s cane by an inch without him noticing. A slight charge in the air that tingled his forearm was his only inkling of not being alone. Caleb and the wheelchair passed one another as they reached the staircase halfway down the hall. Then the wheelchair halted. The wheels squeaked as it swiveled to face him from behind. This time, Caleb heard it. He braced and grabbed the railing, his heart pounding against his ribcage. His father’s room was only a little further. Everything would be okay once he reached it, he told himself. But had Caleb been able to see, and had he looked behind him, he would have seen the dark figure now occupying the wheelchair. An emaciated, very old man with pale, white eyes faced him. His crooked mouth twisted upward, one side slightly more than the other.

Caleb reached the master bedroom and opened the door, careful not to tap too loudly. Allan was asleep. “Dad?” he whispered and tiptoed toward the bed, wholly unaware of the gloomy, hunched-over figure with long, unkempt hair at the foot of Allan’s bed. Moonlight showed only on its face, that of a haggard, ailing woman with eyes that threatened to bore holes through all they looked upon. She stayed still as Caleb passed her, regarding him with a scorning, yet curious glare. His cane nudged something. He bent down and touched it. It was a flattened circle made of black silk stretched around a wire frame. Fwick. The middle of the circle popped upward, assuming the form of a collapsible opera hat. It was the same hat worn by the full-bearded man in the old photograph Allan found unsettling. Tick-tick…Tick-tick….

Caleb went still, genuinely frightened now. The hunched woman looked up and backed away out of the moonlight. The broad-shouldered shape of the full-bearded man emerged from around the corner of a wardrobe, a gold pocket watch dangling from his black dinner jacket. Tick-tick…Tick-tick…. He bent down in front of Caleb and donned the opera hat with a growling exhale, eying him as if he’d caught him playing with it. The deliberate ka-thump of his footsteps and the deep tone of his breathing told Caleb all he needed to know about the full-bearded man—that he was terrifying. Caleb wanted to reach his father, but the full-bearded man stood between him and the bed. “Dad!” he attempted to yell, only his voice was muffled, his throat constricted. He feared whatever was in there with him wanted him silent. Caleb hurried out the door. There was one place he wanted to be now, one thing that had always provided him solace, and he vowed to go to it.

Caleb headed for the stairs, where the very old man in the wheelchair still waited. A wool bed robe barely clung to his bony frame, liver spots covered his sagging skin, and cataracts clouded his eyes. A lone floorboard creaked as the very old man nudged the wheelchair toward Caleb. Caleb reached out with his cane, coming within inches of the very old man’s face. The very old man opened his mouth, slightly, then ever wider, curling up at the corners at first but then gaping in anticipation of something coming Caleb’s way from behind. Ka-thump—Ka-thump. Heavy boots landed on the wooden floor behind him. The very old man backed the wheelchair away. Tick-tick…Tick-tick…. The full-bearded man approached from down the hall, the gold pocket watch swinging as he walked. Tick-tick…Tick-tick…Ka-thump—Ka-thump. Caleb’s breaths came faster and his eyes and nose seeped as he descended the stairs.

A door swung open in Caleb’s path when he reached the bottom. A young girl, perhaps a year older than him, and completely bald, rushed out of a kitchen. Dark circles hung from her eyes and a pair of oxygen tubes ran from her nostrils over her ears. She tilted her head, observing him for an interested moment. A flicker of mischief crossed her face and she disappeared around a hallway corner. Caleb heard only the patter of her bare feet, a slight giggle, and the clattering of the wheels of the metal oxygen tank she pulled along behind her. Caleb had heard pieces of stories about The Warwick House throughout his young life. They meant little to him and his mother had a way of making them seem harmless. But tonight was different. He understood where the stories came from now.  Caleb was frightened, but he still had somewhere he needed to go, something he was compelled to do while he still could. He held his cane steady and moved his feet. Caleb had walked no more than three paces when another door opened in his path and a presence blew by him. An old woman, a decade or two younger than the very old man, shuffled her feet, following the girl with the oxygen tank. She paused before rounding the corner to look back at Caleb with a kind, but melancholy frown. Caleb stood, frozen, awaiting a sound—or anything at all—to tell him he was safe to proceed. Finally, the young girl giggled and the old woman’s feet shuffled after her.

Halfway down the hallway was the formal living room. Caleb proceeded in. His scalp tingled. The air in the room felt alive like it was its own organism, a bustling nervous system of the many who had transferred but never truly disappeared. Yet when Caleb listened, he heard nothing. No footsteps, no voices or laughter, no ticking of a pocket watch or the sound of heavy boots. He heard only the frantic beating of his own heart and the whistle of air through his congested sinuses. He felt his way to the casket and ran his fingers along the woodgrain until he felt the seam where the lid met the side. He set down his cane and opened the lid as far as he could. The chill in the air from the ice bags was instant and he let the lid back down. He needed to lift it higher. Caleb dragged over one of the folding chairs. He climbed up on the seat and lifted the casket lid again, this time until it stayed put in the open position. Inside lay the unremarkable, yet beautiful corpse of his mother, Helen Gray. He carefully removed the two ice bags on her left side, lifting the slick bags over the casket lid until they dropped to the floor. He repositioned the chair and removed the bags supporting her head and neck, right side, and legs. Then he climbed back up. He steadied himself and tested the casket’s balance. Caleb placed a foot in his mother’s casket and lowered himself into the nook of her arm. He closed his moist eyes and stroked the contours of her face.

The tall, thin silhouette from Emma’s bedroom approached the head of the casket. It was several shades darker than the night, its long limbs and pointed elbows slicing through the shadows as it walked. It stopped and stood still, looming over the casket with an object in its left hand. Had Caleb’s eyes permitted it, he would have seen his mother’s face looking down at him. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun here, rather than flowing past her elbows as it did in the casket. The silhouette and Helen Gray were one and the same, a soul, a consciousness freshly transferred. She gazed at her son lying with her vestigial body and a tear ran down the crease between her nose and her ghostly cheek.

Helen raised her left hand. She was holding her violin. She brought it up to her collarbone and held it in place with her shoulder. Then her right hand began to move back and forth in a precise rhythm, playing silently with a phantom bow in an unconscious-looking action.

On the ledges and table surfaces around the room were more framed photos. They showed Caleb with his mother, father, and sister—Caleb and Emma with the bald girl, perhaps a cousin who had become ill and left too soon—the very old man in the antique wheelchair—the haggard, hunched-over woman—the old woman who had followed the bald girl—they were grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and more. Suddenly, Helen turned around.

Emma stared into the formal living room from the hallway. A small, metal turtle destined for the pile of mementos under the casket, wobbled on the floor where she had just dropped it. Emma could see what her brother could not. The entire room was cast in an odd, green glow and hummed with static. The impossibility of her dead mother standing there, moving as if playing her violin, shocked and terrified her. Emma darted out of the doorway back into the hall. She sat huddled against the wall, clutching her knees to her chest. A spindly, ominous shadow stretched down the hallway after her. Emma cupped her mouth and shut her eyes.

She opened them after a moment to see Helen standing over her, resting the violin at her side and smiling sadly. Emma couldn’t believe what her eyes told her because believing it hurt more than she could bear. She closed and opened them again, wishing the sight of her mother away. But Helen remained. Emma scrambled up. “Dad! Dad!” she shouted and ran up the stairs.

The charge in the air that gave the formal living room its ethereal life faded. Helen had vanished, as had the green glow, when Emma returned with Allan. None of what she had so frightfully told her father she saw was there. He held her close and kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” he said to her. But then they noticed the open casket. Caleb was inside, asleep next to his mother’s body. The fear, resentment, and resistance Emma had been harboring shattered. She tried to wipe the tears away at first but could only succumb to them. The release was too overwhelming, too long overdue. It was good, Allan thought, that Emma had finally permitted herself to be sad. He woke Caleb and lifted him out of the casket, hugging him tight and setting him down beside them.

“Dad?” Caleb asked as if coming out of a dream.

“Yeah, bud. It’s me.” Allan pulled his son close as the three of them held each other in a cathartic embrace. Then Allan’s scalp began to tingle. A buzz in the air prickled the hairs on Emma’s arms. They looked up to witness the glow return to the room. Emma was first to notice the odd wheelchair with a wicker backrest sitting empty in the back of the room. Its sudden appearance was inexplicable. The patter of bare feet and clattering of wheels sounded from the hall. Allan touched the back of his neck where he felt the rising and falling of air—breaths in unison with his own. Helen’s ghost joined their embrace. Her eyes met Allan’s then Emma’s. This time, Emma wasn’t afraid, and Allan’s shock quickly gave way. Emma bent down to pick up the metal turtle she had dropped, then walked to the casket to place it in the pile of mementos beneath.

When they separated, Helen resumed moving her empty right hand as if still playing the violin she held in her left. Her eyes grew solemn and vacant. Allan went to the pile and took the bow he had put there earlier, then placed it in Caleb’s hand to give to his mother. Helen’s eyes focused. She took the bow and began to play. The piece started mellow and somber, then rose to something vibrant and powerful.

Emma’s eyes darted to the windows where the curtains now swayed. Behind them, the glass seemed to have chilled and fogged. Then, one by one, they appeared—the very old man in the wheelchair—the old woman—the bald girl with the oxygen tank—the hunched-over woman, whose face no longer bore a look of scorn. They emerged from doorways and hallways, from out of the shadows and the very depths of the night itself. There were many more than the handful Caleb had encountered, at least two dozen spirits in all, many of them found in the dusty photographs arranged around the home. They stuck to the edges of the room as they acknowledged one another by bowing their heads or tipping their hats. For them, this was not a funeral, but a reunion. Helen shared glances with each of them while she played her tragic, yet hopeful melody.

Tick-Tick…Tick-Tick…. Ka-thump—Ka-thump. The spirits all turned at once. The telltale sounds repeated, and the full-bearded man entered. All eyes went to him. The spirits wearing hats removed them. Allan and Emma stiffened, taken aback by his presence. They looked to Helen, who continued to play. The full-bearded man stood by the casket, listening, watching. Finally, he took a step, came closer, and removed the opera hat. The other spirits followed his lead. All two dozen of them formed a circle around Helen, Allan, Emma, and Caleb.

Allan’s eyes lingered on a single black-and-white photograph on the mantle above the fireplace. It was another photo of the full-bearded man, the great family patriarch, holding a shovel with the house under construction behind him. He wasn’t smiling in the photo, as was not the custom during the patriarch’s day, but Allan saw something different in him now, something softer. And in that moment, he decided that every photograph in The Warwick House indeed had its place. Allan looked up from the photo and the patriarch dipped his head in the subtlest of gestures. The spirits’ faces displayed a range of emotions from sorrow to gratitude as Helen played her farewell. Caleb hugged his mother’s waist and absorbed the notes of her music and the comfort of her touch, perhaps for the final time.

Helen Gray’s family had a rich history in their town, dating back to well before her great, great, great grandfather built their infamous house where countless members lived and died. With her children and husband able to accept her passing, Helen could now rest, having left the mortal world in the very place she entered it. Her name, of course, was not always Gray, but Warwick. And as the years and generations went by, like her ancestors who wandered its rooms, halls, and grounds long before her, sometimes seen but usually not, The Warwick House alone knew what happened to the soul of Helen Gray.