The realtor called the staircase a "feature." It dropped past our new cellar, past a wine room nobody asked for, all the way down to a cold concrete floor. In Hollow Marsh, every house had one, each deeper than the last, like the town was competing. Our first night, Mrs. Edevane from next door knocked. "Whatever you do," she said, "don't go past the frost line."

Dad laughed off the warning and called Hollow Marsh "charmingly weird." That night I heard tapping under the floor. Slow, patient knocks, coming up through the concrete from somewhere far below the cold floor we'd already seen. Tap. Tap-tap. Like something asking to be let in.

I taped a baby monitor to the floor and listened from my room. The tapping turned into a voice, soft and friendly. "Come down before the others wake," it said. "I saved a spot just for you. The lowest one. The best one." It knew my name. It used my mom's voice.

I obeyed the voice and crept down before sunrise, drawn by my mom's stolen words. At the lowest step waited a row of empty chairs, one for every family that ever lived here. The last chair had my name carved in it. As I sat, the cold tucked me in like a blanket, and I finally understood the rent was always paid in children.