Prologue

Dot Maddox watched the macabre scene unfold before her, her face stoic. It was the way she was, the way she had been raised: never show your emotions; they are a weakness and can be used against you. 

Dot understood the sentiment all too well. It was the price she paid for the way she had been torpedoed into life, thrown into the open door of a convent. No note, just a crocheted blanket, which Dot had kept for most of her childhood until it became threadbare. As a child, she had imagined all sorts of things, principally that the future would one day lead her to her mother, who might finally explain why she had abandoned Dot.

  It was all Dot had from the genesis of her life, but one day, without warning, it was gone forever. Returning from class one day, Dot discovered one of the nuns had thrown the blanket away. Dot fell asleep crying and awoke with new tears emerging: it was the last time she remembered ever allowing herself to cry. What was the point of crying over something she had no control over? Living with the nuns in the convent had taught her that emotions had no place in her life. She must look forward, not back into a life that was not hers. 

Dot had little memory of those early days in the convent; indeed, her first memory did not surface until several years later, when she was just one of many girls, black hair cut into a severe bob, wearing the same scratchy blue uniform with frilly collar, barely able to lift her head for fear of what she might see. Little had changed in the intervening years. 

Now in her mid-twenties, Dot Maddox rarely wore anything other than black, showing as little flesh as possible. This suited her, mainly because it paid to be inconspicuous in her profession, to lurk in the shadows without being intimidating, with a face that invited trust. People might think Dot Maddox was odd, but they also knew they could trust her. 

Dot turned her head, noticing she was no longer alone. Elinor Duvall had stepped through the broken glass door, the hem of her full-length fur coat trailing through the overgrown moss and ivy in the sunroom. Elinor stopped next to Dot, her smooth face contorted with pain.

‘You got my note,’ Elinor said, her voice as deep as a man’s. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  Dot imagined Elinor was in her seventies, but her face did not show it. It was smooth, with eyes pulled tightly back, full lips painted red and plump. A tear trailed down Elinor’s face, spreading black eye makeup over her cheek. Silver grey hair was piled on her head, smooth and buoyant, not a strand out of place. She appeared to be the sort of woman who belonged in circles Dot could only imagine, not that she had any interest in moving in them herself. 

Dot knew to avoid eye contact with Elinor Duvall because her eyes did not lie and told a terrifying story. Dot had grown up under Elinor’s omnipresent shadow. The stories about her were legion, but Dot had always understood them to be gossip. Now, as Dot turned her attention to the chaos of the glasshouse, she was beginning to wonder what might be true. 

Despite her reluctance to get too close, Dot searched Elinor’s face. Dot had seen the unravelling of a human heart before, the splintering of a psyche when faced with the most unimaginable, unbearable news. It was never pretty, intensified by the knowledge that the person had no doubt awoken that morning, refreshed from a long sleep, and stretched as the sun rose in front of them, imagining a day filled with possibility and new adventures, not knowing that she was about to embark on the worst day of her life. In her career, Dot had spoken to many people whose lives were in ruins, and she had always wanted them to ask the following question: If you could do over your day, knowing how it would end, what would you do? It was a question with no answer. 

Dot had been down this road before: would it be better to know in advance when something terrible was going to happen, or would the futility and inevitability of it be too much and make it worse? Like dangling a carrot, everything is about to go wrong, but you can’t do anything about it. Was it not best to leave the devastation until the last unknowing second of ignorant bliss?

Dot stepped forward, forcing herself to look into the gaping hole. A coffin was pushed open, and all it now contained was a plain white robe strewn across the disturbed earth. 

‘I don’t understand what happened here,’ Dot breathed. ‘But I’m sorry, Elinor. I’m truly sorry. I know how much you loved your son-’

Elinor rounded on her, eyes flicking with confusion. ‘What are you talking about, Dorothy?’ 

Dot moved closer, fingers trailing across a headstone. ‘What does this have to do with Elias?’

Dot’s eyebrows knotted, retracing the steps which had led her to this moment. Her first eighteen years had been spent in this place, and when she left, she thought she would never return. It was a past that would only be a shadow. She left without a second thought, but there was one person she could not entirely erase from her life. Sister Dorothy, a kindly nun who not only lent her name to Dot, but had taken a personal interest in her. For Dot, she was a heroine, a light in the darkness of the unknowing.

When news of Sister Dorothy’s death reached Dot, it filled her with sadness but not a great deal of surprise. However, the letter that arrived turned everything on its head, leading Dot back to where it had all begun. Her arrival was discreet, but it seemed she had not entirely eluded detection. Days after her return to the place of her birth, a note arrived from Elinor; it was concise. 

I know you have returned to Corymore House, and I know why. But we have more urgent issues to address: I need your help, but time is not on our side if we are to save him. Come to the glasshouse right away before it is too late. Elinor.

Dot stared at the grave, her mind a whirl of confusion. What kind of person would dig up a grave and steal a body? Dot had only been in this place once, and it was not something she ever wished to repeat. Known as the glasshouse, it was an annexe of the main house, but it was far different. As a child, it gave her the creeps; now, in her twenties, nothing had changed. Dot never understood how a graveyard had come to be built inside a glasshouse, but she did not dare to question it. Whatever secrets the Duvall family had buried in that space, away from prying eyes, was none of Dot’s concern. She learned early to keep her nose out of other people’s business. 

‘Your note said something about saving “him”,’ Dot stated. ‘I presumed you meant Elias. And now I’m here, and looking at this, I can’t help but be reminded of who he was.’ She paused before adding, ‘How he was.’ 

Elinor clenched her fists upon hearing Dot’s words. They reminded Dot of many things, mainly of how devoted this mother was to her son, despite his being utterly unworthy of it.

‘Don’t cast aspersions on Elias’ name,’ Elinor spat. ‘I won’t allow it.’

As she spoke Elias’ name, his face returned to Dot: soft and round, with a button nose and wide eyes the colour of chocolate and a smooth forehead crowned with golden curls. Elias and his brother Henry were omnipresent in Dot’s early life. They were the two children of the Duvall family, who owned Corymore House, the stately home they allowed the Catholic church to use as a convent and orphanage.

Each night, two curious faces were at the top of the staircase, peering down at the orphans. They were not allowed to join them, but always watched. Henry played by the rules, but Elias never did. His determination to join them grew stronger as he grew, and he found increasingly intricate ways of doing so.

Dot did not understand it at the time, but it was clear that Elias was a boy who would follow no rules, and accordingly, he spent as much time as he could with the children from the orphanage. He was brash and cold and often terrified the children, but Dot understood him in ways no one else did. And although she could not articulate it in words, she knew there were ways to calm him down. The two brothers grew up alongside Dot, and although it took her a long time to trust them, a bond formed between them.

However, after leaving the orphanage, Dot never looked back. She had buried the ghosts of her youth, or at least she thought she had, but they had dragged her back, and now she must face the demons she had been running from. She wanted to close her eyes, but refused to because she knew she would see Henry’s face. Sweet, precious Henry, the polar opposite of Elias, whose destiny was never to grow old.

‘This has nothing to do with Elias,’ Elinor said, her voice cold. 

Dot was aware of the fractious relationship between mother and son, but she also understood it did not matter to Elinor. Despite Elias’s wayward tendencies, a stark contrast to his prim and proper mother, she was devoted to him, her only remaining relative. Dot was sure there was nothing Elinor would not do for, or to protect, her son, even though he had often tried her patience. Although unaware of what it meant at the time, Dot recalled that Elias spent most of his childhood in trouble and was often away from home for extended periods. The rumour was that he was in a special prison for children who were out of their minds.

Dot gestured to the open grave. ‘Then what is this?’

‘This grave belonged to my husband,’ Elinor explained. ‘The grave was Roger’s. And now he’s gone.’

‘Someone stole his body?’ Dot asked in disbelief. She tried to see inside the grave, but it was too dark.

Elinor moved away. She extended her hands. ‘Did you know my great-grandmother created this glasshouse to bury her husband?’ Elinor asked before her full, blood-red lips pulled into a smile, and she added, ‘And others.’

‘Others?’ Dot questioned.

Elinor nodded. ‘My great-grandmother understood, as I do, that the dead should be kept close. After Roger died, people assumed I had him buried there because I couldn’t stand being away from him. That’s partly true,’ she conceded. ‘But it’s only a fraction of the truth. I wanted Roger close to me, but for different reasons. I wanted to make sure no one else got hurt.’

A memory flashed in front of Dot. A man in the dark, his face briefly illuminated by the light coming in from a crack in the door, a vicious smile on his face. He almost sang with happiness when he spoke, but his eyes told the absolute truth. There was no light in his eyes. Dot shook her head, refusing to fall down the rabbit hole of memories. 

Elinor faced Dot again, her face softening as if she were talking to someone of limited intelligence who couldn’t possibly understand something so complex. ‘Don’t you understand? No one stole Roger’s body. He finally found his way out. He wants revenge.’

Dot frowned, pulling a strand of jet-black hair away from her face. ‘Elinor, your husband has been dead for years,’ she whispered.

‘He’s been in the ground for fourteen years, to be precise,’ Elinor stated. ‘And I’ve been waiting for this to happen for that whole time. I always knew it would, but hoped it wouldn’t.’ She stopped, extending her hands in front of her. ‘My husband is walking the earth again.’

Dot’s face softened. She always remembered Elinor’s public face, a smiling, benevolent woman. However, Dot had been too young to recognise the reasons for her slurring when she spoke or the sweet smell of gin on her breath. Whatever had happened to Elinor Duvall in the intervening years, it was clear it was not good. As Dot watched her, she remembered the tragedy that had destroyed her entire family. 

At the time, Dot was too young to comprehend what was happening, only hearing snatches of conversations between the nuns; all she knew for sure was that something had destroyed the Duvall family, tearing a hole through them. One summer, everything changed, and she barely saw any of the family again. When she turned eighteen and was finally able to leave the orphanage, Dot left and never looked back. 

In the intervening years, she thought little of her time at Corymore House, preferring to bury the memories and look ahead. Occasionally, they resurfaced, splinters and snapshots invading her sleep when she was most vulnerable and unable to force them away. They appeared distorted, leaving her disoriented and unable to make sense of them. Dot had long known that something terrible had happened at Corymore House, but she was not sure what. It was as if that whole part of her life was hidden away from her, locked in the recesses of her mind.  

‘Look!’ Elinor cried, extending her arm and pointing with a shaking hand to the ground around the open coffin. ‘Don’t you see that?’ she demanded. ‘That wasn’t someone trying to get into the coffin; it was someone trying to get out of it.’

Ignoring the growing unease she felt, Dot forced herself to move closer to the edge. She pulled back her shoulders, taken aback by what she saw now that she looked closely. The ground was indeed displaced around the coffin, and through the dry earth, Dot saw what appeared to be marks made by fingers, desperately scratching at the earth as if someone were pulling themselves upward. She cursed herself for being foolish, and though it made no sense at all, she realised someone had likely fallen into the displaced earth and tried to climb back out. It was not unimaginable or unexplainable, though it appeared Elinor Duvall was reading something entirely different into the situation.

Dot turned, moving towards the door. ‘I’m going to call the police,’ she said, not knowing why. She had a natural distrust of the police, fuelled by more than one encounter with them stemming from her misspent youth. However, with nothing else in her armoury to deal with the unfolding situation, it seemed like the only thing to do. 

Elinor blocked the path, stopping her from leaving. ‘I’m sorry, Dorothy, but I cannot allow you to leave.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Dot demanded, raising her hand. ‘Move out of my way.’

Elinor put her hands on Dot. ‘I can’t let you leave,’ she repeated, her grip tightening as she pushed Dot back towards the open grave. ‘I won’t let you leave. The ghosts have come back, Dorothy, and there is going to be hell to pay, which means none of us will leave this place. This is our final resting place, and it is what I must accept.’ She reached inside her purse, extracting a knife. She raised it, the blade gleaming. ‘And I’m very sorry to have to do this, but you must know, it’s because I have no choice. I am sorry, Dorothy, but this day was foretold.’ 

Dot opened her mouth to scream, but no sound emerged. Instead, she clutched her chest, her feet scrabbling against the earth, and before she could stop herself, she tumbled backwards, landing with a painful thud inside the open coffin. 

Elinor smiled, raising the knife, and whispered, ‘From dust we came, to dust we shall return.’

Now, Dot screamed.