Carolyn zoomed in so they could easily read the entry for the Youngs.

“Okay, here we can see exactly who was living in this house in 1930,” she said as Douglas read along.

Outside the rain and wind continued to pound the house as Carolyn catalogued the Young family of eighty years earlier.

“Head of household, Desmond Young,” she read. “He was fifty years old, and his occupation was listed as ‘financier.’ And after this is his wife Hannah, age forty-six.”

“Look at all those children they had,” Douglas observed.

They fell quiet. Douglas was quite sure Carolyn was thinking the same thing he was. That most of those children would be dead that same year, taken in the first of the family slaughters.

“Douglas Young,” Carolyn read, pointing to a name on the screen.

Douglas swallowed hard. “That’s my great-grandfather,” he said. “The first of the Douglas Youngs to die in that room.”

He saw that he was listed with his wife and four children: Francis, David, Douglas, and Cynthia. The younger Douglas was this generation Douglas’s grandfather. He was two years old at the time of this census. Fifty years later, he, too, would die in that room.

Carolyn was reading the names of the rest of Desmond Young’s children. “Samuel, Margaret, Howard…” She paused. “There’s your Uncle Howie right there. A strapping lad of eighteen years old, before tragedy struck.”

Douglas nodded.

“And finally there were the children, Jacob and Timothy.” Carolyn sighed. “A few months after this was taken, this family would be practically wiped out.”

“But what are the rest of the names?” Douglas asked.

Carolyn smiled. “That’s the real reason I wanted to see this record. Who else was living in this house in 1930?”

They both peered in at the screen to make out the names.

“Look!” Douglas shouted. “Clement Rittenhouse! That must be Clem!”

“Yes,” Carolyn said excitedly. “‘Age: twenty-nine. Occupation: gardener.’ And look. It says here he couldn’t read or write.”

“So he was just a dumb old brute,” Douglas said. “Probably easily manipulated.”

“And look!” Carolyn exclaimed. “Beatrice! It’s Beatrice! Her last name was Swan!”

“Beatrice Swan,” Douglas said.

“‘Age: nineteen,’” Carolyn said, her voice becoming sad. “She was so young. ‘Occupation: servant.’ She was single, born in Maine. And unlike Clem, she was literate.”

“There’s no baby listed with her,” Douglas observed.

Carolyn shook her head. “No. The child wouldn’t have been born yet. The census was taken in April. Harry Noons said that Beatrice didn’t have her baby until the late spring. But she would certainly have been pregnant at the time this was taken.”

With her cursor she hit a link to take them to the next page of the census. After it had loaded, she said, “Damn.”

“What?” Douglas asked.

“That’s it. That’s the entire list of the household. There was no one else living here.”

“Who were you hoping to find?” he asked.

Carolyn sighed. “Whoever else may have been involved in the events of that night. Remember that Diana picked up on another presence-and she said that presence was the force that really controlled the room. It’s not Clem, and it’s not Beatrice. I was hoping to find a name of someone else living in the house at that time.”

“So who could this other force be?”

Carolyn stood, pacing a little bit. “It could be anyone. A day servant perhaps. Remember Harry Noons worked on the estate, but unlike Beatrice and Clem, he didn’t live here. Surely there were others like him, any one of whom might have been involved in what happened that night, and be the force that still holds this family in its power.”

“What makes you think it’s a servant?”

“I don’t think that necessarily,” Carolyn explained. “It’s just one possibility. It could be anyone. Someone who lived in the village.” A thought occurred to her. “It could be the father of Beatrice’s baby, whoever he was.”

“Yeah,” Douglas said. “If only we knew who he was.”

Carolyn’s eyes were sparkling. “Get your bike. We’re going into town.”

Douglas stood. “Sure, but why? Where are we going?”

“Back to the town clerk’s office.”

Douglas made a face. “We’ve been there before. There’s no record of Beatrice’s death.”

“I’m not looking for a death record this time,” said Carolyn. “Last time, we didn’t know Beatrice’s last name. We could only look up records by date. Now that we know her name was Swan, we can look up some birth records.”

Douglas was nodding. “Beatrice’s birth record…”

Carolyn smiled. “And more importantly, her baby’s…”

In moments they were flying down the hill on Douglas’s bike, both of them wrapped in rubber raincoats. Despite the whipping rain and the chill wind, their spirits were high. And Douglas couldn’t deny how much he liked the feeling of Carolyn’s arms wrapped around him, her face resting against his shoulder. Suddenly he was filled with the urge just to keep driving, bypass the village, just get on the highway and head to Canada. Surely the forces that had ruled his family for eight decades wouldn’t follow them over the border. He laughed to himself at the absurdity of it all and turned the bike into the parking lot of the town hall.

Inside, peeling off their wet raincoats, Douglas realized they didn’t have a lot of time. It was nearly four o’clock, and the clerk’s office closed at four-thirty. “Clock’s ticking,” he said.

Carolyn looked at him. “I’m all too aware of that,” she said.

He knew what she meant. It wasn’t just today’s clock that worried her. The lottery would be held in two days. Time was running out.

The clerk brought them a large ledger with the word BIRTHS imprinted in gold on the spine. On the top she had placed a computer printout. Consisting of several stapled pages, it was a list of names. The top sheet had names all beginning with A.

“This helps a great deal,” the clerk told them, tapping the printout. “The original records weren’t indexed. But this was done not so long ago to help you more quickly get to the record you need.”

“Thank you,” Carolyn said, eagerly flipping through the list to the page containing the S names. “Here she is,” she said within seconds. “Beatrice Swan, born 1911, page 383.”

Douglas opened the heavy volume and turned to the correct page. There, in faded handwriting, was the entry marking Beatrice’s entrance into this world. Her father was Horace Swan, a farmer. Her mother was the former Jeanne Trudeau, born in Quebec. It seemed terribly odd staring down at the sheet of paper that bore witness to Beatrice’s life, when they knew her only as an anguished spirit, roaming the estate, trapped in eternal grief. But here she was a flesh-and-blood baby, somebody’s daughter. Douglas remembered seeing her that day on the cliffs, and his heart broke.

Carolyn told him to write down the information as she flipped through the printout. “Now, we need to find a Swan birth in the year 1930,” she said. She flipped ahead a few pages. “Yes! Oh, thank God, yes! It’s here! Baby Swan, born May twentieth, 1930, page 785.” She looked over at Douglas. “It’s marked ‘illegitimate.’”

“Will it tell us the father’s name?” he asked as he began turning the pages in the old dusty volume.

“Let’s pray,” Carolyn said.

But there was no page 785.

“That can’t be,” Douglas said. “Wait a minute.” He turned back a page. “Page 783, with 784 on the back.” He gulped. “Then it’s page 787, with 788 on the back.”

“Look,” Carolyn said, her voice betraying her disappointment. “You can see there once was a page here, but it’s been torn out.”

Indeed, in the gutter of the book, there was a faint remnant of a torn page.

“Who tore it out?” Douglas asked. “And why?”

Carolyn made a face. “We might not be able to answer those questions just yet, but we can maybe find out when.”