Craven Manor(45)

Daniel felt his heart kick up a notch, but he kept his face serene. When he spoke, his voice barely wavered. “What do you mean?”

“You’re probably hoping I didn’t see anything. Or that I assumed I dreamed it. Or that you can convince me it was some kind of delusion.” Kyle’s eyes hardened as they scanned Daniel’s face. “But I know what I saw. Bran Myricks, supposedly dead for two hundred years, hauled me through that house.”

Daniel tried to laugh, but the noise didn’t come out right.

“His face was rotting.” Kyle’s voice remained flat. There was no flicker of fear or anger in his expression, just set inevitability. It was unnerving. “Grey like a ghoul, all sunken and lumpy, nothing between the skin and the bones. He’s dead—he’s got to be—but he’s not staying in his grave, is he?”

Daniel’s throat was too tight to swallow. “Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake? You were drunk—”

Kyle picked up the phone. He tapped it twice then held it up for Daniel to see. It showed a portrait, drawn in a style similar to Annalise’s. In it, Bran’s skin was supple and healthy, but the lidded eyes, long nose, and black hair swept away from the temples were unmistakable.

“No. Bran Myricks died in 1805 when a plague passed through the village.” Kyle’s mouth twisted. “Only the bastard didn’t stay dead.”





Chapter Twenty





Daniel flicked his eyes from the portrait on the phone to Kyle’s face. His heart hammered against his ribs in a painful tempo. “Have you told anyone about this?”

“What, you mean the nurses? Hell no.” Kyle pulled his phone back close to his chest. “I’m not a moron. They wouldn’t believe me. But you do, because you’ve seen the exact same thing I have. You accepted a job from a walking corpse.”

Daniel clasped his hands in his lap and leaned back in his chair. He tried to keep his voice level, but he sensed his cousin had the upper ground, and Daniel was scared of how he might use it. “That’s why you can’t return to the house. It’s not safe for you there. You understand that, right?”

“It’s not safe for anyone there.” Kyle’s eyes narrowed. “You’re planning on going back, aren’t you?”

“That’s not important right now.”

“Hell. You’ve already been back. That’s why you’re visiting me now, isn’t it? To try to protect that murderer?” Kyle pressed his thumb and forefinger into the bridge of his nose. “You’re such a moron.”

“I had nowhere else to stay.” Daniel hadn’t meant to snap, but the words left him more harshly than intended. He cleared his throat and continued in a softer voice. “You changed the lock on your apartment.”

“Whatever. I’ll give you a new key. Just don’t go back to the madman’s house, okay?”

A sense of wariness drew over Daniel. “Why do you want me to stay away? So you can go back yourself when you’re out of hospital? Bran has been nothing but polite and considerate to me. He just doesn’t like people digging through his stuff and stealing his family’s heirlooms.”

“Haven’t you been listening?” Kyle slapped an open hand onto the tray. Tea sloshed out of the mug and pooled on the plastic. “He’s a murderer! Insanity ran through the whole damn family, and it infected his brain worst of all. It won’t take him much to snap.”

“You’re lying.”

Kyle snorted and snatched up his phone. He swiped a finger across the screen and began reading. “He got shipped from school to school when his fellow students mysteriously died. He was always implicated, but there was never enough proof, so they just moved him on to be someone else’s problem. After he returned to the family home, he only maintained peace for two weeks before bludgeoning his mother to death in their garden. Following her murder, he travelled to the nearest town and slaughtered anyone he encountered in a rage of bloodlust.” Kyle lowered the phone. “Those were peasants. Women and kids, Dan. People who had done nothing wrong.”

Daniel couldn’t feel his fingers. He tried to see the article Kyle was reading from, but the phone’s text was too small. “Yes, he killed his mother. She’d murdered his younger sister, so he killed her. But he wouldn’t have attacked innocents. He’s not…”

“Oh boy. He’s told you a wonderfully sanitised version of what happened, hasn’t he?” Kyle threw his head back in a cackling laugh. “His mother didn’t kill the sister. His mother had spent her life trying to protect the girl. The mansion was a short walk from a small village, and the townspeople were superstitious up to their eyeballs. One year, a famine hit them hard. So they decided a witch was cursing them. And who was the most likely candidate for being a witch? The little rich girl who blistered in the sun. So they dragged her down to the churchyard and burnt her.”

Daniel’s head rushed. He pressed his hands to his temples, trying to still it. He remembered Bran’s expressions from the previous day. He’d looked crushed with grief when telling the story about his mother and sister. “You’ve got it wrong. The mother was deranged and unstable. She killed her daughter.”

“Nuh-uh.” Kyle wiggled the phone, eyebrows lifted. “I’ve been doing a lot of reading. This history site says Eliza Myricks was shy and chronically anxious. But she doted over her family, and even overcame her phobia of doctors to invite one into the house to treat Annalise.”