Excerpt – Beneath the Poet’s House by Christa Carmen
Synopsis
For a grieving writer, the secrets of the past and present converge in a novel of gripping psychological suspense from the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Daughters of Block Island.
Unmoored by her husband’s death and suffering from writer’s block, novelist Saoirse White moves to Providence, and into the historic home of Sarah Helen Whitman, the nineteenth-century poet and spiritualist once courted by Edgar Allan Poe. Saoirse’s certain she’ll find inspiration in the quiet rooms, as well as in the tucked-away rose garden and forgotten cemetery at the back of the property.
Saoirse is immediately welcomed by an effusive trio of transcendentalists obsessed with Whitman, the house, and Whitman’s mystic beliefs. Saoirse, emerging from grief and loneliness, welcomes the idea of new friends taking her mind off the past―even as they hope to summon it. When she meets Emmit Powell, a charismatic and charming prize-winning author, Saoirse thinks she’s finally turned a corner.
Emboldened by new romance, Saoirse begins to write again and, through her writing, rediscover herself. But as old fears return, she finds that nothing about her new life is what it seems―and a secret she’s tried so hard to bury may not be the only thing that comes back to haunt her.
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Excerpt
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?
About the Author
Christa Carmen lives in Rhode Island. She is the author of The Daughters of Block Island, winner of the Bram Stoker Award and a Shirley Jackson Award nominee, the Indie Horror Book Award-winning Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, and the Bram Stoker Award-nominated “Through the Looking Glass and Straight into Hell” (Orphans of Bliss, Wicked Run Press). She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Boston College, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine. When she’s not writing, she keeps chickens; uses a Ouija board to ghost-hug her dear, departed beagle; and sets out on adventures with her husband, daughter, and bloodhound–golden retriever mix. Most of her work comes from gazing upon the ghosts of the past or else into the dark corners of nature.
