Keepers Of The Gate

by E. Denise Billups

  Twyla grimaces. Dinner’s important to Charlie, given it’s Jayson’s first visit. But Charlie’s always thrived under adversity. His Cornish hens will be delicious, though late to the table.

  “Charlie, sorry the ham burned,” Jayson says. “I’m not a cook, but if you need help, I’ll lend a hand where desired.”

  “Nah, I work best alone, and besides you’re a guest. I’d have an apron on you before you offered if I’d needed help,” he says with a grin.

  Jayson chuckles. “OK, well, if you change your mind, you know where I am,” he says, strolling over to Twyla. “I’ve got a shitload of student exams to grade. Do you mind if I take an hour before dinner?” Jayson asks, kissing Twyla on the forehead.

  “Get to it, Professor Sundown. I need to grab something in storage,” she says and winks. On the ball of her feet, she kisses him then hurries to the cellar.

  Twyla puts every removed object back in the trunk, except Grams’ and Mercy’s diaries. After snuffing the candle flame, she peers around the room, realizing her time with Jayson mollified her fear. The storage room is now a special place where they shared a tremendous secret, not the dreaded place of her childhood. She smiles and locks the door, knowing she has Grams’ approval.

  Heading up the back stairs, she pauses on the second-floor landing when Harrison’s voice resounds from the tower room.

  “…Gated, there’s no access inside without a key.”

  Twyla stops. Is he talking about the sacred grounds? She moves closer and lays her head on the frame.

  “I’m positive it’s the grounds Grandad spoke of, the plot where Great-grandad Anson died. His letters mentioned an enchanted spot with a bubbling brook, water natives used for its healing properties. And if I’m right, it’s a mineral spring the Newhouse family hid from the public for years. Can you imagine the price we could charge visitors to bathe in the spring, not to mention bottling and selling it to guests? This land is a cash-cow with possibilities of a health retreat surpassing Saratoga Springs, Dad.”

  Outraged, Twyla’s gasps reverberate throughout the landing. “The two-faced lying little shit,” she mumbles. Had he overheard them in the storage room? No, neither she nor Jayson cited a mineral spring. But they’d spoken of, “The Great Spirit’s medicinal waters,” from Grams’ journal. Did he gain this tip from his grandfather?

  The suite silences. Footsteps near the stairwell exit. Twyla stills her breath and body, although aware he can’t open the solid timber door bolted from her side. She waits for him to move, but he doesn’t.

  The knob twists, jerks back and forth, rattling the doorframe. The shaking ceases, and he quietens on the other end. Did he place his ear to the doorjamb as she had a moment ago? Just when she considers dashing upstairs, he walks away, resuming his phone conversation.

  “I’ll call you in a few minutes, Dad.”

  Twyla tiptoes from the landing and races up the stairs to her room.

  “I knew it!” she fumes, tossing the journals on the bed. He’s been lurking around the property since he arrived, searching for the babbling brook… Is it a natural mineral spring? She recalls Mingin’s words in Mercy’s diary. The water has soothing properties. The natives bathed and worshipped here often.

  With hindsight, she understands Harrison was fishing for information she wasn’t aware of this morning. She stomps her foot in anger, blowing a fiery breath through clenched teeth. He plans to buy Twilight from my family and turn it into an overpriced health spa. “Not in my lifetime,” she mumbles with eyes narrowed in fury. I hope the portal gets rid of him for good. In an instant, she reproves herself for wishing death on another.

  Did his great-grandfather discover the truth, wander through time’s doorway, meeting an angry warrior’s lethal arrowheads? But whose arrows? Did George – Sagoyewatha – the warrior Tessa spoke of, launch projectiles at Harrison’s great-grandfather? Are the warriors still overseeing the gate? “Perhaps they are,” she mumbles, recalling Hecate averting evil spirits. Maybe sentinels of the portal sense ill-intent and eliminate it with speedy arrows.

  Wise to Harrison’s plan, she worries he will devise a way inside the gate as Tessa and Ian had with a ladder. She needs to warn George, prevent Harrison from entering the sacred grounds and another Dox dying on the property. “Tomorrow,” she mutters with a wide yawn.

  She glances at the dreamcatcher above the headboard, too angry, exhausted and sleepy to give it much thought. After everything she’s learned, the watery specter is less of a threat than Harrison Dox. But she’s still uncertain whether it was a ghost she saw or a vision? No, the water was real.

  Fatigued, Twyla drags her feet toward the bed and plops on to the downy comforter, running her hand over the quilt, earlier spotted with water, now long dry. Reclining on her back, she hugs the fluffy pillow to her body, glimpsing approaching dusk in winter-grey skies outside the window. The remarkable day slipped past her in one long continuous sequence of visions and diary entries. Her heavy-eyed gaze drifts with flurries twirling in hissing wind past the window. I’ll close my eyes for just a moment, she thinks, turning on her side. Ten minutes later, she’s deep in sleep.

  An hour passes before Twyla sits up in bed, glances around the room, and throws her legs over the edge of the mattress. She lurches toward her boots, clumsily thrusts her feet inside, then drifts toward the back stairs. Unblinking and staring straight ahead, her blank eyes never lower as she descends the stairs into the office.

  Controlled, reflexive, she pivots around the desk without a bump and reaches for the braided leather chain with a single key inside the wall hutch. As if guided by an unseen force, she turns with mechanical precision, and heads to the rear porch without a falter.

  For a mere second, Twyla pauses as if sensing the snowy terrain’s danger. But her thoughts are vacant as she descends icy porch steps, sinking into calf-high snow. Around the porch corner, a man smokes a cigarette, watching her with fascination.

  29

  Hidden In Shadows

  Harrison makes one complete round of the porch, stops at the back veranda, and leans against the house. With his gaze on the dark backyard, he draws on the cigarette, blows a plume through the tall columns, and glances in the direction he believes the mineral spring exists. He smirks and flicks ashes from the fag into the empty beer bottle in his hand, recalling the earlier scene in his room. Someone eavesdropped on his conversation behind the bolted door. It wasn’t his imagination because he saw a shadow spin beneath the doorframe when someone moved hurriedly away.

  After speaking to Twyla in the parlor, he reckons she’s aware of his interest in Twilight Ends and spied outside his suite. Harrison takes another drag, evoking her burning gaze before he left the parlor. She’ll be a problem when he approaches her parents with a sales pitch. “Hmm…” The little spitfire intrigues and excites him in ways he hadn’t expected. She’s probably a ball of energy in the sack, he speculates, drawing on the dwindling fag. If he threw her a provocative glance, without a doubt she’d smack him across the face, he judges with a wicked curl of his lips. But business is business and it’s a mistake to mess with the proprietor’s daughter.

  In the near distance, a silhouette moves across the groundkeeper’s cottage window. He recalls Old George’s stern warning when he caught him red-handed, fiddling with the lock on the gate. He expected his bags to be on the lawn when he returned to the inn, or the owners’ rebuke, but to his surprise, neither took place. Did he tell them? And if he didn’t, why not? The entire week, Old George’s wary gaze followed him round the grounds, a vigilant watchdog guarding its territory.

  The back door swings open. Harrison inches from the shadows, angling his head around the corner. Twyla leaves the office, advances with a precarious descent of icy stairs into heavy snow, scaling her shins. She pauses and stares straight ahead, motionless.

  Harrison considers Twyla’s still posture, wondering what’s caught her attention? From her hand, a leather cord dangles with a single key hangin
g from it. What’s wrong with her? She’s been acting strange since her boyfriend arrived last night. He recalls the incident in the corridor when she behaved as if she’d seen a ghost. Then the same expression crossed her face when they raised the balsam fir in the Grand Hall. In both instances, her eyes glazed. He wondered what she was seeing as she stared not at him, but through him. His father said there were rumors Teresa Newhouse was a wee bit touched and saw things others couldn’t. He believes the Queen Victorian has something to do with it. And perhaps the little vixen favors her grandmother. Hmm, is that the reason for her peculiar behavior? Had she seen something in him?

  Twyla lifts a snow-weighted boot and pushes forward until she finds her footing. She continues at a trudge through deep snow, indifferent to the bone-chilling wind and snow on her skin as she tramples beyond the inn.

  Without a coat, hat, or gloves, she won’t get far, Harrison thinks. He takes a drag on the cigarette, releasing nicotine fumes into the air, knitting his brows at her stiff gait. A similar walk to that of his younger brother when he sleepwalks. When she marches across the backyard, past the Carriage House, he shuffles from shadows to the porch steps and considers pursuing her.

  With a tilt of his head, he fixes his eyes on her backside and ponders the half-breed’s exotic allure. The curve of her slender legs in tight denim leggings and the sway of her rump beneath the long sweater stirs randy thoughts. Aroused and curious to see where she’s going, he drops the cigarette butt into the beer bottle and places it on the balustrade. Harrison zips his coat, steps from the porch, and skulks behind her at a distance. When he realizes she’s headed toward the private gated area, he scans the yard, peeks over his shoulder at the caretaker’s cottage several times, afraid he’s patrolling.

  Harrison steps between the thicket of conifers and halts when he sees Twyla ahead, standing motionless under the wintery maple and dogwood tree, staring at the gate. Slow and wavering, she lifts her arm and puts the key in the lock. For a moment, she stands inert then grabs the knob and gives three hard pulls, jerking her body back and forth. Given the height of the snowbank at its base, he doubts she’s strong enough to free the snow-weighted entrance.

  Twyla wrestles with the unyielding barrier, which gives an inch at a time with each tug on the handle. The iron hinges squeal and the gate yields, shoving snowbanks to the side with her last jerk. She places the leather lanyard over her neck and slides her petite frame through the narrow opening.

  Harrison’s eyes widen in marvel at a bolted passage he’d attempted to enter for several days. Opportunity presents itself, but he wonders why a well-guarded entrance is open now? Is this a stunt the groundkeeper and Twyla set to trap him on their private plot?

  Someone groans and huffs nearby. He turns and sees a figure approaching, condensing breath hanging in clouds. He rushes to the edge of the woods and hides behind the trees. The woman he’d seen around the inn with her husband advances and growls at thick snow impeding her movement. She pauses at the fence, twists her head, studies the footprints, lifting her gaze to where his tracks ended. He drops behind a snowdrift, hoping she hasn’t spotted him through the evergreen. When he peeks up, she shoves the gate wider and enters.

  What’s thrust these women into foul weather? Her quick pace tells him it’s urgent. Rising from the ground, he stomps and brushes snow from his pants and coat and waits until both women are a good way ahead. He looks around for the vigilant watchdog, and trudges through the gate on the women’s trail.

  30

  Stop Her

  In the dining room, Charlie arranges dinnerware while listening to his eighties playlist, unaware of Twyla walking past the window. Upstairs in the master bathroom, Skylar studies the purple bruises on her shoulder, thighs, and backside before stepping into a warm mineral bath. Resting her head against the tub, she peers out the window at the snow-covered lawn, blind to Twyla’s frame drifting beyond her view. Above, Jayson sits at the modest desk in his suite, grading student exams on the laptop. If he were to glance up, he’d see Twyla moving through sculpted yew toward pine trees along the garden’s fringe – and Harrison trailing behind her.

  A sough of wind and wayward flurries whispers around the Carriage House. Cristal, reclining in the reading nook, takes her gaze from her book, notices the soft winds, glad the ferocious storm has abated. She sets the iPad on the side table, removes the reading glasses from her weary eyes, and rises from the recliner with a yawn and arm stretch. In the adjoining room, she overhears Dante apologize to his staff for his delayed return to the clinic. She glimpses their packed luggage in the corner, wishing they could spend another week with Tessa’s family.

  Cristal sighs. She realizes Dante’s conference call will go past dinnertime. But she’s grown used to late suppers with her husband and occasions missed because of their careers. Nevertheless, she hoped he’d put work aside their last night at the inn and enjoy a romantic evening before returning to their hectic lives in Rochester.

  She strolls to the window and stares beyond the snow-carpeted gardens toward the shadowy lake. Below the hillock, dusk casts a picture-perfect view of light along the powdery ground from George’s cottage window. When a coatless image crosses the backyard, she glues her face to the windowpane.

  “Twyla?” She murmurs. When she passes the tall post lantern beneath her window, light strikes her void expression and uncanny gaze. Is she sleepwalking? The vision she foresaw two years ago, the one she told Tessa about, trudges past the carriage house.

  Another figure follows her at a distance with sneaky glances over his shoulder as if worried he’s being watched. “Harrison Dox. Sly devil, what’s he up to now?” she murmurs with a scowl.

  Cristal hurries to her suitcase, yanks a turtleneck from her packed clothes, and mistakenly pulls it over her T-shirt with the tag facing front. She gestures to get Dante’s attention, lowering her hand and closing her mouth when his face sours with a patient’s dire update. Without snowshoes, her only choice is flimsy designer riding boots. She shoves her feet inside stiff leather and bolts downstairs, through the exit with her parka hanging off her arm. Dante continues talking on the phone, deaf to her scurry, and the door slam.

  By the time Cristal enters the garden, there’s no sign of Twyla. Only her footprints point to her whereabouts, but she doesn’t need a trail to show where she’s gone through the timbers. She’s seen the place where she traveled in her divination.

  The open wrought-iron gate frames a scene from a winter postcard. Clumps of snow decorate dormant wisteria vines wrapped across rails and ornamental scrolls. The maple and dogwood trees tower above it with angel-white boughs. Beyond the gate, a breeze kicks snow powder over the grounds, misting the view of Twyla plodding ahead, but Harrison’s nowhere in sight.

  She glances back over her shoulder, surveying two distinct sets of imprints and frowns. “That’s odd,” she mutters, noticing Harrison’s tracks cut through the coppice a few feet back. Did he return to the inn? Why that direction?

  Her instincts warn her something’s amiss, but her sole concern at the moment is Twyla, not Harrison’s whereabouts. She raises her hand to the knob and pauses. Twyla opened the gate while unconscious. Is this possible? Do sleepwalkers have mental faculties to unlock a bolt? She glances around the ground looking for the key, bends with a rake of her fingers through snow bordering the entrance. Nothing. She still has it. Or someone else opened the gate. The only other person with that privilege is the caretaker, who’d never leave the gate open.

  Cristal shivers and slogs onward, sensing the tingle in her gloveless fingers and the sting of incipient frostbite. Twyla’s limbs must throb with pain by now. No, Tessa said during sleepwalks, her senses are numb to the surrounding environment. Regardless, dressed in just a sweater and jeans, her skin will freeze to the bones.

  Cristal places her hands in her pockets and tugs the fur-lined hood over her head. She lifts her knees high and hastens along the daunting pathway toward the sacred property Tessa mentioned
when they spoke on the dock. Heavy breath escapes in fleeting clouds. Moisture seeps through her boots’ stitching into her socks. She winces at the feel of soggy wool on her feet but lowers her gaze and follows Twyla’s small footprints.

  When she stops to catch her breath, she ponders the anomalous cloud above the trees in the distance. It’s not snow flurries, and the temperature is too chilly for fog. It evokes misty images she’d seen over healing springs in the Canadian Rockies in winter. Is it mist rising from water foreseen in her vision? Could the creek Tessa spoke of be a hot mineral spring? Continuing, she reaches the ridge and hesitates at the rocky stairway from her premonition. With haste, she descends the foggy slope.

  Flurries dissipate as the temperature rises in the canopied grove. Snowless ground and verdant growth emerge around her. Water gushes below, alerting Cristal to a nearby creek. The icy chill fades to a balmy breeze, rustling through the sylvan passage. Impossible! But it explains the mist above the trees.

  She recalls the premonition of the footbridge, a mystical scene lush with spring. She’s never forgotten the vivid pink celestial dogwood trees. In the augury, a tranced Twyla walked toward and vanished through a waterfall. A portal, Tessa explained in her letter. She’d laughed at the absurd notion of time travel but, at this moment, sees the truth.