A Box Full of Darkness - Hardcover

St. James, Simone

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593200411 ISBN 13: 9780593200414

Verlag: Berkley, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

“From the book’s chillingly creepy setting, which previously appeared in The Sun Down Motel (2020), to a nerve-jangling plot that effectively borrows from a mix of genres to the writing itself, which shimmers with a dazzlingly sharp sense of wit, everything about St. James’ latest is done to perfection.”-Booklist (starred review)

Simone St. James, the New York Times bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel, returns with her scariest, most shocking novel yet in this pulse-pounding story about siblings who return to the house they fled 18 years before, called back by the ghost of their long-missing brother and his haunting request: Come home.

Strange things happen in Fell, New York. A mysterious drowning at the town’s roadside motel. The unexplained death of a young girl whose body is left by the railroad tracks. For the Esmie siblings—Violet, Vail, and Dodie—the final straw was the shocking disappearance of their little brother. It started as a normal game of hide-and-seek. The three closed their eyes and counted to ten while Ben went to hide. But this time, they never found their brother—he was gone and the ongoing search efforts turned up no clues.

As their parents grew increasingly distant, Violet, Vail, and Dodie were each haunted by visions and frightening events that made them leave town and never look back. Violet still sees dead people—spirits who remind her of Sister, the menacing presence that terrorized her for years.

And now after two decades running from their past, it’s time for a homecoming. Because Ben is back, and he’s ready to lead them to the answers they’ve longed for and long feared. If the ghosts of Fell don’t get to them first.

A Box Full of Darkness is another propulsive thriller from the author of The Broken Girls and The Book of Cold Cases, a surprising horror story from a writer who is “particularly gifted at doling out twists” (The New York Times).

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Simone St. James is the New York Times bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel and The Broken Girls. She spent twenty years behind the scenes in the television business before leaving to write full-time.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

Violet

Long Island, New York

September 1989

When I wake in the middle of the night, I don't always see darkness. Sometimes I see fog outside the window of my old bedroom, the way it curled like smoke, and I can hear water dripping from the trees. Sometimes I see my daughter's face on the day she was born. I can often picture with perfect clarity our old kitchen in the house where I grew up, or the patent shoes I wore until I outgrew them and handed them down to Dodie, or the yellowing secondhand paperbacks I used to pilfer from Vail's bedroom bookshelf.

Other times, the faces of the people I've seen over the years appear in my mind: the girl in the stairwell at my high school; the man in the window of a neighbor's house, gesturing for me to come in; the woman underwater in the lake, still wearing her wool dress and straw hat. I never forget any of them, and I think somehow they know it. That's why they show themselves to me.

Why I can see them when no one else can, I'll never know.

For a moment, in the dark, it's almost peaceful to recall their faces. Then I turn my head and catch something from the corner of my eye, and for a moment I think I see-

But no, never. Not for years.

It doesn't matter how long it's been. I'm always afraid it's there.

And then I close my eyes and wonder what it's like to see nothing at all.


The day was clouding over as I took my equipment from the trunk of my car. Buckets, cleaning solutions, brooms, mops, gloves. The house stood a few blocks from the shore, a split-level that was dark and empty of life. My employer, Tess, had given me a key.

I stepped through the front door and paused, taking in the silence. The quiet of a house that is no longer lived in is somehow different from any other silence-a little like pitch-darkness. The place was tidy, dim, slightly dusty, the blinds drawn. From what Tess had told me, the elderly woman who owned it had died in a hospital, not here. That was something, at least.

The easiest place to start in a job like this is the bathroom-small, and just about everything must go. I started with the guest bath, leaving the upstairs bath for later. Then I moved to the cabinets and bookshelves in the sitting room, sorting rapidly.

I was a cleaner, but of a specialized kind. The company I worked for cleaned out dead people's houses, sorting and distributing their belongings. Some people died with no living relatives left to do the job; others were, for whatever reason, not on speaking terms with everyone they ever knew. Some isolated themselves, and others were genuinely loathed. When that happened, my employer would get a call from a landlord, lawyer, or other far-removed person, and Tess would send me.

It was an efficient process. Since I had no connection to the person who had died, I could do the job without shedding a tear or feeling a pang of guilt. Throwing out the used toothbrush made me feel nothing. I didn't care that this woman had listened to Lawrence Welk records or had been prescribed antibiotics in 1981. I could toss out the old handmade Christmas ornaments. I could box up the family photos without being tempted to look at them, even for a moment.

I'd gotten into this line of work when my own mother died, alone in a rented apartment, far from the house where my siblings and I were raised. I'd wanted nothing to do with her belongings, hadn't wanted to touch her dresses or whatever items she'd kept of my father's for all those years. I had never even been to her apartment and didn't want to go now. So I'd found a service to empty it for me.

Tess was the one I'd hired. She and I hit it off. She always needed cleaners, and when I offered, she was willing to hire me even after knowing the dark corners of my history.

Now I cleaned for other people like me, and I never judged. Because I knew what it felt like to want to walk away from someone and forget.

At lunchtime, I tugged each finger of my rubber gloves to pull them off, then rooted through my bag for the sandwich I'd brought. I used the old woman's kitchen phone to call Tess, because the woman had died only a week ago and her phone line hadn't been disconnected yet.

"Good afternoon, this is Tess," my boss said when she answered. She was most likely sitting at her desk in her office, doing accounting and making schedules.

"Tess, it's me."

"Violet, hi. How's the job going?"

"Just fine, I guess." I looked across the counter to the sitting room, which was almost completely sorted. "This one's not too hard."

"Anything valuable?"

"Not much." We talked about scheduling the trash pickup, the charity pickup, the appointment with the secondhand dealer who would take items of value on consignment. I glanced at the ceramic salt and pepper shakers on the counter, the plastic napkin holder. I'd start on the kitchen this afternoon.

"Your ex called," Tess told me. "He said to tell you your daughter won't be coming to stay the weekend. Something came up."

I put down the crust of my sandwich. I'd been expecting that, though it still hurt. "Something always comes up."

"I know, Vi. He's being a grade A asshole. You should call a lawyer."

I shook my head, though she couldn't see me. "I don't need a lawyer." Lisette was fourteen, and the custody battle had been over long ago. I'd lost. Lisette visited me less and less lately, but whether that was her decision or Clay's, I didn't know.

"I'll help you pay for it," Tess said, because she was a good person, and we'd been friends for years. She also thought I needed money, which I didn't.

"There's no point," I said. "He'd just use my past against me, like he always does. You'd waste your money. Lisette will be an adult in a few years anyway."

"I don't care what Clay says. She isn't better off growing up away from you."

That was debatable. Even I admitted that. But I said, "I appreciate the vote of confidence. I really do."

"Find yourself another man, Vi. Get out there. A woman who looks like you-jeez. If I was single and had your legs, no man on Long Island would be safe."

I ignored that. Any man who knew exactly how damaged I was would run screaming. "Anything else?"

"Yeah, a weird one. I got a call from a man who was looking for you. He said he was from Daylight Landscaping, in Fell, and he was calling about the house."

Shock sent heat up the back of my neck and made my vision blur.

"Violet?" Tess asked on the other end of the line.

I braced my palm against the Formica countertop and closed my eyes. The landscapers had been hired years ago, and there had never been a problem. Not once.

Something was very wrong.

"Violet?" Tess sounded alarmed.

"I'm here." I cleared my throat, tried to sound even a little bit normal. "They called you?"

"He said you weren't answering your home line, and the answering machine didn't pick up, so he wasn't sure he had the right number. You'd left him the office number in case of an emergency, so he called here."

There couldn't be an emergency, not a real one. There was no one living at the Fell house. Unless the place had burned down. The thought gave me a jolt of panic. "What did he want?"

"You have a house upstate?" Tess's tone was curious, even a little suspicious. She'd seen me for years as a down-and-out former mental patient, not a person who owned property. Property big enough to need landscapers, no less.

"It's . . . my parents' old place," I explained lamely. "No one lives there. The landscapers keep it up."

"Huh." There was an unpleasant tone in Tess's voice. "You're full of surprises, Violet."

Her meaning was clear. Tess thought I had confided in her, told her everything, and she didn't like that I hadn't. Because she knew I'd...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Berkley
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593200411
• ISBN 13: 9780593200414
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: BERKLEY; https://www.penguin.com/?s=BERKLEY; ; Unit 2 Limavady Business Park; Limavady; County Londonderry; BT49 0HR; Vereinigtes Königreich
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland