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  “Here, baby.” She was kneeling at his side with the needle.

  Benny tried to shake his head, but Bill held him still. “Easy, champ,” he said. “Your muscles are too screwed up right now. You gonna hurt yourself for real.”

  The watcher told him Bill was right. Every other part of Benny screamed when the cold steel bit through his skin. Then his body and mind went limp. Not a person. A jellyfish. Soft and floating in a black, black sea.

  Hours later, Benny heard voices and cracked open his eyes. 1:32 p.m., the clock said in a gauzy blur. The room had gone pink, and his body was still washed away somewhere else.

  “You sure you’ll be alright?” Bill was talking in a low voice outside his door.

  “Of course!” Benny’s mother tried to sound cheerful, but she never really did. “Go. Go get some lunch and go to your appointment.”

  “I’ll stop in before I head home. Around five. Okay?”

  “Thanks, Bill. Really. It’s been such a help having you here. I don’t know what I would’ve done if . . .” Benny could hear the tears in her voice. She’s ready to give up, the watcher whispered.

  “You’re doin’ fine. It’s harder when they grown, that’s all. He’s strong, that Benny. Just talk to him, and he’ll be alright. You’re a good mother. Don’t forget that.”

  Frannie cleared her throat and said nothing.

  A minute later, the door to his bedroom opened. Benny willed his eyes shut and his body still. Don’t see me. Don’t see me. But the watcher felt her eyes on him. Sad eyes. Pained eyes. Tired eyes. Broken eyes. And in that moment, Benny was glad for the needle. His body lay still, lost to the ocean. It couldn’t do anything wrong.

  The door clicked shut again, and he heard the shunk of metal on metal as the dead bolt slid home.

  17

  The Spielman Family

  July 29, 2018

  The next morning, Margot padded her way into the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker. She leaned against the counter and rubbed her eyes. Her head pounded as though being beaten with a hammer. She hadn’t slept well the night before. The liquor had kept her tossing and turning as terrible thoughts pulsed through her veins. Things she shouldn’t have said. Embarrassments. Worries. The idea of Hunter trapped in the big house all alone, drinking whiskey, chatting with predators. The horrifying graffiti that still lingered on the walls, buried under layers of paint.

  Murder House!

  The kitchen would never be finished. She scanned the white marble and boxes of white cabinets and shivered involuntarily. In the harsh morning light, it all looked so cold. Sterile. The exact opposite of the warm, wooden, cozy niche it had once been.

  Margot stared out the window into the overgrown backyard. She wore her weariness on her face heavier in these private moments with no one watching. It was in the downward cast of her eye, the grim set of her lips, the fine lines of her forehead she’d tried so hard to conceal. She wasn’t a happy woman. From the withered look of her, she hadn’t been happy in years.

  The comforting aroma of coffee lifted her spirits enough to grab a mug from the folding table in the corner and her favorite vanilla creamer out of the refrigerator. Another day. She breathed in her acceptance of it and poured the coffee before the percolator was done, refusing to wait a second longer. It will be alright, she told herself as the coffee dripped and hissed onto the exposed burner. It sizzled in protest as she shoved the pot back into its place. Everything will be fine. Breathe. Imagine yourself on a white, sandy beach . . .

  A flutter of white silk caught the corner of her mind’s eye, and Margot’s head snapped around to the short archway between the kitchen and the foyer. An imbalance in the air tickled at her skin. The sense of movement just beyond the wall. Margot set her coffee down and followed it. The morning sun streaming in through the leaded glass overhead sprayed the foyer with dancing light as the trees outside shuddered in the wind. Nothing seemed still, yet nothing was really moving. Above her, a shadow drifted down the second floor hallway just out of sight. Or was it a shift in the trees?

  Margot stared after it a moment, taking the time to convince herself it was nothing. Just nerves. Just the stress of a bad night’s sleep. The walls seemed to tilt ever so slightly above her. She did a slow turn, surveying each room, and stopped at the sight of the white cat in the window next to the front door.

  “Was that you, kitty?” she whispered.

  The cat just flicked its tail.

  Margot went back to the kitchen and emerged again a few seconds later with a bowl of milk. She cracked open the door, and the cat shot under the hydrangea bushes at the sudden rush of cold air from the house. She set the bowl down on the stoop while the cat watched her from a safe distance.

  “It’s okay, kitty.” She crouched down to get a better look. Its fur was pristine white and its eyes a crystalline blue, but it had no collar. “What are you doing under there?”

  Her cell phone rang in the kitchen. Margot reluctantly dragged herself back inside to see who had the poor taste not to text instead. The enormous decorative clock she’d tentatively hung on the far wall told her it was seven fifteen. She checked the name on the caller ID and let her head sag back on her neck in exasperation, debating whether to pick up. With a grimace of obligation, she pressed a button.

  “Mom.” Margot said the word with a mix of surprise and resentment. “I—uh—didn’t expect . . . How are you?”

  There was a long pause while the clock ticked.

  Margot picked up her mug and took a long, exhausted drink as though the coffee would make the woman on the other end of the phone go away. “Oh, he’s fine. I mean, it’s tough getting used to a new place, but he’s looking forward to school starting.” Her gaze drifted up to the ceiling toward Hunter’s room.

  She held the phone an inch away from her ear while her mother continued to talk as if the sound of her voice might infect her with madness.

  “He’s asleep right now, but I’ll be sure to tell him.” Her short, terse response made clear that she wanted the conversation to end as quickly as possible. Her shoulders slumped as the strong hint fell on deaf ears. Whatever came next sent her staggering a step back against one of the enormous boxes. She furtively checked the calendar hanging in her office nook and set down her mug. July 29. “Yes, it is, isn’t it? . . . I suppose that’s why you . . .”

  Margot’s grip on the phone tightened, as did her face, while the woman on the other end made some sort of plea. “No. I’m fine . . . I know you think it’s important, but I can’t . . . You should go. I’m not stopping you . . . Be my guest! Go! Pray! Pay your respects! Do whatever you want to do . . . Of course, it’s a nice thing to do . . .

  “No, I am not trying to deny anything!” Her voice sharpened to a knifepoint. “I know she’s dead! I was there! . . . Stop telling me how to deal with this! Every year we go through this! Every fucking year, Mom! I refuse to wallow in this and be miserable for the rest of my life!”

  Margot’s knuckles turned white as she strangled the phone to keep from throwing it. She closed her eyes and forced herself to take a slow, deep breath, counting silently to ten until she could talk without yelling. “I know you don’t. Mom. Stop . . . Yes, I’ve been taking my medication. It’s fine . . . I’ve been to therapy . . . Yes, I know, but I’m fine now . . . and I’m sorry I put you through that. I just need space, okay? Don’t tell me how to feel today of all days . . . Well, I loved her too . . . Yes, but the rest of us have to keep living! Look, I have to go . . . I will.” Sigh. “You too.”

  With that she slapped her phone back onto the folding table. Margot glanced down at her coffee a moment, then stormed off into the den. Hands suddenly more thin and frail, she poured whiskey into a tumbler and slammed it back. A slow, boozy breath hissed out of her as the angry balloon swelling inside her chest deflated down, down, down.

  Margot sank down onto Myron’s desk chair. Against her better judgment, she opened a drawer and pulled out a framed photograph lying there
facedown. It was a family portrait. Myron with a beard and bushy hair holding a baby boy in tiny trousers and a sweater vest. Margot full lipped and rosy cheeked with a little girl on her lap. Yellow dress. Yellow curls. Blue eyes. She looked to be about three years old.

  The loneliness, the constant dissatisfaction, the hollow void inside Margot matched this little girl’s dimensions in every way—her shape, her smile, her twinkling laugh frozen in the resin. She leaned the photograph against her heart and slumped back in the chair. Dry tears rolled down her face. She didn’t have it in her to cry. Drained of all emotion, Margot looked seventy, left with nothing but photographs of children who had vanished like ghosts.

  “Hey.” Myron stopped in the doorway of the den, freshly showered. He was surprised to see her sitting there. Then his eyes found the familiar frame of the photograph against her chest and fell to the floor. The days of the calendar ticked through his mind, and he nodded his head slowly. July 29. It didn’t cut him the same way, but it hurt. He hadn’t just lost a daughter. “You, uh . . . you okay, honey?”

  She didn’t answer. She just looked out the window. Outside, the gate between the driveway and the backyard stood open. She absently made a note of it.

  Worried, but also visibly exhausted and resentful for never once being able to not worry about her, he tried again. Myron walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. She stiffened slightly. Don’t touch me. “You want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head just enough to say no. The distance between them echoed like a moonlit canyon.

  He withdrew his hand, wondering what, if anything else, he should say. There was nothing to say, of course. Saying things never seemed to do a damn bit of good in these situations, he mused to himself. He debated throwing his arms around her, picking her up, and holding her like the wounded deer she was, but he didn’t debate it long. From the defeated look in his eyes, it was clear it had all been tried before, and too much blame had been set at his feet for him to try again. He needed coffee. He needed a lot of things that he would be keeping to himself.

  Unwilling to give up entirely, he lifted her chin with his finger and planted an unwanted kiss on her cheek almost out of spite. “I love you.”

  She forced herself to not recoil from the gesture and pressed her lips into a smile. “I love you too.” And she did. From the other side of the canyon, she did. Her eyes softened at him as he turned toward the kitchen.

  “Thanks,” she said as a way of apologizing for not knowing what she needed him to say, what she needed him to do, for hating him for everything that wasn’t his fault.

  Myron had already turned away and didn’t get the message. It was a flimsy consolation prize anyway, and she knew it. She watched him go.

  After another minute held to the chair by the weight of the photograph and her abject resignation, Margot finally put the picture frame back in the drawer facedown and shut it with a hollow tick.

  She gazed out the window at the unwieldy trees, overgrown shrubs, and neglected flower beds in the backyard. The stone pavers of Georgina Rawlings’s manicured English garden lay four inches beneath the grass.

  18

  The Rawlings Family

  January 5, 1930

  Georgina sat in her sewing room, staring out the window into the back garden. The flowers and shrubs lay buried beneath a blanket of snow. The fountain sat frozen in the center of a dead white expanse.

  She hadn’t slept well in weeks. Her husband had been gone over two months, but the weight of his loss grew heavier with each day. She sat there listening for his footsteps, startling at every sound that rattled through the yawning expanses of the house. The memory of him standing outside her son’s door the night he’d died lingered. The animal look in his eyes in the dim light of the hall still haunted her.

  What’s wrong, she’d whispered.

  Nothing, darling. Go back to sleep.

  “They’re coming for us, aren’t they?” she said softly into her needlepoint, as though he were still standing there. “What have you done, Walter?”

  The thump of something heavy hitting the floor over her head sent her needles clattering to the floor with a muted shriek. Walter?

  Ella raced from the kitchen up the back stairs. “Missus Rawlings!” she called as she flew down the second floor hallway. “Is everything alright?”

  It wasn’t the lady of the house the old maid was worried about. Ever since his father had died, little Walter had been teetering on the edge of disaster. Up all hours of the night with bad dreams, he’d wake up screaming. Ella had moved into the room above the garage so she could watch over the boy. More than once, she’d caught him walking in his sleep. He’d tumbled down the front stairs two nights before, and the entire house stood on edge waiting for the next fall.

  The maid searched door after door, looking for little Walter. He was nowhere to be seen. Ella stopped outside Georgina’s sewing room and spoke with measured caution. “Everything alright, ma’am?”

  “Yes?” Georgina’s eyes skittered wildly from corner to corner, seeing things that weren’t there. “Why? Did . . . did you hear a baby cry just now, Ella?”

  “Baby? What baby?” Ella glowered at her. Georgina was getting worse, frail and disconnected. “I hear something. A loud thump. Where is your son?”

  “My son?” The widow shook the phantoms from her head, then scanned the room as though she’d just woken up. “I don’t know. Have you seen him?”

  “I keep looking, ma’am.” Ella took off down the long hall. Things weren’t right in the house. They hadn’t been right for months. Not since she’d found Mr. Rawlings lying facedown on his desk.

  Down the corridor from the sewing room, little Walter’s door stood open. Nothing inside the room was amiss. Books sat on their shelves, gathering dust. Toys were in their box. The bed was still made.

  “Shavo?” she called out and checked the closet just in case. Sometimes the boy liked to play hide-and-seek without announcing the game. She’d lost him for over an hour the week before. Kneeling down, Ella checked under the bed, making a mental note to dry mop again soon. Not that Mrs. Rawlings really noticed one way or another. Ella tried daily to see the bright side of not having a stern employer barking at her about this or that. Demanding peach pie when she’d baked apple. Running her white glove along the tops of the highest shelves the way Georgina had done her first year, back when the family hadn’t been so sure about having a “gypsy” in the house. But it was unsettling the way the lady of the house had vacated the premises.

  The house itself seemed vacant. Even with the three of them there at the table each night—and that was odd too, sitting at the table with them, but poor Georgina had insisted—it felt empty. Little Walter felt it. The place had gone hollow. Cold. Rawlingswood had lost its luster the moment Mr. Rawlings had expelled his final breath. The wood had begun to shrivel, and the crystal sconces had gone dull. It echoed now when she walked down the hall. Ella had taken to sneaking a nip of whiskey in the afternoons to settle her nerves.

  “Walter?” Ella tried again and stepped back out into the hallway.

  At the far end, Georgina’s bedroom stood empty. He never hid in there. Walter hated his mother’s inner sanctum, refusing to go in even to wake her after a bad dream. It had an air of madness after so many days of Georgina being bedridden with grief. Ella turned the other way and headed toward the attic stairs.

  Another knocking sound sent her feet flying faster. Has he fallen up there? Is he trapped under those old heavy boxes? She took the steps two at a time. “Muro shavo? You there?”

  She scanned the common room, muttering to herself in her own tongue. “Mi duvvaleska.”

  The door to the room Mr. Rawlings used for storing his papers was shut. She tried the handle. Locked as usual. The door to her former bedroom stood open next to it. Cold air hissed through the seams of the window. It was never warm enough up there, except in summer, when it grew hot enough to steam milk.

  Ella bent her
stiff back to check under the mattress. Nothing was there but the suitcase she’d carried onto the steamer from Spain. She straightened herself with a small groan, keeping one eye on her luggage. Her feet itched to walk out of the house and never come back, but she was far too old for the other rich houses to take her in. Most ladies preferred young girls they could intimidate and boss around. Mr. Rawlings had only picked her because the old woman had insisted. You have child. I take care of child. You need cook. I cook. We give it two days. If no work, Dosta. I go.

  She’d never received a single phone call or one scrap of mail in the four years she’d been with the Rawlings. But it was more than that. Ella couldn’t leave little Walter. Not now. Not with Georgina losing all grasp of reality, Ella mused, checking the closet for the boy. Husband gone. A big empty house. A little boy with no father. Mrs. Rawlings was quickly growing too old to remarry. She’d been forced to go find work outside the home “decorating,” whatever that meant.

  Widows don’t last long on their own, the accountant had warned Georgina while Ella kept Walter busy in the kitchen. The way the country is falling apart all around us, you’ll be lucky to hold on for another six months.

  Ella had taken to looking into Georgina’s teacups to see what sort of future the thinning woman had left for herself at the bottom. She eyed that suitcase under the bed again but thought of little Walter.

  Another knocking sound pulled Ella back out into the main room. One of the crawl space doors was cracked open. She crouched down on her aching knees and swung it wide. “Shavo? You there?”

  The smell of mouse droppings and trapped dust hit her face as she plunged her head into the unfinished attic. She felt blindly through the cobwebs until she found a metal pull chain attached to a naked bulb. Click.

  “Walter!” she gasped. The boy was sitting against the knee wall, rocking back and forth as though in a trance. His eyes were open but blank. His lips were moving as though chanting silent words. “Ai, Devel! What are you doing?”