None of the St. Clouds call it a mansion. Proximity normalizes its enormity. The land around it, the woods and park, as familiar as the backyard. It is the place they grew up. It is home— this brick house at 507 Hackberry Road, vaster than even our cast can make use of.
Outsiders hold their breath as they hurry past. Any of the dozen windows could hold a ghost; every dim form is a knife-wielding scion of evil, eager to steal their bodies. The younger St. Clouds grew up hearing children chant their brother’s name in playground murder ballads. The name Roland St. Cloud synonymous with deviance, and makeshift occultism, and threats to fair flesh. Thirty minutes, three bodies, a night in May near the end of the twentieth century.
There is no such thing as a haunted house, but certain places are wrong.
See from the street how the lights come on. It is like one, then four, then a dozen eyes opening. See the roaming shadows— more of them than usual on this, the killings’ anniversary.
Those who left must return: see James St. Cloud and his girlfriend, Heather, drive down the interstate’s warming corridor. James chatters about a movie called The House of the Devil, its pitch- perfect pastiche of eighties horror; the small irony of this title, as he heads home, is lost on him. Heather fusses with her thumbs and only just speaks. She has never come to the house on Hackberry Road. James is reticent about what this anniversary entails— though she, like everyone, knows the story. She saw the movie, Dollmaker, when she was still in high school. Knew James, before they ever met, through the tiny child actor who played him. But there are more complicated things they are not talking about. If only there were something besides the rumble of the road, the muted sounds of college radio. If only they were not getting steadily closer.
See Calla St. Cloud, trying every five minutes to connect to Amtrak Wi- Fi. James had offered to drive her from New York (It’s literally on the way, he said, I mean, why not?), but she couldn’t stand the thought of seven hours in a car with any couple. All the Remember when? and inside jokes, the lovey-dovey bullshit of people who believe in permanence. Calla regrets agreeing to come home; she has skipped the anniversary’s reunion these seven years since their parents died. But New York has become oppressive since she stopped writing. She stopped paying attention to the play she had running off- Broadway, stopped looking for men to fuck. She has been indoors playing The Neighborhood—the same game she’s failing to run on Amtrak’s shitty internet—and she can do that anywhere. At least at Edna’s, someone else might cook for her. The game crashes again; she spits, hisses. No one sits beside her.
See the house lights: the kitchen’s fluorescent glare, the living room’s soft yellow. The pantry has its own bulb and window. Edna St. Cloud goes from room to room turning all of them on. Not for safety and not because it’s dark. The evening’s ritual hasn’t begun. It is the comfort of cause and effect. The flick of a switch, the reliable binary. She can’t believe her luck: tonight the whole family will be together again. Legally the house is hers—willed to her and her alone when their parents died—but spiritually it belongs to every St. Cloud. Everyone except—except—she won’t think his name.
More lights: the red in her darkroom, the attic’s bare bulb. There’s only one room that can’t be lit, bricked up these nineteen years and plastered over. Though he is not dead, Roland has no home to come back to. From outside, you’d have to know what you were looking for to spot his old bedroom.
See Roger Merrilow hemmed in by the packed shelves of his study, skimming the book that made them all famous. How strange to have lived in this house for seven years! These halls and rooms bounded by basement and attic, which he once described to the ravenous public—now more familiar to him than any former home. It is the murders’ nineteenth anniversary but only their seventeenth ritual. Only after the dust settled, and the book was published, did they begin. Still—seventeen chances to perfect his monologue’s cadence. He is sure of his abilities as a raconteur. But he has been distracted; it is good to brush up on his narrative. To return.
The world turns. Blue twilight falls on the yard, the brick path, the tarp-covered circle of stones in the backyard. A window is obscured. The steady sound of hammering reigns over the house, dully clear in the yard, as plywood is secured over the living room’s fragile glass. This room, Edna protects above all others. This room where no one died.
Sound carries inconsistently in the St. Cloud house. Sometimes you can hear every footfall, every latching door. Sometimes every word stays in the room where it’s spoken. Wren Merrilow, the youngest, takes no notice of the hammering. She has lain in bed all day, reading. She has never known a life without the ritual. It will be nice to have a full house. Since Roger started homeschooling her, she’s had little contact with anyone but her parents. She has not seen her aunt, the playwright, since she was a child. And she delights in her uncle’s tales from the video store—gory masterpieces she will never watch. They are a family of storytellers, Wren thinks. Even her mother’s photographs are weighted with history and narrative.
It’s almost night, and all the lights are on. Each door’s key fills its lock. Soon the St. Clouds will move through the house, checking every dusty cranny, and— only when they know each room to be safe— finally flick the lights off. Then the ritual can begin.
If not for the yearly ritual, Edna thinks, what would bind them together? What would bring them home? The family would drift apart, a plate tectonics of the bloodline. Calla wouldn’t be on her way now. James would visit unreliably. Wren would get further away, and Roger probably. Edna would be alone in the forty-watt light with her memories of blood.
James and Heather are greeted at the door with cries of joy, How are yous, hugs and handshakes. What’s the latest: What are you watching, what are you reading? How’s the bakery, how’s school, it’s a shame about the gallery. This is what it means to come back. A return to familial flow—to all the things you share. Where you can find your way in the dark to a glass of water. It is all a ritual, every time, no matter the date.
Everyone is in the kitchen when Calla’s cab pulls up. She doesn’t knock; it’s been seven years and she still has her key. But she knows better than to enter anonymously. Her voice echoes through the house, through the guest rooms and bathrooms, the red darkroom and study, through all the lit corners. “It’s me,” she says. “I’m home.”
Reprinted with permission from All Us Saints by Katherine Packert Burke, published in © 2026 by Bloomsbury Press. All rights reserved.
