The Shape of Night(55)

Maeve waits for a response, but I don’t know what to say. I can only stare at the photo of nineteen-year-old Eugenia, a beauty who chose never to marry. Who lived out her life alone in this house where I am now living.

“It’s strange, don’t you think?” Maeve says. “All those years, living alone here.”

“Not every woman wants or needs to get married.”

She studies me for a moment, but she is a ghost hunter, not a mind reader. She cannot possibly imagine what happens after dark in this house. In that turret.

She nods at the folder. “Now take a look at the next woman who lived in this house.”

“There was another?”

“After Miss Hollander died on the stairs, Brodie’s Watch passed to her brother. He tried to sell the house but couldn’t find a buyer. There were rumors in town that the place was haunted and it had already fallen into disrepair. He had a niece, Violet Theriault, who’d been widowed at a young age. She was in some financial difficulty so he let her live here, rent-free. This was her home for thirty-seven years, until her death.”

    “Don’t tell me she fell down the stairs, too.”

“No. She died in bed, presumably of natural causes, at the age of sixty-nine.”

“Is there a reason you’re telling me about these women?”

“It’s all part of a pattern, Ava. After Violet died, there was Margaret Gordon, a visitor from New York who rented Brodie’s Watch for the summer. She never returned to New York. Instead she remained here until she died of a stroke, twenty-two years later. She was followed by Miss Aurora Sherbrooke, yet another tenant who came just for the summer, decided to buy the house, and lived here until her death thirty years later.”

With every new name she reveals, I flip through the photos in the folder, seeing the faces of those who came before me. Eugenia and Violet, Margaret and Aurora. Now the pattern becomes apparent, a pattern that leaves me stunned. All the women who have lived and died in this house were dark-haired and beautiful. All the women bore a startling resemblance to…

“You,” says Maeve. “They all look like you.”

I stare at the final photo. Aurora Sherbrooke had lustrous black hair and a swan neck and arching eyebrows, and while I am not nearly as pretty as she was, the resemblance is unmistakable. It’s as if I am a younger but plainer Sherbrooke sister.

My hands are icy as I turn the page to Aurora’s obituary in the August 20, 1986, edition of the Tucker Cove Weekly.





AURORA SHERBROOKE, AGE 66



Ms. Aurora Sherbrooke passed away last week at her home in Tucker Cove. She was found by her nephew, Arthur Sherbrooke, who had not heard from her in days and drove from his home in Cape Elizabeth to check on her. The death is not considered suspicious. According to a housekeeper, Ms. Sherbrooke had recently been ill with the flu.

Originally from Newton, Massachusetts, Ms. Sherbrooke first visited Tucker Cove thirty-one years ago. “She immediately fell in love with the town, and especially with the house she was renting,” said her nephew, Arthur Sherbrooke. Ms. Sherbrooke purchased the house, known as Brodie’s Watch, which remained her home until her death.



“Four women have died in this house,” says Maeve.

“None of these deaths were suspicious.”

“But doesn’t it make you wonder? Why were they all women, and why did they all live and die here alone? I’ve gone through the Tucker Cove obituaries back to 1875, and I couldn’t find any men who died in this house.” She looks around the room, as if the answers might lie in the walls or the mantelpiece. Her gaze stops at the window, where our view of the sea has receded behind a curtain of mist. “It’s as if this house is some sort of trap,” she says softly. “Women walk in but they don’t walk out. Somehow it charms them, seduces them. And in the end, it imprisons them.”

My laugh is not entirely convincing. “That’s why you think I should leave? Because I’ll end up a prisoner?”

“You need to know the history of this house, Ava. You need to know what you’re dealing with.”

“Are you telling me these women were all killed by a ghost?”

“If it was just a ghost, I wouldn’t be so concerned.”

“What else would it be?”

She pauses to consider her next words. That hesitation only adds to my sense of foreboding. “A few weeks ago, I mentioned there are things other than ghosts that can attach themselves to a house. Entities that aren’t exactly benign. Ghosts are simply spirits who haven’t moved on because of unfinished business in this world, or who died so suddenly they don’t realize they are dead. They linger between our world and the next. Even though they’ve passed on, they were once human, just like us, and they almost never cause harm to the living. But every so often I come across a house that harbors something else. Not a ghost, but…” Her voice wavers and she glances around the room. “Do you mind if we step outside?”

    “Now?”

“Yes. Please.”

I glance out the window at the thickening mist. I really don’t feel like stepping out into that damp sea air, but I nod and rise to my feet. At the front door I pull on a rain jacket and we both walk outside onto the porch. But even there, Maeve is nervous, and she leads me down the steps and along the stone path that leads to the cliff’s edge. There we stand cloaked in mist, the house looming behind us in the fog. For a moment the only sound is the crashing of waves far below.