Phantom Heart

by Kelly Creagh

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021

  Copyright © 2021 by Kelly Creagh

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Viking & colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Ebook ISBN 9780593116074

  Cover flowers courtesy of shutterstock.com

  Cover design by Jessica Jenkins

  Design by Kate Renner, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  pid_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0

  For Katie McGarry, who hates dead things but loved this book.

  And for Gina Possanza, who appeared at my window just when I needed an angel.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I

  One: Stephanie

  Two: Zedok

  Three: Stephanie

  Four: Zedok

  Five: Stephanie

  Six: Zedok

  Seven: Stephanie

  Eight: Zedok

  Nine: Stephanie

  Ten: Zedok

  Eleven: Stephanie

  Twelve: Zedok

  Thirteen: Stephanie

  Fourteen: Zedok

  Fifteen: Stephanie

  Sixteen: Zedok

  Seventeen: Stephanie

  Eighteen: Zedok

  Nineteen: Stephanie

  Twenty: Zedok

  Twenty-One: Stephanie

  Twenty-Two: Zedok

  Twenty-Three: Stephanie

  Twenty-Four: Zedok

  Twenty-Five: Stephanie

  Twenty-Six: Zedok

  Twenty-Seven: Stephanie

  Twenty-Eight: Zedok

  Twenty-Nine: Stephanie

  Thirty: Zedok

  Thirty-One: Stephanie

  Thirty-Two: Zedok

  Thirty-Three: Stephanie

  Thirty-Four: Zedok

  Thirty-Five: Stephanie

  Thirty-Six: Zedok

  Thirty-Seven: Stephanie

  Thirty-Eight: Zedok

  Thirty-Nine: Stephanie

  Forty: Zedok

  Forty-One: Stephanie

  Forty-Two: Ze do k

  Forty-Three: Stephanie

  Forty-Four: Zedok

  Forty-Five: Stephanie

  Forty-Six: Zedok

  Forty-Seven: Stephanie

  Forty-Eight: Zedok

  Forty-Nine: Stephanie

  Fifty: Zedok

  Fifty-One: Stephanie

  Part II

  Fifty-Two: Lucas

  Fifty-Three: Zedok

  Fifty-Four: Stephanie

  Fifty-Five: Zedok

  Fifty-Six: Lucas

  Fifty-Seven: Stephanie

  Fifty-Eight: Lucas

  Fifty-Nine: Zedok

  Sixty: Lucas

  Sixty-One: Stephanie

  Sixty-Two: Lucas

  Sixty-Three: Stephanie

  Sixty-Four: Lucas

  Sixty-Five: Stephanie

  Sixty-Six: Zedok

  Sixty-Seven: Stephanie

  Sixty-Eight: Lucas

  Sixty-Nine: Stephanie

  Seventy: Zedok

  Seventy-One: Stephanie

  Seventy-Two: Zedok

  Seventy-Three: Stephanie

  Seventy-Four: Lucas

  Seventy-Five: Stephanie

  Seventy-Six: Zedok

  Seventy-Seven: Lucas

  Seventy-Eight: Stephanie

  Seventy-Nine: Zedok

  Eighty: Stephanie

  Eigthy-One: Lucas

  Eighty-Two: Stephanie

  Eighty-Three: Lucas

  Eighty-Four: Erik

  Eighty-Five: Lucas

  Epilogue: Stephanie

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PART

  I

  ONE

  Stephanie

  “He has lights for eyes.”

  Brushing a few errant curls from my face, I glanced up from my homework and leveled my little sister, Charlie, with the full blast of skepticism she deserved. Ignoring her wasn’t working.

  This whole week, she’d been talking about him. The masked man who lived in our new house. Our newest oldest house.

  “There’s nothing in your closet, Chuck,” I said for the tenth time in four days.

  A glower of indignation replaced the saucer-eyed stare of fright she’d been projecting my way ever since the sun had set, taking with it the cozy yellow glow that had surrounded our house—an older-than-Christmas Victorian.

  “Don’t call me Chuck.”

  I pushed off from where I’d been lying belly-down across my metal-framed bed, calculus book open.

  “All right, Chess,” I grunted, opting for the more acceptable nickname Dad had given her. I didn’t feel like trading Charlie’s six-year-old fear for her six-year-old fury: stomping and top-of-the-lungs screeching.

  I took Charlie’s small hand, and she gave my fingers a squeeze.

  “He talked to me last night,” she whispered, creeping me out. “He asked me questions.”

  “Well.” I drew her toward the hallway. “Did you tell him to mind his own beeswax?”

  Her feet stalled on the creaky, bare-wood floor. “He has bees?”

  “No.” I bent down, bringing us eye level. “It’s a way of telling someone to leave you alone.”

  “So . . . you believe me now,” she said, like stating that out loud would make it true. “That he’s in there. Zedok.”

  She pointed down the long hallway to her doorway at the far end.

  With the upstairs hall and bathroom lights off, I had to admit the trek to her bedroom did look ominous.

  “There’s no one in your room, Chesser.” I hit the switch that sent light bursting from the huge, original-to-the-house crystal chandelier that hung over the grand staircase. “This is a big old house, and old houses make noises sometimes.” Realizing I’d just repeated something I’d probably heard responsible adult figures say a billion times, I made an amendment. “Just think of it like house farts.”

  Usually, fart talk got laughs from Charlie. This time, I didn’t get so much as a smile. Gently, I tugged her forward. It was like trying to drag an anvil.

  “Houses shouldn’t have other houses inside them,” she said.

  “That’s right, they shouldn’t,” I agreed.

  “This one does.” Again with the whispers. Li
ke she was afraid someone was listening in.

  I knelt in front of her. “What’s really going on, Chess? You never asked to sleep in my room when we were at the last house.”

  “Because there wasn’t a man in the closet at the last house.”

  Fair enough.

  “Look. Do you want me to show you that there isn’t anyone in your closet?”

  Charlie nodded, her eyes unblinking and silver-dollar-sized.

  Her seriousness, coupled with her apparent confidence in my being a formidable opponent to her imaginary not-friend, made me smile.

  I stood and meandered into her darkened room, where I flipped the light switch. I pivoted to face the closet in question. The door was open already, the small space inside empty.

  Having inhabited the house for only a week, none of us had finished unpacking yet. Tired of having to box things up shortly after unboxing them, we’d all become accustomed to living in the land of limbo regarding our stuff. And Dad, perpetually “just about to” finish a place, never encouraged us to use anything as practical as a closet to store our clothes.

  For us, “home” had never really been a location.

  At least not since Charlie had come along.

  “See?” I said, turning my gaze on my little sister, who stood toes-to-the-threshold in the doorway. “There’s no one there.”

  To this, she said nothing. Just stared at the cracked plaster wall inside the otherwise vacant closet.

  “There was a house in there,” she said. “Like ours but nicer.”

  My shoulders slumped. This was dumb, and my calculus was getting cold.

  “How about this,” I offered, plucking her stuffed octopus, Checkers, from her bed. “How about we swap rooms tonight? I’ll sleep in here, and Chess and Checkers can sleep in my bed.”

  “He can get to your closet, too,” Charlie replied without missing a beat.

  “Great,” I said, officially fresh out of patience. “So, either way, you can send him to me, this Zeebo guy—”

  “Zedok.”

  “Right, okay.” I’d probably regret humoring her later. “You can send him to my closet, and I’ll tell him to get lost.”

  “He told me to tell you he can see you in your dreams.” Her thumb crept toward her lips—a nervous habit that usually meant she was afraid she was about to get in trouble. “And that you wouldn’t believe me when I told you about him. So he told me to tell you that he knows you like that boy with the blond hair.”

  “Chris Hemsworth?” I asked, unimpressed.

  “Kyle,” she replied.

  I scowled at her, though the only one I had to be angry with was myself. Most likely, Dad had asked her to get the scoop on Kyle, a cute guy in my chemistry class, who I might have brought up once or twice, just so Dad wouldn’t be so Dad later when and if I actually made a blip on Kyle’s radar. As a result, Charlie had just factored Kyle into the sensory overload that came with yet another full-scale change.

  Probably, the shadowing me through the house and “monster in my closet” talk also meant something more important was at play.

  Charlie was feeling the move. And maybe the same sense of isolation that had begun to nibble at me in this decrepit once-upon-a-time palace was eating at my little sister, too.

  This house wasn’t like the others my father had flipped. This Addams family mansion meets Poe’s House of Usher was, by far, my father’s most ambitious.

  Not to mention his most risky.

  The other houses, shotguns and suburban bi-levels, had taken three to four months to turn around with the help of a contractor. This one would require more than the projected six months. Which was good news for me, because that meant I might actually get to finish my last year of high school at Langdon. And even though there were only the three of us—me, Charlie, and Dad—I liked the idea of a bigger house that had room to stretch out in. I also liked the idea of a graduation ceremony at which I would not be seated next to total strangers.

  Maybe I’d have friends who lived close enough to come to the party I’d already planned out in my head. One that would strategically place my tank-top- and booty-shorts-clad body next to Kyle’s muscled and tanned one.

  Of course, it had also crossed my mind that Dad had picked this project to give Charlie and me a chance to actually get used to the taste of the tap water somewhere. Then again, he could just as easily have bought this thing purely on the grounds that it included an ancient, inoperative piano.

  Because though Dad happened to be the most functional and pragmatic dad in the history of dad-dom, I happened to be the only one who understood that, deep down, he also sometimes wasn’t.

  “Stephanie,” whispered Charlie. “I’m scared in here.”

  Did she mean her room? Or the house.

  I knew better than to ask.

  Instead, I smoothed my brow and approached her with a smile. Charlie was right. There was something in this house. The same something we’d dragged with us to every house since leaving Syracuse. A ghost, I guess you could say.

  The kind that lived in the heart, though.

  “C’mon, you.” I handed over Checkers and hoisted my little sister into my arms. “Slumber party time. Just for tonight, though, okay?”

  “ ’Kay,” she said, soft in my ear, though the tenseness in her tiny frame told me that she hadn’t been paying attention to my words. That, instead, as her focus remained trained on the doorway to her closet, her little girl’s mind fixated on the creature it had cooked up.

  The imaginary, lights-for-eyes, dream-spying creeper she’d dubbed “Zedok.”

  An entity whose appearance in our lives had, I was sure, little to do with the move and more to do with the fact that Charlie had reached an age where she was starting to notice what was missing.

  Who was missing.

  TWO

  Zedok

  Crayons littered the worn parquet floor in front of the parlor’s drop-cloth-covered piano.

  My piano.

  Charlie sat in their midst, coloring the sheet music she had discovered within the piano’s bench.

  My music.

  I approached with slow steps, my shadow enveloping her small form.

  Charlie did not turn to peer back at me. She merely slowed her progress in obscuring my work with her own.

  Somewhere above, on the second floor, a door slammed and a girl’s voice shouted about coffee, the smell of which filled the mansion to its brim.

  The girls’ father, the estate’s new on-paper owner, a Mr. Richard Armand, barked a reply from his place in the nearby kitchen. Another upstairs door slammed. The sound of rushing water and the clanking of dishes followed.

  For days, similar racket had floated through the walls of this house—the decayed living version—to mine. The preserved dead one.

  Gritting my teeth, I told myself I was lucky to have a child as young as Charlie within my reach—a girl whose psyche, unlike her elder sister’s, had not yet been sealed by the rust of logic and reason.

  In theory, Charlie should help expedite everything. Exactly what end she would expedite if she continued to decimate my work, however . . . Well, that remained to be seen.

  “What have you done?” I demanded.

  Charlie did not reply. Instead, she climbed to her feet, clutching one of her crayons as though it could serve as a weapon. Her gaze flicked from me to the open doorway and back again.

  She looked up, staring straight into my eyes. Through the holes of my mask, I returned her gaze. Until the illustration at her feet caught and stole my attention.

  A hooded black figure marred the sheet music. His gray-colored mask, with its somber expression and muted features, had been rendered with some accuracy. The child had even drawn dark lines to indicate the mask’s grate-like mouth, consisting of skeleton keyholes.

  From
there down, the cloaked form dissolved into one long smear of darkness. Which I supposed was accurate enough as well.

  “Is it not bad enough that you and your family have invaded my home?” I asked. “You would also render useless the only blessed thing that keeps the worst at bay?”

  “S-Stephanie says you need to get your own beeswax!” the trembling girl replied with more tenacity than she’d yet been able to muster in my presence.

  “Stephanie,” I scoffed, not even bothering to decipher the meaning behind her wax comment. Because the subject of Charlie’s sister was precisely what I needed to speak with her about. “It would seem that, despite your efforts to convince her, Stephanie still does not believe in me. And she will neither see nor hear me until she does. Do you know what that means?”

  The crayon between Charlie’s hands finally snapped under the pressure of her grip, making me pause and, for the first time since entering the room, examine my conduct.

  Seeing my music in ruins—unsalvageable—had brought me closer to that edge I so feared. More even than before because there were people in the house. And that was something that put me in a tight grip. Only I could not afford to snap.

  The Armands certainly could not afford for me to.

  “It means,” I said, attempting to soften my tone, “that you and your family will not be leaving as soon as you need to. Which, if it happened today, would still not be soon enough.”

  Thus far, Stephanie had proved to be my biggest obstacle.

  In contrast to her younger sister, Stephanie seemed to understand too much about the world. Far more than any young lady of my day would have dared to boast.

  In the end, though, neither Stephanie nor her father could prove any real match for me. No one—no one aside from the medium, that was—ever had. And was that not precisely why I needed this family to depart?

  “Why do we have to leave?” challenged Charlie. “Why don’t you leave?”

  “Because I am cursed,” I snapped. “My soul has been shattered, its shards shackled to this estate. Its pieces lie strewn about me in much the same way your crayons now lie strewn about you. Do you understand?”

  She shook her head.

  My frustration renewed, I took another step, more of her crayons cracking under the heel of my black riding boot. Stopping short, I bent to retrieve my mangled work.