by Riley Sager
“I don’t recall your parents mentioning anything about that,” Dr. Weber says. “Do you still have them?”
“That’s what it says on my Valium prescription.”
Dr. Weber doesn’t crack a smile at my admittedly bad joke. “The thing about people who suffer from night terrors is that they think they’re real only when they’re taking place. Once they wake up, they know it was just a bad dream.”
I think about the night terror I’d had three nights ago. Me in bed and Mister Shadow watching me from the armoire. Even days later, it still makes me uneasy.
“So, those things I claimed to have seen—I thought they were real?”
“Even when you were wide awake,” Dr. Weber says.
The chair seems to give way beneath me. Like I’m sinking into it, on the verge of sliding into nothingness. The sensation’s so strong that I need to look down to confirm it’s not really happening. Even then, the sinking feeling persists.
“So the stuff in the Book—the things you told my parents—”
“It’s mostly true,” Dr. Weber says. “I can’t vouch for the authenticity of the rest of the book, but that part happened. You truly believed these beings existed.”
“But they didn’t,” I say, still feeling myself sinking. Down, down, down. Deeper into the rabbit hole.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Dr. Weber says. “But you did believe that something was coming into your room at night. Whether it was real or imagined, I can’t say. But it did weigh on your mind. Something was haunting you.”
I stand, relieved to be out of that chair. A backward glance confirms that the cushion is still there. That the sinking sensation had all been in my head.
I wish I could say the same about the ghosts I claimed to have seen as a child. But there’s nothing to prove that they weren’t made-up, either by me or my father.
All I know is that, at least to my young mind, those three spirits, including Mister Shadow, were absolutely real.
JULY 9
Day 14
Part of Jess’s new job required her to teach summer school, which began that morning. Left to our own devices, Maggie and I went to the local farmers’ market and then the grocery store.
It felt nice to get out of the house, even if it was just for errands. After what Maggie had said the night before, I wanted to spend as little time in Baneberry Hall as possible.
“Remember what Dr. Weber told us,” Jess said before leaving for work, as if seeing a psychologist had been her idea. “This is just Maggie’s way of processing what happened.”
But I was concerned. So much so that I made Maggie sit at the kitchen table with some crayons and paper while I put away groceries. I was placing canned goods in a cupboard, my back turned to Maggie, when one of the bells on the wall suddenly chimed—a tinny half ring that stopped as suddenly as it started.
“Please don’t do that, Mags.”
“Do what?”
The bell chimed again.
“That,” I said.
“I didn’t do any—”
The bell rang a third time, cutting her off. I spun away from the cupboard, expecting to see Maggie at the wall, straining on her tiptoes to reach one of the bottom bells. But she remained at the table, crayon in hand.
The bell let out another ring, and this time I saw it move. The whorl of metal tilted ever so slightly, taking the bell with it until that familiar ring sounded again. That’s when I knew it wasn’t Maggie’s doing and that the rope attached to that bell had purposefully been tugged.
I looked to the label above the bell, which now sat silent and still.
The Indigo Room.
“Stay right here,” I told Maggie. “Do not move.”
I took the steps to the first floor two at a time, hoping speed would help me catch whoever was doing this in the act. After rushing through the great room and to the front of the house, I burst into the Indigo Room.
It was empty.
An uneasy feeling overcame me as I spun slowly in the center of the room. A sense that something strange was going on. Something beyond Maggie’s imaginings. As I continued to spin, making sure the room was indeed completely empty, one thing I didn’t feel was surprise.
Deep down, I had expected the Indigo Room to be empty.
By then, the idea that someone continued to sneak into Baneberry Hall seemed more like wishful thinking than possible reality. People didn’t break into homes only to ring bells and turn on record players. Nor were those things caused by mice or a draft or even snakes.
Something else was going on.
Something unexplainable.
Passing under the chandelier, I saw it was inexplicably lit, even though it hadn’t been earlier that morning.
I hit the switch, darkening it once more, and continued to the kitchen. I was halfway down the steps when a chorus of bells rose from the kitchen, prompting me to run the rest of the way. Inside, I saw that every bell on the wall trembled, as if they had been rung at once.
Also trembling was Maggie, who no longer sat at the kitchen table. Instead, she crouched against the wall opposite the bells, pressing herself into a corner. Terror glistened in her eyes.
“He was here,” she whispered.
“Mister Shadow?” I whispered back.
Maggie gave a single, solemn nod.
“Is he gone now?”
She nodded again.
“Did he say anything to you?”
Maggie looked from me to the wall of now-silent bells. “He said he wants to talk to you.”
* * *
• • •
That night, I dropped the Ouija board on the kitchen table, where it landed with a thud so loud it startled Jess from the glass of wine she’d been staring into. We hadn’t talked much about what happened with the bells because Maggie was always with us. But now that our daughter was in bed, I was able to give Jess a full report, followed by the retrieval of the Ouija board.
“Where did you get this?”
“I found it in the study.”
“And what do you intend to do with it?”
“If Mister Shadow wants to talk, then I think we should try it.”
Jess glanced at her wine, looking as though she wanted to down the whole glass. “Seriously?”
“I know it sounds stupid,” I said. “And borderline ridiculous.”
“I think it crosses that border, don’t you?”
“You’re the one who walked through this place burning sage.”
“That was different,” Jess said. “It was just superstition. What you’re talking about is—”
“Ghosts,” I said. “Yes, I’m suggesting that Baneberry Hall is haunted.”
There it was. The word we had tiptoed around for days. Now there was no way to avoid using it.
“You know how crazy you sound, right?”
“I do, and I don’t care,” I said. “Something strange is happening here. You can’t deny that. Something we won’t be able to stop until we know what we’re dealing with.”
Jess’s face rippled with indecision as she stared at the box. When her mind was made up, she took a gulp of wine and said, “Fine. Let’s do this.”
The Ouija board was older than I had initially expected. Far different from the one I’d used as a teenager, when my friends and I would get high and try to scare one another. It was an actual board, for one thing. Solid wood that thunked against the table when I removed it from its box.
The varnish gave the wood an orange tint. Painted across it were two rows of letters, arced on top of each other like a double rainbow. In a straight line below them were numbers.
1234567890
The upper corners each bore a single word. YES in the left corner, NO in the right. Two words ran across the bottom of the board.
GOOD BYE
Just like the board, the planchette also differed from my youth. It wasn’t plastic, but real ivory, one end tapered to a point.
I lit a candle, set it on the table, and turned off the kitchen lights.
“Romantic,” Jess commented.
“Can you please be serious about this?”
“Honestly, Ewan, I don’t think I can.”
We sat across from each other, taking opposite sides of the board. We then placed our fingers on the planchette, ready to begin.
“Is there a spirit present?” I said, addressing the area above the kitchen table.
The planchette didn’t budge.
I asked again, this time intoning the words the way a medium would do in the movies. “Is there a spirit present?”
The planchette slowly began to move—a stuttering slide across the board to the word in the upper right corner.
NO
I looked across the table to Jess, who could barely contain her snickering. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t help myself.”
“Please keep an open mind,” I pleaded. “For Maggie’s sake.”
Jess grew serious at the mention of our daughter. She knew as well as I did that this was about Maggie. If there were ghosts at Baneberry Hall, only she could see them. Which meant she’d continue to do so until they left.
“I will,” she said. “Promise.”
Once again, I asked if a spirit was present. This time, the planchette jerked forward—so hard I thought it was going to slide entirely out from beneath my fingers. They stayed with it, though, following it to the word in the upper left corner.
YES
“You need to be more subtle than that,” I told Jess. “Stop pushing it.”
“You’re pushing it.”
I looked to the board, where the planchette continued to circle YES, even though my fingers were barely touching it. It was the same with Jess. Her touch was so light it looked as if her fingers hovered over the ivory.
A chill entered the kitchen—a sudden drop of temperature I felt in my bones. I hadn’t felt cold like that since the night I first heard the music coming from the third floor. When I exhaled, I saw my breath.
Shivering, I spat out another question before the planchette could stop moving.
“Spirit, did you once reside in Baneberry Hall?”
The planchette continued to circle the word.
YES
“Spirit, what is your name?”
The planchette jerked again. So fast that Jess audibly gasped. I stared at it, dumbfounded, as it moved seemingly on its own to a letter in the center of the board.
C
Then another.
U
And another.
R
“Is this the spirit of Curtis Carver?” I asked.
The planchette did another lurch to the YES in the upper left corner. Across the table, Jess gave me a worried look. She was about to lift her fingers from the planchette, but I shook my head, urging her to keep them there.
“Curtis, are you also who my daughter refers to as Mister Shadow?”
The planchette kept circling.
YES
“Our daughter said you’ve spoken to her,” I said. “Is that true?”
More swooping and circling ensued around the word.
YES
“Do you have something to say to us?”
The planchette quickly slid back to the letter C. Six other letters followed, the planchette moving so hard I could hear it scritching across the board. Jess and I kept our fingers on top of it, our wrists jerking back and forth with each letter.
A
Then R.
Then E.
Then F.
Then U.
Then L.
“Careful?” I read aloud.
The planchette rocketed back to the YES, touching it briefly before returning to the double rainbow of letters and spelling out the same word.
CAREFUL
“What does that mean?” I asked.
The planchette never stopped moving, repeating the seven-letter pattern three more times.
CAREFUL
CAREFUL
CAREFUL
As soon as the planchette’s narrowed tip hit the final L, it swung to the bottom of the board in a jarring swoop.
GOOD BYE
The chill left the kitchen. I felt it go—an instant warming.
“What the hell just happened?” Jess asked.
I didn’t know. Nor did I have time to consider it, for at that moment a scream pierced the silence of the house.
Maggie.
Making the same siren-like wail she’d let out during the sleepover.
Jess and I ran upstairs, pounding up both sets of steps until we were on the second floor and in Maggie’s room. Once again, she stood on her bed, screaming in the direction of the armoire.
Its doors were open.
“Mister Shadow!” she cried. “He was here!”
Seventeen
After leaving Dr. Weber’s office, I head back to Maple Street in search of Bartleby’s public library. The doctor’s mention of Baneberry Hall’s history beyond the Carver family has me curious to find out more. As an added benefit, it will take my mind off Mister Shadow. Something I desperately need. I long for the quiet camaraderie only a library can provide.
Except Bartleby’s library no longer exists—a fact I learn when I pop into a beauty salon to ask for directions.
“That closed years ago,” the hairdresser says while not so subtly eyeing my split ends. “There was a fire, which destroyed almost everything. The town voted not to rebuild.”
I thank her and move on, declining her offer of a trim. Without a library, there’s only one place else I know to go for information—the Bartleby Gazette.
The newspaper’s headquarters are located in an unassuming office building on the southern end of Maple Street. Outside, a newspaper box displays the latest edition. The headline running across the front page is in letters so bold they’re practically screaming.
BODY FOUND IN BANEBERRY HALL
If the headline of every article was this sensational, then no wonder Allie was worried. I’d be alarmed, too.
A subhead sits below the main headline, not as large but equally as intriguing.
Remains discovered in notorious house allegedly girl missing for 25 years.
Included with the article, written by none other than Brian Prince, are three photos. One is an archive image of Baneberry Hall, probably taken around the time the Book came out. The other two are my father’s old author photo and a faded yearbook shot of Petra Ditmer.
Seeing that front page makes me loathe to enter the office. But the sad truth is that I need Brian Prince more than he needs me. So enter I do, finding myself in an office that’s less like a functioning newspaper and more like a hobby. A solitary one. The newsroom, if it could even be called that, is filled with empty desks on which sit computers probably unused since the Clinton administration.
Sitting opposite the front door is a grandmotherly receptionist with the requisite bowl of hard candy. When she sees me, her mouth forms a tight O of surprise. “Mr. Prince is—”
I quiet her with a raised hand. “He’ll want to talk to me.”
Hearing my voice, Brian pops his head out of an office conspicuously marked EDITOR. “Maggie,” he says. “This is certainly a surprise.”
I can’t argue there. I’m just as surprised as he is, especially when I say, “I need your help.”
Brian’s smirk is brighter than his bow tie. “With what?”
“I want to search your archives.”
“Everything the Gazette has published in the past twenty years is archived online,” he says, knowing full well that’s not what
I’m looking for.
We stare at each other a moment—a silent face-off. I blink first. I don’t have much of a choice.
“Help me, and I’ll give you an exclusive interview,” I say. “Nothing’s off-limits.”
Brian pretends to think it over, even though his mind’s already made up. The ruthless glint in his eyes gives it away.
“Follow me,” he says.
I’m led to a door in a back corner of the newsroom. Beyond it are a small hallway and a set of steps that go to the basement.
“This is the morgue,” Brian announces as we descend the stairs. “All our old editions are here. Every single one.”
He flicks a light switch when we reach the basement, brightening a room the size of a double-wide trailer. Running along the two longest walls are rows of metal shelves. Bound volumes fill them, each the height and width of a newspaper page. Printed on the spines are the years of publication, beginning with 1870.
I go straight for the one marked 1889. The year Indigo Garson died.
“What other years are you looking for?” Brian says.
I’ve read the Book so many times that I’m able to rattle off all the dates my father mentioned. Brian collects them all. Five volumes from four different decades—a load that leaves him red-faced and huffing.
“When are we going to do that interview?” he says as he plunks them down on a metal desk at the far end of the morgue.
I sit and open the first volume—1889. “Now.”
While a clearly flustered Brian Prince runs upstairs to retrieve a pen and notebook, I page through brittle copies of newspapers a hundred years older than I am. Because the Gazette has always been a weekly paper, it doesn’t take me long to find an article about Indigo Garson—TOWN MOURNS GARSON HEIRESS.
I bristle at the headline’s many indignities and implications. That heiress had a name, and it would have been decent of them to use it. Then there’s how the headline pulls focus away from Indigo and directs it at Bartleby itself, as if a dead sixteen-year-old doesn’t matter as much as the town’s pain.
The article is equally frustrating. It reveals few details about how Indigo Garson died, yet takes great pains to mention that her father remained locked in his bedroom, inconsolable. The meat of the story doesn’t arrive until a few issues later, with the shocking report that a maid at Baneberry Hall claimed to have seen William Garson carry the house’s namesake berries up to his daughter. Two weeks after that was the headline my father had mentioned in the Book.