Home Before Dark: A Novel (15 page)

Brian makes one last adjustment to his bow tie before getting into his car and driving away. I follow behind him, walking the long, curving road down the hillside to the front gate. Once I’ve made sure he’s gone, I close the gate and lock it.

Then it’s back to the house, where I’m finally able to carry my groceries inside. Burdened with bags heavy in both arms, I get just past the vestibule before noticing something wrong.

It’s bright in here.

Way too bright.

I look to the ceiling and see the chandelier burning at full glow.

But here’s the weird thing: when I left the house, it was dark.

While I was gone, it had somehow been turned on.

Thud
.

Just like three nights before, the sound rattled the house and jerked me from sleep. Turning over, I looked at the digital clock on the nightstand, the numbers glowing green in the predawn darkness: 4:54 a.m.

The exact same time I’d previously heard the noise.

It was unnerving, yes, but also helpful, because it let me know that it hadn’t been a dream. This sound was real, and coming from the third floor.

Despite the ungodly early hour, I slipped out of bed and made my way to the study upstairs. Inside, nothing seemed amiss. The doors to both closets were closed, and the record player was silent.

As for the noise, I had no idea what it was. I suspected the house was responsible. Most likely something to do with the heating system resetting itself at a designated time. Granted, just before five in the morning was an odd time for that, but I saw no other possibilities for what the noise could be.

Rather than go back to bed, I went downstairs before dawn for the second time since we moved in. Once again, the chandelier was lit. I would have continued to think it was the wiring if I hadn’t heard the record player the night before. Clearly, both were the work of my unusually sleepless wife.

When Jess joined me in the kitchen after six, I greeted her by saying, “I never knew you were a
Sound of Music
fan.”

“I’m not,” she said, the second word stretching into a yawn.

“Well, you were last night. I don’t mind you going into the study. Just remember to turn off the record player when you leave.”

My wife gave me a sleepy-eyed look of confusion. “What record player?”

“The one on my desk,” I said. “It was playing last night. I figured you’d had trouble sleeping, went up there, and listened to music.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jess said as she made her way to the coffeepot. “I was asleep all night.”

It was my turn to look confused. “You weren’t in my office at all?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t turn the record player on?”

Jess poured herself a cup of coffee. “If I had, I certainly wouldn’t have picked
The Sound of Music
. Did you ask Maggie? She likes that movie. Maybe she was exploring?”

“At midnight?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Ewan,” Jess said as she sat down at the kitchen table. “Did
you
have it on at some point?”

“I did,” I said. “But that was two days ago. Right before Maggie hurt herself.”

“Did you turn it off?”

I didn’t know. All I could remember was hearing screams in the woods and bumping into the record player before running out of the
study. Between taking Maggie to the emergency room and exploring the cemetery in the woods, I’d never had time to return there until the night before.

“Now that you mention it, I don’t think I did.”

“There you go.” Jess drank heartily from her mug, proud of herself. “You left the player on, and something bumped the needle back onto the record. Then the house was alive with the sound of music.”

“But what could have bumped it?”

“A mouse?” Jess suggested. “Maybe a bat? It’s an old house. I’m sure there’s something scurrying around inside these walls.”

I winced. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

But think about it I did. It was possible that an animal could be living in the study. After all, there had been a snake in the Indigo Room. Although I found it highly unlikely any animal could accidentally play a record.

After breakfast, I returned to the third floor and examined the record player. Everything looked normal. Turned off, record on the turntable, no sign a rodent had been anywhere near it. I bumped the arm, just to see if it could easily be moved by man or mouse.

It couldn’t.

So much for Jess’s theory. That meant the culprit had to be Maggie.

Before leaving, I unplugged the record player. Just in case. Then I made my way to Maggie’s wing, prepared to tell her she needed to ask permission before entering my study. It struck me as the only way to prevent it from happening again.

I found Maggie alone in the playroom next to her room. Only she didn’t act like she was alone. Sitting on the floor with an array of toys in front of her, she appeared to be talking to an imaginary person across from her.

“You can look, but you can’t touch,” she said, echoing
something Jess told her nearly every time we went shopping. “If you want to play, you’ll need to find your own toys.”

“Who are you talking to?” I asked from the doorway. In Burlington, Maggie hadn’t shown any signs of having an imaginary friend. The fact she had one now made me wonder if it wasn’t a by-product of having Elsa Ditmer’s daughters here three days before. Now that she had finally experienced some companionship, maybe Maggie longed for more.

“Just a girl,” she said.

“Is she a new friend of yours?”

Maggie shrugged. “Not really.”

I stepped into the room, focused on the patch of floor where her imaginary not-friend would have been sitting. Even though no one was really there, Maggie had cleared a space for her.

“Does she have a name?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie said. “She can’t talk.”

I joined her on the floor, making sure I didn’t invade the space of her imaginary friend. I still felt guilty about when I’d accused Maggie of lying about the girl in the armoire. She hadn’t been lying. She was pretending.

“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.

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.