The Door to January

by Gillian French

  CHAPTER 10

  Loop Road was easy to find. All Natalie had to do was keep pedaling until Main Street became Route 15, then head up the first dirt road on the right.

  The Emericks lived in a modular home surrounded by a galaxy of junk that covered the blueberry fields as far as Natalie could see: ripped-open couches, appliances, car parts. An old school bus sagged over the rise, its windows bulging with bags of trash.

  Don’t wuss out now. Natalie had gotten off work fifteen minutes ago, while Teddy was scheduled until nine-thirty tonight. He didn’t need to know about this. She hadn’t told him about the shell casing, either. None of this would be happening if she hadn’t come back to Bernier. She’d stirred up a hornets’ nest; now it was her job to smoke the buggers out.

  Natalie picked her way up the walk and knocked on the door. Her heart was thumping so hard she was sure that the Emericks must be able to hear it inside.

  Someone came up the shadowy corridor. When Lowell opened the door, she didn’t fully recognize him. He wasn’t wearing his ever-present Red Sox hat, and his hair looked soft, somehow making him seem younger.

  His expression was hard, but there was a glint of curiosity in his eyes.

  “I thought you didn’t have two seconds for me.”

  “Do you want to talk or not?”

  After a long pause, the door screeched open further.

  “You’re here now. Might as well come in.” He made a mock-gallant sweep with his free arm.

  She slid past him to prove she wasn’t intimidated, her muscles knotted. It was dim inside the house. They went into a sparse living room. A television blathered.

  Lowell dropped onto the couch. “So? You want me to talk, or listen?”

  “I know what you’re doing.” She’d rehearsed these lines. “Stay off Cilla’s property, and stay away from Teddy and me, or I’ll tell the cops that you’ve been harassing us.” His silence shook her. “I really will.”

  He stared.

  “I don’t expect you to own up. Just stop.” Her face grew hot when he didn’t speak. “You know what I’m talking about.” She glanced toward the doorway, wondering who else was in the house. His drunk dad, probably, somewhere.

  Lowell sighed and settled deeper into the couch, his knees spread.

  “I guess you better spell it out for me, Natalie, because right now it sounds like you’re talking out of your ass.”

  “The barrette? The shell casing. I don’t know how you knew about the bird hotel thing, but it’s over. This isn’t junior high. You guys can’t mess with us and get away with it anymore. God, haven’t you grown up at all?”

  He laughed. “Have you? You still think you’ve got me, Jason, and Grace figured, don’t you? Like none of us could’ve changed. We’re always gonna be the bad guys.” He stood and smacked the power button on the TV. “I don’t know what barrette you’re talking about. And we don’t have bullets around here. We don’t keep guns in the house. Now, unless you’ve got some other bullshit accusations you want to throw around, there’s the door. Don’t let it hit ya.”

  Smoldering, Natalie started to go, but then she turned back.

  “It has to be one of you. One of you still has the gun, right?”

  It was the worst thing she could throw at him, the ugliest rumor that had circulated through Bernier’s grapevine back then.

  Lowell looked at her, his hands lowering to his sides.

  “One of you kept it, and hid it, and left that little present for me this morning,” she said. “So yeah. I’d say you’re still the bad guys.” She banged out of the screen door.

  Natalie pedaled her bike furiously, tears blurring her vision. The next thing she knew, a horn was beeping behind her. She’d made it down to the Quik Stop in a complete haze. She swerved over to the curb and wiped her face on her sleeve.

  Cilla’s station wagon drew up next to her, and her aunt leaned across the seats.

  “Hey, stranger. I’m on my way home. Where you headed?” Her smile faded at Natalie’s expression. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I was going home, too.” Natalie put her bike on the rack and climbed in.

  They listened to the radio for a while—her aunt preferred classic country in the vein of Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn—until Cilla said quietly, “Do you want to tell me where you were coming from?” She waited. “Not Oak Hill, I hope.” She glanced at her. “Tell me you and Teddy haven’t been riding your bikes up there to Peter’s grave.”

  “No. Why would we?” Natalie looked at her hands. She sounded like a sullen kid. “We were only friends with him when we were little. He hated us by the time he—when he died.”

  Cilla patted Natalie’s knee gingerly. On the radio, Patsy Cline sang about walking after midnight.

  CHAPTER 11

  “I’m not sure I want this to happen again,” Teddy said.

  “It’s okay. Remember to grab my hand.”

  “You really think you can bring me with you?”

  Natalie shrugged. “I hope so. You have to see what it’s like. Amazing, seriously. Like being there, only—without yourself.”

  She stopped at every second-story window, inspecting the frosted glass. Behind her, Teddy was jumpy, squeezing the backpack straps over his shoulders. Natalie felt an odd sensation of calm, pushing away all thoughts of yesterday’s encounter with Lowell: how he’d stared back at her, his expression somehow worse than wounded, not at all the look of guilt she’d expected.

  The house was what mattered now. Seeing if time would shift for her again.

  Natalie crossed to the attic door in the dim morning light. The attic no longer breathed sickening heat. It was frigid now, smelling of mildew and decay.

  Natalie started up the stairs.

  “Wait.” Teddy stood at the bottom, staring up. “Nat, look. Look at yourself!”

  She looked. It had already begun.

  The light came from her core, just south of her heart, building, streaking down her arms and legs, coating her body until she was nearly blind with it. She panicked, cried out, and turned to him. Their fingers linked. The final flash of light took the world away.

  #

  Autumn 1948

  The Sawbones returned that morning, his truck stalling out in a blast of exhaust halfway up the hill. He coaxed the engine and was off again, sending Rachel running for the house.

  “Vsevolod!” Brother’s true name echoed through the fields. Forbidden. She’d forgotten again.

  Rachel staggered the last few feet to Brother’s workshop, which was heady with smells of sawdust and varnish. She found him bent over a chest of drawers.

  “He’s back.” She started crying, which turned into a coughing fit. Brother had told her to stay in bed with the hot compresses, but she hadn’t minded him.

  He went to look out the window at the Sawbones approaching the house with his black bag in hand. “Stay inside and keep still.”

  She twisted her fingers in her apron and whispered, “He’s coming for me.”

  “Hush.” He petted her head, and then hailed the Sawbones in the yard.

  Rachel watched through the window, catching snatches of the conversation.

  “We didn’t call for you,” Brother said.

  “I received another call from Mrs. Page, your neighbor. Seems she’s concerned about your sister.” The Sawbones tipped his hat back. “Was that Rachel I saw a minute ago?”

  “This family doesn’t hold with medicine.”

  “Then she is ill, your sister.” The Sawbones waited. “I’d better take a look, all the same, young fella.”

  Rachel moaned and drew back. She knew what was in the Sawbones’s bag. Brother had told her. Needles. Knives. A mallet for crushing bone. The Sawbones had left his card in the door last time, and Brother had fed it to the fire. It was doctors who locked Brother aw
ay, gave him a bum leg, kept him from the War.

  She coughed into her hands, looking around the workshop. The old privy stood partly open. A picture was tacked to the inside of the door, one of those pinup calendar girls, with blonde curls piled on her head. Rachel’s stomach tightened and she stepped away.

  “Did you hear they found her without a stitch on?”

  Good churchgoing ladies in hats and gloves, whispering together in New Ashford Sundries about the Awful Thing.

  “God only knows what was done to her. Dumped along Old County Road like garbage.”

  “The sweater she was covered with? Tess knitted it herself.”

  A chorus of gasps.

  One woman saw Rachel standing nearby, dismissed her with a glance.

  Rachel ran through the workshop side door, through the summer kitchen, into the house. Up to the attic floor where she hid her special things. Brother didn’t know about them; he didn’t like reminders of their old life. Sometimes she needed to touch things that had existed before, though; before the memory of Brother sitting in one of the parlor chairs in the New Ashford house, head hung low. How he’d gripped her to him and wept against her stomach for a long time. In his hair, she’d smelled a bonfire.

  Raisa—her true name—opened the hidden door. Her favorite toy of all was wrapped in sailcloth, missing a piece but still sacred, from the time when she was small. She began coughing again. When she looked at her handkerchief, it was dark with blood.

  #

  Natalie awoke in the east bedroom. Two frosted windows allowed muted daylight.

  She found Teddy sitting on the top step of the main staircase, hands dangling between his knees. He bolted upright at the sight of her. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so. Did you come with me? Did you see?”

  He shook his head. “You disappeared again, and I was holding air.”

  She went to the open attic door, hesitating. “We have to go up there. Raisa hid something that we’re supposed to find.”

  Teddy took the flashlight out of their backpack. “I guess I don’t have a choice. Right behind you.”

  The attic ran half the width of the house. The spiderwebs were epic, cathedrals of silk issuing from the rafters. There was a crawl space beneath the eaves, and the chimneys stood exposed at either end of the room.

  Natalie stopped. “Look.”

  There was a small wooden door built into the side of the east chimney.

  Teddy peered inside. “I’ve heard about these. It’s called a smoker. People used them to cure meat in the smoke coming up from the fireplace.”

  Inside, two bars were suspended in darkness. A cast-iron pot dangled from a hooped handle, and Natalie worked the hinge free.

  She set it on the floor and removed the lid, covering her hands in soot. Inside was a sailcloth bundle stained black. Inside that was a tin box stamped with Russian figures.

  “Can you open it? My hands are all gross—”

  Teddy was already taking off the top and folding back the wrappings. He withdrew a painted wooden doll with a dimpled face and a scarf tied under her chin.

  “A nesting doll,” Natalie said. “Matryoshkas—that’s what they’re called. It looks handmade, doesn’t it?”

  He popped the outer shell of the doll in half, removing each identical doll and lining them up across the floor. “Isn’t there’s supposed to be a tiny one in the center?”

  “Her favorite toy, with a missing piece,” Natalie said, turning the biggest doll over and finding the word raisa scratched into the bottom in childish lettering.

  “The name ‘Rachel’ was probably something her brother George—his real name was Vsevolod”—Natalie struggled with the pronunciation, “pushed on her. American, and forgettable. They didn’t speak English with any accent, so . . . I don’t get it. Maybe their parents were immigrants?”

  The tin box also contained a few picture postcards, a pennywhistle, and a silver locket watch. Teddy lifted the chain until the locket dangled between them, winking dully in the glow of the flashlight. The timepiece had stopped long ago.

  Natalie reached out and touched it, watching it spin.

  “Vsevolod didn’t want anybody finding these things.” Her voice was hoarse. “I’m pretty sure he killed somebody.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “You and me. Friday night.” Delia socked Natalie’s shoulder as they passed each other.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re my date.”

  Delia took an order, and then came back, grinning.

  “Big party at Passamaquoddy Lake. I don’t want to go alone. Come on. Illegal bonfires? Night swimming? Boys—well, townies, but it’ll be dark. You can pretend they have mystique in the dark.”

  Seeing the look on Natalie’s face, Delia grew serious. “Nobody named Lowell or Jason will come near you. Promise. I’ll make sure of it. They probably won’t even show.”

  She glanced over at Teddy, who was mopping up a spilled milkshake, his hair hanging in his face. “You can bring him, too, if you want.” She made a huh sound. “I’ve been working here for a year, and I’ve never been able to get more than three words out of him. Either he’s the short, silent type, or he can’t stand me.”

  “Teddy? He’s not shy. He’s just used to people not getting him, I think.”

  “You guys are really close, huh?”

  Natalie nodded, watching her cousin wringing the mop into the bucket. “You know what? Night swimming sounds good. We’ll be there.”

  “Yesss. We close together tomorrow. You guys can ride with me.”

  The house was waiting for them after work. Natalie stopped on the path.

  “I can’t figure out where Vsevolod’s workshop used to be. Raisa ran down a long string of attached rooms, and then into the kitchen. Some of the house must’ve been torn down.”

  Teddy propped his hand over his eyes to block the sun. “Maybe that’s where the door you drew on the wall went, the one you go through in your dream. Why do you think the house wanted you to know about it so bad?”

  Natalie shook her head as they went inside, bracing against the cold. “Look.” She pointed at the staircase.

  Ice coated the banister and frozen rivulets ran down the stairs to the hall. Above, the ceiling light-fixture socket was crammed with icicles, like a mouthful of crooked teeth.

  “The better to eat you with, my dear,” Teddy said.

  When the light came for Natalie, she didn’t fight it.

  #

  Autumn 1948

  Outside, the kitten was yowling. It had been three days since Vsevolod had gotten out of his sister’s bed to do more than shuffle to the john, but finally the keening from the dooryard penetrated his grief.

  His reflection rose in the vanity mirror as he sat up. A patch of daylight stretched across the quilt. Raisa’s dolls lined the bureau, a row of sixteen little black shoes. He’d set them up like that while she was bedridden. Three weeks of listening to her drown. Then silence. The graveside service, the smell of wet soil and autumn rot. The only other mourners for Raisa had been that busybody from down the lane and her husband.

  Outside, the kitten shrieked and climbed the doorframe.

  Vsevolod made his way downstairs. The leg was stiff today. Days like this, he remembered the docs and all they’d done for him. The damn hospital, for his own good; the damn treatments, for his own good, electrodes pasted to his temples, coursing electricity. Waking in the infirmary with a cast on his leg, the Sawbones leaning over him as if he were the bigger man—Sometimes the treatment results in seizures and a fracture occurs. A sound mind is worth it, wouldn’t you say?—though what he really meant was Buck up, boy-o; you could be fighting the Japs right now.

  But Vsevolod’s leg hadn’t healed well. Good for a war story, at least, one he’d made certain Raisa memorized, even if she ha
d a mind like a sieve. He was no 4-F. Nossir. He wasn’t that type.

  He looked down at the orange kitten sitting on the flagstone, tail curled beneath it.

  “I suppose you think I should let you in.” He grabbed it by the scruff—the thing had never liked him, and tried to claw his hand even now. He carried it inside and dropped it along the way, like a rolled newspaper he’d forgotten he was holding.

  He got a fire going, ate a little, plucking thoughtfully at his lower lip. “A fellow can’t abide loneliness,” he said to the cat.

  Loneliness was crouching behind him now, massive, smothering. He knew the remedy, and climbed the stairs again. The cat shot past him into Raisa’s bedroom, where it stopped, tail bottle-brushing.

  “What?” he said.

  Its eyes were round and gleaming as marbles. Raisa’s dying scent was everywhere.

  Vsevolod grabbed the cat by the scruff, opened the window, and let it fly. He didn’t watch to see where it landed. Then he continued up to the attic floor. His treasures were in the crawl space. He dragged the trunk out of its musty corner and opened the clasps.

  Inside was a girl’s hat. He pressed it to his nose and inhaled deeply. He’d snatched the tam before setting the girl’s clothing alight in the woods that night. That New Ashford girl. Always going to the market with her two sisters, laughing to get his attention. One day, she’d walked home from the market alone.

  Now he had her hat, and he’d been very wise to hide it even from his sister, who would never have understood. Raisa had suspected too much as it was. She was a child at heart; she couldn’t understand how it was between a man and a woman.

  Vsevolod gazed into the darkness of the crawl space, considering his bleak longing.

  And then he knew how he would survive.

  #

  CHAPTER 13

  “Raisa never left that house. She was still there. The cat sensed her.” Natalie sat cross-legged on her bed, passing the matryoshka doll between her hands. “Vsevolod wouldn’t get her help. The sickness was all here”—she pressed her hands against her chest—“whatever it was. Drowning her.”