Home Before Dark

The novel returns to Ewan’s narrative. The Holts keep most of the furniture in the house but bring their own beds. Jessica burns sage, even though she doesn’t really believe it will help. Elsa Ditmer, a pleasant, religious woman in her forties, helps them move in. She gives them a gift of bread and salt before she and Ewan break plates on the ground as a good luck charm. Ewan says he feels luckier than Curtis Carver, and Elsa gets quiet. She says he was a monster. He started out charming, but worsened as his daughter grew sick. When Ewan asks her for details about the Carvers, Elsa tells him that she has two daughters: Petra is 16, and Hannah is six. They miss Katie Carver, whose father smothered her with a pillow before putting a trash bag around his head and tightening it with a belt.

A bell rings from the Indigo room and Elsa immediately looks worried. When Ewan investigates, he sees a snake in the fireplace. He covers it with a drop cloth before taking it outside and releasing it into the woods. Elsa watches him and then tells him to break more plates.

The woman Maggie encounters in the Indigo Room is Elsa Ditmer. The police chief, Tess Alcott, answers the call when Maggie reports the intrusion. Elsa’s daughter, Hannah, comes to get her mother. Maggie realizes that they’re all characters from the Book. These are the only people from her father’s story that she’s ever met. At first, a confused Elsa thinks Maggie is Petra. Hannah refuses to shake Maggie’s hand, as if Maggie is her enemy, despite being only six at the time of the story.

Alcott says the Book was a problem for Bartleby and they all wish the house would disappear. She adds that they had to station officers outside the first year after the Book came out. They called the invasive sightseers “ghouls.” When Maggie asks what happened to Petra, Alcott says she ran away 25 years earlier, but no one can confirm the theory. Alcott filed the report that started Ewan’s fame. They make tea, and Alcott says she knew she had to answer the report when Maggie’s call came from Baneberry, but she never expected to return to the house. She says Ewan told her the story that he would write later on the night he gave her the report. Maggie suddenly remembers standing next to a wall dripping with green paint and covering it with gray. After she put her hand in the primer, Ewan had her make a handprint on the wall so that she’d always be part of the house.

It's not a good memory because of Ewan’s lies. Now Maggie worries what other memories might return. She asks why Alcott thinks he told her the story that night, even before Ewan wrote his book. Alcott thinks it was the start of a con and Jessica was probably helping him. She thinks the newspaper would have been their next stop if she hadn’t filed their report. During her investigation, she didn’t see anything ghostly, but she remembers Maggie’s scar. Maggie tells her everything about what led her there except her father’s dying words. She says she’s going to speak with everyone she can find whom Ewan mentioned in the book. Alcott says Janie June is dead—but Brian Prince, the author of the original Gazette article, is still in Bartleby. Regardless of whether Ewan’s story was true, Alcott admits to wondering if the book might have some truth because she knew they were all terrified. After Alcott leaves, Maggie finds a desk drawer open. The letter opener is gone.

They sleep poorly the first night. Ewan dreams of the sounds of doors being opened and shut. Maggie begs them to let her spend one night in their bed after the unfamiliar noises scare her. In the night, Ewan hears one thud above that seems to be more substantial than a dream. When he went downstairs, the chandelier was on. When Jessica came down in the morning, she says she heard the same noises.

Elsa brings her daughters to help them unpack a few hours later. The girls—Hannah and Petra—both resemble Elsa. Hanna is lively and immediately wants to play hide-and-seek with Maggie. Petra is quieter. She’s 16, tall, and wears a crucifix. Ewan hopes they’ll help Maggie forget the uneasy night. Maggie has never made friends easily and they worry that she’s lonelier than she admits.

Bell number four—which connects to Maggie’s bedroom—rings while Ewan is unpacking. It keeps ringing, loudly, as if someone is yanking the cord. When he reaches the room, Maggie says a girl was there and that it wasn’t Hannah or Petra. She says the girl went into the armoire. Elsa asks whether Maggie is “sensitive” and says the Carver girl was as well.

Ewan remembers Elsa’s words that night when the banging noises start again. He goes to check on Maggie and sees her door close as he approaches. However, when he enters, she’s asleep. He thinks irrationally that it must have been the girl she saw. The armoire doors are open.