Twenty-One

In my line of work, I’ve crossed paths with plenty of landscapers. Some are true artists, crafting elaborate groundscapes with attention paid to color, shape, and texture. Others are basic laborers, trained only to yank weeds and shovel mulch. But all of them have told me the same thing: plant ivy at your own peril. Gone unchecked, it spreads and climbs and persists more than any other vine.

The ivy behind Baneberry Hall has done all three for decades. It’s thick—jungle thick—and scales the back of the house in a verdant swath that climbs past the second-floor windows. If there is a door back there, the ivy hides it completely.

At first, I try swiping at some vines, hoping they’ll fall away from the wall. If only it were that easy. When that doesn’t work, I shove my hands into the thick of it and blindly feel around, my fingers brushing nothing but exterior wall.

But then I feel it.

Wood.

I do more tugging and brushing until a door begins to take shape deep within the vines. Short and narrow, it’s less a door and more like a flat board where a proper door should be located. There’s not even a handle—just a rusted bolt that I slide to the side.

The door cracks open, and I give it a pull, widening it until there’s a gap big enough for me to fit through. Then, like a diver about to submerge, I take a deep breath and push through the curtain of ivy.

Once inside, I can barely see. There’s no overhead light that I can find, and the ivy outside allows only dapples of moonlight to pass through. Luckily, I anticipated this and came prepared with a flashlight.

I switch it on and am greeted by a brick wall slick with moisture. A millipede scurries across it, fleeing the light. To my left is more wall. To my right is inky darkness that stretches beyond the flashlight’s glow. I move through it, arriving shortly at a set of wooden steps.

The sight confounds me.

How did I never know this was here?

It makes me wonder if my parents knew about it. Probably not. I’d like to think that had my father been aware of a secret staircase in the back of Baneberry Hall, he would have put it in the Book. It would have been too appropriately Gothic to resist.

I climb the steps slowly, taking them one at a time. I have no idea where they lead, and that makes me nervous. So nervous that the flashlight I’m gripping trembles, casting a jittery glow on the stairwell walls.

After a dozen steps, I reach a landing that could be right out of a Hammer film. It’s small and creaky, with a skein of cobwebs in the corner. I pause there, disoriented, with no clue how far I’ve climbed or where I am inside the house.

I get a better idea once I ascend twelve more steps and a second landing, which would put me firmly on the second floor. There’s a door here as well—similar to the one hidden behind the ivy. Smooth and featureless, save for another bolt keeping it shut.

I slide the bolt.

I pull the door.

Beyond it is a closet of some sort.

The flashlight’s beam lands on several little white dresses hanging inside. Behind them is a thin slice of light.

More doors.

Reaching past the dresses, I push them open and see a bedroom.

My bedroom.

I stumble through the doors and rotate around the room, seeing my bed, my suitcases, the knife sitting atop my nightstand.

Then I see the armoire.

The doorway through which I’ve just emerged.

Shock overwhelms me. I stare at the armoire, uncomprehending, when in truth the situation is easy to understand.

There is a direct route from outside into the bedroom.

It’s why my father had felt it necessary to nail those boards across the armoire doors.

It’s how Hannah Ditmer got into the house unnoticed and without disturbing the doors and windows.

It’s how anyone with knowledge of the passageway can get inside.

Another wave of shock strikes. A real wallop that leaves me tilting sideways, on the verge of being bowled right over.

This entrance into Baneberry Hall isn’t new. It’s been around for decades. Likely since the place was built.

Someone had access to this room back when we lived here.

When I slept here.

It wasn’t Mister Shadow who crept into my room at night, whispering to me.

It was someone else.

Someone real.