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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.”
Fifteen
I close my father’s copy of the Book, having just read the chapter about the sleepover. As I stare at the aerial view of Baneberry Hall on the cover, what Hannah said about that night plays on repeat in my head.
It’s all true.
But it isn’t. It can’t be. Because if the part about the sleepover is true, then so is the rest of the Book. And I refuse to believe that. The Book is bullshit.
Right?
I shake my head, disappointed by my own uncertainty. Of course it’s bullshit. I’ve known that since I was nine.
Then why am I still here at the dining room table with the Book in front of me? Why did I feel compelled to sit down and read the chapter about the sleepover in the first place? Why am I on the verge of reading it a second time?
I want to think it’s because doing a deep dive intoHouse of Horrorsis easier than facing the idea that my father might have killed Petra. It’s a much-needed distraction. Nothing more.
But I know better. I’ve seen too many similarities between real lifeand the Book to dismiss it outright, and I can’t shake the feeling that something eerie is happening. Something strange enough to make my hands tremble as I open the Book.
Then close it.
Then open it again.
Then throw it across the dining room, where it hits the wall in an angry flutter of pages.
I grab my phone, checking to see if my mother returned my call while I was reading. She hasn’t. I call again. When it goes straight to her voicemail, I hang up without leaving a message. What am I going to say?Hi, Mom, did you know about the body in the ceiling, and did Dad do it, and did I really see ghosts as a child?
I drop the phone onto the table and reach for my dinner—a bag of tortilla chips and a can of mixed nuts. Although there’s enough food in the house for several meals, cooking isn’t in the cards. After what happened in the kitchen, I want to spend as little time there as possible. So I stuff some chips into my mouth and wash them down with a beer. That’s followed by some nuts, which I chomp while eyeing the Book, now splayed on the floor. I’m tempted to pick it up. Instead, I grab the Polaroids I found in my father’s study.
The first one is the picture of my mother and me entering the woods. On the far side of the frame is that dark shape I thought might have been a person but is clearly a tree in shadow.
Next is the one from the sleepover, with me and Hannah as minor players in the Petra Show. I study her pose—the hand on her hip, the bent leg, the lips parted in a flirty smile. I can’t help but think she was putting herself on display for my father.
Petra had a boyfriend, Hannah had said.Or something.
Could that have been my father? Was he capable of betraying my mother like that? Even though he once told me my mother was the only woman he’d ever loved, sometimes love has nothing to do with it.
I move to the next photo—the ceiling repairs in the kitchen, whichhas a new, morbid significance after the events of the past few days. Now it’s a picture of a sixteen-year-old girl looking directly at the spot where her remains would be discovered twenty-five years later. Seeing it makes me quiver so hard the chair shakes.
I push that Polaroid away and look at the one of me standing in front of Baneberry Hall, struck by something interesting. I don’t have a bandage under my left eye, which led me to assume it had been taken immediately after we moved in. But when I take another look at the picture from the sleepover, there’s no bandage there, either. Nor is there a cut, bruise, or any other sign of damage, even though according to the Book, the sleepover happenedafterI’d hurt myself on the gravestone in the woods.
I gather all the Polaroids and slide them around the table like mahjong pieces, putting them in chronological order based on the events in the Book.