“It took another couple of days to get to a locksmith and have him make a separate key, but by then he’d been up several days and was suffering the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation. His wife found him in the bedroom, having run headfirst into a wall. He was on the floor surrounded by a pool of blood.”

“He deserved what he got, but Jesus.”

“That’s two people, Mira. Henry and Roman. Two that went crazy. I think both of them saw the ghosts. It could explain what happened with Mr. Loomis too. Maybe he saw them and wasn’t convinced they were real. Maybe he died because he denied them their history.”

“I don’t know, Jesse,” Mira said, but she did know. Right in front of her was the answer to it all. Crazy old Mr. Loomis, people used to say as they mocked him, but what if he’d been right? The ghosts had been after him for what his family had done, and he stayed out of defiance, refusing to believe in their existence until they finally killed him.

“If it was only those two deaths I’d let it go, but it’s not just them. Look, I’ve mapped it all out. There’s a pattern of people dying on this land. You know about the construction workers, and Mr. Loomis, but there’s Alden. So many others. A whole history of families with unexplainable deaths. Freak accidents. Family members being committed and turning to suicide. I’ve made lists and marked each one, but the thing is—and I didn’t realize this until recently—they all tie up to the plantation. Every single one.”

“You’re telling me the ghosts are retaliating.”

“Yes, that’s exactly it. Slowly, but surely, they’ve been waiting for their revenge. Any descendants of those who harmed them or their kindred, they’re seeking them out, killing them if they venture on the property. And now with the wedding, they’re all here. Almost everyone at the wedding is a descendant of slave owners. All of them the great-grandsons and -daughters of planter aristocracy, and there’s something else. Here, I’ll show you. Look.”

Jesse handed her another copied page, a newspaper clipping about the plantation’s renovation. It was a fluff piece, done to drum up interest in the park the place would become. At the bottom a line briefly mentioned the revolt. “Figures,” Mira said, commenting on it before folding the paper back up and placing it on the table with the rest of Jesse’s research.

“You don’t get it. Don’t you see, Mira? Look at the date. The anniversary of the slave revolt is tonight.”