Chapter 1

Benefit Street

Providence, Rhode Island

October

The house smells strongly of honey-tinged beeswax and bergamot, the warm notes as distinct as a long-steeped cup of Earl Grey. Saoirse stumbles into the shadowy foyer with a sigh and a crinkle of bags. When she closes the door behind her, the lingering warmth of twilight disappears with the finality of a stone slab sliding over a crypt. She inspects the space—feathery fern on a cherrywood stand, peach settee, marble table, gold-framed paintings of an idyllic countryside—and allows herself a moment of relief as small as it is earned.

The sound of voices comes from somewhere deep within the house. Saoirse freezes, mind stuttering, then lets out a small bark of laughter and shakes her head. She’s in the city now, not the suburbs. There will be noises beyond the trills of whip-poor-wills and the white-noise hum of a neighbor’s lawn mower. Her nights will be backdropped by teenagers hooting on street corners, students singing on their way to parties, spouses teasing one another as they hustle to dinner reservations at fancy restaurants.

She drops her computer bag, purse, and shopping totes to the floor and pats her pockets. Empty. Her cell phone must still be in the car. Why did she time the three-hour drive to arrive in Providence so late? She could run out again, find a Starbucks, guzzle a shot of—or maybe a double—espresso. Another perk of the city: things stay open later than 7:00 p.m. But the thought of delaying the inevitable makes her want to collapse to the floor with her bags. And she’s not supposed to have too much caffeine; her doctors tell her this constantly. Saoirse pulls her hair into a ponytail and heads back outside to begin the painful process of unloading her car.

Each trek between her grime-coated Mazda and the garnet-red building that is now her home—striking even in this fading light—recalls another detail from her new landlord, Diane’s, pitch. The woodwork is mesmerizing, she’d said on their second call, treating Saoirse’s desire to rent 88 Benefit Street sight unseen as an opportunity to wax poetic. And the front door is white as bone and just as sturdy, reminiscent of the early 1800s during which it was built.

Saoirse had mumbled something like approval but had already decided to sign the lease. She didn’t care about Federal Period architecture or the house’s “storied history,” whatever that meant. Still, Diane had insisted on finishing with the declaration that the property sat at the top of Church Street, overlooking Saint John’s Cathedral and the adjoining cemetery. On foggy nights, she said, sounding more like the tour guide of a haunted house than the owner of numerous high-end properties, the tops of the headstones cut through the fog like rows of teeth.

At the time, Saoirse had been curled miserably into a worn wingback chair, hands wrapped around a mug of tea long-cold, and Diane’s description of the nineteenth-century graveyard had done little more than unnerve her. But standing in the rose garden behind the house, peering down at elaborate stone arches and hydrangeas—melancholy blue in the haze of the streetlights—the marble crosses covering the expanse of grass like forgotten pendants at the bottom of a jewelry box, Saoirse can’t help but admit that the view is thrilling, like the unexpected chords of a violin slicing up from an orchestra pit where before there’d been only silence. She shivers, adjusts her grip on an armload of sheets and blankets, and returns to the house.

She hadn’t taken enough with her from Cedar Grove to warrant a moving truck—and 88 Benefit Street was fully furnished—but Saoirse’s car is full of her most important possessions. Yellowed photo albums. Treasured novels. A tea set inherited from her grandmother. Piles of clothes, including a sweatshirt of her mother’s that smells perpetually of jasmine and cardamom, and a Brown University T-shirt so soft, it could double as a baby’s blanket. A framed copy of her and Jonathan’s wedding invitation. A conch shell from their honeymoon. A photo, refrigerator-worn, of the two of them hiking Rocky Mountain National Park. Everything one might expect a grieving widow to have.

Entering the house with the load of bedding, Saoirse surveys the narrow foyer, clogged with piles from previous trips. Her heart thuds in her chest from the constant lifting, and a voice in her head sounds the alarm: Be careful. Don’t overdo it. When she’s caught her breath, she ventures farther inside to find a place in which to lay her haul.

Beyond the foyer is a living room enlarged by several Zuber panels depicting lush, jungly landscapes. Heavy hunter-green velvet drapes hang from black metal rods, the fabric an exact match to the green velvet settee along the left-hand wall. A candle chandelier casts a shadow over an ornately carved wooden table. The pink roses in the vase at the table’s center are silk but look freshly picked. There are candelabras on the mantel above a tiger bust–adorned marble fireplace. The Zuber panel over the hearth shows a distant mountainscape, the glow of a sunset over an inviting, frothy-green sea.

Saoirse sets everything down on a chair by the fireplace, oscillating between exploring the rest of the house and embarking upon the last trip to the Mazda, when the sound of voices comes again. Muffled but layered, as if several people are speaking in unison. Rising in volume. A little frenzied. This time, it’s unmistakable that they’re coming from inside the house.

Aidan, she thinks, and freezes. But it can’t be. Only her mother knows she’s moved here. It must be the landlord. Though, Diane hadn’t said anything about meeting her here in person. Saoirse received the keys two weeks ago by mail and had texted Diane to confirm receipt. It’s someone else who’s inside the house.

She creeps forward, but her foot catches on a fold of the afghan that had spilled over the seat of the chair. She stumbles, steadies herself on the coffee table, catches the vase of pink roses before it can topple. The voices pause, and Saoirse crosses the room into a hallway. She can go right, to the house’s main staircase; straight, to the kitchen; or left to a short set of steps leading to the walkout basement. The voices start again. There’s a rhythm to the garble, but the sound comes from above and below her all at once. Swallowing her unease, Saoirse starts for the staircase.

On the second floor—no, third; she decides the walkout basement constitutes a floor—she turns left, stopping outside a closed room. There is silence again, minus the pounding of her heart in her ears. She steels herself as she throws open the door, but the floral-papered bedroom, while dark, is empty.

Saoirse opens the other doors on the third floor—two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an office as paradoxically sleek and cozy as every other room in the house—before climbing the next set of stairs. There is a kitchenette on the fourth floor, two more bedrooms, and a bathroom, all empty. The house is large, but she’d wanted large. Something tangible to get lost in, as opposed to wandering through her own sinuous thoughts. Diane had said 88 Benefit Street had been converted into a five-unit residence in the eighties before she’d bought it and done a complete renovation. No, that wasn’t the word she’d used ... a restoration , not renovation. But restored to what?

Saoirse doesn’t have time to consider. The voices are back. This time they seem to be engaged in a chant. And they’re coming from below her. She races down the two sets of stairs, her hand slick on the walnut wood banister—then descends farther, into the walkout basement. Even as she spins to examine the spacious, rectangular room, Saoirse is asking herself how the sound could be coming from here. But then ... the beeswax and bergamot she smelled upon entering the house grow stronger.

Saoirse follows the scent toward a window on the western wall and spins in another circle. She’s about to chalk the whole thing up to new-house jitters when she sees the corner of the braided area rug is turned up. The voices, now a droning hum, float up from beneath it. Dropping to her knees, she pulls the rug back farther and finds herself looking at a groove in the floorboards. Antique strap hinges. A metal chain running through a small square opening. It’s a trapdoor.

A trapdoor that could only lead to a basement.

Do houses with walkout basements have actual basements? Saoirse doesn’t really feel like finding out. She considers running back to her car. She considers calling 911. She considers collapsing in a heap and letting dread consume her. But what Saoirse does is the same thing she did nine months earlier, on a frigid evening in early January when she found her husband’s body. She grabs the metal chain, pulls open the trapdoor, and starts toward what she fears.

The stairs are unfinished. The floor below her is mere dirt, patterned with light coming from someplace beyond Saoirse’s field of vision. The honeyed scent of candles and incense is overwhelming. The voices are no longer muffled:

“Oft since thine earthly eyes have closed on mine,

Our souls, dim-wandering in the hall of dreams,

Hold mystic converse on the life divine,

By the still music of immortal streams.”

Saoirse is at the bottom of the stairs. She takes two hesitant steps toward the light, toward the voices. Then two more. The chanting starts again, the words both ominous and old-fashioned, the speakers male and female, their voices lilting together.

The room is L-shaped, and she can see the edge of a table beyond the jutting wall, a dark-clothed elbow angled out from a high-backed chair. Saoirse grips the wall and leans forward. Sees the table is circular, draped in black crepe. Sees the innumerable candles on its surface, the Ouija board at its center, the amethyst chunks and tourmaline spears, the crushed flower petals, the oracle cards fanned like feathers. Sees the cauldron spitting smoke, obscuring the features of a woman whose head is bowed, shoulder-length brown hair parted like a knife slash down the middle.

The chanters are not teenagers bent on wreaking a little havoc; the man in the high-backed chair is silver-haired, though seemingly prematurely. They are her age. Thirty. Maybe thirty-five. And they are immersed in their séance. None of their accoutrements are cheap Halloween props; the Ouija board looks to have been hand-painted around the time Emily Dickinson learned the alphabet. Saoirse thinks she sees the board rise several millimeters and struggles not to cry out. The candlelight. Just a trick of the candlelight.

Saoirse takes a breath and holds it until the tremors in her hands and fluttering in her stomach lessen. Before she can lose her nerve, she demands, “What the hell are you doing in my house?”

A woman—not the one before the cauldron—gasps. The man whips around. All three of them stare at Saoirse as if she is the interloper, not them.

“ Your house?” the man says. He looks to the woman on his right, eyebrows raised. The woman in turn levels her gaze at Saoirse, her black hair and black-framed glasses accentuating the paleness of her face. Candlelight dances over the black-ink tattoos snaking up both her arms.

“This isn’t your house,” the tattooed woman says calmly.

“It is,” Saoirse says. “I signed the lease last month.”

“No.”

Saoirse is hit with a wave of unreality not unlike that which accosted her in the moments after finding Jonathan. “Yes” is the only word she can force her dry mouth to say.

The pale-faced, black-haired woman leans forward and takes something off the table. To Saoirse’s surprise, the woman stands and, as calmly as she’d addressed her, approaches Saoirse. She reaches down, takes Saoirse’s hand, and places the object in it.

Saoirse recoils. Then, seeing it’s just a photograph, or rather, a daguerreotype, stares at the image within the oxidized gold frame. A white-garbed woman, spiral curls framed by a sheer ruched bonnet, stares back.

“This isn’t your house,” the woman repeats. Her voice is not unkind, but it is also not uncryptic.

“Then whose is it?” Saoirse asks. She’s annoyed that her anger is tempered by the strangers’ refusal to act as if they’re doing something wrong.

The answer comes from the brown-haired woman behind the cauldron, words thick, as if the smoke has hardened her vocal cords into something akin to the wide pillar candles at her elbows: “It’s Sarah Helen Whitman’s, the poet, essayist, transcendentalist, and spiritualist.” The corners of the woman’s mouth turn down slightly. “And I suppose I’d be remiss not to include ‘onetime romantic interest of Edgar Allan Poe.’” She forces Saoirse to meet her gaze. “We’re bringing her back from the dead.”