Read the Excerpt: Turn Off the Light by Jacquie Walters
THE APPLE IS AN OMEN.
She does not yet know why, but she is sure of it.
The moment Edith finds it near the hearth, she pauses, a stillness overcoming her body. And then she cannot help but reach for it, pick it up, twist it this way and that in the window’s early-morning light.
She wonders if her husband has left it here for her. But that would be curious for David, who is a practical man. Not uncaring, not unkind, but also not preoccupied with the happiness of others. And anyway, she does not know where he would have gotten it. She has heard of only one neighbor, farther north, who has an apple tree in the garden. The low-lying, sandy ground of the Shore does not provide the right climate for growing apple trees.
And yet here she is, holding the firm red thing in her hand.
A part of her consciousness tugs at her like a small child at the hem of her dress. Desperate to be heard. But she snuffs out that voice with her logical brain, a habit she has honed over the years. It is just an apple. When she sinks her teeth in, juice travels down her chin and through the space between her fingers. She has never tasted anything like it. The flavor is complex, at once biting and soft.
The ominous feeling persists, but she convinces herself she is making monsters of mist and wind after yesterday’s sermon. The minister spoke of Eve and the apple, and now she is conflating a religious lesson with an innocent piece of fruit—one that was likely ferried here by an animal from her northern neighbor’s property and dropped through her open window. Nothing mysterious about it.
She quickly braids her long, thin brown hair to keep it out of her face as she warms a late breakfast of cornmeal mush over the fire. She takes a few more bites from the apple’s red flesh, and with each new burst of flavor, the hollow feeling in her stomach recedes. The apple is, indeed, just an apple. She thinks of her father, whose voice often bounces between her temples, reminding her that practicality and logic should always win over feelings. Perhaps he could see even when Edith was a child that she would forever be tempted by instinct.
A knock startles her from her thoughts. At once, her mouth is dry. She looks at the door, and though she resists it, the ominous feeling returns.
Another knock.
“A moment,” she says as she mixes the mush before abandoning it for her visitor. She slips the apple in her apron pocket and heaves the door open.
It’s Grace, Edith’s closest neighbor and friend. Her eyes are rimmed with red, her face flushed. She must have run the nearly two miles here. Her long, light hair, which usually falls effortlessly to below her breasts, is tied haphazardly at the nape of her neck, loose tendrils stuck to the sides of her sweaty face.
“Come,” she says between heavy breaths. “Please.”
“Calm. Breathe,” Edith tells her, placing a hand on Grace’s shoulder to help steady her. “You should sit.”
Grace shakes her head. The whites of her eyes are so red from crying that it makes the blue of her irises pop. “Bring your herbs,” she says. “My husband. His summer sickness—we need you.” Her body begins to convulse, the emotion of it all and the toll of the trip setting in.
Edith gets Grace settled safely in a chair. “Take a moment,” she instructs. “And then tell me.”
Grace nods and swallows. “Fever, surely. He was shivering when I left. Shivering! In this heat!”
Edith nods solemnly.
“And a rash,” Grace continues. “On his neck, his upper back. His eyes look different somehow. And he says it’s like fire in his throat.” Her own eyes fill, but she presses them closed forcefully in an effort to stave offtears.
“Okay,” Edith says. “Wait here while I gather my things.”
She needs to find David, who is somewhere on their forty acres, to inform him of her task. But first, she rushes to the corner of the main room just beyond the hearth. There, flush with the wide wooden floorboards, is the door to the root cellar, its rough-hewn planks growing softer each day with damp. Edith crouches low and wraps her fingers around the iron ring hammered into the door’s surface.
The wood, swollen from the humid sea air, groans as she pulls upward, the hinges squealing as if alive. A breath of cool, earthy air rises to greet her. She takes the lantern from its hook by the hearth, lights it with practiced care, and descends.
The steps are uneven, carved roughly from stone. The flickering light catches on shelves lined with clay pots and bundles of dried herbs and plants. The cellar is small, only about six feet by ten feet, but it is Edith’s favorite place. Filled with her treasures. She prefers plants to people. Roots are more honest than men. And they never ask questions she does not wish to answer.
The damp wraps around her like a friend in greeting. Her eyes scan the shelves as she carefully considers what remedies to bring for her sick neighbor. She must be well prepared; the journey is not short. There can be no quick return for a forgotten item.
She gathers the necessary jars, wooden bowls for mixing, and her mortar and pestle. Then she turns back and climbs slowly, the lantern trailing shadows down the stairwell behind her. When she has resurfaced, she closes the trapdoor and latches it. She spots her shears near the hearth and, in case she needs to harvest anything on the journey, slides them into her apron.
As she does, her fingers rediscover the apple in her front pocket. With her back to Grace, she holds it up to her face as if examining it for clues. The hollow feeling in her stomach returns. And when she throws the half-eaten fruit in the fire, she swears she sees the flames jump.
The Devil enters through doors left open…
On the isolated Eastern Shore of Virginia, Edith is a healer, a woman of knowledge—and a woman watched. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Whispers creep through the dark. Terrified she has opened her home to the Devil, Edith makes a desperate choice.
Claire doesn’t believe in ghosts—until she returns home to care for her dying father and finds her childhood house… listening. As one sleepless night bleeds into the next, she becomes convinced something is stirring beneath the floorboards. Something that has waited a long time to rise.
Is the house haunted? What compels this lurking darkness? As the danger mounts, Edith and Claire will discover they’ll need each other to survive. But they are separated by four hundred years. And time is running out for them both.
