The Door Before

by N. D. Wilson

  Hyacinth’s mother held Lawrence with his blond head draped over her shoulder as she approached wide porch steps up to the front door. Daniel hopped up the stairs in front of her, while Harriet and Circe hung back, shivering.

  Before Daniel could knock, the front door swung inward, leaving a screen door still closed. A lean shadow stood still behind the screen, holding a gun.

  “Don’t you move an inch,” the shadow snarled. The voice was a woman’s. “Who are you, and how’d you find this place?”

  Hyacinth could hear the low rumbling growl of angry dogs.

  Albert ignored the woman’s instructions, jumping quickly forward.

  “Albert Smith, ma’am,” he said, and then gestured around. “My wife, Trudie. Our five children. No ill will or ill intentions. I’m hoping we’re at the right place. Who might you be?”

  “If you need to ask, you don’t need to know,” the woman said. “What do you want?”

  “Your finest pancakes,” Circe whispered to her sisters. “Immediately. And fresh squeezed orange juice.”

  Harriet smiled. “A flat place to sleep will do just fine.”

  The girls were tired, Hyacinth knew. And for her sisters, tired always meant silly.

  Albert raised his voice and his hands to hold the woman’s attention.

  “I’m old Isaac’s grandson,” Albert said. “I’m afraid when he passed, well…I inherited the place.” He lowered his hands. “So that’s why we’re here. For the house.”

  For a long moment the woman was silent. Hyacinth expected her to say her name or maybe even claim that the house was hers. The still darkness made Hyacinth feel like another storm was coming.

  And then, slowly, the woman pushed open the screen door, revealing three snarling low-slung dogs, built like muscled barrels with teeth.

  “My name is Granlea Quarles,” she said. “You’re confused. This is my place, and I intend to keep it. You and your wife and your five offspring need to get yourselves elsewhere. Quickly.”

  Albert shook his head. “Ma’am, I’m sorry. I understand this is unpleasant, and if I’d known someone was living here I would have written first. But I have the lawyer’s letter and a copy of the will in my truck. If I could show you—”

  The woman whistled sharply through her teeth.

  The three-dog pack leapt out onto the porch. Daniel slid protectively in front of his mother. Harriet and Circe grabbed each other. Albert froze in surprise.

  “Kill,” the woman said. And the dogs exploded forward.

  THE ATTACKING DOGS IGNORED Daniel. They parted around Trudie’s legs, tumbled off the porch, slid on the damp, sandy path, ignored Circe and Harriet and Albert, and focused completely on Hyacinth.

  Hyacinth bit her lip, but she didn’t flinch or turn to run. Ignoring the adrenaline that pulsed through her, she didn’t reach for her father, although he reached quickly for her. Hyacinth didn’t let herself move at all. Not until the three dogs slid to a stop at her feet and sat their three rumps down in front of her with three tails thumping the ground and two tongues lolling.

  Granlea Quarles stepped out onto the porch, staring at her dogs in surprise.

  “Ray?” she asked. “Shark! Squid! Sick ’em!” But the dogs ignored the old woman, panting happily.

  Relieved, Hyacinth dropped into a crouch, gently touching three cold noses, and then scratching ears. She shifted her weight on the uneven ground and focused on the biggest dog. In the dim light, he looked almost black, but she could tell that he was something closer to a stormy gray. And his belly was pure white. Old scars striped his muzzle.

  “You must be Shark,” Hyacinth said. She reached out for him, and the dog pawed at her arms with one rough foot. She scratched his gray shoulders, rubbed his white belly, and then moved on to the next dog. She knew that the old woman was unhappy. Hyacinth could hear sputtering, but she didn’t care. She had a job to do, and her family was depending on her. If Lawrence had been awake and on his own two feet, then he would have helped. Animals deferred to him almost as much as they did to Hyacinth. But she had to handle this alone. The second dog was black with a wide skull and tightly cropped ears, but he had a white splotch on his forehead shaped like a stingray. And he held perfectly still. She leaned to kiss the splotch, and the dog smelled like hay and salt and long, dusty roads. She liked it.

  “Hello, Ray. Lawrence will love chasing you,” she said. “Yes he will. And now Squid…”

  Squid was an old mottled brown dog with one brown eye and one that was such a pale blue it might have been blind. His fur was a little longer, and he was the only dog still keeping his tongue in his mouth. When Hyacinth reached for him, Squid inched away.

  “Hey, now,” Hyacinth said. She leaned forward, immediately sure that she was dealing with the smartest of the three dogs. “Eyes, Squid.” The dog looked at her neck. And then at her hair. Squid was avoiding eye contact. Not an option, Hyacinth knew. The dog needed to belong to her pack, and he needed to know it.

  “Squid, come!” the old woman hollered. “Come!”

  “No,” Hyacinth said quietly. “Stay.”

  Squid began to shake. He wasn’t sitting anymore; he was forcing his rump down. And it took so much effort he looked like he might explode.

  Hyacinth extended her hand, and Squid’s eyes followed it. Then she moved her hand toward her face, and Squid’s eyes slipped into contact with her own and then froze.

  “Good boy,” Hyacinth said. “Who’s a good boy?” Instantly, the dog relaxed, and she grabbed his neck and scratched him under his collar until his leg thumped in happy reaction.

  “Ma’am,” Albert said loudly as Hyacinth stood back up. “Just because my girl has a touch doesn’t mean I won’t hold this little incident against you.”

  Granlea ignored Albert and studied Hyacinth. Hyacinth tried to smile, but her heart was thumping in her ears and the cold residue of fear was tingling all through her. Lawrence was fearless with any and all dogs. He didn’t even have to try. Hyacinth had learned to bury her fear so deep that she forgot it until right after.

  “How’d you do that?” the old woman asked. “What’s the trick?”

  Hyacinth looked at her father, and he nodded.

  “Go ahead,” Albert said. “You did good.”

  “No trick,” Hyacinth said. “Just…a way to be. My grandfather taught me. I have scars from when it didn’t work.” She lifted her head and traced her fingernail in an arc beneath her chin.

  After a long moment, Granlea nodded. “Well, I guess we can talk,” she said to Albert. “And you can show me that will of yours. But I want my dogs back.”

  Hyacinth shrugged and looked down at Shark, Ray, and Squid, panting at her feet. She was pretty sure the dogs wouldn’t chew on anyone, so they were free to do as they liked as far as she was concerned. All she really cared about was finding something to eat and someplace to sleep—as long as that place wasn’t moving and it had enough room for her to straighten out her entire body. Even a concrete floor would be better than another tight night curled up in the trailer.

  The inside of the house smelled like fish. And dog. But mostly fish. Fish with a serious smoking problem.

  Hyacinth and her brothers and sisters followed their parents through a small entryway crowded with old rubber boots and hanging rubber slickers and heavy plaid wool coats. They shed their shoes and drifted into a living room unlike any they had ever seen—and the five of them had seen many. A single rocking chair faced a stone fireplace and chimney. An exhausted fire spilled black smoke out of the fireplace and up the face of the chimney, running along a dark stain stripe before pooling in blackness on the ceiling. It made Hyacinth think of waterfalls she had seen pouring down from rocky jungle mouths—but very, very opposite. Fire, not water. Upside down. Poisonous.

  The rocking chair in front of the fireplace had been made from twisted and charred tree limbs. The seat and the arms were smooth and ruddy-gold with wear, but the rest of the chair looked like it could have b
een saved from a forest fire that morning.

  Between the rocking chair and the fireplace, there was a solitary black-and-red Navajo rug on the floor, stained and torn. No couch. No coffee tables or lamps or shelves. But the room didn’t feel empty. It felt…crowded.

  Oddly sized door frames without doors lined the walls. Dozens of large picture frames—crudely planed, crooked, bent, burned in places—hung on wires across the empty door frames. Small frames were layered over everything—mounted with hooks, pegs, crooked nails, or tied in place with string and wire. Only the chimney and its smoky waterfall remained uncaged by empty frames.

  Hyacinth turned in place. She felt surrounded by an army of emptiness. It was as if each frame opened on a tunnel to nowhere.

  Circe gripped Hyacinth’s arm. “New creepy room record?” she asked quietly.

  “What?” Hyacinth blinked. For a moment she had forgotten that her siblings were right beside her.

  “Oh, I think so,” Harriet said.

  “No way.” Daniel crossed his arms, watching Granlea lead their parents off into the kitchen. “This isn’t creepy at all. Weird, yes. But remember that ritual mask room in Panama? That was all nightmare.”

  Hyacinth looked at her brother, and then back at the walls. He wasn’t wrong. She had seen creepier rooms, rooms dotted with ritual masks or voodoo dolls or ancient fertility symbols. But those had mostly told her something about the owners.

  She walked behind the rocking chair, letting her hand graze its back. Rough. Dusty. Her fingertips tingled with the contact and she moved on to the closest wall, stopping in front of a wide rectangular frame that straddled two door frames and was in turn overlapped by three, four…six others, some of which overlapped each other as well. If she wanted to touch the wall, there were dozens of different paths for her hand to choose. She reached toward one and paused. Deadly cold trickled up her fingers as soon as her hand broke the plane of the first frame, and she flinched away. She shifted right and tested the next more cautiously. This time she didn’t feel any shift in temperature. She felt…pull. Like her hand was steel and she was holding it over a hidden magnet.

  “No touching!” Granlea yelled from the kitchen. “If you touch, I won’t be held responsible. And don’t be sitting in my rocker!”

  Hyacinth tugged her hand free, stepped back, and exhaled.

  “Hy? What do you think?” Circe was right behind her. Harriet was farther back, pulling on her braid. Daniel still had his arms crossed. Lawrence wandered in from the kitchen rubbing his eyes.

  “This is weird,” Lawrence said, squinting at the empty frames. “Where are all the pictures?”

  The grown-ups conducted their meeting at a small green linoleum-topped kitchen table. Granlea read over the will, then set it down and picked at her teeth before picking the will back up and reading it again. Albert and Gertrude Smith sat across from her, sipping at tap water in goblets of bronze glass. The kids claimed the floor. While the three dogs and Lawrence stretched out around and across legs, the elder four sat with their backs against kitchen cupboards and waited. With drooping eyelids and a warm swamp of dreams trying to pull her down into sleep, Hyacinth wondered how the evening would end. Would the old woman simply leave? Where would she go? Would she take the dogs?

  What if she refused to go? She didn’t think her parents would fight her for the house. Most likely they would end up back in the trailer, sleeping beside a highway, hoping for another wealthy family with another mostly unused house for them to tend. She was dreaming herself into that new house—made of stone and cedar beside a deep cool lake—when the old woman finally spoke.

  “Isaac always was a fool,” said Granlea Quarles. She slapped the will down, interlaced her fingers, and stared at Albert and Gertrude Smith. “Well, what do you intend to do with me? This was my brother’s place, and our parents’ before that, and now he’s left it to you. I’d planned on dying here, but now I expect you’ll want me to move along.”

  Hyacinth saw her mother grab her father’s knee under the table.

  “You were Isaac’s sister?” Trudie asked.

  “And I still am,” Granlea answered. “Even though he’s soil now. Buried him myself, one spot over from Stan, my husband. Always thought I’d end up between them.” The old woman leaned back in her chair. Her white hair was still thick, and the light from the ceiling cast hard shadows across every crease on her face. The old woman’s wrinkles looked like cuts that needed stitching.

  “You can stay,” Albert said. “For a while. How long do you need?”

  “To die?” Granlea asked, twitching a smile. “Or to pack my things and move along?”

  “Albert,” Trudie said. She was wearing her sorry face. The one that she made for apologies and regrets. According to her sisters, Hyacinth made the same one whenever something bad happened, even if it wasn’t her fault.

  “She’s family,” Trudie said. “We can’t throw her out. Did you even know you had a great-aunt?”

  Albert nodded, looking Granlea square in the eye. “I knew. We met. And I heard stories.”

  “As did I,” Granlea said. “And I remember young Albert here when he was just a fearless little lad who looked the spitting twin of that one sleeping on the floor with the hounds. He broke his wrist once, boulder hopping down the cliffs not far from here. Auntie Granlea was the one who set the bone. Brave boy didn’t even faint. You remember that, Albert?”

  Hyacinth saw memory heavy on her father’s face. He rolled his right hand slowly.

  “Albert,” Trudie whispered, leaning toward her husband. “This is actually good. It could simplify things for us with the younger two….”

  And with that Trudie’s eyes shifted to Lawrence, sleeping with the dogs, and then up to Hyacinth.

  What? Hyacinth blinked, trying to question her mother with her eyes. What could Granlea Quarles, dangerous dog owner and gun wielder, possibly simplify for Hyacinth and Lawrence?

  Trudie Smith didn’t answer. But she made her sorry face.

  “Upstairs was Isaac’s,” Granlea said. “Do as you will up there. But I’d appreciate it if you’d leave the front room and the barn to me. I sleep in that rocker, and I work in the barn. That’s all I need.”

  “We’ll need them both,” Albert said.

  “But not just yet,” Trudie said, glancing at her husband. “Not immediately. Right? It will be a while.”

  Granlea smiled.

  “Eventually, Auntie,” Albert said, and his voice went so cold that Hyacinth wouldn’t have recognized it if she hadn’t been staring straight at him. “We’ll be needing you to clear out of both. With no trouble and no complaint.”

  “But of course,” Granlea said, her etched smile fading. “Whatever young Albert needs.”

  For a long moment the heavy breathing of three sleeping dogs ruled the room. Albert hadn’t looked away from his great-aunt, and she remained motionless, returning his gaze with intense boredom. Trudie Smith finally cleared her throat and put her hand on Albert’s shoulder.

  “Do you think we could see the rooms?” she asked. “The children need to sleep.”

  Granlea Quarles didn’t move.

  “Auntie?” Albert asked.

  The old woman slowly pushed back her chair and began to stand.

  “We’ll talk more,” Albert said. “When the children are settled.”

  —

  HYACINTH WAS STRETCHED OUT on an itchy orange plaid sofa positioned on the landing at the top of the stairs. It was an odd place for a sofa, but she preferred it to the cobwebby bedrooms cluttered with old dressers and pictures and mounds of dusty clothes spilling out of the closets. Of the four doors on the upstairs landing, Harriet and Circe were sharing a bed behind one, Daniel and Lawrence behind another. The third guarded the room reserved for the Smith parents, and the fourth stood open, revealing cold tile, a stained sink, an ancient toilet, and a tub and shower with no curtain.

  Hyacinth twisted onto her other side, facing the stairs. The springs be
neath her had sprung their last years ago, and the cushions exhaled mildew fluff with her movement, but with the pillow and blanket she had brought in from the trailer, the couch had still become her most comfortable nest in weeks.

  Several miles beyond exhausted, Hyacinth should have been deeply lost in her normal dreams. But the strangeness of her surroundings had overwhelmed her weariness. Hyacinth couldn’t sleep. She could hear Daniel snoring, and Harriet and Circe had stopped whispering an hour ago. She wriggled in place, sinking even deeper into the cushions. More fluff drifted and swirled across the landing, through the chipped white rail, and down the stairwell toward the only light that was still on in the house.

  She heard the front door open and close, and footsteps moved beneath her toward the kitchen.

  “I’ve never seen anything like him,” Granlea said. “I swear it, Albert.”

  The old woman sounded afraid. Hyacinth held her breath and tried not to squeak a single couch spring. They were talking about the man her father had captured—the man with two mouths—and she had to hear everything.

  “He came from somewhere near here and moved south,” Albert said. “We were put onto his trail all the way down on the border.” Her father paused. “How would something like that end up in California?”

  Granlea’s voice was low. “How do monsters end up anywhere?” She continued, but her voice drifted away. Hyacinth sat up quickly and leaned toward the stairs, peering through the light-striped rail.

  “You have to know the stories I heard growing up,” Albert said. “You and your brother were favorite villains around every campfire through every summer of my entire childhood.”

  “I was young,” Granlea said. “And foolish. What are you suggesting? You think I created a monster? You think I summoned one? I haven’t a spark of power in me, Albert. Not a spark. And if I did, I wouldn’t be fool enough to use it. I wouldn’t be fool enough to use it giving some bloodthirsty thug a second mouth or sending out invitations to nightmares. If I had the smallest kiss of magic, I’d register with the Order like a good girl and use it for hunting treasure or shaping a boat that would never sink.”