Herculeah was in a store buying glasses and binoculars when she saw her dad, a cop, by the abandoned home called Dead Oaks. People called it this name because they believed there used to be people living in there who are now dead. Herculeah wanted to learn more about what was in that house so she asked her dad what was going on. Since, he wouldn’t tell her why he was there she decided to find out herself by going into the house. She told her friend named, Meat about it and they planned on going.

When Herculeah went home she saw her mom, a private investigator, with a client. He was huge. His hat was pulled over his forehead. Herculeah called him the Moloch. Herculeah got her name from a movie called Hercules VS the Moloch.  That’s why Herculeah called him Moloch. Herculeah asked her mom who the Moloch was. Mrs. Jones was upset that she called him Moloch and said his name was William Crewell. Mrs. Jones didn’t want Herculeah to get involved so she didn’t tell her anything about what happened.   

When Herculeah decided to go into the Dead Oaks house, Meat was too afraid to actually go inside. He was in charge of knocking down garbage cans to make a lot of noise. If anyone came into the house, he would do this so Herculeah knew to escape. Later, Meat ended up sleeping on the sidewalk and Mr. Crewell went into the house. Herculeah was in the basement and tried to be really quiet when Mr. Crewell was in there. He nailed the door shut in the basement so Herculeah couldn’t come out. Yet, since this was a very old house, the door wasn’t very strong and Herculeah was able to push hard enough to open the door.

Herculeah went home and found a tape recorder that her mother had. Mrs. Jones would tape conversations she had with the client so she could go back and listen to the story. Herculeah listened to it since her mom wouldn’t tell her what happened. Herculeah found out that Mr. Crewell was looking for his father,Hamilton Crewell. Apparently, William Crewell had gone to Bromwell Asylum for the Criminally Insane, because he was charged of pushing his mother down the stairs and killing her.

Later in the story, Mr. Crewell explains that when he was ten years old, his mother and he were going to go on a secret trip that his father was not allowed to know about. His dad was in the hallway because he came early that day. His mother said, “Go to your room, Willie.” and Mr. Crewell obeyed because he loved his mom. He heard his father say bad things to his mom and then heard his mother scream. The scream went on and on and he knew that his mother fell down the stairs. When Mr. Crewell came out of his room his father blamed him and said he killed his mother. Mr. Crewell told him he hated him and was going to kill him. So in the end, he got arrested.

Herculeah went into the house again but this time she found a stair case that blended into the wall. She ended up falling down the stairs because she didn’t know those were real stairs and then she started screaming. Mrs. Jones and Mr. Crewell went into the room that Herculeah was in. They didn’t know she was in the house until they followed her screams. There was a dead body close to her. It was Hamilton Crewell’s body. She was screaming because she was grossed out that she almost fell on a dead body. They still have to investigate how he died but, Herculeah thinks that Mr. Crewell had startled his father, knocked his father’s cane away, and threw him down the stairs to his death. He wanted someone to find his father so he wouldn’t feel guilty about the death.