All My Darkest Impulses (House of Crows), Lisa Unger [top 10 novels .txt] 📗

name, but she had no voice. She just kept walking until she was at a door that stood ajar. She pushed it open.

There was a tall, slim man dressed in black, standing over a high table, his back to her. The music—she’d sought it out over the years but never found anything that sounded even remotely like it—had grown loud, and the man at the table didn’t hear the creaking of the door, or didn’t respond to it.

Run, a voice in her head commanded.

But instead she just kept walking inside, drawing closer. On the table she saw two feet in red Converse sneakers, attached to a pair of pale, skinny legs.

“Claire,” said the man, his back still to her. Closer now, she could see that he had thick dark hair pulled into a ponytail at the base of his neck, that his suit was fine, nicer than anything she’d seen her father wear. That his shoes were shiny. “I’ve been wondering when I’d see you again.”

Run, the voice commanded again.

Claire, you win. Come out. Matthew’s voice through the floorboards.

But she couldn’t. It was as if there were a chain from her solar plexus, pulling her forward. She saw a face, the still and peaceful face of a girl she thought she knew. From where? School? Bible class? The girl was lying on the table, and Claire felt the strong urge to help her up from where she lay and take her home, where she surely belonged.

“Stop,” she said. “I need to take her home.”

“Too late, Claire.”

When he turned, his smile was full of blood, and in the palms of his cupped hands there was a beating human heart. She heard the familiar rhythm of its thumping and realized it matched her own.

“You and I will meet again,” the man said.

And Claire started to scream, and scream, but he just laughed, and the room spun and the fog turned to smoke, blinding her, filling her mouth and nose.

Matthew flew down the stairs, found Claire lying on the basement floor. There was no man, no girl, no blood, no beating heart. Near a workbench at the far end of the basement, a light had been left on. A radio was playing white noise, and Ian switched it off, while Matthew helped Claire from the basement and upstairs into the light. She tried to tell them what she’d seen, but it sounded as silly and nonsensical as a dream. A pale man with a ponytail, a beating heart in his hands. A girl on a table. The fog. She had thought they’d laugh at her, but no one did.

“That was the summer that a girl you knew disappeared?” asked Dr. Bold.

“That’s right.”

Even before her attack, Claire and Dr. Bold had talked about the disappearance of Amelia March many times, identified this event as the event that compelled Claire to pursue her career, a deep wish to help the girl who was on that table, and if not her, then other girls like her who slip through the cracks in the world, or who fall prey to the predators that walk among us. The mystery of what happened to Amelia March was still unsolved. A tall, skinny girl with dark hair, last seen wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and a pair of red Converse sneakers. Just gone.

“Had her disappearance been occupying your thoughts, before that night?” asked Dr. Bold.

“People were talking about it. So it had been on my mind, yes. I’d had some nightmares of being pursued, a shadow at my heels, falling down a well.”

“Did you perhaps fall asleep while you were hiding?”

“I don’t think so, but maybe.”

“In the past, you’ve called him the Dark Man. Is that right? Where did that name come from?”

“The next day, when Mason turned up for the first time that summer. He was the one who told us all about the Dark Man.”

Claire completed the five-mile loop and came to a stop at the trailhead, walking a circle to cool off, checking her time, distance, and heart rate on the device strapped to her wrist. Her tether, as Will—the ultimate Luddite—liked to call it. Pretty decent. She was getting stronger.

Back at the house, she made coffee, a breakfast of eggs and avocado. She had Dr. Bold in a few hours, had promised Will they could have lunch, but for now she would try to catch up on email. She felt . . . almost normal.

After breakfast, she logged on to her computer and found a note from her lawyer, informing her that Billy had been found faultless by the review board. “The board,” he wrote, “also declines further investigation of your conduct. Meanwhile, Winston Grann’s family, what little there is of it, has opted not to press any charges against Billy, the hospital, or you. This is good news, Claire. When you’re well, you can return to your work.”

It was good news, but it landed flat, like so many things these days. Trauma could do that, make things seem distant and dull. Still, deep inside, something jangled. She took a sip of her coffee, watched the sunlight streaming through the window, dappling the desktop.

Winston Grann’s family.

They’d talked at length about his abusive mother, his absent father, both now deceased. So to what family was her lawyer referring?

She opened the search engine and entered Winston Grann’s name. His crimes were a decade old, but there was still plenty of information from news articles, podcasts, true crime bloggers.

She scrolled through, as she must have done before, when she’d first started working with him, just to get a clear idea of his deeds. It was an ugly catalog, to be sure. But she kept reading and reading. The morning wound on, as Claire went deeper down the rabbit hole of Winston Grann’s life until she found the thing she was chasing. There was an article about Winston Grann, written years ago, that detailed the crimes of other members of his family. Apparently, the Granns had a long