by Riley Sager
The two women leave the kitchen. A few minutes later, Hannah returns and collapses into her chair. I can’t help but pity her. She’s a thief. She’s a liar. But she’s also had a much harder life than I have. I often forget that, despite all the grief it’s brought us, my family’s time at Baneberry Hall made us rich.
When Hannah slides the keys toward me, I push them back across the table.
“Listen,” I say, “I don’t plan on keeping most of the stuff inside that house. Next week, if you want, you can come over and take whatever you want to sell. There’s a shitload of antiques in there. And a lot of money that could be made.”
“All of it’s yours,” Hannah says.
“Not really. Most of it came with the house. It doesn’t belong to anyone. So consider it yours.”
“I’ll think about it.” Hannah takes the keys and, with a grateful nod, shoves them back in her pocket. “But just so you know, I haven’t used these to sneak inside since you came back.”
I cock my head. “What are you saying?”
“That there are other ways into that house.”
“Where?”
Hannah reaches for another cigarette but decides against it. Instead, she stares at her hands and quietly says, “I got in through the door at the back of the house.”
“There isn’t a back door to Baneberry Hall.”
“It’s hidden,” she says. “My mother showed it to me years ago.”
Once again, I look for signs that she’s lying. I don’t see any. In that moment, Hannah Ditmer looks the most sincere I’ve ever seen her.
“Please. Tell me where?”
“Back of the house,” Hannah says. “Behind the ivy.”
JULY 13
Day 18
That morning, I was awakened by a series of blows to my face and chest. Lost in the gray between dreams and wakefulness, I at first thought it was the ghost of William Garson, beating me with his cane. But when I opened my eyes, I saw it was Jess, pummeling me with both fists.
“What did you do?” she screamed. “What the fuck did you do?”
She sat on top of me, red-faced and furious. Although I was able to buck her off me, Jess managed to land a haymaker before falling sideways. Pain pulsed across my jaw as we reversed positions—me straddling her thrashing legs and gripping wrists that vibrated with rage.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I yelled.
“Me? What’s wrong with you?”
Overpowered and overwhelmed—with rage, with despair, with exhaustion—Jess gave up the fight. It shattered my heart to feel her body go limp beneath mine, to see her sink into the bed, moaning. I would have preferred a thousand punches to that.
“How could you do that, Ewan?” she moaned. “How could you hurt Maggie?”
The mention of our daughter sent me into a full-blown panic. I jumped off the bed and scrambled to Maggie’s room, thinking of Katie Carver and Indigo Garson and all those other girls who’d died within these walls.
When I reached her room and saw Maggie sitting up in bed, the relief I felt was stronger than anything I’d experienced before or since. My daughter was safe. William Garson hadn’t gotten to her.
Then I saw her neck, and my panic returned.
It was circled with marks so red they looked as though they’d been seared into her skin. Making it worse was how they resembled handprints. I could make out the ovals of palms and crimson columns left by fingers.
Maggie looked at me from the bed, terrified, and began to wail. I started to go to her but felt something swoop up behind me—a sudden force as strong as a wind gust. It was Jess again, her anger returning to full boil. In an instant she shoved me to the floor.
“Don’t you dare touch her!” she shouted.
I scrambled backward along the floor, just in case Jess tried to kick me. She looked so angry I expected one at any moment. “What happened to her?”
Jess stared down at me with an unspeakable look of hatred on her face. There was nothing else it could have been. In that moment, my wife despised me.
“Maggie woke me up with her crying. I came here and found her gasping for breath. Her face was purple, Ewan. And then I saw those marks on her neck—”
“Jess, you know I would never hurt her. You have to believe me.”
“Our daughter’s pain is what I believe,” Jess said. “And since I didn’t hurt her, that leaves you.”
Maggie had started to wail even more, the sound so loud I at first thought Jess couldn’t hear me when I said, “It doesn’t.”
She heard. It just took her a second to react. When she did, it was with a snarled “Of course it was you!”
“Think about it, Jess,” I said. “I was asleep. You’re the one who woke me up.”
“You weren’t asleep,” she said. “You’d just crawled back into bed the second before I heard Maggie crying.”
Panic poured into me—an all-consuming wave. I remained on the floor, my head in my hands, feeling terrified and guilty. I’d hurt my daughter, and I hadn’t even been aware of it.
“It wasn’t me, Jess,” I said. “I need you to believe that.”
“Ewan, I saw you get back into bed.”
“It might have been me, but it wasn’t intentional,” I said, knowing I sounded crazy. “William Garson made me do it.”
He’d come for Maggie, just as he’d come for the others. Each method was different—baneberries for his daughter, a pillow over Katie Carver’s face. Drownings and falls and accidents. Each death brought about by their fathers, even though they had no control over their actions.
“He’s been killing people throughout the history of this house. All of them girls. All of them sixteen or under. He killed his daughter, Jess. And now he’s making other fathers kill theirs. He’s been doing it for years.”
Jess looked at me like I was a stranger. I couldn’t blame her. In that moment, I was unrecognizable even to myself.
“Listen to yourself, Ewan,” she said. “Spouting this gibberish, trying to excuse what you’ve done. You’re lucky I don’t call the police.”
“Call them.” That would have been one way out of the situation—locking me away where I couldn’t get to Maggie and William Garson couldn’t get to me. “Please call them.”
“You’re sick, Ewan,” Jess said before snatching Maggie off the bed and leaving the room.
I followed them down the hall to our bedroom, my body getting more numb with each step. I couldn’t believe that my biggest fear was about to come true. I was about to lose my family.
“I didn’t mean to do it.”
Jess slammed the bedroom door in my face. I reached for the handle and, finding it locked, began to pound on the door.
“Jess, please! You have to believe me!”
All I heard on the other side of the door was the sound of drawers being opened and closet doors slamming shut. Ten minutes later, Jess emerged with a packed suitcase, which she dragged behind her while still carrying Maggie. They veered into Maggie’s room to repeat the process.
Slam.
Lock.
Pack.
I paced the hallway, wondering what to do. The answer hit me when Jess finally left Maggie’s room with another, smaller suitcase.
Nothing.
Let them leave. Let Jess take Maggie as far away from Baneberry Hall as possible. It didn’t matter that she was angry with me and might be for a very long time. Maybe forever. What mattered was that Maggie wouldn’t be inside these walls.
“Just tell me where you’re going,” I said as I followed them down the stairs.
“No,” Jess said with a ferocity I didn’t think was possible.
I caught up to them at the bottom of the steps and pushed in front of Jess, briefly halting their escape.
“Look at me, Jess.” I stood before h
er, hoping she still recognized the real me. Hoping that some small traces of that man remained. “I would never intentionally hurt our daughter. You know that.”
Jess, who’d been keeping up a brave face for Maggie’s sake, let it crumble. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Know that I love you. And I love Maggie. And I’m going to fix this while you’re gone. I promise. This house won’t hurt Maggie anymore.”
Jess looked into my eyes, a thousand emotions shifting across her face. I glimpsed sadness and fear and confusion.
“It’s not the house I’m afraid of,” she said.
She stepped around me, weighed down with our daughter and two suitcases. All three were placed on the floor just long enough for her to open the front door. Jess picked up her suitcase. Maggie lifted hers. Then together the two of them, still in their nightclothes, left Baneberry Hall.
I watched their departure from the vestibule, not blinking as the car vanished from view. Under any other circumstances, I would have been devastated. My wife and child had left me. I didn’t know where they were going. I didn’t know when they’d return. Yet I felt nothing but relief after they were gone. It meant Maggie was far from Baneberry Hall.
It wasn’t safe there. Not for her.
And it would never be safe with the spirit of William Garson still present. Although I knew I needed to rid him from the place, I had no idea how. In fact, there was only one person I could turn to for advice.
And he wasn’t even alive.
Without any other options, I made my way to the kitchen and sat facing the bells on the wall.
Then I waited.
Twenty-One
In my line of work, I’ve crossed paths with plenty of landscapers. Some are true artists, crafting elaborate groundscapes with attention paid to color, shape, and texture. Others are basic laborers, trained only to yank weeds and shovel mulch. But all of them have told me the same thing: plant ivy at your own peril. Gone unchecked, it spreads and climbs and persists more than any other vine.
The ivy behind Baneberry Hall has done all three for decades. It’s thick—jungle thick—and scales the back of the house in a verdant swath that climbs past the second-floor windows. If there is a door back there, the ivy hides it completely.
At first, I try swiping at some vines, hoping they’ll fall away from the wall. If only it were that easy. When that doesn’t work, I shove my hands into the thick of it and blindly feel around, my fingers brushing nothing but exterior wall.
But then I feel it.
Wood.
I do more tugging and brushing until a door begins to take shape deep within the vines. Short and narrow, it’s less a door and more like a flat board where a proper door should be located. There’s not even a handle—just a rusted bolt that I slide to the side.
The door cracks open, and I give it a pull, widening it until there’s a gap big enough for me to fit through. Then, like a diver about to submerge, I take a deep breath and push through the curtain of ivy.
Once inside, I can barely see. There’s no overhead light that I can find, and the ivy outside allows only dapples of moonlight to pass through. Luckily, I anticipated this and came prepared with a flashlight.
I switch it on and am greeted by a brick wall slick with moisture. A millipede scurries across it, fleeing the light. To my left is more wall. To my right is inky darkness that stretches beyond the flashlight’s glow. I move through it, arriving shortly at a set of wooden steps.
The sight confounds me.
How did I never know this was here?
It makes me wonder if my parents knew about it. Probably not. I’d like to think that had my father been aware of a secret staircase in the back of Baneberry Hall, he would have put it in the Book. It would have been too appropriately Gothic to resist.
I climb the steps slowly, taking them one at a time. I have no idea where they lead, and that makes me nervous. So nervous that the flashlight I’m gripping trembles, casting a jittery glow on the stairwell walls.
After a dozen steps, I reach a landing that could be right out of a Hammer film. It’s small and creaky, with a skein of cobwebs in the corner. I pause there, disoriented, with no clue how far I’ve climbed or where I am inside the house.
I get a better idea once I ascend twelve more steps and a second landing, which would put me firmly on the second floor. There’s a door here as well—similar to the one hidden behind the ivy. Smooth and featureless, save for another bolt keeping it shut.
I slide the bolt.
I pull the door.
Beyond it is a closet of some sort.
The flashlight’s beam lands on several little white dresses hanging inside. Behind them is a thin slice of light.
More doors.
Reaching past the dresses, I push them open and see a bedroom.
My bedroom.
I stumble through the doors and rotate around the room, seeing my bed, my suitcases, the knife sitting atop my nightstand.
Then I see the armoire.
The doorway through which I’ve just emerged.
Shock overwhelms me. I stare at the armoire, uncomprehending, when in truth the situation is easy to understand.
There is a direct route from outside into the bedroom.
It’s why my father had felt it necessary to nail those boards across the armoire doors.
It’s how Hannah Ditmer got into the house unnoticed and without disturbing the doors and windows.
It’s how anyone with knowledge of the passageway can get inside.
Another wave of shock strikes. A real wallop that leaves me tilting sideways, on the verge of being bowled right over.
This entrance into Baneberry Hall isn’t new. It’s been around for decades. Likely since the place was built.
Someone had access to this room back when we lived here.
When I slept here.
It wasn’t Mister Shadow who crept into my room at night, whispering to me.
It was someone else.
Someone real.
JULY 14
Day 19
The first bell didn’t ring until shortly after two p.m.
The sound of it snapped me out of the waking stupor I’d been in and out of since sitting down the day before. In all that time, I’d barely moved. I hadn’t eaten. I certainly hadn’t showered. When I did leave my post, it was only to relieve myself. By midmorning, I’d even stopped doing that, fearful I’d miss an all-important bell chime. Now two bottles of my urine sat in a corner of the kitchen.
I understood—as best as one could in a state of such extreme exhaustion—that I was probably going crazy. These weren’t the actions of a sane man. But each time I was on the cusp of leaving the kitchen, something happened to remind me that I wasn’t insane.
Baneberry Hall was.
During my twenty-hour vigil in the kitchen, the house had been alive with noise. Sounds no home should make under normal circumstances. Sounds that I had nonetheless grown accustomed to hearing.
Music trickling down from the third-floor study and quietly drifting through empty rooms above.
“You are sixteen, going on seventeen.”
The sound of William Garson walking up and down the second-floor hallway, punctuating each step with a strike of his cane.
Tap-tap-tap.
And at 4:54 in the morning, a familiar noise from the study, so loud it reverberated through the house all the way down to the kitchen.
Thud.
Curtis Carver, I now knew. Hitting the floor when life left his body. An action his spirit was doomed to repeat every day for as long as Baneberry Hall was still standing.
But no sound caught my attention more than that single ring at two p.m. It was, after all, what I had been waiting for.
“Hello?” I said.
The sa
me bell rang again. The Indigo Room.
Other bells began to chime a total of four times, repeating the pattern that made me understand the ringing in the first place.
HELLO
More bells rang. Four of them. One on the first row. One on the second. Back to the first, where the first bell in the row rang. Then again at the second with the chiming of the row’s second bell.
Together, it spelled out my name.
EWAN
“Hi, Curtis.” I coughed out a rueful chuckle. Yes, I was now on a first-name basis with a ghost. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
One bell.
I
Four more bells from all over the wall.
KNOW
“Then you also know I need your help.”
The last bell on the second row chimed—the start of a three-ring answer I knew well.
YES
“Then help me, Curtis,” I said. “Help me stop William Garson.”
One bell rang.
N
Then another.
O
I waited for more, inching forward in my chair. After ten seconds passed without the sound of any other bells, I said, “Why not?”
The same two bells rang again.
NO
“But he killed your daughter.”
I got those same two rings in response.
NO
“He didn’t?”
One ring. Two rings.
NO
“Then who did?”
Three bells rang a total of four times, the second one chiming twice on the second row.
LOOK
“At what?” I said, growing frustrated. “What should I be looking at?”
There was a pause during which I sat staring at the wall, waiting for a response. When it came—six bells ringing throughout the wall, two of them chiming twice—I could barely keep up. It was only after they had quieted that I had time to match the bells to their corresponding letters.
The word it spelled was PORTRAIT.
“William Garson’s portrait?” I asked.