Gwen Ashford came to keep this rotting manor, and now the manor would not let her in. Two weeks ago she had a clean loft office downtown, tall windows, polished floors, a life that made sense. Then a lawyer's letter named a dead relative she'd never met and handed her a house in the Nightbloom woods. She meant to fix it, room by room, until it was worth living in. First she had to open the door. She jammed the biggest key into the lock. The rusted ring bit her palm. The key turned an inch, then stopped. She twisted harder. Nothing. The door had swollen tight in its frame, wood pressing wood. "Come on," she said. She threw her shoulder against it. The boards groaned but held. Her muddy boots slid on the wet step. Light was leaving the trees. The woods went gray, then blue. Somewhere behind her, a branch cracked. She turned. Nothing moved. She told herself it was a deer. She tried each key on the ring. Three were too big. Two would not enter at all. The last one turned halfway and jammed like the first. She pulled it free and stared at the rust flaking onto her fingers. Cold crept through her blazer. She had no phone signal, no car close enough to sleep in, no plan for the dark. Panic pushed her to think. Swollen wood. She needed to shrink it or force it. Gwen looked at the ground and found a broken flagstone, loose in the mud. She pried it up with both hands. Then she wedged its edge into the gap between door and frame and leaned her whole weight on it. The wood shrieked. She pushed until her arms shook. The frame gave a wet crack. The door burst inward and she stumbled after it onto a floor of dust and dead leaves. She lay in the dark hall, breathing hard. She had won. She was inside. Then she saw the eyes. Across the hall, high on the wall, two pale points glowed. Her hand found a light switch. It clicked, dead. She pulled a lighter from her pocket and thumbed it on. The small flame showed a mounted head. A black stag, its coat gleaming, its eyes pale and wet and open. It watched her the way a living thing watches. Below it, a table held a hand mirror, its dark face cracked into a web of lines. In the broken glass, the stag's pale eyes showed twice. Gwen did not move. The front door hung open behind her, splintered off its frame, letting the woods in. She could not close it now. Whatever lived in this house, she had just broken the one thing that kept it shut. She was inside the manor. So was the night.