SILENCE FOR THE FIRST HOUR, with only the muffled rumble of the road between them. At last:

“Scott.”

He stared straight ahead and didn’t answer.

“I know not telling you was wrong,” Sonia said.

“Wrong.” Monotone: “You think it was wrong.”

“I know it was. And for what it’s worth, it probably doesn’t mean anything to you right now, but it’s been torturing me from the moment I laid eyes on you again. It’s been killing me. From what your father told me at the time—”

“Why?” Iron rods fastened his neck to his shoulders, preventing him from turning to look at her, or looking at anything besides the snow-strewn galaxy of the very early morning in front of them. “Why couldn’t you just tell me?”

“Your father said she was … beyond help. He said seeing her like this would be much harder on you and Owen—you in particular, because you weren’t there that night and he knew you felt terrible about it. He made me promise. He said it would only make you feel worse.”

“Isn’t that my decision to make?”

“I’m sorry.”

Scott didn’t bother responding. Raw black emotion was piled up inside him, scalding and ugly, and although he didn’t know what he was going to do with it, he could already tell that it wasn’t going to go away. He fingered the place mat that his mother had given him, the crooked strips of what he’d realized was nothing more than cheap construction paper woven together, looped and secured with school glue.

“Something happened to her in the fire,” Sonia said. “Your father said she was trapped under part of the wreckage for hours. He said when she was brought out, she had just … snapped. She wasn’t herself. She wasn’t going to recover. So he put her there for her own safety.”

“Safety from what?”

Sonia didn’t answer, just kept her eyes on the road.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Scott said. “He told everyone she was dead.”

Her voice was scarcely a whisper. “He said she would’ve wanted it that way.”

“And you believed him.” Scott leaned forward, shoving his fists against his eyes, the dull ache somehow helping relieve the pressure that was building behind his sinuses. “What made you change your mind about telling me the truth now?”

“Tonight, when you told me you thought you were losing your mind …” She glanced at him. “I don’t know. You’re so lost. I guess I was hoping for … some answers.”

“You wanted answers,” he said, and shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

“My questions were all about you. Whether you were going to be okay about all this. Whether you and I could ever—” She broke off, took a breath, held it, and let it out. “I’m so sorry, Scott, and you don’t have to forgive me, now or ever. I just want you to know that I was only doing what I thought was right. Most of all I guess I just hope you won’t shut me out.”

He didn’t say anything. He watched the road and the snow.

“We can fix it,” Sonia said. “We can make it better—we can get her out of there. I can help you do that.”

They drove for another long stretch without speaking. The pressure in his head felt close to exploding. It was after six now, and Milburn lay up ahead, becoming visible in the first reluctant moments of winter dawn.

SCOTT’S MIND FLASHED to the vision of the man in the woods, Robert Carver, grinning at him from the snow, the figure seeming to writhe and churn. The pressure in his head gave another massive squeeze, and he felt the harsh electric pain drive white-hot shards through his spine. It was far worse than it had ever been before. Without actually meaning to, he made a fist, causing the place mat that his mother had given him to rip at one side, the paper strips splitting apart along the outer edge.

In the glow of the dashboard light, he saw the edge of something tucked inside. It looked like yellow legal paper, several sheets, folded and stuffed into the woven place mat.

Sonia looked over. “What’s that?”

“It was inside.”

He removed the pages and unfolded them. Four sheets of paper, each one full of the careful cursive handwriting that he associated with his mother, interrupted occasionally by large blocks of text that she’d crossed out so thoroughly that he couldn’t read through it. Scott switched on the dome light and held up the first page.

9/21/96

Dear Scott:

If you are reading this, then it means I have somehow found a way to get through to you, and I am glad for it. Your father says that he has put me in this place for my own safety and protection, but protection from what? I am not crazy. I pose no threat to myself. But from what happened that night at the Bijou Theatre, I believe your father thinks that I am safer here, far away from town and presumed dead. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I feel like I know very little. There’s no question that this is an awful place, full of pain and suffering. At night I lie awake and listen to the screams. But

Here a thicket of crosshatched pen lines scratched out the rest of the paragraph, rendering it illegible. Scott’s eye moved down the page to where the handwriting resumed.

It may be better than continuing to live with what I know now. Because of the security here and the medication the doctors give me, I am afraid that this letter will have to be our only communication. The drugs are very powerful, and they administer them regularly. I am already beginning to forget. This may be a blessing. It is very hard for me to focus, but I have to try.

What I’m about to relay to you, I discovered before the night the Bijou burned. I already had my suspicions, long before that. I researched the Mast family without your father’s knowledge. I already knew that some of his relatives had committed suicide, many more of them had gone insane. Knowing that, I began to

The rest of the paragraph was crossed out. It resumed with:

Your father’s great-grandfather was a human disease, a walking affliction. There are no words to describe what was wrong with him. He built Round House as a place where he could indulge his very worst desires and urges without fear of being caught. I don’t know how many women and girls died within its walls, but their voices still speak to me, so perhaps I am less stable than I initially supposed. Or it may be the drugs, or the voices here in this godforsaken

This godforsaken

Another block of crossed-out text.

The worst mistake your great-great-grandfather ever made was abducting a girl named Rosemary Carver. She was a girl who

Scott, this is very hard for me.

The drugs

The drugs are

Believe it or not, what I’ve written so far has taken me almost a week to put down, and if I don’t

No extra time important things only

Rosemary Carver’s father was a witch, not a female kind but maybe a warlock is what he was called. Swore a blood oath of vengeance against the Mast family—a curse is what he called it a curse of madness carried on in stories, plays, paintings. Your father knew but didn’t believe it until he started seeing things that made him want to believe it. I tried to tell him about the movie because I could already tell it was too late because he told the story

The rest of the second page had been completely slashed away with such vehemence that Scott could almost feel his mother’s frustration in trying to convey what she knew. He started the third page, already alarmed by how much larger her printing had become, slanting blocks that took up too much space.

Scott, the curse is the story. I didn’t know the rest until it was too late. Colette McGuire’s prom dress. I sent you over to her house with it that night. She had given it to me to alter it for her so she could wear it for prom.

Reason why: She was pregnant.

Owen. Owenowen.

Shared her physical body wifth Owen.

The baby was Owens.

Little boy who died in the fire, baby of hers and Owen wuz Colettes attempt to try to mend things with the Mast family. She may try share herself again I don’t know. She may try sharing with you. Maybe she has alredy dun this, I dont know. To stop the curse. She’s part of the curse too but on the other side of it. This is what I learned about Colette that you must know scotty.

Rober Carver had two dotters. Not just 1 but TWO, rosemary dyed but the 2nd cotter lived & she marry a man name mcguire & colette

Colette is only living dessedent of rosemary carver

Wait.

I can do this.

Scott laid the third page aside and picked up the final sheet of yellow paper with trembling hands.

Colette is bound to our family as we are to hers, by Blood. Possessed by the spirit of her dead ansister. Brought back every generation by The Rosemary story. Or song. Or play. Or painting.

When I think about it I can see how that is, our two family tied together with the story, slave to her fathers curse as we are. The haunted and the haunting, with no end ever to the pain and madness and suffring. Having Owns child may have seem like the only way to try to undo the curse but when I saw at the bijoo Fire the movie start. The little boy started screaming in so much pain he died & I know the curse cannot be ended like this but she may try again

she may try again & try again but never get free

in the end Scott she always get hungry

It is a curse & ther is no way to stop it I am so sorry Scott Mommy is tired but I cant remember anymore because they give us medicin here it makes things softer I am so glad they give me medicin here every day so I can forget but I will never forget yu.

I love you scotty,

Mom

SONIA HELD PERFECTLY STILL, reading the last pages over again. “That night with the prom dress. I saw you two up in her bedroom window together.”

“That’s why.” Scott looked at her, remembering the night sixteen years earlier, Colette’s hands tearing open his shirt, her tongue on his skin, so eager and hungry, her breasts already beginning to swell from the baby that she’d had Owen put inside her belly. “She’d never shown any interest in me, but that night—”

And tonight.

Sonia looked away. Scott remembered Colette telling him how Henry’s mother had been Rosemary Carver, and now he understood what it all meant. Rosemary Carver in her tattered blue dress, restless and yearning to find some peace across the decades, willing to try anything to release herself from the bondage of the curse … and failing, failing.

in the end Scott she always get hungry

“We need to find Owen,” Scott said, and no sooner were the words out of his mouth than another, more urgent thought dawned.

We need to find Henry.