Excerpt: Falling Darkness

A monster lived in the attic at Gram’s house. She knew it as sure as she knew her name was Morrigan Abigail McCulloch.

The final convincing factor was the evening Abby—her preferred name—showed up to claim the property, pulling her old clunker up to the curb in front of the aging Victorian on the outskirts of Hickory Hollow. As she got out and looked up at the house built in 1901, memories of baking chocolate chip cookies, the smell of spice cake, and the crackle of the fire in the fireplace flooded through her. She swore she could still hear the tinkling of the sorely out of tune piano while Gram’s aged and gnarled hands played the yellowed ivory keys. The bang of the screen door as friends and neighbors came in and out on those hot summer days, armed with sweet iced tea and peach cobbler.

Twenty-two years, she’d been coming to this house every holiday, every birthday, every summer. Every time her mother had to leave town on one of her research trips.

And now Gram was gone.

Abby’s heart squeezed. Gram died May 1. Today was October 31. Nearly six months to the day and oh, how she missed her!

Funny how her mother had been gone for two years and she hadn’t missed her as much. And, come to think of it, Mom had disappeared on November 1 two years ago.

It’d taken Abby almost six months to screw up enough courage to come here. She wasn’t sure Old Blue—that’s what she called her Chevy pick-up circa 1984—would make the seven-hour trip but it did. She had to roll down the window to open the door and when she slammed it shut, it rattled the poor chassis.

Pulling her fleecy jacket tighter, she walked up the cracked pathway as the cool autumn wind scattered yellow, brown, and red leaves. By some miracle, the grass was still lush and green and thick. The grand pecan tree in the center of the yard only now shedding its leaves for winter.

Gram’s wooden rocker with the faded white paint still stood on the front porch, drifting lazily back and forth in the breeze. She’d sit here in the late afternoons on those sweltering summer nights and tell Abby fantastical stories about fairies, elves, princesses and knights in lands far away. She loved those stories as much as she loved Gram.

She pushed open the heavy oak door with the stained glass oval window and stepped across the threshold for the first time in months. Thick dust hung in the air, smelling musty from being closed up for so long. Flipping on the foyer light, the sudden bright glow made her blink as her eyes adjusted. She dropped her keys on the nearby table and walked inside, pulling the scarf off her neck.

There was Gram’s favorite chair, the lavender upholstery faded from years of use. The knickknacks covered in dust. The doilies on every table. The patchwork quilt draped over the back of the camelback sofa. The threadbare rug covering the creaky wood floor. The Tiffany floor lamp standing as a sentry to oversee it all.

And Gram’s spinet looking forlorn in the corner.

She’d come to start packing up the contents of the house, sell off what furniture she could bear to part with, and put the rest in storage. She’d keep a few of precious pieces and take them back to her one-room apartment in New York City. She’d taken a two-week leave and hoped she could get most of the house packed up.

Morrigan.

She jumped. Whoa, hey. No one called her that but her mother.

Standing in the center of the room surveying all the furniture, she could swear she heard her name whispered. She glanced around, looking for some sign of life but seeing none and shrugged it off as her imagination. Despite her love of the house, it still creeped her out. Probably why she had avoided it so long after Gram’s death. There were many a night when, as a child, she’d come crying out of her room and burrow deep within the covers of Gram’s bed.

There, there, lass, Gram would say. Tis all right now.

It always made her feel better.