Райли Сейгер - Home Before Dark - A Novel

The images of Curtis were so similar that I needed to look at the dates scribbled below them to indicate which ones I hadn’t already seen. July 12th. That was one was new. As were pictures from July 13th and 14th.

The last Polaroid sat facedown at the bottom of the box. Flipping it over, I saw that, like the others, the date it had been taken had been written across the bottom of the photo.

July 15th.

A year to the day since Curtis Carver killed himself.

My gaze moved from the date to the image itself. At first, it looked like the others. But a second glance revealed something different from the rest of the photos. Something deeply, deeply wrong.

Someone else was in the room with Carver.

A dark figure tucked into a far corner of the study.

Although Maggie had called her Miss Pennyface, I knew her by another name.

Indigo Garson.

She looked exactly like the woman in the portrait. Same purple dress and ethereal glow. The only difference between her painting and her ghost was her eyes.

They were covered by coins.

Yet it was clear she could still see. In the photograph, she stared at the back of Curtis Carver’s head, almost as if she could read his thoughts.

I was still studying the picture when a presence entered the room, invisible yet palpably felt.

“Curtis, is that you?”

I received no response.

Yet the presence increased, filling the room with a heat so strong it was almost suffocating. Inside that menacing warmth was something even more disturbing.

Anger.

It burned through the room like fire.

I grabbed the camera from the desk and took a self-portrait similar to the ones Curtis had taken.

The shutter clicked.

The camera hummed.

A picture slid out, its pristine whiteness slowly giving way to an image.

Me.

Arms extended. Staring at the camera. Expanse of study behind me.

Also behind me was Indigo Garson, edging into the frame. I saw a slender arm, the curve of her shoulder, stringy strands of blond hair.

She was there.

And she was waiting.

Not for me.

For Maggie.

“Keep waiting, bitch,” I said aloud.

I raised the camera and took another picture.

Click.

Hum.

Slide.

In that photo, Indigo had moved to the other side of the study. She pressed against the wall, slightly hunched, her coin-covered eyes peering at me through a veil of hair. Her lips were twisted into a grin so sinister it turned my blood cold.

The only thing that kept me from fleeing the house was the knowledge that she didn’t want to hurt me. Not yet, even though that moment would surely arrive. But for the time being, she needed me to get to Maggie.

Convinced I was out of harm’s way for the short term, I moved to the closet, grabbed all the packages of film sitting inside, and carried them back to the desk.

I remained there as the pale light of morning changed to the golden sun of afternoon. Every so often, I’d take another picture, just to keep track of Indigo’s whereabouts in the room. Sometimes she was in a far corner, facing the wall. Other times she was just a sliver of purple on the edge of the frame. In a few photos, she wasn’t visible at all.

But I knew she was still there.

I felt the angry heat of her presence.

I continued to feel it until the daylight outside the office widows had given way to the lonesome blues of twilight. That’s when Indigo suddenly vanished—an instant cooling.

I grabbed the camera and took another picture.

Click.

Hum.

Slide.

I snatched the Polaroid from the camera and held it in front of me, watching the image take shape.

It was just like all the others—me and a woman standing in the background.

Only this time it wasn’t Indigo.

It was Jess. Standing just inside the study. Every muscle in her body tensed. Confusion streaking across her features like lightning.

I turned around slowly, hoping she was just an imagining brought about by hunger, thirst, and a need for sleep. But then Jess spoke—“Ewan? What are you doing up here?”—and my heart sank.

It meant she was real and that Indigo’s patience had paid off.

Maggie had come home.

Twenty-Three

Dane takes a step into the study. I take a step back, pressing against the edge of the desk.

“It’s not what you think,” he says.

I hold up the Polaroid. “You knew her.”

“I did,” Dane says. “I was living with my grandparents that summer. My parents thought it would do me some good. I was seventeen and a fuckup and needed to get away from them for a while. So I came here.”

“And met Petra. You’re the reason she snuck out at night.”

A nod from Dane. “We’d meet in the woods behind your house and mess around. It wasn’t anything serious. Just a summer fling.”

He’s moved farther into the room while talking, hoping I won’t notice. I do.

“If it wasn’t serious, why did you kill her?”

“I didn’t,” Dane says. “You have to believe me, Maggie.”

That’s not going to happen. Especially when I recall the way we’d found Petra. Dane pushing on the stained ceiling, testing it. Pushing and pushing until it gave way, which—I now suspect—was exactly what he wanted to happen. I think he knew Petra’s remains would be discovered at some point during the renovation and decided it would look better if he was the one to find them. That way all suspicion would shift to my father.

Dane edges forward again until mere feet separate us.

“Take one more step and I’m calling the police,” I warn.

“You can’t do that, Maggie,” he says. “That’ll send me instantly back to jail. No one will believe me. They’ll just see an ex-con who almost killed a man. I won’t stand a chance.”

“Maybe you don’t deserve one.”

Dane swoops in close. I try to yank my phone from my pocket, but he slaps it out of my hands. It hits the wall and drops to the floor several yards away.

He grips my shoulders, shaking me. “Listen to me, Maggie. You need to pretend you never found out about me and Petra.”

He stares at me with a mean scowl and even meaner eyes. There’s anger in them. A darkness that makes me wonder if it’s the last thing Petra ever saw. I look away, spot the knife I brought with me still on the desk, and reach for it.

Dane sees it, too, and lunges for it.

That’s when I run.

It starts with a push off the desk, followed by a quick arc around Dane. When he comes at me, I shove him in the chest.

Hard.

He lurches backward into one of the bookshelves, his arms flailing, loose books tumbling around him.

I run.

Down the steps.

Into the second-floor hallway, where I can hear Dane coming after me, his footfalls fast and heavy down the stairs from the third floor.

I keep moving. Breath hard. Heart hammering.

I hit the main staircase at a full run, pounding down it, trying to ignore the sound of Dane barreling across the hallway behind me. And how fast he’s moving. And how he’s surely gaining on me.

He’s also at the stairs now. I hear his boots slam the top step and feel the shimmy of the staircase as he thunders after me.

I up my speed, my eyes on the vestibule and, just beyond it, the front door. In the slice of time it takes to move down the last two steps, I try to gauge if I can make it to that door before Dane catches up to me.

I decide I can’t.

Even if I can get through that door—which is debatable—I’ll still need to elude Dane’s grasp long enough to get off the porch and into my truck.

That’s not enough time. Not with the way he’s storming up behind me.

I change tactics. A split-second decision that, at the bottom of the stairs, jerks me away from the vestibule and into the parlor.