by Lisa Unger
They’d both said they would come, with surprising speed and eagerness. But part of him didn’t believe that anyone would come back here unless they had to. But maybe they did have to, whatever their individual reasons for doing so might be.
“We’re having a bit of an emergency,” Samantha was saying. Matthew heard the slight shake in her voice. “Our daughter, Jewel—it seems that she’s run off.”
“It looks like, from the app that tracks her phone, that she’s at Havenwood,” said Matthew.
They both turned to look at him, Claire’s mouth dropping open in surprise.
And in the warm light of the foyer, they were all sixteen again. While they stood regarding each other, Samantha walked out the front door.
Matthew followed and called after her, standing on the porch. He was still processing what she’d told him, about the tracking app. What did she know about him?
But she didn’t turn back and finally disappeared into the trees, holding her phone out in front of her like a divining rod, following the little blue dot that was their daughter.
He turned back to face his old friends.
4.
Young Ian, Claire, and Matthew all sat around the fire in Old Man Merle’s study. After the detective had left, and Penny had fed them tomato soup and grilled-cheese sandwiches, they told Matthew’s grandfather about what they’d seen in the basement of Havenwood. About the circle with the X in the middle, about Mason’s wish.
Claire added what she’d seen—or thought she’d seen—in the basement of Merle House. The old man sat at his desk, fingers steepled, eyes watching each of them as they spoke.
When they were all done talking, there was silence, the fire casting strange shadows on the portraits and landscapes that hung on the dark walls.
Matthew was hoping that the old man would start to laugh, to tell them they were watching too many horror films and their imaginations had gotten away from them.
But instead he rose and walked to his bookshelf, pulled down a thick leather-bound volume. He opened it and started flipping through its tissue-thin pages. Claire sat cross-legged on the floor, Matthew on the hearth, and Ian slumped on the couch.
Matthew was thinking about Mason. Was he in jail? Had he killed his father? Had he been the last one to see Amelia March?
Outside a light rain started to fall. Penny had called Ian and Claire’s parents; they’d be coming to pick them up eventually.
“This land has a history,” Matthew’s grandfather said. “And it’s not a pretty one.”
They all looked at him from their various seats. Claire’s eyes shone, like she might start to cry again. Ian kept glancing at the door as if he was thinking of making a run for it.
“That building you visited is the ruins of a place called Havenwood. My great-uncle was a famed psychiatrist, known for his writings on the care and reform of troubled children: Dr. Archibald Arkmann.”
They all stayed quiet, keeping their eyes on the old man.
“His practices, let’s say, were less than scientific. I’m ashamed to say a number of children died in his care at the facility he founded, Havenwood Reform School—which you kids have discovered out on the property.”
The wind picked up, knocking the rain against the window.
“Since the discovery of his gruesome activities, the unmarked graves, the school’s closure, his subsequent suicide, and the closing of all roads leading to that place, I’m afraid an urban legend has sprung up. Dr. Archibald Arkmann. The Dark Man.”
He turned the book to face them, and the kids rose to gather around his desk. There was a line drawing of a slim man with long dark hair and a black suit, pronounced cheekbones, and sunken eyes. Claire issued a little cry and pushed back into Ian, who put a hand on her shoulder.
“It was him,” she whispered. “I saw him in the basement.”
Matthew’s grandfather shook his head. “No, dear girl, that’s not possible. He is quite dead. Long dead. In fact, he killed himself with a gun to his head in the very room that once stood where we are right now.”
Claire gasped, and they all looked around the room, as if expecting the Dark Man to leap from the shadows.
“I saw him,” she said, her voice clear and calm. “He had Amelia March.”
The old man just shook his head.
“These stories, these images, have a way of working their way into our psyches. We all grow up thinking we know what God looks like, how an alien might appear, or a yeti, or a dragon. All things we’ve never seen.”
Matthew had never thought of it that way. It was true.
“Stories of Havenwood, and Dr. Arkmann, have circulated in this town for decades. He’s part of our collective unconscious, a kind of bogeyman. When I was a child, he was a cautionary tale—behave or we’ll take you to Dr. Arkmann.”
“That’s pretty messed up,” said Ian.
“Indeed,” said Grandpa with a rueful chuckle. “And these frightening images have a way of worming their way into our unconscious, taking the form of our individual fears, or taking the blame for things that can’t otherwise be tolerated or understood—violence, murder, a child disappearing without a trace.”
Claire shook her head, but didn’t say anything.
“To say the Dark Man did it, or that he made me do it, is to give a name and a form to the darkness that lurks without—and within—each of us. To call for him, to ask for his help, is to call on whatever self within us that’s capable of doing violence.”
“Is that what Mason did?” asked Matthew.
“I don’t know,” said his grandfather, blowing out a breath. “I know that there is violence and abuse in that family, a skein that runs deep through generations. Very often abused boys become dangerous men. There’s nothing supernatural about that.”
“My great-uncle died at Havenwood.”
They all turned to see that Penny had come into the room and was standing by the door with her arms folded across her middle.
“Horrible things happened at Havenwood and here at Merle House,” she went on. “And the land, it remembers. Pain and sadness, fear and madness, it seeps into the soil. There’s an energy.”
“Penny’s family, once upon a time, owned this land,” said Old Man Merle with a nod. “Dr. Arkmann bought it when the land dried up and could no longer be farmed. He bought a hundred acres and built Havenwood.”
“This land has always been cursed, long before Havenwood, before Merle House. It infected my family too. That’s what my grandmother told me.”
“More myth,” said Matthew’s grandfather, not unkindly.
“How did it infect your family?” asked Claire, her voice soft.
Penny shook her head, looked down at the ground between them. “There have been evil men in my family—rapists, murderers, child killers. I’d rather not say it all.”
It seemed impossible, when Penny was so good, so kind and reliable, always taking care of them.
“Violence breeds violence,” said Matthew’s grandfather. “Nature or nurture—or both. It has nothing to do with hauntings or curses. It takes someone strong like Penny to break the chain. Isn’t that right, Penny? Your girls went off to college, and now one’s a reporter, the other a research scientist.”
Penny nodded. “That’s right. They moved far from this place.”
“History only has so much power,” the old man went on. “And there are no such things as ghosts or bogeymen. There are just bad people looking for a reason to do bad things.”
They all stood silent for a moment.
“Dr. Arkmann is buried on this land, long dead,” said Matthew’s grandfather. “His facility is a ruin that should be torn down, I suppose. And, yes, horrible things have happened here in this very house. But that’s the past. And the rest of it, just stories created and perpetuated by small and frightened minds.”
He leaned back in the big leather chair.
“Matthew, it will be up to you to make a better future for Merle House. And,
all of you, stay away from Havenwood, and from superstitious people. And when you hear rumors, ignore them.”
“What about Mason?” asked Matthew.
“I’ll send our lawyer to help him navigate whatever comes next, to make sure he’s treated fairly. His family and ours, like Penny said, we’re connected over generations. I’ll make sure he and his mother get whatever they need.”
They all stood waiting for more. But the old man seemed to lose himself in the book he’d showed them, turning through its pages.
Matthew walked Claire and Ian down the long hallway.
“I saw him,” Claire said again. “He was real.”
Matthew had seen him, too, a shadow in the hallway, a form in the corner of his room that disappeared when the lights turned on, in his dreams. Matthew had, in fact, been seeing him since he was a child. He’d even thought he’d caught a glimpse of him that night when Mason had made his wish. The weird thing was, Matthew wasn’t afraid of him. Not at all. In fact, the Dark Man was one of the things Matthew loved most about Merle House.
In the foyer, they all stood and looked at each other awkwardly, no one quite sure what to say.
“Do you think Mason killed his father?” asked Ian.
“Or Amelia?” said Claire, eyes wide.
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” said Matthew. He turned a finger at his temple. “Mason’s crazy. You know that. He’s weird. Creepy.”
Matthew didn’t think Mason was guilty of anything. The words just seemed to spring from his mouth, and when they were on the air, they seemed true. Claire and Ian nodded uncertainly. Claire frowned and opened her mouth as if to speak, but when the doorbell rang, she pressed her lips closed.
“It’s like my grandfather said. There’s no Dark Man, just bad people looking for a reason to do bad things.”
Claire shook her head, but didn’t say anything. Ian nodded, but kept his eyes to the ground.
They each stood stone still with their own thoughts, with their own versions of what they’d experienced. Then Claire and Ian left, and Matthew was alone.
“Are you just going to stand there like a statue?” Penny scolded.
How long had he just stood there, listening to the Dark Man?
“Go get in the shower and wash this day off your skin.”
Matthew obeyed. He didn’t know, as he got in the shower and rinsed the day’s dirt away, that his parents would come for him the very next day, that it would be years before he saw his friends again, and that slowly he’d bury all his memories of Merle House, Havenwood, and the Dark Man as deep as he could.
5.
When Ian finally arrived at Merle House after what seemed like an endless drive, it looked as if nothing had changed. The house. The grounds. The whispering of the trees. It was exactly as Ian remembered it. He climbed out of the car and stood a moment, just observing.
“So this is it,” said Liz. “Doesn’t look so bad.”
Her laughter was like chimes on the wind. But then she was gone.
As he stood, he watched a taxi approach. It came to a crunching stop, and after a moment, a young woman climbed out. Claire.
The driver, a young bespectacled guy in a plaid shirt, helped her take her bag from the trunk. And Ian was lost in the watching of her. She came to stand before him, wearing an uncertain smile.
“Hey,” she said. “Long time.”
“Too long,” he said. “You look . . . beautiful.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I really don’t.”
Strange.
Standing there with her, just as he had so many times years ago, it was as if time had stood still, but they had aged in place.
They both glanced up at Merle House.
The larger world was unrecognizably changed from what it had been when he was a kid, but this place seemed eternal. And though he hadn’t set foot here in years, it felt as if he’d never left, as if he was still the same teenager he was the night he’d left for the last time. The air was crisp and cool, a light breeze.
“I was so sorry to hear about your wife,” said Claire. “I meant to call.”
The cab drove off, disappearing down the drive.
The wind tossed Claire’s skirt, and the hem of her belted jacket, the strands of her auburn hair.
“Thank you,” he said. There wasn’t really anything to say when people offered their condolences. It had stopped feeling like a gut punch every time, so that was progress.
“I heard you had . . . an incident at work,” he said.
“I . . . ,” she said, looking up to the sky. “I was attacked by a patient. Violently. I’m—um—you know—getting better.”
He nodded. She looked fragile, a bit edgy. There was some faint scarring on her throat and jaw. The side of her face seemed swollen, off somehow. But she’d barely aged, the volume of her beauty only deeper, richer than it had been when she was younger.
“Wow, Claire,” he said softly, gently touching her arm. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”
She shifted away just slightly, subtly, and he drew his hand back.
“Horrible things happen, right?” she said. “You just have to move on, try to get past it.”
“That’s true.”
He looked back at the house, out toward the woods.
“Matthew emailed you?” asked Ian. She nodded, wrapped her arms around her center.
“Yeah,” he said. “Me too. He said he needed help with the house.”
Claire nodded. “He told me that Avery March still had questions,” she said. “That he thought we all owed it to her to have a sit-down and give her anything we knew about Amelia.”
“Sounds like he’s looking to clear some bad energy from the place.”
She looked at him with a new glimmer of interest. “That’s what you do, right? Ghost hunting?”
He smiled. “It’s more like space clearing, energy balancing.”
She nodded with a little frown. “I guess that’s what I do, except with people.”
He smiled at that. “Liz used to say that we were house psychologists. We help them get over their issues and move on to find peace.”
The shadow of a smile touched her lips. “I like that.”
He heard a low murmur from behind him, and turned to see about a hundred crows perched in the trees and on the barn. They’d always lived here, this big murder of crows. Their black bodies gleamed against the gunmetal sky. He had an affinity for crows, their intelligence, their mischievous natures, their love of shiny things.
“I guess I always knew we’d need to come back here; didn’t you?” asked Claire.
He thought about it. Maybe. Maybe not.
There was a time when life was so good with Liz and their weird little business that he never thought about the past or the future. When he was just happy every day. Just like he’d asked the Dark Man that night when Mason made his wish. Silently Ian had said, in the space under Mason’s wail, I want to be happy every day. He didn’t even know what that meant until he got it with Liz.
“Shall we?” he said, making a flourish with his hand, picking up her overnight bag, and following her up the steps.
They rang the bell, and a few moments later a frazzled-looking Samantha Merle came to the door and let them in, Matthew drifting down the stairs a minute later.
“We’re having a bit of an emergency,” said Samantha, running a nervous hand through her wild hair. She looked frightened, tired, her eyes rimmed with fatigue. “Our daughter, Jewel—it seems that she’s run off.”
“Oh my God,” said Claire. “What can we do?”
Ian wasn’t even surprised to arrive here and find yet another missing girl. In fact, he had a weird sense of déjà vu. Had he had a dream that was just like this?
“It looks like, from the app that tracks her phone, that she’s at Havenwood,” Matthew interjected.
Ian almost laughed. Of course she was. Why not?
A look passed between Samantha and Matthew, not a ple
asant one. And then Samantha was gone, racing out the door without another word to any of them.
Matthew brushed past them, chasing after his wife. On the porch, he called her name. But she just kept going. After a moment, he turned and came back inside.
Then, it was just the three of them in that foyer where they’d last said goodbye and never seen each other as kids again—for various reasons. Claire’s mom had gotten stricter after Amelia March went missing. Ian’s parents hadn’t wanted him to hang around with anyone connected to Mason, and that included Matthew and Claire. And, anyway, Matthew’s parents had come and taken him home the day after they were all questioned by the police. He hadn’t returned the following summer. They’d all gone off to college, except for Mason, who’d gone to juvie, then returned to work for the old man—or so Ian had heard.
“So,” said Matthew. He clapped his hands together, the sound echoing off the tall ceilings. He seemed taller—was that possible?—darker in the eyes, somehow not as nice as Ian remembered him, even from the last time he’d seen Matthew and Samantha in the city a couple of years before Liz passed. “Welcome back to Merle House.”
“Should we go with Sam?” asked Ian. “To look for Jewel.”
“Yeah, we probably should,” said Matthew.
They stepped back out into the gray light of the overcast day just in time to see a black Mercedes drift up like a shark and a tall person climb out. It took a second for Ian to place her. Avery March, Amelia’s sister.
“Sam called me,” she said as she approached. “Jewel is missing?”
Matthew lifted his palms. “Let’s not say missing. She’s gone off into the woods. She’s pissed at us. She hates me. And she’s done this before.”
“Don’t you think we should call the police?” suggested Claire. “They can help. Just to be safe.”
“No,” said Matthew, adamant. “That’s the last thing I need right now.”
By Ian’s estimation, Matthew was not striking the pose of a worried father. But Ian didn’t have kids, so what did he know about teenagers and when and when not to be worried?