He terrified her. She didn’t want to help him. But her head lay heavy, and when she closed her eyes, she found she could not open them again.
ONE YEAR LATER
ETHEL WATCHED her father carry his pipe into the study and close the door. Her mother was already inside, reading a book to Jared. Her sister would be knitting in the corner. Ethel lifted a milk crate from the butler’s pantry and set it near the study door. She retrieved the hammer and nails she’d hidden in her room the day before. She climbed onto the crate and pressed a nail diagonally into the door, so that it would drive through the wood of the door into the frame. She paused, listening.
Her father brought up the new capitol building in Lansing, as she knew he would. His talk of politics always grew boisterous and angry. Each time his voice rose, Ethel tapped the nail lightly. Around the frame she moved, until the door was surrounded by nails. She had nailed the windows shut early that morning.
In the kitchen, she took a pile of rags and dipped each in kerosene, returning to the door and shoving them beneath. Had they smelled the kerosene she’d poured onto the curtains? Unlikely.
The match lit with a tiny scrape, and the flame engulfed the rag. She threw the match away and watched the fire consume the rags snaking beneath the door.
“What in God’s name?” her father suddenly bellowed.
Ethel backed away, her hands balled into fists.
Her mother called out, and then her sister. Her brother began to cry.
Ethel went to the great room and retrieved her father’s pistol. She walked trance-like back to the door and lifted the heavy gun, pointing the barrel. Her hand shook, dipped and rose as her scrawny arms wielded the weighted revolver.
The fire raged, consuming the door and beginning to blacken the surrounding walls. Smoke poured fourth and Ethel’s eyes watered so she could barely see.
After the screams died, Ethel walked upstairs. She stood for a long time in her parents’ bedroom, and then climbed into the dumbwaiter and pressed her hands over her ears. The screams had ended, and yet they echoed on in her mind. She closed her eyes and waited.
CHAPTER 1
The Morning after Halloween, 2001
Now
Corrie
M y head ached and my mouth tasted metallic, like pennies. I sat up, noticing the first trickle of early pre-sunrise light creeping in from the windows.
When had I moved to the couch? I patted the velvet sofa and tried to remember. Halloween night flitted by in fragments, images of the party, people laughing. I may have had a few too many Grave Digger cocktails.
Kerry Manor loomed around me, dark and soaring. The carved wooden face over the fireplace held me in its frozen gaze.
My last memory was Sammy draping his arm across my shoulder and handing me a shot of something sweet and vodka-laden.
“It’s All Hallows Eve, my dawling,” he’d whispered, sucking my earlobe. “Have another shot.”
I stood, and the room rolled. Hunched over, I braced my hands on the armrest of the couch and noticed my white Bride of Frankenstein dress was streaked and damp with red. I touched the lace. It was still wet. Had I spilled a drink on myself or gotten sprayed by someone’s fake blood during the night?
I sniffed the air and wrinkled my nose at the dank, metallic smell of blood. I pulled the fabric close to my nose. There was no mistaking the scent.
“Sammy?” I called my husband’s name, my voice wavering. A tiny seed of panic took root in my stomach.
I left the room, glancing in the empty kitchen. At the sink, I saw a pile of bloody rags heaped on the counter. My feet dragged along the wood floor, my dress heavy. The stink of blood grew heady in the kitchen, the fragrance making me dizzy. I braced a hand against the counter’s edge and looked out the window, somehow already knowing what I would see there.
Beneath the oak tree that flanked the water’s edge lay Sammy.
I shrieked and pushed away from the counter, nearly tripping on my long dress as I burst through the back door and plummeted down the stairs.
I didn’t have to touch him to know he was dead.
His eyes stared, unseeing, red veins snaking through white. His mouth hung open and a dark, gelatinous mass pooled inside and dripped onto his chin. I clutched his head and pulled him into my lap, screaming, howling. His body was stiff, cool to the touch, and less like a body than a mannequin. He looked like one of his lifelike wax figures, his realness merely an illusion, a talented artist’s creation.
“No, no, no, please, no.”
Hours passed, or maybe only minutes. Did I fall asleep beneath his body?
“You’re not dead, Sammy,” I murmured. I pinched his firm face and slapped his cheek hard. It would be just like Sammy to pull a prank on Halloween night. “It’s not real,” I told him, wiping the thick blood from his chin, smearing it across his cheek and my palm.
He had grown heavier, stiffer, and when I rolled him off me, I nearly threw up. The previous night’s spirits swam in my head, churned in my belly. I crawled toward the water’s edge, the sharp stones of the beach hard beneath my knees and cutting into my palms.
I waded into the lake, my dress a lead weight pulling me down. If I pushed out far enough, the water would swallow me whole.
I could join my husband. He couldn’t have gone far.
“CORRIE!” The sound found me, a woman screaming, a sad confirmation that I was not dead. Slick hands took hold of my shoulders and forced me into shallow water.
I blinked and found Sarah, Sammy’s twin sister, staring down at me, her face melted in grief and fear. She had thought I was dead, floating out there in the lake. I wanted to be.
“Sammy’s-” she sputtered and stopped, glancing toward the tree where he laid.
She lifted me, soaked dress and all, and struggled up the rocky beach into the yard. She fumbled the glass door open and heaved me into Kerry Manor, depositing me near the fire that burned in the hearth, though I didn’t remember seeing it when I woke earlier in the room.
“Here, let’s get this off.” Sarah undressed me as if I were a child. I stood, shivering, icy and hard. My legs trembled so violently that the moment the sodden dress pooled at my feet, I sank to the floor and pressed my face to my knees. I cried loud, gurgling wails, wishing I could reach deep enough to pluck out the despair and set it free.
CHAPTER 2
Two Months Earlier
Then
Corrie
“This place is outta sight!” Sammy exclaimed.
I nodded, staring through the windshield at Kerry Manor, the Gothic monstrosity we’d be living in for the next eight months.
“Our Halloween Party will be awe-some,” he continued, jumping from the car and pulling me after him. He spun me around and then left me teetering as he jogged to the porch.
I gazed at the steep gabled roof that ended in elaborately carved trim. Two brick chimneys sprouted from the roof, and a pointed iron railing ran the length of one of several rooftops.
I had to admit, it was a neat place to write a book.
“This guy’s a genius,” Sammy announced, producing a skeleton key from the small black box by the door. “He’s restored this house to near-original condition. Can you imagine this place in its prime?”