Home Before Dark

by Riley Sager

Every house has a story to tell and a secret to share.

A ceiling fan that, when it spun at full speed, sounded like the clicking of teeth.

“You know there’s no such thing as ghosts, right?” I said. “You’re wrong.” Maggie slid deeper under the covers. “I’ve seen them.”

Twenty-five years ago, my family lived in a house named Baneberry Hall, situated just outside the village of Bartleby, Vermont. We moved in on June 26. We fled in the dead of night on July 15. Twenty days.

Grief is tricky like that. It can lie low for hours, long enough for magical thinking to take hold. Then, when you’re good and vulnerable, it will leap out at you like a fun-house skeleton, and all the pain you thought was gone comes roaring back. Yesterday,

Finally, I cry for all the versions of myself that have existed through the years. Confused five-year-old. Sullen child of divorce. Furious nine-year-old. Inquisitive me. Defiant me. Dutiful me. So many incarnations, each one seeking answers, leading me to right here, to right now, to a potential truth I have no idea how to handle.

“Do you think it’s possible to believe two things at once?” I ask Dane. “It depends on if those things cancel each other out,” he says. “For example, I believe Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback to ever play the game. I also believe he’s an asshole. One belief does not negate the other. They can exist at the same time.”

And people don’t lie unless they’re hiding something. Or want to spare someone the truth.