Hunter Beaumont doesn't understand his grandmother's deathbed wish: "Destroy Beaumont House." He'd never even heard of the place. But after his grandmother passes and his first love betrays him, the family house in the Wisconsin woods looks like a tempting refuge. Going against his grandmother's wishes, Hunter flees to Beaumont House.<br><br>But will the house be the sanctuary he had hoped for? Soon after moving in, Hunter realizes he may not be alone. And who -- or what -- he shares the house may plunge him into a nightmare from which he may never escape.<br><br>Sparks fly when he meets his handsome neighbor, a caretaker for the estate next door, but is the man salvation...or is he the source of Hunter's terror?

A Demon Inside

Harsh sunlight poured into the room, heating it and illuminating the dust particles floating in the air. The birds sticking it out through the harsh Wisconsin winter sang out, or perhaps they were just complaining, their screeches and chattering reaching Hunter through his closed and locked bedroom window.


Hunter lay in bed, not feeling refreshed but bone-numbingly weary. As he’d predicted, he had not slept at all the night before but had lain awake, listening for odd sounds that never came. In the morning he fell into a fitful sleep, stirring as nightmare imagery took hold: yellow eyes, the fall of a shadow on his parents’ terrified faces, disembodied laughter.


Chapter 49