Home Before Dark

by Riley Sager

I slide out of bed and go to the window, which offers a sharply angled view of the night-shrouded yard below. I scan the area nearest the house, seeing only moonlit grass and the upper branches of an oak tree. I move my gaze to the outskirts of the yard, where forest replaces lawn, expecting to see a deer cautiously stepping into the grass.

  Instead, I see someone standing just beyond the tree line.

  I can’t make out many details. It’s too dark, and whoever it is stands in too much shadow. In fact, had they stayed a few feet deeper in the forest, I wouldn’t have known they were there at all.

  But I do know. I can see him. Or her.

  Standing in statue-like stillness.

  Doing nothing but staring at the house.

  So far.

  I think back to what Chief Alcott said about people trying to get inside. Ghouls, she called them. And some of them succeeded.

  Not while I’m here.

  Turning away from the window, I sprint out of the room, down the stairs, and to the front door. Once outside, I run around the side of the house, dew-drenched grass slick beneath my bare feet. Soon I’m in the backyard, heading straight to the spot where the figure stood.

  It’s now empty. As is the entire tree line.

  I listen for the sound of retreating footsteps in the woods, but by now the crickets and frogs and night birds have started back up again, making it hard to hear anything else.

  I remain there for a few minutes longer, wondering if I’d really seen someone lurking outside. There’s a chance it could have just been the shadow of a tree. Or a trick of the moonlight. Or my imagination, stuck in paranoid mode after my chat with Chief Alcott.

  All are possible. None are likely.

  Because I know what I saw. A person. Standing right where I am now.

  Which means I need to invest in a security system and install a spotlight in the backyard as a deterrent. Because despite the front gate and the forest and the stone wall that surrounds everything, Baneberry Hall isn’t as isolated as it seems.

  And I’m not as alone here as I first thought.

  JUNE 28

  Day 3

  After two days of unpacking and arranging our own furniture with what came before us, it was finally time for me to tackle the third-floor study—a thrilling prospect. I’d always wanted my own office. My entire writing career had taken place in white-walled cubicles, at rickety motel room desks, on the dining room table in the Burlington apartment. I hoped having a space of my own would once again make me feel like a serious writer.

  The only hitch was that this room had also been the site of Curtis Carver’s suicide, a fact that weighed on my thoughts as I climbed the narrow steps to the third floor. I worried his death would still be felt in the study. That his guilt, desperation, and madness had somehow infiltrated the space, swirling in the air like dust.

  My fears were allayed once I finally entered the study. It was as charming as I remembered. All high ceilings and sturdy bookshelves and that massive oak desk, which I had no doubt once belonged to William Garson. Like Baneberry Hall itself, it had a grandeur that could be conjured only by a man of wealth and status. The whole room did. Instead of Curtis Carver, it was Mr. Garson’s presence that loomed large inside the study.

  But I couldn’t ignore the brutal fact that a man had taken his own life within these walls. In order to make this space truly my own, I needed to rid it of any traces of Curtis Carver.

  I started in the first of two closets, both of which had slanted doors like the one in Maggie’s bedroom. Inside were shelves stacked with vintage board games, some dating back to the thirties. Monopoly and Clue and Snakes and Ladders. There was even a Ouija board, its box worn white at the corners. I remembered what Janie June had said about Gable and Lombard staying here and smiled at the thought of them using the Ouija board in the candlelit parlor.

  Below the games, sitting on the floor, were two square suitcases, their surfaces feathery with dust. I slid both out of the closet, finding them not without some heft.

  Something was inside each of them.

  The first suitcase, I discovered upon opening it, wasn’t a suitcase at all. It was an old record player inside a leather carrying case. Fittingly, the other case contained LPs kept in their original cardboard sleeves. I sorted through them, disappointed by the collection of Big Band music and movie musical soundtracks.

  Oklahoma. South Pacific. The King and I.

  Someone had been a Rodgers and Hammerstein fan, and I was fairly confident it wasn’t Curtis Carver.

  I carried the record player to the desk and plugged it in, curious to see if it still worked. I grabbed the first record in the case—The Sound of Music—and let it spin. Music filled the room.

  As Julie Andrews sang about the hills being alive, I made my way to the second closet, passing a pair of eyelike windows similar to the ones facing the front of the house. These two looked onto the backyard, beyond which sat woods that sloped sharply down the hillside. Peering outside, I saw Maggie and Jess round the corner of the house, hand in hand. Knowing I was up here, Jess shot a glance toward the window and waved.

  I waved back, grinning. It had been a rough few days. I was sore from all that moving and unpacking, tired from restless nights, and concerned about Maggie’s problems adjusting. That morning at breakfast, when I asked why she’d opened the doors to the armoire in the middle of the night, she swore she hadn’t done it. But my stress melted away as I watched my wife and daughter enjoying our new backyard. Both looked happy as they explored the edge of the woods, and I realized that buying this place was the best decision we could have made.

  I continued to the second closet, which was almost empty. The only things inside were a shoebox on the top shelf and, next to it, almost a dozen green-and-white packages of Polaroid film. The shoebox was blue with a telltale Nike swoosh across its sides. Inside was the reason for all that film—a Polaroid camera and a stack of snapshots.

  First, I examined the camera, boxy and heavy. Pressing a button on the side raised the camera’s lens and flash. A button on the top clicked the shutter. On the back was a counter telling me there was still enough film inside for two more pictures.

  Just like with the record player, I decided to test the camera. I went to the back window, seeing that Maggie and Jess were still outside, heading toward the woods. Maggie was running. Jess trailed after her, calling for her to slow down.

  I clicked the shutter as both entered the forest. A second later, amid much whirring, a square photograph slowly emerged from a slot in the camera’s front. The image itself had just started to form. Hazy shapes emerging from milky whiteness. I set the picture aside to develop and returned to the snapshots stored in the shoebox.

  Picking up the top one, I saw it was a picture of Curtis Carver. He stared straight at the camera with a blank look on his face, the light from the flash turning his skin a sickly white. Judging from the stretch of his arms at the bottom of the image, he had taken the picture himself. But the framing was off, capturing only two-thirds of his face and the entirety of his left shoulder. Behind him was the study, looking much the way it did now. Empty. Dim. Shadows gathered in the corner of the vaulted ceiling.

  A date had been written in marker across the inch-high strip of white that ran across the bottom of the photo.

  July 2.

  I reached back into the box and grabbed another picture. The subject was the same—an off-center self-portrait of Curtis Carver taken in the study—but the details were different. A red T-shirt instead of the white one he wore in the previous photo. His hair was unkempt, and stubble darkened his cheeks.

  The date scrawled under the picture read July 3.

  I snatched three more pictures, bearing the dates July 5, July 6, and July 7.

  They were just like the others. As were four more that lay beneath them, dated July 8, July 9, July 10, and Jul
y 11.

  Flipping through them felt like watching a time-lapse video. The kind they showed us in grade school of flowers blooming and leaves unfurling. Only this was a chronicle of Curtis Carver, and instead of growing, he seemed to be receding. With each picture, his face got thinner, his beard grew longer, his expression more haggard.

  The only constant was his eyes.

  Staring into them, I saw nothing. No emotion. No humanity. In every photograph, the eyes of Curtis Carver were dark blanks that revealed nothing.

  A saying I’d heard long ago came to mind: When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you.

  I dropped the photos back into the box. Although there were more inside, I didn’t have the stomach to look at them. I’d done enough staring into the abyss for one morning.

  Instead, I grabbed the photo I’d taken, which was now fully developed. I liked what I saw. I’d managed to capture Maggie and Jess on the verge of vanishing into the woods.

  Maggie was barely visible—just a brown-haired blur in the background, the flashing white sole of a sneaker indicating that she was running. Jess was clearer. Back turned toward the camera, head tilted, right arm outstretched as she pushed a low-hanging branch out of her way.

  I was so focused on the two of them that it took me a moment to notice something else in the photo. When I did see it, my whole body jerked in surprise. My elbow knocked into the record player, ending the song that had been playing—“Sixteen Going on Seventeen”—with an album-scratching screech.

  I ignored it and continued to stare at the photo.

  There, standing just on the edge of the frame, was a figure cloaked in shadow.

  I thought it was a man, although I couldn’t be sure. Details were sparse. All I could make out was a distinctly human shape standing in the forest a few feet from the tree line.

  Who—or what—it was, I had no idea. All I knew was that seeing it sent a cold rush of fear coursing through my veins.

  I was still staring at the figure in the picture when a scream tore through the woods, so loud that it echoed off the back of the house.

  High-pitched and terrified, I knew at once it belonged to Jess.

  In an instant, I was out of the study and hurtling myself down two sets of stairs to the first floor. Outside, I veered around the house and sprinted into the backyard, where more screaming could be heard.

  Maggie this time. Letting out a loud, continuous wail of pain.

  I picked up my pace as I entered the woods, bounding through the underbrush and dodging trees to where Jess and Maggie were located. Both were on the ground—Jess on her knees and Maggie lying facedown beside her, still screaming like a siren.

  “What happened?” I called as I ran toward them.

  “She fell,” Jess said, trying to sound calm but failing miserably. Her words came out in a frantic tumble. “She was running, and then she tripped and fell and hit a rock or something. Oh, God, Ewan, it looks bad.”

  Reaching them, I saw a small pool of blood on the ground next to Maggie’s head. The sight of it—bright red against the mossy green of the forest floor—sent me into a panic. Gasping for breath, I gently rolled Maggie over. She had a hand pressed against her left cheek, blood oozing from between her fingers.

  “Be still, baby,” I whispered. “Let me see how bad it is.”

  I pried Maggie’s hand away, revealing a gash below her left eye. While not very long, it appeared deep enough to require stitches. I took off my T-shirt and pressed it to the cut, hoping to slow the bleeding. Maggie screamed again in response.

  “We need to get her to the emergency room,” I said.

  Jess, her maternal instincts kicking in something fierce, refused to let me carry Maggie. “I can do it,” she said, hoisting our daughter over her shoulder as blood gushed onto her shirt. “I’ll meet you at the car.”

  Off she went, a still-whimpering Maggie in her arms. I stayed behind just long enough to examine the spot where Maggie had hit her face. It was easy to find. A wet splotch of blood glistened atop a rectangular rock that jutted an inch or so out of the ground.

  Only it wasn’t a rock.

  Its shape was too orderly to be caused by nature.

  It was, to my complete and utter shock, a gravestone.

  I dropped to my knees in front of it and brushed away decades of dirt. A familiar name appeared, the soil in the carved letters making them stand in stark contrast to the pale marble.

  WILLIAM GARSON

  Beloved father

  1843–1912

  Six

  After seeing that person outside, it took two hours and one Valium before I was calm enough to get back in bed, let alone fall asleep. Even then, a night terror invaded my slumber. Me, in bed, the figure in the forest now suddenly hovering over me, its back against the ceiling.

  I woke up gasping, my skin covered in a thin sheen of sweat that glistened in the moonlight coming through the window. I took a second Valium. It did the trick.

  Now it’s six in the morning, and even though all I’d like to do is stay in bed, I can’t. There’s work to be done.

  Since there’s no coffee in the house, I use a cold shower as a poor substitute for caffeine. I emerge wide awake, but in a sore and sorry way. It feels as though I’ve just been slapped, my skin pink and pulsing. When I glance in the bathroom mirror, I see how it makes my scar stand out in in the faint light of dawn. A small slash of white on my otherwise rosy cheek. I touch it, the skin surrounding it puffy and tender from lack of sleep.

  For breakfast, I have a protein bar—literally the only food I thought to bring along—washed down with another mug of horrid tea and a vow to get to the grocery store by the end of the day.

  I check my phone as I eat, seeing a text from my mother. Its tone and subject matter tell me she’s heard my voicemail.

  So disappointed. Don’t stay there. Please

  My response is a master class in maturity.

  Try and stop me

  I hit send and go upstairs to roam the Indigo Room and parlor, looking for the letter opener I’m certain I misplaced last night during the unexpected drama with Elsa Ditmer and her daughter. It is the only explanation. Letter openers don’t just vanish by themselves. But after several minutes of fruitless searching, I give up.

  I tell myself it’s here somewhere, likely buried under years of junk mail. It’ll turn up at some point. And if it doesn’t, so be it.

  By seven, I’m outside and unloading my pickup truck before Dane arrives, even though it’d be easier with his help. I do it myself because, one, I’m already here and don’t feel like wasting time and, two, I want him to see that I can do it myself. That he’s here to assist, not carry most of the load.

  When Dane arrives promptly at eight, half the truck has been emptied and equipment litters the front lawn. He eyes the drill case sitting next to the ladder, which leans against the tile saw. I think he’s impressed.

  He helps me finish unloading the truck as I go over the plan. Clear the house, keeping anything that might be worth saving and throwing out the rest. We’ll start at the top, in my father’s old study, and work our way down, room by room. I still don’t know what I’m going to do with it all. I need more time in the house before I can come up with a proper design. But already I’m leaning toward taking a cue from what’s already here. Rich woods, ornate patterns, jewel tones. If I had to put a label on it, I’d call it Victorian glamour.

  With the truck unloaded, we grab some empty cardboard boxes and head inside. The house feels larger in the morning light. Warmer and brighter. Most people, if they didn’t know its history, would describe the place as homey. But the past hangs heavy over Baneberry Hall. Enough for me to feel a chill when we pass a back window and I see the spot where last night’s trespasser had been standing.

  “You have a key to the gate, right?” I ask Dane a
s we climb the steps to the third floor.

  “I wouldn’t be a good caretaker if I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t happen to be strolling around the grounds last night? Around eleven?”

  “At that hour, I was asleep in front of the Red Sox game. Why?”

  “I saw someone in the woods. A few feet from the backyard.”

  Dane turns around on the steps to give me a concerned look. “Did they do anything?”

  “As far as I know, they just stood there looking at the house before disappearing in the woods.”

  “It was probably a ghoul,” Dane says.

  “I guess that term isn’t just cop talk.”

  “We all call them that. They’re mostly local kids. I’ve heard they like to dare each other to sneak onto the property and get close to the infamous House of Horrors. They’re harmless. But you might want to stop making it easy for them. The front gate was wide open this morning. That’s like sending them an invitation to trespass.”

  Dane’s mansplaining aside, I know he’s right. I’d forgotten about the gate last night. My lesson learned, I don’t plan on doing it again.

  “Duly noted,” I say as I open the door to the study. It’s hot inside, even though it’s not even nine and the sun is still rising behind the woods out back. It’s also dusty. Huge particles of it swirl around us as we enter, practically glowing in the light shining through the circular windows.

  Dane looks around the room, impressed. “This is a great space. What do you plan on doing with it?”

  “I was thinking guest bedroom,” I say. “Or maybe an in-law suite.”

  “You’d need to put in a bathroom.”

  I grimace, because he’s right. “Plumbing will be a bitch.”

  “So will the cost,” Dane says. “I know this sounds crazy, but if you wanted to, you could get rid of the floor—”

  “And make the room below a master suite with cathedral ceilings—”

  “And a skylight!”

  We stop talking, both of us slightly out of breath. We speak the same language. Good to know.