The unseen hands pulled her to the door, her sweater riding up around her breasts, the friction of the floor tugging painfully at her skin. Through the smoke, she could see the emaciated face of Niles. “Get out,” he said. “Your daughter is already outside.”
She didn’t trust him, would never trust him, but what choice did she have? The door creaked open before she could touch it, and the cooler air was a benediction against her sweaty, burning face. The sirens were louder now.
“Mom!”
“Dallas?” Her eyes were too blurred with tears to see.
Arms lifted her, and a familiar voice spoke into her ear. “I’ve got you, Terri. Don’t worry. You’re safe now.”
Safe.
“H-Henrietta Vandermere is in there. In her father’s study.” As Officer Molloy set her gently on the grass, and Dallas flung her arms around Terri’s neck, she explained where the study was. He nodded, and left them.
“Mom, you’re alive! I was so scared.”
“W-what happened? Are you okay?”
Dallas bit her lip. Her beautiful face was streaked with soot. “Please don’t be angry with me. It was an accident.”
“What was an accident?”
“I swear I didn’t mean to, Mom. I didn’t mean to knock over the lamp.”
“What lamp?” None of this made sense. Knocking over a lamp wouldn’t have started this fire. Terri stared at the house, that gorgeous house. The entire first floor was engulfed in flames, and smoke billowed out of the second-floor windows. There was no way to save it now, even though firefighters had arrived and rushed toward the house, hoses in hand.
Glenvale would never be restored.
Her daughter clung to her neck, and Terri reached up to hold her hands. Dallas. She’d thought she’d never see her daughter again. And yet….
“Dallas, what’s that smell?”
Her daughter drew back, widening her eyes in a pantomime of innocence. “What smell?”
“You reek of kerosene.”
The feeling of cold dread returned. Oh no…Dallas, what did you do?
“I told Officer Molloy – it was an accident. I didn’t mean to knock over the lamp. I swear I didn’t.”
But there hadn’t been any kerosene lamps in the house. Had there?
“He told me I wouldn’t go to jail. He promised. Not for an accident. They won’t send me to jail, will they, Mom?”
“No, they won’t send you to jail. It was an accident,” Terri repeated, knowing it wasn’t.
Together, they watched Glenvale burn.
Epilogue
She was grateful when the nice cop stopped coming around.
She liked him, and she wanted her mother to be happy, but in the end, it was for the best.
It was his eyes – the eyes that seemed to look through her, that saw through all her lies. The longer he looked at her, the closer he was to the truth. It had been a relief when her mom broke up with him. He was a great guy, but having him around brought up too many bad memories, she’d said.
That was truer than she realized.
How could Dallas ever tell him the truth? That a grandfatherly man had woken her up that night and shown her how to start the fire? He’d told her it was the only way to save her mother, the only way to stop Niles from hurting anyone else.
He’d been wrong about that.
The night after the fire, Dallas began having nightmares. Except she understood they weren’t really nightmares. They were real.
Her mother kept begging her to tell her what was wrong. “Was it the fire?” she asked. “You can’t keep blaming yourself for the fire. It was an accident.”
But they both knew it hadn’t been. Her mother wasn’t dumb. She’d known there was no kerosene anywhere near Dallas’s room. But for whatever reason, she’d let it go, and Dallas was grateful for that too. Maybe her mom didn’t want to know the truth. If she let herself believe the fire had been an accident, she could look that nice cop in the eyes and let him take her out for dinner. Her mom was better off that way.
The truth haunted Dallas. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t close her eyes without the nightmares finding her again. She had destroyed a beautiful old house, and killed a lady. Henrietta Vandermere had never made it out alive.
But someone else had.
Niles smiled at her, the skin pulling taut against his cheekbones. His head looked even more like a skull than usual. The horror of it made her want to scream, but she bit her lip and kept quiet. What else could she do? That sweet old man had been wrong, but that wasn’t his fault. Everyone had been wrong about Niles.
He tapped her cheek playfully, the feel of his fingers like spiders crawling over her skin. “Wakey-wakey. You weren’t sleeping, were you?”
Her mom had tried, really tried. Dallas knew she was desperate to do whatever she could to help. There had been a long line of psychologists, therapists she was well aware her mother couldn’t afford. She’d had to leave the restoration business and work two jobs, just to pay for all those people who’d patted Dallas on the head and made her draw pictures and do puzzles and asked her about her feelings.
They treated her like a child.
Dallas may be eleven, but she wasn’t a child. Not anymore.
The diagnosis, when it finally came, would have made her cry if it hadn’t been so damn funny. Post-traumatic stress disorder.
She was eleven, but she understood what ‘post’ meant. Post meant it was over. Why didn’t anyone see it? None of it was over.
It was only the beginning.
She’d known that from the moment Niles had appeared in her bedroom at her grandmother’s house, thanking her for setting him free. Burning Glenvale hadn’t stopped his evil, as the old man had promised. The house had kept Niles trapped like a giant cage, protecting everyone on the outside.
But now Glenvale was gone. All because of her.
If she hadn’t set the fire, her mother would have died. Henrietta would have killed her for sure. She clung to that thought during those long, dark nights when she waited for Niles to visit her, but a part of her wondered if she’d been selfish. If she’d let her mother go, let Henrietta kill her too, would more people have lived? Would it have been worth it to keep the world safe from Niles?
She sighed. “No, Niles, you know I wasn’t.”
“Good. Perhaps we can go have some fun then.”
Her eyes focused on his face. There were dark streaks on his cheeks and around his mouth. His teeth looked black when he smiled. She sat bolt upright in bed.
“You didn’t go visit Gertrude again, did you?”
He smirked, curling a lock of her hair around his fingers, but she slapped his hand away, marveling at how it could feel so solid. “Maaaaayyybe.”
“Niles! You promised you’d leave her alone.” Dallas wanted to weep at the thought of what that poor woman had gone through, was still going through. Her mom had told her that Gertrude had been put away in some place for the mentally ill, that everyone thought she was crazy. Who would believe a deranged spirit was attacking her? Better to believe she was doing it to herself.
Dallas knew Gertrude wasn’t crazy, but she was just a kid. Who was going to listen to her?
“I had my fingers crossed behind my back,” he said, laughing. “Fooled you!”
“You have to leave her alone, Niles. You have to. Or I won’t talk to you anymore.”
His lower lip protruded. “Spoilsport.”
Sometimes she thought of ending her own life. It was so tempting she’d thrown out the tie to her bathrobe, along with anything else in her room she could use to hang herself. She’d come too close too many times, felt the fabric cutting into her neck, her breath stopping.
But she couldn’t do that to her mom. Terri needed her. Especially now that the nice cop was gone. It was the two of them again.
They were a team. Thanks to Henrietta, even her dad wasn’t around anymore.
There was another, bigger reason she didn’t kill herself. A reason she didn’t like to think about.
If Niles was this bad while she was alive, what would happen if she was dead? What if death wasn’t an escape, but another trap, another nightmare she couldn’t wake up from? Committing suicide was a sin, and she’d already committed the ultimate sin when she’d burned the house down and killed the old woman. She wouldn’t be welcome in Heaven.
Best not to risk it. While she was alive, he listened to her. She was able to control him, to some extent.
Niles would stay young forever, while she’d get old and would eventually die anyway. But it was better not to think about that too much. Maybe by the time she was as old as Henrietta Vandermere, he’d lose interest in her. Or, maybe when she got older, she’d figure out a way to defeat him for good. Maybe someday that nice grandfatherly man would return and help her.
She could only hope.
“Do you want to play a game?”
“Sure, Niles. Let’s play a game. Which one do you want, The Game of Life?”
He stuck his tongue out. “Nah, that’s boring. I’m weary of that game. Let’s go and hurt someone.”
She folded her arms across her chest, fixing him with a stern look. “I’ve told you a hundred times. I’m not going to hurt anyone. Hurting people is bad.”
“That is what you keep saying.” He winked at her. “But eventually I’ll wear you down and get what I want.” His grin broadened, displaying teeth that were stained with poor Gertrude’s blood.
“I always do.”
Author’s Note
On September 13, 2019, I was one of four dark-fiction authors invited to spend the night at Dalnavert House, a heritage home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Now operating as a museum, this extraordinary mansion is rumored to be haunted. We were allowed to roam freely through the house without supervision all night, and explore as much as we wished, in order to write stories inspired by our experience. These four stories were then published in a limited-edition chapbook.
During my stay, I opted to spend most of my time in Jack Macdonald’s room. Jack had died in the room from complications of diabetes when he was still a young man, so I figured that if anything ghostly were to happen, it would happen there. I wasn’t wrong, and I wrote about that eerie experience on my blog, www.jhmoncrieff.com/blog (search for the post “Overnight in a Haunted House”). Dalnavert House also has a wonderful virtual tour, if you’d like to ‘visit’ the real-life Glenvale. www.friendsofdalnavert.ca/virtual-tour.
While this is a work of fiction (the Macdonald family was nothing like the Vandermeres, and no slander is intended), this novel would not exist without the kindness of Thomas McLeod, former Executive Director of the Friends of Dalnavert Museum Inc., the Winnipeg International Writers Festival, the magnificent Dalnavert House, and the spirit of Jack Macdonald himself.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to the Friends of the Dalnavert Museum, notably former executive director Thomas McLeod and former curator Alexandra Kroeger. Your generosity with your time and allowing me so much access to the house made this novel possible.
Thank you to writer Jess Landry, who talked me into applying to the Winnipeg International Writers Festival’s Fantasmagoriana program. This novel would not exist without her. A shout-out to the two writers we shared the experience with: Adam Petrash and Dave Demchuk.
I cannot fully express how grateful I am for my editor, Don D’Auria, who has championed my work from the beginning. I’m so happy to be working with him again, and to be published alongside many of the wonderful writers I began my career with. The title of editor doesn’t do him justice – there are so many great writers who broke into the industry because of Don.
Thanks to the amazing team at Flame Tree Press, including Don, Nick Wells, Maria Tissot, Sarah Miniaci, Carole Rogers, and Jessica White. To all the readers and friends who continue to encourage my crazy writing dreams, especially Christine Brandt, Simon Fuller, Kimberly Yerina, Nikki Burch, Catherine Cavendish, Tara Clark, Kelli Lea, Lee Murray, R.J. Crowther Jr. from Mysterious Galaxy, John Toews from McNally Robinson Booksellers, Dana Krawchuk, Steve Stredulinsky, Erik Smith, Hunter Shea, Janine Pipe, JG Faherty, Russell R. James, Teel James Glenn, Jim Edwards, Lisa Saunders, Alex Cavanaugh, Toinette Thomas, Mary Aalgaard, and the phenomenal Insecure Writer’s Support Group.
Thanks also to my parents, Gary and Shirley Moncrieff. And to my agent, Rosie Jonker, for talking me off the ledge and keeping me sane.
About this book
This is a FLAME TREE PRESS BOOK
Text copyright © 2021 J.H. Moncrieff
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Thanks to the Flame Tree Press team, including: Taylor Bentley, Frances Bodiam, Federica Ciaravella, Don D’Auria, Chris Herbert, Josie Karani, Molly Rosevear, Mike Spender, Cat Taylor, Maria Tissot, Caroline Watson, Nick Wells, Gillian Whitaker. The cover is created by Flame Tree Studio with thanks to Shutterstock.com.
FLAME TREE PRESS is an imprint of Flame Tree Publishing Ltd. flametreepublishing.com. A copy of the CIP data for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
HB ISBN: 978-1-78758-705-2 • US PB ISBN: 978-1-78758-703-8
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Other titles by J.H. Moncrieff: Those Who Came Before
Other titles available include:
The Wise Friend by Ramsey Campbell, In Darkness, Shadows Breathe by Catherine Cavendish, Killing Fire by Faye Snowden, The Toy Thief by D.W. Gillespie, The Siren and the Specter by Jonathan Janz, Kosmos by Adrian Laing, The Sky Woman by J.D. Moyer, Misfits by Hunter Shea, The Bad Neighbor by David Tallerman, Ten Thousand Thunders by Brian Trent, The Mouth of the Dark by Tim Waggoner, Second Lives by P.D. Cacek, Black Wings by Megan Hart.
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