by Lisa Unger
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2021 by Lisa Unger
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle
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eISBN: 9781542027274
Cover design by Anna Laytham
1.
Merle House was quiet, and the night was silvery with moonlight, the cold fingers of winter already reaching into the air. He hadn’t planned to get there so late.
In fact, he’d planned to arrive in the bright light of afternoon, when the place looked more like what it was—a crippled giant, felled among the tall pines. Just a house—too big, too old, too decrepit to sell. Probably uninhabitable, definitely uninsurable. And, Matthew Merle was discovering, possibly unrepairable, due to the cost and the impossibility of convincing local trade workers to set foot on the property.
He brought the car to a stop and stared through the windshield.
Once upon a time, the Merle name meant wealth and power in this town. Now it meant something else altogether.
The name. The house. These things were his birthright, his family legacy. Those words implied a boon, a gift of inheritance that anyone would be happy to receive.
No.
Matthew’s wife, Samantha, was uncharacteristically silent in the passenger seat.
Really, dumbfounded was more like it.
Down at the towering stone and wrought-iron entrance, she’d woken from sleep and issued an amazed laugh. He’d climbed out of the car, opened the thick padlock with the key he’d been sent, and pushed the impossibly heavy gate open, hinges issuing an unpleasant squeal.
Up the winding drive in the old Wrangler, which he hadn’t even been sure would make the drive from Florida:
“Oh my God,” Samantha breathed, a hand, urgent, on his thigh.
As Merle House rose into sight:
“You’re fucking kidding me, right? Matthew. Is this a joke?”
“No joke,” he said.
He climbed out of the car, and Samantha did the same. Now, as they stood before the house, he felt her arm slip through his.
“It’s . . . amazing.”
She didn’t know the half of it, not really. He’d told her some; other bits she’d gathered from her research and the documents they’d received in the mail from his grandfather’s lawyer, Benjamin Ward, after virtually attending the reading of the will.
Certainly, Samantha didn’t know everything, not about the house, the land, its history.
They’d never talked about any of it, or about his grandfather, except in the broadest possible strokes. His parents were gone. So discussions about his family and childhood were brief and vague. A time best forgotten. And Matthew never even thought about Merle House, his grandfather’s place where he had spent long, languid summers exploring all its dusty rooms and back corridors. It had disappeared into the recesses, with other things he’d rather not remember. He’d never imagined that it would come to him. That he’d be called back to care for it, deal with it.
“You know what I’m thinking,” said Samantha. There was a breathless quality to her voice when she was excited about something, and it always aroused him.
“Run?” he offered.
She squeezed his arm with hers.
“Writers’ retreat.”
His wife was the kind of person who came upon a pile of shit and asked, “Where’s the pony?”
He loved that about her. Looking down into her dark bedroom eyes, he saw something he hadn’t seen there in a while. A kind of light of possibility. Hope. She’d been through so much. He wanted this to be something good for her, for them.
“Or what about a yoga and wellness center?” she went on. He felt a little twinge of guilt. A private yoga teacher and wellness coach, Samantha had had to leave behind all her clients, a base that had taken her years to build, work she loved. She’d never complained, not once.
“I like the way you think,” he said, kissing the thick softness of her hair. It smelled like lilacs.
Never mind that they were dead broke.
Ideas aren’t money, Matt. Stop dreaming.
But that was his father’s voice—heavy with pessimism.
Matthew knew that sometimes ideas had a power of their own.
Just like Merle House had a mind of its own.
The old giant seemed to sigh with relief as Samantha put a hand on the porch railing, ready to make her way up.
“We should head back to town,” he said, feeling the urge to pull her back as she climbed up the staircase. “Find someplace to stay the night.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “We’re not staying here?”
“Uh.”
“I mean—this is where we live now, right?”
This is where we live now, right?
It was not an accusation, a nudge meant to remind him how miserably he’d failed them, how he’d lost his job, had to sell their dream house—because Samantha was just not that woman. She didn’t have a manipulative bone in her body. She was all practicality, clear vision, an okay-this-sucks-but-how-do-we-manage-it kind of woman.
“I don’t think it’s livable, Sam,” he said.
The porch groaned under her step. From the looks of the place, he wouldn’t be surprised if she stepped through a rotting board. He knew the old man hadn’t been able to keep it up at the end. “Be careful.”
“But that’s why we’re here, right? To make it livable?”
Or at least salable.
Had they discussed this? Where were they going to live until Merle House was repaired? He’d assumed that they’d stay at the little B&B in town for a couple of nights, then rent something cheap. But the truth was that they really couldn’t afford to do that. Ideas aren’t money.
“And your grandfather lived here, right? Until just a few months ago, when they took him to hospice.”
The old man had always lived at Merle House, or at least on the property where Merle House stood. Justice Merle had been born there, returned there from Harvard to run the family construction business, raised his own family there—two sons, one of them Matthew’s father. He’d stayed at Merle House long after he’d sold the family business, after his wife left him, after he became estranged from both his sons. He’d lived alone in the eight-thousand-square-foot behemoth, grown old, and would have died there if it had been left up to him. Now his body was buried on the family plot, not far from the house in the surrounding acreage.
The old man would, in fact, be here for all eternity.
And now Matthew would join him. Something like dread pressed down on his shoulders.
“Yeah, but—” he started. She didn’t let him finish.
“So it’s inhabitable. Technically. Maybe not what we’re used to. But there’s electricity, running water. Right?”
Certainly not what they were used to, and they had Matthew to thank for that. Over the last few weeks, he’d developed chronic stomach pain, a kind of twisting roil in his gut. A miserable brew of guilt and anger.
He still thought about her, though he really shouldn’t, the woman who had taken a rocket launcher to h
is life, cost him his job, almost his marriage. Sylvia. He wanted to forget her completely. But he couldn’t.
“Matthew,” said Samantha, like it was the second or third time she was saying it. “Do you have the keys?”
Matthew stood staring at Samantha, who was tiny but mighty, with a tight, wiry body toned from years of yoga and long-distance running. She walked up and down the porch, tried the door, peered in the window. He admired the lush cascade of her dark hair, the determination on her brow, in her jaw. He was doing the staring thing; he knew that. When he had so many thoughts in his head that they kind of all jammed up and he just froze, glassy eyed, and needed to be snapped out of it. She turned to face him when he didn’t say anything, dug her hands into her pockets, and thrust out a hip.
“At least let’s take a look.”
The keys were in his pocket. He took them out with a jangle and joined her on the porch.
“Wasn’t the caretaker supposed to meet us here?” she asked. “Pete, was it?”
“We were supposed to arrive this afternoon. I told him we’d call him tomorrow.”
“Well,” she said brightly, fitting the key into the lock. It turned with a satisfying click. “I guess we’re on our own.”
Samantha pushed open the heavy oak door of Merle House and disappeared fearlessly into its maw. His wife, the warrior. He was her inferior in every way. Why had she stayed with him? After everything he’d done.
Matthew followed, stumbling over the threshold and nearly falling all the way to the ground. As he righted himself with a hand on the doorjamb, he could have sworn he heard laughter from somewhere within the house. He did. He did hear laughter. But it was coming from behind him.
“Were you just going to leave me in the car?”
His sixteen-year-old daughter, Jewel, stood behind him on the porch. Whatever amusement she’d found in his clumsiness had passed. Now she wore the usual scowl she seemed to save only for him. She was a mama’s girl; Matthew and Jewel had been at loggerheads for as long as he could remember. Because you’re basically the same person, Samantha liked to quip, earning protests from both father and daughter.
He had not, in fact, been in any rush to wake Jewel. As long as she was sleeping, she wasn’t complaining.
“Not all night,” he said, turning to drop an arm around her shoulder. She blew out the annoyed breath specific to teenage girls.
“God, is this it? It looks like a funeral home.” She hefted her camouflage rucksack up onto her slender shoulder, shifting away from Matthew.
“On a good day,” he agreed.
Her glance drifted from the house back to him. “Is it haunted?”
Good question. “Probably.”
She was way taller than her mother, and even catching up to Matthew. Jewel was a lithe five foot eight, too gorgeous for her own good and his, with silky black hair that hung like a curtain, always in her eyes, and pouty pink lips. And a body that made him see the wisdom in burkas and nunneries. She tugged at the silver hoops in her right ear, looked around.
“This is your fault,” she said. Samantha was wrong; their daughter wasn’t the same person as Matthew. Jewel was a darker, mean version of Samantha, all her mother’s personal power but none of her softness.
“I know,” said Matthew, looking away from her, bracing himself.
But she didn’t say it: I hate you. It still rang in his ears from the last time. She’d said it three times. Each time it hurt a little more, mainly because it seemed like she meant it.
Samantha tried to soften the edge of it. Of course she hates us. All teenagers hate their parents. It’s a rite of passage.
She hates me, not you.
You just happen to be the target of her rage at the moment. Next time it will be me.
“Hey, bunny?” It was what they’d always called her. “We’re going to be okay.”
She backed toward the front door and away from him; something played out on her face—sadness, anger, fatigue.
“Save the bullshit for Mom, okay? She is—for some reason—still buying it. And don’t call me bunny.”
Ouch. Who knew your child could have so much power to hurt you? He should reprimand her—seriously, she just didn’t have the right to talk to him that way, did she? But he didn’t have the energy.
Samantha came back to the door, stood behind Jewel, who had yet to cross the threshold.
“You guys,” she said, eyes shining. “This place is ah-mazing.”
“Yeah,” said Jewel flatly. “Amazing.”
But Jewel did look vaguely interested. Still, she took a moment to shoot Matthew a disgusted look before following her mother inside.
He stood on the porch for a moment and stared off into the dark distance. The moon was high, dimming the stars in the velvet blue sky. Did he see a glow off in the distance, among the trees? No, not possible. There was so much Samantha didn’t know. So much more to this land than Merle House. And hopefully they’d be long gone before she discovered it.
“Matt, come on,” Samantha’s voice echoed from inside. He kept staring. Did he see a light? Maybe just the faintest dancing, orange glow. Part of him wanted to head out there, through the woods he’d known so well as a kid. He wanted to see if it was still there.
“Matthew! What are you doing?”
“Coming,” he said, turning to walk through the door.
He tripped over the threshold again. This time there was only silence as he followed his wife and daughter inside.
2.
Claire settled into the hard, uncomfortable chair in the nondescript therapy room, organizing her files, taking out her notebook and pen. Then she sat back and focused on her breathing.
You are surrounded by light energy, she told herself. Nothing dark can reach you.
There was always a tension in her body as she waited for him to be brought in. An ache in her shoulders, a tightness to her breath. Claire made sure that these sessions were the last of the day, the final hour of her workweek. Because she knew that when they were done, she would be drained. That was Winston Grann’s special gift, to take everything from the people in his energy sphere.
The truth was that there was nothing she—or anyone—could do for him. His treatment was part of a state-mandated psychiatric protocol that existed for all patients who had been deemed criminally insane. Part of a philosophy that offered “comprehensive treatment that acknowledged the patient’s offense, but also his humanity.”
No one thought that Winston Grann was going to get any better. A serial killer who had murdered at least fifteen young women, he was certainly never going to be released.
Claire heard voices outside the door, footfalls in the hallway. She looked out through the barred window at the great oak that sat in the yard, its roots spreading wide like feet, its thick branches reaching into the dimming blue sky of early evening. High clouds drifted, and Claire watched, focused on her breath, centering herself.
She’d chosen this assignment as part of her research. She was a psychiatrist with a private practice, treating mainly people who struggled with severe depression, crippling anxiety disorders, phobias.
But she wrote extensively about men—yes, mostly men, all men in Claire’s experience—like Winston Grann. So she’d chosen to spend Friday afternoons at four with Winston, even though her mentor, Dr. Sarah Bold, and Claire’s ex-husband, Will, who was still her best friend, had urged her to give up the state assignment.
If she did move on from the Grann sessions, no one would challenge or even question that decision.
After all, the people who cared for Winston Grann did not fare well. He’d been incarcerated for over ten years. During that time, his first doctor, a nurse who attended to him some years later, and then, just recently, a patient he’d befriended in the last few months during supervised group meals had all killed themselves. What did it have to do with Winston? How had he wormed his way into the minds of these people? Was it a coincidence that might be attributed to the high-pressu
re work for the health professionals and the acknowledged instability of his fellow patient? Very hard to say.
But she knew this: Winston Grann was a sucking vortex, a black hole draining all the light and energy from the area, from people. After an hour with Winston, Claire felt so exhausted she often worried about driving. She felt a deep well of sadness and despair, a persistent, gnawing sense of failure. It often took her the weekend to recover.
“I think you need to ask yourself why you continue,” Dr. Bold had offered. “Is your research more important than your mental health?”
She wasn’t sure. Maybe. Because she couldn’t shake the conviction that he, or the study of him, would provide answers to questions that had haunted her since childhood.
She jumped at the sudden knock on the door, snapping back hard to the present.
“Come in.”
Her favorite orderly, Billy Jenkins, escorted Winston into the room. They were a contrast—Billy young and beefy, always with a smile in spite of the gritty nature of his work. Tattooed on his thick brown biceps was the word MOM, surrounded by a wreath of flowers. He wore a wedding ring, though she didn’t know anything about his wife.
Winston, on the other hand, was a small man, slim, and nearly bald, skin pallid from years of incarceration. He had dark eyes that were alive with intelligence, seeing. His hands and feet were bound with cuffs, connected by a chain. It seemed like overkill; in prison, Winston had been as quiet and well behaved as a lamb. She was often tempted to request that he be freed during their sessions. Maybe she’d make more progress if she offered him this small concession.
But she always stopped short of making the request.
Because Winston Grann believed himself to be the host for a spiritual parasite named Archie. And it was Archie who had driven Winston to do bad things, all his life. Archie, in fact, used Winston’s body to satisfy his dark appetites. Winston didn’t deserve to be punished; he needed to be rescued. He didn’t need a psychiatrist to treat him. He needed a priest to exorcise him.
Or so he said.
Claire wasn’t afraid of Winston, who was mild mannered and soft spoken. She was, however, afraid of Archie.
