Her eyes were red with blood.

Chelsea screamed, staggering backward.

Now she could see the woman’s body. Across her chest were five gaping holes, each gushing blood. The blood was staining the sheets of the bed and dripping into puddles on the floor.

Chelsea screamed at the top of her lungs, then screamed again. She covered her own face with her hands.

She was still screaming when Ryan rushed into the room, shaking her, asking her what was wrong.

“That woman!” Chelsea cried. “On the bed!”

But of course there was no woman on the bed.

And no blood either.

Ryan and Chelsea exchanged looks.

They had been in this position before, only reversed. They said nothing to each other, just continued staring in dumb horror.

In moments, Douglas and Carolyn were at the door, clearly having heard Chelsea’s screams. That heating vent worked both ways.

“What’s wrong?” Douglas asked.

“What the fuck is going on in this house?” Chelsea demanded. She saw Carolyn’s face go white.

They heard a shuffling from the hallway, and within a few seconds, Uncle Howard had made his way into the room.

All he had to do was to take one look at Chelsea’s face, and he seemed to surmise what she had seen.

“Perhaps,” he said, in a weary voice, “what I have to tell you cannot wait for your father to get here.”

Chapter Thirteen

Dean Young wasn’t getting any work done today. In front of him, spread all over his desk, were the plans for a major new high-rise development set for Boston’s Copley Square. Construction was slated to begin in less than a month, and all sorts of decisions had still to be made. Final dimensions, work orders, schedules. As chief architect, he had to approve all of the minutiae his associates had planned. But he simply couldn’t keep his mind on his work. All he could think of was that a month from now, when this project got under way, he might not be alive.

It may be me who’s chosen this time, Dean thought, for the thousandth time. It may be my turn to spend a night in that room.

Of course it terrified him. What went on in there? What horrible events took place? He remembered his father the morning after his name had been chosen in the lottery. He’d been found sitting on the couch in the room, his eyes bugged out, his hair white. His heart had stopped, and he was cold as ice. Dean would live with that image for the rest of his life.

Would that be how I’d die as well? Terrified beyond all reason? Or would it be even more gruesome, the way cousin Douglas had died, with a plastic bag secured over his head by some unknown creature? Or would there be gore, like so many of the others?

But for all his terror, the manner of his own death was not the worst of it for Dean. It would be leaving Zac and Callie fatherless. He’d made sure to buy all sorts of life insurance policies, with them and Linda as beneficiaries. He was able to get some terrific plans, because, according to everything the insurance companies could see, he was in good health, and was still a relatively young man. Every indicator pointed to Dean living a long life. But Aetna and Travelers didn’t know about the room in the basement of Uncle Howard’s house.

Sitting at his desk, looking past the blueprints and gazing out his twentieth-story window onto the city below him, Dean thought of his sister. What if it was Paula who was chosen? How could he let her walk in there by herself? He adored his older sister. He had ever since he was a little boy, and asthma had prevented him from playing ball or running too fast. Paula had always been there to protect him when the other boys picked on him. Once, when it looked like they’d miss the bus to school, Paula had swept up the six-year-old Dean in her arms and carried him as she ran, knowing full well he’d never have been able to make the exertion himself. In Dean’s mind, that symbolized their relationship. Paula had literally carried him through some of life’s roughest moments.

And, he hoped, he’d done the same for her now. He felt terribly bad that the family curse had ended Paula’s relationship with Karen. How many lives would it destroy?

He’d spoken with Uncle Howard yesterday. The old man had sounded optimistic that this new investigator might come up with something. Dean wasn’t so sure. The investigator, a Carolyn Cartwright, had only been located in the last couple of weeks, at the eleventh and a half hour. “What can she do between now and the lottery?” Dean had asked. “Other people you’ve hired have had years, and they never found an answer.”

But Uncle Howard had retained his optimism. It may have been largely an act, Dean surmised. He has to try to give us some hope, he thought. But Uncle Howard did keep returning to the fact that Carolyn was a woman. “That will help,” he insisted. “I believe that will help.”

How Ms. Cartwright’s gender could benefit them remained unclear to Dean. But he was encouraged at least that she had good credentials. And that someone-anyone-was trying to find a remedy for them as the date of the lottery drew nearer and nearer.

“Mr. Young?”

His secretary’s voice started him as it came through the intercom.

“Yes, Sondra?”

“The image that you asked to be digitized is ready. Should I have them e-mail it directly to you, or should I have it printed out?”

“E-mail it to me, please,” he said. “I’ll print it.”

His mind snapped back into sharp focus. But the image had nothing to do with the plans on his desk. It had everything to do with the thoughts that were consuming his mind this morning.

He heard the little ping on his computer that announced the delivery of a new e-mail. He instantly clicked on it, opening the e-mail and downloading the attached file. As he’d requested, it was a big file. The image had been scanned at a high resolution by the firm’s production department. Dean was very curious if such enlargement might allow him to discern something he had long wondered about.

When he and Paula had been young, probably no older than eight and ten, they had broken a very strict rule of Uncle Howard’s. While visiting him one weekend, they had snuck down into the basement. That was the one part of the house that was forbidden to them, which of course only made them want to see it more. They were innocent back then, unaware of the dangers and the tragedies of that locked room. But they’d found a set of keys, and while Uncle Howard was in his study, they’d unlocked the door in the foyer that led to the basement and crept down the stairs. They discovered many rooms in the basement, only one of which was locked. All of the rest were open, packed high with crates and boxes. In and out of these rooms Dean and Paula had tiptoed. Nothing exciting to be found. But perhaps in the one room that was locked? The key ring in Dean’s hand jingled. They decided to see if they could find the key to the one room they’d been unable to explore. And, after four tries, they’d found the key that fit…

Dean opened the image on his computer.

That day in the basement, they’d recorded their undercover work with a Polaroid camera, a gift Dean had recently gotten from Mom and Dad for his birthday. They’d snapped pictures of the basement staircase and of the various storerooms. They wanted proof that they’d actually made it into forbidden territory. As each photograph slid out of the camera, Dean would hand it to Paula, who would hold it as it dried and the images took shape. But as the door to the locked room creaked open before them, they heard footsteps from above. Uncle Howard was emerging from his study. They would have to forget about exploring the room and hurry back upstairs-but still Dean had time to snap a fast picture of the inside of the room before locking the door again.

That image revealed itself on his computer screen now.