What the Woods Keep

by Katya de Becerra

  No one tries to kill us.

  But it does get weird: As we pay up, I sense the peach-haired lady’s eyes lingering on me with interest. I meet her stare, half expecting her to zone out like that Mark guy did at the airport, but she keeps my gaze and asks, “Aren’t you Ella Holland’s little girl? You’ve got her eyes and that expression, like you have the pressure of the entire world on your little shoulders.”

  A sweet apple I bit into seconds ago sours in my mouth. What’s worse, in addition to the nosy peach-haired woman’s interest, I also sense Del’s attention. Thankfully, the woman’s son has disappeared behind the STAFF ONLY door, so I have one less spectator.

  “Correct,” I tell the shopkeeper, hoping that if I keep it short and sweet, Del and I can get the hell out of here before the former hears something spooky and freaks out on me. But my curiosity immediately overrules my first instinct and I ask the woman, “How did you know my mom?”

  “I used to live in Promise. Ella was in my self-defense class.”

  I do a double take. The idea of my mother, fragile and willow-looking, fighting off pretend-assailants doesn’t quite align with my memory of her. In the dichotomy of lover/fighter, the mother I remember was the former—she roamed the woods barefoot for hours; she stood outside the Manor in the pouring rain, her head thrown back in amazement at something unseen to the rest of us.

  Ignoring my disbelieving expression, the peach-haired lady goes on, her tone suspiciously casual, “She spoke of you often. And of your father. So sad what happened to her. Such a bizarre tragedy to hit that poor town. And, you know, the police didn’t take me seriously then, but I know Ella was scared of something. Something that’s been hiding in these woods for decades. Ancient evil that poisons the soul…”

  “All right, we’re in a rush, actually. Thanks!” Del nearly shouts. Through the noise of my pounding blood, I can barely hear her words to the woman. A slight pressure on my arm tells me Del’s dragging me out of the shop. I begin to protest, many questions bubbling on the tip of my tongue, but Del’s determined to get me out. Dazed, I give in and let her. Once safely back inside the car, I volunteer to drive. My hope is that being in control of the car will bring me some quiet and time to consider what I just heard.

  I get the car going. Once Del locates Promise on the map and issues directions, she asks, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, I guess.” I shrug. “Though I don’t enjoy being ambushed by total strangers like that.”

  “She’s a nutcase, clearly. Sorry you had to hear that. ‘Ancient evil that poisons the soul’? Cliché!”

  “Yeah, right?” I nod, glad I’m not the only one who took the peach-haired lady’s words for what they were—nutty mutterings. “It’s just what she said about my mother being scared of something.…”

  “What is it, Hayden?”

  “Well, it’s more of a feeling rather than an actual memory of something that happened, but there were these times when Mom would become jumpy for no reason at all, like she was being watched, maybe. I don’t know.”

  Del gives me a long look; I can feel it like a weight on the side of my face. After examining me for a few long seconds, she issues her verdict. “You look like you just ran smack into a ghost, Hayden. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this freaked out. And I’ve seen you freaked out.”

  “I’m not used to talking about what happened to Mom. But I guess I should be prepared for more of that kind of stuff in Promise.”

  “She was just one very confused old lady.” Del sighs. “If you want my unsolicited advice—don’t take her words to heart. Don’t mull over it.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Some twenty minutes in, the fog begins to dissipate. The road takes an edgy turn and, following a semiwild path up the slope, we roll right into the woods. The farther in we get, the tighter the forest becomes around us, rough tree branches scratching the car like talons of wild spirits attempting to prevent us from entering their domain.

  “Hayden?” Del asks in a small voice.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you ever going to tell me about your mom? Like, what really happened to her?”

  “I am. But now may not be the best time.”

  “Is it that bad? Does it have anything to do with this forest?”

  Del is uncannily perceptive today, even more than usual. “I don’t want to freak you out.” Not after the gas station lady’s talk of ancient evil.

  “You’re just making this worse now, you know that, right? Look!” Del points at something to her right. I slow the car down to a crawl, grateful that Del got distracted and there won’t be any more dangerous questions. For now, at least.

  What got Del’s attention is some kind of paramilitary camp. Not something one would expect to come upon during a drive through the woods.

  Through the tightly woven forest, I can only see glimpses of it at first: a cluster of camouflage that’s too precise, the ground too smooth.

  Not a soul in sight.

  I hit the brakes.

  “Are you insane?” Del protests. “No. Stay in the car. Please!”

  But my body’s already made the decision for me. I’m getting out, forcing the car door open amidst low-hanging branches scratching at the metal and at my skin. “I want to check this out. Are you coming?”

  Del doesn’t look happy and doesn’t return my reassuring smile, but she still joins me. Her visceral disapproval is digging into the flesh and bone of my back.

  I tear my way through the thick woods until we get to the clearing housing the camp. The space is large enough to hold three pavilion tents. Under my feet, the ground’s crisscrossed with car tracks—the kind that scream big vehicles, maybe jeeps or Humvees or some other kind of military machinery. I wish my phone wasn’t dead and I could take a few pictures.

  A weird kind of animal laugh comes from above, prompting me to jerk my head up. A pair of giant ravens are sitting side by side on a sturdy tree branch. One’s black, the other’s silver-gray. Both stare at me with their beady black eyes. “And what do you want?” I address the black raven, half expecting it to open its mouth and say something or at least repeat my question in that toneless guttural voice of ravens.

  When Del notices the ravens, she’s not impressed. “Unless they’re going to open their mouths—beaks, whatever—and recite Poe, can we get moving?”

  Hesitant to leave and feeling like I’m missing some important clue, I take another look around. That’s when I pick up on a logo printed on the tent closest to me. I get closer for a better look. An indigo pyramid is encircled with the words BLUE HAVEN RESEARCH INSTITUTE. My hands itch to get the Internet working on my phone so I can look up what kind of research this Institute does and what it has to do with Promise.

  “Any theories?” I turn to Del, but she seems lost, hugging herself tightly and absently rubbing her arms and shoulders. When she looks up at me, a hint of concern makes a little frown appear between her eyebrows. “You never mentioned you came from a place that was used as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s movie set.”

  “Wait until you see the Manor.” My attempt to lighten the mood only makes Del retreat further into herself.

  On our way back to the car, Del keeps giving me these strange looks without holding eye contact for long. Before I get back into the driver’s seat, I take a casual look at the trees, seeking out the ravens. I feel like they’re watching me, but it’s probably just my subconscious regurgitating the wording from Mom’s codicil and her flash card note. The longer I stare into the trees, the more ridiculous I feel. The birds are long gone.

  Released by the forest, we reenter the world at the top of a hill overlooking the town. Promise is nestled at the bottom of a shallow ravine, surrounded by woods, with Edmunds’ Gorge darkening the landscape to the north. Two tall silhouettes—a clock tower and a church’s steeple—rise up on the town’s south side. The sun’s almost down, and twilight paints the landscape with eerie colors. I roll down my window and poke
my head out.

  Welcome to Promise, I guess.

  As we head down the hill, following the shape of the road, I dig into my memories to help me navigate the rest of the way until the Manor comes into view. I seem to be moving on autopilot, without needing directions.

  I train my eyes on the Manor, but they keep sliding to this other house across the field from my childhood home. The Reaser house. Where Shannon grew up. The dream I had on the plane to Denver resurfaces, and I strain once more to see Shannon’s face, blurry, shifting out of view.

  “We’re here,” Del announces. “Aren’t we?”

  Unsure anymore what it is that our arrival’s supposed to make me feel, I try to quell my rising panic.

  My heart has been shattered so many times that by now it’s a restored piece of ancient china preserved in a museum somewhere. Still, an army of untethered images, words, and sensations swarms me.

  This swarm is dangerous; I fear what I might see in its depths if I stare there long enough. So I do what I always do in my moments of extreme self-doubt: I focus on the mundane, allowing myself to feel the simple but powerful relief that we’ve made it here without major incidents and excitement at the prospect of my head meeting a pillow soon.

  * * *

  The house is a restored Victorian Queen Anne in all its glory: a conical shingled roof, a rounded porch with sunburst detailing, a lineup of columns and bay windows. The House of the Rising Sun, Dad called it, but it was Mom’s Holland Manor that stuck in the end.

  The longer I stare, the more I see it: the sure signs of abandonment. Empty flower beds, paint peeling off, windows murky with grime.

  “My hopes of getting a pizza delivered are dying a slow death.” Del’s out of the car, joining me on the driveway facing the Manor’s front. Her words register, but I don’t say anything. Still too consumed with the riffraff of memories mixed with dreams and childhood fears. It’s difficult to tell which memories are real and which aren’t; post-therapy, my recollections of my time in Promise are all messed up.

  “Earth to Hayden?” Del sounds far, far away.

  We return to the car and haul our bags up the porch stairs. Before we go inside the Manor, Del fishes out her cell phone from her purse and snaps a picture of the Manor’s door. Another item for her collection of portals, as she calls them.

  That’s when it occurs to me that I’ve got no keys to the Manor.

  Del must come to the same realization, because her perkiness deflates, turning her eyes feral. “We’ll break in if we have to,” I comfort her.

  I inspect the Manor’s entrance. To my surprise, a tight row of runic symbols runs along the doorframe, all the way down, to encase the door completely. Another row appears to go around the entire house. A twinge of a memory scratches my mind but vanishes before I can hold on to it. I file the symbols away for now and reach over the wooden plane that crowns the Manor’s entrance, letting my fingers run its length. I squirm at the dust and grime that clings to my fingertips but don’t stop. This is where Dad used to hide our house keys—in plain sight, he called it. I doubt I’ll find anything, but to my shock, my fingers land on what feels like a ring with several keys on it. I seize my find and pull my hand back, triumphant. Del gawks at me in disbelief.

  It’s almost too easy—as if someone left the keys here for me to find.

  Or like someone’s been living in the Manor, an unwelcome idea announces in my mind.

  I know I’ll dwell on all the possibilities later, but for now I locate the central entrance key on the brass ring and slide it into the keyhole. The rusty lock impatiently gives way.

  12

  MY HOUSE AT THE EDGE OF THE WOODS

  As far as the second law of thermodynamics goes, heat spreads from hot bodies to cold ones. This direction is dictated by the fact that atoms in hot bodies are more disordered and random than in cold ones. To hypothetically violate this law, a physicist named James Maxwell dreamt up an imaginary creature that could sort out hot particles from the cold ones and, by doing so, reverse the movement of heat and break the second law.

  This hypothetical device is called Maxwell’s Demon.

  Imagine: A demon sits in a box, which is divided into two sections by a wall. The wall has a door that the demon controls. The demon acts as a bouncer of sorts by opening the door to let the faster (hotter) molecules flow to one side of the box while leaving the slower (colder) ones to drift on the other side. Hence, the first side of the box will heat up and the second one will cool down. The natural order of things will be overturned and entropy will decrease.

  Hypothetically.

  When I first read about Maxwell’s thought experiment, I actually believed he meant it was a real demon: sad, long-haired, shy even, like the one from Vrubel’s painting, The Demon Seated. Also the demon was cursed, for some reason, to dwell forever inside that box.

  I also liked to imagine that if colder particles were sad emotions—doubts, regrets—those “unwanted” feelings could be sorted out and thrown away.

  Could an emotion-sorting demon open and close my heart’s door, letting only the happy, warm particles in? Wouldn’t that be nice? But if that meant all my memories of Mom would be gone along with my sadness, would I still want to be rid of those sad particles?

  * * *

  I wave Del into the Manor. I start to go in after her, but I hear a distant whisper and pause at the threshold to listen. The whisper comes from the giant pines, spruces, and Douglas firs guarding the edge of the woods, moving to the rhythm of the wind, hissing my name as if mocking me. The sound is framed by the ringing of a wind chime. It sounds almost like the clattering of medieval armor.

  A distant whiff of animal musk tickles my nostrils and makes me think of horses. Sweat coats the insides of my arms and my heart beats a little faster. As if on cue, a flashback from my dream: I’m barging into the woods, my legs tight around the muscled back of a horse. A black horse in the white mist. But I’ve never ridden a horse in my life!

  The wind picks up, licking my skin with its icy tongue. Trying to ignore my shivers, I stay out on the porch and scan the darkening mass of trees ahead and around the Manor. My eyes begin to water as I see nothing but the night and what comes with it.

  “Hayden? You coming?” Del calls out from the Manor. “I found the central-heating switch. And there’s something here you’ve got to see.…”

  Dizzy with the night, I step inside. The second I turn my back to the forest, the trees begin to throw my name around. The sound of it bounces from branch to branch, from the mossy ground to the green giants’ heads, until it melts away into the dark.

  Hayden … Hayden … Hayden …

  * * *

  The Manor welcomes me with an inaudible sigh. Does it think a prodigal daughter returns? Or an impostor invades? Its presence all creaks and murmurs, the house acknowledges me with a slight atmospheric pressure change. I suspect all these preternatural sensations are a testament to how exhausted I am.

  “Omelette or scrambled?” Del’s voice comes from the kitchen.

  “You’re making breakfast for dinner? And where did you come across eggs?” I make my way to the kitchen to find Del leaning into the open fridge. The kitchen actually looks … lived in? Not at all how I’d imagine the kitchen of a house that’s been empty for years. The space is relatively clean, the lights are working, and then there’s the matter of the fridge’s contents. “Wait. Don’t touch anything!” I grab Del’s bare hand. In response, she flinches like I electrocuted her. I pull my hand back.

  “But I’m hungry!” Reluctantly, she puts back her find—a carton of eggs—and steps away from the fridge.

  I come closer to take a look. The fridge is not exactly packed with food, but it’s not empty, either. Actually, even the fact that there is a working fridge in the Manor should be a warning sign. My eyebrows rise in surprise when I see a row of wine bottles lining the fridge door.

  I scrutinize the rest of the items inside: packaged sliced cheese, eggs
, a couple of cartons of milk (still another week to go before the expiration date). But no leftovers or anything suggesting someone’s been here very recently. It looks more like someone keeps food around because he or she visits here once in a while.

  I shut the fridge with unnecessary force and move around the kitchen, opening the cupboards and drawers.

  Several boxes of some generic brand of cereal (all unopened). Some bland saltines. A box of whole wheat spaghetti. Canned soup (chicken noodle).

  I grab a soup can from the shelf. “Do you know what this means?” I turn to Del, who watches me in silence from the corner, arms crossed over her chest. She arches one eyebrow but stays silent. I continue, surprised she’s not as rattled by this discovery as I am, “Someone’s been living here!”

  “That much is obvious.”

  I pick up one of the boxes of cereal and shake it in accusation. “And this doesn’t bother you?”

  “The grocery store’s off-brand? I’ve nothing against offbrands, if that’s what you’re getting at. Though I myself prefer oatmeal in the morning, I’ll settle for a generic cereal if nothing else’s available.” Her face softening, she adds, “You’re overreacting. Maybe there’s someone who looks after the house, like a custodian or something, and they keep their food here. Or it’s a food fairy who found out about our visit and went on a shopping run for us. Who cares?”

  I put the soup and cereal back with too much force. “Who cares? Really? Don’t you think Doreen would’ve mentioned something about a custodian when she was giving me the deed? I don’t think we can stay here.”

  “You’re kidding.” Del gets an alarmed look on her face. She shakes her head for good measure. “Not going anywhere. It’s dark out. We don’t know the town. We’re hungry. And there are eggs here!”

  “Someone’s been living in my house, Del!”

  “Yeah, but you’re here now. And if someone does show up, they’ll see you and they’ll know the owner’s back. We’ll call nine-one-one if we hear or see anything suspicious. We can barricade the doors, if that makes you feel calmer. But can we please, please stay?”