“Why? What’s his issue with Kerry Manor?”
“He claims it’s haunted,” the detective said, lifting the photo up. “More than haunted, he called it evil the last time he got arrested.”
“What makes him say that?” Sarah asked, chilled by his comment.
“Something that stems from his childhood, according to another detective here. The kid’s name is Will. Six years ago, he witnessed his father murder his mother.”
Sarah grimaced, shaking her head.
“That’s terrible, but…”
“But what does it have to do with the house? Yeah, that’s what I asked. Will says they stumbled on Kerry Manor a week before the murder during a day at the beach. His father went in the house and had a strange experience. Will insists that something evil entered him in the house, and they took it home. Eight days later, his father strangled his mother in the bathtub.”
“And what happened to his father?”
“He killed himself in jail.”
“Good grief,” Sarah murmured. “No wonder the kid’s messed up.”
“The father said the same thing. He insisted when the police arrived that he hadn’t done it. He had no memory of the incident, but an evil little girl had followed him from Kerry Manor. She had killed his wife and was framing him.”
“So mental illness runs in the family?” Sarah asked, but her words sounded hollow. She thought of the gaps in Corrie’s memory.
“It hadn’t, before the murder,” Detective Collins continued. “The father’s record was pristine. Not a single incident of domestic violence, not even a drunk driving. But the son fixated on his father’s claims. He’s been trying to destroy Kerry Manor ever since.”
“Where is Will now?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. I have a guest at your brother’s party who saw him. He knew Will from school and recognized him. Will wore a black ninja costume that concealed the lower part of his face. He’s only seventeen and still a minor. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a home, per se. He stays with friends, changes locations pretty regularly.”
“Can’t you find him in school?”
“He took online classes and graduated early. He’s not in school anymore.”
“Why would he kill my brother, though? I mean, Sammy wasn’t the one restoring the house.”
The detective shrugged.
“Why do crazy people do crazy things? We’ll probably never have an answer to that question.”
CORRIE
I UNLOADED THE DISHES. We had bought this coffee mug in New Orleans when I was pregnant with Isis. It was bright pink and black with a colorful skull grinning out from the bone face. I put it in the cupboard, exhausted, though I’d spent most of the morning in a heap of blankets on my bed.
I was a therapist. I knew the signs of grief, depression, hopelessness. But what did any of those labels matter when you waded through it, the muck as high as your neck, the future only more of the same?
At some point I had to pull it together. I understood that on a theoretical level, but how did people actually do it? I usually counseled them to find a hobby, make friends, go for walks in nature.
I laughed and clutched the edge of the counter. For the first time in my life, I understood why people cut themselves. They sought relief from the despair trapped inside, mistakenly believing they could cut it out.
“Corrie?” I looked up to find Sarah in the kitchen doorway, an envelope in her hand.
“Hi,” I said, and then returned my gaze to the dishes, still troubled each time I looked at Sarah and saw Sammy tucked in her features.
“I spoke with Detective Collins this morning.” She came to stand near me, opening the envelope. “He asked about this person. Apparently, he was at the party. Do you recognize him? He was wearing a ninja costume.”
I glanced at the photograph of a young man. Startling green eyes looked out from his pale face, as if the picture had taken him by surprise.
“No.” I shook my head.
“His name is Will. He has a pretty bizarre history with Kerry Manor.”
“Yeah?” I unloaded several plates, knowing I should listen to Sarah, but I felt as though I were receding down a long dark hallway, getting further and further away from myself.
“Corrie? Corrie!”
“Huh?” I snapped my head up and realized she’d asked me something, maybe had been talking for a while.
“I asked if Sammy ever mentioned him. Maybe he and Sammy had an encounter before that night?”
I glanced at the picture again.
“He’s just a boy,” I murmured, rubbing my temple with one hand and bracing myself against the counter with the other.
“Are you okay?” Sarah asked.
If I looked at her, her forehead would be marred with little lines of worry.
“No, I’m fine. I’m going to finish the dishes and take a nap. I’m not feeling well.”
Sarah
SARAH HUGGED Corrie goodbye and walked to the front door. She opened and closed it with a bang, and then slipped into the hall closet, tucking behind a rack of coats.
Not sure what compelled her to hide in the house, she waited, listening to Corrie putting dishes in the sink. Sarah could see the great room through a slit in the hall door.
After several minutes, Corrie walked by clutching one of Sammy’s shirts, breathing in the fabric. Though Sarah could not see her face, she suspected Corrie’s eyes held the same glazed expression that had come over her in the kitchen.
Corrie sat heavily on the couch. For several minutes she didn’t move, and then something fell to the floor. Sammy’s shirt.
“One for sorrow, two for mirth.”
Sarah froze when she heard the song and squinted forward. Corrie sang in the voice Sarah had heard before, a child’s voice.
Corrie stood, and her body looked different. Her head was high, her eyes bright and fierce. A little smile played on her lips, and she skipped across the room to a playpen in the corner. She reached down and pulled out one of Isis’s dolls.
Sarah recognized it as the Raggedy Ann doll her mother had given Isis at her last birthday.
“Dolly’s been bad,” Corrie said, holding the doll out in front of her. “Dolly has to go to the room. Bad Dolly made Mommy drop her ironing.”
Corrie tucked the doll beneath her arm and bounded from the room, running up the stairs.
Sarah slipped out, pressing against the wall and listening to Corrie’s footsteps in the upstairs hallway. Stepping lightly, Sarah hurried up the stairs.
She saw Corrie disappear into the master bedroom. Sarah waited, counting off sixty seconds, and then followed, pushing the door open quietly.
The room appeared empty. Sarah crept to the bed and peeked beneath it, and then moved to the closet to peer behind Corrie and Sammy’s clothes, her eyes lingering for a moment on Sammy’s Bigfoot slippers.
Where had Corrie gone?
Sarah moved along the perimeter of the room, touching the paintings, oil portraits of another time. The huge wardrobe stood near a vanity arranged with Corrie’s makeup and a scattering of Isis’s toys. Sarah looked behind the wardrobe, but found no other door Corrie could have gone through.
Above her, she heard movement. Had Corrie somehow climbed into the rafters?
Sarah looked at the ceiling, following the line of footsteps across the room, and then the distinct clap of bare feet on stairs.
She tiptoed across the room and tucked herself behind the long drapery that shielded the gloomy day.