Winterwood

by Shea Ernshaw

  But I don’t want to see one tonight, so I stand and walk to the cemetery gate.

  Fin starts up the shore again, toward the boys’ camp, but I call him back.

  Oliver didn’t try to walk down the mountain to town. He came to the cemetery, then went back to camp. And maybe it was all part of some stupid trick. Some prank. Maybe he only pretended he needed somewhere to stay last night; maybe the other boys dared him to stay in the house of the witch girl. To see if he’d survive another night. Usually the boys at camp leave me alone—they’re just wary enough to avoid the Walker house. But maybe they thought Oliver could talk his way back in. That I’d be foolish enough to let him. And I did.

  The thought makes me angry.

  That perhaps none of what he’s told me is true. That he remembers more from that night than he’ll admit.

  I leave the cemetery before I see any shadows, any figures between gravestones. Ghosts trapped in the in-between.

  But Oliver was here. He was here, at Willa Walker’s grave, and I don’t understand why.

  OLIVER

  I round the lake, past the marina.

  Smoke rises from the chimney of a small cabin set back from the lake, and there is movement at one of the windows—a man peering out from inside. For a moment I think he sees me, but then he steps away and the curtain falls back into place.

  The shoreline cuts sharply to the right, the banks grow steep, and large rocks rise up from the edge of the frozen lake. It’s deceiving, the calm surface, the layer of ice that seems solid and safe. Nothing to fear here. And I wonder what the lake looks like in spring, thawed and glistening under the lemon-yellow sun.

  Docile and inviting. A place to cool the sweat from your skin.

  I arrived at Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys just as autumn settled over the mountains, as the temperature began to drop and the lake started to freeze. I came later than most of the boys, who had been here for the whole summer—or longer. I was the new kid.

  I was the one who didn’t belong.

  But in truth, I don’t belong anywhere. There is no bedroom waiting for me when I leave these mountains. No one to write letters home to. No front porch or garden gate with the smell of mint and laundry drying on the line.

  And without a place to call home—to call my own—I don’t have anything to lose. No one to disappoint. No reason to fear what might come next. I’m on my own. And in books, those with nothing to lose often become the villain. This is how their story begins—with loss and sadness that quickly turns into anger and spite and no turning back.

  I wish I could see the memories lost somewhere inside me. I wish I didn’t feel bitter and frustrated. Alone. I wish this buzzing would stop grating against my skull.

  I never wanted to be the villain, I never wanted to wake in the woods with the cold weaving its way along my bones, and a certainty that something bad has happened click, click, clicking against my eardrums. Something I can’t take back.

  But it’s not always a path you choose—becoming the villain—it’s a thing that happens to you.

  A series of circumstances that lead you to a fate you can’t escape.

  Ahead of me, set back in the trees, sits the cemetery with its crumbling headstones and overgrown greenery and dying trees. It’s an old graveyard, and I wonder if it’s even still used. If locals still bury their loved ones here.

  I step through the small metal gate, which sits bent at the hinges, into the plot of land—and I know I’ve been here before. The memory doesn’t wash over me clear and sharp. Instead, it’s a knot that binds inside my stomach—the feeling of the hard, hollow ground beneath my footsteps. The shock of air, like stepping into a cooler. Stepping into a tomb. I’ve felt it all before.

  I walk a few paces, listening to the morning birds caw from the nearby pines, and then my feet stop. My legs refusing to go any farther. I’ve stood beside this row of graves before, where the ground is uneven, the headstones decaying in the winter wind. My ears begin to ring, a memory wanting to push to the surface, and I recall the name on the grave at my feet, without even needing to read it: Willa Walker.

  I stood here in the dark, snow under my feet, stars smeared out by a low layer of clouds, and peered down at this same grave.

  Voices rise up in the back of my mind, back of my throat. Memories scratch and claw at me, drawing blood, violent bursts like a punch to the chest.

  I press my hands over my eyes and try to blot them out.

  But I hear them anyway. And I know I wasn’t alone that night.

  The others were here too—the boys from my cabin. Rhett and Jasper and Lin. They were all here. Snow fell around us, a storm blowing in. I can taste the whiskey at the back of my throat, feel the warmth in my stomach, hear the stiff, sharp laughter.

  We were here that night. I was here. My heart thumped too fast, my legs ached to run—I didn’t want to be in this cemetery with a storm drawing close.

  But it wasn’t just the four of us.

  There was someone else. Another boy.

  Their laughter echoes against my ribs and I take a step back. Then another. I don’t want to be here—the memories beginning to slice me open. Raw and serrated.

  I reach the gate, my heels bumping into it, my boots getting stuck in the snow.

  I stagger through the opening and press my hands to my temples. A boy died that night, Nora told me. A boy died and I vanished into the woods.

  The wind howls against my ears, a scream that sounds like a warning, like the trees remember, they know who I am. I stumble toward the lake, away from the cemetery—I let my legs carry me toward camp. Anywhere that isn’t here.

  A boy is dead, my head repeats, the wind screeches.

  And one of us who stood in this cemetery that night is to blame.

  NORA

  The old house facing the lake has sheltered nearly every Walker who has ever lived. Aside from the earliest few who I know little about—the ones who were said to emerge from the forest, hair woven with juniper berries and foxglove, feet covered in moss, eyes as watchful as the night birds.

  Legend says we appeared as if from a dream.

  Early settlers claimed they saw Walkers weaving spells into the fibers of their dresses: moonscapes and five-pointed stars and white rabbits for protection. They said Josephine Walker stitched the pattern of a severed heart into the fabric of her navy-blue dress, with a dagger splitting it in two, blood dripping down the folds of her skirt to where it met her shoes. And two days later, the boy who she loved—but who loved another—fell from his porch steps onto the hunting knife he kept sheathed at his side. They say it tore straight through his rib bone to his beating heart, slicing it clean through.

  And the blood on Josephine’s dress trickled down the fabric and made perfect round drops on the floor of the old house. The spell had worked.

  After that, locals knew with certainty that we were witches.

  Whether the story is true, whether Josephine Walker really did stitch a spell into the folds of her dress or not, it didn’t matter. The Walker women would forever be known as sorceresses who should never be trusted.

  And in this town, we would never be anything else.

  It can be a burden to know your family history—to belong in a place so completely that you understand every hiss from the trees, the familiar pattern of spiraling ferns, the sound of the lake crackling in winter. The certainty that something isn’t right, even if you can’t quite see what it is.

  “It’s so fucking cold in here,” Suzy says when I step through the front door.

  She’s sitting on the edge of the couch, a blanket draped over her shoulders, legs twitching.

  “Fire went out last night,” I say, shedding my coat and boots to bend down beside the stove.

  “Where were you?” she asks.

  I bite my lip, not looking at her. I don’t want to tell her the truth, but I can’t seem to think of a lie fast enough.

  “Looking for Oliver.”

  “The b
oy you found in the woods?” Her eyebrows lift and so does her upper lip—smirking.

  “He was gone when I woke up. I just—I didn’t know what happened. I thought something was wrong.”

  “You were worried about him?” she says, her grin spreading wider.

  “No.” I shake my head. “I just thought it was weird that he left before the sun was up.”

  Suzy stops shaking and she leans forward. Her curiosity has cured the cold inside her.

  I scrape a match against the edge of the stove, and it sparks to life—the brightest thing in the house—then I wait for the flame to catch on the small twigs scattered across the bottom of the stove. The glow of the fire soon spreads over the larger logs and I close the door, letting the heat build inside.

  “He stayed here last night?” she asks.

  I stand up and cross into the kitchen, feeling on edge—I don’t want to talk about this, about him. “He didn’t have anywhere else to go,” I say. Or it was all just a game, I think. A stupid prank, and I fell for it. A dare from the other boys, who have never seen the inside of my house. Maybe they dared him to steal one of the lost items while I slept, but when I do a quick survey of the living room, nothing seems to be missing.

  Something else is going on that I don’t understand.

  But Suzy’s grin is so wide that even her ears raise up slightly. “Why doesn’t he want to stay at the camp?” she asks.

  “I’m not sure.” Of anything.

  “He probably just wants to stay here with you,” she suggests through the broad row of her grinning teeth.

  I shake my head—“I doubt it”— and pull down the box of oatmeal from the cupboard.

  “Wait.” Suzy sits up straighter. “Does he know what happened to the kid who died?”

  My fingers touch the edge of the counter, feeling the cold tile, the divot where I once dropped a glass honey jar and chipped the surface. Glass shattered and honey dripped everywhere. Mom was furious, but Grandma only cooed and sang a song about honey making the house smell sugary sweet. I think she made it up on the spot to make me feel better.

  “He said he doesn’t,” I answer, remembering the stunned look that spread across Oliver’s face when I told him. But maybe I misread everything in his cool-green eyes. Maybe I’m foolish to think anything he’s told me is the truth.

  “It was probably just an accident anyway,” Suzy adds, sinking back into the couch cushions, suddenly bored again.

  I release my fingers from the counter. “What do you mean?”

  She draws her lips to one side, thinking. “That kid who died, he probably just fell from a tree or froze to death during some wilderness exercise.”

  “Maybe,” I answer. “But if it was an accident, why is it such a secret? Why didn’t the camp counselors tell everyone what happened?”

  “Who knows. Maybe they wanted to call the boy’s parents first. Or they didn’t want to scare anyone until the police came. I don’t know how this stuff works.” Again, her tone seems callous. As if she doesn’t want to be bothered with my questions.

  But her expression drops and I realize it’s not that. It unsettles her to talk about it. She’s pretending it’s no big deal so that it won’t be. So she doesn’t have to think about being trapped up here, in these unforgiving mountains, with someone who may have killed that boy.

  “Can we not talk about it?” she adds, and I know that I’m right. She’s afraid. And maybe she should be—maybe we should both be terrified.

  “Sure,” I agree.

  But it doesn’t mean I’ll stop thinking about it. That the thin, acrid feeling isn’t carving a gaping hole inside me. That I don’t feel restless and edgy, and that I won’t double-check the locks tonight before we go to sleep.

  “I’m not even supposed to be here,” Suzy murmurs, her voice almost a whimper. Like she’s holding back tears.

  The cabin roof creaks and moans as the wind outside picks up.

  “The road will thaw eventually,” I say, a tiny offering of hope. But with winter now settled firmly over the mountains, it could take another month, maybe more. Storms have been rolling in over the lake daily, snow piling up on roofs and driveways and the only road down the mountain. We’re trapped. Hemmed in. Captive.

  Suzy runs her fingers through her long, wavy hair, pulling against her scalp, and tucks her forehead against her knees, like she’s a little girl playing hide-and-seek. If she can’t see the darkness, then it can’t see her.

  She doesn’t belong here.

  “I can’t wait to leave this place,” she says, lifting her head to look out the window. I wonder if she means Jackjaw Lake, or Fir Haven—where she lives. If she wants to leave completely, escape this wild part of the country. “I hate the cold, these mountains, all of it. As soon as I graduate, I’m gone. I’ve been saving up.” She flashes me a look, like she’s divulging her deepest secret. “My parents don’t know. But I refuse to end up like everyone else who gets stuck here.”

  I’ve heard it before, the desperation, the plotting to escape—it’s common at Fir Haven High, especially from the seniors as the months tick down to graduation. They talk of moving out east, or down to California where it never snows, or overseas, as far away as they can get. Yet, the truth is, most will stay. They get jobs working at the lumberyard or one of the nearby Christmas tree farms that dot the valley. They get stuck. They forget about the dreams they had to travel far, far away from here.

  I should tell her that I believe her, but I’m not sure that I do.

  Instead, I place a pot of water on the woodstove and wait for it to boil. I add more logs to the fire.

  “Will you leave after high school?” Suzy asks, and the question actually startles me—as if she cares about me, even just a little—and I swallow stiffly, unsure how to feel. No one’s ever asked me this. Not even my mother, or grandmother. Because Walkers never leave Jackjaw Lake. At least not for long. We find it hard to breathe beyond this forest. The farther we go, the more it throbs inside us, our lungs gasping for air. My mother left for a whole year when she was nineteen. Traveled around Alaska, met my nameless father, got pregnant, then returned home with regret in her eyes—at least that’s how my grandmother told it. Mom thought she could escape who she was by leaving these woods. But Walkers always come back. I think that’s why she travels to the ocean to sell her jars of wild honey; it’s a way for her to escape, to stand facing the open sea and to feel momentarily free—before returning to Jackjaw Lake.

  Returning to me: the daughter who has kept her trapped here. Her burden. And a knife digs deeper into my heart every time she leaves, every time she promises to be back but I’m not entirely sure that she will. If this time she’ll leave for good and never return. And I feel guilty for wanting it sometimes, for wishing she would stay away.

  Perhaps it’s easier: being alone. Building walls. A solitary life with no one to lose. No one to break your heart.

  “No,” I tell Suzy finally. “I won’t leave.” I don’t need to escape—I’m not like her, my mom. I don’t need to run away from here, I don’t need to see palm trees or vast parched deserts or glittering cities at night to know this is where I belong. To know I wouldn’t survive out there. I am a forest creature. I can’t dwell anywhere else.

  “But you could,” she says. “You could get out of here. You could come visit me wherever I am. Paris maybe.” Her eyes widen at the thought of it, as if she were already halfway there just by thinking it—the taste of a buttery croissant already on her lips.

  I smile in spite of myself. And shake my head. “I don’t think I’d know what to do with myself in Paris.”

  “Why not? We could eat pastries for breakfast and gelato for dinner and fall in love with whoever we want. We wouldn’t even have to learn French, we could just let the boys whisper their foreign words in our ears and lose track of the year. Lose track of who we used to be.”

  I laugh and sink onto the couch next to her. Suzy snorts, her cheeks rosy red. I like her dr
eam, her imaginary world where we can go anywhere and be whoever we want.

  “Okay,” I say, because I like this moment too much. Because I want to believe she’s right and we can do these things.

  For this moment, I am a girl who leaves the forest behind. A girl with a friend who convinces her to sneak out her bedroom window late one night and run far, far away from here. A true, forever kind of friend. One you’d go anywhere with. A friend you’ll never lose—no matter what.

  “We should pack tonight,” Suzy says with a wink, continuing our impossible little dream. “Make sure we have the right hats, we can’t go to Paris without the perfect Parisian hats.”

  “Agreed,” I say. “And shoes.”

  “And sunglasses.”

  I nod and laugh again.

  “We’ll also need new names,” she says, swiveling her head to face me. “To match our disguises. We can’t have anyone knowing we’re two small-town girls.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Agatha Valentine,” Suzy says, her eyes beginning to water with laughter. “That’s my name.”

  I shake my head. “It sounds like a private investigator’s fake name,” I say.

  “Or the heiress to a greeting card company.”

  I break into laughter.

  “You’ll be Penelope Buttercup,” she tells me, raising an eyebrow. “The daughter of a racehorse tycoon, whose champion thoroughbred, Buttercup, won the Kentucky Derby. But not the Belmont Stakes, which was his greatest embarrassment.”

  “My backstory seems slightly more elaborate than yours,” I point out, still chuckling.

  Suzy’s eyes are weeping now, and I think we have a touch of cabin fever. That feeling that once you start laughing, you can’t stop—when everything becomes funny. Even though it shouldn’t be. “A greeting-card heiress and racehorse royalty,” she continues. “We’ll be invited to all the best Paris parties.” She snorts again.