Free Home Before Dark: A Novel by Riley Sager

unpleasant.
    Decay.
    As I stand there breathing in the unwelcoming odor of Baneberry Hall, it occurs to me that maybe I should be scared. Fans of the Book would be. Wendy Davenport and tens of thousands more. They’d be terrified right now, worried about all the horrors lying in wait just beyond this door.
    I’m not.
    Any trepidation I feel is related to more mundane matters. Mostlywhat’s causing that whiff of decay. Is it wood rot? Termite damage? Some woodland animal that found its way inside during the winter and died here?
    Or maybe it’s my imagination. A remnant of my expecting to find a house in utter disrepair. Not a place that still has a caretaker and a cleaning woman. Definitely not a place my father continued to occupy one night a year.
    I step into the vestibule, drop my bags, and flick a switch by the door. The light fixture above my head brightens. Inside it is a trapped moth. Silhouetted wings beat against the glass.
    I’m not sure what I expect to see as I move deeper into the house. Squalor, I suppose. Twenty-five years of neglect. Cobwebs strung like party banners from the corners. Holes in the ceiling. Bird shit on the floor. But the place is tidy, although not spotless. A thin coat of dust covers the vestibule floor. When I turn around, I see footprints left in my wake.
    I keep moving, pulled along by curiosity. I had thought being here again would spark at least some memories, no matter how faint. Faded recollections of me on the front porch, sitting in the kitchen, climbing the stairs before bed.
    There’s nothing.
    All my memories are of reading about such things in the Book.
    I trace the path my parents took during their first tour. The one my father had written about in detail. Past the staircase. Under the chandelier, which does have a few zigzags of cobwebs strung through its arms. Into the great room. Pause at the fireplace, where the grim countenance of William Garson should be staring down at me.
    But the painting’s not there. All that’s above the fireplace is an expanse of stone, painted gray. Which means either Mr. Garson’s portrait never existed or my father had it covered up during one of his unmentioned visits.
    After that it’s on to the dining room and the subterranean kitchen,with its wall of bells that once must have gleamed but are now dull from tarnish. I touch one—the tag above it reads PARLOR —and it lets out a tinny, mirthless sound.
    I cross to the other end of the kitchen, glancing at the ceiling as I go. Over the butcher-block table is a rectangular area not part of the original ceiling. The paint doesn’t quite match the rest of the kitchen, and there’s a visible seam surrounding the patch that had been replaced. In the center is a grayish oval where the ceiling has started to bulge.
    A water stain.
    Even though it looks to be decades old, the stain means something in the ceiling had been leaking at some point. Definitely not ideal.
    At the kitchen’s far end, I don’t bother descending into the stone-walled cellar. The whisper of a chill and the strong smell of mold wafting from the doorway tell me that’s a place best explored in the daytime and with protective gear.
    So it’s back to the first floor and into the circular parlor, which is smaller than I imagined. The whole house is. My father’s descriptions of Baneberry Hall made it seem bigger—a cavernous place usually only found in Gothic fiction. Manderley on steroids. The reality is less grand. Yes, it’s large, as houses go, but cramped in a way I hadn’t expected, made even more so by dark wood trim and fusty wallpaper.
    The parlor is cluttered with furniture covered by drop cloths, making it look like a roomful of ghosts. I yank them away, creating plumes of dust that, when cleared, reveal pieces so finely made they belong in a museum.
    Probably Garson family furniture. Items like this would have been well above what my parents could have afforded at the time. Especially the cherrywood