Home Before Dark

The first bell rings that afternoon. Ewan has filled two bottles with urine, unwilling to leave the kitchen and miss a message. He has now sat there for 21 hours, and the cacophony of sounds has reminded him that there is something wrong with the house—not him. The bells repeat the pattern of five tones: HELLO. EWAN. When Ewan says he needs help to stop Garson, Curtis says NO. He also says that Garson didn’t kill his daughter. LOOK.

Then, it spells the word PORTRAIT—not Garson’s portrait but HER PORTRAIT. In the Indigo Room, he looks at the rabbit she holds in the portrait. It isn’t as detailed as the rest of the work. The rabbit is missing an eye, which reveals a layer of paint behind it. He scrapes away the paint of the rabbit, eventually revealing that Indigo is actually holding a snake.

Maggie calls Dane and asks for help moving the armoire. She intends to block the secret passage and leave. She puts the Book on the desk in the study and throws Buster and the photos into the closet. When she turns around, the Book is open to the page from the Fourth of July, when the hole in the kitchen ceiling was fixed. The page says that Hibbs “brought a boy from town” (335) to help. She wonders if the boy might have become Petra’s boyfriend and connects this figure with Dane, who would have been a similar age to Petra. Maggie’s mind races over the possibility that Dane killed Petra. She looks at the picture of her father standing behind Walt when he’s on the ladder. There is a boy in the background: It’s Dane as a teenager. Then, Dane comes into the study and says he can explain.

Ewan now believes Garson painted over the snake with the rabbit to hide the truth about his daughter. Indigo is the one making fathers kill their daughters. When a man lives here, he inevitably becomes obsessed with the mystery of Indigo’s death. She punishes every father as revenge against William.

Curtis says Indigo killed them and then says CAMERA when Ewan asks how to know if she’s there. In the study, he looks at the photos again. Now the photos of Curtis look like a man who is wasting away from terror. The photo dated July 15 was taken a year after Curtis killed himself. He sees another figure in the background. It’s Indigo, with pennies over her eyes—Miss Pennyface.

An angry presence enters the room. Ewan takes a self-portrait. In the developing Polaroid, he sees Indigo behind him. Another photo shows her grinning behind him from another corner of the room. He’s safe for now since Maggie is her target. Over the course of the afternoon, he stays in the study and takes photos to track Indigo. He takes a final photo when the sun is setting. It shows Jessica behind him. He’s terrified as he realizes that she brought Maggie back and Indigo is waiting.

Dane admits that he was seeing Petra but insists that he didn’t kill her. She thinks Dane finding the remains was his alibi. She reaches for the knife on the desk and then shoves Dane away and runs to the Indigo Room. It’s dark enough that Dane doesn’t see the opening in the floor where Petra’s body had been stored. He falls through the gap and Maggie hears his body hit the kitchen floor in the room below.

Ewan shows Jessica the photos with Indigo in the study. They rush to Maggie’s room. Ewan asks Jessica to carry her, not trusting his power to resist Indigo. The armoire opens and something pulls Maggie toward it before vanishing back inside. Ewan jumps halfway into the armoire and grabs her leg, managing to pull her back into the room. They go downstairs as Ewan continues to take photos. In the final photo, he sees Indigo behind Maggie, just before Maggie flies into the ceiling. She grabs the chandelier and tries to hold herself in place. Ewan takes a shard of glass from the chandelier and threatens to harm himself. He hopes the threat will stop Indigo, who wants him to kill Maggie. He cuts himself until he bleeds, and Maggie falls to the floor.

Snakes with red bellies fill the room. The family runs outside, and they make it to the car. Something rams them from behind as they drive. They make it past the gate. Ewan jumps out and locks it. At the book’s conclusions, he writes, “For us, Baneberry Hall is a house of horrors. One that none of us may dare enter again” (353).

Maggie watches paramedics load Dane’s stretcher into an ambulance. Alcott apologizes to her for her accusations about Ewan. Maggie realizes that she kept looking for the truth because the story no longer belonged to her alone. Weber had said that Maggie was rewriting her story, but it also included Petra and the Ditmers.

Her mother arrives in a police car. Maggie tells her everything in the kitchen. Jessica says they have to leave and never return. Maggie puts the pie on the table and says that they’re going to talk like normal people as she takes a bite. She demands to know what Jessica is hiding. Her mother gives Maggie an envelope. She says she hoped this day would never come, but that if Maggie wants the truth, she was the one who killed Petra.

The text of the letter is from Ewan to Maggie. It says that much of the story from the Book is true but some is not. There were no ghosts, although the imaginary friends were real. There were no portraits of Indigo and William. He believes that William killed Indigo and that Curtis killed Katie, but that the other deaths were unrelated.

He and Jessica rented a room at Two Pines to get away on the night that Petra came to babysit. They returned at midnight to the sight of Petra’s body, dead at the foot of the stairs. Maggie was crying at the top of the steps, saying she didn’t do it. Petra had scratch marks on her neck, and Ewan remembered how Maggie had punched Hannah. Maggie said it was Miss Pennyface who pushed Petra.

Elsa didn’t know Petra was there because Petra had sneaked out. Ewan and Jessica were ashamed to hide the crime, but they did it to protect Maggie. Ewan hid her body beneath the floorboards. They left because the sight of the teddy bear unraveled Jessica. As they tried to come up with an explanation for leaving, Maggie had asked if it was because Miss Pennyface scared them away. They decided to use her idea and claim the house was haunted. Ewan hadn’t expected the story to spread, or for the book deal to materialize. Jessica didn’t want him to write the book, and it broke their marriage.

Jessica always wanted to tell Maggie the truth, and Ewan always refused. He never sold the house because of the risk to Maggie. He returned every year out of guilt and to pay his respects. He writes that he thinks he’ll be punished in the afterlife. He concludes by saying he loves her.

Maggie believes the letter is true, although she tells her mother it’s a lie. She says they have to tell the truth, then slaps her mother and kicks her out of the house. When Maggie is alone, she begins to feel unsteady. Believing her dizziness is due to the shock of her mother’s revelations, she crawls to her bed. She looks at the armoire, which is making strange noises: It opens and Miss Pennyface steps out. There are no pennies on her eyes, however. It’s the moonlight reflecting on the lenses of a woman’s glasses: Miss Pennyface is actually Marta Carver.

Maggie remembers all the times Miss Pennyface stood at her bedside. Marta says she used to watch Katie sleep, exactly the same way. She talks about Curtis taking everything from her. When the Holts moved in, she used it a chance to watch Maggie sleep, just like she did with her daughter.

Maggie remembers Petra entering the room to check on her and finding Marta there. Petra tried to go downstairs to call the police. During the scuffle, Marta’s ring hit Maggie’s cheek and caused the wound. Petra fell down the stairs. Marta ran and waited at home. She expected to be caught and arrested, but the police never came.

As she listens, Maggie’s stomach starts to hurt. Marta says it’s good that she ate the pie, and that it had poisonous baneberries mixed in with the cherries. Marta eventually realized that Maggie’s parents thought Maggie was the killer. Now Marta has decided that she can’t get caught. Marta moves to smother Maggie with a pillow, but Maggie rolls onto her side, knocking Marta to the floor. Marta catches Maggie in the hall and knocks her down the stairs. Maggie looks up and sees Marta at the top of the stairs. A light appears behind Marta, and Maggie thinks she sees Petra behind her. Marta flies down the stairs as if something pushed her, and her neck snaps as she falls. Maggie then sees that it’s Elsa at the top of the stairs. Elsa finally knows what happened to her daughter.

The house is in the news once again. The rumors about the house being haunted won’t go away, despite the new revelations, and the ghouls return in droves. Regardless, Maggie finally feels safe, especially after destroying the armoire. She realizes that Elsa was Mister Shadow, visiting Maggie’s bedroom at least twice. Rather than threaten like Marta, Elsa’s nighttime whispers had been meant as warnings to get Maggie to leave the house: Elsa was superstitious about the house’s dark past.

Jessica apologizes to Hannah, but she says no apology can make up for what has happened.  Elsa is moved to a care facility out of the area and Hannah relocates to be near her. Maggie apologizes to Dane, but he doesn’t respond and moves a week later.

Jessica is due for sentencing the following week for covering up Petra’s death. While Maggie was talking to Marta at Baneberry Hall, Jessica was confessing to Alcott in Bartleby. Alcott got to the house in time to see Elsa—and Marta’s body—and to call for medical attention quickly enough to save Maggie, who then told her everything. Jessica says that Maggie’s forgiveness is all that matters to her. Now they can bond.

Maggie thinks her vision of Petra was real. She wants to apologize to her and thank her. She has been in the study, typing on her father’s typewriter. She considers writing the new story because she’s her father’s daughter, and he would have loved it. She begins by typing, “Every house has a story to tell and a secret to share” (384).