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."

I asked Mrs. Edevane what the frost line was. She pointed at my feet. "You'll feel it. The step where the air turns to ice. Below that, the house stops being yours." Then she left a thermos of soup and hurried home. I stood at the top of the stairs, looking down into the dark.

I went down to find the frost line myself. Twenty steps, then thirty. The wine room glided past. Around step forty the air bit my lungs and my breath came out white. One more step and the cold turned solid, like walking into a wall of winter. This was it.

Right at the frost line, I found a small door I hadn't seen before, set into the stone wall. A brass plate read OWNER. I opened it. Inside was a list of every family that had ever lived in our house, each name crossed out. The last name on the list was mine, not crossed out. Yet.

I tore the list out, ran upstairs, and showed Dad my name on it. He went pale and admitted the realtor had warned him about "the arrangement." We agreed to leave that night. But when I went to grab my bag, my name had already been crossed out on the page in my pocket. Down below, a new spot had just opened up, and it was waiting for me.