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to someone as untrained as Eric. Something was wrong with Clayton. Had to be.
     
    Why would he give Eric a gun?
     
    She ran into the back storage room and opened three different boxes until she found her old video recorder.
     
    She could hear Eric calling for her to come upstairs.
     
    “In a minute,” she shouted.
     
    “ Now, ” he yelled back down.
     
    What the fuck?
     
    She opened the tape drawer and saw it held a VHS tape.
     
    Whatever is on this tape is about to be erased.
     
    She grabbed the cord and plugged it into the back of the recorder as she ran for the stairs. When she got to the top of the stairs, she saw why Eric had called her.
     
    She gasped and almost dropped the recorder.
     
    “Who did this?” Eric asked. “Did you?”
     
    She shook her head in an exaggerated twist back and forth. “Never,” she whispered.
     
    “How did it happen?” Eric asked, his words coming out in tight, short beats.
     
    “What? You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you?”
     
    “Look, Tessa, I drove into town and when I come back, the room you were painting is ruined. Unless we have company, you did this. And don’t suggest otherwise. Unless you really want to get crazy and say this house is haunted, but we both know that’s not the case. We don’t believe in that shit.”
     
    She stood, stunned at what she saw and at Eric’s words. His tone hurt her. Eric had never talked like that before, and now he stood in their new home with a gun in his hand. For the first time in a long time, Tessa felt real fear.
     
    “Eric, we should leave.”
     
    He threw his head back and laughed. “You know, you’re a real fucking joke. How could you say that? ” Spittle flew from his mouth at the last word. His face reddened and the sclera of his eyes lost their white to a red hue. “Someone is fucking with us, and you want to leave. Give me a fucking break!”
     
    “I’m sorry. Please stop shouting.”
     
    “Don’t tell me what to do,” he screamed and stormed past her.
     
    What’s happening to us? This morning when we arrived with the paint and set up, he was so happy. We were so happy. What has changed?
     
    Tessa stepped into the master bedroom and looked at the first coat she had spent seven hours applying. It had bubbled up and flaked off like she’d tried to paint the side of a barbecue. Flakes of charred paint lay around the room at the bottom of every wall that had been covered.
     
    The original wooden wall showed through in all its ugly brown and black surface. The room had lost the smell of paint too.
     
    Only the faint odor of burnt hair remained.
     

Chapter 6
     
    Friday, June 1, 2012…
     
    Officer Clayton poured himself a glass of wine and sat on his couch. The purse had come up empty. He’d kept it sealed at the house so the volunteers would think it would be opened in a lab. Everyone watched CSI nowadays and were amateur scientists. When he got to the station, he’d walked into his office and opened the purse to see there was nothing in it.
     
    He had fast forwarded and rewound the VHS tape to loosen it up. It took him more time to locate his old player in the garage than it took to get the tape ready.
     
    With it hooked up and the tape ready to play, Officer Clayton sat back and sipped his wine. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to see the tape or not. Should he just let it go? How many more people would go missing before someone else noticed and raked him over the coals for not doing more?
     
    Maybe it was time to deal with The Burning House . Ever since that fire in 1978, no one had ever done a thing about that house. Why did it have to fall on Clayton’s shoulders?
     
    He pushed play on the remote and drank more wine.
     
    The tape started with the man and woman who had bought the house, Eric and Tessa, playing at a beach somewhere. He leaned forward to speed the tape up. Then the scene changed.
     
    As far as he could tell, Tessa held the camera. A man’s voice in