JULY 12

Day 17

I didn’t tell Jess about the bells or my talk with Marta Carver or my fear that something terrible was brewing inside Baneberry Hall. I knew she wouldn’t want to hear it. She’d made up her mind that everything happening there was, if not normal, then at least benign. Denial was a powerful force, and Jess was fully caught in its grip.

Once Jess left for work, I walked with Maggie to Elsa Ditmer’s cottage to again convince Petra to babysit. But instead of Petra, it was Elsa herself who answered the door. We hadn’t spoken since the night of the sleepover, and I detected residual traces of anger in her pinched expression.

“Do you need something, Mr. Holt?” she said, looking not at me but at my daughter.

I explained that I needed to do some work in my study and wondered if Petra could watch Maggie for a few hours.

“Petra’s being punished,” Elsa said, not elaborating why. But it was clear how she was being punished. Petra’s voice, coming from somewhere deep inside the house, drifted out the open door.

“Lord have mercy on me,” I heard her murmur. “Do not look upon my sins, but take away all my guilt.”

Elsa pretended not to hear it. Instead, she finally looked my way and said, “I can watch Maggie, if you’d like. But only for an hour.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

Elsa retreated inside the house for a minute before returning. As she closed the front door, I could still hear Petra’s feverish prayer.

“Create in me a clean heart, and renew within me an upright spirit.”

Together, the three of us left for Baneberry Hall, strolling up the twisting, wooded drive in relative silence. Elsa spoke only when the roof of the house popped into view.

“Your daughter is still seeing things, yes?”

“She is,” I replied. “Her doctor says she has a very active imagination.”

“If only that were true.”

I looked to Elsa, surprised. “You think Maggie’s lying?”

“On the contrary. I think she can see things most of us aren’t able to.”

Ghosts.

That’s what Elsa was talking about. That Maggie was seeing ghosts. I already knew that. What I didn’t know—and what I had failed to learn from Marta Carver—was if I needed to be worried. As we reached the house, it was clear I had talked to the wrong person. I should have gone to Elsa Ditmer all along.

“Do you think my daughter’s in danger?”

Elsa gave a solemn nod toward Baneberry Hall. “In this house, all daughters are in danger.”

I thought about the articles I’d found at the library. “You know its history, then?”

“I do,” Elsa said. “My mother worked here. As did her mother. We’re well-acquainted with the tragedies that have taken place inside these walls.”

“What should I do?”

“You want my honest opinion?”

“Yes.”

“I would leave as quickly as you’re able,” Elsa said. “Until then, watch your daughter closely. And be as careful as possible.”

Rather than go inside, Elsa suggested that she and Maggie play in the backyard. After what I’d just been told, I thought it was a great idea. Part of me wanted to forbid Maggie from ever entering that house again, even though I knew that was impossible.

While they played, I went to the study and sat at my desk, sorting through the articles I’d photocopied at the library. Not just the ones about the deaths of Indigo Garson and Katie Carver, but all the others, too. Those unnerving incidents no one had bothered to tell us about.

The accident in 1926 happened when a car curving its way down the hillside suddenly veered off the driveway into the woods. The driver claimed a white blur had streaked in front of the car, forcing him to swerve to miss it. The car hit a tree, killing the passenger—William Garson’s fourteen-year-old granddaughter.

The man behind the wheel was her father.

In 1941, the person who drowned in the bathtub was the daughter of the Hollywood producer who had bought the place from the Garson family.

She was four, far too young to be in a bathtub on her own.

Which is why her father had been there with her.

He told police he had, for no ascertainable reason, suddenly blacked out. He woke up to the sight of his daughter’s lifeless body floating in the tub. The police had considered pressing charges, but there hadn’t been enough evidence.

Then two deaths in two years, after Baneberry Hall became a bed-and-breakfast. One guest, a fifteen-year-old, inexplicably climbed out a second-floor window and fell to her death. Another—a thirteen-year-old girl—was found dead in her bed, the victim of an unknown heart condition.

Both girls had been staying with their fathers.

The death in 1974 was another apparent accident. The victim, the only daughter of the family who bought the house after its bed-and-breakfast days had ended, tumbled down the main staircase.

She was five.

The same age as Maggie.

The only witness was her father, who couldn’t provide a good reason why his daughter, who had gone up and down those steps hundreds of times, would fall.

Adding in Indigo Garson and Katie Carver, seven people had died in or near Baneberry Hall.

All of them girls.

All of them sixteen or younger.

All of them in the presence of their fathers.

Something entered the room just then. I sensed it—an additional presence imperceptibly felt.

“Is this Curtis Carver?”

Silence.

“If it is you, give me a sign.”

The record player next to me switched itself on. I watched it happen, my eyes not quite believing what they were seeing. One moment, the turntable was still. The next, it was spinning, the grooves on the album atop it blurring as it picked up speed.

Even more incredible was when the record player’s arm moved by itself, as if pushed by an unseen hand. The needle dropped on the usual spot, and the music began to play.

“You are sixteen, going on seventeen—”

I scanned the room, looking for a glimpse of Curtis Carver himself. If Maggie could see him, then it seemed reasonable I could, too.

I saw nothing.

Still, Curtis was there. The record player confirmed it.

“Did you kill your daughter?” I asked him.

The music continued to play.

“Baby, it’s time to think.”

I took it to mean his answer was no. Maybe because I had started to believe he was innocent. After all, he hadn’t been around for all those other deaths. But William Garson had been. He had been at Baneberry Hall since the very beginning, even if for most of that time it was just literally in spirit.

“Was it William Garson?”

“Better beware, be canny and careful—”

The record began to skip, a single word repeating itself.

“careful”

“careful”

“careful”

Curtis’s message was clear. William Garson was making fathers murder their daughters, just as he had.

And if I couldn’t find a way to stop him, Maggie was going to be next.