Chapter 5: Halloween

By seven-thirty, the Langford manor had ceased to resemble a mere dwelling. From the landing window, with the last of the afternoon’s work behind me, I watched it become what it had always seemed to want to be: a house that had been waiting, patient and hungry, for this night for a full century.

The first guests would not have to reach the door to feel it. Ancient trees arched over the winding drive, their limbs interlaced like a vaulted ceiling, their leaves burned to copper and crimson. Hundreds of tiny lights coiled around the trunks and lower boughs, so the trees seemed to glow from within. I had stood in the cold that afternoon holding the ladder while the lighting crew wound them, and even knowing how it was done, I felt the small thrill of seeing the whole thing lit.

The mansion itself was lit almost entirely from below. Concealed uplights in the shrubbery threw long, dramatic shadows across the stone, sharpening every turret, gable, and chimney. The tall windows on the ground floor burned amber, but several upper panes had been left deliberately dark, hollow eyes watching the night.

Black-iron lanterns flanked the front steps, their glass flickering with a light so steady it could have been real candle flame. There were no plastic skeletons, no inflatable ghosts, no orange-and-black streamers. Mother considered such things beneath the dignity of the estate, and I had heard her say so to the decorator twice. Every ornament had been chosen to look as though it had always belonged there, timeless and inevitable.

The front doors stood ajar beneath an enormous wreath of dried twigs, black roses, deep-red foliage, and soft feathers. A pair of carved pumpkins guarded the threshold. Their faces were not cartoonish grins but severe, almost human, etched with solemn lines that hinted at ancient rites.

I went down the stairs one flight, then stopped on the half-landing where the banister vanished into shadow, the place I had hidden as a child to spy on the grown-ups. From there the entrance hall stole my breath, as it did every year. The house’s original architecture did most of the work: a soaring two-story ceiling crossed with dark beams, polished marble underfoot, a sweeping staircase that curved up past me into the dark. Portraits of long-dead Langfords stood guard in gilt frames, their painted eyes fixed on the door. For tonight, each frame had been knotted with a thin black ribbon, as if the house were mourning the living.