Love the Way You Lie (House of Crows) by Lisa Unger (early reader books TXT) 📕

Ian was thinner, paler, than when Matthew last saw him. Grief had aged him, drawn his face narrow, hollow, grayed his hair. Claire was the same wild beauty, her red hair gone auburn, but there was a new fragility to her. It took a second for him to register the scarring on her neck and jaw, the swelling of one side of her face, the guarded way she held herself.

They’d both said they would come, with surprising speed and eagerness. But part of him didn’t believe that anyone would come back here unless they had to. But maybe they did have to, whatever their individual reasons for doing so might be.

“We’re having a bit of an emergency,” Samantha was saying. Matthew heard the slight shake in her voice. “Our daughter, Jewel—it seems that she’s run off.”

“It looks like, from the app that tracks her phone, that she’s at Havenwood,” said Matthew.

They both turned to look at him, Claire’s mouth dropping open in surprise.

And in the warm light of the foyer, they were all sixteen again. While they stood regarding each other, Samantha walked out the front door.

Matthew followed and called after her, standing on the porch. He was still processing what she’d told him, about the tracking app. What did she know about him?

But she didn’t turn back and finally disappeared into the trees, holding her phone out in front of her like a divining rod, following the little blue dot that was their daughter.

He turned back to face his old friends.

4.

Young Ian, Claire, and Matthew all sat around the fire in Old Man Merle’s study. After the detective had left, and Penny had fed them tomato soup and grilled-cheese sandwiches, they told Matthew’s grandfather about what they’d seen in the basement of Havenwood. About the circle with the X in the middle, about Mason’s wish.

Claire added what she’d seen—or thought she’d seen—in the basement of Merle House. The old man sat at his desk, fingers steepled, eyes watching each of them as they spoke.

When they were all done talking, there was silence, the fire casting strange shadows on the portraits and landscapes that hung on the dark walls.

Matthew was hoping that the old man would start to laugh, to tell them they were watching too many horror films and their imaginations had gotten away from them.

But instead he rose and walked to his bookshelf, pulled down a thick leather-bound volume. He opened it and started flipping through its tissue-thin pages. Claire sat cross-legged on the floor, Matthew on the hearth, and Ian slumped on the couch.

Matthew was thinking about Mason. Was he in jail? Had he killed his father? Had he been the last one to see Amelia March?

Outside a light rain started to fall. Penny had called Ian and Claire’s parents; they’d be coming to pick them up eventually.

“This land has a history,” Matthew’s grandfather said. “And it’s not a pretty one.”

They all looked at him from their various seats. Claire’s eyes shone, like she might start to cry again. Ian kept glancing at the door as if he was thinking of making a run for it.

“That building you visited is the ruins of a place called Havenwood. My great-uncle was a famed psychiatrist, known for his writings on the care and reform of troubled children: Dr. Archibald Arkmann.”

They all stayed quiet, keeping their eyes on the old man.

“His practices, let’s say, were less than scientific. I’m ashamed to say a number of children died in his care at the facility he founded, Havenwood Reform School—which you kids have discovered out on the property.”

The wind picked up, knocking the rain against the window.

“Since the discovery of his gruesome activities, the unmarked graves, the school’s closure, his subsequent suicide, and the closing of all roads leading to that place, I’m afraid an urban legend has sprung up. Dr. Archibald Arkmann. The Dark Man.”

He turned the book to face them, and the kids rose to gather around his desk. There was a line drawing of a slim man with long dark hair and a black suit, pronounced cheekbones, and sunken eyes. Claire issued a little cry and pushed back into Ian, who put a hand on her shoulder.

“It was him,” she whispered. “I saw him in the basement.”

Matthew’s grandfather shook his head. “No, dear girl, that’s not possible. He is quite dead. Long dead. In fact, he killed himself with a gun to his head in the very room that once stood where we are right now.”

Claire gasped, and they all looked around the room, as if expecting the Dark Man to leap from the shadows.

“I saw him,” she said, her voice clear and calm. “He had Amelia March.”

The old man just shook his head.

“These stories, these images, have a way of working their way into our psyches. We all grow up thinking we know what God looks like, how an alien might appear, or a yeti, or a dragon. All things we’ve never seen.”

Matthew had never thought of it that way. It was true.

“Stories of Havenwood, and Dr. Arkmann, have circulated in this town for decades. He’s part of our collective unconscious, a kind of bogeyman. When I was a child, he was a cautionary tale—behave or we’ll take you to Dr. Arkmann.”

“That’s pretty messed up,” said Ian.

“Indeed,” said Grandpa with a rueful chuckle. “And these frightening images have a way of worming their way into our unconscious, taking the form of our individual fears, or taking the blame for things that can’t otherwise be tolerated or understood—violence, murder, a child disappearing without a trace.”

Claire shook her head, but didn’t say anything.

“To say the Dark Man did it, or that he made me do it, is to give a name and a form to the darkness that lurks without—and within—each of us. To call for him, to ask for his help, is to call on whatever self within us that’s capable of doing violence.”

“Is that what Mason did?”