by Lisa Unger
“Marla?” he called. “Everything okay?”
With foggy glass and a ramshackle old porch, slats missing and stairs sagging, the house didn’t look lived in. The trees around him were silent in the chill, just a light wind whispering. His nerve endings tingled. He shouldn’t be here.
He took out his cell phone and called Marla again, listening to it ring and ring. It was only when he took the phone away from his ear that he heard the tinny stream of music, some pop ringtone mingling with the night until it went silent and he heard Marla’s recorded voice on the line. He hung up and dialed again. This time he followed the sound of the ring.
It was coming from inside the house.
On the porch, he put his hand on the rusted knob of the door, and it swung open with a squeal to reveal a thick darkness. The phone had gone silent, so he dialed again.
And tonight’s gonna be a good night, sang a tinny voice, an electronic backbeat thrumming, lyrics in a song he’d never heard. But the glowing screen lit his way into the single room.
Marla seemed to leak from the shadows to stand before him, lifting the phone to light her face. He didn’t like the way she smiled at him. It was a mean-girl smile.
“Marla,” he said. “What is this?”
“Hey, Pastor Mason. Thanks for coming.”
He didn’t even hear the guy come up behind him, just felt the hard blow to the back of his head, and then the floor rose up to smack him on the side of the face.
“What the hell,” he heard Marla say. “You said you wouldn’t hurt him.”
As swirling darkness swallowed him, he saw the Dark Man lingering in the corner.
4.
She must have drifted off. The last thing Jewel remembered was waiting to get back on Red World after having been killed by TheDarkMan.
But the other players had mad skills, and the digital storm that would eventually end the session seemed slow to close in around them, and the round wound on and on. She watched Eldon kicking ass; he’d killed TheDarkMan after TheDarkMan killed Jewel.
That’ll show him, Eldon texted.
Have you ever heard that name before? she asked.
Yeah, it’s that internet thing. The Dark Man grants your wishes, if you do something for him. A bunch of kids have done some fucked-up stuff, claiming he made them do it.
But that was the last thing she remembered.
When she woke up, her screen was filled with texts from Eldon.
You coming back on?
Where’d you go?
Hello?
Okay, nighty night.
She texted him back: Oops, sorry. I fell asleep.
I’m still playing.
Loser.
Yeah.
Go to bed. It’s after midnight.
After this round.
Jewel heard something outside, like a tinkling of bells. Or maybe it was inside; hard to tell here with all the echoing walls and trees outside. She was warm in her bed, didn’t want to climb out to investigate. But then she heard it again.
She pushed back the comforter and walked to her window. At first she didn’t see anything, just her own reflection in the window. But then she cupped her hands around her eyes, moved closer to the glass, and peered out.
That was when she saw the girl from the graveyard, standing, a pale light in the trees.
They each stood, watching the other for a moment. The girl in the woods raised a hand and beckoned Jewel toward her. She seemed to shimmer and glow, a beautiful mirage in the darkness. And Jewel felt something, a kind of excitement, a wanting. It was as if they knew each other, as if they were long-lost friends. The pull to this girl was powerful, something tugging at Jewel’s heart and spirit.
There’s someone outside, she texted Eldon. The girl. I think she—needs my help.
Wait. What?
I gotta go. I’ll text you later.
The fog was already settling all around her, thick and fragrant. She felt like she had when she’d been at a party one night and everyone in the room had been taking hits from a bong. She had declined but wound up with a pretty intense contact high. She remembered that floating feeling.
She breathed in the fog now and felt a new kind of peace, a spreading relaxation that time had expanded into a swirling infinity. She tossed her phone in her pack and shouldered the bag. She could hear her phone buzzing but no longer had the urge to answer it.
She crept past her parents’ room. The door was closed, and the light shone out from underneath, casting a glow on the floor. She kept moving, her steps light, careful not to creak on the stairs. Her relatives watched from their ornate frames, eyes following her. She sneaked out the back door from the kitchen, closed it behind her.
Outside the fog was thick, and the air was full of whispers.
Somewhere, distantly inside, there was a voice shouting for her to wake up. What are you doing? This is wrong, so bad, really dangerous. Snap out of it! But it was just a voice shouting into the wind all around her. Am I dreaming? she asked herself. But there was no answer.
And the girl was waiting for her.
“I want to show you something,” she said when Jewel approached her.
Her eyes were galaxies and her skin was light.
“I’m going to take you somewhere. And you’ll never be lonely again.”
Yes, that was true. Jewel was very lonely. Her only friend was an avatar on a game she played online. All her friends back home had moved on, didn’t even answer her texts anymore. She saw their Insta posts—from the Friday night games, from parties, from days at the mall. There was even a new girl in their group, one who looked a little bit like Jewel. She hadn’t told her mom, who was the person who always made her feel better. Because Jewel knew that her mom was trying to be happy, and that she couldn’t be happy if Jewel was sad.
The girl’s smile was radiant and warm, and she reached out a hand to Jewel, and Jewel took it.
Jewel felt the other girl’s heat, and she let herself be led into the woods.
Through the swirling blue-gray fog, she could barely see the shadow of the man they were following.
5.
Samantha Merle was awake when she heard a car door slam shut outside. A milky early morning was already lighting the room through the drapes, and Matthew slept beside her, snoring softly.
“There’s someone here,” she said.
But he didn’t answer, just rolled over in his sleep. He always slept most soundly in the early morning.
His insomnia, which had always been a problem, was not surprisingly worse than ever. There was a buried, locked-up part of her that felt bad for him and wanted to help. But mainly she was just annoyed that he’d woken her up multiple times a night—leaving the bed, leaving the room, wandering the house. He was always checking locks, looking in empty rooms.
Lying in bed alone, she’d hear his creaking passage around the house. Sometimes she thought she heard his phone; other times she’d woken to hear his voice.
Who was he talking to?
Sylvia, the woman with whom he had not had an affair, the one he had never touched?
Sylvia. Whose name he sometimes said in his sleep.
She’d heard him say her name when he was talking on the phone late at night, when he thought she was sleeping. Who was he talking to? Not Sylvia, right? It couldn’t be her. Samantha checked his cell phone log to see who was calling him, or whom he was calling. But there were no strange incoming or outgoing calls late at night. Maybe he was savvy enough to delete the log. Or maybe he was losing his mind. Or she was.
She should be angrier at her husband. Like a lot angrier. Other women would be. She should have left him. Other women would have left.
Instead she just felt a kind of pity. Worse than that, she still loved him. She was waiting. For what, she wasn’t sure. Maybe she was still hoping he might do something to redeem himself. So that she could remember what she’d loved about him and forgive him. Or until she was stronger, and could imagine a life wi
thout him.
Matthew issued an obnoxious snore, startling her back to the moment.
Samantha slipped from the bed and walked to the window, pulled back the drapes to reveal a foggy morning, mist turning the trees that surrounded the house into shadows.
In the driveway, next to a sleek black Mercedes, stood Avery March. She leaned her long frame against the hood and sipped from a paper cup of coffee, watching the house. From this distance, she looked like a man—slim and elegant, unapologetically gray hair slicked back.
They’d told her that she could have the run of the house and the property to find the answers she was seeking. Matthew wasn’t happy about it. But Samantha suspected that March wouldn’t find anything here at Merle House.
Samantha knew more about the Amelia March case than she’d let on.
From her research, she’d deduced that all evidence pointed to the theory that the young girl had left town with a drifter, a stranger she’d met in the pizza place where she worked after she graduated from high school. Amelia March had been troubled, abused by her alcoholic stepfather. Amelia had been, by all accounts, a girl who slept around; not that Samantha was victim blaming. Of course not. But Amelia had been a broken girl, a vulnerable one, a mark for predators. And what had happened to Amelia after she left town with the stranger was anybody’s guess. Most likely, she was in an unmarked grave somewhere. Which made Samantha’s heart ache, as it would any mother’s.
But it didn’t have anything to do with Merle House, or her family. As she stood in the window, she felt a rush of protectiveness. She wasn’t going to let any more darkness touch them. There had been too much.
She dressed hurriedly, pulling on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt, dragging a brush through her hair. The woman in the mirror did not match the woman in her mind. When she imagined herself, she still looked as she did in her twenties—pink cheeked and full bodied, with lush thick hair and bright eyes. Once upon a time, she had pulsed with energy and vitality, deeply inspired by her work as a yoga instructor and wellness coach, in love with Matthew and baby Jewel. The last few years had drained her. The woman in the mirror looked tired, fragile.
She breathed, straightened her posture, and mentally connected with her inner warrior, the one she’d become to help her battle cancer, to metabolize the things Matthew had done, to hold her head high as they sold her beloved house, ignore the pitying looks from people who used to be friends and colleagues, to move into this new house, new life, new self. I am strong, she told herself. I am powerful and able to face whatever this day brings.
She moved down the hall, floating down the huge wrapping staircase, past the creepy oil paintings, noticing a water stain on the wall she hadn’t seen before. A spreading rust-colored stain, from the ceiling down to the wainscoting. That could not be good.
Merle House was a crazy fairy-tale mansion. In old pictures, it was so elegant, so beautifully appointed with its crystal chandelier from Paris, the mahogany molding, the travertine marble floors. How would they ever restore it to what it had been? They’d been—she’d been—working tirelessly for weeks, and they’d barely made a dent in all the things that were broken.
Outside the air was cool. Would they be spending the winter at Merle House? That had not been the plan. But the longer they were here, the less she could imagine them leaving. There hadn’t been a single potential buyer in to look at the house, and she was starting to wonder if Avery March was doing anything at all.
“I’m sorry,” said March as Samantha came down off the porch. “It’s early.”
“Matthew and Jewel are still sleeping,” Samantha said, approaching. March was so much taller than Samantha that she had to look up a little at the other woman.
“Can I ask you a question?” Samantha said.
“Of course,” said March easily. She opened the car door and retrieved another paper cup of coffee, handed it to Samantha. It smelled heavenly and was pleasingly warm in her hands. She nodded her thanks.
“After all these years, what do you hope to find here?”
March looked at her and then back at the house.
“I don’t know,” March said. “I just know I have to look. Amelia, my twin, she’s part of me. I still feel her.”
“You think she’s alive?”
March offered a small smile. People who had suffered recognized each other. There was something in the mouth, in the eyes, a knowing.
“I only have questions, no answers.”
“I get it,” she said. And she did. No, she’d never spent a lifetime looking for a lost twin. But all loss was the same at its heart, a terrible, aching desire, really, a struggle to reconcile what was wanted with what was given.
The wind picked up, scattering leaves.
Caw. Caw!
March and Samantha both turned to look at the barn. Atop were perched at least a hundred crows. One, then another, and another, flapped away into the trees. Others came toward them, landing on the eaves of the house.
She didn’t hate them. They were just creatures, after all, looking for a place to call home. Samantha could relate. At night, she still dreamed about the house they’d left behind. The place they’d bought when Matthew became a professor; where, young and strong, he’d carried her over the threshold; where they’d conceived their daughter; where Jewel had had her first Christmas, taken her first steps, lost her first tooth. It wasn’t any jaw-dropper, but they’d painted every wall and planted every tree. They’d built the deck with their own hands.
“It’s just a place,” Matthew had said when they had to leave. “The memories come with us.”
It was true, but she hated him a little for saying it, for not knowing or not caring or for trying to gloss over what a loss it was for her. He always did that when he felt guilty, tried to make things seem less awful than they were. It was a kind of gaslighting, wasn’t it?
Leaving their home behind was like abandoning a beloved friend. She literally felt something break inside when they’d walked out the door for the last time.
She hadn’t expected it to, but Merle House had brought some comfort. It needed them. She needed Merle House, a thing she could tend to and fix. A thing that wanted to be fixed, to be restored to what it had been. It had moods, Merle House. Today it was guarded and tense. When she was tending to it, it preened like a cat. At night, it dreamed. She had an unexpected relationship with the place.
“Come on in,” she said to March. She noticed that March’s cup was empty. “I’ll put on some more coffee.”
When March smiled, it softened the steely gray of her eyes, melted away the grim line of her mouth.
“Thank you.”
Samantha walked up to the doors. They stuck as she tried to push inside, but finally yielded under her effort. She could feel the energy of the house, reluctant, guarded. But that was crazy, wasn’t it? That she was starting to feel like the house was communicating with her? She had a virtual therapy appointment this afternoon. Maybe she’d bring it up. Then again, maybe she wouldn’t.
They passed through the foyer, into the huge, bright kitchen.
March took a seat at the table by the window. While the other woman towered over Samantha, she seemed dwarfed by the big room. Merle House had a way of doing that. Sometimes when she looked at Matthew here, he seemed like a boy, so tall were the ceilings, so big was the furniture.
Samantha put on a pot of coffee in the ancient coffee maker. Old Man Merle had never spent a penny he didn’t need to. And still, supposedly, there was nothing left but this house. They had a meeting tomorrow to go over the estate with Benjamin Ward, the Merle family lawyer, and get the full picture. But he’d been grim in his email; there was apparently a mountain of debt, some fines and money owed from tax audits that had gone unresolved, several liens against the property for services engaged and bills never paid—which was part of the reason they were having such a hard time getting local tradesmen out here to help with the work.
When Samantha and Mat
thew had gotten the word that the old man had died, it had come at the lowest moment in their lives. They thought, coldly, selfishly, that it was the windfall that could save them. But no. When the house sold, a good deal of the money would go to waiting creditors. There would be something; they just didn’t know how much.
March looked around the kitchen, seemed to be inspecting it, though she’d been here before.
Samantha carried their cups over. The coffee had a bitter smell, and it turned Samantha’s stomach a little. They needed a new machine, but Matthew was being a dick about money, nickel-and-diming her on every single thing.
“So you weren’t living with your sister and your mother when Amelia disappeared?” she asked, sitting across from March.
March took a sip from the coffee Samantha had brewed. “No, I went with my father when our parents split. My mother and I—let’s just say the chemistry wasn’t there. We made peace before she died, though. I promised her that I’d never stop looking.”
Samantha felt a shudder move through her. It was a thing she couldn’t even imagine; to lose a child in any way was a horror, but to lose one and die yourself, never knowing what happened to her, was not a place she could go. Since her own brush with death, she had no appetite for dwelling on the darkest things. She turned away from them, closed them out completely. No news, no scary movies, no gossip from friends about this terrible thing or that; she looked into only the light now.
March reached into her pocket and took out a tattered old photo. Two girls, tall and slim with long dark hair and big doe eyes, both of them clowning, one making bunny ears behind the other’s head. Looking at the older Avery March, Samantha saw the shadow of that youth and prettiness, that mischief.
“I lived in the town over with my father. Amelia and I, we talked every day. She ate with my dad and me three times a week. We hung out on the weekends, had many of the same friends. Things with my dad were way more stable.”
