We stood outside the door.
“Do you want to talk to him?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
She turned back down the hall in tears. Plucked the figure from the light fixture.
“I thought this was me at first,” Susan said, handing it to me. “But I don’t have brown hair.”
“I think it’s me,” I said.
“I’m so tired of being afraid,” she murmured.
“I know.”
“You don’t,” she said. “But you will.”
Susan went to her room. I went to work. I swear I worked. I washed the house, every inch of wall and floor, with rosemary and lavender. I smudged the sage and said my magical words that were gibberish as Miles screamed and Susan cried in the rooms above me. Then I dumped everything from my vomit-smeared purse into the kitchen sink and ran water over it until it was clean.
As I was unlocking my car in the dusk, an older woman, well powdered and plump-cheeked, called out to me from down the block. She scurried over in the mist, a little smile on her face.
“I just want to thank you for what you are doing for this family,” she said. “For helping little Miles. Thank you.” And then she put her fingers to her lips and pantomimed locking them, and scurried away again before I could tell her I was doing absolutely nothing to help this family.
A week later, as I was killing time in my tiny apartment (one bedroom, fourteen books), I noticed something new. A stain, like a rusty tidal pool on the wall by my bed. It reminded me of my mother. Of my old life. All the transactions—this for that, that for this—and none of it had made any difference until now. Once the transaction was complete, my mind was a blank, awaiting the next transaction. But Susan Burke and her family, they stuck with me. Susan Burke and her family and that house.
I opened up my ancient laptop and did a search: Patrick Carterhook. A whir and a grind and finally up came a link to an article from a university English Department: Victorian True Crime: The Grisly Tale of the Patrick Carterhook Family.
The year is 1893, and department-store magnate Patrick Carterhook moves into his splendid Gilded Age mansion in the heart of the city with his lovely wife, Margaret, and their two sons, Robert and Chester. Robert was a troubled boy, much given to bullying schoolmates and harming neighborhood pets. At age twelve, he burnt down one of his father’s warehouses and remained on scene to watch the wreckage. He endlessly tormented his quiet younger brother. By age fourteen, Robert proved unable to control himself. The Carterhooks chose to keep him away from society: In 1895 they locked him inside the mansion. He was never again to set foot outdoors. Robert steadily grew more violent in his gloomy, gilded prison. He smeared his family’s belongings with his own excrement and vomit. A nursemaid was sent to the hospital with unexplained bruises; she never returned. The cook, too, fled one winter morning. Rumors had it that she’d suffered third-degree burns from boiling water in a “kitchen mishap.”
No one knows exactly what went on in that house the night of January 7, 1897, but the bloody results are indisputable. Patrick Carterhook was discovered stabbed to death in his bed; his body was pocked with 117 knife wounds. Patrick’s wife, Margaret, was found struck down by an ax—still in her back—as she was fleeing up the stairs to the attic, and young Chester, age ten, was found drowned in a bathtub. Robert hanged himself from a beam in his room. He had apparently dressed up for the occasion: he wore a blue Sunday suit, covered in his parents’ blood. It was still wet from drowning his little brother.
Beneath the story was a blurry ancient photo of the Carterhooks. Four formal unsmiling faces peering out from layers of Victorian ruffles. A slender man in his forties with an artfully pointed beard; a blond, petite woman with sad, piercing eyes so light they looked white. Two boys, the younger blond like his mother; the elder dark-haired, black-eyed with a slight smirk and his head tilted at a knowing angle. Miles. The elder boy looked like Miles. Not a perfect match, but the essence was exact: the smugness, the superiority, the threat.
Miles.
If you remove the bloody floorboards and water-stained tiles; if you destroy the beams that held Robert Carterhook’s body, and you tear down the walls that absorbed the screams, do you take down the house? Can it be haunted if the actual guts—its internal organs—have been removed? Or does the nastiness linger in the air? That night I dreamt of a small figure opening the door to Susan’s room, creeping across the floor as she slept, and standing calmly over her with a gleaming butcher knife borrowed from her million-dollar kitchen. The room smelled of sage and lavender.
I slept into the afternoon and woke in the darkness, in the middle of a thunderstorm. I stared at the ceiling until the sun set, then got dressed and drove over to Carterhook Manor. I left my useless herbs behind.
Susan opened the door with wet eyes. Her pale faced glowed from the gloom of the house.
“You are psychic,” she whispered. “I was going to call you. It’s gotten worse, it’s not stopping,” she said. She collapsed onto a sofa.
“Are Miles and Jack here?”
She nodded and pointed a finger up. “Miles told me last night, quite calmly, that he was going to kill us,” she said. “And I actually worry … because … Wilkie …” She was crying again. “Oh, God.”
A cat padded slowly into the room. Ribby and worn, an old tomcat. Susan pointed to it.
“Look what he did … to poor Wilkie!”
I looked again. At the cat’s back haunches was only a frayed tuft of fur. Miles had cut off the cat’s tail.
“Susan, do you have a laptop? I need to show you something.”
She led me up to the library, and over to the Victorian desk that was clearly her husband’s. She clicked a switch and the fireplace whooshed on. She hit a key and the laptop glowed. I showed Susan the Web site and the story of the Carterhooks. I could feel her warm breath on my neck as she read.
I pointed at the photo: “Does Robert Carterhook remind you of anyone?”
Susan nodded as if in a trance. “What does it mean?”
The rain spattered at the black windowpanes. I longed for a bright blue day. The heaviness of the house was unbearable.
“Susan, I like you. I don’t like many people. I want the best for your family. And I don’t think it’s me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you need someone to help you. I can’t help. There is something wrong with this house. I think you should leave. I don’t care what your husband says.”
“But if we leave … Miles is still with us.”
“Yes.”
“Then … he’ll be cured? If he leaves this house?”
“Susan, I don’t know.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you need more than me to fix this. I’m not qualified. I can’t fix it. I think you need to leave tonight. Go to a hotel. Two rooms. Lock the adjoining door. And then … we’ll figure it out. But all I can really do for you is be your friend.”
Susan stood dizzily, holding her throat. She pushed back from me, murmured excuse me, and disappeared out the door. I waited. My wrist was throbbing again. I glanced around the book-filled room. No parties here for me. No referrals to rich, nervous friends. I was ruining my big chance; I gave her an answer she didn’t want. But I felt, for once, decent. Not telling-myself-I-am decent, but just decent.
I saw Susan flicker past the door heading down the stairs. Then Miles swooped immediately after her.
“Susan!” I yelled. I stood up but I couldn’t will myself to go outside the room. I heard murmuring. Urgent or angry. Then nothing. Silence. And still nothing. Go out there. But I was too afraid to go alone into that dark hallway.
“Susan!”
A child who terrorized his little brother and threatened his stepmom. Who told me calmly that I would die. A kid who cut the tail off the family pet. A house that attacked and manipulated its own inhabitants. A house that had already seen four deaths and wanted more. Stay calm. The hallway was still dark. No sign of Susan. I stood. I began walking to the door.