Райли Сейгер - Home Before Dark - A Novel

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” Dane says.

“It can’t. I need your help. Please. I can’t do it alone.”

“Fine,” Dane says with an epic sigh. “I’ll be there in ten.”

“Thank you.”

Dane doesn’t hear that part. He’s already ended the call.

I shove my phone into my pocket and prepare for the job ahead. The plan is simple—block off the secret passage to the bedroom, gather up my things, and leave Baneberry Hall.

This time, I won’t be returning.

Once I’m back in Boston, I’ll list the house and sell it as is for whatever offer I get, no matter how small it might be. I no longer want anything to do with this place. Nor do I want the truth about what happened here.

I just want to be gone.

It’s not safe here. Not for me.

In the dining room, I gather the five Polaroids on the table and my father’s copy of the Book, still splayed spine-up on the floor. They’ll be going right back where I found them. Soon to be someone else’s problem.

My hands full, I march to the third-floor study and go straight to the desk, where I drop the Book and the photos. I then grab Buster and toss him into the closet where he’d first been discovered.

Much like Baneberry Hall, I never want to see that bear again.

I turn back to the desk, where the Book sits open.

It was closed when I dropped it there.

I’m certain of it.

Yet there it is, flopped open, as if someone has just been reading it.

I approach the Book slowly, considering all the ways it could have opened on its own. I can’t think of any. At least nothing that doesn’t border on the supernatural. Or, to borrow a term from Dane’s grandmother, the uncanny.

Bullshit , I think.

I then say it aloud, hoping that uttering the word will make it true.

“Bullshit.”

But it isn’t. I know that the moment I see the page the Book is open to. It’s the chapter that takes place on the Fourth of July. The day the kitchen ceiling was patched. I scan the page, one passage in particular leaping out at me.

Now it was time to patch the formidable hole in the ceiling. For that, I enlisted Hibbs, who brought a boy from town to help because the task was too big for just him alone.

My heart beats faster as I read it again and let the full weight of the words sink in.

A boy from town.

Who was in this house the same time as Petra.

Who likely knew her.

Who could have been her boyfriend. Or something.

Who might have persuaded her to sneak out her bedroom window.

Who might have suggested they run away together and became violent when Petra got second thoughts.

Who then broke into Baneberry Hall and dumped her body under the floorboards because he knew there was a hiding place there.

A boy, I realize, who’s in one of the Polaroids my father took.

I snatch the photo off the desk. When I first saw it, I’d thought it was my father standing behind Walt Hibbets and his ladder. I should have realized my father was likely behind the camera—and that it was someone else lurking in the back of the image.

I can’t see too many details, even after I bring the picture close to my face and squint. Just a narrow slice of clothing and an even smaller sliver of face poke out beyond the ladder. The only way I can get a bigger, better view is if I had a magnifying glass.

Which I realize with a delighted jolt that I do.

There’s one in the top desk drawer. I saw it there during my first trek into the study. It’s still there now, sitting among pens and paper clips. I grab it and hold it in front of the Polaroid, the mystery man now exponentially larger. I see dark hair, half of a handsome face, a sturdy arm, and a broad chest.

And I see his T-shirt.

Black and emblazoned with an image that’s only half visible.

The Rolling Stones logo.

My mind flashes back to that dingy room at the Two Pines. Dane stepping inside, looking so good that I couldn’t help but stare. When he caught me, I complimented his shirt. I hear his voice loud in my memory.

I’ve had it since I was a teenager.

And I hear his voice now, coming from the study door, where he stands with his arms at his sides and a dour look on his face.

“I can explain,” he says.

JULY 15 Day 20—Before Dark

I woke up on the floor.

Where in the house, I didn’t know.

All I knew when I regained consciousness was that I was somewhere inside Baneberry Hall, flat-backed on the floor, my joints stiff and my head pounding. It wasn’t until I opened my eyes and saw the portrait of Indigo Garson staring down at me that everything came rushing back.

Me in the Indigo Room.

Scraping at the painting.

Seeing the snake in Indigo’s hands.

A snake that, the longer I looked at it, the more unnerved I became. I wanted to believe Indigo’s pose with the snake was one of those Victorian-era eccentricities. Like death masks and taxidermied birds on hats. But my gut told me there was something far more sinister behind it.

That the snake represented Indigo’s true nature.

A predator.

I assumed it was William Garson who’d ordered it painted over. An attempt to hide the truth about his daughter. I suspected he couldn’t bear to paint over the whole portrait. The artist—poor, besotted Callum Auguste—had done too good a job for that. So the rabbit replaced the snake, an ironic reversal not found in nature.

Now the snake was exposed again. With it came grim understanding that I’d been wrong about so much.

It wasn’t William Garson making fathers kill their daughters inside Baneberry Hall.

It was Indigo.

I understood it with icy clarity. Just like the snake in her hands, she slithered her way into the minds of men who lived here, making them obsessed with what happened to her. I didn’t know if she died by her own hand or her father’s. In the end, it didn’t matter. Indigo was dead, but her spirit remained. Now she spent her days seeking vengeance for what her father had done. She didn’t care that he, too, was long gone. To her, every father deserved punishment.

So she made them kill their daughters.

Six times that had happened.

There wasn’t going to be a seventh.

I made my way back to the kitchen slowly, too sore from my night on the floor to move quickly. After hobbling down the steps, I found myself in front of the bells once more.

“Curtis,” I whispered, fearful Indigo was also nearby. Lurking. Listening. “Are you there?”

Three familiar bells rang.

YES

“It was Indigo, wasn’t it? She made you kill Katie.”

Another three rings.

YES

“What can I do?” I said. “How can I stop her? How can I tell if she’s here?”

Five bells rang a total of six times. At the final chime—the first bell on the first row—I realized he had spelled a word new to this weird form of communication.

CAMERA

I knew what he was referring to. The Polaroid camera in the study.

“Thank you, Curtis.” As I whispered it, I realized I was never going to hear from him again. He’d told me everything he could. The rest was up to me. So before leaving the bells, I added a somber, sincere “I hope this frees you from this place. I really do. I hope you find peace.”

With that, I made my way up three sets of stairs, my joints creaking the entire climb. In the third-floor study, I found what I was looking for in the closet.

A blue shoebox full of Polaroids.

I sorted through them, seeking the ones I’d neglected to look at the day I discovered the box. Photo after photo of Curtis Carver’s increasingly haunted face. I wondered if, when he took them, he felt as helpless as I did. If he was as worried and racked with the same guilt that weighed on me.