Welcome To The Peeg House- -

Then he walked inside.

“How much for the first month?” he heard himself ask.

That’s what the faded, hand-painted sign said, nailed crookedly above a narrow door wedged between a pawnshop and a laundromat. The letters were cheerful—curly serifs, a little sunburst dotting the ‘i’—but the effect was anything but. The wood was rain-streaked. The brass handle was tarnished the color of a bad memory.

The pig turned a page. “Welcome to the Peeg House,” it said, without looking. “Rules are simple. Don’t open the basement door after midnight. Don’t feed the mirror in the upstairs bathroom. And whatever you do, don’t say ‘thank you’ to the tall man in the gray coat if he offers you anything.” Welcome to the Peeg House-

Leo stared at it, then down at the flyer crumpled in his fist.

Leo took a breath.

And somewhere above, in Room 7, a single lamp flickered on, casting a warm golden square onto the rain-slicked pavement below. Then he walked inside

And in the middle of that room, sitting on a sagging velvet settee, were three of the strangest creatures Leo had ever seen.

Behind him, the door to the street clicked shut and locked itself. The grandfather clock with no hands began to chime—thirteen times.

Cheap was the only word that mattered. He’d spent his last seventy dollars on a bus ticket to this city, and the shelter had turned him away for the third time. So when the old woman with the milky eye and the lavender perfume had pressed the flyer into his hand at the depot, he hadn’t asked questions. He’d just followed the address. The letters were cheerful—curly serifs, a little sunburst

“For you? The first month’s free. New peegs always get a trial.”

Leo should have run. Every nerve in his body was screaming it. But he was tired. So tired. And the smell of woodsmoke and pears was strangely gentle.

“Um,” he said.

Welcome to the Peeg House.