“I told you, and them, I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it!” he shouted.
Sarah leaned back on the stool, glancing at the door. Over the sounds of the games and the well-insulated walls, no one would hear her if she screamed.
“I’m not here to accuse you,” she said calmly. “I want to know what you think.”
“What I think?” he sneered.
“Yes, what you think. I know you suffered a tragedy you believe was connected to Kerry Manor. I’d like to hear more.”
Will glared at her. He seemed to size her up, questioning whether she might actually believe him.
He took his knife back out and flicked it open, closed, open. He paced away from her.
“Whoever killed your brother,” he said in a rush, “was forced to do it.”
“Forced how?”
“By the evil spirit that lives in the house.” He spoke the words with his back to her.
She wanted to laugh. In a movie, this was the part where she’d laugh, the kid would get mad, and later the evil spirit would kill her for her disbelief. The kid would get the last laugh. Instead she squeezed the chair beneath her and braced for the possibility his words were true.
“You don’t believe me, right?” he asked, spinning around.
“Well, I don’t want to,” she sighed. “I prefer murderers who can be incarcerated. But I’m learning things, strange things about Kerry Manor. You’re not the first to…”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve spent the last five years of my life researching Kerry Manor. There are at least three deaths I’m aware of, four now that your brother is dead, and half a dozen other… things.”
“Three deaths?” Sarah asked, incredulous. “At Kerry Manor?”
He shook his head and slumped back onto the couch.
“Before your brother died, there’d been only one at the house itself – well, more if you include the original family that died. The first after the fire happened in 1965. It was a doctor who worked at the Northern Michigan Asylum. His wife killed him in Kerry Manor.”
Sarah frowned.
“How do you know?”
He rolled his eyes.
“This is the twenty-first century. Have you heard of the internet?”
“Don’t trust everything you read online.”
He snorted.
“I’m not stupid. The stories online are a place to start. I found the wife.”
“The wife? The murderer?”
He nodded, head high.
“She’s not a murderer. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. A spirit made her kill him. She woke up in a pool of blood in Kerry Manor. She found her husband in the kitchen, dead, stabbed to death with a piece of broken glass.”
A tremor of fear coursed through her as she recalled the story of Mr. Pulver’s friend with glass sticking from his cheek.
“How did you find her?”
“Her name was public record. They institutionalized her after the murder at the Northern Michigan Asylum. When the hospital closed, they released her.”
“Released her? No prison time?”
“They considered her insane when she committed the murder. Of course, they released her. She lives in Petoskey now with her sister. She takes care of old people.”
“And she spoke to you about these things? After all these years?”
He cocked an eyebrow.
“She did when I told her about my dad. But it’s also because I believed her. Do you know how rare that is? To find someone who truly believes? I mean, look at you. You’re sitting there just searching for a way to poke holes in my story. You don’t want to believe it, so you’ll find a way not to. I know the truth. I watched it happen with my own eyes. My dad was the best person I’ve ever known. He was honest and kind and loved my mom like… like people in romantic comedies, or some shit. After we went to that house, he was scared. He confided in me. I was only twelve, but I knew something was wrong. He said a girl followed him from the house. She was torturing him, and he was terrified she wanted to hurt Mom.”
“And then your father killed your mother?”
“Except it wasn’t him. It was just like the doctor’s wife. He blacked out, and when he woke up, Mom was dead in the bathtub. They arrested him. The prosecutor made up some fool story that he wanted to have an affair with his secretary. Bullshit! He and my mom used to laugh about what a ditz his secretary was. Our criminal justice system is a joke.”
Sarah tried to imagine the young man before her as a twelve-year-old boy - the only believer in his father’s innocence.
“Why did he commit suicide? I mean, doesn’t that imply guilt?” She realized she’d just echoed the words of Detective Collins, and immediately regretted them.
Will glared at her and shook his head.
“He killed himself to get rid of the spirit. He couldn’t take it anymore. He wrote me a letter and told me everything. I tried to stop him. I called his lawyer, but it was too late. By the time I got the letter, he had already done it.”
“I’m sorry,” Sarah breathed. She too had lost her father, but not under such horrendous circumstances, and not while she was still a young girl. “What other things happened at Kerry Manor?”
“I’m sure there’s more than what I know,” he said. “But I have a file on my laptop of every incident I’ve uncovered. Give me your email, and I’ll send it you.”
Sarah nodded.
“Okay, yeah, that would be helpful.” She noticed he had glanced toward the corner when he mentioned his laptop, and she saw a green duffel bag next to a stack of neatly folded blankets.
“Do you live here?” she asked.
His jaw tightened, and he shook his head.
“I crash here once in a while.”
“You’re seventeen?”
“Eighteen in four months.”
“And then what? College?”
He shrugged and took the knife back out, opening it and closing it.
“Maybe. Why do you care?”
Sarah stood.
“I don’t, just asking.” She handed him a card from her wallet.
“Sarah Flynn, Architect,” he read out loud.
“Yep, that’s me.”
“You build houses?”
“Design them. I leave the building to the professionals.”
He nodded and stuck the card in his back pocket.
“I’ll email you tonight.”
SARAH CLICKED the email from truthteller333@mail.com. Will had compiled a Google document that spanned five pages, including links to online articles, forums, his personal notes, and a detailed timeline.
“Damn, this kid is organized,” she murmured, wondering at his persistence. His parents were both dead, after all; there was no one to exonerate.
“He did it for himself,” she said. “Because he had to know for sure.”
The document started with the original tragedy at Kerry Manor. It listed the names of the five members of the Kerry family offering a handful of details about each. There was a paragraph about Ethel, who had potential behavior problems at school and allegedly spent six months in the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane.
The next incident occurred in 1928 and involved a little boy who nearly drowned while swimming in front of the partially burned mansion. He insisted he saw a little girl watching him from the window, and then suddenly she was in the lake, pulling him beneath the water. His father resuscitated him, and the incident was reported to a local journalist, who wrote a piece reflecting on the tragedy that occurred in the house nearly three decades before.
Sarah read on. A girl claimed she was shoved from her roof by a ghost who followed her from Kerry Manor. A young woman was institutionalized, insisting she was being haunted by a child’s spirit after visiting Kerry Manor. The doctor’s wife, who murdered him at Kerry Manor and claimed she had no memory of the event. There were several reports by people who visited Kerry Manor and heard a child singing. Five articles linked to the murder of Will’s mother, Beverly, and an entire page was devoted to his father’s strange behavior after their visit to Kerry Manor. Finally, lastly, Sarah read about her own brother’s murder, and followed links to two news articles.