The Door Before

by N. D. Wilson

  Lawrence writhed, kicking the blanket tangle completely clear of his legs.

  Downstairs, Granlea began coughing. And just as quickly as the heat had risen up the stairs, it was gone, replaced with slow, crawling coolness and the sound of rain.

  Hyacinth left her brother sleeping where he was, and she tiptoed carefully to the top of the stairs and listened.

  Rain. Rain spattering on stone. Rain spitting on leaves. Rain splashing in puddles, and finally, rain drumming on a metal roof. Hyacinth heard it all, but the sounds were coming from downstairs, not from outside.

  The floor beneath Hyacinth’s bare feet shivered with the sound of distant thunder. Behind the house, barely audible to Hyacinth’s heightened senses, the dogs had begun to whine.

  Carefully, Hyacinth descended the dark stairs, stepping around the worn middles of the treads, trying to avoid squeaks and creaks. But the house was old and new to her and she couldn’t avoid them completely. Every sigh and groan in the wood beneath her stopped her heart and briefly froze her progress as she waited to see if she had been detected.

  Two-thirds of the way down, a hidden nail shifted in its hole. The stair tread popped like a knuckle. She paused in the darkness, holding her breath.

  All around Hyacinth, the air changed again. Dank heat crawled across her skin, like the air in a hot flooded basement. And then she heard the fluttering of wings. And cursing.

  “No!” Granlea bellowed. “Wrong!”

  Hyacinth heard the rocking chair bang in the living room, followed by quick footsteps. An uneven light flickered to life, and then there was a whoosh of something being swung through the air and a crash of something wooden falling.

  A furry flying animal the size of a dog careened into the stairwell and slammed into Hyacinth, battering her face and hair with sticky leather wings as wide as an eagle’s. Hyacinth threw her arms up and fell backward onto the stairs, too surprised to scream. The frantic animal clambered over her and flew over the landing, clearing the rail and then crashing loudly into the upstairs bathroom.

  Hyacinth heard the shower curtain fall, rings and rod clattering into the old cast-iron tub.

  And then silence. Lawrence was still breathing steadily. Hyacinth’s heart was trying to break free of her ribs, and she’d bitten her tongue hard enough that her lower jaw was pooling with blood.

  “Idiot bat,” Granlea muttered. “I’ll feed you to the dogs.”

  Hyacinth rose to her feet and descended the last few steps quickly. Upstairs, she heard the giant bat scuffling in the shower curtain. The noise made it easy for her to slip down the short hall and lean into the living room.

  Granlea Quarles was on her hands and knees picking up pieces of a broken picture frame. Her rocking chair was tipped onto its side, and a kerosene camp lantern was on the floor beside it, along with an old broom with a dinged and bent yellow handle.

  While Hyacinth watched, Granlea rose to her feet and threw the broken frame pieces at her fireplace, not appearing to care at all how accurate her throw might be. The broken pieces tumbled and hopped loudly, and Granlea stepped back into the center of the room, putting her hands on her hips and puffing loudly in the heat.

  The old woman was wearing a black tank top, and her bare skin was spotted and loose and a shade of tan that made Hyacinth think of decay and age. Her white hair was in a bun, and at least four nasty rows of tree fungus teeth had erupted from the skin on the back of her neck and down both shoulders. It made her look like she was part dinosaur.

  “All right, then,” Granlea muttered. “No more playing around. Time’s up, Granlea Agrippina Quarles. Time is more than up.”

  Hyacinth inched forward, gaining a wider view of the living room and the walls layered with empty frames.

  Granlea moved to the wall beside the fireplace and lifted a frame down. She grabbed another smaller one and carried them both across the room and stood in front of an empty doorjamb. Her hair twisted and fluttered, brushed by invisible movements in the air. Granlea hesitated, shivering slightly. Then she lifted the larger of her two frames and held it carefully centered in the empty doorway. After a moment Granlea let go and stepped back.

  The frame floated in the air where she had left it. Hyacinth blinked, focusing every one of her senses on what she was seeing, trying to understand. The frame wasn’t floating gently. It was trapped, being pulled in every direction with equal force. The wood strained. The seams in the corners stretched and expanded. And once again, the air completely changed in the room.

  Hyacinth stepped closer, out into the open. But Granlea didn’t turn.

  Biting cold billowed out of the frame, breaking around the old woman in a swirl of frost, sparkling in the lamplight.

  “Isaac!” Granlea yelled. “You daft old man, are you in there?”

  Snow fluttered and spun across the plank floor.

  “Well, if that’s the world you chose, then you really are dead.” Granlea snatched the frame back out of the doorway. For a moment the frame still blasted cold, swinging the old woman’s bare arm up and around while it spewed the last of its frost and snow. But only for a moment. Granlea dropped it at her feet and gripped the next frame with both hands, examining its joints closely.

  “I’ve been avoiding you,” she said to the frame. “You know I have, and you know why.”

  The frame had a small opening, but the wood was wide and black on all four sides. At first, Hyacinth thought that it had been especially charred by lightning, but as the light flickered, she saw that only some of it was burned, but all of it was dark. The heartwood of a tree she did not know. A tree she did not trust.

  Whoever made the frame clearly didn’t trust the wood either. As Granlea turned it over in her hands, Hyacinth could see that it had been backed with golden plates, strapped and riveted at each corner.

  And then, as if in a rush so she wouldn’t change her mind, the old woman stepped forward, tossed the frame into the doorway, and jumped back.

  The black frame snapped into the center, shivering with intense force, and the air around Hyacinth began to move again. But this time it wasn’t moving toward her out of the frame. It was moving from behind her, flowing down the stairs and down the hall and breaking around her, rolling dust and frost across the floor, sucking it up into the air around Granlea’s legs and swirling the collected mess into the dark frame and away out of sight.

  The temperature dropped again, but not with blowing cold. It dropped because the heat was being stolen. Hyacinth blinked, suddenly dizzy, queasy, cold at her very core.

  “Name thyself.”

  The female voice curled and twisted around the room like a demented cat. Hyacinth wasn’t even sure whether she had heard it outside her head or inside. She gagged and braced herself against the wall.

  Granlea was turned a little sideways, like a boxer, with both hands raised in defense as her hair pulled itself loose, pointing at the empty doorway.

  “Granlea Agrippina Quarles. I am mistress of this house, and I forbid your entry. I seek an old man named Isaac, lost between the worlds, I believe. Who are you? Do you have him?”

  “There is only one world. And its many roads are mine.” The voice sucked at the air, as if spoken by an inhaling storm. “And you, Granny, are no longer the mistress of this house. You cannot forbid me.”

  “I am, and I can,” Granlea said, widening her stance. “Who are you? Do you have Isaac? If you do, I am willing to make you a trade.”

  Dappled light spilled out of the frame, and the sucking wind stopped. Pale gold and harsh quivering green spread across the floor, like sunlight on metal trees. The frame began to bend and twist slowly.

  “No!” Granlea jumped forward, but a long-bodied white cat leapt up from beyond the frame and perched inside it, hissing. The animal’s skin was wrinkled and nearly hairless, and its vertical pupils were glowing green. It looked from Granlea to Hyacinth.

  “Your Isaac is dead,” the voice said. “Killed by the bite that now kills you.”
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  Granlea’s head slumped, and she rolled her shoulder painfully under its mountain range of erupting fungus.

  “I want his body,” she said. “I want to see it.”

  “There is no longer a body,” the voice said. “And you will suffer the same as your brother unless I heal you. What will you pay me?”

  Granlea slumped to the floor and put her head in her hands. The cat leapt out of the frame, landing in the room, lashing its white tail and focusing its wide green eyes on Hyacinth.

  Hyacinth slid back toward the stairs. She was about to vomit, and her skin had gone slimy and cold.

  “The boys,” Granlea muttered. “Those twins your hunters were after. They are still here.”

  Wood popped and the frame shivered.

  “Yes,” the voice said, and it sounded hungry. “I will take the boys. And the girl behind you as well.”

  “What?” Granlea looked up and around, seeing Hyacinth for the first time.

  “The boys have angered me, and I will destroy them with agonies uncountable. But the girl.” The voice practically purred. “She will be more useful.”

  Wood began to split. Metal groaned and stretched.

  “No entry!” Granlea shouted. Jumping up, she kicked at the cat and then reached for the dark misshapen frame.

  The wood exploded before she touched it.

  The old woman tumbled. Splinters swarmed through the room like bees. Light haloed the tall shape of a woman standing inside the doorway. She might have been the most beautiful thing Hyacinth had ever seen. Her skin was both sun-kissed and silken. Her hair was black and weightless around her shoulders. Her eyes were emerald and pearl, but strangely unseeing, like the eyes of a perfect doll. The pale cat turned and leapt up into the woman’s arms.

  Hyacinth staggered backward, ignoring the tiny shards of wood that had pricked into her cheeks like quills. The woman was looking just over Hyacinth’s head, but the cat in the woman’s arms was looking straight into Hyacinth’s eyes.

  “I am Nimiane, heiress of Nimroth’s undying blood, mother of incubi, goddess of worlds, witch-queen of Endor.” She smiled at the hallway behind Hyacinth. The cat lashed its white tail across the woman’s olive arm. “What is your name, girl? You are a grower and a healer, a waker of trees. Name your fathers to me.”

  Hyacinth swallowed. “I…,” she said. “My father is Albert Smith.”

  “A smith,” the woman said. “Not a wizard? Is he not the one who bound the powers of lightning and crafted these doors? Is it not his blood in your veins that gifts your touch with growing things?”

  “No entry,” Granlea said from the corner. “You may not cross this threshold, witch.” She managed to sit up. “Unless we agree to terms.”

  “Terms!” Hyacinth yelled. “No terms.” She looked at the witch and then at the witch’s cat. “This is my family’s house, not hers. I’m the oldest one here, and I say you can’t come in.”

  The witch began to laugh, and as she did, the purring in her voice vanished, replaced with something more like shards of glass rattling in phlegmy lungs. She stroked her cat and looked up at the ceiling, smiling. But the cat stared right at the old woman in the corner.

  “What foolishness have you taught this girl, Granlea Agrippina Quarles? I am no faerie and no lesser imp, to be bound by threshold laws and charms.”

  With that, Nimiane, witch-queen of Endor, stepped through the doorway, passing from another world into the living room of an old house on the cliffs of the California coast. Every board in the house shook and popped. Dust rained down from the ceiling, and frames fell from the walls, clattering to the floor.

  Hyacinth felt the earth shiver beneath the house, and she knew the lightning trees would be swaying and boulders would be slipping into the sea. The presence of the woman was like the presence of an entire city, like the movement and weight of a crowd all bound and contained in one shape. She was so overflowing with stolen life and power, Hyacinth felt as if she were standing beside a barely contained explosion.

  “Hy?” Lawrence’s voice echoed down the stairs and into the hall. Quick footsteps followed. “Hy!”

  Before she could stop him, Lawrence tumbled into the hallway beside her and then stood, blinking, with mouth hanging open.

  As the shaking of the house stopped, the cat purred.

  Outside three dogs began to bark.

  Behind the witch, a ring of seven barely animate mushroom men rolled and stumbled into the room, along with the intense aroma of rot and fungus. They were just as tall but far more slender than the monster Albert had killed, and they were grown together like one creature, each with what passed for its hands and wrists attached to the elbows of the one in front of it, with head bowed, eyes closed, and brow firmly grown into the skin between the next pair of shoulders.

  Hyacinth grabbed Lawrence’s hand and backed them both toward the stairs.

  “Be still,” the witch said. “Or your brother shall be devoured at my feet.” She flared her nostrils wide and drew in a long breath. The light dimmed. Granlea cried out in pain and collapsed on the floor. Hyacinth gagged as she felt a ball of her own strength slip out from between her ribs. The witch was collecting life from everything around her, but not for herself. With a light brush from her fingertips, the ring of mushroom men writhed and groaned. Backs arched, and foreheads and hands tore free of each other. Eyes opened wide, and mouths opened wider, yawning above and below pale jaws.

  “Gather them all,” the witch said. “And bind them in my garden.”

  Hyacinth didn’t wait for the monsters to focus on her. Jerking her brother fully off his feet, she raced for the stairs, dragging him up behind her.

  And the house was filled with snarling.

  HYACINTH HAD NO PLAN. She had only instincts. Racing up the stairs, she managed to drag Lawrence beside her and then shove him ahead around the rail and past her couch.

  Four mushroom men slammed into the stairwell, climbing quickly up and over and around each other like four parts of one creature.

  Lawrence was yelling.

  The fake men were snarling.

  Hyacinth’s adrenaline overflowed and her heart stopped in a chasm between beats. She froze.

  The stair rail broke. Mushroom men careened over its ruin, slipping on Lawrence’s bedding.

  Lawrence shoved Hyacinth onto the cold tile of the bathroom floor, and as snarling gray men raced down the landing toward them, Lawrence slammed the bathroom door, turned the antique brass lock, and pressed his back against it.

  Hyacinth blinked and gasped, pulling in a long, painful breath. Her heart was beating like a hummingbird’s.

  “What’s going on?” Lawrence asked. “What do we do?”

  Heavy bodies slammed into the bathroom door so hard that the panel bowed and paint cracked and flaked, raining down on Lawrence’s shoulders.

  “Out,” Hyacinth said. “We have to get out.”

  Hyacinth looked out the window. She could see the barn with its dingy yellow light. She could see the dark army of lightning trees.

  Behind her, the door began to crack. A fist exploded through the wood above Lawrence’s head.

  “Hy!” Lawrence yelled. “Help!”

  Hyacinth threw the bathroom window open, grabbed her brother, and quickly boosted him headfirst onto the edge of the roof. She was a little wider, but there was no time for hesitation. Arms first and then head, she scraped her ribs on both sides as she wriggled out. Her hip bones banged and glass broke as she dove the rest of the way through, landing on the roof and practically sliding off the edge.

  Lawrence grabbed her, and she pushed herself up onto her knees.

  “Now what?” her brother asked, and he pointed past the gutter and over the edge of the roof. “That’s rock down there.”

  They both heard the bathroom door crash off of its hinges.

  As a gray fleshy head emerged from the window with nostrils flared, an arrow whispered past Hyacinth’s ear and plunged in between the man’
s eyes, knocking him back inside.

  “Move south!” Caleb yelled from the ground. He already had another arrow on the string and he drew its feathers back to his cheek. “It’s lower there. Then dangle and drop!”

  Caleb let his next arrow fly above her head, and glass broke behind her.

  “C’mon!” Lawrence yelled, and he pulled his sister by the hand.

  Doubled over and scrambling sideways, Lawrence and Hyacinth raced across the rough roofing with bare feet, making their way to the corner of the house lowest to the ground.

  But it was still high.

  “This is nuts,” Lawrence said. “I wish Dad was here.”

  “No kidding,” Hyacinth said. “Now how do we do this?”

  “Hang on the gutter and then let go,” Lawrence said. “And fall. And get hurt.”

  “Better than being eaten by mushrooms.” Hyacinth rolled onto her stomach and slid her feet and legs back over the edge. All at once, her weight passed the point of no return and she felt herself teetering.

  “I just…oh…” And she fell, just managing to hook her fingers in the gutter as she did.

  Metal squealed and popped and tore away from the house, sagging two feet down before it stopped.

  “Perfect.” Lawrence was peering over the edge at her. “Let go, Hy!” And then his face went white. “No!”

  Strong arms wrapped themselves around Hyacinth’s legs and jerked her down. She screamed as the rusty gutter ripped free of her fingers and bounced up toward her brother.

  The skin touching her was cold. And slick. And it smelled of fungus.

  She kicked, but it was like kicking sandbags. She twisted and punched, and then long-fingered hands grabbed her wrists, pinning them to her sides.

  Two mushroom men held her in the air between them. In unison, they rotated her slightly and she found herself eye to eye with one of the gray-skinned monsters.

  His pupils flattened, wobbled, and then rose up into slits. Hyacinth knew that she was looking straight into the eyes of the witch even before the false man slowly opened his upper mouth and the witch’s voice emerged. His jaw and lips were motionless, but the flesh in the back of his throat contorted and writhed with every puffing, trash-can-scented syllable.