Winterbay Abbey

by John Bladek

  chapter twenty-six

  Three weeks had passed since Emily’s death. Her body was never found. I had to admit that gave me some false hope, though the logical part of my brain knew she most likely drowned and washed away with the tide in that cursed bay.

  Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night reaching out for her, only to find her clothes I’d wadded up on her side of the bed. Putting words to the guilt, loss, and grief I felt was impossible. I’d had to teach myself how to do the simplest things, almost like relearning how to tie my shoes. I hadn’t even taken off the sweater Emily made me since I’d returned to Seattle.

  The worst part was the memorial. A lot of people came, so many artists; Emily was well-liked. Some brought drawings and paintings instead of flowers, more reminders of how creative she’d been. Ariel stopped by as well. She made soup for me and said she would help in any way she could. She finished by saying that it’s what Emily would have wanted. I was grateful for Ariel’s kindness, but didn’t feel I deserved it.

  After the memorial, Emily’s mother Sharon came by. We both cried as we packed up things she wanted. I didn’t really like Sharon taking anything. Having everything in the house just as it was somehow kept Emily alive for me.

  Emily was all Sharon had left, though. Who was I to tell her she couldn’t have some of her daughter’s things?

  After about half an hour of packing, Sharon excused herself and walked outside with a box of tissues. Shortly after, I heard her drive off without Emily’s things.

  I haven’t seen her since. I guess everyone has to deal with grief in their own way.

  Besides the incessant emotional tugging in all different directions, life was quiet. I went back to work, unable to stand any more silence.

  My first day in the office, Lance called me in. This time by phone.

  “Hey, Will, I need to see you for a moment,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. A nervous twinge began to churn my stomach.

  I prayed this wasn’t the last meeting Lance and I would have. I could guess the demise of the abbey hadn’t sat well with him.

  I walked into his office.

  He gestured for me to sit down.

  A concerned look came over his face. “How’re you holding up?” he asked.

  “I’m…I don’t know how to answer that question. I’m alive. That’s pretty much all I can say,” I replied.

  He sat back in his chair and nodded. A good twenty seconds passed before he spoke again. “I just got an email from Ted and James. I’m not trying to be pushy, and if you want to take more time off, please feel free, but they were asking if you wanted to continue work for them on their new hotel out in Winterbay.”

  I cleared my throat. I’d forgotten about their request.

  “They’re specifically asking for you, and if I didn’t know any better, their email seemed to hint at wanting you for other projects as well.”

  I nodded.

  “Look, I’m more than happy to give this to someone else if that’s what you want,” he said.

  By “someone else,” he meant Dustin. I wasn’t about to let that prick just pick up my ideas and take all the credit for them again. Besides, Ted and James were adamant about not wanting to work with anyone but me.

  I adjusted my collar. Perhaps, in some strange way, actively creating something new would help me heal. Emily would have wanted that. I was sure of it. I wouldn’t go back to Winterbay; Ted and James had said I could work remotely from Seattle.

  I glanced at Lance.

  He was staring at me.

  “I think I will go ahead with it,” I said.

  He smiled. “Okay. Good. And there’s no problem with staying here to complete everything,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I walked back to my desk past Noelle, who was on the phone. She gave me a sorrowful smile.

  I brought out my original sketches of the hotel. The abbey was still the summer wonderland hotel from the 1890s I originally envisioned.

  Readying myself for a long session of work, I took a very slow breath. It was going to be good to be productive again. I wanted to draw a new, different building that would take advantage of the site. I had no desire to keep anything from that dark past, but only use it as a reference.

  I put my Winterbay drawings on the desk. After I took out my pens and a new sheet of paper, I peered at my old sketch.

  A jolt pulsed through me as I studied the abbey’s entryway.

  A figure stood there, a woman. She cradled two small bundles in her arms.

  I touched the soft image of Emily with my index finger and began to sob.

  Through the tears, I glanced at the abbey’s bell tower window.

  Pamela was nowhere to be seen.

  authors’ note

  Henry James, Charles Dickens, H.P. Lovecraft, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, M.R. James. Just a few of the names you may recognize from the last two centuries as having populated imaginations with tales of Gothic horror, a genre we adore. There is nothing better than reading a Gothic supernatural story like “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” or “The Fall of the House of Usher” by the faint light of a candelabrum. Classic tales like these defined Gothic horror and continue to inspire new stories, including recent films like Crimson Peak.

  In addition to reading the classics, we are always on the lookout for modern writers who harken back to these old tales. English author Susan Hill’s ghost stories (The Woman in Black, The Small Hand, Dolly) and John Boyne’s novel, This House is Haunted, represent some of the best the genre has to offer today. Their tales follow the Gothic tradition in both time and place, although Gothic need not be relegated to Victorian or Edwardian England. The genre fits into the present as well, as long as a sense of forbidden, forgotten evil returning from the past, and a sense of place are retained.

  John’s love for horror and Gothic started early. His older brother told terrifying stories of haunted radio towers on the distant hill of his Spokane neighborhood. Hundred-foot-tall metal monsters with creepy red lights that glowed in the dark of night populated his nightmares. He also recalls sneaking peeks at the daytime Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows with its vampires, werewolves, and witches. The first book he ever read on his own was a collection of ghost stories.

  In grade school, John put his love of horror to the test. He walked home every day past the local neighborhood haunted house where, his best friend’s older brother told him, an insane teenager had murdered his family in their beds with a butcher knife. One day, along with his friend, John built up the courage to sneak inside the abandoned Lizzie Bordenesque-house. He pushed through the creaking door and made his way up the winding staircase as visions of the murdered family, and a madman wielding a knife danced in his head.

  On the second floor, where the terrible deed had purportedly taken place, he peered into the bedrooms of the murdered. It was there that he confronted his greatest fear: an angry neighbor, tired of kids who believed in the made-up nonsense about a midnight murder. The neighbor chased John and his friend back into the street, leaving them to wonder if perhaps they had seen a ghost.

  Not satisfied with the horror down the street, John developed a long love affair with the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, a radio anthology from the 1970s featuring scary audio tales and adaptations of classic ghost stories. The creaking door of the opening credits made up the soundtrack of his childhood, and undoubtedly left him susceptible to stories of haunted houses.

  John introduced Davonna to radio drama some years back, and she’s been entertained and frightened by spooky shows ever since. She grew up reading a healthy dose of Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories, a staple at sleepover parties and Girl Scout meetings. She also read R.L. Stine’s young-adult novels. Every year, Halloween rivaled Christmas in her holiday preparations. She hunted down Halloween decorations and festooned her home with spider webs and pumpkins in anticipation of All Hallow’s Eve. Disney’s classic 1949 cartoon, The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow narrated by Bing Crosby, was a must-watch during the Halloween season along with Disney’s animated Halloween Treat cartoons.

  From the time she was five until the end of high school, Davonna owned a Disneyland pass and frequently went on the Haunted Mansion ride. She remembers being terrified—yet enthralled—with all the ghostly effects. Her freshman English teacher introduced her to Edgar Allan Poe, and she began to read his works, helping to solidify her love of all things classically Gothic and macabre.

  This mutual love of creepy Gothic and ghost tales—coupled with our longstanding friendship—made it seem natural for us to co-write a ghost story. Two months before Halloween in 2014, we challenged each other to write a ghostly tale based on a list of supposedly haunted buildings and locations in the U.S. We settled on a combination of a haunted hotel and a lighthouse, which morphed into the Winterbay Abbey setting along with its brooding lighthouse offshore. Just like the fateful summer of 1816 at Lord Byron’s Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva (the vacation mansion where Mary Shelley dreamed up her gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein, in response to a writing challenge), by the end of August we were on our way to creating our own Frankenstein story.

  While Winterbay Abbey is a work of fiction, the idea surrounding it is partially rooted in history. We chose an abbey as the setting based on Davonna’s research from her previous book, Seeing Red. Set in the 1960s, Seeing Red tells the story of a young woman navigating a pre-women’s lib world. Davonna’s investigation into that era led her to the discovery of a disturbing yet common practice for handling many unwed pregnant girls. Their ashamed families sent them to asylums or convents for the duration of their pregnancies to avoid public humiliation.

  These asylums comprised an expansive institution throughout Europe and North America for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. They were an untalked-of secret that society knew were places for “bad girls.” And they were often much more than places where middle-class daughters hid from shame. For the poor, they could become prisons with virtually no way out. Forced to purchase their freedom at often exorbitant prices, some girls were enslaved for many years.

  Magdalene asylums or laundries, Irish institutions run by Catholic nuns that housed unwed mothers, prostitutes, and other “wayward girls,” have become popularized by films like the Magdalene Sisters and Philomena. These movies dramatized life for the destitute and abandoned women living in convents. The films depict true horror, as women suffered incredible abuses and were robbed of their children and their freedom. A mass grave uncovered near one of the Magdalene laundries in Dublin, Ireland contained the bones of 155 forgotten women and children.

  These facts stuck with Davonna. As she has a tendency to idealize the past, her Sound of Music image of happy singing nuns suffered a terrible blow.

  Thus, we decided to make Winterbay Abbey a place of terror. While Winterbay itself has no mass graves, it still stands as a symbol of the struggles and abuses women faced at the hands of would-be reformers. Good Gothic stories usually allude to some familial or societal sin, and Winterbay Abbey is steeped in its own especially awful secrets. Furthermore, some early Gothic novels (The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe and The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis) include nuns as mysterious central characters.

  In addition to encompassing a dark lineage, good Gothic horror is also marked by often bleak, yet beautiful settings like the coast of Maine, making it the perfect place to host a ghostly tale. Gnarled trees like skeletal hands, fog that comes and goes on a whim, and the unforgiving sea are part of the region’s personality. Winterbay’s setting truly became its own character.

  And of course there is the abbey itself, a looming estate with a curse that eventually brings it down in a final disaster. Without a suitable building, dark and mysterious, decrepit and abandoned, Gothic horror is not as powerful, not even really Gothic. And while the coast of Maine provides a terrific setting, Winterbay Abbey itself sets the frightening scene as it looms above that wild, isolated shore.

  As our setting, Winterbay Abbey had to evoke the proper sense of mystery, loathsomeness, and separation from the everyday world, yet remain a realistic site for a grand hotel. And as this is a Gothic tale, the abbey needed to have the feel of something old and forgotten, a place given over to memory that just might be home to spirits. It is hidden away, beyond the everyday, out of touch and out of sight, yet not out of thought. For it is from those attributes that real Gothic horror comes, all the more terrible for being removed from the immediate senses.

  While the Maine coast is certainly a real place, neither Winterbay nor the abbey of that name is real. You will not find either on a map, and there are no satellite photos of the abbey’s ruins. The story may have originally been based on a list of the most haunted places in America, but we wanted our own unique site that we could embellish and populate with our own nightmares. Thus we crafted Winterbay to feel real, rather than adopting an actual location.

  You may have also noticed a lack of the gore that has become so prominent in modern horror, often a visceral substitute for more emotional, or spiritual terror. Much of what makes Gothic horror so timeless is the use of psychological fear, which has an impact that extends far beyond floods of blood and simple shock. Stephen Mallatrat, who adapted Susan Hill’s ghost novel The Woman in Black for the stage, sums up this idea: “Darkness is a powerful ally of terror; something that’s glimpsed in a corner is far more frightening than if it’s fully observed.”

  In the hands of the old masters of classic Gothic fiction, the frights really do come more from suggestion. There is terror just beyond reach but right over your shoulder; crouching behind a locked door, or lurking in the dank, dark cellar, it flees before detection. Sanity is also drawn into question. Are these horrors real? In many of the old tales, readers must decide for themselves if the ghosts are actual or wild imaginings. Gothic, at least in its finest sense, is subtle. Ghosts rarely appear to crowds, saving their haunts for lone travelers or lost, broken people, damaged by life and the least equipped to deal with their fears. The reader, like the protagonist, is left to wonder, and fear, all alone.

  We hope that the shadows in dark corners of your reading space came alive for you as you read Winterbay Abbey.

  acknowledgments

  Many people work to bring a book alive. Without a team, Winterbay never would have come to be.

  First, let us both thank those who contributed so much to this book. Logan Denmark, you whipped Winterbay into shape from that first draft. You’ve helped Davonna so much in the past, and we’re so grateful for your assistance and expertise on this manuscript. You are a story-logic maven! Bernadette Martonick, all your comments really aided us in amping up the storyline, including tweaking Will’s interior monologue. Andrew Ernst, thank you so much for your fast read-through and for proofreading. You were an enormous help in getting the book ready for final editing, and we’re so glad you loved the story. Leslie Lane, our expert architecture advisor, you really rescued us with those small details that made Will a living, breathing architect. So happy to have had all of you as our first official readers!

  Scarlett Rugers, as always you are definitely hair and makeup for a manuscript. Thanks for making Winterbay red-carpet ready. We fell in love with your concept design for the cover. You really understand how to visualize a book, and Davonna was so happy to be working with you again. And kudos to Jason Anderson at Polgarus Studios for his eye-catching design work on the ebook. Jim Whiting, what can we say? As always your edits and suggestions never fail to impress. Winterbay shines because of your polishing, and it’s been an education and wonderful experience working with you again. We look forward to collaborating on the next manuscript.

  And now for our individual thanks.

  Davonna:

  A big thanks to John Bladek for encouraging me for so many years to keep writing stories and embarking with me on this journey to co-write a Gothic ghost novel. Andrew Ernst, thanks again for all your support and encourage
ment on this project. I was so excited for you to read the book the whole time we were writing it! Mom and Dad, thank you so much for taking me to Disneyland all the time when I was a kid and for supporting my career. Your nurturing along with all the amusement park trips really helped foster my imagination. You’ve always encouraged me to pursue the arts, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized this is a true blessing. Not everyone receives this kind of support. Love you both so much!

  John:

  Thanks, Davonna Juroe, for coming up with so many great ideas, double for being a writer, and for cutting out all my “buts.” To Mom and Dad, thanks for being pretty lax about not letting me watch too many scary shows as a kid.

  And last, to all of you readers, a big thanks for picking up Winterbay Abbey. Writers are here to entertain and offer escapism. Without you and your support there is no one to entertain.

  Thanks again, everyone!

  about the authors

  Davonna Juroe loves ghost stories…as long as they’re not too scary. She tends toward an overactive imagination and startles easily, making her wonder why she’s writing ghostly tales. When she’s not drinking tea and writing spooky novels, she’s exploring old buildings or daydreaming about her next 80s-inspired Halloween costume. Besides reading and writing full-time, she can also be found taking photos of all things whimsical and fantasy-inspired in parks throughout the Pacific Northwest. Davonna currently lives in Seattle, Washington, home of the famous and magical Troll Bridge.

  Winterbay Abbey is Davonna’s third book. She is also the author of the Amazon-bestselling young adult novel Scarlette, a dark retelling of Little Red Riding Hood set in France. Davonna is currently working on Origin, a supernatural pop-science novel about the existence of mermaids. To learn more about Davonna and her books, visit her website at http://www.davonnajuroe.com/