Chapter 1 Hemlock House
Hemlock House
“You get out here. I ain’t going the rest of the way.”
“Excuse me?”
“I won't turn down that drive.”
I haven’t slept properly in three days and the words feel like a cruel joke.
This entire thing feels like a joke.
I grab onto the lawyer’s letter, still warm from being handled the whole drive here. In hindsight, I should have realized something was fishy when I told the driver Hemlock House was my destination and he grunted, wide-eyed, and took far longer than a normal person should to start up the engine.
My eyes follow the driver’s pointed index finger to the massive iron gates, rusted, but open. The drive beyond is flanked by trees on either side, and winds into a curve. I can’t even see a glimpse of the house.
“That’s . . . quite a long driveway.”
He lowers his finger, and looks at me in the mirror. His gray eyebrows furrow, and his lips turn down in a frown. “Maybe I should take you back to the airport, Miss.”
“What? No. I need to get to the house.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just sits there, as if waiting for me to change my mind.
And I suppose I’m waiting for him to change his mind, which doesn’t seem likely.
I grab my purse and pull out three twenties, enough to cover the fare and tip.
I hold it out for the driver, but he hesitates.
The look on my face must spur him on, because he takes it, then exits the taxi to get my suitcase from the trunk.
I gather the few smaller bags I have with me, my purse, my backpack, a paper shopping bag from the airport gift shop, and sling them over my arms. The gravel is hard and frozen when I step onto it, and the air around me is bitter cold. I pull my scarf higher up as the wind lashes my face.
The driver returns to his seat and peels away, as if he can’t get out of here fast enough. A great sign for what lies ahead, I’m sure.
The landscape is all bristle and grey, the trees slicked with rime, fields furrowed into death and mud.
Across the road sits another old manor at the end of a winding drive.
Its gables sit like hunched vertebrae against a sky so low I can practically taste it.
Even from here, I can see the soot-caked stone, the battlemented roofline, the windows with eyelids half-closed by grime.
It’s not even five, but it’s already dark enough to turn every pane into an obsidian eye.
Hi, neighbor.
I drag my suitcase up the drive, the wheels stuttering and catching on the gravel. The lawyer’s letter flaps like a paper flag in my grip. My hair—shoulder-length, brown, fine as dust—whips across my cheekbones.
After a few minutes of walking that feel like a solid hour in the cold, I take a bend in the driveway and the manor comes into view.
Hemlock House.
A few more minutes of walking and dragging and fluffing the scarf around my face, and I make it to the front steps and stop, boots crunching in the brittle frost. A single lantern glows by the front door, one of those wrought-iron jobs with real flame flickering inside. How quaint. And inefficient.
I stare at the door and it stares back: hulking, black oak, studded with iron nails.
I half expect it to grunt at me. The lintel above is etched with some grotesque script, all twining vines and belladonna blossoms. The timbers groan overhead.
Not metaphorically. The whole house seems to shift, just enough to register, like an animal adjusting itself in sleep. I hate that I flinch.
Aunt Maeve was never sentimental so I don’t know why this all hits me so hard. I take one more minute to look up at the scrolled stonework, the spikes of frozen ivy, the single, glowering window lit above the entry. Cautious curiosity, not fear, right? Right.
Wind snakes through the cracks, making a mournful sound that I recognize only from movies. I reach for the bell, but before I touch it the door swings open—so smoothly, so silently, I’m left standing with my hand in the air in a gothic pantomime.
The woman who stands with one hand on the door is shorter than me, maybe five-three, but you wouldn’t guess that from her presence.
She’s not the ancient crone I was expecting, either—sixty, maybe, with iron-grey hair, neat as a plaited rope, and a face like a retired teacher’s—stern but not unkind, just finished with the world’s nonsense.
Her brown eyes take me in from head to feet, sharp as tannin.
“Miss Vale,” she says, voice crisp as breaking glass. “You’re early.”
I blink. “That’s a new one. I thought I’d be fashionably late. Mrs. Whitby, right? You can just call me Nora.”
She inclines her head an inch but otherwise ignores my words. “I see you received the letter.”
The wind tries to drag the front door closed again, making it necessary for Mrs. Whitby to plant one palm flat on the wood. She barely weighs a hundred pounds but the door doesn’t budge. She motions with her other hand for me to come inside and shuts the massive door behind me.
“Should I take off my boots?” I ask, glancing down at them. Sensible black leather and ugly as sin. “Or will the floors survive?”
“They’ve seen worse,” she says. Then, as if already regretting this dab of levity, “Please come in.”
We pass through the vestibule, which is large enough to park a car in, and enter a grand hall, covered in black and white tile.
There’s a cluster of umbrella stands by the wall, though no umbrellas: just a tangle of walking sticks and canes, one of them topped with a silvered raven’s skull.
For a moment I’m conscious of the smell, which is almost not a smell at all—just a faded echo of lavender, mothballs, and ancient varnish.
Mrs. Whitby regards me as I wipe my nose with my sleeve.
“Your aunt always detested the cold,” she says, though it’s not clear if this is for my benefit. “I keep the main rooms heated, but I’m afraid the rest of the house is less . . . hospitable.”
I want to say ‘She detested me too,’ but I just nod. The letter is still in my hand, crumpled now. “I’ve never owned a house before.”
Mrs. Whitby raises an eyebrow. “Do you plan to keep it?”
I let the silence hang between us. The answer is, of course, no. I plan to strip it of any valuables, call an auction house for the furniture, and run back to my normal, rented life before the ghosts—literal or otherwise—catch up. But there’s no need to give her ammunition. I shrug slightly.
“I just want to see it,” I say. “All of it.”
This seems to satisfy her. She turns on her heel—her shoes soft, flat, old-fashioned, and silent—and gestures for me to follow. I do, setting down my suitcase as gently as possible; it still rattles like bones.
We pass through a corridor lined with portraits. Every ancestor is sour-faced, severe, and, for the first few frames at least, getting progressively uglier with each generation. “My mother always told me our bloodline was distinguished,” I say.
Mrs. Whitby doesn’t laugh. “Hemlock House is older than the family. It was built by men with different appetites.”
“Appetites,” I echo, not liking the way the word tastes. I have no idea what she means by that, but I decide I will save my questions for the things that really matter.
She steers me past a staircase so grand it might have its own ego. The banister is cold and slick under my fingers. My boots squeak on the waxed wood.
“I’ll have your bags brought up,” says Mrs. Whitby. “You’ll take the Blue Room, of course.”
I almost ask why it’s called the Blue Room, but I don’t want to sound like a tourist. “Of course,” I say.
We round a corner. Another corridor. More ancestors.
The hush is so absolute, I find myself breathing softer.
The windows here are leaded, the glass thick and weirdly rippled, giving the outside world a funhouse quality.
I risk a glance. From here, I can see past the trees lining the winding drive to the road beyond.
The taxi is long gone, its tire tracks all that remain of the memory.
“You live here?” I ask, keeping my voice low.
Mrs. Whitby glances at me, unreadable. “Yes, in the servant’s quarters. I maintain the premises. There is other staff, but they come and go.”
I want to ask: Who else is here now? But I keep my mouth shut.
Finally, she halts by a door. It’s painted a blue so deep it might as well be black, and the handle is a lion’s head with a ring in its teeth. Mrs. Whitby opens it with the same silent strength as the front door.
The room inside is . . . a surprise. Not the dusty crypt I expected, but polished, elegant, the bed freshly made with a coverlet in indigo damask, a writing desk by the window, a rich fireplace radiating actual heat. My duffel is already there, perched on a steamer trunk.
I try to say thank you, but it comes out as a sigh.
Mrs. Whitby places a hand on the windowsill.
“Dinner is at eight. Normally you will eat in the dining room, but with your travels, I thought you’d take a tray tonight.
You’ll want to go to sleep early and see the house in daylight.
” Her tone makes it clear this is not a suggestion.
“I will draw a bath for you if you prefer.”
“Oh no, thank you. I can manage.”
She nods disapprovingly and points to a braided gold cord with a tassle at the end, hanging from the wall. “If you require anything, ring twice for the kitchen, three times for me.”
She turns to leave, but I stop her. “Wait. Did you know her well? My aunt?”
She looks at me, and in that moment I’m certain she knows every sin, every secret in my blood. “I know the house, Miss Vale. I know what it keeps, and what it does not.”
And with that, she closes the door behind her, leaving me alone with the warmth, the dark blue walls, and the sense that I have been not so much welcomed as admitted.
For the first time in years, I feel like a trespasser in my own life.