As far as they could tell, Arlo and Stefan Feeney were entirely normal boys. They lived in a normal house, with two reasonably normal parents, and each morning they walked together to their most normal of schools. Probably, if you’d asked them, they would have told you their futures would be normal too: normal jobs, normal holidays, normal friends and growing slowly, normally old, the way most people did. Neither of them could have guessed just how very un-normal their lives were about to become.

Later they would understand there had been clues. Like the deserted house halfway down their street, with trees growing over the roof and branches reaching out through broken windows, and a roof that rusted and sagged its way down to the tops of the bulging, flaky walls. Ghosts lived in that house, other children said and walked past it with their heads down and their footsteps quickening. But Arlo and Stefan always lingered, staring hopefully into the darkened windows, as if the house was calling to them…

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