RETURN TO BRIARHOUSE

PROLOGUE



County Durham, Briarhouse Manor, 1801

Mr. Philip Blackwood lay half-reclined in a soft red velvet armchair, listening absently to the crackle of logs in the fireplace. His right hand still remembered the cold, unforgiving weight of the pistol, and the echo of recent gunshots lingered faintly in his ears.Anxious lines had settled deep into Mr. Blackwood’s wrinkled face. A dark crease cut across the bridge of his nose, and his lips were drawn into a tight, downward curve. He pressed his fingers into the cool, yielding velvet of the chair and opened his tired, bloodshot blue eyes. Slowly, Philip Blackwood lifted his gaze to the portrait on the wall—to the face of his son, Edgar Blackwood, now dead.

The painting depicted a handsome, pale-skinned youth dressed in a dark red silk coat. Coal-black hair fell to his shoulders, and his eyes—light grey, almost translucent—reminded Philip of forest lakes sealed beneath ice. Those cold, pale eyes had once been alive with mischief, with a restless, youthful spark. Edgar had inherited them from his mother, Anna—the lost love of Philip Blackwood. And those same light-grey eyes had passed on once more, to Philip’s grandson, Leonard: a beautiful child, barely seven months old, with soft black curls as fine as down and pale grey eyes shadowed by dark lashes.

“Anna…” Philip Blackwood whispered drowsily.

In his half-sleep, it seemed to him that he was limping down into the dark underground vault of the crypt, where his ancestors lay in eternal rest, and where, in the damp darkness, hungry rats scurried back and forth. He could hear the faint scuffling of tiny paws and the shrill, unpleasant squeaking that echoed off the stone walls. There was nothing for the rats to feed on in that cold, damp underworld; no one had been buried in the crypt for a long time, and nothing remained of the dead but bones.

But soon the rats would have something to feast upon.

Philip Blackwood descended deeper. He knew they were waiting for him below—the two gravediggers.

“Mr. Blackwood!” Stan Lipman grinned broadly—a man better known by the nickname Leprechaun. His loose, flushed face stretched into a wide, yellow-toothed smile. Beside the Leprechaun stood a scrawny, ragged boy named Pip, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. Philip Blackwood suspected that the London urchin went by another name as well—Bill, Will, Piper—what did it matter? A common vagrant, quick to take any job, so long as he knew when to keep his mouth shut.

Pip—filthy, with black hair standing up in stiff, dirty spikesand dressed in patched, threadbare clothes—stared down at his worn boots with the look of a trapped animal. From time to time, he cast a fearful glance at the statue of the Angel of Death. The stone skull leered, and shadows from the two torches danced across the monstrous figure. Darkness and fire combined to form a strange illusion: it seemed as though the bony stone effigy hovered in the damp gloom of the crypt like a dreadful specter.

“The dead, sir…” Pip said softly, almost in a whisper, jerking his head toward the two closed coffins. “They’re not in there, sir.”

“And they never were! Never were in those damned boxes—your precious dead!” the Leprechaun roared, bursting into loud, ugly laughter.

Pip hunched his shoulders, shrinking into himself, his fearful glances darting first to the coffins, then to the dreadful grin of the stone skull.

Philip Blackwood leaned heavily on his cane and bent toward the coffins.

No bodies? How the devil could they not be there?

He knew that his only son, Edgar, and his daughter-in-law had died of fever in London half a year earlier. It was Philip Blackwood himself who had hired Pip and the Leprechaun to transport the remains of Edgar and his wife, to have them reburied at Briarhouse. He tightened his grip on the cane and thought of the Percivals’ words. Both of them were cowards—Howard and his wife, Rose. They had stumbled over their explanations, contradicted one another, babbling nonsense, eyeing Philip Blackwood like a pair of timid old hares, their chins trembling.

“There’s something wrong with your son! Something wrong with Mr. Edgar Blackwood’s wife as well!”

Nonsense.

Philip Blackwood shook his head angrily and grimaced. Edgar and Eleanor were dead—what could possibly be wrong? Everyone dies, sooner or later.

The Leprechaun burst out laughing again, the sound harsh and grating to the ear. With a careless kick, he sent the lid flying off one of the coffins. To a sharp, ringing echo, he sprang lightly over the open box—as easily as a boy jumping a ditch—and, without slowing, tore the lid from the second coffin beside Pip.

A short, piercing echo ripped through the silence and rebounded from the stone walls. The dreadful statue of the bony Angel of Death seemed to swell and stretch as the sound exploded through the crypt. Pip shoved his hands into his pockets and pressed himself against the outspread stone wing of the monstrous figure.

The scoundrel Leprechaun had spoken the truth. There were no bodies in either coffin. Instead of corpses, there was damp earth, crawling with fat white worms and black beetles.

“Here you are, sir—have a look!” the Leprechaun snorted with laughter. “Back in London, I sensed something was off—your ‘dear departed’ were far too heavy! So little Pip and I pried the coffins open, and what do we see? No dead folk at all—just earth and crawling vermin!” he declared cheerfully.

“There really weren’t any of your kin in there,” Pip whimpered apologetically, as though trying to excuse himself.

“There really weren’t any of your kin in there!” the Leprechaun mocked, pulling faces as he mimicked his young partner. “Here you go, sir!”

He reached inside his coat and flung something small and black toward Philip Blackwood.

Philip Blackwood snapped his hand out, catching what he thought was one of the black beetlescrawling through the earth and feeding on the white grave worms. To the touch, however, the beetle felt smooth, flat, and far too hard to be alive. Opening his palm, Philip Blackwood discovered—astonished—not a beetle, and not even a stone, but a black agate cameo.

Carved into the smooth black agate was the pale face of a young woman, shown in half-profile. She appeared to be standing against the wind; her white hair streamed in waves, swept back by an unseen gust. Her pale lips were slightly parted, a thin line dividing them, as though she were about to speak. She gazed into an endless black distance, yet whatever words she meant to say were carried away by an icy wind, merciless to all living things.

“An interesting trinket, isn’t it?” the Leprechaun said with a chuckle. “Perhaps it belonged to your late daughter-in-law?” He shrugged. “I thought about it and decided to give it to you. We don’t keep what isn’t ours, do we, Pip?”

The Leprechaun jabbed Pip in the side with his elbow, and the boy nodded quickly in agreement.

“Pip and I have given it some thought,” the Leprechaun went on, grinning. “And here’s what we came up with, Mr. Blackwood. You wouldn’t want to air dirty laundry in public, now would you? You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Philip Blackwood agreed, slipping the cameo into his pocket as he addressed Stan—better known as the Leprechaun.

“And I imagine you’ll pay Pip and me a little extra,” the Leprechaun continued, his face spreading into an ugly smile, “for our modest efforts—and for our silence?”

“Oh yes. I will pay you generously,” Philip Blackwood promised. “Each of you will receive twenty pounds for your silence, and one gold coin on top of that.”

With that, he turned his back on the gravediggers and, tapping his cane against the stone floor, limped toward the stairs, favoring his left leg. At the foot of the staircase, Philip Blackwood paused, as though he had forgotten something. He struck the cold stone floor once more with his cane and clasped its silver handle in his wrinkled hands.

Dusk had already fallen. From the marshes, a thick fog was creeping in, wrapping Briarhouse in its pale shroud. Slowly, like a white tide, it drifted down into the lowlands toward Norton—a small provincial town lying five and a half miles from the manor.

“I must be certain you’ll wait for me,” Philip Blackwood said, looking upward, toward the doorway where the damp fog was thickening.

“We’re in no hurry,” the Leprechaun replied, spreading his hands.

“Good.” Philip Blackwood nodded and slipped his hand into his sagging right pocket. The master of Briarhouse drew out a pistol with a metal barrel and roses carved into its brown, lacquered grip, cold and smooth to the touch.The ugly grin vanished at once from Stan’s—Leprechaun’s—face when he saw the weapon leveled at him. Pip managed to cry out before the shot rang out. The bullet struck the boy in the temple. Pip collapsed at the feet of the Angel of Death, and hot blood spilled from his head onto the stone floor, onto the coffins, and over the angel’s stone shroud. The second shot brought down the Leprechaun. Philip Blackwood hit him squarely in the chest, and—to the delight of beetles and worms alike—the Leprechaun fell straight into one of the open coffins.

Philip Blackwood, listening with indifference to the dying groans of the Leprechaun, took two gold coins from his pocket and tossed them into the darkness. The coins rang sharply, rolled across the stone floor, struck Pip’s boot, crashed against the Angel of Death’s stone shroud—and came to rest forever.

United States, Maine, 1924

Jacob Allister stood by the window on a rainy night, slowly sipping brandy. Rain drummed against the glass and streamed down it like a waterfall. Over the past two weeks the downpours had grown frequent, and earlier that day Sebastian had joked about a second Great Flood. Jacob Allister grimaced and swallowed the last mouthful. Thoughts of children caused him pain—especially now. Since the hunting accident, he had felt that something was wrong with him, terribly wrong, damn it. Five days earlier, Mr. Allister had accidentally gravely wounded his closest friend, Dominic Sherwood, while out hunting. They had been tracking a grizzly together, spending three days in the forest, following the beast that had taken to raiding nearby farms and killing livestock.

“That brute was trouble even last winter—I remember,” Dominic had said with a laugh. On that fateful night he wore his favorite cowboy hat, and a cigar smoldered between his lips, flaring in the darkness with the orange-red glow of heated metal. Dominic smoked and cleaned his rifle. The rain had let up for a while, and they built a fire beside the tent.

Jacob Allister went back into the tent to fetch another bottle of beer. As he did, he heard a voice—one that had pursued him since his earliest years.

Spill blood.

The voice commanded him insistently.

Why did you take the rifle, Jake?

Jacob Allister froze, crouched on all fours. Before him hung a burning kerosene lamp; the rifle lay on the mattress, and beside it an open box of cartridges.

“Get out!” Dominic shouted from outside.

Mr. Allister quickly checked the rounds—five in the rifle. More than enough to kill a grizzly.

“Don!” Mr. Allister called and scrambled outside.

Thunder rolled. The campfire had gone out. In the damp night air drifted the smells of smoke and wet, rotting leaves. Tall black shadows of trees and juniper bushes swayed in the wind.

“What the hell is that thing?!” Dominic shouted at someone—or something—in the darkness.

Mr. Allister narrowed his eyes. Amid the juniper thickets he saw a shadow. A huge, black, roaring shadow.

A grizzly!

Mr. Allister’s mouth went dry. The grizzly roared again; white vapor poured from its jaws, and the beast’s eyes glimmered faintly in the dark. Mr. Allister could even smell the wet bear hide. Without a moment’s hesitation, he fired at the creature’s chest.

Over the course of his life, Jacob Allister had killed many grizzlies, and never once had a beast caught him off guard. The advantage had always been his.

But not this time.

This time the beast proved far more dangerous—and far more cunning.

After the shot, it was not a grizzly that fell to the ground, but Dominic.His closest friend.

It was Dominic’s blood that Jacob Allister had spilled five days earlier. On the morning of September 30, 1924, Dominic Sherwood died in the hospital in Longville.

“You were there,” Mr. Allister whispered bitterly, pressing a finger to the cold windowpane.

In the garden, like a mannequin behind a shop window, a pale man stood motionless in the rain. He wore a tuxedo and watched the windows of the Allisters’ bedroom. The strange man smiled—his lips white and bloodless, tinged with gray.

“You were there—and it was you who made me spill blood. You tricked me into killing him.”

“Oh God… Dominic…” Mr. Allister shook his head. His voice faltered, his face crumpled. “Forgive me. I never meant it. God is my witness, Dominic—I never meant to.”

A fine tremor ran through Jacob Allister’s body as he replayed the events of that night—fatal for him, and for Dominic Sherwood—over and over again in his mind. There was his friend Dominic in a red plaid shirt, wearing his cowboy hat and jeans, laughing by the campfire with a cigar clenched between his teeth. They were drinking beer. And only minutes later, mortally wounded, Dominic was writhing in pain on the wet ground, coughing up bloody foam as his eyes rolled back.

Oh God, Dominic.

Jacob Allister thought of his older brother, Douglas. Douglas had spilled blood too. And afterward, he had come back changed. Their grandmother had said the family must burn him. Mr. Allister had seen nothing with his own eyes, but from the screams in the night and the faces of his family the next day, he understood what they had done to Douglas.

But who would burn Mr. Allister—when he changed?

Mr. Allister was afraid. Not for himself—his fear was for those he loved, a fear that bordered on madness. He lingered over the sight of his sleeping wife, his heart aching as thoughts of his children pressed in on him. No one in his family knew what to do. He had not told them. And even if he had, they would not have believed him. Grandmother Gabrielle had been gone for many years now.

There was no one left to protect the Allister family but Jacob Allister himself.

Mr. Allister offered a sad smile to the pale stranger who still stood soaking in the garden, then shook his head and glanced at the bottom of the empty glass that only minutes earlier had held brandy—now fallen from favor in this country. He asked forgiveness of his wife and children, bent over the bed, and kissed a pale lock of Catherine’s hair. God was his witness, they had been through many things together, and they had not always been the best of couples. But they had lived side by side for twenty-five years and brought four fine children into the world. Neither Kitty nor the children deserved this.

Mr. Allister crept to the door, slipped out into the corridor, passed the bedrooms of his sons, and went downstairs. He cast a brief glance at the old clock, which struck every three hours. It was nearly four in the morning. The stranger was still standing in the garden, drenched by the rain. Pale lips, tinged with gray, curved into a smile.

He had won.

Jacob Allister had spilled blood.

Jacob Allister drew the curtain shut. The pale fellow would trouble him no more. He left the sitting room and stepped into the dark corridor, passed the library, then stopped before a door. He turned the round brass handle; a familiar, dry click sounded, and the door to the study swung open.

Jacob Allister did not usually lock himself inside his study—but not that night. That final time, everything was different. He shut the door behind him and, hesitating, reached for his pocket. He took out the key. In the darkness came two metallic clicks, unnaturally loud—sounds Jacob Allister did not often hear. To be certain, he tried the handle. It would not give. It had not jammed; it had been firmly seized by the lock. The familiar click did not follow.Jacob Allister let out a breath of satisfaction and slipped the key back into his pocket. No one must disturb him.Mr. Allister lingered a moment, switched on the light, and his legs gave way. He collapsed heavily into the soft leather chair. His wandering, bewildered gaze came to rest on the green lampshade standing near the left edge of the desk. He tried to remember when it had first appeared. Had Catherine bought it in New York? Perhaps in Portland? Or had her brother given it to them as a Christmas gift?

It didn’t matter. Mr. Allister shook his head. He longed desperately for a smoke and a drink—another glass of brandy, or whiskey, or anything at all. Mr. Allister gave a crooked smile. He had never been a coward. Over the course of his life, men had threatened him with firearms half a dozen times, and with knives on three occasions—and never once had he felt fear.He had been younger then. Even when he had talked that boy out of doing something foolish, persuaded him to hand over the gun, Mr. Allister had known death was still far away. He would live yet. His final note had not been struck.

And now?

His hands were shaking. His palms were slick with sweat. The tips of his fingers had gone numb; his mouth was dry. And damn it all—was it possible that every last cigar was gone? Oh, how he wanted a smoke.

“This can’t be put off,” Mr. Allister whispered, and switched on the lamp.

In the top drawer of the desk, among old letters long since read, Jacob Allister kept a small silver-colored revolver. It held three bullets—but for this, he would need only one.

“Children… Catherine… forgive me…” Mr. Allister whispered. He squeezed his eyes shut and pulled the trigger.