CHAPTER 68

She’d be damned if she went running after Holly after all that. Stevie attacking her and Holly behaving like it was just all some Method actor bullshit, when it was so obvious Stevie was losing his shit. Pretending she appreciated everything Nisa brought to this play, when she was really just thinking about herself, as always. They could have used this time without Amanda to rehearse some of Nisa’s songs. Instead, she’d been used as a punching bag by someone who hadn’t had an Equity role in ten years.

She slumped in the leather chair, watching the fire dwindle to a heap of black and glowing red. She felt the heat ebb from the room as the flames flickered out, but she was too pissed off to set another log on the embers. Let them die, let them all die.

She could hear Holly chiding her during a long-ago argument: You wouldn’t just cut off your nose to spite your face, you’d cut off your whole face.

Holly was right—Nisa knew she could hold a grudge.

Let it go, she thought. Get back to your own work. At least Holly had admitted how great her songs were, how much they were bringing to the show. Nisa could feel it; this was going to be her break. And she remembered how fabulous the acoustics had been, on that first house tour with Ainsley. Nisa had barely had a chance to play with them yet.

The tower, for instance—if only she could get in there. Ainsley said it wasn’t safe, but the rest of Hill House seemed like it could survive into the next century with barely a new coat of paint. She bet Ainsley had been feeding them a load of crap all along, about the house and its history. Riling up the flatlanders so they’d leave early—less wear and tear—and Ainsley could keep Holly’s money.

Nisa softened at the thought of Holly. This all meant so, so much to her. Nisa had seen the effort it took, Holly returning home, day after day, from her students, to hunch on the street-salvaged couch in their cramped apartment, wearing earbuds to keep out the wail of sirens from the fire station across the street as she wrote—and rewrote, endlessly—the play that would become Witching Night. Nisa deserved her star turn, and Holly did, too.

Yet Holly was wrong about Stevie. He really had been on the verge of losing it earlier. Nisa had never seen him look like that—she’d never seen anyone look like that. As though someone else had slid inside him, to stare out from Stevie’s eyes.

Shivering, she hopped to her feet, grabbed another log, and set it on the pile of ashes. But the fire was dead. She gazed at the hearth and thought about the hare. And then about Amanda’s dead face, her empty eyes. Holly, talking in her sleep. Stevie, again…

She turned and walked resolutely from the parlor. Maybe she’d join Holly, after all. She could drive herself crazy brooding about all this shit. Her friends, the house, Amanda and those other crazy women. Ainsley, Evadne. The three of them were like the Weird Sisters. Nisa almost wished Holly had written another part for someone closer to her own age. But then, all eyes might not be on Nisa whenever she made an entrance.

The parlor lamps cast enough light into the hall that she didn’t need to use her phone. A good thing, since the charge was way down again. She’d have to remember to plug it in when she got back to the room later.

No one was in the main hall when she got there.

“Holly?” she called. No answer, so she texted, pleased to see a flickering bar of service for once.

Where are you?

In the room. Decided to shower.

I’ll meet you down there w the

wine in a bit love you xoxo

Nisa smiled. Love you too

She’d wait to bring up the whole Stevie thing again, she decided. She didn’t want to get into it with Holly, not so soon, not here. She needed to save her own energy for singing. She walked to the front door and looked out through one of the side windows. It was sleeting heavily now, the goldenrod beaten down, the fallen leaves a brown pulp. There was no sign of Amanda’s car. At least she hadn’t walked to Evadne’s. If Nisa had been Amanda, she’d have just driven to town in search of a bar.

But Melissa was right: bad weather was coming, and the roads likely wouldn’t be safe. And since they were stuck here, Nisa hoped it would turn to snow. She’d always loved snow days, and there were fewer of them every year. In fact, she decided, this would be a perfect place to be stuck. They had enough food, plenty of wine, plenty of candles. Firewood, too. Her younger self would have killed for the chance to have a sleepover with her friends in a spooky mansion during a storm.

Maybe they could all sleep downstairs tonight, in front of the living room fireplace? Drag the couch over, pile up blankets and bedding. Amanda might not be up for it, but she could be convinced. She wouldn’t want to be the only one sleeping alone upstairs. It felt safer down here.

Nisa hummed softly to herself, a melancholy, slightly threatening tune that was the perfect counterpoint to the bleak weather. She turned to gaze at the door to the tower.

The heavy padlock bolted to the wood frame hung loose. Not broken but unlocked. Frowning, she walked over to examine it. She was pretty sure it’d been secured when they arrived. But since it wasn’t… she slid it from the hasp and set it on the floor, creaking open the door to enter the tower.

“Oh!” she exclaimed softly. Struck by how her breath echoed in the air, almost as though expecting an answer. Such a beautiful space, why had they closed it off? A round room, its lower walls paneled with wooden bookshelves, only broken by windows that looked out onto the front drive and side lawn. A library, with an iron spiral staircase rising from its center to the stone turret.

The spiral stairway had a queasy tilt, like a carnival ride that had frozen in place. But otherwise the tower seemed safe enough. Stabilized by those gigantic rebars, Nisa thought, noting where they protruded like ribs through the lower section of the wall. From the upper windows, you would have a commanding view of the distant mountains.

Books still lined the shelves, mostly moldering Victorian-era texts on spiritual living and the horrors of sexual congress out of wedlock, or maybe even in it. Nisa made her way over and flipped through a volume titled Rewards of Chastity, or, The Golden Life after Marriage. It reeked of mildew, and as she turned its damp pages, silverfish wriggled out. With a yelp, she dropped the volume, heard a satisfying crack as it struck the stone floor and split apart.

As she walked on, she saw other books, too, waterlogged paperbacks and Old Farmer’s Almanacs, some hardcover bestsellers from the 1980s. An old cassette tape. She picked this last up and opened it, disappointed to see that the case was empty. She pried the paper sleeve from the once-clear plastic, now fogged with age. The Psychedelic Furs. The cover art was plain, a black-and-white photo of six young guys.

Thoughtfully, she turned the paper in her hands, recalling the broken Walkman in the nursery, with its tangled wad of magnetic tape. It might have come from this, she thought, rubbing a thumb along the plastic case. She had a vague memory of her mother liking this band, the two of them watching some old movie with a song of theirs. But also listening to a CD of their music, maybe even this one. A song that her mother had played over and over when she was high.

“Your father always said this was about me,” she’d told Nisa, more than once. “When we first met in London.”

What was that song? Nisa could almost remember it. Ominous drumbeats and a man’s voice, a repetitive chorus like an incantation. The song had spooked Nisa back then, especially after what her mother told her. She squinted at the label, struggling to read the list of songs in the afternoon’s dying light.

And there it was—“Sister Europe.” All at once the words came back to her, along with a rush of yearning she’d been too young to comprehend when she’d first heard it: yearning and threat.

She imagined the teenage boy or girl who’d owned the Walkman, rewinding the cassette to listen to that same song again and again, until the Walkman devoured it. A boy, she thought, remembering the figure she’d seen staring at her window that morning. The connection made her skin crawl. She stuffed the slip of cover art back into the cassette case and replaced it on the shelf, setting a heavy book on top of it, as if to keep it from escaping, and turned back to survey the tower.

Why was it off-limits? The room had more light than the rest of the house, its high windows that would keep it bright even in winter. The spiral staircase was obviously a liability, but why not simply remove it? You’d have no way of accessing the uppermost shelves, but they were empty anyway.

Though there was a door up there, at the top. She hadn’t noticed it at first—a dark rectangle set into the gray stone. Once it must have opened onto the top of the spiral stairs, but now they leaned a good ten feet away from it. That was the door that needed to be padlocked, otherwise you’d take a step to nowhere fast. If you could even reach it, of course.

She rested a hand on the stairway’s curving rail. She expected the iron to be cold, but it was warm. The entire room was warm, which was odd. If anything, the granite walls should make it feel colder. Like the rest of Hill House, the tower seemed to generate its own weather.

She grabbed the rail with both hands, testing it, and let herself slide beneath it, still holding tightly, before she straightened. Like playing in the outdoor jungle gym near their home when she was a girl. The spiral stairway was solid, much too heavy to be moved by someone as slight as she was—it was bolted into the stone floor. It felt enticing, the way the jungle gym had, with its struts and spires reaching to the sky. She took a step up, then another, until she was about a dozen feet above where she’d started. With each riser she felt the staircase shift ever so slightly.

When she looked down, she was overcome not by fear but a giddy joy, as when she’d reached the top of the jungle gym and could look out over their neighborhood, glimpsing her own home a block away. Now, though, her joy was undercut by fear that she might fall; she clutched the rails, her hands slick with sweat. She lifted one foot and stomped hard on the step.

She was rewarded by a bright ringing note, as though a bell had been struck. The sound echoed in the circular chamber and she listened, enchanted, her foot poised to do the same thing again.

But then she thought of the others hearing it, and rushing to find the source of the ghostly carillon. Holly would yell at her for entering the tower. And everyone else would know about it. She liked that, for a few minutes, she had a secret. Maybe she’d wait and just tell Holly. The two of them could slip down here after the others fell asleep and make love on the warm stone floor. She began to sing, softly, testing the room’s acoustics.

“Dead girl, dead girl, won’t you come to me?

O, where did you lie last night?

In the earth, in the earth, where my soul found its worth

And I waited but no morning came…”

She’d rewritten one of her favorite songs, the one she’d had the most trouble convincing Holly to use in the show.

“It’s too well known,” Holly said dismissively.

It was—originally recorded by Bill Monroe and then Lead Belly in the 1940s, long before it became notorious after Kurt Cobain sang it in his final performance before his death, broadcast on MTV thirty-odd years ago. Nisa had watched the clip on YouTube when she was a girl. It had terrified her. Not the words, which went over her head, but the way Cobain sang them. The verses an incantation until the end, when his voice rose to a scream then dropped to a hoarse whisper.

Her own voice echoed against the stone walls, soaring like a hawk released from a cage. She forgot to worry about the others hearing her as she flung her head back, her voice rising to a pitch that made her entire body shake. It was the most extraordinary feeling she’d ever had: as if she and her voice had merged with the tower itself, bringing everything around her, stone, stairs, even the old books, into being. She drew a deep breath, clinging to the rails, staring up into the turret above her, dark like the inside of a witch’s hat, perched upon Hill House.

“Nisa?”

Nisa’s breath faltered. She looked down to see Amanda Greer at the foot of the staircase.

“Nisa! What the hell are you doing?”

Nisa stared at her, confused. “I’m singing. The acoustics here, they’re amazing.”

“Get the hell down, it’s not safe!”

“It’s fine!” Nisa gestured at her feet, stable on the step.

Amanda grabbed the rails and shook them, hard. The staircase swayed sickeningly as Nisa yelped in alarm.

“Stop that!” she shouted at Amanda. “Why the fuck would you do that?”

“You get down here!”

Amanda stormed up the lower steps, the extra weight causing the entire structure to shimmy.

“Stop it!” Nisa yelled. “I’m coming, you’re going to make me fall—”

She remembered then what had happened to that actor, what was his name? The one Amanda Greer had played against, years ago? Nisa had been too young then, but when Holly’d cast Amanda, Nisa had googled Amanda Greer.

Amanda stared up at her, hair wild and eyes wide, her mouth yawning open like a gorgon’s. “Get down!” she howled.

She’s losing it, Nisa thought in sudden panic. Like Stevie in the parlor…

“I’m coming! Jesus!” Nisa clutched the rails, walking down as quickly as she dared. The staircase vibrated with every step, threatening her balance.

And yet, Amanda continued to climb. What the fuck was she doing? She was still wearing her rain-soaked coat, wet hair clinging to her face.

“Go back down, damn it!” Nisa screamed at her.

They met eight feet above the floor. Amanda blocked her way, still angry. “What were you thinking? That door is locked for a reason!”

“It wasn’t locked,” Nisa snapped. “Why the hell are you up here? Move!”

Amanda didn’t budge. Was she drunk? Amanda wasn’t a big woman but she was taller and stronger than Nisa, and right now she looked like she was ready to throttle her.

“I thought you were in danger,” Amanda said at last, biting off each word. “Will you please just get off the stairs?”

Nisa gritted her teeth. She slung one leg over the rail, then the other, took a deep breath, and dropped to the floor. She fell on the balls of her feet, caught her balance, and waited as Amanda huffed back down. The woman looked enraged, way out of proportion to the situation. Nisa was fine! She hadn’t even climbed to the top of the stairway—she wasn’t crazy.

While Amanda looked like someone who could have pushed a man to his death.

The two of them stared at each other, until Amanda broke the silence.

“What the hell were you thinking, breaking in here?” she demanded, and peeled off her wet coat. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I told you, the door wasn’t locked. I wanted to hear what it sounded like. I felt like… singing.”

A wave of loss overcame her. To have heard her own voice echoing within this glorious space, carving another room from the air. It was a place where they might all have gathered and been safe, protected by Nisa and her songs: an ancient chain that uncoiled through the centuries, Nisa the most recent link holding them all in place.

And then Amanda had broken the chain.

“You could have killed yourself,” fumed Amanda.

“I wasn’t going there,” Nisa said, with a nod to that upper door. “I’m not stupid.”

“I could hear you from outside. It sounded like someone screaming!”

Screaming? Really? Nisa clenched her hands, afraid she might strike this hag who’d insulted her. “Where were you?”

“I went to see Evadne.”

“And?”

Amanda said nothing, her face obdurate.

Nisa pushed past her and out into the hall. Amanda followed, stooping to pick up the padlock.

“Leave it,” Nisa ordered. “Maybe someone wants it open.”

“‘Someone’?”

Amanda jammed the padlock back into place and locked it, giving it a tug to make sure the hasp was securely bolted to the door.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said, more calmly now that she was in control, “but whatever you were singing—it scared me. What was that song?”

“Something I’m working on. Old melody, new lyrics. My lyrics.”

Amanda sighed. “You do have a beautiful voice. It must have been the acoustics in the tower. Or the weather. The storm is picking up.”

“Thank you.” Somewhat mollified, Nisa glanced out the window. “It looks nasty out.”

“Evadne said it’s going to change to snow,” Amanda replied dully. “There’s a winter storm warning for the whole valley. Up here we could get a foot. Maybe more.”

Nisa looked back at her, surprised by the shift in the older woman’s tone. Amanda appeared subdued, shaken, even. By the weather? But Amanda lived upstate and seemed to pride herself on her toughness. Nisa would have thought her a good match for Evadne Morris, another shrewd old bird. She cocked her head, deciding to move past the argument in the tower.

“Amanda, what’s wrong? Did she say something?”

Amanda hesitated. “She said we could lose power for days. She seemed to think it was a really bad idea for us to stay here…”

Amanda looked like she was going to continue. But then she glanced past Nisa, who turned to see what had caught her attention.

“Who said that? Evadne?” Holly ambled toward them from the central stairway, her hair damp and face dewy from her shower. “Hey, baby,” she murmured, slipping alongside Nisa.

“She talked to Evadne,” said Nisa, watching for Amanda’s reaction.

Holly glanced at Amanda. “And…?”

Amanda repeated what she’d just told Nisa. Holly shrugged. “I think we’ll be okay,” she said. “We’ve got food and plenty of firewood and candles and stuff.”

“Maybe we need some garlic,” Nisa said sarcastically. How could Holly not see that Amanda was holding something back? “And wolfsbane—I mean, dogbane,” she added, as Holly gave her a dirty look.

“Look, we’re basically on our own anyway,” Holly retorted. “We’ll just hunker down. I’d love to have another read-through after dinner. If we lose power, we’ll read by candlelight—that’s how Elizabeth Sawyer would have done it, anyway.”

“So flattering to older complexions,” sniped Nisa.

Amanda made a show of ignoring her as she turned to Holly. “Have you seen Stevie?”

“He’s probably upstairs,” said Nisa. “Sharpening his teeth.”

“Look.” Amanda pointed to a window. White flakes the size of nickels whirled in the wind, already cloaking the driveway in white. “‘It will be rain tonight,’” she said in a sepulchral tone, waiting to see if the others would recognize the line that presaged Banquo’s death in the Scottish play.

Holly nodded, then slowly smiled. “‘Let it come down.’”