Wolfhowl Mountain

by Dian Cronan

  Mother remarks how strange it is to have an earthquake so far up the coast and wonders when the last time such a thing occurred. I nod politely, but am too busy making observations to really pay attention – attention to Mother’s words anyway. I’m paying attention to Mother – her mannerisms, her body language, her tone of voice. Compared to the depressive state she was in over the weekend, and her bubbly state as she left for work this morning, she’s tending more toward the depressive. I can tell Mother’s trying to fight it off, trying to keep her voice light and airy, but I’m not fooled. I know that, like me, and like Liam, Mother’s falling under the spell of the house.

  I’m now certain of three things. One, this house is alive. It’s a living, breathing thing. The strange voices in the night. The front doors opening on their own. The constant sensation of being watched. How had I missed it for so long?

  Two, the house wants Liam for itself. It wants to love him and to care for him the way it had Emily Lenore II. I go back over the strange occurrences I haven’t really thought about before. The glass of water at Liam’s bedside that first night. Liam’s “mystery” sandwich. The television coming on at Liam’s command. His sudden independence… Is the house already controlling him? Taking care of him?

  And three, in order for the house to succeed, both Mother and I must die. I think back to the diaries, to the women and their words, writing as if they were in conversation with someone, with some thing. I think back to what they did – had they really killed themselves or…?

  I feel a fierce determination to protect my family. The odds are against us, I’m sure of that much. I can’t leave because I know Mother, who’d never believe me, won’t leave. As if we could anyway – all of our money was sunk into this house from hell. I also know if I’m going to protect my family, I’m going to have to do it from the inside. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’ll just have to do my best to be strong and to keep the house at bay until I find a solution – if one exists. My sudden determination begins to falter, to give way to defeat and fear. Enit’s cold words ring out in my head.

  Your death is certain.

  ***

  “I know you don’t need me to tuck you in,” I tell Liam as I’m doing just that, despite his loud complaining, “but you’re my brother, and we had a scary evening, and I want to make sure you’re alright with my own eyes. Your protests are useless,” I say with a smile.

  “Fine.” Liam, bathed and in his pajamas, settles down in bed grumpily, and I pull the sheets over him – airplane sheets – and feel a pang in my stomach. Ignoring it, I pull the heavy blanket over him and kiss him on the cheek.

  “Goodnight squiggle worm. I love you.” I wait for a reply that doesn’t come. “Liam, I said – ”

  “I love you too,” he says, vaguely annoyed, and rolls away from me. “Goodnight.”

  There’s a tug on my heartstrings as I leave Liam’s room, closing the door behind me. He’s lost to me already.

  ***

  Alison sits before the vanity in the master bedroom. She stares through her reflection with dark, unseeing eyes. Her long brown hair has been stroked a hundred, two hundred times already, but she doesn’t stop. She slowly pulls the brush through her shiny hair again and again, as if in a trance.

  Hagan is downstairs in the drawing room, she knows. He is sitting by the fire and listening to the sad Christmas music still emanating from the speakers despite Christmas being a week past, a vodka tonic in his hand. Alison hears the music seeping through the floorboards of their bedroom, sweet and low… A perfect soundtrack for tonight.

  She looks at her empty glass on the vanity, sighs deeply, heavily, as if she is very, very tired and barely able to keep her eyes open, but she does not blink. She just keeps staring. Staring and thinking.

  It’s Hagan’s fault, she tells herself. It was his blasted idea to bring her here, to separate her from the city and the life she loved. It was him who kept her imprisoned in this fortress, this dank, miserable eyesore. Maybe he thought it would save them. Maybe if they came up here they would remember who they were when they first fell in love.

  Idiot. There is no saving them now. There was no saving him now. Now is the time, she tells herself. Now is the time because it is already too late.

  Alison sets her brush down and rises, catching sight of her silken dressing gown in the mirror, the one Hagan had given to her on their first anniversary. It is a miracle it still fits, she thinks. Of course, that is the benefit of a mostly liquid diet; she only eats when she isn’t drunk, which isn’t often.

  Next to the brush is the revolver, shiny and new. This she picks up with her delicate fingers, feeling its comforting heaviness in her hand. It is Hagan’s of course, not that he knows how to use it. Like many of their possessions, it was bought to impress. This is some kind of special edition kept in pristine condition, but beyond that, Alison knows nothing of it. It is a gun like any other gun, made for an explicit purpose.

  She slips into a pair of heeled slippers and slus her way out of the room and into the hall. She pauses briefly and leans drunkenly over the banister.

  “Hagan,” she calls in a breathy voice he would barely hear over the music. She is a ghost already… “Hagan, darling…” She hears the music grow lower, followed by his impatient sigh.

  “What is it Alison?” His voice is contemptuous, impatient. Am I so hard to love? she wonders.

  “Would you come up here darling?” She coos. With any luck, he will think she is feeling surprisingly amorous and follow her sultry voice up the stairs.

  “Come up?” he says, annoyed. “What ever for?”

  “Please, Hagan,” she says pleadingly, as if she needs him right now, in this moment. “Come up the stairs and meet me in this room at the end of the hall.”

  “At the end of the hall?” Hagan’s voice grows louder and his form appears in the foyer below. He looks up at her with hands on his hips, a cigar hanging out of his mouth. “What the devil are you on about?”

  Alison makes sure the hand with the revolver is behind her. She sees his double take when he takes notice of her lithe figure beneath the gown.

  “Darling, please,” she says. “You ask too many questions. I have something to show you. In the room at the end of the hall.” She doesn’t wait for his response. She pulls away from the banister and walks into the room at the end of the hall. She goes around the corner once inside and waits, melting into the shadowy darkness.

  “I’m waiting, Hagan,” she calls seductively.

  She hears him make his way up the stairs with those heavy steps she’d grown so used to; he stalks around like Frankenstein’s monster. She hears his breaths as he pauses at the cracked door. He nudges it open with a shoe and speaks over the long groan of the hinges. “Alison?” He calls uncertainly.

  “Over here,” she says from the blackness of the corner.

  “Why is it so dark?”

  “So it’ll be easier to see the light.”

  “What li—”

  Alison doesn’t wait for Hagan to finish his question. She pulls the trigger and watches his shadowed form fall to the floor, dead instantly. It was easier to pull the trigger than she expected – like plucking an eyebrow – and she stands startled, a deer in the headlights, as a thin trail of smoke lifts out of the barrel.

  Coming to, she drops the revolver to the floor and bends down. She drags her husband’s body to the center of the room. As she drops his limp, heavy bodyk, his forehead, with a neat little bullet hole in the center, comes to rest in the rectangle of light coming from the hall. He always was such a handsome man, she thinks, looking into his frozen, dead eyes. Pity she had to muss it up.

  Alison retrieves the gun and then lays down next to her husband, placing herself comfortably in the crook of his arm. She sighs, feeling content for the first time in ages, and lays her head back. “I told you, you would be sorry, darling.”

  Slowly, she pulls the revolver up and places it against the side of her h
ead, staring straight up to the ceiling.

  To no one in particular she says, “We’re so lonely, Rose.”

  Then she pulls the trigger.

  I shoot up and fall off the side of my bed. My ears are ringing, as if I’ve really heard the sound of the gun, like it originated from my very room and not from the confines of a dream. I bring my hands up to my head, but something chillingly cold and heavy is in my right hand. Slowly, I lower my hand to a shaft of moonlight on the floor.

  Gleaming in my fingers is the revolver I’d seen in the Boyles’ attic box.

  I fling it away from me, horrified. It lands with a threatening clunk near the closet.

  I sit on the floor for a long time, my hands on my chest. I try to slow my heartbeat and regulate my breathing. My chest is expanding desperately as I gulp for air, and I think my rib cage might burst.

  It takes an hour for me to calm down. When I’m finally able to think, I think hard, trying to remember the dream. What did Alison say?

  We’re so lonely, Rose.

  And what did my father say?

  I’m so lonely, Rose.

  What does it mean? What can it possibly mean?

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Earthquakes

  Beckan wakes up around three thirty in the morning. It’s been his habit lately. He hasn’t been able to make it through a full night’s sleep since Delaneys on arrived on Wolfhowl Mountain. He’s worried about Rose and her family. He can’t be sure if they’ve noticed the slight changes in their personalities themselves, but he and his father surely have. It turns out you don’t have to know someone well to see them beginning the spiral into depression, or to watch them fall under the hazy spell of the house.

  Rubbing what little sleep there is from his eyes, Beckan makes his way to the kitchen for some tea and sees the kettle is already on the stove, a hot brew steaming within. He pours himself a cup and finds his father in the living room, a snoring Lady at his feet.

  Derry stares into the flames of a dying fire, rocking slowly in his chair, a comically small teacup in his large mitts.

  “You bettah find out what that girl is up tah,” he says in his gravelly voice without turning away from the fire.

  Beckan takes the other rocking chair by the hearth, remembers his mother rocking in this very spot, and looks at his father. The light throws dark shadows over the rugged crags of his worn face. Beckan wonders how much different his father might look if his mother had lived. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean, son,” Derry says, turning his glare on Beckan. “That girl and her friends are up tah somethin’. They-uh meddlin’ in somethin’ they-uh don’t understand. She’s gonna get them all killed.”

  Beckan doesn’t reply. He blows on the steam coming from his tea and takes a test sip, hisses away from his cup quickly; still too hot.

  “Don’t you fah-get,” Derry adds quietly, “that it’s our job tah protect ‘em.”

  Beckan nods instead of pointing out their family’s failure to do exactly that is the reason why so many people hate them.

  “And don’t you get tah attached tah her neither,” Derry says. “One broken man in this family is enough.”

  Beckan nods slowly, knowing his father’s warning is much too late.

  ***

  Is it only Tuesday? This week feels eternal already. Mother skipped out of the house again this morning, glad to head to work, an environment she can control. Much like his fit yesterday afternoon, Liam desperately wants to stay home. He has no interest in going to school, in seeing his new friends, in getting out of the house at all. And, seeing another wet and cold day ahead, I understand.

  But I’m strong, right? I’m the one who’s going to protect this family. Step one is getting everyone out of the house as much as possible. So when Liam sinks to the floor, lifeless and heavy, I drag him onto the porch by an elbow and lock the door behind us.

  Beckan pulls up as I’m tucking the key into my bookbag. He looks happy to see me when we climb into the truck, and I feel his eyes linger on both of us before putting the truck in gear and heading down the hill.

  “How are you doin’ aftah last night?” Beckan asks. “Everyone alright?”

  Liam sulks between the two of us, crossing his arms and remaining silent. I roll my eyes at Beckan.

  “We’re fine,” I say. “The rest of the night was…uneventful. Damage was minimal.” I stifle a yawn. I wasn’t able to fall back asleep after the nightmare, especially with the gun sitting on my bedroom floor. When the sun finally came up, I returned it to the box in the attic, where I hope no one will find it. I decide not to tell anyone about the dream – to talk about it would only make it too real.

  “Good,” Beckan says. “I was plannin’ tah spend some time up there today. Check and repair the damage and take care of some other thins that’ve been needin’ attention.”

  “You can’t,” I blurt without thinking, and Beckan looks at me questioningly. “I mean… not by yourself. You should wait until we get home. I could help, you know, hold your hammer for you or something.” My recovery attempt is transparent, but after what happened last night, I don’t want anyone in the house alone. There’s no question in my mind the house is fully alert now. Who knows what it’s capable of? Who knows what it’s thinking? What it’s planning.

  “Don’t worry,” Beckan says with a smile and a wink, unconcerned. “I’ll be careful. I’ll only take care of the necessary thins. I don’t want either of you gettin’ hurt.”

  Beckan meets my eyes. We both know the other is holding something back. Beckan’s afraid to tell me anything that might fuel whatever futile effort I’m making with my friends. I don’t want him to know about my dream or the gun.

  “I feel like a crazy person.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. Thank God, they’re only a whisper.

  “What,” says Beckan with a peaked eyebrow.

  I shake my head. “Nothing.”

  When the truck reaches the bottom of the hill, we’re both surprised Letta isn’t waiting for us.

  “No Letta?” Beckan asks.

  “Maybe she decided to walk?” Yet another pang of anxiety takes hold of me. Is Letta okay? Is she running late? Or is she mad at me because of last night? Could the house have somehow hurt Letta, even in the safety of her own home?

  “Maybe,” Beckan says, and we trundle down the road in silence.

  There’s a lot of activity on the school lawn when we arrive, everyone anxious to talk about the “earthquake.” With the rumble of the diesel engine, most of the eyes turn in our direction as Liam and I hop out of the truck.

  “Listen,” Beckan says before I close the door, “I’m gonna pick you up aftah school today. Okay?”

  “Um, sure,” I say, wondering what he’s thinking. “Meet you here?”

  Beckan nods. I close the squeaky door and bend down to Liam, who’s still pouting. I remind him of his promise last night to stay with Mrs. Bauer and to behave. “There will be consequences if you aren’t a perfect angel for her. Understand?”

  Liam nods sullenly before walking very slowly toward the kindergarten doors, dragging his feet with each step.

  I search the lawn for familiar faces, but find only one. Adam O’Sullivan leans against the building, far enough away from the main doors to ensure he’ll be ignored by the other students, who’ve finally decided to head inside as the wind picks up.

  “Hey.” I’m not sure if Adam notices me approaching or not, but if he does, he ignores me. “How are you?”

  Adam stares at his feet and the hood of his jacket hides most of his face. When he finally looks up, his black eye is obvious, and I wince. “I’m really sorry about what happened.”

  Adam shakes his head and pushes his body away from the building with a foot. He lifts his bookbag and throws it over his shoulder, brushing by me.

  I don’t know why, but Adam’s stubborn refusal to speak to me makes my blood boil. “Hey!” I grab his shoulder and spi
n him around. “I’m talking to you!”

  Adam rolls his eyes and stares at me. When I don’t start talking, he leans forward with a hand to his ear, as if saying “Well?” His audacity fuels the fire and I curl my hands into fists.

  “Why do you hate me so much?” I demand. “I’ve been nothing but nice to you. Even at the party. You’re the one who earned you that black eye, not me.”

  Adam stares hard at me, his face the perfect picture of contempt. “Why does it even matter? Why’s it so important to you that I take your notice? Why do I have to like you?”

  I don’t have an answer.

  “I’m supposed to be grateful because you, the Great Rose Delaney, deigned to notice lowly peasant Adam O’Sullivan, pathetic descendent of crazy Ol’ Enit? You’re just like everyone else in this whole dumbass town,” Adam says, his voice full of venom. “You want to be noticed. You need to be important for no other reason than to be important. Another sheep on the farm.” His voice grows more irate with each syllable. He glares at me as if the just sight of me is offensive. “I don’t owe you anything.” He spits at the ground and turns away from me.

  The old Rose, Texas Rose, would have followed Adam and popped him another black eye. Texas Rose might’ve knocked him down and kicked him in the ribs while shouting obscenities. But the new Rose, Maine Rose, just stares at his back as he walks away, feeling very small. Only when it starts to drizzle do I head inside with the last of the students.

  I wonder when the sun will come back to Port Braseham. There’s a strong desire from within to feel the warmth of the sun, and see its yellow haze overhead instead of these ugly rain-swollen clouds. An unnervingly strong swelling of nostalgia for Texas wells up inside me, and I think about poor Margot, locked in a closet while all the other children play in the sun.

  ***

  Usually I like to sit up front in history so I can give my full attention to Mr. Lindsay. He’s a good storyteller; sometimes I forget I’m in class, and his enthusiasm reminds me of Dad, but I’m not in the mood today. I sit in a back corner, retreating into myself.