Dark across the bay, p.1
Dark Across the Bay, page 1
PRAISE FOR ANIA AHLBORN
“…genuinely scary…damn good...”
-Cemetery Dance on Apart in the Dark
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“…good, spooky stuff.”
-Jack Ketchum on Within These Walls
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“…creeps under your skin and stays there.
It’s insidious…”
-The New York Times on Within These Walls
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“For fans of sleepless nights.”
-Portland Monthly Magazine on Within These Walls
ANIA AHLBORN
Dark Across the Bay
Born in Ciechanow Poland, Ania has always been drawn to the dark, mysterious, and sometimes morbid side of life. Her earliest childhood memory is of crawling through a hole in the chain link fence that separated her family home from the large wooded cemetery. She'd spend hours among the headstones, breaking up bouquets of silk flowers so that everyone had their equal share.
Ania's first novel, Seed, was self-published. It clawed its way up the Amazon charts to the number one horror spot, earning her a multi-book deal and a key to the kingdom of the macabre. Eight years later, her work has been lauded by the likes of Publishers Weekly, New York Daily News, and the New York Times.
She lives in North Carolina with her family.
Dark Across the Bay is her eleventh published work.
W W W. A N I A A H L B O R N. C O M
ALSO BY ANIA AHLBORN
Seed
The Neighbors
The Shuddering
The Bird Eater
Within These Walls
The Pretty Ones
Brother
I Call Upon Thee
The Devil Crept In
Apart in the Dark
If You See Her
Dark Across the Bay
ANIA AHLBORN
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 Ania Ahlborn
All rights reserved.
FAMILY
AN INTRODUCTION
BY JOSH MALERMAN
Every family is an isolated incident. Worthy of investigation.
No matter how good or bad you have it, there’s darkness and there’s joy. There’s confusion and miscommunication. There’s someone who isn’t speaking their mind and there’s someone who’s speaking theirs too often. There’s someone to blame, there’s no one to blame. Good times, bad times, ugly times, too. It’s a disaster, it’s the greatest thing ever; it’s who you are and who you are not. And meanwhile, the biggest problem of all is that the only people qualified to launch the investigation, the only people who have all the evidence, are the family members themselves.
It’s a constant conflict of interest…no?
And so…who to trust? Whose motivation is noble and whose is not? Who is acting (sometimes even abysmally) in the name of saving the family, keeping it together, keeping it strong?
Are we all raised by wolves?
Maybe. Yet, there is an outside party, there is someone who might tell the family’s story from an objective distance. Someone to lay out the facts, the comeuppances, the karma. The one person fitted with wings to give us an aerial view, to show us who got what they deserved, who got screwed, and who made it out alive.
That person is the author. The writer. The seer of such troublesome, and fabulous, dynamics.
Meet…Ania Ahlborn.
And in Dark Across the Bay, meet the Parrishes, too.
See, the Parrishes have problems. Enough so that they’ve booked a few days at a gorgeous solitary house on an island off the coast of Maine. They really need this. But what family doesn’t have issues? And who can blame Mom and Dad for thinking complete isolation is the way to cure what ails them? In theory, this is a great plan. In theory, this could work! But in the hands of Ania Ahlborn, chances are, whether it works or not, things are going to get a little bit…
Scary.
None of us writers (should) care about labels, Thriller versus Horror, genre be damned, even if we wear horror with pride. But Ahlborn nailed something with this book, something bigger than the word count: while Dark Across the Bay has all the fixings of what the publishing world would deem a “thriller,” it still acts as a horror story, i.e., it scares the shit out of you. And more: it’s as unsettling and creeping as any ghost story you’ve read.
Every family is also a ghost story. Did you know?
Specific moments haunt, and sometimes that haunt is welcome, and sometimes it’s not. In every family, Dad or Mom invariably do something wrong (often, much more than wrong), whether either is a “good” or “bad” person. And the ghosts of those past events stand in the shadows of the basement every time you need to get the laundry from below. History whistles in the middle of the night. It weighs enough to creak the floorboards out in the hall.
Who can get any sleep with the noise familial history makes?
The Parrishes sure can’t. Even when they can. Even when they feel good about the decisions they’ve made. No matter what they do, they’re haunted by decisions they’ve made before.
And this goes for all four of them. Ezra, the seemingly aloof manchild of a father; Poppy, the piqued mother on a mission; Leo, the grieving yet forward-thinking son; and Lark, the lovestruck, neurotic sister whose biggest fault may simply be that she’s still young.
This family loves each other! Don’t they? They can work things out! Can’t they? Well, it’s not so simple, as, in every family, one member’s unreasonable self-loathing is another’s unreasonable rationalization. Dynamics have a way of grating, highs and lows often bump heads, and it’s those moments that become the incidents…the hauntings…the…
The horrors.
Yes, every family is a horror story, too. Bet you knew that.
And damn, if Ania Ahlborn doesn’t know how to unsettle.
I imagine it’s in her, in her voice, naturally, as there isn’t a moment in the pages that follow that feels inorganic, unlike her, forced. Some writers have that, you know, that way about them, where everything they present suggests the bulk of the iceberg below, in this case: dark waters. Maybe it’s Poppy’s actual fear of water, yet she booked a weekend on an island. Or maybe it’s the feeling that Ezra isn’t aloof after all, but intentionally keeping quiet. Possibly it’s Leo’s future plans, the ticking clock of actual Time he has remaining in close proximity to his family. And maybe, just maybe, it’s Lark’s being between personas, as most sixteen-year-olds are.
All unsettling. Naturally.
And we, the readers, feel all of this, on every page, in every scene. Ahlborn doesn’t relent. But that doesn’t mean she bludgeons us to death, either. Herein lies a story told by a truly gifted artist, an author who has long found her voice, and doesn’t get caught up in labels, rules, expectations. For this, she’s the perfect person to tell the story of the Parrish family. The only.
Ah, family…
For, what is family if not an entity with an unavoidable voice? An organism the defies easy classification? And, even when all the members are asleep, a thing that yet dreams?
I’m way excited for you to meet the Parrishes. But more importantly, I’m thrilled for you to experience what I just did: an unforgettable story from Ania Ahlborn.
Some authors have a way of slipping the story under your skin, scaring you, long before the incidents, the hauntings, and the horrors arrive.
Just when everything feels normal, good, safe.
Good luck, I say. And when you’re done, maybe hand the story off to a brother, a sister, Mom or Dad. Someone in your family, anyway.
Someone to share the horrors with.
Josh Malerman
Michigan, 2021
DISCOVERY
Seeing their little island creep into view made Diedre Allan’s stomach twist. It was crazy that they still owned it, crazier still that they had dropped their entire life savings to buy twenty-two acres of stone, sand, and the rustic Shingle-style home that stood among the trees. A long pier jutted into the water, serving as both a boat dock and a spot to relax in a pair of Adirondack chairs. It was quintessential Maine; the perfect place to watch sunsets and the turning of the leaves, to forget the world beyond Raven’s Bay.
During family reunions, all of Silas’s side would come, but only a few awkward stragglers from Diedre’s side would show. Her niece, Gigi, was the one most impressed with the island, having loved the place since she’d been a girl. She and her cousins had spent countless hours within the nooks and crannies hidden inside the walls. They’d knock from within hidden compartments like phantoms unseen, at times frustrating their parents with refusals to reveal themselves for dinner and sleep. Gigi had adored the island home so thoroughly as a girl that, as an adult, she’d booked it for herself as a personal getaway a handful of times. Her love of the house was what had given Diedre the idea of renting it out in the first place. Because after thirty years of living there, a heart attack had sent Diedre and Silas fleeing to mainland Raven’s Head, and suddenly the place had no occupants. No breath. No pulse.
Diedre had been curled up in a blanket and sitting on the very dock they approached now when, carrying two steaming mugs of coffee, Silas had collapsed to his knees. Had the Coast Guard not arrived when they had, Silas wouldn’t have seen another sunrise .
Silas had taken convincing when it came time to leave. Diedre, however, had been quietly relieved to finally get off that rock. She had always hated the house’s seemingly pointless doors, the secret passageways and windowless rooms that had so thoroughly delighted the children. But despite Silas’s eventual agreement to move, he wouldn’t stand for selling, so she hadn’t bothered to suggest it. They’d visit on occasion, watch the leaves on adjacent islands turn red and orange and brilliant hues of gold. But when they were away—which would be for most of the year—they’d line their pockets with rent money. As it turned out, strangers were just as smitten with the island as the children of Diedre and Silas’s past.
Renting the place out on AirBnB had been Diedre’s idea. As long as you know there’s going to be trouble, Silas had warned, and he had been right. That was the thing about rental property: you collected the money, but you also had to clean up the mess. Diedre usually had a service do most of the work, but this autumn had been booked up solid until the Allans’ own reserved week. The idea of having a cleaning crew flit about the house while they settled in gave Diedre the creeps. She could scrub a couple of toilets, could wipe the counters down with Lysol and wash the sheets.
Steering the boat by its outboard motor, Silas regarded Easy Livin’ the way a cowboy would an obstinate horse. As the motor cut and Easy Livin’ cruised up to the dock, Diedre noticed Silas glaring at the pier’s tie-off. Part of the dock was singed, blackened with soot as if by lightning strike.
“What in the world?” She squinted at the five or so feet of darkened wood, then shook her head with a sigh. The Allans had discovered their fair share of damage in the past, from scuffed-up floorboards to Sharpie markers decorating the walls of the upstairs hall. The scariest had been the ghosts of dead bonfires, one of which had appeared to have raged so out of control it had set some of the groundcover alight, having crept dangerously close to the spruce trees beyond the beach. It had left Diedre to wonder whether, one day, they would arrive to find the island vacant and the house burned to the ground.
Silas lashed Easy Livin’ to the pylon as a muffled grumble skirted his lips.
“Goddamn son of a—”
“Cool it, Si,” she cut him off. “We don’t know what happened yet.”
She busied herself with a picnic basket she’d stuffed full of supplies that needed restocking—Lysol and toilet bowl cleaner, garbage disposal tabs and a fresh roll of trash bags; just another convenience traded for the luxury of seclusion.
“They may not be responsible,” she said of their most recent tenants. The damage could have been done by any number of the other renters that had used the house in the past handful of weeks. God knew there had been enough of them. The property management company was supposed to alert the Allans to any damage as soon as they discovered it, but there had been incidents that had fallen between the cracks before. Besides, the Parrishes had struck Diedre as a nice family. She had yet to meet them in person but doubted they had anything to do with what was now the focus of Silas’s scorn.
“How am I supposed to fix this?” Silas asked, looping the rope around the tie-off as aggressively as one would loop a noose around the neck of an accused.
Placing one hand on the dock, Diedre braced herself, then strong-armed the picnic basket up from around her Bean boots. She hefted up her patchwork skirt to her knees and climbed onto steady ground.
“What in the hell?” Silas continued to feed into his aggravation, grabbing hold of a rope lashed to the pylon beneath where he’d moored their own boat. Its end was burnt.
“Did they return the commuter?” Diedre asked.
It had been less than a few hours since the Parrishes had been expected to check out. She hadn’t been notified by the AirBnB app that they had done so, but it wasn’t the first time renters had forgone the check-out process and simply left. It was annoying, but no harm done. Diedre shrugged it off as she watched her husband prepare for the uncomfortable task of hauling himself out of Easy Livin’ and onto the dock.
“Here,” she said, extending a hand his way, but he waved it off despite his bad knee. His back was also touch-and-go, seizing up on him if he so much as shifted his weight too much to one side. His heart condition was simply the cherry on top of a sundae of suffering. But even a pacemaker couldn’t compete with his bullheadedness.
Silas swatted at her hand, and she pulled it back.
“The commuter,” she said again. “Is it at the dock?”
The commuter was little more than a dinghy the Allans had purchased after their first few tenants kept calling, kept asking how they were supposed to get off the island to go shopping or have dinner in Raven’s Head. She and Silas had considered only renting to folks who provided their own watercraft, but they eventually caved and bought a little boat as an added convenience. Now, after renters were ferried to the island by Gill, they could go back and forth from the house to the mainland whenever they pleased.
Silas groaned as he hefted himself up, then paused to take a breath. “Didn’t check with Gill,” he said through gritted teeth. “Didn’t think I had to.”
“You should give him a ring,” Diedre said, resting the picnic basket on the swell of one of her hips. “If you can catch a signal, at least.” The island wasn’t so far out into the bay that there was no cell phone service, but it was notoriously spotty.
“Yeah, yeah,” Silas mumbled, securing the tie-off before slowly straightening to stand. A moment later, he was reaching for his flip phone and holding it up to the sky.
“You know that doesn’t work out here,” she told him, turning away. “Holding it up to heaven doesn’t mean God is giving you full bars.”
“Maybe one, you merciful bastard?” Silas quipped, then grumbled a few more expletives as she left him to it, holding back a laugh as she moved down the dock.
But her good humor was cut short when, stalking up the stairs of the deck, she spotted the first clue that something was truly amiss. The deck was covered in mud. There was so much of it that it looked purposeful, like an abstract painting dedicated to the island itself. That, however, wasn’t what had her frozen in place. No, that was left to the door being wide open, those swirls and streaks of dark mud leading all the way inside.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she whispered to herself. Of all the renters they’d had over the years, they’d experienced their fair share of inconsiderate behavior. Damaged furniture, sticky kitchen floors, clogged toilets, and dirty dishes left piled in the sink. The Sharpie that once decorated the upstairs walls refused to scrub clean; Silas had been left to repaint the board and batten himself. But an open front door? It was a first.
Diedre opened her mouth to yell back to her husband. Call Gill right now. But the ominous feeling of the house gave her pause. Renting the place had been her idea. If the house had finally been ransacked, then the damage was hers to discover.
She shot a look over her shoulder. Silas was still trying to get a signal, holding the phone over his head, rotating right to left like a rusty weathervane. Seeing him struggling that way only reminded her of just how stubborn he was. It also reminded her that the commuter boat was gone. Certainly, it was back in Raven’s Head, which left the question: if the Parrishes had departed the island, why was Diedre suddenly sure there were still people inside?
“Maybe they didn’t latch it,” she told herself of the door. “Maybe it just blew open.” There had been a heavy storm a few nights ago, but today the gilded tree leaves were breathtakingly still.
Stalking up the muddy porch steps, Diedre found herself hesitating after taking the last riser.
“Hello?” She called out, assuring herself that her trepidation was nothing short of ridiculous. Meanwhile, her heart thudded hard within her chest.
She reminded herself that the Parrishes had seemed lovely, that they had come with a recommendation. The woman who had reached out to her on the AirBnB site was over-the-moon excited when Diedre had shuffled a few dates around to accept their request. Oh, thank goodness, Poppy Parrish had written. You have no idea how much my family and I need this.
And yet, Diedre continued to approach the door with bated breath, sure that someone would come blasting through it at any moment, scaring her half to death.
