While Eleanor has never believed in ghosts, one evening she hears children laughing and running around on the mansion’s third floor, even though there are no longer children at Cliffside. Death lurks in the hallways and on the grounds. In the early 1950s, the sanatorium was closed, and after being thoroughly disinfected, was soon reopened as a retreat for artists and writers.Īlmost immediately, however, Eleanor senses that Cliffside has not escaped its past. The victims, many of them children, were sent to Cliffside, not only for their own comfort and treatment, but to prevent them from infecting others. Back then, tuberculosis was a killer, a highly contagious disease with a low survival rate. In 1925, Chester Dare, Miss Penny’s father, built Cliffside as a sanatorium for TB patients. Written in Miss Penny’s hand, Eleanor is told she has a mystery to solve adding, “My nightmare is over. Later that evening, Eleanor finds another note within her bed covers.

The two died in an automobile accident 20 years ago. A suicide note, clutched in Miss Penny’s hand, explains that she’s lonely and wants to join her father and sister, Chamomile.

Even before Eleanor can settle in, Miss Penny is found dead, an apparent suicide, her face garishly painted to resemble a grotesque doll. Miss Penny is there to greet her, but their time together will be brief. While Eleanor is excited about beginning a new chapter in her life, she can’t shake the feeling of dread that overtakes her upon glimpsing the foreboding mansion through the fog.“Something wicked was indeed wending its way into my life, only I was too caught up in my circumstances to notice,” she observes. Almost too easily, “Miss Penny” makes an offer that Eleanor finds hard to refuse. Eleanor feels herself drawn to Cliffside, located on the shores of Lake Superior. Cliffside Manor, a respected retreat for artists and writers, needs someone to replace its longtime director, Penelope Dare. As luck would have it, the perfect opportunity lands at her doorstep. Although her experience would land her a position at another newspaper, she wants to make a complete change. Diagnosed with PTSD, she is forced to leave her job. After years of covering crime for a newspaper, Eleanor Harper suffers the cumulative effect of seeing so much violence and horror.

The end of temperance dare a novel