PROLOGUE

Stanley Untergang adjusted his hard hat and tightened his vest as he hurried through the site of what might be his company's biggest deal yet; the restoration of an old mansion left to rot for five years following the untimely deaths of the family living there. Sad news for them but this deal was worth over three-billion and he would be damned if he let a little tragedy slow things down. And as he eyed one of his men taking an unscheduled lunch break he knew just where to cut the slack.

"Do you think it really happened?," Charlie took a bite of his egg, ham, and tomato sandwich and hastily wiped its spilled excess from his balooning black shirt before continuing without bothering to swallow, "You know, like they said in the newspaper?"

"I don't know man," Randy sat down his saw and peered through a pair of dusty goggles at his much fatter coworker, "They say lots of things. They say two rich jagoffs killed their whole family and then themselves. They say they found them in a circle 'a candles all cut up n'at. They say they dug up their ol' grandpa and the body was never found. Whole thing's pretty far-fetched if you're askin' me."

"Well I ain't askin' you," Stanley stepped in and put the saw back in Randy's hands before grabbing the sandwich from old Chuck, "I'm payin' you bottelhinkels to do a job! This ain't no amateur hour boys. Grantham House is worth a ransom and Mr. Amplas wants it ready in three months yous understand me? So no more ghost stories and get back t'work."

As if on cue, a rattling rang through a nearby cellar door drawing a growl from Stanley, "And what the hell is that?"

"If we got fah-ken rats down here," the harried foreman fumed as he raced down the muddy stone stairs, "I know an exterminator an' me are gonna be havin' words!"

But there were no rats. And there was no cellar like anything Stanley had seen before. The long, brick corridor before him seemed to lead out into others. By the dim illumination of his flashlight the whole thing looked like something that belonged in Paris more than Pennsylvania.

"Rich assholes," he muttered as he wandered further down, his light darting from wall to wall in search of whatever critter had snuck in, "Never appreciate what they got."

Maybe it was the light, or maybe his mind was playing tricks on him, but he swore that some patches on the rocks went from Jim Bean brown to a dried red. As a tinny smell filled his nostrils he thought for an unsettling moment that any kill dragged down here would have to be pretty big to leave that much stain before shaking it off and turning around to leave, "No rats in here."

There were no rats. Stanley could see that. What he didn't see - what he might have seen if he had gone down just a little further - was that the wall's end had a conspicuous looking hole in the center of it from which might have shone the concealed end of a gun barrel belonging to a gun someone had loaded. It might not have mattered though because the gun had been rigged through the floor to fire at anyone stepping on a pressure plate virtually indistinguishable from the uneven masonry that made up the floor. A pressure plate upon which Stanley Untergang had just stepped with heel of his boot as he turned to face the last thing he would ever see.

All anyone upstairs would hear was the gunshot ringing out. But Stanley saw more. Much more. In the light that now spilled from the floor with the one tool that could have saved his life - spilled like the fountain of blood from his chest - a silhouette came into view on the wall. It might have been a man, hunched and gaunt, but for the heavy cloud of decay that swirled around it and made the dying worker vomit shades of red and green bile.

By the time a cold, rotted hand rested firm on Stanley's shoulder, he was far too weak to scream at the hollow voice that gurgled behind him, "It's still MY house."