Brackenhill was the name of a castle on top of a mountain deep in the woods in the Catskill Mountains. It was built in the 1800s by a wealthy Scottish immigrant named Douglass Taylor as a summer lodge. He built the castle originally for his wife, who was committed to a sanatorium shortly after the birth of her only child. Taylor himself then died young, and their daughter, Merril, inherited the land and the Taylor fortune. She married and lived in happy seclusion for years until she, too, was committed to a sanatorium shortly after the birth of her fourth son. Brackenhill was passed down from generation to generation in a family riddled with mental illness.
It has been said that over ten girls went missing on Brackenhill grounds over the course of 150 years. Some were children living in the castle; some were residents of the village below. Brackenhill stole the sanity of women and the bodies of children. The children, ranging in age from seven to eighteen, have never been found. Some people think they’re all buried on the expansive grounds. Sometimes, especially when it rains (and no one knows why), you can hear their laughter as they play.
CHAPTER FOUR
Now
Grover M. Hermann Hospital was a half hour south of Rockwell, New York. Huck steered Hannah’s car into the brightly lit parking lot just before dawn on Friday morning. Huck, the saint, had driven the full six hours, letting Hannah doze in the passenger seat, violating Road Trip Rule #7: absolutely no sleeping. But those rules had been made for beach trips and summer getaways, not middle-of-the-night emergency trips to visit long-lost—and gravely injured—relatives.
Hannah’s mother, Trina, had passed away a year and a half ago. Huck and Hannah had been new, and he’d met and charmed her only once. He tried to come with Hannah to the funeral, make the arrangements, see the house she grew up in. That sad little box house in Plymouth, Pennsylvania. She’d stopped him. She hadn’t needed him then. She wasn’t even sure that she’d cried. “You’re so strong,” he told her then. Proud of her, like strength was an accomplishment, something to strive for. It never occurred to him to question where it had come from.
But this felt different. Heavier. They were engaged. It hadn’t even been a question this time: Huck was here. The thought made her hands clench. There was so much he didn’t know. Would he think she was strong this time? Unlikely.
Hannah sat up, smacked her mouth. She dug around for a piece of gum and a dog treat. Rink slept soundly in the back, sighing softly, legs kicking at a dream. She turned around and tucked the treat between his nose and his front paws. He woke long enough to eat it and drifted back off.
Hannah’s eyes burned, reminding her that her car sleep had been spotty at best. She dialed work and left a voice mail for her director. “I should be back on Monday; there’s been a family emergency.” She thought of her boss, Patrice, a severe, private woman who would scoff at the excuse. It was a hot, sunny Friday. Surely Hannah had just taken off for a long weekend with that “hunky fiancé,” as Patrice called Huck.
Hannah was in charge of brochures: ad copy and placement of pictures of happy couples frolicking on beaches. She loved the idea of making life look wonderful and glossy. But still, she had the odd habit of trying to imagine her life like the pictures on a brochure: perfect boyfriend, pristine apartment, small yet loyal circle of friends laughing around a campfire.
“Hannah?” Huck’s hand on her knee. She jerked her leg away and regretted it. She was jumpy, too little sleep, too much energy charging through her veins.
Hannah reached out and gripped Huck’s hand. It was calloused, even in the summer—especially in the summer—because of his job as a landscape designer (the gardener, she sometimes called him, sexy and silly).
Huck knew almost nothing of Aunt Fae and Uncle Stuart, aside from their names. He’d never met them. He didn’t know much about her childhood, and he knew nothing of the castle. He knew her mother had died. He knew very little of the summer of 2002. He knew she had an older sister who’d died when she was young, but not why or how. Well, no one knew how, Hannah supposed. He knew that she and her sister had spent summers at her aunt’s house in New York, but surely he imagined something normal: a cabin, a ranch, a colonial.
Hannah knew so much about Huck’s life before her: his idyllic childhood, his four brothers, parents who swelled with pride for their children and love for each other. His whole childhood had felt like a slap. Even after meeting the whole brood, she’d glossed over her own childhood with a broad, shiny brush. Huck’s family was loud, raucous, ribbing each other at holidays. His mom sat at the head of the table, cheeks flushed. His parents lived less than an hour from them in Virginia. Somehow Hannah still managed to find plenty of excuses to beg off visits.
Besides, they’d only gotten engaged three short weeks ago. They hadn’t progressed past the showing-off-the-ring stage of engagement. The word wedding had barely been uttered. They had time, Hannah reasoned. They should be enjoying this time. Not mucking it up with heavy pasts and childhood traumas.
Would she have told him about Brackenhill eventually? Of course. Maybe. She’d rarely given it a thought in seventeen years. Except for the nights she woke up sweating, crying, the faint outline of a dream tugging at her subconscious. Her hands clenched until they cramped, a deep ache across her shoulders. A heavy refrain, the memory of a sound. Click, click, thump, thump. Once and only once Huck had found her standing in the living room naked, her clothes strewed on the floor. Hannah didn’t remember it, but Huck had told her she had clawed at the hardwood, crying.
Later, when she woke up and he recounted the story, he’d laughed. “Like you were digging something up. It was bizarre.” At the time, she pretended to laugh with him as her heart raced. He hadn’t noticed. Sometimes Hannah thought what she loved most about Huck was his obliviousness. His willingness to not look too deeply.
They’d met at a brewery in the next town over. Before Hannah worked in marketing for a PR firm, she’d tended bar in the evenings while she job hunted. Huck had come in with his rowdy friends, him in jeans and a T-shirt, them in suit shirts and loosened ties. His fingernails with their blackened crescent moons had struck her as odd among all the manicures. Bartenders noticed hands. The first words she spoke to him were “You don’t fit in,” and he’d grinned at her, thrown an extra ten on the bar top. Before he left, he slid his business card under the tip, scrawled neither do you on the back.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked, the silence in the car wearing thin. He’d been more patient with her than required, but Hannah suspected this trip would try him. Huck hated messes, despised melodrama.
And now he was about to get his trial by fire and perhaps more answers than he’d ever wanted. Hannah wondered if he’d be there at the end of it. Would he stay if he knew the whole truth? That last summer, her sister, Wyatt. The knot in her stomach tightened, and she stopped, swallowed back the panic in her throat.
She’d worked so hard to relegate her childhood, her sister, and her aunt and uncle to the background of her life. She never examined her childhood in direct light, only in periphery—dreams where Julia was still alive, racing her back through the forest, the sunlight blinking between the leaves. And now they were going back. Her shiny new life, handsome fiancé, everything she’d ever wanted.