Darkness Falls

DARKNESS FALLS

A hundred and fifty years ago, in the sleepy fishing village of Darkness Falls, Matilda Dixon would give the local children cakes and treats and accept their baby teeth as “payment.” After her husband Sonny was killed in a boating accident and a kitchen fire left her horribly scarred, Matilda became a recluse—but she still collected baby teeth, now leaving coins behind instead of treats. When two children went missing on their way to visit “the tooth fairy,” the townspeople lynched Matilda in retaliation—just as the two children turned up alive and well.

Today, Kyle Walsh lives his life in fear, and has ever since he left Darkness Falls as a boy. Kyle is the only one who knows the truth—that the spirit of Matilda Dixon has returned to exact her revenge. Now Kyle must return home to confront his troubled past and save his childhood sweetheart Caitlin and her younger brother Michael from “the tooth fairy”—before she kills again!

Light shone down on Matilda Dixon . . .

Unlike the dark, foreboding, uneven light from the torches, this was a blinding, pure glare.

It was the light of righteousness.

Her dress caught fire first. Then her skin started to blacken. The rope also ignited, and soon the corpse fell to the ground.

A huge cheer went up from the crowd. John led it.

And then for some reason the cheers started to die, even as the corpse of Matilda Dixon was now a tiny inferno. John didn’t understand why, until a small voice said, “Papa?”

John Ames whirled around at the familiar voice. It was his son William. Next to him was Emma Jackson.

“We—we thought—we thought we could—could make it back before supper. We didn’t—we didn’t think—think we’d be so—so—so—”

And then William said nothing at all. He just stared at the burning corpse of Matilda Dixon.

A woman who had done nothing wrong.

John Ames felt a bit of himself die.

An
Original
Publication of POCKET BOOKS

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Copyright © 2002 by Revolution Studios Distribution Company, LLC

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks to John Hegeman and Duncan Macdonald at Revolution Studios for answering all my dumb questions; Joe Harris and Charles Adlard for
Darkness Falls: The Tragic Life of Matilda Dixon
comic book, from which I ruthlessly cribbed; the Pocket Books gang, including editor John J. Ordover and publishers Scott Shannon and Liate Stehlik; my wonderful agent, Lucienne Diver; the Web sites
www.Victoriana.com/
and the Virtual Victorian House Tour at
www.geocities.com/victorianlacell/
for useful reference; GraceAnne Andreassi DeCandido for her usual magnificent editorial advice; and the
Oxford English Dictionary
for reassuring me that the term
baby teeth
was already in use by the 1830s.

But most of all, thanks to Terri Osborne, who kept kicking me in the rear when I needed it most.

one

1836

Matilda Dixon was baking a lemon cake when she was told that her husband was dead.

Until then, it had been the happiest day of her life. Every day was the happiest day of Matilda Dixon’s life. It saved time and energy for more important things if she thought of it that way.

At first, she had thought the day she first met Captain Sonny Dixon to be the happiest day of her life.

That was later superseded by the day Sonny got down on his knee in the kitchen of Matilda’s father’s house and asked her to marry him.

That was, in turn, superseded by their wedding day, a glorious spring day in the field behind her father’s house.

Then every day of their honeymoon became the happiest day.

Then the day they moved to Darkness Falls together, with dreams of Sonny becoming a successful whaler dancing in their heads, buying the lovely small house on the edge of the woods near the lighthouse.

Then every day of their lives together.

Sonny had taken his boat out several weeks ago on a whaling expedition. Matilda had expected him to return within the week—probably with another scrimshaw carving to add to the huge collection they had already amassed. Matilda had once joked, “When you grow tired of the sea, you can retire and be an artist.”

“But my darling,” Sonny had said with that wide smile that had so enchanted her, “I will never grow tired of the sea.”

And then he would wrap his arms around her and pull her into an embrace. Mrs. Dixon stood a head shorter than Mr. Dixon, and so whenever they embraced, her head fit perfectly right under his chin, with his arms over her shoulders and her arms around his waist.

Of course, the real reason she wanted him to retire was so that they could have children. He kept promising her, “Just a few more trips at sea,” before they would settle down to the business of a family. It was a sufficiently vague promise that did not actually bind Sonny to a particular time frame.

Matilda was, however, willing to wait. Sonny was worth it. Besides, he always kept his promises to her, even if he wasn’t always quick about it. When they had first met, he had promised to make a scrimshaw with her face on it. Years went by, and she never saw it, but then, on their second wedding anniversary, he had presented it to her. “I may not be fast,” he had said to her with that smile of his, “but I do get there in the end.”

Most of Sonny’s scrimshaws were displayed in various parts of their small house—on the mantel, on the end tables, on the kitchen shelves. But the one of Matilda, based on a portrait done of her for her sixteenth birthday, had a place of pride on Matilda’s nightstand. It was the first thing she saw when she woke up in the morning and the last thing she saw before going to sleep. During the long, lonely days when Sonny was at sea, it served as a reminder of him that she treasured.

The lemon cake she was making was intended for young Samantha Wellington, who was turning eight today. Samantha loved lemons, and Matilda knew that the young girl would be happy as a clam when Matilda took it by their house.

Assuming, of course, that the rain ever stopped.

The storm had gone on for several hours. Matilda had been glad that Sonny wasn’t due back for a few more days. Even so, as the storm brewed, she put the lantern in the window. Normally, she waited until sundown, but there was no sun today, and she wanted to make sure that Sonny could find his way home on the off chance that he came home early.

Not that Sonny Dixon had ever been early for anything a day in his life. But Matilda always held out hope. Without hope, she would never have survived the long weeks without her husband.

The cake was in the oven, and Matilda was struggling to figure out how to transport it in the rain to the Wellington house without ruining it, when the knock came at the door.

It couldn’t have been Sonny. It was, after all, his house.

“Coming!” she called out, and headed for the door. When she left the kitchen, a chill came over her. She assumed it to be just the cold, rainy weather seeping in through the walls of the old house, only noticed as she moved away from the warming glow of the oven.

Matilda opened the door only a crack, so as not to let any more of the cold and rain in.

She saw two smartly dressed men, wearing topcoats and hats to protect them from the elements. Matilda recognized them as two men from the town, Mr. Turley and Mr. Jefferson. Both good men; Matilda remembered that Sonny had spoken highly of Mr. Jefferson in particular.

“Mrs. Dixon,” Mr. Jefferson said, removing his hat, despite the weather.

“Sorry, ma’am,” Mr. Turley added. He declined to remove his headgear. Matilda couldn’t bring herself to blame him. The rain had grown worse in the hours Matilda had spent in the kitchen working on the cake.

“Mrs. Dixon—Matilda,” Mr. Jefferson started, then stopped. He took a breath, put his top hat to his heart, looked down, and closed his eyes.

A fist of ice clenched Matilda Dixon’s heart. There was simply no manner in which she could conceive that what Mr. Jefferson was about to convey was in any sense good news.

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this. Mr. Dixon’s boat—Sonny’s boat—they came up against something fierce out there. They don’t think anyone survived.” He finally looked up at her with pale blue eyes. “I’m sorry.”

A female voice said, “That’s quite all right, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Turley. Thank you both for coming by to tell me this.” Dimly, Matilda realized that it was her own voice doing the talking, though she had no conscious recollection of forming those words.