PROLOGUE
The screams have long since died away. The bloodstains, like the memories, have faded brown with time, obscured beneath a fine layer of dust. Mildew creeps along the peeling floral wallpaper. The window frames are soft with rot.
A skylight of colored glass softly illuminates the slow and steady decay.
Once, laughter filled the spaces between the tired walls. Running feet and mother’s hugs and whispers under covers at night. Hearts beat, as hearts do, then broke, then beat again. Until they didn’t.
An elderly woman stands inside the remains of what used to be a home. Her head is tilted to one side, and an observer might wonder if her thoughts are anchored in reality. She wonders the same.
Wings flutter in the silence, disturbing the dust and sending a shower of particles down through the beam of sun soldiering on across the room. Starlings, roosting in the attic. Pests, some would say, but she doesn’t begrudge them a dry eave to shelter beneath. The desiccated old place has little else to offer.
Yet something feels different. Changed. This is the thought that occupies her as she stands, listening for sounds that aren’t there, feeling blindly for a pulse that ceased many years before.
She shakes her head. Foolish old woman. Nothing has changed. This house is a corpse, too large to move, decomposing where it lies. A victim, as much as any of them, to the madness that lived, grew, and died within its walls a long time ago.
She leaves the house, her steps unhurried. The sun warms her hunched shoulders, then gives way to shadows that shelter the path to the ivy-covered caretaker’s cottage tucked far back in the trees.
Home. The way was shorter when she was a girl. She would fly through these woods, branches slapping at her, cheeks flushed as she joined her family waiting up ahead.
A memory calls, some vague shape hidden behind the bothersome fog that’s taken permanent residence at the edges of her mind.
Mam’s voice, a lilting brogue that whispers of green hills an ocean away. “’Tis the gravedigger’s bell you hear, lass.”
She waits, feigning disinterest. Impatience will get her nothing. The harder she tries to capture a memory, the deeper into the fog it retreats. But if she’s quiet and still, sometimes it will come, stepping lightly like a doe emerging from the woods.
Sometimes.
Today, though, it bounds away, skittish and shy.
A different memory comes instead. A ghost of a memory, back to greet her as an old friend might.
“Keep my secrets,” it whispers in her ear. “For my secrets are yours.”
She’s not frightened. At her age, there’s little left to fear save death, and even death brings the haunting scent of something new and unknown. An enticement of what might come next.
But as is the nature of ghosts and memories alike, this one has no concern for the future, and even less concern for death. It is fully encapsulated by the past.
The old woman frowns and thinks of the gravedigger’s bell.
A small, dark seed of worry burrows down deep, settling in.
Something is rising.
If only she could remember what it is.
1
TESSA
Tessa stands near the back and surveys the crowd. The crush of reporters in their dark overcoats brings to mind a flock of blackbirds. Unsavory creatures that travel in packs, aware they possess no great beauty alone. Only the power of the mob. They vie with one another, jostling to prove their dominance, and turn their glassy eyes to the object of their curiosity.
Oliver Barlow.
Wondering if he’ll make a good meal, no doubt.
Tessa shakes off the thought. She’s no better. Not really.
“Mr. Barlow, what are your plans now that you’re a free man?” one of them shouts over the rest.
“I . . . I don’t know,” Oliver stammers in response, overwhelmed by the strangers and microphones pushing in on him, questions coming quick and sharp from all directions.
He glances at his wife, a full head shorter than his lanky six-foot frame. She stares at her shoes, intimidated by the mass of humanity blocking their way.
Oliver’s father, a truck driver who manned a wall of stoicism during the fourteen years of his son’s incarceration, stands beside the couple and mops at tears that show no sign of stopping.
Oliver scans the crowd. Searching for an answer, perhaps. Or an escape. Or simply a familiar face in a sea of strangers.
When his eyes find Tessa, they light with relief, and she sends him what she hopes is a reassuring smile.
“I just want to live my life,” he says, his voice stronger. “Hug my kids. Have a home-cooked meal. Watch a ball game with my old man.”
The elder Mr. Barlow chokes back a sob and hides his face behind his hands. Oliver glances at him, bemused. After a slight hesitation, he gives his father an awkward one-armed side hug, which only causes the heaving of the old man’s shoulders to increase.
Oliver’s words are honest, if simple, and leave the reporters hungry for more.
“Do you plan to return to the Bonham community permanently, Mr. Barlow?”
“Chief Winters and the district attorney still deny any wrongdoing in the handling of your case. Would you care to comment on that?”
“Are you angry at the system, Oliver?”
Tessa holds her breath as each barbed question lands, questions that if directed her way would send her into an anxious spiral of self-doubt. Each one steals a little more happiness from Ollie’s face. He opens his mouth to reply, and for a moment it seems he might hand the reporters the sound bite they’re baiting him for.
Then his gaze meets Tessa’s once more. With a nearly imperceptible shake of her head, she silently implores him, Don’t let them win.
Ollie bites back the response ready to spring from his lips. He takes a deep breath instead, then glances over his shoulder at the Merrivale Correctional Facility. His home, for better and for worse, for far too many years.
The hulking gray structure stands resolute. Uncaring and unapologetic.
“What’s done is done,” he says when he finally turns back to the waiting crowd. “Today I’m on this side of those walls. That makes it a better day than yesterday.”
Tessa lets out a relieved breath, but any hint of celebration has fizzled. When Oliver Barlow walked into prison he was a young man, twenty-two years old and brimming with righteous anger and protestations of innocence. Now he’s old and he’s tired. A man clocking out after the longest, darkest shift a person could imagine.
“So if you don’t mind, I’d like to go home now.”
After a few last-ditch attempts, the news crews begin packing to go, unrewarded for their efforts. Ollie steers his family toward their waiting car, a faded gold sedan that hasn’t been new for a long time.
He holds the door for his wife, who quickly ducks inside, her head still bent low. Mr. Barlow Senior drops into the front passenger seat and burrows in, trying to control his emotions.
Oliver looks up as Tessa makes her way toward him. A smile breaks through the clouds on his face, erasing some of the signs of premature aging. Even the gray, gloomy day can’t dampen it, and Tessa feels her own face respond in kind.
Before she realizes it, he’s pulled her in for a hug that lifts her off her feet and swings her around. They’re both laughing when he sets her down.
“You did it,” he says, his grin wide and amazed. “I didn’t believe it, but you really did it.”