Books by Kirsten Miller
Don’t Tell a Soul
How to Lead a Life of Crime
The Eternal Ones
Books by Kirsten Miller and Jason Segel
The Last Reality Series
Otherworld
OtherEarth
OtherLife
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2021 by Kristen Miller
Cover art copyright © 2021 by Dan Quintana
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Miller, Kirsten, author.
Title: Don’t tell a soul / Kirsten Miller.
Other titles: Do not tell a soul
Description: New York : Delacorte Press, [2021] | Audience: Ages 14 and up. | Audience: Grades 10–12. | Summary: “Bram moves to the small town of Louth in order to help her uncle start his new inn, but when she discovers a legacy of silenced women tied to her new home, she sets out to investigate the truth behind the town’s ‘Dead Girl’ myths”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020007149 (print) | LCCN 2020007150 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-525-58120-8 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-525-58121-5 (library binding) | ISBN 978-0-525-58122-2 (epub)
Subjects: CYAC: Mystery and detective stories. | Ghosts—Fiction. | Hotels—Fiction. | Uncles—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.M6223 Don 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.M6223 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9780525581222
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
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Contents
Cover
Books by Kirsten Miller
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For my aunt Virginia, who knows (as do I) that ghosts are real
There was no one at the station when I arrived. I’d slept for most of the three-hour ride, while the train had barreled its way through a blizzard. When it stopped at Hudson, I stepped down from the car and sank into snow that was already shin-deep. I’d barely reached the platform and set down my suitcase before the train sped off again, leaving me all alone with the darkness.
The lights were out at the station house, and when I hurried to the door, I found it locked. We’d pulled away from Penn Station over two hours late. Looking around at the buried town, I could tell it was a miracle we’d reached Hudson at all. I left my bag by the door and stepped out into the night. There was little to see but the swirling snow. I’d never known a world so quiet or so dark.
The warmth of the train car slipped away, and the cold crept through my buttonholes and under the collar of my coat. There were no lights in the buildings and no cars on the road. I was alone in a town I’d never visited, and I was convinced that I’d been forgotten. Fear coiled around me, squeezing the air from my lungs. The courage that had driven me north had vanished. I knew I shouldn’t have come—and now I had nowhere to go.
Then the glare of headlights appeared in the distance, blinding me as a car approached. A taxi pulled up within feet of me and stopped. Then I heard the mechanical hum of a window lowering, followed by a man’s gruff voice.
“Howland?”
The name threw me at first, and panic tightened its grip on my chest.
“Howland?” He shouted it the second time, impatient for an answer. Then I remembered I’d be using my mother’s maiden name.
I wiped away the tears that had welled in my eyes and hoped he hadn’t seen them. “That’s me,” I called back.
The driver’s door opened, and something that looked like a bear emerged. As it waded through the snow and into the headlights’ beams, I saw it was a giant man in a brown fur coat. He passed by with a grunt.
“Get in,” he ordered. “I’ll grab the bag.”
I reluctantly climbed into the backseat of the cab, which was blistering hot and smelled like whatever beast the man must have murdered to make his coat. As he returned to the car with my suitcase, I was able to get a good look at him. He seemed old, though exactly how old was hard to say. A bramble of gray whiskers sprouted from his nostrils and covered his face from the nose down. He opened the door on my left and tossed my enormous suitcase onto the seat beside me. Whatever his age, he was clearly very strong. I didn’t want to be alone in a car with him. If there had been any alternative, I would have jumped at it. I pulled my backpack closer on my lap. Hidden inside were the weapons I’d ordered online for protection—a box cutter and a can of bear repellent.
“That your only suitcase?” the man asked.
“Yes,” I said. He slammed the door in response and opened his own.
I waited until he’d wedged his massive body into the driver’s seat before I asked, “Do you know where I’m going?”
“That I know,” the man said. “Whether we’ll get there is anyone’s guess. Plows haven’t been able to keep up with the snow.” He turned and glared at me over his shoulder. His eyes were so narrow that he seemed to be squinting. “You couldn’t have waited till morning?”
“I didn’t know it would get this bad,” I said. Though even if I had, I wouldn’t have waited.
Staying in Manhattan was no longer an option.
“Storm’s gonna get worse before it’s all over,” he informed me. “I’d strap on my safety belt if I was you.”
I noticed his own seat belt still dangling from its hook as he backed the car out of the station. The dashboard warning bell chimed a few times before giving up. We picked up speed, snow hurling itself at the windshield, trying to push us back where we’d come from. There was no road ahead, just a seamless expanse of white.
“How long will it take to get there?” I asked nervously.
“No telling,” the driver said. “Gotta get over the river and up the hill. Outside of town, the roads are bound to be brutal.” He clearly considered it just short of a suicide mission.
“Maybe I should stay in Hudson.”
“I was told your uncle wants you at the manor tonight,” he said. “I suppose he has his reasons.”
“So you know James.” That made me feel better. Not a lot, but a little.
“I live in Louth.” The man peered at me in the rearview mirror, and something in his look gave me the feeling he didn’t care much for my uncle. “Everyone knows everyone in Louth.”
The backseat windows had fogged up. I wiped a circle clear with my coat sleeve and rested my forehead against the glass. No light broke through the darkness around us, and I assumed we’d left civilization behind, until we passed a car idling on the side of the road. I saw its owner shoveling it free from a snowbank, and I realized we were still in town.
“The electric’s out,” I noted. Seventeen years in Manhattan, and I’d only lived through a single blackout.
“Happens,” the man said. “It’s out on the other side of the river, too. You’d better hope they have a fire waiting for you up there at the manor. You’re gonna freeze to death in that place if they don’t.”
“There are worse ways to go,” I muttered.
“What did you say?” he demanded. In the rearview mirror, his eyes were wide open, and I could see they were blue.
“Nothing,” I said, holding his gaze. I knew he’d heard me. And he’d understood.
We didn’t speak much after that.
* * *
—
I don’t know how long the trip took. As soon as I was convinced that death wasn’t imminent, my mind returned to the life I’d just left. But at some point, I heard the car’s engine begin to strain as we started up an incline. I’d only been to my uncle’s house once, right after he moved in, but I’d never forgotten the sight of it sitting on top of its hill. The first time I’d laid eyes on it, I’d thought it looked lonely. There was no better place to hide from the world.
The steeper the climb got, the more our progress slowed, until eventually the car crawled to a stop. Within seconds the wipers were overcome and the windshield was covered with snow.
The driver got out to investigate, and I pushed open my door and followed him.
“What happened?” I asked, wrapping my arms around myself in the sudden cold.
“We’re stuck,” the driver grumbled, as if it were somehow my fault. He pulled an ancient flip phone out of his pocket and tapped in a number. “It’s me,” he informed whoever picked up. “Nope, didn’t make it….’Bout fifty feet from Howland’s drive….Yep….Thanks, Joe. ’Preciate it.”
He snapped the phone shut. “Get in and get comfortable. We’ll have to wait. I just gotta make sure the tailpipe is clear so we don’t die while we do. A plow should be through in a couple hours. They’ll give us a ring when they’re close.”
My chest tightened. I wasn’t going to wait. I couldn’t be trapped in a car with a man I didn’t know. My anxiety was building, and I knew a full-blown panic attack could follow.
“I heard you say we were right at the drive.” I looked around. Nothing seemed familiar. “The house can’t be too far from here, can it?”
The man raised a hand to shield his eyes and squinted at the snow-covered hill ahead of us. “Half a mile. Maybe more.”
“That’s not so far,” I said. “We can walk and wait for the plow at the house.”
“No,” he said. Just that—no. He didn’t offer an explanation.
“It’ll be a lot warmer—” I started.
“No,” the man interrupted me. “This car is my livelihood. I’m not gonna leave it.”
“I don’t understand,” I persisted. “What could possibly—”
“No,” he said again. Third time was the charm. We both knew that the car would be fine. The man didn’t want to set foot in my uncle’s house.
“Well, I’m going,” I announced. I’d take my chances in the storm. “Can I leave my bag here?”
He snorted. “Can’t take it with you. I’ll bring it round once the roads are clear. You sure you won’t get lost?”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “GPS,” I said. “No one ever gets lost anymore.”
I typed in my uncle’s address, and with my headphones on, I followed my map app’s directions. Even beneath the trees, the snow was building, and I waded through drifts that buried me to my knees. Without the phone’s flashlight I wouldn’t have found the entrance to the drive. Everything around me was covered, its true nature hidden. There was no way to tell the road from a ditch.
I knew half a mile was roughly ten city blocks. Before I set out, I thought I could take ten blocks of anything. As it turned out, I was wrong about that. By the time I reached the crest of the hill, I was certain I was going to die. I began to wonder what people would say if a photo of my frozen corpse popped up on social media. It was nice to imagine that I might be mourned. But New York had made it clear that I wouldn’t be missed.
I stopped at the top of the hill to catch my breath. The wind was wild and it clawed at my lungs. I knew I couldn’t rest long or I’d freeze to death on the spot. Somehow I chose the right moment to pause, though I’m not sure I’d call it luck. For just a few seconds, the storm seemed to clear and the moon peeked out from the clouds, casting a pale silver light onto the landscape. Ahead of me, tall white figures stood in two straight lines. They were covered in snow, but I knew what they were, and they sent a chill down my spine. I’d seen pictures of the house and its grounds that had been taken just after the renovation. My uncle had trimmed the century-old topiary hedges that lined the drive into humanoid shapes. A dozen design magazines had called them masterpieces. But I thought they looked like monsters. Even the photos were terrifying. I wondered if the sight of them would turn guests away.
Waiting for me in the distance was the house. It seemed even more massive than I remembered. Three stories of stone crawling with ivy, with a dozen dark windows on every floor. Two wings branched off a central hall. I knew one wing had recently been destroyed in a fire, but from where I stood, it was impossible to tell which one was damaged. The snow had stitched the house back together. It sat there, still and silent. I had the sense it was watching, like a camouflaged beast stalking its prey.
I’d come to Louth in search of answers, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for what I might find. My feet refused to take another step—either forward or backward. Then I saw something dart across the drive a hundred yards ahead of me. It rushed from a hedge on my right to its twin on the opposite side. It must have been an animal, but it was far too big to be anyone’s pet. And if my eyes could be trusted, it was almost entirely white. I was alone in the wilderness with something large—something that could see me better than I could see it. My heart pounding, I switched off my phone’s light and remained perfectly still, waiting for the creature to step out from behind the hedge. It had to be a deer, I told myself, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. There was something strange about the way it had moved. The creature had seemed to be walking on its two hind legs.
I was trying to come up with an explanation when the hedge suddenly shook, shedding piles of snow. Then, just as the thi
ng was about to make its next move, the phone in my hand rang. I glanced down instinctively, and my eyes landed on a brightly lit screen with the word “MOTHER” in the middle. My hand shaking, I hit ignore, and the screen went dark. But when I looked up again, I realized I’d been blinded. I could hear something moving, just off to my left. The beast had gotten closer, but the only thing I could see was the hulking silhouette of the house at the end of the drive. I turned my flashlight back on and ran as fast as I could toward the house, certain there was something behind me.
I sprinted to the front door of the house and pounded on it with my fist. Then I spun around and pressed my back to the wood, ready to confront whatever was out there. But there was nothing, and I felt like a moron. Then the door opened and I fell flat on my butt.
A woman dressed in a flannel robe towered over me. “You must be the niece.” She was standing safely in the center of a circle of candlelight. I scrambled to my feet, embarrassed and still catching my breath.
She was forty-something and pretty in an I grow my own kale kind of way. The candlelight accentuated her chin, leaving dark shadows beneath her eyes that gave her an air of fatigue. I was grateful she wasn’t laughing.
“I’m Bram,” I said, pulling myself together. I took the hand she offered and shook it.
“I’m Miriam Reinhart. Your uncle will be happy you made it here safely.” Then her brow furrowed. “Where are your things?” She stepped past the door’s threshold and peered out into the night. “Where’s Boris?”
I didn’t even need to ask. Only someone named Boris could have rocked a fur coat the way my dear driver had. “His car got stuck at the bottom of the drive. He’s waiting for the plow to come through. For some reason he didn’t want to walk up to the manor.”
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