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  Tenacious little Walter stomped the harlot’s foot. He dropped his weight violently to escape from under her arm and caught the sharp blade square in the neck.

  Walter!

  The boy’s eyes went wide as the steel sank into his skin.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Felix hissed. “Carmen. What have you done?”

  42

  The Spielman Family

  August 10, 2018

  The attic window glowed yellow against the pale morning sky. The servant’s bathroom peered out from its perch below the gabled roof at Hunter standing in the driveway.

  He backed himself across the pavement until his backpack hit the neighbor’s fence. A shadow moved across the ceiling. A shape shifted in the corner of the window. The invisible strings of someone watching followed him all the way to the front door.

  The wine he’d drunk the night before pounded in his temples. The memory of her shadow in the doorway, the sound of her laugh, and her hot breath on his neck twisted through his addled brain.

  Can you keep a secret? her voice repeated as he opened the front door.

  “Hey, Mom? I’m home!” His voice drifted up the front stairs and down the empty hallway. No one answered. “Mom?”

  He found her sitting in the den, eyes glazed with her hangover. Myron had gone out an hour earlier to look into a home security system. Will you be okay for a bit while I’m out?

  “You’re back,” she said flatly, not looking at him.

  “Uh. Yeah. Sorry, I was just . . .” He hadn’t thought of a good explanation. I was just what?

  She stood up and floated past him toward the kitchen. “You must be hungry. Have you eaten?”

  “No. I’m starving.” Am I? He couldn’t feel his stomach. Following her, he made a concerted effort not to look toward the basement door. He dropped his backpack at the edge of the kitchen as quietly as he could. He sank onto a stool at one of the enormous marble slabs in the middle of the room and waited for the yelling to start.

  Margot went through the motions of making a sandwich as though in a trance. The rage and fear she’d felt trapped in the hot attic the day before were nowhere to be found. Relief and exhaustion took their place as she pulled ingredients out of the fridge. Her baby was home just like she’d prayed in her head. But was he? The filthy teenager at the counter was more a stranger than her baby. She stopped to look at him.

  Hunter tensed. What?

  Her little boy was gone. The sad realization struck her as it had every single time she’d noticed a change in him. Every inch he grew and every facial hair that sprouted were reminders of the boy he could no longer be. Lost. All of it just slipped away. She turned away again to grab the bread.

  The yelling didn’t come. It was too easy. Hunter’s muscles unwound one by one as it seemed more and more that the whole thing would blow over. His eyes roamed the kitchen awkwardly as the silence between them widened and deepened.

  The calendar showcasing their ski trip to Aspen last year hung by itself on the bulletin board over the “home office” desk next to the refrigerator. Margot looked flushed and vibrant in her hot pink parka against the snow. The month of July had come and gone, but it still hung there forgotten. No one in the family really used the calendar. Not with their computers and phones constantly at the ready. Hunter had nothing to put on a calendar anyway. Nothing except . . .

  Oh.

  His eyes darted from an empty square on the calendar to his mother’s back. July 29. It had been the previous week, and he hadn’t said a thing. I’m a terrible son.

  He wished desperately that he knew the right thing to say to her. The thing that would tell her, I’m sorry she’s gone. I’m sorry it wasn’t me. I’m sorry I can’t fix it. I’m so, so sorry . . . But a part of him wasn’t sorry. A part of him was sick to death of having to feel sorry all his life. A part of him hated her for not just loving him instead and for the shame he felt for living. The story wrote itself over his face. His storkish frame sagged with it. It should’ve been me that died. You wish it had been me.

  “You have fun last night?” His mother’s voice fell dully against the marble.

  “Sure,” he answered, and then he remembered he’d run away. He was in trouble. He was a bad son. “Yeah. I, uh, met up with some friends. I’m sorry . . . I should’ve called.”

  Margot looked up at her perfect mosaic backsplash at the word friends. Her eyes fell back to the bread on the plate. “Yeah. You should’ve.”

  She turned and slapped the plate in front of him. Ham sandwich, cheese, no mustard. The way he’d liked it when he was little.

  “Thanks,” he said and tried to catch her eye with a smile. Is she okay? he wondered. Fear lurked around the edges of his face—a wariness, like something bad had happened, a shoe had dropped. “Hey, Mom?”

  “Hmm?” Margot looked up with feigned interest from the other side of the island. Her eyes were bloodshot and heavy.

  “Do you, um . . .” He lost his nerve and changed tack. “Do you know anything about the people that used to live here? You know, before us?”

  “Not really. Why?” She narrowed her eyes at him, wondering what strange things he’d seen and heard in the house. The memory of the intruder and a voice singing inched up her back. Has he heard it too?

  “Just something that kid Roger said.” He tried to sound casual. “I did some hunting through the county records and found that the last owners were Clyde and Maureen Martin. Do you think they had kids?”

  “I have no idea, honey. The contractors found some unopened mail . . . I think your father put it somewhere. Let me go check.”

  Her brow furrowed as she went into the den. Should I say something about the intruder? she wondered. No. No need to panic or overreact. It will just upset him, and besides . . . I didn’t actually see anyone.

  Myron had tried to calm her nerves again that morning. The security system will be monitored by a twenty-four-hour service. We’ll be fine.

  “I want to leave this house, Myron,” she whispered to herself.

  A scrap of paper on the desk blotter caught her eye as she rifled through the files in the drawer. Max’s Smudging Psychic Lady—Madame Nala and a phone number scrawled in Myron’s agitated hand. She picked it up and read it again before putting it in her pocket.

  Hunter had managed to swallow half his sandwich before she came back.

  “Here,” she said, handing him a manila folder. “You can look through this if you’d like. What’s with this interest in the house all of a sudden? First the dead Shakers and now the last owners?”

  He shrugged as nonchalantly as he could. “I dunno. Just curious. This place is kinda weird.”

  “Yeah. I suppose it is.” She didn’t say more about her own thoughts on the house. The newspaper stories of the little boy murdered in the attic turned her stomach. How could a mother do such a thing? She put on a brave smile for her son’s sake and said, “Since you’re doing all this research, maybe you could write one of your college essays about it.”

  “Yeah. Maybe . . . I think I’m going to go shower.” He needed one, no doubt. If Margot had been paying attention, she would’ve noticed the grime of the basement staining his hands and clothes and the guilt dirtying his face.

  “Okay, sweetie.”

  Relieved to be away from her and the specter of his dead sister and the weight of his lying, Hunter grabbed his backpack and headed up the stairs. He paused in the hallway, listening, scanning the dark corners, eyeing the closed doors. She could be anywhere. In a house big enough for twelve people, it was no wonder they’d never noticed.

  Your family has to leave this house . . . before it’s too late.

  Down in the kitchen, Margot didn’t move. She stared at the half-eaten sandwich as though in a trance. The sound of water raining down a hidden pipe broke the spell. She glanced up the back stairs and then to the empty barstool, opening her mouth to shout at her son, then shutting it without a sound.

  Hunter’s shower drummed the fl
oor above her.

  She dumped the sandwich into the sink and wandered into the foyer. The grand staircase loomed over her, somber and still. It felt like a funeral parlor. The blood red roses bloomed lasciviously from their table. Taunting her. Displaying a glimpse of pollen here, dropping petals there. Stripping naked, slowly, slowly, slowly.

  The phantom voice of a man breathed in her ear. I don’t live very far.

  With an exhale of utter disgust, she grabbed the fat bouquet by the throat. Yanked from their vase, the stems dripped dirty water onto the floor as she stormed back into the kitchen, slapped open a cupboard, and shoved the inexplicable roses into the trash. Thorns ripped at the plastic liner as she shoved the display down to the bottom of the can and slammed the door shut.

  Drops of red hit the gleaming white floor. Tap. Tap.

  Margot stared at the color blooming on the marble tiles dumbly until it registered that it was blood. Blood dripped from her torn palm down to the floor. She watched it fall with an unhealthy fascination. She squeezed her fist into a ball of pain, eyes bright and clear for the first time that morning. The pain felt good. So good. So much better than before. She opened her palm and studied the punctures as though wishing for more. A block of sharp knives sat on the marble slab three feet away, waiting for their chance. She let out a long hiss of breath and shook her head.

  Staggering back to her feet, she grabbed a paper towel and watched the white fibers turn brilliant crimson in her palm. The blossoms of red on the floor kept spreading into the crystalline depths of the marble, finding the minute cracks in the grout, seeping down to the wood below.

  The shadow of a girl watched from the back stairwell, but when Margot turned her head, she was gone.

  43

  Hunter ran the hot water until the bathroom clouded over with steam. After a full minute’s debate, he cracked open the door and listened for his mother’s footsteps. Satisfied, he stepped out into the hallway and tiptoed across the carpet runner to the attic stairs.

  Down below, his mother’s feet padded away from the kitchen toward the den, and he took the chance to creak open the attic door. One excruciating step at a time, he made his way up to the third floor. His head slowly emerged between the rails into the empty room. “Hello?” he whispered.

  The morning sun streamed into the long expanse through the dusty windows. The bathroom light at the far end burned yellow through the open door. But there was no one inside. He reached the top of the steps and scanned the main room for signs of life. One of the crawl space doors stood ajar between the window dormers. Fixated, he crossed the room and swung it open.

  “Hello?” he whispered into the rafters and the insulation. “Ava?”

  Insulated ducts ran under the rafters, carrying cool air to the rooms below. A pile of rags sat a few feet inside the crawl space to his right. To his left lay a little boy’s shoe. With its cracked brown leather and moth-eaten laces, the shoe looked nearly as old as the house. He leaned in for a closer look. It belonged to a small child, a boy of maybe five or six years old.

  His body was halfway into the crawl space when he heard the attic door close behind him.

  He cracked his head on the roof planks, hard. Vision blurred, he extracted himself from behind a knee wall and spun around to face the empty room. “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  Frustration mixed with the pain as he staggered back to his feet and down the steps. To his relief and near surprise, the door wasn’t locked. He swung it open hard, determined to not let some crazy girl frighten him.

  The second floor hallway stood empty.

  Behind him, the back hall wound around a corner to the guest suite, silent and dark. Along the main hallway, all seven doors were shut. All except the master suite. He crept toward his parents’ room. The sight of his mother standing at the front door pushed him back into the shadow of the far wall. He was supposed to be in the shower. He was supposed to be a lot of things. As his mother turned his way, he slipped back into his bathroom and out of sight.

  Margot scanned the foyer, the dining room, the entrance to the kitchen, the stairs, the hall above. Someone was there, watching. She was sure of it. But the only sound was Hunter’s shower and her angry feet pounding across the wood floor toward the kitchen.

  Hunter closed the bathroom door without a sound and rubbed his bruised head. “There is no such thing as ghosts,” he said to the clouded shape of himself in the mirror. “Crazy girls? Yes. Ghosts? No.”

  He defiantly stripped down naked, despite the prickly sense of being stalked, and stepped into the scalding shower. Broad shoulders. Long, gangly legs. Four chest hairs and counting. A smattering of pimples across his back. Patches of dark hair where his limbs met his torso. He ran a bar of soap over all the parts of his body that suddenly seemed foreign to him. As though someone else was watching.

  A wisp of cool air fluttered against his back, making him shiver. Outside the steamed glass, a small form stood in the corner next to the sink. Hunter could see nothing through the clouded door. Still, he felt it. On instinct, he smeared the condensation with his hand.

  Nothing was there but his own ungainly form in the mirror. The bathroom door stood open an inch. The chill set into his skin as the cold air leaked in.

  He shut off the water, grabbed a towel from the rack, and darted out into the hallway.

  Still empty.

  He raced across the hall to the attic door and listened at the bottom of the stairs for footfalls, for breathing. He heard a cupboard slap closed down in the kitchen. Taking the back steps down two at a time, he hit the cold marble tiles with wet feet to find the room vacant. The glow of the television flickered from the den. His mother, he figured. The ham sandwich sat dejected in the sink.

  Red drops of blood dotted the floor.

  His breath caught, shocked not just at the red color but that it had been left there to mar his mother’s pristine marble. He knelt down and touched a drop with his fingertip. It was still wet. Thin and cold, the blood soaked into his skin, staining it. He lurched up, alarm spreading over his face.

  “Mom?” He took off for the den. “Mom? You okay?”

  The television glowed from the built-in bookcase where house flippers picked out bathroom tiles on the screen. The couch was empty. The crystal stopper of the liquor decanter lay on its side on the coffee table. The whiskey had been drained.

  “Mom?” he called out again, turning toward the front stairs. Sprinting now, he dashed up the red carpet runner to her bedroom. The door was shut. He pounded on it with his fist. “Mom? You in there?”

  There was no answer.

  He pressed his ear to the door and heard water running in her bathroom. Alarm turned to panic. July 29. Blood on the floor. He pounded again.

  “Mom!”

  44

  The Martin Family

  June 13, 2015

  “911. What’s your emergency?”

  “We need an ambulance. Please! She’s bleeding!”

  “Who is bleeding?”

  “Mama Martin. Maureen.”

  “And what’s your name, miss?”

  “Just come. She’s bleeding to death!”

  “Are you in danger?”

  “No. Please! Hurry!”

  “Is there anyone there with you?”

  “No . . .” Papa Martin had died a few months earlier. That had been a 911 call as well. We need help! He’s not breathing! Ava’s voice echoed off the white subway tiles. “It’s just us.”

  “What is the address?”

  “14895 Lee Road. Just hurry!”

  “I’m sending an ambulance now, hon, but the more you tell me, the more we can help. Understand? Where is she now?”

  “The bathroom. Upstairs.”

  “Okay. Where’s she bleeding from?”

  “Her wrists.”

  “Did she cut her wrists?”

  A choked sob echoed in the cold, hard room. “I don’t know.”

  “Is she awake?”

&nb
sp; “I—um—I’m not sure. No. I don’t think so.”

  “What was the weapon?”

  “I’m not sure . . . wait . . . a razor.”

  “Does she have it with her now?”

  “It’s on the floor.”

  “Listen carefully. I need you to kick that razor out of her reach. Okay? Do not pick it up. Understand? Don’t touch it.”

  A tinkling of metal over tiles was followed by a shaky breath. “Okay.”

  “Now, I want you to see if you can stop the bleeding, alright? The ambulance will be there in five minutes, but we need to try and help her right now. Can you find some towels?”

  “Uh. Yeah. Here’s one.”

  “We need two. Okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. I want you to wrap a towel around her right wrist, tight. Try to tie it into a knot. Alright?”

  “Oh, God. It’s bleeding so fast. Um . . . okay. I wrapped it, but it won’t knot. It won’t. It’s too thick.”

  “That’s okay. Just tuck the ends under as tight as you can. Okay. Now do the left wrist.”

  “Okay. Okay. Okay. Oh, Jesus. I don’t think she’s breathing.”

  “The ambulance is coming. I want you to elevate her arms over her head. Get them higher than her heart, alright?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good, sweetie. You’re doin’ good. Is the front door unlocked?”

  “Um . . . I don’t know.”

  “Are any doors unlocked?”

  “I don’t . . . maybe the back door?”

  “Okay. Where are you in the house?”

  “The second floor. In the bathroom. On the left.”

  “Alright, you just sit tight, sweetie. They’re almost there. You hear them?”

  The sound of approaching sirens sent a shudder through the house.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Good . . . now I need you to tell me your name, hon.”

  There was no answer.

  “Hello? Are you there?” the operator chirped through the speakerphone sitting on the floor next to the tub. “Hello? . . . Are you okay?”