Keepers Of The Gate

by E. Denise Billups

  “I’ve missed something, but what, Grams?”

  She drops her gaze to the floor. Her secret must be hidden inside the portfolio and journals.

  19

  Tessa’s Portfolio

  At once, Twyla slides the documents back inside the envelope and opens the portfolio, evoking the whisper of graphite pencils across pads in Grams’ diligent hand as she drew unsuspecting guests. The nucleus of the soul was her obsession, not the shape or color, but an inner light of the eyes that revealed a person’s soul. Grams strove to capture her model’s inner self in her art.

  Sitting on the floor again, Twyla flips through several sketches of people, arriving at an image of a one-and-a-half-story log cabin bordered by woodlands, overlooking Seneca lake. In the right-hand corner lie Grams’ initials, dated 1798. Did she mean 1998?

  The next drawing depicts a dark-haired woman in a pale-yellow, Victorian-style dress, standing near a fireplace with enigmatic eyes that leap through the painting. Her coy smile holds a hint of mischief. Beside her, a short-haired, gray cat in the middle of licking its raised paw on a rectangular wooden table, looks up as if startled by the artist.

  “Mystik?”

  Twyla pulls the sketch from its plastic casing, and examines the cat’s collar engraved with MD, the same initials on Mystik’s collar. Grams had told her it was the designer’s logo, but Twyla couldn’t find any pet accessories with that brand on the Internet.

  Around the woman’s neck, a golden, egg-shaped pendant catches Twyla’s eyes. Grams’ locket. She lifts it from her neck, comparing the hand-engraved vines creeping up the sides with identical curls ending at the top. They’re the same. Following the woman’s neckline up to her oval chin, upturned lips, straight, classic nose, round, brown eyes, dark-brown hair, Twyla lingers on the widow’s peak. Cristal? Cristal’s side-parted hair falls around her face unlike the woman’s swept-back hair in the sketch, but the drawing’s a mirror image of Cristal Whelan.

  Widow’s peak…

  Twyla gasps. The wailing woman… No, impossible. Cristal’s alive. Twyla’s body chills with the thought. The ghost looked familiar because she resembled Cristal. Grams’ eyes were awash with recognition as Twyla described the ghost, because she’d drawn her, a face favoring her dear friend Cristal. At the bottom of the sketch lies the name Mercy Dox, 1794.

  Mercy Dox… Is she the MD on Mystik’s collar?

  Twyla studies the sketch with sharper eyes, noticing the blue-landscape-decorated white porcelain laid around the table where the cat is sitting. Toward the back of the room, on top of a cabinet, sits a white pitcher and bowl. Family heirlooms… They’re the same items in Grams’ boxes. The ghost she’d seen as a child was Mercy Dox. Is it the china she seeks inside the trunk or her child’s nightgown?

  The next drawing displays a man dressed in a familiar deerskin jacket, resembling the one she pulled from the trunk. But it can't be the same one, she surmises, running her hand over the skin that shows no sign of time except stiffness and unraveling seams. The man’s hair, gathered in a ponytail, accentuates his sapphire eyes made bluer by sun-kissed skin, revealing he’s Caucasian, not Indian. In the bottom, right-hand corner lies the name Mingin (Gray Wolf), dated 1800. Twyla shakes her head in awe at Mingin’s striking resemblance to Dante Whelan. No, impossible, Mingin lived more than 200 years ago.

  Underneath Mingin’s picture, a teenage girl draped in traditional Iroquois wedding dress stands hand in hand with her groom. Wide-eyed, Twyla draws the sketch closer.

  “It’s Jayson and me,” she murmurs as gooseflesh rises across her body, seeing their images depicted in a dim longhouse, among several elders. But it’s impossible. Grams never met Jayson. How could she know they’d marry?

  For several minutes, Twyla digests the drawing before moving to a picture of an older couple and a teenage girl. In the foreground sit a stable and log cabin overlooking Seneca Lake. The three are Tessa, Ian, and a youthful Skylar, but the names below read Jawanda, Billy, and Garrentha, 1800.

  In the next drawing, Charlie stands with his arm around Skylar’s waist. Twyla recognizes the beaded cuff on her arm. Is it the same cuff in the trunk? she wonders, glancing at the basket of jewelry. At the bottom of the sketch, she sees the names Jonathan and Garrentha, not Charlie and Skylar, with the date 1800.

  These can’t be real… But Jayson? She examines the sketch. Is it him or someone else?

  The next drawing depicts a log cabin on a farmstead with vegetable and fruit orchards, a stable, animal pens, and a second cabin under construction. Two African men are constructing the rooftop. Mingin and Billy are sawing logs in the yard. Several natives carry timber on their shoulders toward the incomplete home, Twilight in its infancy.

  Are these replicas of 18th-century photos from the Geneva Historical Society? Was the trunk off-limits because of her creations?

  Untying the ribbon around the journals, she opens faded pages, expecting Twilight End’s bookkeeping accounts, finding diary entries dating back to 1957. Tessa was 17 that year. She browses through brief entries, most of them a paragraph, others a page or more.

  The treadmill’s whirr slows in the gym. Voices sound across the basement. Twyla stuffs the land deeds inside the portfolio and rises from the floor. With haste, she returns the boxes, camera, and journals to the trunk’s uppermost compartment. When she grabs the portfolio from the floor, a sketch and tattered book drop from an inner pouch. Life’s Circular Path: Reincarnation. She’d never seen Grams read this. She reaches for the drawing with a sharp gasp. The portfolio falls with a resounding thud to the floor.

  “What the hell?”

  When did Grams draw this? A native Indian teenage girl with two waist-length braids and a teenage boy with a mohawk stand beneath the Old Man maple tree. “It’s Jayson and me.” In the sketch, Jayson is carving an eagle into the tree bark as she, the girl, watches. In the background, rows of cornfields and fruit orchards surround palisade walls circling a bustling Iroquois village.

  Why would she draw this?

  “Twyla! Are you there?” Charlie calls from the stairs.

  Placing the sketch, portfolio, and book in the top tray, she throws the deerskin jacket on top and locks the trunk.

  “I’ll be there in a second, Charlie,” she replies, walking backwards toward the door and pondering the drawings with a glare at the trunk.

  Are the sketches your secret, Grams? she wonders. “I don’t believe that. There’s more to this,” she mutters and switches off the light.

  20

  The Balsam Fir

  Twyla stands in the Grand Hall, oblivious to Charlie, Jayson, and Harrison lifting the balsam fir into the vintage cast-iron tree stand. Rampant mental chatter, images of ancestral relics, sacred stones, and Grams’ sketches beset her consciousness. Are the ruins beneath Twilight a conduit through time? Cristal’s words resound. “Tessa said the stones allowed her to visit her ancestor’s past lives.” Was she referring to visions or actual time travel? No, that’s complete science fiction, too far-fetched to digest. Time travel’s impossible… Isn’t it? Twyla’s face skews with fascination. Watery ghosts and morphing corridors occur only in sci-fi movies, but they happened at Twilight.

  Ghosts. Reincarnation. Time Travel… Will Grams’ journals unravel the mystery?

  “Twyla, is the tree straight?” Jayson asks.

  “Twyla… Twinkles? Earth to Twyla,” Charlie calls out from where he’s crouched beside the balsam.

  “Huh? Oh,” Twyla responds, at once, embarrassed and wondering if she’d spoken her last thought out loud. Sensing everyone’s eyes in her direction, she straightens her stance, fidgeting with the locket, detecting concern in Charlie and Jayson’s faces.

  “You OK?” Charlie asks, gazing up from the floor.

  “Sorry, I-um, I was just thinking about the sky-high tree,” Twyla lies with an obvious scowl at Charlie. Although her gaze is fixed on the balsam fir, the intriguing notion of time travel has held her captive since the storage r
oom, not the tree, not their toil, and not even Jayson. Though she wants to spend more time with him, she’s eager to uncover the truth behind Grams’ sketches. With Harrison’s thoughtful gaze on her, she clutches the locket tighter with mounting tension provoked by his presence.

  Charlie catches Twyla’s scowl and her smoldering eyes fixed on Harrison. He hadn’t expected Harrison to show up exactly while they were struggling with a tree too big for two to handle and grab one end. He couldn’t decline his help, given the need for another pair of hands to keep the tree upright. And he refused to ask George to trek up the hill in a dangerous storm.

  “The balsam’s bigger than last year’s,” Twyla says.

  “How does the tree look? Is it leaning?” Jayson asks.

  Twyla takes three steps backward, cocks her head to the side, detecting a slight tilt. “It’s uneven. Move it a tad to the left,” she states, directing with her hand. If Jayson weren’t helping, she’d string Harrison along, a puppet master orchestrating a series of maneuvers, she thinks with an inner smirk.

  Jayson pulls, and Harrison pushes. The tree does the same, jerking Harrison forward and pushing Jayson backward. They center the balsam on tottering feet and glance in her direction.

  Twyla’s vision shifts, doubling to a mirrored image. She blinks and squeezes her eyes, but two perspectives emerge, two sets of eyes viewing the same scene from opposite angles. The balsam fir changes to a maple tree, in an opposite view, it remains a balsam with Jayson and Harrison in their current-day form. In Twyla's eyes, Harrison transforms into a soldier brandishing a bayonet at a native. Jayson! The other's face materializes. The specter girl from her room stares back, as awed as she.

  Twyla flounders forward, seizes the edge of the greeting desk, leaning in for support. She blinks several times, clearing the cloudy unified vision until the two-dimensional sight vanishes. What the heck is happening?

  “Twyla, you OK?” Jayson asks, letting the tree go as he steps forward.

  “No!” Harrison yells.

  “Don’t let go,” Charlie screams.

  Right away, Jayson grabs the tipping tree and stares at Twyla. “You OK?” he repeats.

  “I’m fine. It’s nothing, just the swaying balsam and lack of food,” she replies, catching Harrison’s eyes, realizing she’d used the food excuse twice today, earlier when he helped her into the parlor and now.

  Harrison’s brows furrow.

  Twyla wonders if he’s concerned or vexed by her odd behavior. Her eyes must have appeared strange, staring unblinking into space a moment ago. She’s never seen a single vision in her life. Why today, she ponders, recalling the images when she’d touched the archery set in the storage room. Why now? What’s different today? She wonders, glancing at Jayson and Harrison… They are.

  The thought recalls words Grams spoke long ago. “When the right people, stars and time align, history reappears around Twilight.”

  Did the stars align a moment ago with the right people – Harrison and Jayson? The weird events can’t be a coincidence. It’s their first meeting and first time at Twilight. Nothing strange happened the entire week Harrison was here, not until Jayson arrived. The sleepwalking, storm, ghosts and visions began with his arrival. Their past and present life just collided before her eyes. She’d heard of history repeating itself so how will it play out this time? If Harrison shot Jayson during the Revolutionary War, Jayson could be in danger.

  She recalls the book on reincarnation in the trunk and wonders if Grams left it as a clue. A staunch believer in the afterlife, Grams often said, “Rebirth’s a central part of tribal cosmologies before Europeans introduced Native Americans to Christianity.” Twyla straddles the middle, an agnostic of sorts, but given what she’d seen today, Grams might have been right.

  This can’t be her destiny. Forever seeing visions as Grams did might drive her mad. Are they warnings, messages to heed? Skylar’s never acted on paranormal events but treats them as minor annoyances, never shared or spoken about. Maybe silence is more tolerable than people’s skepticism. But is it the right choice?

  Their ancestors made life-or-death decisions based on dreams and visions, deemed divine guidance centuries ago. Grams was forever meditative and must have sought spiritual guidance. Were her solitary walks around the garden and lake a reflective means of rationalizing visions, not restlessness as she’d believed?

  “Dreams and visions – never ignore them. They are a gift of power, a calling,” Young George said to her as he sat across the table from her one frightful night when she couldn’t sleep. She’d drunk one of Tessa’s soothing concoctions that made her drowsy as she listened to his words. “Kateraswas, I navigate this world through dreams. Watera’swo, they bring good luck.” George always eased her childish fears. She’d grasped truth in his words but sensed a secret behind his eyes, a soul that recognized hers. After they spoke, she took his message to bed and welcomed her dreams. But now she suspects her girlish beliefs were imaginings, mistaken for the security George’s presence brought her.

  With a grimace, Jayson angles his head around spiky pine branches. “How’s the tree now?” He asks, studying her with a worried expression.

  “Oh,” Twyla murmurs, squinting at the balsam. “Perfect.”

  Jayson’s eyes narrow as he mouths a silent, “What’s wrong?”

  Twyla shakes her head and mouths, “Nothing,” lifting her gaze to the tree’s spire matching the second-floor balcony in height. “Well, we won’t have a problem with the star tomorrow. We can drop it right from the second-floor mezzanine instead of using the dizzying ladder,” she says, trying to appear normal.

  “That’s smart,” says Harrison.

  Twyla throws Harrison a sharp glare. She recalls the bayonet he wielded at Jayson in her vision with growing concern for Jayson’s life and considers booting Harrison from the inn. But that’s cruel, even for a man who’d like to steal their home. He shouldn’t be here, resounds in her mind. He’s a threat not only to Twilight but to Jayson. Was the vision a warning? Alarmed, Twyla gnaws her lip, restraining an intense urge to chew him out. She tightens her lip and releases a breath.

  Where is George? And why didn’t Charlie ask him to help as he does every year? That’s obvious, given Charlie has two robust men to help. Regardless, involving Harrison in one of Grams’ favorite traditions is disrespectful. She’ll protest till the roof blows off if Charlie invites Harrison to the trimming party tomorrow.

  Unable to restrain rising indignation, she exclaims, “Why are you at a Newhouse family event? You don’t belong here, Harrison.”

  “Hold your tongue, young lady. This is not the time or place,” Charlie exclaims, lifting his head in her direction.

  Twyla reins her anger, forcing a furious breath from her lips. Her thick-heeled boots squeal as she swivels around on the parquet floor and marches toward the grand staircase. She doesn’t care if she embarrassed Harrison but regrets the angry display in Jayson’s presence. Why isn’t Charlie bothered Harrison’s here? She sighs and glances at the wicked storm through the front door’s glass panel, regretting her impetuous words. Maybe Charlie’s right. This isn’t the time or place to air her grievances with Harrison. She walks to the staircase and sits on the bottom step with tight lips.

  Thick tension fills the silent room after her outburst. Charlie’s hands, the only sign of movement, move back and forth, twisting and tightening the screws into the balsam as Jayson and Harrison stand motionless, silenced by her attack. The wind beats against the door, desperate to enter. She wishes she could get out and cool her fevered head.

  “Got it, you can let go now,” sounds muffled from the tree.

  Jayson and Harrison release the tree and step backward.

  Sliding from beneath the balsam, Charlie rises with a middle-aged groan, exhales deep, and removes one work glove. He glances at Twyla with a warning frown, then wipes his shiny forehead with the back of his hand. “OK, guys, thanks for your help. We’re done for today,” he says, glanci
ng at Harrison. “The fun comes when we trim this baby tomorrow.” Charlie pulls off the second glove, pats Jayson on the shoulder and heads to the kitchen.

  Twyla jolts from the bottom step and scuttles behind him. “Charlie, are you aware of Harrison’s plan? It’s disrespectful to Tessa to involve him in our family events.”

  “Calm down, Twyla. Skylar and I know all about Harrison Dox’s reputation. As long as he’s a paying guest, we will treat him with hospitality while he’s snowbound under our roof. Don’t worry. Our eyes are on that one.”

  “You know what he’s up to, don’t you?”

  “Yes, and your mom and I couldn’t sell this place, not for a billion dollars. It meant too much to your grandparents. So stop worrying. We got this, Twinkles. Go enjoy your time with Jayson. And be mindful of your mouth.”

  “But…”

  “No,” Charlie silences her with a stern glance.

  “It’s not right. Grams would be furious,” Twyla says, getting in the last word. She wavers, then drops her hands to her side with a loud puff. Pursing her lips, she skulks from the kitchen into the grand hall. At once, she’s annoyed with Jayson and Harrison’s friendly banter. Walking toward the stairs, she plops on the step with a stony gaze at Harrison.

  Look at them, chummier than best buddies. Well, they have a lot in common. They’re around the same age, both grew up in Ithaca, and attended the same high school, but in past lives they were rivals. One fought for his people and land, while the other pillaged and destroyed the Six Nations’ homeland. Ironic, history returns to the same territory Sullivan’s Expedition torched. If Jayson were aware of Harrison’s scheme, he’d be just as hostile as she.

  Charlie comes out of the kitchen holding a silver tray laden with food and a tea server. “I’m going upstairs to coddle Sky with Tessa’s special brew. Twyla, do you mind removing the ham from the oven in 10 minutes? I need to spend time with the love of my life,” he says, approaching her on the bottom step and climbing the stairs.