“Do you feel that?”

“Feel what?”

“That energy. That tingling on your arms.”

I didn’t respond. Yvette had always been into that new age stuff, crystals and horoscopes. And I, the eternal skeptic, didn’t want to admit that I… felt it. The hairs on my forearms stood at attention, leaning into the chilly October wind.

“So this is the place?”

“Shhhh,” whispered Yvette, holding up a finger. She was knee-deep in the sawgrass, crouching down toward the remains of an old stone foundation in the weeds. There it was, after a century and a half. We found the Parsons home. Not much left these days.

As she stood, the darkest of the stormclouds skulked across what remained of the sun. Yvette pressed her hands against an imaginary surface in the shadows before her, and gasped.

“This was the front door,” she mouthed. Neither of us could speak. She reached down, trembling, and pantomimed clasping her fingers around the doorknob.

Suddenly the wind grew horribly… deathly… still.

Yvette turned the knob and walked inside.