The rasp was coming from the basement. It didn’t make any sense. Vera had never been able to hear noise from the dining room before, not noise from the basement anyway. But then she remembered the Crowder House telling her about how it tried to soak up everything bad, how it tried to insulate her from all the hurt that happened inside the house. It was letting her hear now. It was letting her know. Like a child calling out in the night because there’s a monster in the room—it was asking for help.
