In the Vines Read online

  PRAISE FOR SHANNON KIRK

  “A beautiful, bloody, harrowing mashup of all the best elements in gothic horror set against the backdrop of a (more) demented version of Grey Gardens. An absolute stunner.”

  —Emily Carpenter, author of The Weight of Lies

  “Only the crazy-brilliant mind of the super-talented Shannon Kirk could channel Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe—and create this unique and contemporary horror-mystery-love story. Only a skilled writer like Kirk could dive into the dark madness of the mind and soul—and come up with this chilling tale of broken hearts and desperately twisted love.”

  —Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author

  “Flowers in the Attic meets “The Tell-Tale Heart” with a dash of Psycho, Shannon Kirk’s In the Vines is as dark, tangled, and twisty as the title would suggest. A fascinating portrayal of madness, wealth, and decaying family legacy, Kirk’s superbly crafted gothic thriller will have you gasping the entire way through. This is an insanely good ride into the mind of a madwoman . . . just remember to hang on, lest you not make it back out.”

  —Jennifer Hillier, author of Jar of Hearts

  “A dark and twisted thriller, both poetic and page-turning. A treat for the discerning suspense lover.”

  —Mark Edwards, author of Follow You Home

  OTHER TITLES BY SHANNON KIRK

  Method 15/33

  The Extraordinary Journey of Vivienne Marshall

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Shannon Kirk

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503901940 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1503901947 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781503900752 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1503900754 (paperback)

  Cover design by Damon Freeman

  First edition

  Dedicated to Halibut Point State Park, Ocean Lawn at Coolidge Reservation,

  Fort Constitution State Historic Site, and Odiorne Point State Park, for the science, the solace, the history, and the inspiration.

  The Haddock Point State Park of this novel is a fictional location in a nonexistent sliver of space between Rockport and Gloucester, combining various elements of these parks.

  And for Max: always visit gardens, reservations, forests, beaches, and points, whenever in life you want or need to. This is where the peace lives unfiltered.

  CONTENTS

  IN THE SINK

  CHAPTER ONE MARY OLIVIA PENTECOST, AKA MOP

  CHAPTER TWO AUNTY LIV

  CHAPTER THREE MARY OLIVIA PENTECOST, AKA MOP

  CHAPTER FOUR AUNTY LIV

  CHAPTER FIVE AUNTY LIV

  CHAPTER SIX MOP

  CHAPTER SEVEN MOP

  CHAPTER EIGHT AUNTY

  CHAPTER NINE MOP

  CHAPTER TEN MOP

  CHAPTER ELEVEN AUNTY

  CHAPTER TWELVE MOP

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN AUNTY

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN MOP

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN MOP

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN AUNTY

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN AUNTY

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN AUNTY

  CHAPTER NINETEEN MOP

  CHAPTER TWENTY AUNTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE AUNTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO MOP

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE AUNTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR AUNTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE MOP

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX MOP

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN AUNTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT MOP

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE MOP

  CHAPTER THIRTY MOP

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  IN THE SINK

  I have been in the sink

  The cycle down, down, around

  Can’t stop

  Darkness, walls, fading light

  Thoughts on cycle, looping, racing

  I have been in the sink, the stink,

  The ever-choking loss of breath, can’t think

  Can’t grasp a hook or a hole or a knot or a root

  Too slick, thoughts swish, on cycles, all grim

  The madness

  The flickers of tricks of reason, lucid not

  Of laughter echoes above from deniers

  Who too will feel the walls as they slide

  I have been in the sink

  I know the signs

  The sink, she widens, greedy, relentless

  Slipping at the lip, ground loosened and jagged

  Deniers trip, hands knees in mud

  And will know, their silence, delay

  Made wider ways, for all to fall

  In the patterns made by wicked men

  Time and again, history’s said

  We’re all in the sink, as we’ve always been

  —SCK, November 13, 2016

  CHAPTER ONE

  MARY OLIVIA PENTECOST, AKA MOP

  Present time

  It was the note that led us here, in the dark, trembling. Bloodstained. Hiding. It was the note. It crinkles in my hand, wet with sweat, in the fortune-teller’s creases of my palm.

  Although I didn’t write it, I can recite it, here in this hole in which we hide, in my head.

  I am the mistress. Say it. Say it. I am the one sleeping in your bed. The nights you’re there, I’m there, a whisper. My body snakes in your sheets, swimming in his head. He doesn’t say “I love you” anymore, not without the stick of me in his throat. The sob you hear in the shower through the walls, that’s your delusion, draining down the pipes. I am the mistress, know it, know it. I am the one sleeping in your bed.

  I found the note in Aunty Liv’s guest room. I wasn’t supposed to be at her near-seaside house in the first place. For two years now, ever since my mother, her sister, launched herself into the ocean just beyond Aunty’s house, she has kept a lid on, blocked us out of her life. Yet here I came, her twenty-five-year-old, still-grieving niece, breaching all her literal barriers and boundaries as if they never existed. I needed her help. And I found that damned note one week after first arriving two weeks ago, when we lived aboveground, like most humans, not hiding in a hole. As shocks go, the note is tame by comparison to the other shocks that crashed like asteroids in the last two weeks.

  Now I’m in the basement remains of a burned guest cottage on Aunty’s property, hiding. I hear a woman who wishes to kill me—or rather, wishes to kill me and my companion. She’s scraping and scratching, clawing and hacking her way through the otherwise impenetrable tangles of five-foot-high hedges and tornadoes of oceanside brambles. Her skin must be ravaged like a savage’s, the thorns, the heavy dead sticks off twisted trees, the relentless vines that wish to hold you firm for their forest friends, the nettles, to slice skin. All around us topside is a New England jungle, as if nature wishes to coil vegetation into a barrier between inland and the glorious roaring ocean it protects. And the goddess ocean, she’s angry tonight, yelling at us mortals in the middle of a personal war. Her thundering waves warn of the coming hurricane.

  In the last two weeks, I’ve come to view my world in dramatic terms, and as this night is either a magnificent resolution or our climactic
end, I find comfort in anthropomorphizing nature as Earth’s army, the Atlantic as Earth’s one goddess, and the sky her faithful servant. I must consider something greater than the woman who hunts us, focus on something more forceful than her murderous evil. Because this is the literal last ditch: we have nowhere else to run. Like lab mice in a glass box. No clear, safe escape. If we try to exit from where we entered, out through the hidden hinged board among other boards that cap this burned basement, she’ll hear us and hack us. Again. I lost too much blood before I tied the kerchief tourniquet around my wounded shin. I’m weakened and pale, slouching in a lean against a dirt wall. My companion is even worse. Nature now is our only hope.

  The woman above who hunts us, she treats the boundary of nature’s twisted knights like trash. A thwack, thwack returns, her slicing through vines and overgrowth, cutting a path with a hatchet she took from the barn. “You bitch,” she screams. “You biiiiitch,” she screams again—the word bitch is a bat’s sonar, sending out waves of sound to detect us, her insects in this hole.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AUNTY LIV

  Two years ago—Boston

  This is the story I’ll have to commit to memory and live with, forever. This is my story now. I will never, I cannot, forget the details. Even as I watch the facts unfold and I burn this story, the one I’ll tell if asked, I am confused at my current reality. It’s like the emotional delusion I felt upon Daddy’s death and my two miscarriages, but this is not delusion. This is not delusion. Watch, listen, burn these details to your mind. Everything is wrong, everything is off. This is not delusion. This is real.

  I watch her, because, I admit, I want to watch her disintegration. I am not an evil person—at least, I thought I wasn’t. I am, I was, happy. I have a great family. I live in a pink house, a shade of light rose, by the sea, on a large parcel of land that neighbors Haddock Point State Park. The brightest blue morning glories crawl up my outer walls, netting the creamy rose like blue crocheted lace. It’s possible I am insane now. I should maybe get professional help; I sometimes don’t recognize myself. But I don’t think any medical intervention would clear my mental plague. What I suffer is the insanity of being in love. The type of insanity for which there is no cure.

  I trailed her all day, and she led me here, to Proserpina’s, the oldest Italian restaurant in the universe, but somehow regular vintage in Boston. The walk down the alley to Proserpina’s, the buildings we pass, all made of bricks.

  It’s early June, so it’s friggin’ cold one minute and hot the next. I say spring is like a menopausal woman. Mop, my lovely nerd niece at Princeton, is more giving in how she describes spring. Last night in a phone call, she said, “Boston weather is bipolar: hot one day, cold the next, high, bright sun one minute, biting chill the next. Spring is a selfish bully, clawing to hold more time away from our beloved New England summers.” So that’s one way to put it. I responded by telling Mop I love her, and to go on and finish up for the semester with her nerd poetry and philosophy courses so we can enjoy the damn beloved summer—which, as of now today, I’m almost certain is lost forever.

  For me, however you describe New England spring, this weather sucks. Brings every strain of cold and pneumonia to Saint Jerome’s, where I work, one block away. I’ve taken off and put back on my green cashmere sweater fifty times while trailing her through Boston Common. The pink flowering trees are in bloom now, so the scent of sharp sugar and a dusting of pollen lingers in my nose.

  We enter the restaurant. She sits in a circular booth with padded walls with another woman. I’m in the likewise circular booth adjacent them, the barrier between us high, so they don’t see me. The woman I follow, she doesn’t know me. Doesn’t know the impact I’m about to make on her life. I have no clue who this other woman is, and I wouldn’t care, except for what I heard and what I did see and what I didn’t see, as I expected to see, in the park.

  Nothing made sense about her path here. My simple intention was to follow her until she met up with him and watch from afar as he told her about us. Simple. By now, she should have returned to Danvers, a forty-minute drive north of Boston, to their big Victorian across from the baseball fields. She should be sitting in her car in her perfect-paved, suburban driveway, her head on the wheel of her ridiculous minivan, the color of drab and dated yet evil, like her, maroon. She should be burrowing her etched face, etched of her madness, into her steering wheel, grappling with accepting what he should have told her. But this did not happen.

  Instead, I followed her following another woman. If she knew the truth, she’d be following me.

  Do I know everything? Am I the sucker? Is he making love to this other woman too? No. We’re in love. He’s meant to tell his wife today.

  He was supposed to tell her, his wife, in Boston Common, where I waited and watched. But he never showed, despite her being there, and she waited under a flowing willow, and I across the pond, watching. Then she saw this other woman traipsing through with a Lord & Taylor shopping bag, and she followed her, so I followed her following this other woman. A total twist to my intended spy session. Who is this other woman? I wondered. I continued following.

  The wife I follow cornered this other woman at the edge of the Civil War cemetery on Tremont, across the street from Suffolk Law School, a half block out of the park. With one hand wrapped around the black iron of the cemetery’s fence, and one foot away from a cracked, gray grave, I caught only fragments of their heated argument, but pieced together enough: this other woman is a neighbor friend of the wife I follow, and the wife thinks this neighbor woman, whose name is Vicky, is having an affair with him. But she’s wrong. No. This Vicky is not sleeping with him, my love. MY love.

  Out there, aside crumbling graves, a cool wind swooped in and swirled Vicky’s hay-bale hair, washing out her words to me. When the wind slowed, I heard Vicky deny the wife’s “false accusations.” Oh, little Vicky with the twitchy nose, she was pissed, but she must empathize with the wife, or hold some diabolic ulterior motive: she convinced her to calm down and join her for a late lunch at Proserpina’s. I followed, and now we’re separated by the curved booth wall.

  All staff of Saint Jerome’s, where I work with him, come to Proserpina’s to unwind. My place of employment takes up the entire block behind. The other regular inhabitants of Proserpina’s are law professors and law students from Suffolk Law, and, of course, Freedom Trail tourists, who are obvious as the only ones wearing the “Paul Revere Rode Here” and “Wicked Pissah” T-shirts they purchased down at Faneuil Hall.

  With the law school on the same block and the hospital behind, this is our regular spot, us nurses and doctors, us hospital workers, us budding lawyers and professors. Hell, he could walk in any minute, still in his white doctor’s coat, stethoscope around his thick, muscled neck, the one I’ve sucked after getting too liquored during Proserpina’s happy hours. I scan the crowd with furtive eyes but find no one I recognize. The bloodred paintings of Tuscan poppy fields litter the dark paneled walls. I hide my face behind the extra-large menu. The tension in Proserpina’s, for me, is like a plaza held captive by a backpack bomber.

  I had pulled the waiter aside upon entering and said with a pleading smile, “Please don’t interrupt, please. I need to finish this book. Please bring me still water and the penne Bolognese, thanks.” This way, the waiter won’t interrupt my eavesdropping or call too much attention to my presence next to her and this Vicky.

  At first, her and Vicky’s conversation in the adjacent booth was inaudible. All I captured were excited whispers. But now I hear the wife, because I calibrated my hearing to the cadence of their conversation, and she’s just opposite me. I note how the restaurant’s music forms a barrier between her voice and the sparse inhabitants far away at the bar. The bar folk are further insulated from her talking, given how they conduct their own loud conversations by leaning in to one another for better hearing, what with the television squawking mindless drivel about the Red Sox game tonight and the outfits
a state senator dressed her two daughters in to tour Boston on vacation. The wife I follow shoos the bow-tied waiter away. He snaps a basket of bread on their round table in retreat.

  “I’m done with this. He’s been saying he wants to talk to me tonight, and I know what he’s going to say. I thought you were my friend, Vicky. He wants to leave me for you,” the wife says to this Vicky.

  No, that is not what he is going to say to you tonight. Not the plan at all. He was supposed to tell you in the park today, where I was to watch, he’s leaving you for me. Me. Me. Me. Not this Vicky. And you have no clue who I am, Cate. Cate, your name tastes of metal in my mouth. Like a metal pin in my mouth . . . like the metal shirt pin that cretin shoved in my mouth when Daddy tried to save . . . no, stop. Stop. Don’t go there. Don’t think in the past. You’re here, now, in the present, in a restaurant. You are forty-some fucking age, not fourteen. Listen.

  I need to spit just to think your name, Cate. Everyone thinks Cate is an innocent, best-friend name, so yellowy and pristine, untroubled by problems and poverty, the epitome of sanity. But that’s not you, Cate—foul, I spit your name. You are the opposite. You don’t deserve your own name, much less him.

  He never showed in the park, and instead you saw her, and you followed her, and now here we are. Where is he? And who the fuck is Vicky?

  I know a panic attack is closing in on me. I force a cavernous inhale and push the air around me with flat palms. I drop my head, close my eyes, and breathe. No. Heart, stop. Stop going crazy. Listen. You must listen. Relax. Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . breathe.

  The waiter is back, timid in his approach to Cate and Vicky’s table. “Madams, I am sorry to interrupt, but my shift ends in five minutes and I could expedite your order now, before shift change, please.”

  Cate grunts and orders “spaghetti and meatballs,” because she’s an obstinate child. “And ensure the chef places exactly, ex-act-ly, three meatballs, not two, and not four,” she adds, because she’s a fucking psycho. I flip a page in the book I swiped from a park bench, sticking my nose to the cracked inner spine, appearing enthralled in this thriller—although it could be a romance novel, I don’t know. Mop would know. She’d be able to read and listen. But I couldn’t possibly hear the real world around me if I were reading. I suffer consumptions. I need consumptions, for safety. For sanity.