I wonder?”

“I haven’t a clue,” said Mrs. Wells. “Except that much of the time is surely spent with one’s hand down a toilet.”

From the hall came a loud shuddering sound.

“And listen to that—the pipes are still banging!”

“Yes, dear.” Mrs. Wells continued reading, her dark-framed glasses perched impossibly on the end of her nose, and her black hair tightly tied up in a bun. How Joy wished she had hair the same color. Instead of the unfathomable black of her mother, she was stuck with sunny blond, which hung perfectly straight in a cheerful honeyed sheet. It was an outrage.

Still, it suited Mrs. Wells, who was a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Wiskatempic University, a storied college standing on the banks of the north-flowing river of the same name. Like Spooking, the old campus had been swallowed up within the Municipality of Darlington. Despite the loss of its leafy grounds, the school still attracted a few students owing to a notable humanities program. Mrs. Wells specialized in existentialism, a subject she had been delighted to explain to her daughter meant the study of why one exists. The question—and the noisy pipes—had kept Joy awake many a night since.

Mr. Wells, on the other hand, was a lawyer with the firm Pennington, Plover, & Freep, a job that left him with too little time to properly match his socks, much less ponder his existence.

But even with two working professionals in their midst, the Wells family was not particularly wealthy, which was how they’d come to live in Spooking. According to Mrs. Wells, it was a frugal decision: Why would anyone buy a tiny little property in Darlington when they could buy an enormous house up in Spooking for the same price? Mr. Wells had countered that the additional expense in renovations and upkeep actually made Spooking twice as expensive in the end. However, in the ensuing debate between two towering intellects, the powers of argumentation of the philosopher proved to be superior to those of the lawyer—especially since the philosopher involved was the immovable Mrs. Wells.

And so they moved to Spooking with a young Joy and baby Byron in tow. And big it was, their new house, perfect for the epic games of hide-and-seek to come. While Joy stood counting at the hearth in the drawing room, Byron could race down the hall to the white-tiled kitchen that looked like a butcher’s shop, or across to the dining room with its long table and enormous chandelier. Or flee upstairs to hide behind the high library drapes or under the overstuffed chairs in the study. Or sneak into one of the bedrooms such as Joy’s, at the very top of what on the outside resembled an evil wizard’s tower with its steep scaled roof. Or his parents’ room, with a huge four-poster bed to slip under, and cavernous wardrobes; or his own, which, although smaller, was cluttered beyond compare, offering many secret spots to squeeze into. He could even climb up to the arched attic that was the happy home to an extended family of pigeons; or, when feeling particularly brave, head down to the cool clamminess of the cellar, crammed full of the belongings of previous owners, stacked up in moldy cardboard boxes and teetering on rickety shelves.

Then there were the guest bedrooms, the pantry, the scullery, and endless closets…So big was the house, that often a whole hour passed before a frustrated Joy announced loudly that she wasn’t playing anymore.

Mrs. Wells often bragged that they had all the space a family could ever want, yet were only a short drive from every convenience of the city. Mr. Wells mostly grumbled that he could never find time to fix up the place and could never save up enough to hire professional contractors—especially since they all seemed to charge extra to work in Spooking.

“Aren’t you going to light a fire?” Joy asked finally after her parents ignored her theatrical sighs.

Her parents looked up from their reading, startled.

“Tonight? I shouldn’t think so,” answered Mr. Wells. “It’s warm enough in here,” he explained, his words producing vaporous puffs.

“Joy, it is really time for bed,” said Mrs. Wells. “And I mean straight to sleep—no reading tonight. I don’t know how you can get a proper rest, sitting up with all those scary stories. They must keep you lying awake all night terrified!”

“No,” said Joy defensively. But it wasn’t completely true.

The Compleat and Collected Works of E. A. Peugeot had been keeping Joy awake all night—however,