Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling by Michael Boccacino

Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling by Michael Boccacino is a strange and wonderful gothic tale of other worlds blending with our own and the consequences that fall from it. It is a fable told in the old way, not the sanitized Disney versions we feed our children, but the dark and bloody tales we keep to ourselves and only recall when it is late and dark at night.

..."No one ever comes back," I said.
James pulled his face away from the skirts of the mystery woman, and looked her over carefully before returning my pleading gaze with a confused expression. In his eyes I could see that there was no doubt the woman he clung to was his mother.
Paul didn't bother to remove his head from the other woman's shoulder. He had awoken from his nightmare and it had all been some terrible misunderstanding. Everything he hoped for had come true.
"But she has. She's alive again."...

Charlotte Markham, the Governess to James and Paul Darrow is awoken from a dream by the screams of a woman. She goes downstairs and is related the tale of a murder and the victim being the boy's own Nanny. Charlotte, a widow herself, must take into her care the boys and their father Henry, who themselves had recently buried the Lady of the house, Lily Darrow. So soon after the loss of their mother, the boys are subjected to another terrible loss. The murder of their Nanny.
One day after lessons, they wonder into the woods surrounding their estate and come upon a path not seen before. A path that leads them to a new place. The House of Darkling. Where they find the living Lily Darrow. But is she still alive? Or something else. Charlotte knows she must unravel this and yet is grieved to tear their children away from the mother they have found again.

..."What do you make of spirits?"
He looked disappointed. "I wouldn't know. I don't touch the stuff. Man of the cloth, you know."
"Not spirits, spirits. As in apparitions of the formerly living."
He paused and rubbed his chin. "Well, I can't say that I've ever seen one." He looked at me strangely, as if I'd suddenly grown a pair of horns.
I quickly elaborated. "Neither have I, of course. But I've been reading the children ghost stories, and James asked me if all spirits were evil..."

Charlotte watches the boys as they visit their mother at the House of Darkling and comes to find that it's inhabitants are not just spirits or human at all. But are the creatures of fable and legend. Creatures much darker and deadlier than the stories that are told of them.
It is here in the House of Darkling that Charlotte must battle against these creatures and the master of the house as she tries to save the souls of the boys; James and Paul. And in doing so, perhaps even save herself.
Michael Boccacino has crafted a well written fable of loss and pain and the inevitability of death. For human and inhuman alike.
A good read.