Home Before Dark
Page 14
“I see,” I say. “So which one of you was in my study last night?”
Maggie gave me the same confused look I’d received from Jess in the kitchen. A slight tilt of the head. Right eyebrow raised. A scrunching of the face. The two were so alike, it was uncanny. The only difference was the bandage on Maggie’s cheek, which crinkled as she scrunched.
“What study?” she said.
“The room on the third floor. You haven’t been up there, have you?”
“No,” Maggie said, in a way that made me think she was telling the truth. Her voice usually contained a note of hollowness when she was lying. It remained convincing when she turned to the empty space across from her and said, “You weren’t up there, were you?”
She paused, absorbing a silent response only she could hear.
“She wasn’t,” Maggie informed me. “She spent last night in the wooden box.”
Those two words, innocuous by themselves, took on a sinister new meaning when used together. It made me think of a coffin and a little girl lying inside it. I smiled at Maggie, trying to hide my sudden unease.
“What wooden box, sweetie?”
“The one in my room. Where Mommy hangs things.”
The armoire. Again. I thought it strange how fixated she seemed to be on a simple piece of furniture. I told myself that Maggie was five and only doing things all kids her age did. Playing. Pretending. Not lying.
But then I remembered the sounds I kept hearing in my dreams. And the thud that most definitely wasn’t a dream. That got me thinking about what Hibbs had said about the house remembering. And the way Maggie’s door had closed the other night, almost as if pulled by an unseen force. A sense of dread crept over me, and I suddenly no longer had the desire to indulge my daughter’s imagination. In fact, all I wanted was to leave the room.
“I have an idea. Let’s go outside and play.” I paused, opting to make one small concession to Maggie’s imagination. “Your new friend can come, too.”
“She’s not allowed to leave,” Maggie said as she took my hand. Before we left the playroom, she turned back to the spot where her imaginary friend presumably still sat. “You can stay. But tell the others I don’t want them here.”
I paused then, struck by one word my daughter had used.
Others.
The unseen girl Maggie had been talking to and playing with—she wasn’t her only imaginary friend.
* * *
• • •
“I’m worried about Maggie,” I told Jess that night as we got ready for bed. “I think she’s too isolated. Did you know that she has imaginary friends?”
Jess poked her head out of the master bathroom, toothbrush in hand and mouth foaming like Cujo. “I had an imaginary friend when I was her age.”
“More than one?”
“Nope.” Jess disappeared back into the bathroom. “Just Minnie.”
I waited until she was done brushing her teeth and out of the bathroom before asking my follow-up question. “When you say you had an imaginary friend named Minnie, are you talking about Minnie Mouse?”
“No, Minnie was different.”
“Was she a mouse?”
“Yes,” Jess said, blushing so much even her shoulders had turned pink. “But they were different, I swear. My Minnie was my height. And furry. Like an honest-to-God mouse, only bigger.”
I approached Jess from behind, took her into my arms, kissed her shoulder right next to the strap of her nightgown, the skin there still warm. “I think you’re lying,” I whispered.
“Fine,” Jess admitted. “My imaginary friend was Minnie Mouse. I have a shitty imagination. I admit it. Happy now?”
“Always, when I’m with you.” We crawled into bed, Jess snuggling against me. “Our daughter, I suspect, isn’t. I think she’s lonely.”
“She’ll be going to kindergarten in the fall,” Jess said. “She’ll make friends then.”
“And what about the rest of the summer? We can’t expect her to spend it cooped up in this house with imaginary friends.”
“What’s the alternative?”
I saw only one. And they lived just outside Baneberry Hall’s front gate.
“I think we should invite the Ditmer girls over,” I said.
“Like a playdate?”
That would have been the proper course of action, had their previous playdate gone well. But with Hannah being so bossy and Maggie so shy, they didn’t gel as much as they should—or could—have. To truly bond, they needed something more than another half-hearted game of hide-and-seek.
“I was thinking more like a sleepover,” I said.
“Both girls?” Jess said. “Don’t you think Petra’s a little old for that?”
“Not if we pay her to babysit. She could watch Maggie and Hannah, and we, my dear, could have a proper date night.”
I kissed her shoulder again. Then the nape of her neck.
Jess melted against me. “When you put it that way, how’s a girl supposed to say no?”
“Great,” I said, drawing her tighter against me. “I’ll call Elsa tomorrow.”
The matter was settled. Maggie was going to have her first sleepover.
It turned out to be a decision all three of us would later come to regret.
Eight
In the evening, I get a text from Allie.
Just checking in. How’s the house?
It has potential, I write back.
Allie responds with a thumbs-up emoji, and No ghosts, I presume.
None.
But there’s lots about the place that doesn’t sit well with me. The person standing behind the house last night, for instance. Or the chandelier that magically turned itself on. That one had me so spooked that I called Dane to ask if he’d been in the house while I was gone. He swore he hadn’t.
Then there’s everything Brian Prince told me, which has prompted me to sit in the kitchen with a copy of the Book and my father’s Polaroids lined up on the table like place settings. I flip through the Book, looking for hints Brian might be onto something, even though his insinuation that my father engaged in some kind of improper relationship with Petra is both wrong and, frankly, gross.
Not long after my mother married Carl, my father and I took a trip to Paris. I hadn’t wanted to go. I had just turned fourteen, an age at which no girl wants to be seen with one of her parents. But I knew my father hadn’t reacted well to my mother’s decision to remarry and that he needed the trip more than I did.
We departed a few months before I finally stopped asking questions about the Book, knowing I’d never get a straight answer. I asked about it only once during the trip—another one of my sneak attacks, this time in front of the Mona Lisa—and received my father’s stock answer. That’s why one of the things I remember most about the trip, other than croque monsieurs and a dreamy, flirty café waiter named Jean-Paul, was a rare moment of honesty during an evening picnic in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
“Do you think you’ll ever get remarried like Mom?” I asked.
My dad chewed thoughtfully on a piece of baguette. “Probably not.”
“Why?”
“Because your mother is the only woman I’ve ever loved.”
“Do you still love her?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” my father said.
“Then why did you get divorced?”
“Sometimes, Mags, a couple can go through something so terrible that not even love can fix it.”
He went quiet after that, stretching out on the grass and watching the sun sink lower behind the Eiffel Tower. Even though I knew he was referring to the Book, I dared not ask him about it. He’d already let his guard down. I didn’t want to push it.
Maybe if I had, I finally would have received an honest answer.
I put down the Book and grab
the Polaroids, paying extra attention to the ones that feature Petra. At first glance, they’re innocent. Just a teenage girl being herself. But creepier undertones emerge the longer I look at them. In the picture taken in the kitchen, neither Petra nor my mother acknowledges the photographer’s presence, giving the image an uncomfortable, voyeuristic feel. A photo snapped before the subject realized someone was there.
Worse still is the picture of the sleepover. Petra is front and center. So much so that Hannah and I might as well have not even been there. Unlike the kitchen shot, Petra knows she’s being photographed—and she likes it. Her hands-on-hip, one-leg-bent pose is something a forties pinup would strike. It almost looks like she was flirting with the photographer, which in this case had to have been my father.
I slap the photos facedown on the table, disappointed with myself for giving in to gossip.
Behind me, one of the bells on the wall rings.
A single, resounding toll.
The sound jolts me from my chair, which overturns and slams to the floor. I push myself against the table, its edge pressing into the small of my back as I scan the bells. The kitchen is silent save for the sound of my heart—an audible drumroll coming from deep in my chest.
I want to believe I heard nothing. That it was one of those weird auditory blips everyone experiences. Like ringing in the ears. Or when you think you hear your name being called in a crowd and it ends up just being random noise.
But my pounding heart tells me I’m not imagining things.
One of those bells just rang.
Which leads me to a single, undeniable fact—someone else is inside the house.
I edge around the table, never taking my eyes off the bells, just in case one of them rings again. Moving backward, I reach the counter, my hands blindly sliding along its surface until I find what I’m looking for.
A block holding six knives.
I grab the largest one—a carving knife with a seven-inch blade. My reflection quivers in the glinting steel.
I look scared.
I am scared.
Holding the knife in front of me, I creep out of the kitchen and up the steps to the main part of the house. It’s not until I’m in the great room that I hear the music. A crisp, almost dreamy tune I’d have recognized even without the lyrics floating from somewhere above.
“You are sixteen, going on seventeen—”
My heart, which was still beating wildly a mere second ago, stops cold, making the song sound even louder.
“Baby, it’s time to think.”
I move through the great room on legs so numb with fear it feels as though I’m floating. When I reach the front of the house, I notice the chandelier is jangling. Almost as if someone is pounding the floor directly above it.
“Better beware—”
I have two options here—run, or confront whoever’s inside the house. I want to run. My body begs me to, twitching insistently. I opt for confrontation, even though it’s not the wisest choice. Running only leads to more questions. Facing it head-on can only lead to answers.
“—be canny—”
Mind made up, I start to run, not giving my body a chance to protest. I rush up the stairs, across the second-floor hallway, up another set of steps. I’m still running when I reach the third floor, the study door shut and looming before me.
“—and careful—”
I hurtle toward the door with my grip tight around the knife, letting out a scream as I go. Part of it’s self-defense. Trying to catch whoever’s inside off guard. The rest is fear, bursting out of me the same way I’m bursting into the room.
“Baby, you’re on the brink.”
The study is empty, even though all the lights are on and the record player on the desk blares at full volume.
“You are sixteen—”
I flick the needle away from the turntable and, pulse still thrumming, survey the room, just to confirm it is indeed empty. Whoever had been up here must have left as soon as they started the record player, ringing the bell on the way out.
Which means it was a ghoul. Some punk-ass kid who’d read the Book, heard I was back here, and now wanted to reenact part of it.
The only wrinkle in my theory is that I’d closed and locked the gate after Brian Prince left. I also closed and locked the front door when I got back to the house. If it was a House of Horrors prankster, how did he get inside?
That question vanishes when I take another look at the desk and notice something off.
Just like the letter opener in the parlor, the teddy bear Dane and I had found in the closet is now gone.
JULY 1
Day 6
“He says we’re going to die here.”
Until then, the day had been notable for not being notable. No ringing bells or rogue snakes or new, unnerving discovery. If there had been a thud at 4:54 in the morning, I slept right through it. It had simply been a normal day. Our first at Baneberry Hall.
Then my daughter uttered those words, and it all went to shit.
I immediately fetched Jess, knowing this was a job best handled by the both of us. Even then, I wasn’t sure what we should do. One of my daughter’s imaginary friends was telling her she was going to die. That wasn’t covered in any parenting handbook.
“Mister Shadow isn’t real,” Jess said as she climbed onto the bed and took Maggie into her arms. “And he’s not a ghost. He’s just a piece of your imagination with a mean voice telling you things that aren’t true.”
Maggie remained unconvinced.
“But he is real,” she said. “He comes out at night and says we’re going to die.”
“Do your other friends say stuff like that?”
“They’re not my friends,” Maggie said in a way that broke my heart a little. Basically, she was telling us that she had no friends. Not even imaginary ones. “They’re just people who come into my room.”
“Just how many people have you met?” Jess said.
“Three.” Maggie counted them off on her fingers. “There’s Mister Shadow. And the girl with no name. And Miss Pennyface.”
Jess and I exchanged concerned looks. Whatever this was, it wasn’t normal.
“Miss Pennyface?” I said. “Why do you call her that?”
“Because she has pennies over her eyes. But she can still see. She’s watching us right now.”
Maggie pointed to the corner by the closet with the slanted door. I saw nothing but an empty space where the angled ceiling began its sharp descent. Jess didn’t see anything, either, because she said, “There’s no one there, honey.”
“There is!” Maggie cried, once more on the verge of tears. “She’s looking right at us!”
She was so convincing in her certainty that I continued to stare at the corner, searching the shadows there, looking in vain for something I couldn’t see but that my daughter could, even if it was just in her mind’s eye.
Then I heard a noise.
Tap.
It came from somewhere down the hallway. A single rap on the hardwood floor.
“What the hell was that?” Jess said.
“I don’t know.”
Tap.
The noise was louder that time. Like whatever was causing it had moved a few feet down the hallway, closer to Maggie’s bedroom.
Tap-tap.
These were louder still, the second sounding nearer than the first.
“Do you think it’s the pipes?” Jess asked.
“If it is, why haven’t we heard it until now?”
Tap-tap-tap.
Three that time, growing in volume until they were right outside.
Maggie pressed against her mother, her wide eyes unblinking.
“It’s Mister Shadow,” she said.
Jess hushed her. “Maggie, stop it. He’s not real.”
“Someone’s inside the house,” I whispered.
The noise was now an unbroken stream, so loud and so close. It seemed to pass right by the bedroom door, even though no motion accompanied it.
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
The sound began to recede as it continued down the hall, seemingly heading to the steps that led to the third floor.
I bolted from the bed, determined to follow it. “You and Maggie stay right here.”
Jess protested. “Ewan, wait—”
If she said anything else, I didn’t hear it. By then I was already running down the hallway, trying to locate the source of the—
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
I looked up and down the hallway. Nothing was there. Certainly nothing that could have caused something as strange as that—
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
The sound had become quieter, almost as if it had moved to another section of the house. I heard one last tap before it died away completely, leaving me standing in a silent hallway.
It didn’t last long.
Within seconds, I heard something else.
Music.
Coming from directly above me.
“You are sixteen, going on seventeen—”
I bolted up the steps to the third floor, taking them two at a time. When the door to my study edged into view, I saw that it was closed, a thin strip of light visible just beneath it.
“Baby, it’s time to think.”
I knew I should have turned back, but by then it was too late. Whoever was behind that door had heard me coming. Besides, momentum kept me moving. Up the rest of the steps, through the door, into the study.
“Better beware—”
Just like the other night, the study was empty. It was just me and the record player and the damn album spinning and spinning and spinning.