Trent carefully rehung the degree – making very sure it wasn’t crooked – and came back out.

Lissa burst into tears of relief, and Brian quickly joined her; he looked disgusted but seemed unable to help himself. Laurie had to struggle very hard against her own tears. They drilled holes at intervals along the stairs to the second floor and found metal behind these walls, too. It continued roughly halfway down the second-floor hallway as it proceeded toward the front of the house. There was metal behind the walls of Brian’s room, but behind only one wall of Laurie’s.

‘It hasn’t finished growing in here,’ Laurie said darkly.

Trent looked at her, surprised. ‘Huh?’

Before she could reply, Brian had a brainstorm.

‘Try the floor, Trent!’ he said. ‘See if it’s there, too.’

Trent thought it over, shrugged, and drilled into the floor of Laurie’s room. The drill went in all the way with no resistance, but when he peeled back the rug at the foot of his own bed and tried there, he soon encountered solid steel… or solid whatever-it-was. Then, at Lissa’s insistence, he stood on a stool and drilled up into the ceiling, eyes slitted against the plaster-dust that sifted down into his face.

‘Boink,’ he said after a few moments. ‘More metal. Let’s quit for the day.’

Laurie was the only one who saw how deeply troubled Trent looked. That night after lights-out, it was Trent who came to Laurie’s room, and Laurie didn’t even pretend to be sleepy. The truth was, neither of them had been sleeping very well for the last couple of weeks.