Love the Way You Lie (House of Crows)

by Lisa Unger

  Samantha deleted the email without reading it. The police had cleared Matthew of connection to Sylvia Rowan’s disappearance. The young woman had shifted into another identity, was working on destroying someone else’s life, they’d all surmised.

  “It’s hard to catch a good con artist. Even their crimes are very slippery, layered,” the police detective on the case had told her. “They don’t take, rob, or steal as much as they convince people to give, often by giving people what they want first. They’re good at slipping away when they’ve gotten all they can. We may never find Sylvia Rowan, or whatever her name really is.”

  It was one of the things you learned the hard way in life. Sometimes bad people got away with it. For a moment, curiosity almost got the better of her, and she thought to fish it from the trash. But no. If that detective wanted more from them, let him come looking. She deleted it from the trash file too. The email disappeared with the little electronic sound of paper being crunched.

  She opened the web browser and stared at the blinking cursor.

  What did she want to know? She didn’t even know where to start. The missing girl? Mason Brandt? The abandoned structure supposedly on the Merle property? All things her husband had kept from her.

  She took a breath and started with Amelia March. She found a smattering of articles about the girl, her disappearance, the subsequent search, the final conclusion of the police that she ran away.

  Samantha scrolled through images—the beautiful young Avery and Amelia, stunning, dark-haired twins. There was an image of Mason Brandt—a painfully thin, sad-eyed young man with dark curls—an article about his being questioned as a suspect. She was down the rabbit hole then. His father’s suspicious death—a fall from the roof that might have been a push, Mason’s history of violence and rages. Now, apparently, Mason Brandt was a pastor at a Unitarian church. The man she saw on the church website didn’t resemble the boy, except for those very sad eyes.

  She sat a moment, looking out the window. A woman pushed a baby past in a stroller; a young man chatted on a cell phone, sitting on a park bench.

  Finally she entered “Merle House.”

  There was very little—articles about Justice Merle, Matthew’s grandfather; his philanthropy and contributions to the town, like the school, and firehouse, the restoration of city hall; about Merle Construction, sold decades ago when the old man retired. There was a picture of the house, by far the grandest in the area, in the local paper, accompanying a story about its renovation. The original house was built in the forties, restored, updated, and expanded by Justice Merle in the eighties. But the land, more than a hundred acres, had been in the family for generations.

  Finally, she reread Old Man Merle’s obituary, which Matthew had written.

  Samantha kept scrolling, thinking she’d reached the end of the line. Then she entered “Havenwood.” She clicked through the listings: a rehabilitation center in California, a retirement community in Pennsylvania, a wellness retreat in Sedona. Honestly, it didn’t seem possible that there was anything like that out behind the house. It sounded like an urban legend, a childish myth—just like the Dark Man. Then as she was about to click off, something down at the bottom of the third page caught her eye. A blog called This Haunted Land, written by a self-described “haunted historian,” Clay Ritter.

  Samantha clicked and started reading.

  When most people think of hauntings, they think of dwellings—creaking doors, cold spots, moaning in the night, pacing footsteps, shades disappearing around corners. But often it’s the acres upon which the dwelling are built that are seeking to make themselves known. The earth beneath our feet can hold dark, trapped energies, and like any living organism, it has memories, can be traumatized and damaged. Here is a list of the most haunted land in America.

  Samantha scrolled through a list of burial grounds and battlefields, prisons and insane asylums and poison gardens, and the stories of hauntings there—the usual ghostly fare. All creepy, but nothing she hadn’t read before, and nothing to do with her search.

  Then finally she arrived at Havenwood Reform School.

  She clicked on the aerial photograph.

  Oh my God, she thought. It’s right there, not a mile from Merle House. She stared at the image of the large white structure with a clay-tile roof, surrounded completely by trees, then started to read.

  There are no roads to Havenwood Reform School. After the school’s closure, roads to the institution were torn up and the forest all around it was allowed to grow back, with the help of some reforestation. Built in the late 1930s, Havenwood was considered a last chance for troubled and criminal young people. Unfortunately, many families who sent their children there never saw them again. Some were declared runaways, others suicides. It wasn’t until 1947 that an investigation was opened into the actions of the school’s headmaster, Dr. Archibald Arkmann, and his terrible sadism was revealed.

  As the investigation unfolded, stories of his terrible deeds were revealed by staff and the remaining children, and bodies of alleged runaways—identified by personal items—were found buried on the grounds. Rather than face his fate, Dr. Arkmann committed suicide in his study at home.

  The staff and children at the school referred to him as the Dark Man, a play on his name, the black suit he always wore, and the shadow of his form in the doorway when he came for you. Dr. Arkmann would apparently grant favors to a child—an extra portion of food, a longer recess in the yard, access to letters from home—then come for that child in the night, asking for payment on the favor. He would then take the child from the school and bring them to his mansion on the same property.

  Decades later, area children, in a twisted version of this ugly history, claim to call on the Dark Man to ask for favors and do his bidding in return. Havenwood still stands, abandoned but not alone, frequented by area teens who use it as a place to party, and also to call on Dr. Arkmann and tell him their darkest desires.

  The property is owned by the Merle family, most recently by a construction mogul named Justice Merle. He restored Arkmann’s historic home, Merle House, which sat about a mile from Havenwood, apparently not a believer in the stories or in the idea of haunted lands.

  Cold fingers of fear tickled down the back of Samantha’s spine.

  Stop it, she chastised herself.

  She did not, nor had she ever, believed in anything supernatural. She wasn’t superstitious. She wasn’t religious. She wasn’t even “spiritual,” as so many people seemed to be these days. Even though most people in her work as a yoga instructor and wellness coach were into all that, Samantha was about the health of body and mind.

  What she did believe in was the contagion of fear and bad ideas. This kind of thinking was a virus, and it infected young people more than anyone. What had Matthew said? Bad kids looking for an excuse to do bad things. Something like the idea of the Dark Man, when seized upon by troubled young minds, was insidious.

  Haunted land. How stupid.

  She jumped when Penny returned, bringing with her two lattes.

  “Didn’t mean to startle,” said the older woman. “Everything okay? You looked a little peaked.”

  “Just tired,” said Samantha, closing her laptop.

  She shook off what she’d just read. Silliness, right? Clickbait.

  Penny slid in across from Samantha. Penny had changed from the blue polo shirt with the coffee shop logo into a pretty flowered blouse. She was one of those ageless women, lovely to look at, with glowing skin and an intelligent gaze. If she’d cared for a young Matthew when he was a kid, she must be in her sixties, but could easily pass for much younger.

  “How’s Merle House treating you?” Penny glanced at Samantha over her cup.

  The coffee. It was wonderful, smooth and rich, foamy with milk. She missed these creature comforts, the little pleasures of living someplace that had everything you wanted within a few minutes’ drive. Good coffee, nice restaurants, a big, gleaming gym, yoga studio. Merle House. It w
as isolating; there was an energy that kept you there. The drive to the gate was almost fifteen minutes long.

  “It’s a bit of a wreck, to be honest,” admitted Samantha. “We have our work cut out for us if we want to sell.”

  “Sell? Will you sell it?” Surely Peter must have told her. But Penny looked surprised to the point of being stricken.

  “That’s the plan,” said Samantha easily.

  The other woman turned her gold wedding band. It was the only piece of jewelry she wore.

  “That house, that land,” Penny said. “It’s been in Matthew’s family for such a long time.”

  Boundaries, people, thought Samantha. None of your beeswax what we do with our “inheritance.”

  She waved a breezy hand, trying to keep things light.

  “It’s far too much house for us. Our daughter, Jewel, she’ll be leaving for college in two years. And it will just be us.”

  That was a scary thought, just the two of them, without Jewel to focus on.

  “Just the one then?” said Penny with an eyebrow raise.

  She loved the way people said that as if she’d defied a social norm by only bearing one child. Surely people knew that life had a way of making choices for you, that you weren’t always in control.

  “Yes,” said Samantha. “And once she’s off to school, we’d always planned to downsize a bit and travel more.”

  “Places like Merle House are . . . not so easy to shift off,” said Penny. It might have been ominous, but she followed it with a good-natured chuckle.

  “We’re discovering that,” Samantha said. “But we’re hoping to market it as a writers’ retreat, or maybe a bed-and-breakfast.”

  It rang hollow, sounded like a lie or a pipe dream. But Penny nodded politely, seeming to have recovered herself and remembered that it was no business of hers what became of Merle House.

  They chatted a bit, about young Matthew, about Penny’s time as Justice Merle’s housekeeper, about how she’d checked in on Matthew’s grandfather regularly until his passing.

  “There’s a tie to the place, to the people,” she said, when Samantha expressed their gratitude for all she’d done. “My family has served that land for generations. It’s in my blood in a way.”

  “Tell me,” said Samantha.

  Penny smiled, seemed pleased that she was interested.

  “Well, Merle House as you see it now has only been there since the 1980s. But there was another house on its footprint for generations,” said Penny. “Not as grand, but a mansion by standards of the day. Justice Merle restored it, updated it, and expanded it.”

  Samantha nodded, having just read as much, and sipped at her latte. Would she mention Havenwood and the evil Dr. Arkmann?

  “The men in my family have served as groundskeepers, the women as maids, cooks, and housekeepers,” Penny went on. “Of course, my girls went off to college, and they don’t want anything to do with this old town, or Merle House. And Mason Brandt, my cousin’s son and Matthew’s old friend, well, he won’t be back here. So, after Pete, I’m not sure who will keep the grounds.”

  Penny was easy, casual, as if of course Samantha should know all this, that everyone did. Matthew had never said anything about another house, about Penny’s family serving the Merle family for generations, about Amelia March, about Havenwood. In fact, he’d barely talked about Merle House except in the most passing mentions until they inherited. Her husband. He was so very good at hiding things he himself would prefer to forget.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to ask about Havenwood. But she swallowed it back; she didn’t need a deluge of rumor and hearsay. And what else could the woman possibly have to offer on the subject?

  “So, Penny,” said Samantha. “We’re having some guests, and the bigger project of cleaning, organizing the place—it’s a bit too much for me alone. Matthew’s not the biggest help. Would you be willing to come on for a few weeks, at least, for just a couple hours a day? Maybe longer?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Merle,” she said, with a deferential nod. “I’d be happy to.”

  “Please, call me Sam.”

  They settled on money quickly, Samantha offering what she thought they could afford, and Penny agreeing, even though it wasn’t much.

  “First thing tomorrow, then, Sam?”

  “Perfect.”

  After Penny had left, Samantha sat a moment, puzzling over what she’d read, the things the woman had said. She made a grocery list, wondering about the strange gathering of guests that were coming to the house—why? Because of Avery March’s missing sister? No, something more than that. And whose idea had it been? Hers? Avery’s? Matthew’s? No. Then she had a silly thought, one that she quickly quashed.

  It is Merle House who wants everyone to come back. And we are all just doing what it wants.

  Stop it. All this talk about old houses and haunted lands had her losing it.

  She knew better than anyone that the really scary things were often right out in the open. Sometimes sleeping right beside you.

  She was gathering up her things when her phone pinged with a text from Matthew.

  Hey, it read. Is Jewel with you?

  3.

  Matthew watched as Samantha tore up the drive in the Jeep and came to a skidding stop in front of the house. She climbed out of the car and came to stand before him.

  “Did you find her?” she asked, breathless.

  “No,” he said. “Her stuff is gone. Her bag, her phone. I’ve been calling her. It just goes straight to voice mail.”

  Samantha gave him a look he couldn’t read and stormed past him, jogging up the steps. He followed her through the house, up to Jewel’s room.

  He was worried, but he wasn’t panicking. The fact was that Jewel had done this before—sneaked out, gone off with friends, once with a boy, without telling them. It was an act of temper, of defiance, and she was plenty angry, especially at him, at their new life. It was like her to do something like this.

  Samantha wouldn’t think so. But Matthew knew Jewel in a way that Samantha didn’t, couldn’t. He knew Jewel because they were just alike. It was the main reason that they didn’t get along. She would do things just to hurt him, just to scare him. That kind of behavior wasn’t in Samantha’s DNA, so she didn’t recognize it in her daughter.

  “She’s done this before,” he said, standing at the door, while Samantha sat at Jewel’s desk, flipping through papers, her sketchbook, then picked up her iPad.

  “What is this?” she asked, her voice taut with concern.

  He came to stand behind her. Open on the screen was some kind of online Ouija board. Spelled out across the top was the word basement. Something cold moved through Matthew.

  “It’s just some stupid online thing,” he said with a dismissiveness he didn’t feel.

  He hadn’t been down into the deepest recesses of the basement since they’d returned. In fact, he hadn’t been down there since that game of hide-and-seek—so many years ago now.

  He stared at the iPad. What had Jewel been playing with online? Had she gone into the basement? A kind of frightened paralysis took hold.

  Samantha took her own phone out, dialed, and put it on speaker.

  “Leave a message. I might even get back to you.” Jewel’s too-cool recorded message was tinny over the phone speaker.

  “Jewel, call me immediately when you get this message.”

  It was Samantha’s no-bullshit tone. Ignore it at your peril.

  Then she tapped on the screen of her phone.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. He felt like he was standing in poured concrete that was solidifying around his feet. Fear shut him down, made him stupid. He sank onto Jewel’s bed. He was sixteen again, clueless and afraid. Maybe he’d always been sixteen, had never grown up at all.

  “I downloaded that tracking app on my phone,” said Samantha. “I can see where her phone is. I can access its camera and its mike.”

  Spyware? That was a step beyond even what
he had, the app that let him see all her texts and social media activity. He wouldn’t have thought his wife had it in her.

  She waited a beat, then: “I can see where yours is too.”

  He stared at her. Her face was still and pale, all the glow, all the laughter and love that always lit up her skin and her eyes gone.

  “I know where you were that night,” she said. “The night I told the police you were with me.”

  “Sam.”

  “Shut up, Matthew,” she said so sharply it startled him. Those were not words she said often. “Just shut the fuck up and help me find our daughter.”

  She held up the phone, and his heart stuttered.

  The pulsing blue dot was deep in the woods behind Merle House. She was at Havenwood.

  Samantha accessed the camera. They both leaned in over the tiny screen, but there was only a kind of jerking darkness. Then the mike. At first it just sounded like static. Then, as they listened, they heard quick, light footsteps. A labored breathing, the rushing sound of wind.

  “Can you talk to her on it?” asked Matthew.

  Samantha just shook her head. “Let’s go. Do you know how to get out there?”

  Of course he did. He just nodded.

  The doorbell rang then, sending deep alto chimes echoing through the whole house. Samantha was already on her way down the stairs before he even got up from the bed. On the landing he heard voices.

  When he got to the foyer, there was a man and a woman standing with Samantha. It took him a second to register who it was.

  His old friend Ian—and behind him Claire. They’d come. He almost couldn’t believe it.

  Ian was thinner, paler, than when Matthew last saw him. Grief had aged him, drawn his face narrow, hollow, grayed his hair. Claire was the same wild beauty, her red hair gone auburn, but there was a new fragility to her. It took a second for him to register the scarring on her neck and jaw, the swelling of one side of her face, the guarded way she held herself.