Райли Сейгер - Home Before Dark - A Novel

“We need to hurry,” I said. “Run!”

That’s exactly what we did. The three of us ran through the vestibule. Toward the front door. Onto the porch.

The snakes followed, pouring forth from the open front door in a writhing, teeming mass.

Indigo Garson was with them, unseen but definitely felt. White-hot air burned at my back as I guided Jess and Maggie down the porch steps and into the car.

“What about our things?” Jess asked as she climbed into the back seat with Maggie.

“We need to leave them,” I replied. “It’s too dangerous. We can’t ever come back here.”

I started the car and peeled down the driveway. Behind me, Maggie knelt on her seat and stared out the back window.

“She’s still following us!” she cried.

I glanced in the rearview mirror, seeing nothing. “Miss Pennyface?”

“ Yes! She’s right behind us!”

Just then, something rammed into the back of the car. A hard, shocking jolt.

Jess screamed and reached for Maggie. I gripped the steering wheel, trying hard not to run off the road and into the woods, which is exactly what Indigo wanted. I slammed my foot down on the gas pedal and continued to speed down the twisting drive, tires squealing all the way.

The car was hit by another invisible force, this time on the passenger-side door. For a brief moment, I lost control of the car. It skidded onto the grass alongside the drive, perilously close to the trees. It was only through sheer force of will that I was able to right us and continue down the drive.

Jess, thankfully, had left the front gate open when she and Maggie returned, allowing me to drive right through it. As soon as we were off the property, I leaped from the car and slammed the gate shut.

Heat bore down on me as I fumbled with the keys, frantically trying to lock the gate. It burst through the gate’s wrought-iron bars, turning them hot. If hell does exist, I suspect it feels a lot like the angry heat I experienced the moment I turned the key and locked the gate.

That was the moment the vengeful spirit of Indigo Garson realized she had failed.

We’d escaped Baneberry Hall, our family still intact.

And there was nothing she could do to lure us back there.

Others might one day pass through that gate, travel up that winding drive through the woods, and enter Baneberry Hall. If so, I wish them nothing but luck. They’ll need it to survive such a place.

As for me and my family—my sweet Jessica, my beloved Maggie—we have yet to return. Nor do we intend to ever set foot inside that place.

For us, Baneberry Hall is a house of horrors. One that none of us may dare enter again.

Twenty-Four

Half a dozen emergency vehicles sit outside Baneberry Hall, their flashing lights painting the house in alternating shades of red and white. In addition to Chief Alcott’s cruiser, there’s an ambulance, three more police cars, and, just in case things really get out of hand, a fire truck.

I watch from the porch as Dane is loaded into the ambulance. He’s strapped to a stretcher, a brace around his neck. His fall through the floor didn’t do much damage, all things considered. As the EMTs wheeled him out, I heard murmurs of broken bones, maybe a concussion. Whatever happened to him, he was injured enough to allow me to flee the house and call the police.

Now Dane is on his way to the emergency room and then, presumably, jail. He stares at me as the stretcher is pushed into the back of the ambulance, his expression pained, his eyes accusing.

Then the ambulance doors are slammed shut and Dane vanishes from view.

As the ambulance departs, Chief Alcott emerges from the house and joins me at the porch railing.

“Did he confess?” I say.

“Not yet. But he will. Give it time.” The chief removes her hat and runs a hand through her silver hair. “I owe you an apology, Maggie. For saying those things about your father. For thinking he did it.”

I can’t be mad at her for that. I thought the same thing on and off throughout this whole ordeal. If anyone should be ashamed, it’s me.

“We’re both guilty on that front,” I say.

“Then why’d you keep looking?”

I’ve been asking myself that same question for days. The answer, I suspect, lies in something Dr. Weber told me. That it was my way of writing my own version of the story. And while I did it for completely selfish reasons, I realize now the story isn’t solely mine.

Petra’s a part of it, too. It doesn’t change what happened. Elsa’s still without her older daughter, and Hannah no longer has a sister.

But they have the truth. And that’s valuable.

I should know.

Chief Alcott departs with the rest of the emergency vehicles. They form a line down the driveway, their sirens on mute but their lights still flashing.

Another car arrives before they fully vanish down the hill, its headlights unexpectedly popping over the horizon. For a brief, blinding moment, it’s a kaleidoscope of lights as the two cars slow down and pass each other. Blue and red and white. All flashing through the trees in spinning, disco-like fury. The emergency lights disappear. The headlights grow brighter as the car rounds the driveway and comes to a gravel-crunching stop.

I can’t see who’s inside. It’s too dark, and my eyes are still stinging from the lights of the emergency vehicles. All I can make out is a person behind the wheel, sitting in complete stillness, almost as if they’re tempted to start driving again.

But then the driver’s-side door swings open, and my mother steps out of the car.

“Mom?” I say, shocked. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

She remains in the driveway, looking exhausted in her travel clothes—white slacks, print blouse, a pair of strappy sandals. Shed of their sunglasses, her eyes are bloodshot. Dark half-moons droop beneath them. She carries no luggage. Just a purse that’s about to slip from her shoulder.

“For God’s sake, Maggie,” she says. “Why did you come back here? What did you think that was going to accomplish?”

“I needed the truth.”

“I told you the truth,” my mother says. “But you couldn’t leave well enough alone. Because of that, I had to fly halfway around the world, and then I get here and see all those police cars. What the hell have you been up to?”

I bring her inside. There’s a moment’s hesitation at the front door, making it clear she has no desire to enter Baneberry Hall, but she’s too tired to put up a fight. Once inside, the only thing she insists on is going down to the kitchen.

“I don’t want to be up here,” she says. “Not on this floor.”

Down we go, into the kitchen, taking seats across from each other at the butcher-block table. There, I tell her everything. Why I decided to come back. What happened when I got here. Finding Petra’s body and suspecting my father and realizing the true culprit was Dane.

When I finish, my mother simply stares at me. She looks so old in the harsh and unsparing light of the kitchen. It illuminates the ravages of time she usually tries so hard to cover up. The wrinkles and age spots and gray strands sprouting along her hairline.

“Oh, Maggie,” she says. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”

Unease slams onto my shoulders, so forceful that all of Baneberry Hall seems to shake.

“Why?” I say.

My mother’s gaze flits around the room, making her look like a trapped bird. “We need to leave,” she says.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“We need to leave and never come back.”

My unease grows, pouring into me, weighing me down. When my mother stands, it takes all the effort I can muster to also get up and push her back into her chair.