Elara, a woman etched with the lines of a long life, mostly lived in the present. But her home, the ancestral home, held a different kind of time, one that bled into the present, whispering stories from the past. It was a house that held its breath, waiting, she sometimes felt. This feeling had intensified in recent weeks. The creaks and groans, once merely the sounds of an aging building settling, now seemed to carry a malicious undertone, a low, guttural hum that vibrated in her bones.