The Door to January

by Gillian French

  “O Lordy, how they could looove . . .”

  There came the sound of the girl’s light footsteps, as if she were crossing the parlor. They seemed to pass right by Natalie and Teddy, heading out to the foyer.

  There was a screen-door creak.

  “Good morning.” It was her, the same girl who’d said Thirteenth Army Infantry on the last recording.

  “Morning, miss—got your milk delivery,” said a man with a thick Maine accent. “Gorry, hope I didn’t wake you.” He sounded like the old duffers who came into the Grill to swap stories.

  “I wake up with the birds.” She said it proudly, like a child, interrupted by heavy glass bottles clinking together. “Do you want to see what I can do?”

  Whatever it was, it was lost in a wave of static that rose and receded. Then they were saying their good-byes, the milkman chuckling, the door creaking shut again.

  White silence.

  Heavy footsteps. Natalie felt goose bumps break out over her body like a rash.

  A man spoke—the man, from the first recording—his voice deep and slow. “You just don’t want to learn.” He said something else in a harsh foreign dialect.

  The girl ran. He chased. Their footsteps seemed to pound off down the hallway.

  Natalie grabbed the recorder and followed, holding the recorder out like a divining rod; she was closing space between them, the footsteps growing louder on the tape.

  The footsteps went into the kitchen, where there was a crash that made Natalie cry out, like a piece of furniture being shoved aside. Natalie, with Teddy on her heels, cleared the kitchen threshold in time to hear a door—later, they both agreed they’d felt a gust of cold air—slam in the far wall.

  It was the same wall where the door to January stood in Natalie’s dream.

  CHAPTER 5

  “You two sure are putting a lot of mileage on those bikes.” Cilla watched them from across the table.

  Supper was chipped beef on toast, aka, paste on cardboard; Natalie couldn’t taste a thing. She felt as if she were soaring inside, weightless, unable to settle into her own body.

  “I almost never ride in Lincoln.” Natalie forced down another bite, shooting Teddy a look. He hadn’t touched his meal. He was too busy staring into space, looking pale and stricken, practically advertising that something was wrong. “Too many pulp trucks. I can’t wait until I get my own car.”

  Cilla chewed slowly. “Mind if I ask where you’ve been going lately?”

  “All over,” Natalie said at the same time Teddy said, “Around.”

  Cilla stared at them. “Mm-hmm.”

  They finished the meal in silence, but when Cilla pushed her chair back, she said, “Nat, give me a hand with the dishes?”

  Teddy hung around while the sink filled, brushing at crumbs on the counter and stalling. Cilla finally said, “For God’s sake, go find something to do. I’m not going to bite her.”

  “All right, I’m going.” He stood holding the screen door open until Cilla spun on him, and then he stomped down the steps into the yard.

  Cilla plunged her hands into the suds. “I wanted to say thanks for hanging in there at work today. It’s not going to be easy, but you won’t be such a novelty forever. People will quit gawking.” She shook her head. “Small towns have long memories.”

  “I guess.”

  “Have you been down to see your folks’ old house?”

  “No.”

  “Nice family living there.”

  The subject of Lowell Emerick swelled between them until Natalie couldn’t take it anymore.

  “So what’s Lowell’s deal? He’s like Bernier’s lovable Mr. Fix-it now?”

  “On the side.” Cilla’s tone was mild. “He’s working for LaBrie Landscaping this summer, too.”

  “He must like money.”

  “He needs it. He helps his dad pay the bills. Fred isn’t really up to holding a steady job anymore.” Cilla made a glug-glug gesture.

  “Shocker.”

  “Lowell was never the worst of them, Natalie.”

  “No, that was Jason, followed by Grace. And it looks like the threesome’s still tight. Too bad Peter isn’t around anymore. They could keep smoking weed under the train trestle and setting off cherry bombs forever.”

  Cilla stopped scrubbing. Shame flooded in, and Natalie shut her eyes.

  “I didn’t mean it. About Peter.”

  Cilla nodded, taking her time rinsing. “Nat . . . try to remember. Just because something looks a certain way doesn’t mean that’s how it is. It’s been two years. People can change a lot.” She gave her a sidelong glance. “Especially when they’re young.”

  Later, Natalie went outside in search of Teddy. An early moon hung in a sky of lapis. She found him at the badminton net, bouncing a shuttlecock. She picked up the other racket. “Serve.”

  He did, and they played a while. When their gazes finally met, it was as if they still stood together in the nightmare house, in that cacophony of sound. The shuttlecock landed in the grass.

  “What do you want to do now?” He sounded hoarse.

  “Keep going back. Find out about the house, who lived there.”

  She was amazed to find that she’d already made her decision, even though she could still feel the goose bumps on her skin.

  “I think I have to. You don’t.” She held her breath, waiting.

  Finally, Teddy shook his head. “Uh-uh. I’m sticking with you.”

  In the dream kitchen, flurries drifted. Natalie opened the door with six panes of glass. Frigid air swirled out, stirring her hair.

  The girls’ voices whispered around her, calling her name.

  “Hello?” Natalie said, gripping the door frame. There was a sensation of being pulled forward, of losing gravity. She felt herself leave the threshold, passing through the door for the first time.

  She drifted into the blackness. Snow pelted through the void, generating its own cold light. “Who are you? How do you know my name?” she asked.

  They answered at once, a hissing legion.

  “We are the weavers. We are the shearers.”

  Silence.

  “And you are the darning needle.”

  Their laughter followed, melodic, inhuman, like the ringing of silver chimes.

  Natalie awoke to light, and the conviction that she wasn’t alone in the room.

  She opened her eyes, blinking against a burned afterimage on her lids, much like the imprint left by staring too long into the sun. Yet the summerhouse was dark. Her alarm clock read 3:32 a.m.

  For a long time, she huddled under the sheets. The dream burned inside her.

  Eventually, she became aware of the sound of something moving around outside. The summerhouse backed on the woods, and as Natalie listened, she heard dead leaves crunching underfoot. Not a raccoon, not a deer. Heavier.

  A bulb with a pull chain hung from the rafters, and Natalie turned it on, going to the door and stepping outside in her pajamas and bare feet.

  She waited. It only occurred to her later to feel fear. She felt cloaked in the dream, not fully in this world and therefore in no danger. She wanted to see who was out there.

  For the longest time, there was silence. Perhaps the visitor had heard her. Perhaps there was no one there at all. Natalie shut the door, got back under the covers.

  Only once she had nearly surrendered to sleep again did she think she heard footsteps moving off into the night.

  CHAPTER 6

  The next morning, she awoke to a knock on the door. Teddy stood outside on the step, holding a backpack. “Provisions. We’ll need them later.”

  “Later? Are we having a picnic?”

  “We’ll probably have to work through lunch.” When she blinked, he snapped his fingers under her nose. “Finding out the history of the house—who
used to live there? Any of that sound familiar?”

  “Quit it.” She swatted his hand away. As she turned, she noticed that the bird hotel’s miniature door was open. It was their old signal, hers and Teddy’s, when one of them had left a message for the other.

  “Did you . . .?” When Teddy shook his head, Natalie went to the house and lifted the roof.

  The object inside was simultaneously familiar and strange. Natalie turned it over in her fingers, thinking of footsteps in the dark. “Something happened last night.”

  As she told him about it, Teddy took the barrette from her hand. Familiar, yes, because every little girl on the planet had probably worn something like it once: molded white plastic with a metal clasp.

  “It’s not yours?” he said.

  “When was the last time you saw me wear barrettes?” She bit her thumbnail. “Who else could’ve known how we used the bird hotel, anyway? Other than our parents. Maybe it was in there this whole time.”

  Teddy pushed the small door shut with his finger. “Birds sure left in a hurry.”

  The Historical Society donation box had a sign asking for $1.00 minimum. A tiny woman with a white bouffant hairdo sat behind the desk reading a paperback.

  “Hel-lo, wel-come,” she sang out as Natalie and Teddy came in.

  Natalie searched her pockets. She had seventy-six cents. She nudged Teddy. He scrounged up a dime and dropped their change through the slot.

  “Sorry,” he said, turning red.

  “Short, are we?” the woman said. “That’s all right. So am I. Buh-bum-ching. I don’t suppose you’re interested in the tour. People rarely are.” She studied them with small, bright eyes. “Unless you’re the rare sort? Do you thrill to the sight of antique quilts and china sets?”

  Natalie laughed. “Not really. We’re looking for some information about an old house out on Morning Glory Lane. Who owned it and when they lived there. The clerk over at the Town Office said you guys have a collection of papers on that stuff?”

  “Oh, yes. A gift from a local historian. Don’t tell me you two vibrant young people want to spend your summer afternoon tracing property titles?” They nodded, and she got to her feet. “Splendid. I knew you were the rare sort the moment I laid eyes on you.”

  Fans gossiped overhead as Natalie and Teddy bent over a grantee book, tall as an atlas and pungent with dust. 25 Morning Glory Lane. Natalie ran her fingertip beneath the text.

  “Somebody owns it. Howard and Catherine Foster. Bought the place in 1998.”

  “They left it to fall apart like that?” Teddy said, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Maybe they were driven out, like, Amityville-style. Maybe you’re not the only one the ghosts have talked to.”

  Natalie folded her arms on the table. “I am, though.”

  “You’re just that special?”

  How could you explain a gut conviction?

  “The tape recordings aren’t from 1998, anyway. A milkman? Really?” She flipped to the house’s first ownership. “Built in 1772 by Captain Nathaniel Leary. Originally sat on one hundred and thirty acres of land. There’s a note that the barn and some outbuildings were added in 1820. They turned it into a farm.” She flipped through the next few pages. “The Leary family owned it for over a hundred and fifty years. Then it was bought by a guy named George Dawes in 1947. He sold it in 1949. The next owner, Harriet Forsythe, held on to it until 1970. Empty again until the Fosters.”

  Natalie dropped back in her chair. “None of those names sound foreign. I was kind of hoping it’d be obvious who we were listening to. I mean, I don’t even know what language that man was speaking—”

  “Russian. I think.”

  “Well. You little Rosetta Stone, you.”

  “I think you need to expand your cultural education beyond Syfy, Nat.”

  “Ha.” Natalie thought. “What if we’re listening to some time period not long after World War Two? Our deep-talking guy served in the Thirteenth Army Infantry, and the song the girl sang sounded like big-band music, didn’t it? And getting a milk delivery would’ve been weird if the house was still a farm.”

  “George Dawes,” Teddy said. “It must be him.”

  Excitement played cat’s cradle with her insides. “You’re into war stuff. Did American soldiers ever need to learn Russian during World War Two?”

  “Maybe. Russia allied with Great Britain after Germany invaded their country, so we were all sort of on the same side.”

  “Huh. Well, whoever George Dawes was, he didn’t stay in Bernier long.” She rubbed her arms. “They say that some ghosts are imprints, like memories of tragedy stamped on a place, replaying over and over again. Those tapes make me feel sick, and the nightmare is getting weirder. Do you think I could be picking up on psychic fallout left behind by George Dawes and that girl?”

  Teddy thought for a moment. “Psychic fallout? Maybe. The thing I don’t get is, why you?”

  Inside 25 Morning Glory Lane, Natalie and Teddy sat in the left-hand parlor with the recorder between them. Natalie pressed the button.

  Nothing.

  Why should they be allowed to pick up where they left off? The house wanted to wind them up, watch them bump into walls before teetering off in a new direction.

  “Another room, then,” Natalie said. “Maybe it wants us to explore.”

  Teddy cleared his throat. “Yay.”

  They selected a small bedroom upstairs. When they pressed record, the sound of an old-fashioned sewing machine came from the speaker, thud-thud-thud, and then a pause as the operator adjusted the fabric before working the foot pedal again. In another bedroom, silence. In the next, weeping. It was muffled, as if the person was sobbing hard into their bent arm or a pillow. Natalie’s own body felt wracked with it.

  “Sounds like a man,” Teddy said softly. “Doesn’t it?”

  Goose bumps tickled up her legs. “Okay. That’s enough for today.”

  They were almost to the back door when she changed her mind.

  She went into the kitchen, to the wall with the invisible door. She held out the recorder.

  Hhsshh. This time it wasn’t static coming from the speaker. It was wind, whispering around a door left ajar.

  Natalie followed the invisible seam, running her fingers over the wall.

  “Pen?” she said.

  Teddy dug in the backpack until he produced one. She traced the doorframe on the wall in blue ink, had nearly finished when there was a click from the speaker. The wind stopped.

  Someone, somewhere, had closed the door.

  Heebie-jeebies drove them all the way down the hill to their bikes, where they stopped to catch their breath. They’d forgotten to eat the lunch Teddy had packed, so they did so as they perched on their bikes, staring up at the house.

  Natalie said, “In my dream, the girls say I’m their darning needle. What do you think that means?”

  Teddy chewed, thinking. “Dream code. Could be anything.”

  When they left, it was never their habit to look back. The glare of the windowpanes followed them. The glass was now covered in frost.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Heads up.” Delia dodged Natalie with a platter, raising her voice above the Friday-night din. “Help me, huh?”

  Natalie carried the second platter for Delia’s party of eight. She’d been lost in thoughts of snow and dream riddles, but now she spied him, coming through the Grill door in a herd of customers.

  Lowell. Again.

  The sight of him made Natalie’s stomach drop, and it finally hit her that he was exactly the kind of guy she and her girlfriends would’ve lusted over back home—him, Lowell Emerick. He was sexy. The same boy who used to shoot spitballs at her in the hallway and once helped Jason trip Teddy down a flight of cement steps in front of Bernier Middle.

  She must’ve sucked in her
breath. Delia glanced back. “Burn yourself?”

  “Yeah.” Natalie passed out crabmeat rolls and bowls of steamed clams. The crowd who’d come through the door split off into separate parties, and Natalie recognized two more faces. Jason Morrow and Grace Thibodeau. They headed toward the corner booth with some other friends, but Lowell went to the counter alone. Jason and the rest hollered and catcalled at him until he finally slid off the stool and joined them.

  Delia noticed her gaze skewering the corner booth and frowned.

  “Go take a breather, okay? It’s almost time for your fifteen anyway. I’ll find you, and then you’re going to tell me what this”—she pointed between Natalie and Lowell—“is all about.”

  In the kitchen, Teddy was unloading dirty dishes into the sink, his hair sticking to his damp brow. “Having fun?” he said as Natalie came up beside him. “Welcome to Friday nights until Labor Day.”

  “Did you see who’s out there?”

  The corner booth was framed in the pickup window, and Teddy peered out.

  Grace lolled on Jason’s lap, her short hair held back by a red bandanna. Jason Morrow had changed little: He had the blunt looks of a jock, closely buzzed blond hair and a clean shave; his tattered jeans and corded necklace looked like a costume he’d ripped off some hapless metalhead. Three other kids had wedged into the booth with them, and though none of them could legally order anything stronger than Coke in the Grill, they’d obviously fueled up ahead of time.

  Teddy swallowed and shoved his hair out of his face. “That’s Bess’s table. She’ll take care of them.”

  The older waitress stepped up to the booth, one hand parked on her hip.

  “Don’t even go back there, okay?”

  “What’s going on?” Delia leaned in between them, bringing a whiff of sandalwood oil.

  Teddy flushed and moved back.

  Natalie said, “They hate us, we hate them. That about sums it up.” She watched her cousin remove his glasses, polishing away an invisible smudge. “Jason, Lowell, and Grace treated us like crap when we were in middle school together. The end.”

  “Obviously not. Every time you see Lowell, you grow claws.”