The Red House

Siblings Pete and Ellen Morgan lead a relatively secluded life as self-sufficient farmers with their quiet adopted teenage daughter, high-school senior Meg Morgan, on their property in rural Piney Ridge; their farm is on the other side of Oxhead Woods, away from town and from all the other farms. Ellen and Meg are able to convince Pete, who has a peg leg and thus can't do as much as he used to, to hire Meg's most trusted classmate, Nath Storm, the son of the long-widowed storekeeper, to help out at the farm after school, although Pete is reluctant to have a stranger around on a consistent basis. Nath accepts the job despite the rampant gossip that abounds in the valley about the mysterious Morgans, especially in they not being a "traditional" family: the unknown nature of how Pete and Ellen came to adopt Meg, and why spinster Ellen has devoted her life to Pete when she and Dr. Jonathan Byrne were once sweet on each other. The job might not sit well with Nath's steady girlfriend, possessive Tibby Rinton. Pete cautions Nath not to take the more direct route through the unfamiliar and implied dangerous woods to get home, those dangers including the "screams" he would inevitably hear and the red house hidden somewhere deep within. Pete fails to mention his arrangement regarding the woods with an uneducated young man named Teller who has his own designs on Tibby. The lure of the woods is too strong for both Nath and Meg, whose interest is spurred by Nath's and by her interest in Nath himself. The two believe that discovering the woods' secrets will only happen when they find the red house--at Pete and Ellen's peril, especially the peril to Pete's sanity.