24. Mona
“Season of the Witch” by Donovan plays through the massive speaker system as I pack my makeup bag up and station for the last time until next fall.
I can’t believe it’s already Halloween. Between Casper’s busy schedule and the festive chaos around here, the last two weeks have flown by. But the day of honor has finally arrived for the lovers of all things scary.
Thankfully, I don’t have to work into the late hours, but all of our actors and actresses were scheduled to be done with hair and makeup in advance. And if they have any beauty emergencies, Peyton’s staying late to soak up the extra hours.
Which means I can head back upstairs to the library for the next few hours and dive back in.
After the aftermath of the attack settled and we reopened, Casper and I came here, looking at the house in a whole new light.
We discovered that my room was one of many hidden in plain sight, a few scattered between each floor.
There are corridors running between most of them, narrow passageways and staircases to navigate the house without ever being seen.
There’s even an exit from the house that’s not visible to the naked eye.
We gathered that’s how Edgar moved in and out of the house undetected from us and Casper’s cameras.
The rest of the details? We filled in by devouring the journals in the library, including the one Casper took home and forgot all about amid chasing me around. But we had help from someone else, unexpected help—Edgar himself.
I received his letter a week ago from The Minnesota Forensic Psychiatric Hospital.
Mona Greer,
I hope you’ll read this.
I am truly sorry for what I did. I know you can never forgive me for my actions at the house, nor can I ever forgive myself. I wasn’t in the right state of mind, not that that lessens any of your pain and experience.
In my mind that night, I didn’t see you as a person. I saw an evil entity trying to infiltrate my family’s estate and take everything from me.
The Schrader House was my home for almost my entire life. After my escape from The Minnesota Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in 1985, I lived in the shadows, sticking to them so I was never caught. It only made guests more convinced that it was haunted and gave me a sanctuary that no one could ruin.
After my father’s passing, I couldn’t get my medication, and I thought I could hold it together. But as the time slipped away, it got the best of me, and I wish more than anything that you never had to suffer the wrath.
Violence has been a part of my life, long before my onset schizophrenia or the dementia that found me recently.
I think I was born with an anger inside of me, one I’ve been battling since the beginning and one that’s not anyone’s burden to bear but my own.
You were never the demon. I was—at least that night.
I know nothing I say will ever make it better, but I hope in some way, you might understand. I wish you nothing but the best, and I’m truly sorry for the pain I’ve caused you.
Sincerely,
Edgar Schrader
It took me a couple of days to muster up the strength to open it and a few more to make the hard decision to write back.
Casper, of course, supported whatever I wanted to do, and while I appreciate him to the fullest, I know there’s a part of my past and my life he’ll never truly relate to. And I’m so fucking happy he doesn’t.
But Edgar? He lived it.
In the end, Edgar was just a boy trying to protect his home and his family. He just wants a place to call home and a family to love him.
In some way, I hope that’s true because I can’t imagine the pain of losing a loved one like that. The only one I’ve ever loved is Casper. Peyton and Brett are close seconds, but it’s not the same.
I think there’s an understanding between Edgar and me, but not forgiveness—I’m not quite there. But I can sympathize with the desperation to be loved, to crave belonging, and to protect it to whatever end.
When I sent my letter back, I sent a few things with it: a photo of him and his parents that I found in his room—the one hidden directly across the hall from mine, a few cards in there as well, a stuffed bear that was clearly incredibly loved, and a photo album we found in the room hidden inside of the library.
The house is truly an architectural work of art.
We haven’t heard anything back, but I hope it all arrived safely and was allowed inside.
I’d followed the guidelines the administration at the facility provided me.
Even if we never hear from him again, I feel at peace with it all—at least at this very moment.
Like Casper has said time and time again, healing from trauma isn’t a straight line.
After a quick chat with Peyton, I head upstairs to the third floor, now blocked off for staff only, and slip inside the library, flicking the light on.
I’ve spent many hours in here, reading the stories of the Schraders, and I think it’s important that they be remembered.
I’d like, at some point, to type up select entries and make a collection, a memoir of the history that lived in these walls.
I think it’d be special to showcase the history on the walls, framed passages and newspapers, other than the one of the actress in 1940.
Maybe one day, we could get a few of the collections printed and have them downstairs for guests to read.
I didn’t expect to connect with this place as much as I have since going through the journals and the secrets inside them.
The house is as much of a family member as any of the other Schraders, and while the house doesn’t have feelings of its own, I know what it’s like to feel left behind. We are one and the same.
Would I ever live here? God, no. But I enjoy visiting and then leaving when I please. Living in a haunted house is never going to happen.
I drop my stuff on the little empty table by the door and wander back over to the desk and to the black leather journal I left off on yesterday.
I pull the satin bookmark from the pages and continue on, reading Harvey Schrader’s passages from early 1950, where I find stories of an eleven-year-old Edgar, who was a very active child and loved being outside.
I am so eager to read everything, not only because I find it interesting but to also make more sense of what happened to me, of who Edgar is at his core. I get lost in the cursive, deciphering smudged letters and reading through coffee stains until I’m blue in the face.
“What are you doing?” Casper’s voice rips me back to reality, and I jump in my chair, my head snapping up to him. “Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The smirk on his face says otherwise, but I’ll let him live another day.
“The same thing I do everyday in here.”
He saunters over and around the desk, grabbing my boots from the top and leaning back against the wood in their place, holding my legs in his arms. “Come on. I want to show you something. I discovered it last week when we were let back in here.”
Gently, he lowers my legs to the ground, and I take his hand, our fingers intertwining as he leads me out of the library—one I have many memories in, both good and absolutely fucking horrifying—and into the hallway.
“And you haven’t told me before now because … ” I trail off, giving him hell.
Spinning and walking backward, pulling me along with him, he scoffs happily as he smiles. “This is going to sound like some line, but it’s so goddamn true. I forgot every single time I saw you.”
“You’re right.” I chuckle. “It does sound like a line, but I like it anyway.”
“God, you are turning into such a sap.” He shakes his head, as if he isn’t loving every second of it, and spins back, striding forward.
I can’t imagine what he wants to show me that I haven’t already seen.
But when we reach Edgar’s room, he releases the door using the hidden button on the trim near the floor.
I’ve been wondering where that is, but every time I’ve been back or gotten curious and wanted to peek my head inside, it’s already open.
The door clicks, and I jump back, the picture frame falling off of the wall, made of plexiglass and not glass.
It’s like a puzzle piece finally snapped into place.
That’s the same picture that I found on the floor from time to time.
It must’ve been when Edgar needed to venture out of his walls for something.
“So, the place really isn’t haunted?” I laugh, bending over and picking up the image I’ve looked at a hundred times by now, but something new catches my eye.
It’s an old sepia-toned picture of the house with a bunch of people gathered in front.
I recognize a few of them from labeled photos I found in the library—Garrett and his wife, Linda, and Harvey and his wife, Jean.
I have no clue who the rest are, all varying in ages.
But there’s a little boy clinging tightly to Jean’s leg, a blurred smile stretching ear to ear—and I know who that is in one glance.
All the time I’ve looked at this photo before, I assumed he was one of the other guests’ children, but now I know that happy little boy is Edgar Schrader, who’s been here all along.
I hang the photo back up in its place before turning to Casper, who’s watching me carefully, studying me like he knows a secret I don’t. Carefully, he seals the door shut.
“What are you looking at, tough guy?” I tease him, remembering the first night we met in Moore’s Crafts.
He bites down on his bottom lip and smiles, shaking his head. “Someone really gorgeous.”
I scrunch my nose and lips up, hooking my hands on my hips. “Suck-up.”
He blows a raspberry. “There are quite a few things on your body I wouldn’t mind sucking on right now.”
“Oh, I bet, and I intend on enjoying every second of it, but first, I need to use your muscles and height to help me get a few more totes down from the inner library.”
“I knew that’s why you liked me—to put me to work.” He clicks his tongue, stomping past me and sulking back the way we came.