I carried Theo back up, but he kept counting down. "Three. Two." At "one," every light in the house died. When they flickered back, Theo was smiling at me with too many teeth, and the real Theo was the one now crying somewhere far below the frost line. I had brought the wrong brother home.

I plugged Theo's ears with my hands and hummed his favorite song until the whispering lost its grip. Slowly his eyes cleared and his skin warmed up. "Don't listen to the counting," I told him. We climbed up together. We never used that staircase again, and we taught ourselves to sleep through the tapping.