The Gathering

by Dan Poblocki

  “How could you let her out of your sight?” Dylan demanded. “Were you really that wrapped up in playing a stupid piano?”

  “She’s a big girl!” said Marcus. “She can do what she wants!”

  Poppy sighed. “Not in this house, she can’t. Here, we’re like mice in a maze.”

  “It’s not my fault she’s gone!”

  Dash grabbed the handles of the French doors. “You guys can hang around waiting for Azumi, but I’m out.” But when he pulled down on the handles, they wouldn’t budge. He struggled for a few moments before backing away, looking for a latch or a lock that he could release.

  “What about Del?” asked Dylan, coming up behind Dash.

  “Didn’t you hear Poppy?” Dash shouted, moving toward the piano. “She said Del doesn’t exist! And I believe she’s right.” He dragged the piano bench several feet back toward the door.

  Poppy’s eyes were wide and scared. “I tried to smash a window upstairs with a chair, but it wouldn’t break,” she whispered.

  Dash tossed it at the glass anyway. It bounced off, clattering to the floor with a raucous echo. Marcus ran back into the room, shocked.

  “See?” said Poppy.

  “I can’t believe this.” Dash tried to toss the bench several more times, but the door remained intact.

  “But the email,” said Dylan quietly. “The voice mail. We heard his voice.” Nobody paid him any attention, even as he stomped his foot. “Am I invisible?”

  “We came in through the front door,” said Marcus. He tried forcing himself to remain calm, but the fright of the others was slowly infecting him. “We could leave that way too.”

  “I don’t think it’ll be any different,” said Poppy. She seemed to be fighting against tears again.

  “How would we even find our way back there?” asked Dash.

  Marcus shrugged. “By going to look for it.”

  “You didn’t see what we saw upstairs,” said Dash. “The hallways were moving! The whole house keeps changing shape.” The group stared at Dash for a moment. “If it doesn’t want us to leave, I don’t think we can.”

  “What do you mean if it doesn’t want us to leave?” said Dylan. “How can a house not want us to leave?”

  “We have to find Azumi before we do anything else,” said Poppy, heading toward the hallway. “Right? I mean, maybe she’ll already have found a way out.”

  “Let’s try for the front door,” said Marcus evenly. “Maybe we’ll run into Azumi. We can figure out what to do from there.”

  “I already know what we can do from there,” said Dash, making his way back across the room in a huff. “We can go.” He took his brother’s arm and disappeared into the hallway.

  MARCUS SHOOK HIS head at Poppy and followed the twins. “Me and Azumi found a whole bunch of stuff that made it pretty clear this place is a school. A boarding school, like with uniforms and a big kitchen with silverware and food trays and … and a pantry with enough food to feed an entire—”

  “Orphanage?” Poppy interrupted, her voice growing higher. “That doesn’t sound so different from a boarding school. I mean, right? That was what I found upstairs. Files and files and files.” Poppy blinked and gathered herself. Ahead, Dash and Dylan were rushing side by side down the hallway. The light at the end of the hallway looked familiar. Hopefully it was coming from the grand foyer. “Please tell me we’re all thinking the same thing,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to feel like the one weirdo here.”

  “And what should we all be thinking?” asked Dylan over his shoulder.

  “That Larkspur is haunted,” said Poppy. “The girl that I saw walked through fire. How is that possible? And she spoke to me. She said, ‘You came. You actually came,’ as if she’d been expecting me! What if these kids in masks are making us see, feel, and hear things that aren’t real? Or that were real once … I don’t know! I have no clue how hauntings work.”

  All three boys stopped and stared at her, not moving, as if too frightened to agree.

  Marcus touched her elbow, and Poppy flinched. “I think maybe you should find a place to sit,” he said.

  Poppy shook him off. “No! I’ve seen things before. Really strange things. And I’m beginning to wonder if those things have to do with why I’m here.”

  “What kind of things?” asked Dylan.

  Poppy closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. “I always thought of her as if she were a friend. My only friend.”

  “Her who?” Marcus asked. Was it Poppy’s imagination, or had Marcus gone pale?

  “Promise you won’t laugh.”

  “We promise,” said Dash.

  Poppy took a minute. She’d kept the secret clenched inside herself for so long that it was almost an effort to let it out. “A Girl. She stands behind me whenever I look in a mirror.” Poppy locked eyes with Dash. He had to believe her. “My whole life I’ve seen her. My mother … she left me when I was five. I grew up in a group home. So this Girl was special to me.” Dash raised an eyebrow and glanced at his brother, who looked away. Poppy swallowed her nerves. “The Girl was always smiling. Always warm. Until I found my great-aunt’s letter. Then she changed. In fact, when I reached Larkspur’s gate, I’m pretty sure she’s what grabbed me and threw me to the ground. That’s where you found me, Marcus.”

  Marcus wouldn’t look at her.

  “I thought she’d turned on me,” Poppy went on. “Jealous or something. But she wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was trying to stop me from coming here.”

  Dylan looked revolted. “That’s as creepy as … I don’t even know what.”

  “But you believe me?”

  Marcus wouldn’t meet Poppy’s eyes. His own Musician had gone silent for the moment, but Marcus remembered the therapist and the threat of medication. He remembered how he’d forced himself to keep the Musician a secret so that he could keep the music in his life. Marcus balled his fists. Poppy had said she didn’t want to be the weirdo here; well, neither did he.

  “Not really,” he heard himself say. Poppy looked at him with wide, shocked eyes.

  It suddenly struck Marcus that what everyone was suggesting—to leave this place, to give up on everything each of them had hoped to find here—would bring him back to Ohio, to his ordinary life where his siblings and classmates just didn’t understand jazz or classical music, to his mother, who hated listening to him practice because of her memories of her dead brother. He hadn’t realized until this moment how much he needed to stay at Larkspur, to believe that this was the music school he was always meant to attend. His Musician’s tune had proven this, hadn’t it? He’d never felt more truly at home as he had playing the melody on the ballroom piano.

  The twins glanced at each other, unsure what to say.

  Marcus went on. “Have you ever seen a doctor about these visions?”

  Poppy scowled. “The Girl’s not a vision. She’s … It’s hard to explain.”

  “I mean, it sounds pretty simple to me,” said Marcus, hating himself. “People sometimes hallucinate.”

  “Was Dylan hallucinating?” Poppy asked. Her face was flaming. “Was Dash?” She turned toward the foyer and continued walking. The boys followed.

  “I don’t know!” Marcus shouted. “But they’re not the ones who’ve seen imaginary girls standing behind them in mirrors their whole lives.”

  “I told you, she’s not imaginary,” Poppy yelled.

  “Here we are!” Dash cried out as they made their way into the foyer. “The main entrance!” He raced to the solid double doors, grappling with the handles. But just like in the ballroom, the doors would not give.

  “But this is how we came in,” said Dylan, moving toward the tall, thin window beside the door, peering out of it. “How are they locked now?” He smacked the pane hard with his knuckles. There was a loud thud, and Dylan groaned. The glass did not shatter.

  “This way,” said Dash. The group rushed to follow him into the game room. He went for the closest window lock, but th
e lever wouldn’t turn. None of them would.

  “This is so messed up,” said Dylan, grabbing the wire bingo globe off the nearby table, the plastic letters rattling inside it. It was heavy; it took two hands to arc it back behind his head and then whip it at the closest window. The globe hit it with enough force to snap a couple of wires, but the glass didn’t break. The little red balls inside spilled onto the floor, rolling in all directions, looking like beads of blood. “I don’t understand,” said Dylan. He moved from window to window, pounding on the glass.

  “What about the door’s hinges?” Poppy asked. “Can we take it apart that way?”

  Dash ran back to the entry. “There are no hinges!” he called out.

  “How can a door not have hinges?” asked Marcus.

  “They’re gone.” Dash returned to the game room and threw his hands into the air. “How can any of this be happening?”

  Poppy grabbed the back of one of the game room couches. “Maybe if we use the furniture to make some sort of battering ram … ?”

  “A battering ram?” said Marcus, shaking his head. “This isn’t a video game, Poppy.”

  “It was just a thought … ”

  “I don’t think anything we do will get these doors or windows open,” said Dash, his voice strained and trembling. “Poppy was right. It’s this place, or those kids, or something. They wanted us here. And now they won’t let us go.”

  A wave of cold fear grabbed at the four kids, and for a moment all they could do was stand there, shuddering, frozen in place.

  AZUMI HAD BEEN following the pink nylon ribbon down the dark and twisted corridor for so long, she almost expected to arrive back at the starting point. But she kept going and going, wandering around corners, stumbling up and down steps, without even crossing the path she’d already walked.

  How big is this place? Azumi wondered.

  The ribbon was starting to feel like a safety line back to the way out.

  The hallway stretched about a hundred yards farther before coming to another T-shaped crossing. With her phone’s flashlight, Azumi could see the nylon ribbon veer around the corner to the right. She listened to her breath, counting in her head with every exhalation so that she had something to focus on other than the growing strangeness of the situation.

  Azumi didn’t see the backpack on the floor until her sneaker caught on the strap, and she tripped, letting go of the ribbon and landing sprawled on the floor.

  Her hand trembled as she reached for the backpack. Its blue canvas was faded, as if it had been bleached by the elements. Its front pockets had been worn through and the sides were ragged, as if torn open by hungry animals. Inside, Azumi could see what she knew were stacks of notebooks, once waterlogged but now dry. She knew that if she were to reach in, pull out one of the books, and open it to any page, she’d see ink that had bled into gray splotches, words that had been leeched away by water.

  Azumi kicked the bag away hard, and it arced away from her and hit a distant wall with a satisfying smack.

  This backpack had been one of the first objects that she and Moriko had stumbled upon in the forest behind Auntie Wakame’s house in Yamanashi Prefecture. And here it was, waiting in Larkspur for Azumi to find it again.

  Something shifted down the hallway. There was a scuffling of feet.

  “Who’s there?” Azumi demanded. “What is going on here?” She grabbed her phone and shone the light into the shadows. A few more objects were scattered throughout the hall in the darkness ahead of her, but from where she sat, Azumi couldn’t make out what they were.

  She stood slowly, waiting for the scuffling sound to come again, but the hallway was quiet. Following the ribbon, she made her way to the next object. It was a wrinkled photograph, its subjects staring up at Azumi. She knew this one too. It was a snapshot of a father standing with his daughter on the corner of a busy street, her arms slung around his neck, both of them smiling for the camera. Azumi knew it was taken in Tokyo. She also knew that if she were to flip over the photograph, she’d find kanji written on the back in ballpoint pen: Good-bye, my lovely girl. Forgive me. Azumi’s Japanese wasn’t nearly as good as her parents wanted it to be, but she’d studied this photograph before too—in the forest on the day Moriko went missing. With every discovery, she felt herself growing giddy, as if she might lose control and start laughing again, like she had done with Marcus in the laundry. She pulled her jacket tight across her middle and forced the feeling away, determined to keep hold of herself.

  Azumi remembered the time last year when Moriko had tried to pierce her belly button with a sewing needle. Azumi had run to tell her parents what her sister was about to do. They’d laughed, and Azumi had fumed. “It’s going to get infected!” she’d insisted.

  “So then let it get infected,” her father had said. “Your sister will learn, won’t she?”

  Let it get infected. That was the thought that had gone through Azumi’s head when she headed back to Auntie Wakame’s cottage on that last afternoon. Those were the words she thought of as the sun had set and she’d held her tongue about leaving Moriko alone on the path at the edge of the woods, holding on to that stupid pink ribbon. Your sister will learn, won’t she?

  Azumi had no idea at the time how that infection would spread—how it would sneak into her brain like a worm, turn her into a mindless zombie, and walk her unknowingly into the darkness of her dreams.

  Coming to the end of the hallway, Azumi ran around the corner, following the ribbon. There was light up ahead coming from a doorway on the right. Pieces of paper were strewn like bread crumbs all the way into the distance. Azumi ventured on, bending down to examine these pages. Picking up several of them, she noticed that the same words were written in pencil at the top of each: Dear Sister—

  Someone was toying with her. With all of them. The creepy papier-mâché figurines that looked like the group of kids she’d met that day and now the ribbons and things from the woods here in the house …

  She picked up another page. This one was different. The words Dear Azumi were followed by a series of thick black lines, Magic Marker inked over the rest of the message. Azumi looked closer. Holding the flashlight in just the right position, she was able to make out indentations in the paper, more of the message that someone had tried to erase.

  Dear Azumi,

  I miss you so much. If only we could see each other face to face …

  A spark of anger lit in her stomach, and she had to stop herself from crumpling the page. Someone had mimicked Moriko’s writing perfectly. Who would make fun of her sister like this? She hadn’t told anyone about Moriko besides Marcus. Was this the type of joke that he’d try, to get back at her for whatever dumb thing she might have said earlier to offend him?

  A muffled cough echoed from up ahead. A figure was standing in the pale light filtering through a doorway, holding the end of the pink ribbon. Azumi squinted. “Hello?”

  The figure didn’t answer her. Didn’t move. Trying to keep herself from trembling, Azumi approached steadily. “Did you write this?” Azumi found herself fighting tears. “Answer me!” She didn’t know what emotion she was feeling. They were all so mixed up.

  She thought of the day weeks prior when she’d searched online for East Coast schools and how only one entry kept coming up. Larkspur. Was this person responsible for that too? It didn’t seem possible. Not physically, nor emotionally—she’d never imagined that someone could be so cruel.

  She was about to tear the papers to pieces, but the figure stepped into the faint beam of her flashlight and Azumi’s breath was swept from her lungs.

  “Moriko?” Azumi wheezed. Her face was on fire. Her skin tingled, and then the hallway tilted, or maybe it only seemed so.

  The figure stepped back into the shadows, the details of her appearance melting away. She dropped the end of the ribbon and then disappeared through the doorway on her right.

  “Moriko, wait!” Azumi called out. She raced after her sister.

 
“HEY, OVER HERE,” Dash called from up ahead. He and Dylan were standing in front of a large wooden door on the right side of the corridor. “Maybe this one leads to an exit!” The top of the door rose high over their heads, crowned in a sunburst-shaped arc. Marcus and Poppy approached the twins, and the door, cautiously. Dylan was already pulling at the doorknob.

  “I don’t think so,” said Marcus. “Look.”

  Dylan hadn’t noticed the dozen or more rusty nails that had been hammered along the outer edge of the door, piercing the frame around it. Frustrated, Dash pushed his brother’s hands away from the knob. “It looks like someone wants to keep people out of there.”

  “Either that,” said Poppy, “or they want to keep someone inside.”

  Dash closed his eyes, and Poppy realized that she should try harder to not frighten her new friends. Friends? Was that what they’d become? Despite the animosity she’d already felt building between herself and both Dylan and Marcus, she had to admit that Dash was feeling like a friend. “I’m sorry, Dash,” she said. It was hard for her to say. The girls at Thursday’s Hope hardly ever apologized unless Ms. Tate threatened them with punishment.

  “Listen,” Dylan whispered. He brought his ear close to the door but didn’t touch it. The others decided they could hear just fine from where they stood. A slight scratching sound was coming from within, like long fingernails dragging along the wood. Dylan glanced at the others. “Do you think it’s Azumi?” None of them wanted to call out or make their presence known.

  “What if it is?” Poppy asked. “We’d need a hammer to pry those nails away.”

  “We could go look for one,” said Marcus, but nobody appeared willing to head back into the dark passage behind them.

  The doorknob rattled violently, and everyone jumped back. There was a sudden pounding, and the door itself jounced and trembled. It bulged outward and the nails in the door frame strained.

  Dash whimpered. They were all too frightened to move. Too scared to speak. But Dash knew they were all thinking the same thing he was: One of the masked kids is in there, and he or she is trying to get to us.