“They still haven’t found her. Sylvia. The detective said you hadn’t returned his calls.”
Sylvia was missing. Sylvia’s longtime lover and partner in crime (a woman, by the way) had hired a private detective when the police case went cold. Now this detective was on his case—calling, emailing. No, he hadn’t returned calls. He didn’t have anything to say. Sylvia, the police determined in their investigation, was a con artist, had blackmailed a handful of men, other college professors, doctors, a lawyer. She’d made false claims of sexual harassment, taken money to withdraw the charges, then disappeared. No reason for anyone to think she hadn’t done the same here, this time leaving her lover, as well.
“I’ve told that detective everything I know about Sylvia,” said Matthew. “We never had an affair. Her claims were all lies. I have no idea why she did what she did, or where she went.”
“Have you heard from her?”
“No.”
“Who’s been calling late at night?”
Last night’s conversation was still ringing in his ears.
I never stop thinking about you. About us.
Sylvia’s voice was like smoke, twisting and curling over the line. He inhaled it.
You were different from the others, Matthew. I fell in love with you.
“You know,” he said to Samantha now. “The usual spam and telemarketing calls.”
Samantha shook her head, did not believe him.
Where are you, Sylvia? You have to tell the police you’re okay. I’m still a suspect.
Sorry. I’m not going to jail. Let me know if you want to meet me. Leave it all behind.
Leave it all behind: the accusations, the judgments, the shame, the debt, the shrinking savings account, Merle House, the past, the angry teenager who hated him. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted.
But then there was Samantha, his first love, his redeemer, the brightest star he’d ever seen. Without her love, he was just a mark, a fool, a failure.
“What’s going on with you?” Samantha asked. “I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me. Now this missing girl from your childhood, that Realtor, the incident with Jewel. The energy here—it’s bizarre.”
“I don’t know what you mean. It’s just a house we’re trying to fix and get rid of. When it sells there will be enough to start over.”
“You were always a terrible liar. It’s one of the things I used to love best about you. I figured, whatever your failings, you’d always be honest with me. Talk to me.”
“What?” he asked with a smile, rubbing at his temples. He’d had a persistent low-grade headache for days. “You think it’s haunted or something? That there was a ghost in the woods?”
Samantha was the most practical person he knew. But she didn’t return his grin tonight.
“Maybe we should call your friend,” she suggested. Who did she mean? Oh—really?
“Ian?” he asked, incredulous.
They’d made fun of Ian and Liz, their whole energy-cleansing, space-clearing, ghost-hunting, exorcist thing. On the way back from their last get-together with his old friend, Matthew and Samantha had laughed their asses off. Of course, they did look like they were doing pretty well. Dressed to the nines, expensive car, picked up the pricey dinner tab.
“Have you been in touch since Liz passed?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I called. Sent an email a few weeks later.”
“How was he?”
Matthew shrugged. Ian was broken, devastated, cored out; he’d lost the only person he’d ever truly loved. Matthew had stared down that particular barrel himself when Samantha was sick. Who was he without her? No one. He knew that Ian felt that way about Liz. And now that she was gone, he was just—less.
He didn’t have to say any of this to Samantha.
“Yeah,” said Samantha, as if he had spoken the words. She looked off into the fire, which was dwindling to embers. “He’s not far from here, is he?”
“No,” said Matthew. “Not very.”
“And what about Claire?”
“Claire?”
Where the hell is this coming from?
Oh.
This place. Sometimes when you thought it was sleeping, it was wide awake, playing its little games.
“She wrote that article for the New York Times Magazine—about possession. Serial criminals who believe they are doing the bidding of a spirit or demon within them.”
He felt his throat go a little dry. Why was she bringing that up? “Something like that. Where are you going with this?”
“I’m just wondering if we need a little help, Matthew. With Merle House.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said again.
But she had him pinned in that gaze, her X-ray vision that saw right through all his self-delusions, all the walls he erected, all the things he didn’t want to face.
“Don’t you, Matthew?”
9.
Mason disappeared into the house with Matthew close behind. By the time Claire and Ian had made it down the hill, the other boys could no longer be heard. It was as if the place had swallowed them whole.
Claire hung back at the edge of the clearing, the big house looming like a thunderhead. Closer now, they could see that it wasn’t a house, exactly, but maybe something more institutional, like a school. There was a circular drive, a sweeping staircase that led up to a landing and wraparound porch. There was a faded, nearly illegible sign hanging askew over the tall double doors: HAVENWOOD. It rang a bell for Ian, distant and eerie.
“I’m not going in there,” said Claire. She’d reached her limit. Ian could tell by the set of her mouth, the furrow in her brow. She was flushed from exertion, eyes a little red, too, like she might cry. “I’ll wait here until one of you falls through a rotten floor and breaks his leg—or worse. Then I’ll go get help.”
She sat then, cross-legged, against the slim trunk of a birch tree.
Ian felt the tug of the boy energy inside the structure. He was briefly torn between whatever adventure they’d discover inside and Claire, who seemed wise and sensible, and whose flushed cheeks were so pretty. His father would tell him to stay with Claire, to take her home—that was what a
