The day of the sleepover began like any other at Baneberry Hall.
Thud.
I got out of bed without looking at the clock—there was no need—and went downstairs, where the chandelier was aglow. I flicked it off with a heavy sigh and descended to the kitchen to brew a pot of extra-strong coffee. It had become my usual morning routine.
By then, exhaustion was a fact of life at Baneberry Hall. Almost as if the house was purposefully denying me a full night’s sleep. I counteracted it as best as I could with midafternoon catnaps and going to bed early.
But on this day, there would be no napping. The afternoon was spent preparing for two extra people in the house. Grocery shopping, cleaning, and making the place look like a happy home, which it definitely wasn’t.
The whole point of having the sleepover be supervised by Petra was to give Jess and me some much-needed relaxation time alone. But when Hannah and Petra arrived bearing backpacks, sleeping bags, and a tray of cookies from their mother, I realized their presence only added to our stress. Especially when Maggie asked to speak to Jess and me alone in the middle of dinner.
“Can’t it wait?” I said. “You have guests.”
“It’s important,” Maggie told us.
The three of us went to the great room, leaving Hannah and Petra to eat their spaghetti and meatballs in awkward silence.
“This better be good,” Jess said. “It’s rude to leave your friends like that.”
Maggie’s expression was deadly serious. The cut on her cheek had healed enough that she no longer needed a bandage. Now exposed, it gave her a weathered, wizened look.
“They need to leave,” she said. “Miss Pennyface doesn’t want them here. She doesn’t like them. She’s been angry all night.” Maggie pointed to an empty corner. “See?”
“Now’s not the time for this,” Jess said. “Not with your friends here.”
“They’re not my friends.”
“But they could be,” I said in my most encouraging voice. “Just give it one night. Okay, kiddo?”
Maggie considered it, her lips a flat line as she weighed the pros and cons of friendship with Hannah.
“Okay,” she said. “But they’ll probably be mad.”
“Who’ll get mad?”
“All of the ghosts.”
She went back to the table, leaving Jess and me speechless. Maggie, however, was chattier than ever, and remained that way through the rest of dinner. And the ice-cream sundaes made for dessert. And the board games played after that. When Maggie emerged victorious after a game of Mouse Trap, she ran around the dining room cheering like she’d just won the World Cup.
It was so nice to see her having fun with other girls. For the first time since we came to Baneberry Hall, Maggie looked happy, even when she shot occasional glances to the corners of the room.
Those fearful looks grew more pronounced when the girls got ready for bed. While Petra engaged in a half-hearted pillow fight instigated by her sister, Maggie merely sat there, her gaze flicking to the corner by her closet. And when I lined them up to take a picture with the Polaroid camera, she appeared more focused on the wall behind me than the camera’s lens.
“They’re down for the night,” I announced to Jess after I’d turned out the lights in Maggie’s room and retired to my own. “Whatever else they need, Petra can take it from here.”
I collapsed on the bed, an arm flung over my eyes. I would have plunged immediately into sleep if something hadn’t been weighing on my mind since dinner.
“I think we should take Maggie to see someone.”
Jess, who had been applying moisturizer at her vanity, gave me a look in the mirror. “As in a shrink?”
“A therapist, yes. Clearly, something’s going on with her. She’s struggling with this move. She has no friends and doesn’t seem to want to make any. And all this talk of imaginary friends—it’s not normal. And it’s not a plea for attention, either.”
In the mirror, Jess’s face took on a wounded look. “Do you plan on throwing that back at me every time we discuss our daughter?”
“That wasn’t my intention,” I said. “I was just making a case for why we should send her to someone who might be able to help.”
Jess said nothing.
“Either you have no opinion on the matter,” I said, “or you don’t agree with me and just don’t want to say it.”
“Therapy’s a big step,” she finally said.
“You don’t think Maggie has a problem?”
“She has imaginary friends and trouble making real ones. I don’t think we should punish her for that.”
“It’s not punishment. It’s getting her the help she needs.” I sat up and moved to the edge of the bed. “These aren’t typical imaginary friends, Jess. Miss Pennyface and Mister Shadow. Those are scary names, given to them by a scared little girl. You heard what she called them—ghosts. Imagine how terrified she must be.”
“It’s a phase,” Jess insisted. “Brought on by this move and all the things that have happened with this house. I worry that sending Maggie to a shrink will make her feel like an outcast. To me, that’s a far bigger concern than something she’s going to grow out of as soon as she gets used to this place.”
“And what if she doesn’t grow out of it? What if this is a legitimate mental disorder that—”
A scream cut me off.
It came from Maggie’s room, shooting down the hallway like a bullet. By the time the second scream arrived, Jess and I were already out of our bedroom and running down the hall.
I was first to reach Maggie’s room, colliding with Petra, who had burst into the hallway. She wrapped her thin arms around herself, as if trying to ward off a sudden chill.
“It’s Maggie,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” Jess asked as she caught up to us.
“I don’t know, but she’s freaking out.”
Inside the bedroom, Maggie began to shout. “Go away!”
I ran into the room, confounded by what I saw.
The armoire doors were wide open, and all the dresses Jess had hung there were now scattered about the room. Hannah was up to her neck in her sleeping bag, mute with fear, scooching backward like an inchworm.
Maggie stood on her bed, shrieking at the open armoire.
“Go away! Go away!”
In the hallway, I heard Petra telling Jess what had happened.
“I was asleep,” she said, the words tumbling out. “Hannah woke me up yelling, saying Maggie had just pulled her hair. But Maggie said she hadn’t. That it was someone else. And then I heard the wardrobe door open and things flying out of it and Maggie screaming.”
Maggie remained on the bed. Her shouts had devolved into an earsplitting wail that refused to die down. In the corner, Hannah’s hands shot out of the sleeping bag and clamped over her ears.
“Maggie, there’s no one here.”
“There is!” she cried. “They’re all here! I told you they’d be mad!”
“Sweetie, calm down. Everything’s okay.”
I reached for her, but she slapped my hand away.
“It’s not!” Maggie cried. “He’s under there!”
“Who?”
“Mister Shadow.”
It wasn’t until her voice died down that I heard an unidentifiable noise coming from under the bed.
“There’s nothing down there,” I said, hoping to convince myself as well as Maggie.
“He’s there!” Maggie shrieked. “I saw him! And Miss Pennyface is right there!”
She pointed to the corner behind her closet door, which I saw had also been opened. I didn’t remember it being that way when I came into the room, even though it had to have been.
“And then there’s the little girl,” she said.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“Right next to you.”
Even though I knew it was my mind playing tricks on me, I still felt a presence beside me. It was the same way you could tell someone was sneaking up behind you. A disturbance in the air gave them away. I longed to look at my side, but I feared doing so would make Maggie think I believed her.
So, I didn’t look, even when I felt—or thought I felt—someone brush my hand. Instead, I glanced across the room to Hannah, hoping her reaction would tell me if something was there. But Hannah’s eyes were shut tight as she continued to slide backward into the corner where Maggie said Miss Pennyface was standing.
She wasn’t, of course. There was no Miss Pennyface. But when Hannah reached the corner, she began to shout.
“Something touched me! Something touched me!”
In between her screams, I again heard the noise under the bed.
A muffled skittering.
Like a giant spider.
Without thinking, I dropped to my knees.
Above me, Maggie had resumed shrieking, matching Hannah in volume. More noise started up from the doorway. Jess asking me what the hell I was doing.
I ignored her.
I ignored everything.
I was focused solely on the bed. I needed to see what was under there.
With trembling hands, I touched the bed skirt, brushing it aside.
Then I peered into the dark under Maggie’s bed.
Nothing was there.
Then the bedsprings sank—a jarring sight that made me yelp and jump away from the bed. I looked up and saw it was Hannah, out of her sleeping bag and now standing on the bed. She tugged at Maggie’s arms, trying to snap her out of whatever spell she was under.
“Make it stop, Maggie!” she yelled. “Make it stop!”
Maggie stopped screaming.
Her head snapped in Hannah’s direction.
Then she punched her.
Blood sprayed from Hannah’s nose, flying across Maggie, the bed, the floor.
A stunned look crossed Hannah’s face as she tilted backward and dropped off the edge of the bed. She hit the floor hard, wailing the moment she landed. Jess and Petra ran to her.
I stayed where I was.
Also on the floor.
Staring up at my daughter, who seemed not to have realized what she’d just done. Instead, she looked to the corner by the closet. The door was now shut, although I had no idea how or when that could have happened.
It was the same with the armoire. Both doors were completely closed.
Maggie looked to me and, in a voice thick with relief, said, “They’re gone.”