Райли Сейгер - Home Before Dark - A Novel

Only it wasn’t a rock.

Its shape was too orderly to be caused by nature.

It was, to my complete and utter shock, a gravestone.

I dropped to my knees in front of it and brushed away decades of dirt. A familiar name appeared, the soil in the carved letters making them stand in stark contrast to the pale marble.

WILLIAM GARSON

Beloved father

1843–1912

Six

After seeing that person outside, it took two hours and one Valium before I was calm enough to get back in bed, let alone fall asleep. Even then, a night terror invaded my slumber. Me, in bed, the figure in the forest now suddenly hovering over me, its back against the ceiling.

I woke up gasping, my skin covered in a thin sheen of sweat that glistened in the moonlight coming through the window. I took a second Valium. It did the trick.

Now it’s six in the morning, and even though all I’d like to do is stay in bed, I can’t. There’s work to be done.

Since there’s no coffee in the house, I use a cold shower as a poor substitute for caffeine. I emerge wide awake, but in a sore and sorry way. It feels as though I’ve just been slapped, my skin pink and pulsing. When I glance in the bathroom mirror, I see how it makes my scar stand out in in the faint light of dawn. A small slash of white on my otherwise rosy cheek. I touch it, the skin surrounding it puffy and tender from lack of sleep.

For breakfast, I have a protein bar—literally the only food I thought to bring along—washed down with another mug of horrid tea and a vow to get to the grocery store by the end of the day.

I check my phone as I eat, seeing a text from my mother. Its tone and subject matter tell me she’s heard my voicemail.

So disappointed. Don’t stay there. Please

My response is a master class in maturity.

Try and stop me

I hit send and go upstairs to roam the Indigo Room and parlor, looking for the letter opener I’m certain I misplaced last night during the unexpected drama with Elsa Ditmer and her daughter. It is the only explanation. Letter openers don’t just vanish by themselves. But after several minutes of fruitless searching, I give up.

I tell myself it’s here somewhere, likely buried under years of junk mail. It’ll turn up at some point. And if it doesn’t, so be it.

By seven, I’m outside and unloading my pickup truck before Dane arrives, even though it’d be easier with his help. I do it myself because, one, I’m already here and don’t feel like wasting time and, two, I want him to see that I can do it myself. That he’s here to assist, not carry most of the load.

When Dane arrives promptly at eight, half the truck has been emptied and equipment litters the front lawn. He eyes the drill case sitting next to the ladder, which leans against the tile saw. I think he’s impressed.

He helps me finish unloading the truck as I go over the plan. Clear the house, keeping anything that might be worth saving and throwing out the rest. We’ll start at the top, in my father’s old study, and work our way down, room by room. I still don’t know what I’m going to do with it all. I need more time in the house before I can come up with a proper design. But already I’m leaning toward taking a cue from what’s already here. Rich woods, ornate patterns, jewel tones. If I had to put a label on it, I’d call it Victorian glamour.

With the truck unloaded, we grab some empty cardboard boxes and head inside. The house feels larger in the morning light. Warmer and brighter. Most people, if they didn’t know its history, would describe the place as homey. But the past hangs heavy over Baneberry Hall. Enough for me to feel a chill when we pass a back window and I see the spot where last night’s trespasser had been standing.

“You have a key to the gate, right?” I ask Dane as we climb the steps to the third floor.

“I wouldn’t be a good caretaker if I didn’t.”

“You didn’t happen to be strolling around the grounds last night? Around eleven?”

“At that hour, I was asleep in front of the Red Sox game. Why?”

“I saw someone in the woods. A few feet from the backyard.”

Dane turns around on the steps to give me a concerned look. “Did they do anything?”

“As far as I know, they just stood there looking at the house before disappearing in the woods.”

“It was probably a ghoul,” Dane says.

“I guess that term isn’t just cop talk.”

“We all call them that. They’re mostly local kids. I’ve heard they like to dare each other to sneak onto the property and get close to the infamous House of Horrors. They’re harmless. But you might want to stop making it easy for them. The front gate was wide open this morning. That’s like sending them an invitation to trespass.”

Dane’s mansplaining aside, I know he’s right. I’d forgotten about the gate last night. My lesson learned, I don’t plan on doing it again.

“Duly noted,” I say as I open the door to the study. It’s hot inside, even though it’s not even nine and the sun is still rising behind the woods out back. It’s also dusty. Huge particles of it swirl around us as we enter, practically glowing in the light shining through the circular windows.

Dane looks around the room, impressed. “This is a great space. What do you plan on doing with it?”

“I was thinking guest bedroom,” I say. “Or maybe an in-law suite.”

“You’d need to put in a bathroom.”

I grimace, because he’s right. “Plumbing will be a bitch.”

“So will the cost,” Dane says. “I know this sounds crazy, but if you wanted to, you could get rid of the floor—”

“And make the room below a master suite with cathedral ceilings—”

“And a skylight!”

We stop talking, both of us slightly out of breath. We speak the same language. Good to know.

Dane zeroes in on the bookshelves along the wall. I go to my father’s desk, getting uncomfortable flashbacks to when Allie and I emptied my father’s apartment a week after his death. It was rough. The entire place smelled like him—a soothing combo of wool, aftershave, and old books. Every item dropped into a cardboard box felt as though a part of his existence was being locked away where no one could see it. Every tattered cardigan. Each worn-edged book. I was erasing my father piece by piece, and it gutted me.

Worse still was finding a box of manuscripts in his office closet, sitting with his old typewriter and a set of rarely used golf clubs. It turned out he had written five books after House of Horrors . All of them fiction. All unpublished. One included a letter from his longtime agent, saying no one wanted anything other than another ghost story.

Now I open the top drawer of my father’s desk slowly, steeling myself for similar signs of his failure. There’s nothing in it but pens, paper clips, and a magnifying glass.

The next drawer, though, holds a surprise.

A copy of the Book.

I pick it up and blow dust from the cover. It’s a hardcover. First edition. I can tell because it’s the only one not to feature the words all writers dream of having on their book jacket: New York Times bestseller. Every edition after this one wore them like a badge of honor.

The cover is a good one, which many say attributed to the Book’s initial success. It’s an illustration of Baneberry Hall as seen from an angle not attainable in real life. A bird’s-eye view of a tall, crooked house on a hill. There’s a light on in the third floor—the very same floor in which Dane and I now stand—the greenish glow seeping through the round windows, making it look like Baneberry Hall is watching you. The forest encroaches on the house from all directions, the trees bending toward it, as if waiting to do its bidding.