The House in Poplar Wood

by K. E. Ormsbee

  “But that’s just the way people are sometimes! Strangers. People who don’t know you like I do.”

  “I saw how she looked at me,” Felix said. “I’m going back home. Now.”

  “Please don’t—”

  “You don’t have to come with me!” he snapped.

  “Hey!” someone else cried.

  Gretchen was standing at the wood’s edge, looking very much like the zombie she’d dressed up as—shoulders hunched and bloodied mouth agape.

  “Wait!” she said, but Felix darted into the dark of the wood.

  It wasn’t until a stitch twisted into his side that he slowed and stooped and puffed out stammers of breath, pressing his hand against an oak tree to keep himself upright.

  Lee came up behind him once more. “You’re not going back to the bonfire, are you?” he asked.

  “No. I’m going home.”

  “But you’re taking the long way back.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Lee sighed loudly. “Fine. You were gonna walk back early with me; I’ll walk back early with you. But Felix?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think you’re being stupid.”

  “Okay.”

  That settled, the brothers started back toward Poplar House, leaving behind the bonfire and the girl named Gretchen.

  In all his talks about town, Lee had only ever mentioned one person named Gretchen, and never in nice terms. Which could only mean that that undead girl had to be Gretchen Whipple. Felix reflected, with a grim smile, on what Halloween luck that was: His one night in town, and he had managed to run into two sworn enemies.

  Gretchen was in the counselor’s office for the third time that week, and it was only Tuesday.

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  Ms. Clark, Boone Ridge Middle’s school counselor, sat across from Gretchen at a snot-yellow desk. Her hands were folded neatly atop Gretchen’s file, a manila folder as thick as a phone book.

  “Guess you’re going to tell me,” Gretchen said.

  Ms. Clark pulled in a short, forbearing breath. “You’re here, Gretchen, because I want to help you. I want you to succeed in your classes. I want you to learn.”

  Gretchen sat up straight. She folded her hands on the edge of the desk, a perfect mirror of Ms. Clark—only Gretchen’s nails were painted orange, and there was a ring drawn around her pinky finger in permanent marker.

  “I want to learn, too,” she said. “Mr. Edmonson is getting in the way.”

  Mr. Edmonson was Gretchen’s history teacher, and according to the message Gretchen had left on his whiteboard that afternoon, he wasn’t doing a very good job.

  Ms. Clark showed Gretchen her cell phone screen. There was a photograph of Gretchen’s handiwork, which had since been erased by an incensed Mr. Edmonson. The message was a poem:

  Feed us knowledge, not facts.

  Give us hearts, not spineless backs.

  Don’t test us on our As and Bs.

  Let us argue, read, and breathe.

  “It’s got a nice rhythm,” said Gretchen. “My best poem to date.”

  Ms. Clark clicked off her phone. “This is not poetry class, Gretchen. And that wasn’t a poem, it was juvenile behavior. Do you know what ‘juvenile’ means?”

  “‘Juvenile.’ Adjective. From the Latin juvenilis. There are several definitions, but I’m guessing the one you intended is ‘childish, immature.’”

  Ms. Clark slammed down her phone. Gretchen wasn’t scared. She was used to making adults angry.

  “Miss Whipple, I hope you don’t find this funny.”

  “I don’t,” said Gretchen. “It’s extremely serious. But haven’t I given you the right answer? You can’t be angry with me for that. Rights and wrongs and trues and falses—that’s what you people want.”

  “‘We people’? Who, pray tell, are ‘we people’?”

  “You, Mr. Edmonson, the principal. You just want us to color the right bubbles on our tests. None of you wants us to think, to wonder what if, because if we did that, we might get an answer wrong.” Gretchen paused, but Ms. Clark didn’t deny a thing. “Only Mr. Hickering asks us whys. Yesterday, Quentin Mattherson finished this really difficult long division on the board. Quentin is the teachers’ favorite, obviously, because he always gives the right answers.

  “But then, do you know what Mr. Hickering said? He asked Quentin why what he’d done was so important. ‘Why does division matter, Quentin?’ he asked. ‘It’s all fine and good you understand decimal points, but why on earth should any of us care?’”

  Gretchen leaned in closer. “And Quentin didn’t know any right answer to that. He told Mr. Edmonson, ‘I just want an A.’ Isn’t that the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard? Quentin didn’t know why he should care, and he didn’t care that he didn’t.”

  “There is nothing wrong with wanting As,” said Ms. Clark. “Good students want to make good grades. And you have the potential to do just that, if only you didn’t argue so much.”

  “But arguing is how we learn,” said Gretchen. “That’s what Dad always says.”

  “Well, please do remind your father of that when you give him this.” Ms. Clark handed Gretchen a sinister green slip of paper.

  “Fine!” Gretchen chirped brightly.

  “You understand, don’t you, Miss Whipple, that you are one demerit away from a suspension?”

  “Of course,” said Gretchen. “Why do you think I’m smiling?”

  Gretchen stepped outside Boone Ridge Middle just as Asa was pulling Whipplesnapper into the parking lot. Whipplesnapper was a car the color of green mold, and it smelled even worse. The family was rich enough for Asa to afford not only his motorbike, but a brand-new sports car. Mayor Whipple had even taken his son to many car lots, attempting to convince Asa to buy a nice BMW.

  Only, Asa did not want a nice BMW. He wanted Whipplesnapper, a car that was older than Gretchen, which he’d bought from a used car lot in Junction City, twenty miles east of Boone Ridge. As for his motorbike—he’d bought that broken and brought it to life himself. For weeks, the Whipples’ driveway had been oil-stained and covered in chrome parts. Gram had made a fuss, but for those few weeks, Asa had almost seemed happy. Almost. And then he’d cleared the mess away and gone back to his all-wrong smiles.

  “You’re late,” Gretchen told Asa, settling into the passenger seat.

  “You’re late,” Asa grunted back.

  “I had a special appointment.”

  Asa shifted Whipplesnapper’s gears. The old sedan wheezed out of the parking lot and clunked onto the main road. As they drove away from school, Gretchen stuck her head out the window and proudly surveyed the chalk message on the brick overhang—the reason for her first counselor visit that week.

  question everything, it read.

  Asa was looking at his rearview mirror, and Gretchen was sure he could see her chalky masterpiece. She wondered if he approved—not that she wanted Asa’s approval, and not that he’d ever tell her if she had it.

  “They kicking you out, or what?” he asked.

  “I’m one demerit away from suspension,” Gretchen said breezily.

  Asa snorted. Her older brother had his own impressive suspension record, Gretchen knew, though his was for fights and cigarettes, not protest poems. But maybe Asa’s snort meant he was proud of her. Not that she cared. She really didn’t, at all.

  Asa slowed the car at a red light. “Just because you don’t hand in those slips to Gram or Dad doesn’t mean they don’t know about your demerits. I’ve heard them talking about sending you off.”

  Gretchen laughed, but it was a puttery sound, much like Whipplesnapper’s engine. “You’re making that up. Send me off to where?”

  “North Carolina. I’m sure Gram’s picked the school with the ugliest uniforms and worst food. Someplace with lots of decorum.” Asa simpered at Gretchen, and she dropped her eyes to her shoes.

  “The light’s green,” she muttered.

  “Yo
u keep acting out at this rate, they’ll ship you off by New Year’s.”

  “The light’s green!” Gretchen yelled.

  Asa laughed and turned back to the road. Whipple-snapper shuddered through the intersection.

  Asa was lying, he had to be. Gram wouldn’t send Gretchen away to boarding school. She hadn’t sent Asa away, for all his black eyes and green slips. But then, Asa had always gotten away with more. He was the firstborn, the only son. He was the one who’d inherit the family business. And Gretchen? Maybe she was only good for sending away.

  “Whatever,” said Gretchen. “‘Act out’ is a very stupid pairing of verb and preposition. Practically redundant. Acting, by its very definition, is an outward activity.”

  Whipplesnapper rumbled down Main Street and turned onto Avenue B, then rattled to a stop in front of the Whipples’ well-manicured lawn. Cherubic statues watched them, arrows drawn and aimed for fatal blows. Bushes lined the house, cut into perfect squares. The whole of the lawn seemed to take offense at Whipple-snapper’s wheezing presence.

  Asa cut the engine, and the ruckus stopped.

  “You do question everything,” Asa said.

  Gretchen sniffed proudly. “You’d better believe it.”

  “Good.”

  Gretchen frowned. “Good?” That almost sounded like a compliment.

  “You go right ahead questioning. You question yourself right over the Smoky Mountains. I’ve always wanted a second bedroom.” Grinning, Asa got out of the car and strode across the front lawn, leaving a trodden path through the tender grass.

  Stupid, Gretchen thought. Stupid to ever think Asa would say something nice. He wanted Gretchen around as much as Gram and her father did—not at all. And really, what was she good for at home? Asa was the one who’d been trained in the ways of summoning, and she would never be. So what was the point of being a secondborn Whipple? All she could do was stand outside the family business she’d never be a part of.

  So maybe, Gretchen reflected, it would be better to be sent away to school. In North Carolina, she might meet teachers who encouraged independent thought. She might even make friends—kids her age who didn’t care what her last name was. That might be worth the ugly uniforms and the subpar food.

  Only, North Carolina didn’t have the answers Gretchen needed right now. Her questions had to do with a park in Boone Ridge and a conversation she had heard right here in her own home.

  The day the hikers had found Essie’s body, Gretchen had listened on the other side of her father’s office wall, using the drinking glass that, over many years of eavesdropping, she’d determined was best for the job. In the office were Orson Moser, the Boone Ridge sheriff, and Vernon Wilkes, the town coroner.

  “You’re sure?” asked Mayor Whipple.

  “Certain,” said the coroner, his deep voice dulled through the wall. “Her body was found in that ravine, but without one broken bone. Not a bruise, not a scratch—no discernable cause of death.”

  “And yet,” said Sheriff Moser, “the girl is dead.”

  “The hikers,” said Mayor Whipple. “Do they know anything?”

  “Young kids,” said the sheriff. “Called us first thing, not one of ’em touched the body. Clear as day when they found her that she was gone.”

  “Good,” said Mayor Whipple. “Then our story will stand.”

  “And what story is that?” asked the coroner.

  “That she fell from the cliff, of course. Loose rocks, slippery from the storm. She lost her footing and tragically fell to her death.”

  “Whipple,” said Sheriff Moser. “This warrants investigation.”

  “Hardly,” said Mayor Whipple. “I know who the culprit is.”

  “Who?” asked the joined voices of coroner and sheriff.

  “Death,” said Mayor Whipple. “It was Death who killed the girl. He took her, before her appointed time, for reasons of his own.”

  “But!” cried Sheriff Moser. “Surely that’s out of line with—”

  “Your job, gentlemen, is to do as your mayor asks. Essie Hasting’s death was a tragic accident. She fell from a cliff in Hickory Park, down to the rocks below. The town will mourn her, and my family will pay our respects. Then, this town will move on.”

  The silence was so long and complete Gretchen feared she’d missed something, and she pressed her ear more firmly to her listening glass.

  “That,” said Sheriff Moser, “is what you’d like us to say?”

  “That is what happened,” said Mayor Whipple. “We are all agreed: That is what happened that night.”

  “Of course,” said the coroner, in his deep drawl. “My report will confirm that.”

  Gretchen had run to her room then, ears burning from the words still circling inside them:

  Culprit.

  Investigation.

  Not a bruise, not a scratch.

  Even now, Gretchen felt dirty, as though those words needed to be washed clean from her ears with a cotton swab.

  Death had killed Essie Hasting.

  Death killed everyone, of course. Gretchen knew that. But the way her father and the two men spoke made it sound like this was different. Like this was wrong. Only they would tell no one about it. They would keep it quiet.

  Something was not right.

  Something was hidden.

  And her father was hiding it.

  Maybe Gretchen wasn’t the firstborn Whipple, wasn’t destined to be a summoner. But just because she was shut out of the family business didn’t mean she couldn’t try to break in.

  Her father was hiding a secret, and Gretchen was going to uncover it.

  She’d prove that she was just as much a Whipple as the rest of them.

  So, for now, she had to stay in Boone Ridge. North Carolina would have to wait. And if that required fewer poems and demerits—well, she could manage that.

  Resolved, Gretchen crumpled the green slip of paper, and headed inside.

  Lee tied a violet bow around the canning jar. Violet-ribboned jars belonged on the fifth shelf, which Lee wasn’t yet tall enough to reach without the stepladder. Judith was in the parlor, still talking with Mrs. Derry, her five o’clock appointment. When Lee entered the room, he looked neither woman in the eye, only took the splintery stepladder, which his mother had left propped by the china cabinet, and lugged it to the canning room so he could properly put away Mrs. Derry’s memory.

  It must have been a terrible one, Lee thought, running his thumb along the puckered rim of the jar. Its contents were black as night, thick as syrup. Still fresh, the memory bubbled and squelched. It had to be atrocious. That was why it belonged on the fifth shelf.

  The stepladder squeaked under Lee’s foot. He reached high and nudged the jar into its place, making sure its label—Forget—was visible. Then he climbed down, wound up the rest of the ribbon, and put it away with the sewing scissors. That was that—a chore complete.

  Before Lee reached for the light switch, he stopped and stared at the wall of jars. He couldn’t help it; it was as natural an instinct as scratching an itch. Those five shelves of memories were a sight to behold.

  The first and lowest shelf was the fullest, crammed with silver-filled jars of Trivialities—accidents and mishaps and misspoken words, tied neatly at their tops with blue ribbon. On the second shelf, the orange-ribboned jars were filled to their brims with what an uninformed visitor would swear to be lemonade. These were memories of People, down to the timbre of a laugh and the shade of a freckle. Green-ribboned jars of clear Happiness rested on the fourth shelf. The dark, violet-ribboned memories of Bad Things, like Mrs. Derry’s, were above them on the fifth. But the memories Lee found most entrancing sat on the third shelf. They were red-ribboned memories of Love, the exact shade and substance of cherry cordial, and they simmered in their jars, as though each was suspended over a flame.

  Then there was the matter of labeling memories. Green-ribboned jars were universally marked Remember. They were memories siphoned by his mother, stored
here to be kept safe, untainted by time or disease. Memories worth reliving.

  The blue- and violet-ribboned jars were nearly all labeled Forget. Memories his mother coaxed out, to ease the minds of their bearers, then sealed away to never be opened again. They were full of pain or sadness or embarrassment. Memories best put away.

  But the memories of Love and of People—there was no rule to their labeling. They were equal parts Remember and Forget. Some precious, to be cherished. Some rotten, to be put away. And they were the only jars Lee was ever asked to relabel. Patients would return, begging to never remember former friends whose memories they once wished to preserve, while others asked to reclaim memories of love they once thought they did not want anymore.

  Once jars marked Forget had sat untouched for a year, Lee took them down from their shelves and disposed of them for good. This was Lee’s least favorite part of the job, for it required that he venture deep into Poplar Wood, to a small and clear pond. There, he slowly opened each of the jars under the water’s surface and let the memories free.

  There was magic in the place that Lee called Forgetful Pond. Memory had formed it long ago with her power—water that washed away memories for all time. Lee didn’t like staying near the pond for any length of time. It spoke to him in dark and greedy whispers, and Lee had a notion that should he ever fall into the water, he would lose every memory inside his head and simply cease to exist. Whatever magic lived in the pond, Lee had decided, was not a nice kind of magic. He avoided trips whenever he could, setting aside the jars to be disposed of and only venturing out once or twice a year. His mother and Memory didn’t seem to mind this. So long as the jars were promptly labeled and shelved from the beginning, all was well in the house’s west end. Meantime, Memory kept the sole record of appointments—which patients had produced which memories, and how much of each. The practice was tidy and orderly, as Lee’s work was expected to be.

  His staring complete, Lee flicked off the light of the canning room and locked the door tight. Behind him, he heard a noise like a popping knuckle. He only heard that noise out of his left, otherwise-unhearing ear. It was Memory.