by Jack Lewis
“Forget the pepper. I just want to get something straight before I go to my hotel for the night,” said Jay. “You guys must have turned around. Probably when you stopped. You must have turned the car around, and then you forgot about it.”
“I forgot that I turned my car around? Right. Loe also forgot, I take it?” said Mag.
“We’ve all been there. Sometimes you do things on autopilot. I once drove home thirty miles, stepped inside, grabbed a beer, and then realized I didn’t remember a damn second of the journey.”
“Jay, the only way to turn around on that road is not just a three-point turn, but a bloody sixteen-point turn. It’s so cramped it’s like trying to turn a tank in an alleyway. I’d remember doing it.”
“Serves you for buying such a ridiculous car,” said Altair. Loe caught his eye, glad to find someone else in agreement.
“Whatever. I’d remember having to turn around. Loe would remember.”
“What about the woman?” said Jay. “She was just watching you?”
“Unless she was on a late-night forest stroll wearing just her gown, then yes. She watched us from beside a tree, and then scampered off somewhere.”
“Maybe she was Dad’s girlfriend.”
“Funny.”
Jay drank the rest of his whiskey and stood up. “I’ve had enough. I’m, going to my hotel. They said they had a couple of rooms vacant if you guys wanted to sleep somewhere that doesn’t look like a squatter’s den?”
Altair, Mag, and Loe all looked at each other. Loe was the first to speak.
“I’m staying here,” she said. “If that’s okay with you all.”
“I don’t give a damn. Why would I?” said Jay.
“It’s your dad’s…our…dad’s house.”
“And he’s as much a stranger to me as he is to you. Sleep on the roof, for all I care. Throw a party. I don’t give a damn. I just want a nice, comfy bed in a place where there are no trees, no old ladies, no vanishing cars. I’ll find whoever towed your car away in the morning. I’m telling you, it will be sitting in a garage in Eldike. Then I’ll come back, we’ll pack all this shit up ready for the removal van, and take a look at The Door, because believe me, I’m not giving up on that. After that, we’ll put a price tag on this piece of crap and never have to see the place again.”
“Jay, there is no chance I’m letting you drive. You’ve been drinking all day!” said Mag.
“It’s a straight road to Eldike. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re not getting in that car,” said Altair.
“I’ll break your fingers if I have to,” added Mag.
“Oh look,” said Jay. His good humor seemed to have left him completely, and Loe felt as if she was looking at a stranger, meeting Jay anew for the second time in one day. “You guys are concerned siblings, all of a sudden? So concerned that after years of no contact, you’re making up for the lost time by being pains in my arse? Get lost.”
Jay left the room. A door slammed, another one opened. An engine roared, and then his car drove away, headlights fading into the distance.
Mag stood up, but Altair grabbed her shoulder. “He’s already gone. Chasing him down will just agitate him even more.”
“He’s drunk, Alt.”
“He isn’t…drunk. He’s been drinking, but he isn’t drunk.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“None of this is okay. All we can do it talk to him about it tomorrow, when he’s himself again.”
“Damn it. I’ll take some of that cayenne pepper,” said Mag, holding out her mug.
Altair smiled. “Really?”
“Might as well try it.”
“There’ll be an explanation for all this,” said Loe. “There always is.”
“Sometimes, realizing that something is unexplainable is an explanation in itself,” said Altair.
“Did your psychic tell you that?” said Mag.
Both Loe and Altair looked surprised. Loe had misjudged Altair once again. She would never have guessed he was superstitious. Altair, seemingly, was surprised that Mag had even known about it, let alone brought it up.
“You know about that?” he asked.
“There’s a lot I know about my big brother.”
“Who told you? Jay? No, he couldn’t have. I never told Jay that I’d visited a psychic.”
“I know,” said Mag, her voice quiet. “I…uh…I had a vision. Last autumn, I was taking a nap, when I felt this stirring in my gut, like something was wrong or there was something I needed to pay attention to. When I fell asleep, I saw you sitting in a dark parlor…”
Altair’s face was ashen. “You had a vision of me?”
“No, you dope,” said Mag, almost laughing. “I found your blog where you mentioned going to see a psychic. Jesus Christ.”
“Hilarious.”
“You okay, Alt?” said Loe.
He took his glasses off and started rubbing them. “It’s fine. I just…”
“So come on,” said Mag. “What did she tell you, this psychic? You wrote about everything in your blog except for the juicy stuff.”
“Maybe it’s private,” said Loe.
Altair put his glasses back on. The color still hadn’t returned to his face. “No, it’s fine. It’s all a bunch of bollocks anyway. Nothing to be concerned about. I don’t know why I went.”
“Okay, but what did she tell you?”
Loe felt a change in the air. The lamps seemed dimmer, the room colder. She became aware of a clock on the wall, realizing that it had never ticked in all the time they were there. The hands were still, as if time meant nothing here.
She became aware of a portrait on the wall of a girl. A girl wearing a long, white dress. She had her back to the frame, and her black hair was stringy and flowed down her back. Cuffs were clasped around her wrists, and each cuff was attached to chains on the walls either side of her, making her spread her arms out.
“One of our ancestors,” said Altair, catching her staring at the painting. “Gives me a chill.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my arms feel cold.”
“I mean, how do you know that she’s one of our ancestors?”
“Just a guess. I don’t usually trust my gut. What’s to trust about your digestive system? But something tells me she’s related to us.”
“Maybe the psychic could tell you, if she were here.”
“Those people…they’re frauds. Preying on the vulnerable. Exploiting you with simple psychological tricks,” said Alt.
Mag persisted. “Okay…and what did she tell you?”
Altair held Mag’s stare. “She said-”
The door burst open, and Loe had to stop herself from jumping out of her seat. What the hell was it with this place and making her jumpy? She’d had more shocks here in a single day than in the last ten years combined.
Jay was standing in the doorway. He didn’t look like he’d been in an accident or anything. That was something.
“Don’t tell me you hit a tree,” said Mag.
Jay’s pale face matched Altair’s, and he looked as if he’d sobered up quicker than a politician caught in a strip club by his wife.
“I drove straight,” he said. “All the way down the road. All the bloody way. I didn’t turn around. I know I didn’t.”
“And you ended up back here,” said Mag.
“Back here.”
Those two words were enough to bring a smothering silence upon them all. Loe racked her brain for an explanation, but there was nothing. It was already unlikely that Mag had turned her car around without her or Loe remembering. It was downright impossible for it to happen to Jay as well.
“Night-time riddles unravel in the daylight,” said Altair.
Jay and Mag looked at their older brother. Jay seemed to be trying to remember where the phrase came from, and struggling.
“Mum used to say that,” said Mag.
Jay slapped the chair arm. “That’s right. When
we wouldn’t go to sleep because we were asking about Dad. Night-time riddles unravel in the daylight. Only, the riddles never unraveled in the daylight, did they? We waited until morning, asked her again, and she just talked about something else. Anything else.”
Altair, his normal pallor returning, perched on the chair arm, near Mag. “But this riddle might unravel, all the same. There will be a simple reason that we’re all missing, and daylight will reveal it. Let’s get some sleep, and then we’ll drive to Eldike together.”
Chapter Six
Emory walked naked through his living room, threading between the pieces of string that hung from nails on the ceiling. When he got too close and nudged one, he heard the rattle of bones, the clatter of teeth. A lamp cast a dull glow on his skin, illuminating the shapes drawn across his chest, ones sketched using blood of the mouse and squirrel variety. Goats, pigs, and sheep were best for The Ritual, but a man had to take what he could find. Now that it was done, only one task remained.
Standing at the foot of the stairs, Emory looked up at the steps as if they were the beginning of a mountain trail. Just twenty-one steps, but each of them was a hill of its own. Only, instead of leading to a snowy peak with a view of the land for miles around, this mountain trail led to his bedroom and bathroom.
The first step took his breath away. The second made his chest hurt, the third made it ache. Halfway up the stairs, he clutched onto the banister and had to fight back a sob, had to fight the same self-pitying questions that he’d asked himself over and over in his life.
Why can some people ruin their lungs with smoke, fill their bodies with crap, and they’re fine? I do nothing wrong, and I can’t even climb the stairs?
He gripped the banister, gritted his teeth. He wouldn’t let the stairs in his own home beat him. He never had, and he never would. Even if sometimes he had to take a moment to hold back tears as his lungs felt like they were aflame.
“Josiah?” croaked a voice from the darkness of the top of the stairs. “Josiah?”
“It isn’t Josiah, mother,” he said.
“Josiah?”
“Mother! For the last time,” he said, wheezing at the pain in his chest. “Father is de-”
He caught himself, swallowed the words. No point having this conversation for the thousandth time. The words never sank in, and would never sink in again, the doctor had warned. Every time he tried to tell her that father was gone, it was like breaking the news to her for the first time. Forcing her to relive the grief again and again. The human brain and the things it could do to you when you were old was a cruel, cruel thing.
Instead, he turned his attention to his next problem; making sure that mother never, ever went into the woods again. He couldn’t afford to be lax and let her night-time wanderings happen anymore. If only it were as simple as just telling her.
“Josiah?”
“It’s Emory,” he said.
“Emory?”
“Your son.”
“Emory! What are you doing? Where have you been?”
“Coming to see you, mother. After I’ve gotten changed.”
“You shouldn’t be climbing the stairs,” she said. Her voice was full of motherly concern. This had shocked him the first time he’d heard it, a few years ago. Growing up, he’d never once heard a trace of concern in her voice.
All of a sudden, she had started speaking to him with kindness. It had shocked him. He’d distrusted it, but at the same time, it was what he’d longed for all his life. But then came the memory lapses, moments of fugue. Various appointments and tests later, and it was apparent that Mother had spoken to him with such kindness because her brain was diseased, not because she had changed.
He took another step. Agony ripped through him like barbed wire wrapping around his ribs. He felt a toxic fog in his lungs. He spluttered once, twice, tried to hold it in but failed, so instead just clung onto the banister like it was the rail of a ship being battered by a storm.
Why me? All those people out there, running marathons, going here, going there. They don’t have pain. I can’t even climb the stairs…
The ordeal lasted an hour. A full rotation of clock hands before he made it upstairs, changed his clothes and went back downstairs. He could have moved his clothes and things down there to make it easier, of course, but he wouldn’t. While he could continue his battle with the stairs, he would. And he’d win every time. That was what he told himself; while he could still win his battle with the stairs, his condition hadn’t beaten him.
Now he was in the living room, blood-free and wearing a fresh shirt. He’d cleared away the bone and teeth strings. He’d packed the herbs back in the kitchen, where they would be used in a vegetable stew, and not for rituals. He’d opened a window to let the smell of blood out.
Footsteps sounded from outside the room, and the staircase creaked. Before Emory could even get up, his mother was in the living room. Even thirty years older than him, she won her battle with the staircase much easier than he did. He hoped she always would. He’d already resolved that the only way he’d cave in and get a stairlift or begin to move things downstairs was if Mother struggled.
Mother loomed in the doorway, staring at him. Her eyes were dark, her mouth open and revealing toothless gums.
“Your gown has mud on it,” he said.
She pinched her gown but said nothing.
“Been out for a walk, have we?”
No answer.
“I find it hard to believe, since I locked every door and window. Unless you have a key that you aren’t telling me about, Mother,” he said. “Tell me, are you being sneaky?”
No answer.
Damn. He’d thought the sneaky bit would provoke a reaction, since it was what she used to say to him when he was a child. ‘Tell me, Emory. Are you being sneaky?’ Of course, Emory would never take a belt to Mother the way she had to him.
He smiled at her. “Come and sit down. I’ll put the TV on. We can watch Auction House Challenge.”
“They’re here,” she said.
He sat up straight. “You saw them?”
No answer.
“I know they’re here,” said Emory, filling the silence. “That’s why I…”
“The Ritual.”
“Yes. Stay out of the woods from now, Mother. You won’t find your way back.”
“I’ll walk where I please.”
“Fine. Just not alone, and not in the woods. You only have to ask, and I’ll walk anywhere with you,” he said. Even the thought of a long walk made his chest hurt, but that was preferable to imagining mother in the woods on her own. Especially after The Ritual.
“Mother?” he said. “Promise me you won’t go into the woods.”
She sounded more forceful now. “I will go where I please.”
Damn it, what did he have to do? He’d already fitted locks on every window, every door. Or at least, he thought he had. How the hell was she getting out?
He hated that it even came down to that. But after this morning, the woods weren’t safe, not even for him. The thought of her out there, alone and lost, made his chest ache more than a thousand flights of stairs.
“This could have ended with you, Josiah,” she said.
Emory was about to correct her, when he stopped himself. He’d found that ever since Mother’s condition had worsened, he was getting the answers to all kinds of questions that had been denied him when he was younger. It was only when
Father died, leaving Emory with a letter and a key, that he’d even begun to understand what had happened, who his family really was, and what would inevitably be his duty.
“Just let Stanway be,” said Mother. “The curse is ours as much as theirs, can’t you see? Let Stanway be, and spare little Emory from it all. Just pretend it didn’t exist. Okay, lovie? Can you do that for me, Josiah?”
It felt disingenuous, but Emory knew how to play this. He looked at his mother. He didn’t try to imitate his father’s voice, but that didn’t matter. “It’
s already done,” he said. “This morning. You can rest easy. But they can’t, obviously.”
“They can’t. And they shouldn’t. That’s the way it is, the way it always was, the way it always will be. The forest will keep them. And if they try to leave…he’ll be there. Watching. Don’t go back into the woods.”
She stared at him for the longest time, and he wondered what she was seeing. Him? His father? An amalgamation of the two of them? Who did she really think she was talking to?
“Alright, Josiah,” she finally said. “I’ll shan’t go into the woods.”
“Thank you, mother. Now let’s watch Auction House Challenge.”
Emory turned the television on and heard the familiar upbeat theme music of their favorite show, and he let it carry him away for a little while. Away from his stresses, from his lungs, from the work he still hard to do later that night.
Ugh. Work.
The mere thought of it was a hammer shattering his glass of calm. His gaze was drawn to the doorway, where he could see the downstairs landing and front door. There, by the front door, a dozen metal mouths grinned back at him.
Chapter Seven
Everything looked different in the morning light. Harrow Hall looked less foreboding, the woods weren’t as sinister. The stench of musty pinecones and animal dung was as strong as ever, but morning sunlight could hardly do anything about that. This place would always stink.
The four of them were outside Harrow Hall. Jay’s red cheeks and nose betrayed the fact that he’d had a few more whiskeys before bed. Altair was wearing a long, black overcoat, giving the impression he was late for a meeting. Mag and Loe were dressed alike, which was no surprise given Loe had been forced to borrow a coat from her half-sister.
“First things first,” said Altair. “We’ll walk down the road together. All four of us, wide awake and alert.” He looked at Jay now. “Mostly.”
Surprisingly, Jay led the way, walking at the front of the pack and showing no signs of a hangover. He even stopped ten minutes into their trek to point at something in the forest, his face a canvas of excitement.
