THE PAYTONSThe Paytons were everywhere, crowded around rooms in various positions of contentment or unrest, pushed into corners or lounging on the stairs as if undecided about whether to go up or to go down. The house's labyrinthine hallways often led to rooms diverse and unclaimed, to rooms either dark and forbidding or light and alive. The Paytons never stayed in one place too long, as they liked to migrate from room to room with no discernible pattern or logic to their movements. It was uncertain exactly how many rooms the house contained, but that was fine for the Paytons, since they had no idea how many family members resided in the house, anyway. Almost every day, a new Payton would be introduced to another Payton, only to discover that the two were brothers and lived right across th
