Their house is hidden until you get right up close to it. Avery hates this, and nearly everything else; he has driven for two brutal, blistering days and is itching to get out of the truck. First they had driven south down the 20, then took an eastern turn at Kansas City, then hauled ass along the 75 during which he had about died, if not for Lisa's last cigarette carton. Tobacco was crucial for things like this. If Avery was in his Chevy, he had a cigarette hanging from his lips. He had spent twelve hours in the truck yesterday, and had been in it for ten today; he had a cigarette lit now, here, wherever they were. Sixteen hundred miles and twenty three hours. Where are they. Here they are: Georgia. Valdosta, Georgia, but not quite.

Their house is hidden until you get right up close to it, entrenched in a grove of oaks; everything about the place is so aggressively alive- sticky and buggy and humidly, utterly, frustrating. Avery creeps up the rutted drive, slowing as they reach the edge of the modest property, which is full up with all manner of derelict metal and packed-down dirt. He furrows his brow and peers out at the carcass of a '65 Chavelle, pretty certain that all of this smacks of something unpleasant. Fuck! Abruptly, he squashes the mosquito on his forearm, startling Lisa. He closes the truck window.

This isn't a willy-nilly sort of thing. No, this is a thing that comes at the high cost of a car trip straight from hell, the two touchy vertebra in Avery's back coming this much closer to fusing together, Lisa missing her bi-monthly crochet club meeting.

You see, their daughter had died. She had been young, and feisty, and full of the unyielding tang of an eight-year-old life, and then she had gone down under intoxicated wheels. But in death, things had not gone typically—you know their story: Something about a vengeful spirit, something about a grave turned sour. So here they were, five years later, carrying their tired grief and a slip of paper that read nothing but Winchester and an address.

There air in the Winchester property is laced with a sense of anticipation, cramping in Avery's gut until he can't abide by the feeling. So he unpeels his butt from the plastic seat cover, and goes to meet it. Whatever it is.