Page 100 of Home Before Dark

I’m already moving to the next volume—1926—when Brian returns to the morgue. Leaning on a shelf with his pen and notebook, he says, “Are you ready to begin?”

I nod while flipping through pages filled with ads for ladies’ hats, Model T cars, and the latest motion pictures playing at the town’s Bijou Theater. It’s not until I’m well into May that I see an article about a Garson family member killed in a car accident.

Truth number two.

“Do you think your father killed Petra Ditmer?” Brian asks.

“I hope he didn’t.”

“But youdothink he did it?”

“If I do, you’ll be the first to know.” I open the collected newspapers from 1941. “Next question.”

“Do you think Petra’s death is why your family left Baneberry Hall so suddenly?”

“Maybe.”

I find the article about the bathtub drowning that occurred that year. A third truth. The four and fifth ones come a few minutes later, while I scan the volumes from 1955 and 1956. Two bed-and-breakfast guests died, one in each of those years.

All the while, Brian Prince keeps lobbing questions at me. “Do you know of another reason you and your family fled the house?”

“It was haunted,” I say while reaching for the papers from 1974. “Or so I’ve been told.”

I’ve just found the article I’ve been looking for—FATAL FALL AT BANEBERRY HALL—when Brian slams an open palm across the page, blocking my view. It doesn’t matter. Just seeing the headline confirms that my father hadn’t been lying about any of the deaths at Baneberry Hall.

“You’re not upholding your end of our deal,” he says.

“You’re interviewing me, aren’t you?”

“It’s not an interview if you refuse to answer my questions.”

I get up and leave the desk, heading to another shelf of newspaper volumes. “I am answering them. I truly hope my father didn’t kill Petra Ditmer. And, yes, maybe her death was why we left. If you want specifics, you’ll need to talk to someone else.”

“Just give me something I can use in next week’s edition,” Brian says as he follows me to a row of bound volumes spanning two decades ago. “A legitimate quote.”

I grab two more volumes, one from twenty-five years ago, the other from the year before that, and carry them back to the desk.

“Here’s your quote: Like everyone in Bartleby, I’m shocked and saddened by the recent discovery inside Baneberry Hall. My deepest condolences go out to the family of Petra Ditmer.”

While Brian scribbles it down in his notebook, I open the volumefrom the year my family fled Baneberry Hall. The article about our departure is easy to find—it’s splashed across the front page of the July 17 issue.

THE HAUNTING OF BANEBERRY HALL

Fearing for their lives, new owners flee historic estate.

The story that started it all.

I’ve seen it before, of course. Scans of the article are all over the internet. That tabloidy headline and photo of Baneberry Hall—eerily similar to the one currently on the front page of theGazette—have been preserved forever.

So has the name of the man who wrote it.

“Still my finest hour,” Brian Prince says as he peers over my shoulder to see his byline.

“And my family’s darkest,” I reply.

I read the article for what’s probably the hundredth time, wondering what my life would have been like had it never been written. I’d have had a more normal childhood, that’s for damn sure. No being an outcast. No being teased and tormented. No Goth freaks trying to befriend me because they mistakenly thought I was one of them.

Maybe I would have become the writer my father wanted me to be. No article would have meant no Book, which is what steered me away from the profession in the first place.

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