by Riley Sager
“My father,” I say.
“Yes. I saw him clear as day. He got out of the car, unlocked the gate, and drove on through.”
“Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so. I was still in the woods. Besides, he seemed pretty focused on getting inside as fast as possible.”
“How long was he there?”
“I don’t know. I had gone home by the time he left.”
“What do you think he was doing?”
Hannah stubs out her cigarette. “At the time, I had no idea. Now, though? I think he was dumping Petra’s body.”
Chief Alcott told me she went to Baneberry Hall the night we left, finding nothing out of the ordinary. If my father had killed Petra and stuffed her body in the floor, that means he either did it well before the chief searched the house or well after.
Maybe two weeks after.
In which case Petra’s body would had to have been kept somewhere else. Something I don’t want to think about.
“Did you tell anyone that you saw him back at the house?” I ask Hannah.
“No, because I didn’t think anyone would listen to me,” she says. “The police weren’t really interested. By then your dad’s story about Baneberry Hall being haunted was spreading. We’d already started to see looky-loos driving up to the front gate, trying to get a look at the place. As for Petra, they were convinced she’d run away and would return when she felt like it. She never did.”
“That’s what your mother thought as well, right?”
“She did,” Hannah says. “Because that’s what I told her had happened.”
She lights another cigarette and inhales. One long, hungry drag during which she decides to tell me everything she knows.
“Petra had a boyfriend. Or something.”
Hannah lets the word hang there, insinuating. It makes me wonder if Brian Prince had shared his theory about my father with her.
“I don’t know who it was or how long it had been going on,” she says. “But she snuck out at night. I know because we shared a bedroom. She’d wait until she thought I was asleep before climbing out the window. When I woke up in the morning, she’d be right back in bed, asleep. I asked her about it once, and she told me I had been dreaming.”
“Why the need to sneak out?”
“Because my mother didn’t allow dating. Or boys. Or anything that would displease God.” Hannah holds up her cigarette as an example and takes another devilish puff. “The thing you need to know about my mother is that she was strict. As was her mother. And her grandmother. The Ditmer women were hardworking, God-fearing people. There’s a reason they all became housekeepers. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”
A bit of ash drops from Hannah’s cigarette onto the kitchen table. She doesn’t brush it away. A small act of rebellion.
“Growing up, Petra and I weren’t allowed to do anything. No school dances. No going to the movies with friends. It was school and work and prayer. It was only a matter of time before Petra was going to rebel.”
“How long had she been sneaking out?”
“Only a week or two, as far as I could tell. The beginning of July was when I first watched her do it.”
My heart sinks. I’d been hoping it had started weeks before my family moved into Baneberry Hall. But, no, we were there by the beginning of July.
“The night Petra disappeared, did you see her leave?”
Hannah gives a quick shake of her head. “But I assumed she did, because she was gone the next morning.”
“And that’s when you told your mother she had run away?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Buster was also gone.”
Hannah sees the confusion on my face and elaborates.
“He was Petra’s teddy bear. She got it years before I was born and still slept with it like she was my age. If she spent the night somewhere, Buster went with her. You don’t remember this, but she had him when we went to your house for that sleepover.”
Hannah gets up and leaves the kitchen. She returns a minute later with a photograph, staring at it as she resumes talking.
“She’d never leave home without him. Ever. When we realized Buster was also gone, we assumed she’d run away. Most likely with this boy she’d been seeing.”
That boy could have been my father, a possibility that makes me as wobbly as the kitchen table. The feeling gets worse when Hannah finally shows me the photograph. It’s her and Petra, presumably in their bedroom. Petra sits on a bed. Next to her is a disturbingly familiar teddy bear.
Brown fur.
Button eyes.
A red bow tie circling its neck.
It’s the very same bear Dane and I found in my father’s office. Now it is gone. While I don’t know—and likely will never know—who took it, I can think of only two reasons it was in Baneberry Hall.
“You mentioned that Petra brought Buster that time you spent the night,” I say.
“Yes,” Hannah says. “Even though we never made it the full night.”
I’m well aware of that, thanks to the Book.
“Is there a chance Petra left it behind?” I say, hoping I’m not revealing too much. Hannah doesn’t need to know that, until a few nights ago, Buster was still inside Baneberry Hall. “Maybe it got lost.”
“She brought him home with her,” Hannah says. “I’m certain of it.”
That leaves only the other reason Buster could have been in the house. The one I’d been hoping wasn’t true.
Petra brought the bear with her because she thought she was leaving for good. Probably with my father. The idea sucks all the air from my chest.
Short of breath, there’s nothing left for me to do but stand and leave the cottage in a daze. Hannah follows me past the living room, where the television has changed from a game show to a sitcom. Forced laughter blares from the TV.
It’s not until I’m at the back door that I turn around to ask Hannah one more thing. A question prompted not just by that picture of Petra and her bear but by the memory of yesterday morning. Mister Shadow in the armoire, staring at me, creeping closer.
“You seem to remember a lot about the night you two came to Baneberry Hall for that sleepover.”
“It was pretty hard to forget.” Hannah huffs out a humorless laugh, as if she can’t believe that, with everything else going on, this is what I want to talk about. It makes perfect sense to me. She was there. She remembers. I don’t.
“The things my father wrote about that night,” I say. “That was bullshit, right?”
“I don’t think so,” Hannah says.
I study her, seeking a tell that she’s lying. She levels her gaze at me, indicating she’s dead serious.
“So, what my father wrote about that night—”
“It’s all true,” Hannah says, without a moment’s hesitation. “Every damn word.”
JULY 7
Day 12
The day of the sleepover began like any other at Baneberry Hall.
Thud.
I got out of bed without looking at the clock—there was no need—and went downstairs, where the chandelier was aglow. I flicked it off with a heavy sigh and descended to the kitchen to brew a pot of extra-strong coffee. It had become my usual morning routine.
By then, exhaustion was a fact of life at Baneberry Hall. Almost as if the house was purposefully denying me a full night’s sleep. I counteracted it as best as I could with midafternoon catnaps and going to bed early.
But on this day, there would be no napping. The afternoon was spent preparing for two extra people in the house. Grocery shopping, cleaning, and making the place look like a happy home, which it definitely wasn’t.
The whole point of having the sleepover be supervised by Petra was to give Jess and me some much-needed relaxation time alone. But whe
n Hannah and Petra arrived bearing backpacks, sleeping bags, and a tray of cookies from their mother, I realized their presence only added to our stress. Especially when Maggie asked to speak to Jess and me alone in the middle of dinner.
“Can’t it wait?” I said. “You have guests.”
“It’s important,” Maggie told us.
The three of us went to the great room, leaving Hannah and Petra to eat their spaghetti and meatballs in awkward silence.
“This better be good,” Jess said. “It’s rude to leave your friends like that.”
Maggie’s expression was deadly serious. The cut on her cheek had healed enough that she no longer needed a bandage. Now exposed, it gave her a weathered, wizened look.
“They need to leave,” she said. “Miss Pennyface doesn’t want them here. She doesn’t like them. She’s been angry all night.” Maggie pointed to an empty corner. “See?”
“Now’s not the time for this,” Jess said. “Not with your friends here.”
“They’re not my friends.”
“But they could be,” I said in my most encouraging voice. “Just give it one night. Okay, kiddo?”
Maggie considered it, her lips a flat line as she weighed the pros and cons of friendship with Hannah.
“Okay,” she said. “But they’ll probably be mad.”
“Who’ll get mad?”
“All of the ghosts.”
She went back to the table, leaving Jess and me speechless. Maggie, however, was chattier than ever, and remained that way through the rest of dinner. And the ice-cream sundaes made for dessert. And the board games played after that. When Maggie emerged victorious after a game of Mouse Trap, she ran around the dining room cheering like she’d just won the World Cup.
It was so nice to see her having fun with other girls. For the first time since we came to Baneberry Hall, Maggie looked happy, even when she shot occasional glances to the corners of the room.
Those fearful looks grew more pronounced when the girls got ready for bed. While Petra engaged in a half-hearted pillow fight instigated by her sister, Maggie merely sat there, her gaze flicking to the corner by her closet. And when I lined them up to take a picture with the Polaroid camera, she appeared more focused on the wall behind me than the camera’s lens.
“They’re down for the night,” I announced to Jess after I’d turned out the lights in Maggie’s room and retired to my own. “Whatever else they need, Petra can take it from here.”
I collapsed on the bed, an arm flung over my eyes. I would have plunged immediately into sleep if something hadn’t been weighing on my mind since dinner.
“I think we should take Maggie to see someone.”
Jess, who had been applying moisturizer at her vanity, gave me a look in the mirror. “As in a shrink?”
“A therapist, yes. Clearly, something’s going on with her. She’s struggling with this move. She has no friends and doesn’t seem to want to make any. And all this talk of imaginary friends—it’s not normal. And it’s not a plea for attention, either.”
In the mirror, Jess’s face took on a wounded look. “Do you plan on throwing that back at me every time we discuss our daughter?”
“That wasn’t my intention,” I said. “I was just making a case for why we should send her to someone who might be able to help.”
Jess said nothing.
“Either you have no opinion on the matter,” I said, “or you don’t agree with me and just don’t want to say it.”
“Therapy’s a big step,” she finally said.
“You don’t think Maggie has a problem?”
“She has imaginary friends and trouble making real ones. I don’t think we should punish her for that.”
“It’s not punishment. It’s getting her the help she needs.” I sat up and moved to the edge of the bed. “These aren’t typical imaginary friends, Jess. Miss Pennyface and Mister Shadow. Those are scary names, given to them by a scared little girl. You heard what she called them—ghosts. Imagine how terrified she must be.”
“It’s a phase,” Jess insisted. “Brought on by this move and all the things that have happened with this house. I worry that sending Maggie to a shrink will make her feel like an outcast. To me, that’s a far bigger concern than something she’s going to grow out of as soon as she gets used to this place.”
“And what if she doesn’t grow out of it? What if this is a legitimate mental disorder that—”
A scream cut me off.
It came from Maggie’s room, shooting down the hallway like a bullet. By the time the second scream arrived, Jess and I were already out of our bedroom and running down the hall.
I was first to reach Maggie’s room, colliding with Petra, who had burst into the hallway. She wrapped her thin arms around herself, as if trying to ward off a sudden chill.
“It’s Maggie,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” Jess asked as she caught up to us.
“I don’t know, but she’s freaking out.”
Inside the bedroom, Maggie began to shout. “Go away!”
I ran into the room, confounded by what I saw.
The armoire doors were wide open, and all the dresses Jess had hung there were now scattered about the room. Hannah was up to her neck in her sleeping bag, mute with fear, scooching backward like an inchworm.
Maggie stood on her bed, shrieking at the open armoire.
“Go away! Go away!”
In the hallway, I heard Petra telling Jess what had happened.
“I was asleep,” she said, the words tumbling out. “Hannah woke me up yelling, saying Maggie had just pulled her hair. But Maggie said she hadn’t. That it was someone else. And then I heard the wardrobe door open and things flying out of it and Maggie screaming.”
Maggie remained on the bed. Her shouts had devolved into an earsplitting wail that refused to die down. In the corner, Hannah’s hands shot out of the sleeping bag and clamped over her ears.
“Maggie, there’s no one here.”
“There is!” she cried. “They’re all here! I told you they’d be mad!”
“Sweetie, calm down. Everything’s okay.”
I reached for her, but she slapped my hand away.
“It’s not!” Maggie cried. “He’s under there!”
“Who?”
“Mister Shadow.”
It wasn’t until her voice died down that I heard an unidentifiable noise coming from under the bed.
“There’s nothing down there,” I said, hoping to convince myself as well as Maggie.
“He’s there!” Maggie shrieked. “I saw him! And Miss Pennyface is right there!”
She pointed to the corner behind her closet door, which I saw had also been opened. I didn’t remember it being that way when I came into the room, even though it had to have been.
“And then there’s the little girl,” she said.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“Right next to you.”
Even though I knew it was my mind playing tricks on me, I still felt a presence beside me. It was the same way you could tell someone was sneaking up behind you. A disturbance in the air gave them away. I longed to look at my side, but I feared doing so would make Maggie think I believed her.
So, I didn’t look, even when I felt—or thought I felt—someone brush my hand. Instead, I glanced across the room to Hannah, hoping her reaction would tell me if something was there. But Hannah’s eyes were shut tight as she continued to slide backward into the corner where Maggie said Miss Pennyface was standing.
She wasn’t, of course. There was no Miss Pennyface. But when Hannah reached the corner, she began to shout.
“Something touched me! Something touched me!”
In between her screams, I again heard the noise under the bed.
A muffled skittering.
Like a giant spider.
Without thinking, I dropped to my knees.
Above me, Maggie had resumed shrieking, matching Hannah in volume. More noise started up from the doorway. Jess asking me what the hell I was doing.
I ignored her.
I ignored everything.
I was focused solely on the bed. I needed to see what was under there.
With trembling hands, I touched the bed skirt, brushing it aside.
Then I peered into the dark under Maggie’s bed.
Nothing was there.
Then the bedsprings sank—a jarring sight that made me yelp and jump away from the bed. I looked up and saw it was Hannah, out of her sleeping bag and now standing on the bed. She tugged at Maggie’s arms, trying to snap her out of whatever spell she was under.
“Make it stop, Maggie!” she yelled. “Make it stop!”
Maggie stopped screaming.
Her head snapped in Hannah’s direction.
Then she punched her.
Blood sprayed from Hannah’s nose, flying across Maggie, the bed, the floor.
A stunned look crossed Hannah’s face as she tilted backward and dropped off the edge of the bed. She hit the floor hard, wailing the moment she landed. Jess and Petra ran to her.
I stayed where I was.
Also on the floor.
Staring up at my daughter, who seemed not to have realized what she’d just done. Instead, she looked to the corner by the closet. The door was now shut, although I had no idea how or when that could have happened.
It was the same with the armoire. Both doors were completely closed.
Maggie looked to me and, in a voice thick with relief, said, “They’re gone.”
Fifteen
I close my father’s copy of the Book, having just read the chapter about the sleepover. As I stare at the aerial view of Baneberry Hall on the cover, what Hannah said about that night plays on repeat in my head.
It’s all true.
But it isn’t. It can’t be. Because if the part about the sleepover is true, then so is the rest of the Book. And I refuse to believe that. The Book is bullshit.
Right?