Home Before Dark

by Riley Sager

  I pretend not to notice. I have a more pressing issue. One I’d hoped to avoid. But there’s no getting out of it.

  I need to talk to Marta Carver.

  About Baneberry Hall.

  And how I suspect her story is closer to my father’s than anyone realizes.

  * * *

  —

  Because it’s lunchtime, there are quite a few people out and about. A man enters the sushi restaurant on Maple Street as, next door, a woman exits the vegetarian place with several takeout bags. But it’s Marta Carver’s bakery that draws most of the attention. Outside, people crowd café tables, checking their phones while sipping iced coffees. Inside, a line forms just beyond the door and snakes past the wall of birds.

  When it’s my turn at the counter, Marta greets me with the same polite formality as before. “What can I get you, Miss Holt?”

  It dawns on me that I should have devised a plan before coming here. Or at least thought of something to say. Instead, all I do is hesitate awkwardly before saying, “I was wondering if we could talk. Somewhere private.”

  I don’t tell her what, exactly, I want to talk about, and Marta doesn’t ask. She already knows. The big question is if she’ll agree to it. The Book has given her every reason to say no. Which is why I’m thrown off guard when she gives a quick nod.

  “I’d like that.”

  “You would?”

  I must look as surprised as I feel, for Marta says, “We’re a lot alike, Maggie. Both of us have been defined by Baneberry Hall.”

  The guest in line behind me clears his throat, announcing his impatience.

  “I should go,” I say. “I can come back later. After the bakery’s closed.”

  “I’ll come to you,” Marta replies. “After all, I know the way. Besides, it’s time I faced that place again. I’ll feel better knowing you’re right there with me.”

  I leave the bakery feeling relieved. That went better than I expected.

  I also feel fortunate that, after my sudden exit from the Gazette newsroom, Brian Prince hadn’t decided to follow me. He would have stumbled upon another massive story if he had.

  Marta Carver is about to return to Baneberry Hall.

  JULY 11

  Day 16

  After Jess left for work that morning, I convinced Petra Ditmer to babysit Maggie for a few hours. She was reluctant to do so. Understandable, considering what had transpired the last time she was at Baneberry Hall. She agreed only after I doubled her usual sitting fee.

  With Petra watching Maggie, I went to the bakery Marta Carver owned downtown. I found her behind the counter, where she plastered on a polite smile and said, “How can I help you, Mr. Holt?”

  “I need to talk,” I said.

  Marta nodded toward the customer standing behind me. “I’m sorry, but I’m very busy at the moment.”

  “It’s important,” I said. “It’s about your time at Baneberry Hall.”

  “I really don’t like to talk about that place.”

  Her shoulders were slumped, as if she were literally weighed down by grief. I wanted to leave her in peace. She had enough troubles, and I wasn’t eager to add to them. It was only my need to know more about what was happening at Baneberry Hall that kept me talking.

  “I’m worried about my daughter,” I said. “She’s experiencing things. Things I’m trying to understand but can’t.”

  Marta’s spine suddenly straightened. After another glance at the waiting customer behind me, she whispered, “Meet me in the library in ten minutes.”

  I retreated to the library and waited in the reading room. Marta arrived exactly ten minutes later, still in her apron and with a smear of icing on her forearm. A few bits of flour dusted the lenses of her spectacles, making it look as though she’d just run through a snowstorm.

  “Tell me more about your daughter,” she said. “What’s she experiencing?”

  “She’s seeing things. When you and your family lived in Baneberry Hall, did anyone witness anything strange?”

  “Strange how?”

  “Unusual occurrences. Unexplained noises.”

  “Are you suggesting the house is haunted?”

  “Yes.” It was pointless to deny it. That was exactly my suggestion. “I think there are supernatural entities inside Baneberry Hall.”

  “No, Mr. Holt,” Marta said. “I never saw anything to suggest there were ghosts in that house.”

  “What about Katie and Curtis?”

  Marta gave a hard blink at the mention of her family, as if their names were a gust of air she needed to brace against.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “My husband claimed to have heard a tapping in the hallway at night, but I was certain it was just the pipes. It’s an old house, as you well know.”

  I assumed it was the same sound I’d been hearing in the hall.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  I had thought it was the restless spirit of Curtis Carver, but the fact that he also had heard it meant it was something else. Or someone else. Because I still didn’t think the pipes were to blame.

  “Back to your daughter,” Marta said. “Is she sick?”

  “Physically, no. Mentally, maybe. Was—” I managed to stop myself from saying Katie’s name. From the way Marta had reacted to the first mention, I figured it was best not to do it again. “Was your daughter ill?”

  “She had been sick, yes,” Marta said. “Quite a lot. Constant weakness and nausea. We didn’t know what was causing it. We took her to doctor after doctor, hoping one of them would be able to tell us what was wrong. We even went to an oncologist, thinking it might have been some form of cancer.”

  Having a sick child and being helpless to do anything about it is a nightmare for any parent. I’d already experienced the slightest hint of it with Maggie and her visit to Dr. Weber. But what Marta described was far worse.

  “Every test came back negative,” she said. “Katie was, on paper at least, a perfectly healthy child. The closest thing we got to a potential diagnosis was a doctor’s suggestion that there might have been mold in the house. Something she was allergic to that didn’t affect the rest of us. We arranged to have the house tested. It never happened.”

  She said no more, letting me infer the reason for that.

  “I understand this is extremely difficult for you to talk about,” I said. “But I was wondering if you could tell me what happened that day.”

  “My husband murdered my daughter, then killed himself.” Marta Carver looked me square in the eye as she said it, daring me to turn away.

  I didn’t.

  “I need to know how it happened,” I gently said.

  “I really don’t see how describing the worst day of my life will help you.”

  “This isn’t about helping me,” I replied. “It’s about helping my daughter.”

  Marta responded with a slight nod. I had convinced her.

  Before speaking, she shifted in her chair and placed her palms flat against the table. All emotion left her face. I understood what she was doing—retreating to a safe place while she recounted the destruction of her family.

  “I found Curtis first.” Her voice had also changed. It was lifeless, almost cold. Another coping technique. “He was on the third floor. In that room of his. A man cave. That’s what he called it. No girls allowed. I would have considered it ridiculous if Baneberry Hall hadn’t been so big. There was enough space for each of us to have several rooms.

  “That morning, I was awakened by a noise coming from Curtis’s man cave. When I saw that his side of the bed was empty, I immediately got worried. I thought he might have fallen and hurt himself. I hurried up the steps to the third floor, not realizing that the life I had known and loved was about to end. But then I saw Curtis on the floor and knew he was dead. There was a trash bag over his head and that belt
around his neck, and he wasn’t moving. Not even a little. I think I screamed. I’m not sure. I do remember shouting for Katie to call 911. When she didn’t respond, I ran back down to the second floor, yelling that she needed to get out of bed, that I needed her help, that she couldn’t under any circumstances go up to the third floor.

  “I really didn’t think about why she wasn’t responding until I was a few inches from her bedroom door. That’s when it hit me. That she was dead, too. I knew it right before I got to the doorway. And when I did, I saw that it was true. She was lying there, so still. And a pillow—”

  Grief cut through her voice like a hatchet. The masklike expression on her face shattered. In its place was a heart-wrenching combination of pain and sorrow and regret.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Holt.”

  “I’m the one who’s sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have insisted on it.”

  Yet there was one more thing I needed to know. Something I was reluctant to ask about because I knew it would only further Marta’s pain.

  “I have one last question.”

  “What is it?” Marta replied with understandable exasperation.

  “You said you were awakened by a sound from the third floor.”

  “Yes. I realized later it was the sound of Curtis’s body hitting the floor. A loud, horrible thud.”

  “Do you happen to know what time this was?”

  “I looked at the clock when I realized Curtis wasn’t in bed. It was four fifty-four a.m.”

  I had already assumed that. Yet it still didn’t prevent the full-body shiver I felt upon hearing it.

  Baneberry Hall remembers, Hibbs had said.

  And so it did.

  It remembered key events and repeated them. What I’d been trying to understand was why. There had to be a reason I heard that dreadful thud upstairs every morning. Just like there was a reason for the ringing of the bells and Maggie’s near-constant visits from the man she knew as Mister Shadow.

  He says we’re going to die here.

  Coming secondhand from my daughter, it sounded like a threat. That the unruly spirit of Curtis Carver planned to do us harm.

  Then why hadn’t he done it yet? Instead, he continued to try to communicate with us. Which made me think he wasn’t threatening us at all.

  He was trying to warn us.

  “Other than the tapping your husband heard, was there anything else he might have experienced that was suspicious?” I asked Marta.

  “I already told you that he didn’t,” she said.

  “And he never talked about feeling uneasy in the house?”

  “No.”

  “Or that he was worried in any way about your family’s safety?”

  Marta crossed her arms and said, “No, and I’d appreciate it if you told me what you’re suggesting, Mr. Holt.”

  “That someone else—or something else—killed your husband and daughter.”

  Marta Carver couldn’t have looked more stunned if I had slapped her. Her body went still for a moment. All color drained from her face. Her appearance was so alarming that I worried she was going to pass out in the middle of the library. But then everything righted itself just before she snapped, “How dare you?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that I’m starting to suspect that what happened that day isn’t what you think happened.”

  “Don’t you tell me what I know and don’t know about the destruction of my family,” Marta said with pronounced disgust. “How would you know better than me about what happened?”

  I hesitated, knowing I was about to say something that sounded colossally stupid. Insane, even. Not to mention completely insensitive to the plight of the woman who sat across from me.

  “Your husband told me.”

  Marta shot out of her chair like an arrow. She looked down at me, her face twisted by both anger and pity.

  “I knew you were naive, Mr. Holt,” she said. “That was clear the moment I learned you’d bought Baneberry Hall. What I didn’t know—not until right now—is that you’re also cruel.”

  She turned her back to me and started walking. Away from the table, out of the reading room, and, finally, out of the library.

  I remained at the table, feeling the full, guilty weight of Marta’s words. Yes, it was cruel of me to burden her with my questions. And, yes, maybe I was also naive about the intentions of Curtis Carver. But something was about to happen at Baneberry Hall. Another remembering and repeating. Naive or not, I believed Curtis Carver was trying to save us from the same fate that befell his family. In order to avoid it, I needed to know who was responsible.

  After ten more minutes spent stewing in guilt and worry, I left the library. On my way out, I passed the plaque dedicated to William Garson and, across from it, the kinder, gentler portrait than the one in Baneberry Hall.

  Pausing at the painting, I noticed that Mr. Garson’s softer appearance wasn’t the only difference between the two portraits.

  In this one, gripped in his right hand, was a walking cane.

  I zeroed in on it, taking in every detail. The ebony staff. The silver handle. The tight way William Garson gripped it, his knuckles knotted, as if he never planned on letting go. Seeing it brought to mind a sound I’d heard several times in the prior days.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  Coldness shot through my body. As frigid as the night I first heard the record player.

  No, I thought. You’re being ridiculous. The ghost of William Garson isn’t roaming Baneberry Hall, his cane tapping up and down the halls.

  Yet the cold stayed with me, even as I stepped outside into the July heat, the tapping sound echoing through my thoughts the entire way home.

  Nineteen

  Marta Carver arrives just before sunset, bearing a shy smile and a cherry pie.

  “It’s from the bakery,” she explains. “We bake fresh every morning, so I like to give leftovers to my friends.”

  I accept the unexpected gift, genuinely touched. “Are we friends?”

  “I hope we can be, Maggie. We have—” She pauses, unsure how I’m going to react to whatever’s coming next. “We have more in common than most.”

  I take that to mean she thinks my father is guilty. She may be right, although I’m starting to doubt it. The fact that the Book has proven itself to be true at almost every turn suggests someone else caused Petra Ditmer’s death.

  Or something else.

  Something that frightens me to my core.

  Had someone told me last week that I’d start to believe the Book, I would have said they were crazy. But for the first time in my life, I suspect my father knew something that I’m only now on the cusp of understanding.

  I’m hoping Marta Carver can help me cross that line.

  “It looks delicious,” I say, gazing at the pie. “Come on in and we’ll have a slice.”

  Marta doesn’t move. She stares at Baneberry Hall’s front door. Behind her round spectacles, her eyes burn with fear. In a guilt-inducing way, seeing her apprehension makes me feel better. It justifies my own fear.

  “I thought I’d be able to go in there,” she says. “I want to go in there. To show this house that I’m not afraid. How are you able to do it, Maggie?”

  “I told myself what happened here wasn’t real.”

  “I don’t have that luxury.”

  “Then we’ll talk out here,” I say. “Just let me take this inside.”

  I carry the pie downstairs to the kitchen and return with two bottles of beer. Although I don’t know if Marta drinks, it’s clear she needs something to get her through this visit. Back on the porch, she accepts the bottle and takes a tentative sip. I notice the rings on her right hand—an engagement ring and a wedding band—and remember how Brian Prince told me she never remarried. I can only imagine
how lonely she’s been the past twenty-five years.

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” Marta says after another, longer sip of beer. “I thought I was brave enough to go inside. But this house has a power to it. I can’t stop thinking about it, even though all I want to do is forget everything that happened here.”

  I raise my beer in a grim toast. “I know that feeling well.”

  “I thought you would,” Marta says. “It’s why I was glad you stopped by the bakery today. In fact, I was expecting it. I almost reached out to you, but after everything that’s happened in the past few days, I didn’t know if you’d want to talk. There’s much to discuss.”

  “Let’s start with my father,” I say.

  “You want to know if that book of his is true. At least my role in it.”

  Marta gives me a sidelong glance, checking to see if I’m surprised to learn she’s read the Book. I am.

  “I read it on the advice of my attorney,” she says.

  “Is your part of the story accurate?”

  “To a degree, yes. I met with your father, in exactly the same way it takes place in the book. He came to the bakery, and then I met him at the library.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  Marta holds the beer bottle with both hands, cradling it against her chest. It makes her look like a wallflower at a frat party. Timid and shy. “A lot of what eventually ended up in the book. Our time at the house. What happened that horrible day. He told me he was working on a book about Baneberry Hall, which is why I agreed to talk. I wanted him to know the truth. I was very honest about everything, from Katie’s illness to how I discovered her and Curtis’s bodies.”

  “And all that stuff about thinking your husband didn’t do it?”

  “We never discussed it,” Marta says. “That part is entirely fiction.”

  I stare into my beer bottle, too ashamed by my father’s actions to look Marta in the eye.

  “I’m sorry my father did that. It was wrong of him.”

  What my father wrote about Curtis Carver is one of the many reasons I’ve struggled with the Book’s legacy. It’s one thing to make up an outlandish story and say it’s real. Tabloids do it every week. Rewriting someone else’s history isn’t as easy to ignore. By openly claiming that Curtis Carver hadn’t killed his daughter and himself, my father twisted Marta’s true tragedy until it started to resemble fiction. The fact that she’s here now shows a level of forgiveness I’m not sure I possess.