cbr16bingo dreams
Well, now. This took quite a few unexpected turns!
It starts off as your bog-standard evil house with a few skeletons (cough) in its closets. Nobody seems to want Baneberry Hall, tucked away in the remote bits of Vermont. But a young couple, Ewan and Jess, thinks it’s a treat and the price is certainly right. They move right in with their five year old daughter, Maggie. They are only there twenty days before they flee in the middle of the night.
Ewan ends up writing a book, House of Horrors, about their experiences, which becomes a best-seller. Maggie’s parents divorce not long after, and Maggie grows up mostly with her dad. But she doesn’t know the true story of what happened, no matter which parent she asks, and when her father dies, she inherits the house, which oddly enough, her parents never sold. By this time, Maggie runs a business that renovates historic properties, so it only makes sense that she do the job herself, and the property can finally be sold. The property has not gone vacant all this time, but none of the various uses it has been put to, such as a bed and breakfast place, have prospered. It’s time for some extensive renovation, and Maggie likes to work with her hands.
Despite being a young child when she left, Maggie quickly finds the townspeople have not forgotten her. Many regard her with distrust, and she can’t even trust the motives of some who seem to want to help her. Not to mention she has memories of ghosts and events during that brief stay that are not especially reliable. And can we trust Maggie herself? A very twisty ending indeed!