Райли Сейгер - Home Before Dark - A Novel

I also feel fortunate that, after my sudden exit from the Gazette newsroom, Brian Prince hadn’t decided to follow me. He would have stumbled upon another massive story if he had.

Marta Carver is about to return to Baneberry Hall.

JULY 11 Day 16

After Jess left for work that morning, I convinced Petra Ditmer to babysit Maggie for a few hours. She was reluctant to do so. Understandable, considering what had transpired the last time she was at Baneberry Hall. She agreed only after I doubled her usual sitting fee.

With Petra watching Maggie, I went to the bakery Marta Carver owned downtown. I found her behind the counter, where she plastered on a polite smile and said, “How can I help you, Mr. Holt?”

“I need to talk,” I said.

Marta nodded toward the customer standing behind me. “I’m sorry, but I’m very busy at the moment.”

“It’s important,” I said. “It’s about your time at Baneberry Hall.”

“I really don’t like to talk about that place.”

Her shoulders were slumped, as if she were literally weighed down by grief. I wanted to leave her in peace. She had enough troubles, and I wasn’t eager to add to them. It was only my need to know more about what was happening at Baneberry Hall that kept me talking.

“I’m worried about my daughter,” I said. “She’s experiencing things. Things I’m trying to understand but can’t.”

Marta’s spine suddenly straightened. After another glance at the waiting customer behind me, she whispered, “Meet me in the library in ten minutes.”

I retreated to the library and waited in the reading room. Marta arrived exactly ten minutes later, still in her apron and with a smear of icing on her forearm. A few bits of flour dusted the lenses of her spectacles, making it look as though she’d just run through a snowstorm.

“Tell me more about your daughter,” she said. “What’s she experiencing?”

“She’s seeing things. When you and your family lived in Baneberry Hall, did anyone witness anything strange?”

“Strange how?”

“Unusual occurrences. Unexplained noises.”

“Are you suggesting the house is haunted?”

“Yes.” It was pointless to deny it. That was exactly my suggestion. “I think there are supernatural entities inside Baneberry Hall.”

“No, Mr. Holt,” Marta said. “I never saw anything to suggest there were ghosts in that house.”

“What about Katie and Curtis?”

Marta gave a hard blink at the mention of her family, as if their names were a gust of air she needed to brace against.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “My husband claimed to have heard a tapping in the hallway at night, but I was certain it was just the pipes. It’s an old house, as you well know.”

I assumed it was the same sound I’d been hearing in the hall.

Tap-tap-tap.

I had thought it was the restless spirit of Curtis Carver, but the fact that he also had heard it meant it was something else. Or someone else. Because I still didn’t think the pipes were to blame.

“Back to your daughter,” Marta said. “Is she sick?”

“Physically, no. Mentally, maybe. Was—” I managed to stop myself from saying Katie’s name. From the way Marta had reacted to the first mention, I figured it was best not to do it again. “Was your daughter ill?”

“She had been sick, yes,” Marta said. “Quite a lot. Constant weakness and nausea. We didn’t know what was causing it. We took her to doctor after doctor, hoping one of them would be able to tell us what was wrong. We even went to an oncologist, thinking it might have been some form of cancer.”

Having a sick child and being helpless to do anything about it is a nightmare for any parent. I’d already experienced the slightest hint of it with Maggie and her visit to Dr. Weber. But what Marta described was far worse.

“Every test came back negative,” she said. “Katie was, on paper at least, a perfectly healthy child. The closest thing we got to a potential diagnosis was a doctor’s suggestion that there might have been mold in the house. Something she was allergic to that didn’t affect the rest of us. We arranged to have the house tested. It never happened.”

She said no more, letting me infer the reason for that.

“I understand this is extremely difficult for you to talk about,” I said. “But I was wondering if you could tell me what happened that day.”

“My husband murdered my daughter, then killed himself.” Marta Carver looked me square in the eye as she said it, daring me to turn away.

I didn’t.

“I need to know how it happened,” I gently said.

“I really don’t see how describing the worst day of my life will help you.”

“This isn’t about helping me,” I replied. “It’s about helping my daughter.”

Marta responded with a slight nod. I had convinced her.

Before speaking, she shifted in her chair and placed her palms flat against the table. All emotion left her face. I understood what she was doing—retreating to a safe place while she recounted the destruction of her family.

“I found Curtis first.” Her voice had also changed. It was lifeless, almost cold. Another coping technique. “He was on the third floor. In that room of his. A man cave. That’s what he called it. No girls allowed. I would have considered it ridiculous if Baneberry Hall hadn’t been so big. There was enough space for each of us to have several rooms.

“That morning, I was awakened by a noise coming from Curtis’s man cave. When I saw that his side of the bed was empty, I immediately got worried. I thought he might have fallen and hurt himself. I hurried up the steps to the third floor, not realizing that the life I had known and loved was about to end. But then I saw Curtis on the floor and knew he was dead. There was a trash bag over his head and that belt around his neck, and he wasn’t moving. Not even a little. I think I screamed. I’m not sure. I do remember shouting for Katie to call 911. When she didn’t respond, I ran back down to the second floor, yelling that she needed to get out of bed, that I needed her help, that she couldn’t under any circumstances go up to the third floor.

“I really didn’t think about why she wasn’t responding until I was a few inches from her bedroom door. That’s when it hit me. That she was dead, too. I knew it right before I got to the doorway. And when I did, I saw that it was true. She was lying there, so still. And a pillow—”

Grief cut through her voice like a hatchet. The masklike expression on her face shattered. In its place was a heart-wrenching combination of pain and sorrow and regret.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Holt.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have insisted on it.”

Yet there was one more thing I needed to know. Something I was reluctant to ask about because I knew it would only further Marta’s pain.

“I have one last question.”

“What is it?” Marta replied with understandable exasperation.

“You said you were awakened by a sound from the third floor.”

“Yes. I realized later it was the sound of Curtis’s body hitting the floor. A loud, horrible thud.”

“Do you happen to know what time this was?”

“I looked at the clock when I realized Curtis wasn’t in bed. It was four fifty-four a.m.”

I had already assumed that. Yet it still didn’t prevent the full-body shiver I felt upon hearing it.

Baneberry Hall remembers , Hibbs had said.

And so it did.

It remembered key events and repeated them. What I’d been trying to understand was why. There had to be a reason I heard that dreadful thud upstairs every morning. Just like there was a reason for the ringing of the bells and Maggie’s near-constant visits from the man she knew as Mister Shadow.