Page 41 of Home Before Dark

“My thoughts exactly.”

I kneel in front of the nearest stone, wipe the dirt away, see a name carved into the marble.

Then I begin to laugh.

I can’t believe I thought—even for just a moment—that the Book was true. It shows how good of a liar my father was and how greatly I’d underestimated his talent. Of course he sprinkledHouse of Horrorswith real-life events and places. If there’s an honest-to-God cemetery on your property, it’s only natural to mention it. When you throw enough facts into your fiction, tangling them together like a nest of snakes, some people are bound to believe it. Politicians do it all the time.

And for a second there, I did believe. It was hard not to after encountering so many things mentioned in the Book. The record player. The photograph of me and my mother. The sleepover and the kitchen ceiling and the graveyard. All of it made me think the Book was real.

But now I look at the name on the gravestone and realize I was right all along—the Book is bullshit.

ROVER

He was a good dog

Dane, now at my side, stares at the stone and says, “This is a freaking pet cemetery?”

“Looks like it,” I say. “If not, the Garsons were one seriously messed-up family.”

We stroll through the rest of the cemetery. While certainly old and admittedly creepy, it’s nothing compared to the place my fatherwrote about. There are stones for several dogs, too many cats to count, and even a pony named Windy.

Pointing to its grave, Dane says, “Maybe it was a ghost horse your family encountered.”

“Ghosts don’t exist,” I reply. “Equine or otherwise.”

“Hey, now. Don’t be so quick to dismiss ghosts.”

“You don’t believe all that stuff, do you?”

Dane’s expression grows contemplative. “Do I believe in ghosts? Not really. At least, not in what people think of as supernatural. But I do believe that things happen. Things we can’t explain away, no matter how much we try. The uncanny. That’s what my maternal grandmother called it.”

“She was a believer?”

“Oh, yes. She was old-school Irish. Grew up hearing stories of sprites and banshees. I always thought it was silly, how she believed in such things.” His voice goes quiet now. No more than a whisper. “But then I saw one when I was ten. Maybe not a ghost. But something.”

“Something uncanny?” I say.

He blushes a little and scratches the back of his neck. A boyish gesture that’s oddly endearing. Of the many versions of Dane Hibbets I’ve encountered in the past twenty-four hours—cockily handsome caretaker, eager employee, font of information—this is the one I like the best.

“We were living in an old house a few towns away,” he says. “It was tall and narrow. My bedroom was on the top floor, kind of isolated from the rest of the house. I didn’t mind it too much. I was ten. I wanted privacy. But then one night in October, I woke up to the sound of my bedroom door being opened. I sat up in bed and saw my grandmother poke her head into the room. ‘I just wanted to say goodnight, Boy-O,’ she said. That was her nickname for me. Boy-O. Then she left, closing the door behind her. Before going back to sleep, I checked the clock on the nightstand. It was one thirty-two a.m.

“In the morning, I went downstairs and found my parents sitting at the kitchen table. My mother was crying. My father just looked dazed. I asked them where Nana was and why no one had told me she was visiting. That’s when they told me. My grandmother had died during the night. At exactly one thirty-two a.m.”

We stand in silence after that. To speak would be to break the sudden, strange connection between us. It’s similar to our exchange in the office, although this time it feels more potent because it’s personal. In that silence, I think of Dane’s story and how it’s more sweet than scary. It makes me wish my father had said something similar before he died. Instead, I got a vague warning about Baneberry Hall and an apology for something he never got around to admitting, both of which led me here.

“I have a confession to make,” I eventually say.

“Let me guess,” Dane says, deadpan. “Your real name is Windy.”

“Close. I didn’t come back just to renovate Baneberry Hall. My real reason for returning is to try to figure out why we left this place the way we did.”

“You think there’s more to the story?”

“I know there is.”

I tell him everything. My checkered history with the Book. My father’s cryptic last words. My certainty that my parents have been withholding the truth from me for twenty-five years.

“I know my father was a liar,” I say, giving a nod toward Rover’s grave. “Now I want to know just how much he lied about. And why.”

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