Home Before Dark: A Novel (17 page)

I didn’t sleep all night. As the minutes ticked by, accumulating into hours, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if, when, how someone could get inside. The night was full of noises, all of them innocent. Yet that didn’t keep me from thinking each one was the intruder returning for another round. I thought about the stone wall and wrought-iron gate at the end of the driveway and how I had once scoffed at their existence. Now I wished they were higher.

By the time the darkness of night had started to soften into dawn, my thoughts turned to something else.

Thud.

There it was.

I looked at the clock: 4:54 a.m. Right on schedule.

Abandoning the notion of getting any sleep, I slipped out of bed—quietly, so as not to wake Jess and Maggie, who had spent another night with us. I crept downstairs and was immediately greeted by the site of the chandelier at full glow, a fact that seemed
impossible. I’d made a point of making sure it was off before going to bed the night before.

Fearing an intruder had once again been inside the house, I hurried to the front door. The thread remained taut across it. The chalk line on the floor was undisturbed. The bit of index card was still wedged between door and frame.

Secure in the knowledge the door hadn’t been breached, I went down to the kitchen, made a pot of extra-strong coffee, and poured it into a mug roughly the size of a soup bowl. After taking a few eye-opening gulps, I returned to the rest of the house and methodically checked all the windows. They were the same as the door—completely undisturbed.

No one was there.

No one but us chickens.

My grandmother had used that phrase, back when I was a boy and my cousins would play hide-and-seek in the hulking barn behind her house. Because I was the youngest and smallest, it was Gram who’d hide with me, pulling me into her arms and shrinking her surprisingly spry body behind hay bales or in dark cubbyholes that always smelled of leather and motor oil. When one of my cousins came looking, calling out to see if anyone was there, Gram would always reply, “No one but us chickens!”

Security check complete, I returned to the kitchen and grabbed my coffee mug. As I took a sip, I noticed white dust sprinkling the tabletop. Sitting among it were small chunks of gray rubble.

Then I felt it.

Something inside the mug.

Small and whip thin.

It lashed against my upper lip before scraping my front teeth, slimy and foul-tasting.

I jerked the mug away from my mouth. The coffee I hadn’t been able to swallow streamed down my chin. The liquid I did swallow came back up in a gurgling, choking cough.

I peered into the mug. A circular ripple spread across the coffee’s surface and splashed against the mug’s rim. I tilted the mug, and the thing inside breached the surface—a slick shimmer of gray rising and falling in the mud-brown liquid.

I dropped the mug and backed away from the table as coffee rushed across its surface. Riding the wave, like some small sea serpent washing ashore, was a baby snake.

It squirmed along the table, tracing a sinuous path through the spilled coffee. I stared at it, dumbfounded and disgusted. My stomach roiled so much I had to clamp a hand over my mouth.

Looking up, I saw a hole in the ceiling’s plaster that was roughly the size of a shot glass. Two more baby snakes slipped through it and fell onto the table. Their landing sounded like two fat raindrops hitting a windshield.

I scrambled to find something to contain them. A bowl. Tupperware. Anything. I was rooting through a cupboard, my back turned to the table, when something else landed with a sickening splat.

I turned around slowly, dreading to see what I already knew I’d find there.

A fourth snake.

Not a baby.

Fully grown and more than a foot long, it had landed on its back, exposing a belly as red as baneberries. It flipped over, and I saw twin stripes the color of rust running down its back, just like the snake I’d found in the Indigo Room the day we moved in.

This bigger snake slithered past the babies and went straight to
the upturned coffee mug, trying to coil itself inside. It hissed. In anger or fear, I couldn’t tell.

I was still staring at it, paralyzed with horror, when two more baby snakes rained down onto the table.

I looked to the hole in the ceiling, where a seventh snake—another adult—was winnowing its way out, headfirst. It tried to reverse course by bending its body back toward the ceiling, which only hastened its slide from the hole.

When it landed—another splat, like a water balloon hitting its target—the table shimmied. Flecks of plaster from the ceiling fluttered like confetti. By then, most of the baby snakes had dropped off the table’s edge and were slithering in all directions. One came right toward me, prompting me to scramble onto the counter.

Above, a mighty tearing sound emanated from the ceiling. Cracks spread across its surface, zigzagging like lightning bolts. Standing on the counter, I threw myself against the row of cupboards as a massive chunk of ceiling smashed onto the table.

A rolling cloud of dust filled the kitchen. I closed my eyes and again covered my mouth, blocking the scream that had formed in my throat. The wave of dust hit me. It was gritty, like sand. Small granules stuck to my skin and coated my hair.

When I opened my eyes again, the dust was still settling, revealing the damage in gut-tightening increments. The rectangular hole in the ceiling. The matching chunk on the table, now broken into several smaller pieces.

And more snakes.

A dozen. Maybe more.

They had landed as a single unit—a writhing, hissing knot of snakes so big I worried the table would collapse under their weight. Within seconds, they were untangled and oozing outward.

Across the table.

Onto the floor.

A few more stragglers dropped from the ceiling, sending up their own individual puffs of dust.

The scream I’d been withholding finally broke free and echoed through the kitchen.

I screamed for Jess.

I screamed for help.

I screamed sounds I didn’t know I was capable of just because there was no other way to express my panic and revulsion and fear.

When they died down—settling as surely as the ceiling dust—I realized no amount of screaming could help in this situation. I had to jump down from the counter and run. There was no other choice.

Letting out another scream, I jumped. My bare feet hitting the floor sent the snakes around me rearing up. One struck at me. Its fangs snagged the hem of my pajama bottoms, got caught in the fabric, tugged until it was freed.

Another went for my right foot. I sprang away just in time, missing its bite, only to have a third snake aim for my left foot. It also missed.

I crossed the kitchen that way, jackrabbiting over the floor. At one point I stepped on a snake when I landed. A baby. Its body wriggling sickeningly against the bottom of my foot.

Then I was at the steps, on my way up at the same moment Jess and Maggie were coming down. They’d heard my screams and came running.

I wished they hadn’t.

Because it meant that they, too, caught a glimpse of the horror in the kitchen.

Maggie screamed when she saw the snakes, making sounds
similar to my own. Jess let out a horrified gurgle. I thought she was going to be sick, so I took her arm and dragged her up the stairs before she had the chance. I used my other hand to grab Maggie, who’d been standing a few steps behind her.

Together, we climbed the steps and ran through the dining room. Jess and Maggie waited on the front porch while I went to the master bedroom to fetch my keys, wallet, and a pair of sneakers.

Then the three of us fled the house, not knowing where we were going but knowing we couldn’t stay inside.

Two weeks later, we did the same thing.

That time, though, we didn’t return.

It’s the dead of night and I’m in bed, not quite asleep but not quite awake.

My father had a phrase for that.

In the gray.

That netherworld between deep sleep and full wakefulness.

So I’m in the gray.

Or at least I think I am.

I might be dreaming, because in that fuzzy grayness I hear the armoire doors crack open.

I open my eyes, lift my head from the pillow, look to the armoire towering against the wall opposite the bed.

The doors are indeed open. Just an inch. A dark slit through which I can see into the armoire itself.

Inside is a man.

Staring.

Eyes unblinking.

Lips flat.

Mister Shadow.

This isn’t real.
I repeat it in my head like a chant.
This isn’t real. This isn’t real.

But Mister Shadow is still there, lurking inside. Not moving. Just staring.

Then the armoire doors open and he’s suddenly by the bed, leaning over me, gripping my arms and hissing, “You’re going to die here.”

My eyes snap open—for real this time. I sit up in bed, a terrified yelp leaping from my throat. I cast a panicked glance toward the armoire. Its doors are shut. There’s no Mister Shadow. It was all just a dream.

No, not a dream.

A night terror.

One that stays with me as I get out of bed and tiptoe to the armoire. Even though I know I’m being paranoid and ridiculous, I press my ear to one of the doors, listening for a hint of noise from within.

There’s nothing inside.

I know that.

To think otherwise would make me just as gullible as Wendy Davenport and any of the other people who believe the Book.

Yet fear tightens my chest as I tug the doors open just a crack. I tell myself it’s vigilance that makes me peer inside. Someone broke into the house last night, and it makes sense to make sure whoever it was hasn’t come back.

But I know the score.

I’m looking for Mister Shadow.

Inside the armoire, I see nothing but the dresses that still hang there, draped in darkness. They brighten once I throw the doors completely open, allowing them to be hit with the gray light coming through the bedroom windows.

The armoire is empty. Of course it is.

Even so, the nightmare lingers. Enough for me to decide to start my day, even though it’s barely dawn. In the shower, each groan of the
creaky pipes seems to signal Mister Shadow’s approach. Every time I close my eyes against the spray of water, I expect to open them and find him here.

What bothers me so much about the nightmare is that it didn’t seem like one. It had the feel of something experienced. Something real.

A memory.

Just like the one I had of me and my father painting in the kitchen.

But it can’t be.

I can’t remember something that never happened.

Which means it’s the Book I’m remembering. A sound theory, if my father hadn’t written it in first person. The reader sees everything only through his eyes, and I’ve read
House of Horrors
too many times to know my father never wrote such a scene.

I survive the shower unscathed, of course, and make my way downstairs. The slip of paper is still jammed in the front door. It’s the same with all the windows.

Nothing has been disturbed.

I’m all alone.

No one here but us chickens.

When Dane arrives at eight, I’m already on my third cup of coffee and twitchy from the caffeine. And suspicious. Deep down, I know Dane had no role in last night’s events. Yet seeing him enter Baneberry Hall without my having unlocked the gate or the front door reminds me of the section of missing wall and the cottage just beyond it. There’s also the record player to consider. No one else knew we had found it yesterday. Only me and Dane, who insisted on dragging it to the desk.

“Which cottage is yours?” I ask him. “The yellow one or the brown one?”

“Brown.”

Which means the one I saw last night belongs to the Ditmers. Dane’s sits on the other side of the road.

“Now I have a question,” he says, eyeing the coffee mug in my hand. “Is there more of that, and can I have it?”

“There’s half a pot with your name on it.”

When we go down to the kitchen, I pour a giant mug and hand it to Dane.

He takes a sip and says, “Why did you ask about my cottage? Were you planning on paying me a visit?”

I note the flirtation in his voice. It’s impossible to miss. This time, unlike on the night of my arrival, it’s not entirely surprising. Or unwanted. But his timing could definitely be better. I have more pressing issues.

“Someone broke in last night,” I say.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

I relay the events of last night, sparing no detail. He hears it all—the bell, the music, the missing bear, me shouting at whoever it was as they fled through the woods.

“And you thought it was me?” he says.

“Of course not,” I say, massaging the truth so as not to offend him. “I was just wondering if you saw anything suspicious last night.”

“Nothing. Have you asked Hannah if she did?”

“Haven’t had the chance. But do you know about the breach in the wall? There’s a spot where it’s crumbled away.”

“That’s been there for decades, I think. I wrote to your father last year asking if he wanted me to repair it, but he never got back to me.”

That’s because he was enduring aggressive rounds of chemotherapy, even though none of us had much hope it would help things. It was just a stalling tactic. A way to stretch out my father’s life by a few more months.

“Well, someone used it to get on the property,” I say. “They snuck into the house, although I don’t know how.”

Dane grabs a chair and sits down backward, his legs straddling
the chair back. “Are you certain of that? The bear could have simply fallen behind the desk. We piled quite a bit of stuff on there.”

“That doesn’t explain the record player. It couldn’t have turned on by itself.”

“Not unless there’s something funky going on with the wiring. Have you noticed anything else weird?”

“Yes,” I say, recalling the night of my arrival. “The light switch in the Indigo Room doesn’t work. Not to mention the chandelier being on when I got home yesterday.”

“How about down here?” Dane looks to the kitchen ceiling and studies the light fixture, a chunky rectangle of smoked glass and gold trim that, like the rest of the kitchen, reeks of the eighties. His gaze soon moves to the bulging, stained swath of ceiling situated directly over the table.

“Looks like water damage,” he says.

“I’ve already added it to the very long list of things that need to be done to this kitchen.”

Dane climbs onto the table and stands beneath the bulge, trying to get a closer look.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking to see if the ceiling is compromised,” he says. “You may need to fix this sooner rather than later.”

He pokes the bulge with an index finger. Then, using his whole hand, he pushes on it. Seeing the ceiling give way slightly under his fingers unlocks another memory I know only from the Book. My stomach clenches as I picture the plaster opening up and snakes pouring out.

“Dane, don’t.” My voice is more anxious than I want it to be. “Just leave it alone for now.”

“This plaster is weak as hell,” he says as he keeps pushing. The ceiling expands and contracts slightly—like the rise and fall of a sleeping man’s chest.

It’s snakes
, says the whispering voice I heard yesterday. My father’s voice.
You know they’re there, Maggie.

If there are snakes coiled inside that ceiling, I want to pretend they’re not there, just like my parents pretended the Book didn’t tear our family apart.

“Dane, I’m serious,” I say, angry now. “Stop doing that.”

“I’m just—”

Dane’s hand bursts through the ceiling, punching into the plaster all the way up to his wrist. He curses and yanks away his fist.

The ceiling quivers as small chunks of plaster rain down around him.

The seams of the patch job darken, growing more pronounced. Puffs of plaster dust pop from newly formed crevices and spiral to the table.

A small groan follows.

The sound of the ceiling giving way.

Then it falls.

A rectangular section drops away like a trapdoor. It swings toward Dane, who tries to twist out of its path. The ceiling hits him anyway, knocking him over.

He lands hard and scoots backward, narrowly missing the swath of plaster as it fully rips away from the ceiling and breaks apart against the tabletop. Dust blooms from the rubble—a foul-smelling cloud that rolls through the kitchen.

I close my eyes and press against the kitchen counter, my hands gripping the edge, bracing for the snakes I’m certain will start raining down at any moment.

I’m not surprised when something drops from the ceiling.

I’ve been expecting it.

I don’t even flinch when I hear it land on the table with a muffled thud.

When the dust clears, Dane and I both open our eyes to see a formless blob sitting on the table like a centerpiece.

Dane blinks in disbelief. “What. The. Fuck.”

He jumps down from the table and backs away. I do the opposite, moving toward it.

It’s a sack. Burlap, I think. Or maybe canvas. The dust covering it makes it hard to tell. I poke it with an index finger, and whatever’s inside shifts, creating a sound I can only equate to Scrabble tiles inside their fabric pouch.

“Maybe it’s hidden treasure,” Dane says, his voice dazed so that I can’t tell if he’s being silly or serious.

Saying nothing, I lift the sack and tilt it. What’s inside pours out in a dusty stream and lands on the table in a dull-gray heap.

They’re bones.

Human ones.

I know because sliding out of the sack last is a skull, which rolls atop the pile. Leathery scraps of tissue cling to the bone, out of which sprout wiry strands of hair. Its eye sockets resemble twin black holes.

Transfixed and terrified, I stare into them, knowing deep down—in a place where only my darkest thoughts and fears reside—that this is why my family left Baneberry Hall.