“Julia!” she called after her sister, her voice breaking with the effort. The night was still. Bright. Clear. In the far distance, she heard the rush of the river, so faint, like the inside of a conch shell.
Julia stopped, turned. “Leave me alone, Hannah!” she yelled back, and Hannah felt the burn of fury in her gut. That bitch.
“I’m hurt!”
She retracted the key from her pocket and pulled the blackberry vines away from the opening. Just as she’d thought: a rough wooden door, once painted but now splintered and weathered.
The key fit perfectly in the old padlock. When the door swung open, she saw nothing but concrete steps down into blackness.
“Julia!” Hannah called again, the lantern casting dark shadows into the cavern.
So strange, thought Hannah, that I’m not afraid.
Hannah descended the steps, careful with her ankle, holding on to the wall. Julia’s face appeared above her from the opening, moon bright and shining.
“Hannah, what are you doing?”
“I’m hurt. I fell.” Hannah felt the half lie in her mouth, sweet and full. Would her sister worry? She might pretend to worry.
“Hannah, please.”
Hannah, please. Oh, a refrain from her childhood. Please go away. Please leave me alone. Please be quiet. Please stop talking. Please make yourself smaller. No, smaller. There, now you are invisible.
“I got the door open,” Hannah said from the center of the room. She swung the lantern out before setting it down in the middle of the floor: shelves, flour sacks, canning jars—some filled with brown liquid, most empty. A pile of burlap in the center of the room. A few glass jugs filled with water.
“Hannah, it’s not the right time for this. Please, I have to go.” Julia’s voice was quick, panicky.
“You don’t have to go. You choose to go.”
“You don’t understand anything!” Julia screamed, her face red with rage. “I just need you to leave me alone for five minutes. You don’t! You’re always after me. Do you know there are bigger things happening than you this summer?”
“Why would I know anything? You don’t talk to me. You haven’t talked to me in months.”
Julia panted, trying to catch her breath. She descended the concrete stairs, stepping carefully into the beam from Hannah’s lantern. Finally, she said, calmer, “Hannah, listen to me. She killed Ellie. Aunt Fae killed someone. Maybe more than one. We are not safe here. We are not safe with her.”
“That’s bullshit. Aunt Fae couldn’t kill anyone!”
Did Julia’s selfishness know no bounds? She’d accuse Aunt Fae of murder?
“You take everything from me.” Hannah covered her face, willed the tears to come, but her eyes stayed dry. She felt nothing: not fear, not sadness, just a blank emptiness deep inside where feelings should have been. Like she’d been flayed open, all her insides out for the world to see, and now she had nothing left.
Hannah didn’t recognize the girl in front of her: the tangled blonde hair, the flush of her cheeks, the sour smell of her. “I can’t go back to Plymouth. Do you understand? Do you know what he does to me?” Her voice cracked, the tip of an unpleasant feeling surfacing. Despair. Hannah tamped it down, stamped it out. “Did he do it to you?”
It was a big gun, Hannah knew. Her sister wilted, her face transformed, and Hannah had her answer. Not anymore. Julia didn’t have to say it.
Julia’s old silence was Hannah’s new burden.
Fuck that.
Julia took two steps forward and folded her sister in her arms. Hannah didn’t return the embrace, just waited. Counted to five. Breathed in and out. Bubbles of anger rising up, her throat on fire with it, her skin burning where Julia touched her. Julia, who had always sworn she’d protect her.
Hannah slipped out of the hug and bounded up the concrete steps two at a time.
“Hannah!” Julia yelped.
Outside, the air felt cooler. A breeze was blowing a storm in. The air hummed with energy.
Hannah slammed the door shut.
Clicked the padlock closed. Click, click.
Julia’s footfalls hit the concrete steps on the other side. Then: thump, thump.
“What are you doing, Hannah? Let me out!”
Then, “Hannah, please.” And softer, again.
Thump, thump. The weight of her sister’s fists on the other side of the door.
Hannah on the outside. Combing the vines—just so—with her fingertips over the wood. Until the hillside looked like a hillside, nothing more or less.
The muffled sound of her voice. “Hannah, please.”
If she took three steps back, onto the path, Hannah couldn’t hear it anymore. Tamped down by earth and dirt and the quiet sound of rain and the rumble of thunder.
Like no one had ever been there.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Now
How long had she been there?
What time was it?
Thump, thump. Hannah, please.
Thump, thump. Hannah, please.
Thump, thump. Hannah, please.
And then, “Hannah, get up.” A woman’s voice.
Hannah lifted her head off the dirt floor. Expected to see Julia, face pinched with anger at what she’d done. But no, Julia was dead. She was gone. That was Hannah’s fault. She felt the beginnings of the truth of that: the dull body ache, something sharp in her chest, making it hard to breathe.
Instead Alice stood above her, the hunting knife glinting in her hand. Hannah sucked in air. Julia was gone.
“How did you . . . get in here?”
“You were moaning. I could hear it from the path. Screaming, really.” Alice shook her head, her eyebrows knitted sympathetically. “I have to say I wasn’t expecting this. I thought you were long gone.” She smiled, all lips, no teeth. “You killed your sister?”
“Where is Julia?” Hannah asked. “What have you done to her?”
“Julia? Hannah, dear. You aren’t well, are you?” Alice tipped her head to the side, scrutinized Hannah’s face. “Have you been sleeping poorly?” Her voice took on a sympathetic tone. “Did you take the Klonopin like I told you?”
“Detective McCarran will be looking for me.” Hannah’s voice shook when she said it. An empty threat, and they both knew it.
“Oh dear, I’m afraid he won’t. Wyatt, as you affectionately call him, has no idea you’re here. See, there’s no service underground. There’s no cell service in this forest.”
Hannah struggled to stand but felt weighted—heavy and broken—and her mind slogged through the possibilities. The door behind Hannah, where did it lead? She had no idea. Underground, she assumed. Alice blocked her exit to the forest.
“Where’s my sister?”
“Your sister is dead because you killed her,” Alice snapped.
She had no idea what to trust—what tricks her mind was playing on her. She’d spent the past two weeks walking through Brackenhill in a dream state: half-asleep, half-awake. She had no idea if this was any different. Had Julia been here? No. Because that was not possible. What Alice had said made sense.
Hannah had killed Julia. She’d left her in the storm shelter to die.
Her mind handed her images then, things she’d long forgotten. The day after, she and Uncle Stuart had combed the forest, calling for Julia. Circling past the storm shelter, down to the shed, through the courtyard, and down the river. Over and over again. Each pass of the storm shelter, Hannah would call her sister, wait a beat and listen, but hear nothing back. She remembered the feeling of relief then, a sagging, heart-pounding, thrumming relief.
No. Hannah had loved Julia. Hadn’t she? Oh God. Hannah was a monster. A killer.
Ellie had pushed Ruby, the impulse of a child. Fae had killed Ellie, blinded by grief and rage. Hannah had killed Julia (she could hardly believe it still) out of fear. Alice had killed Fae for revenge. A tragic, violent daisy chain. Brackenhill hadn’t killed anyone: they’d all done it to themselves, consum
ed and isolated.
Oh God. Hannah was one of them now. Had been the whole time.
Alice stepped forward, her hair wild, her breath coming in gasps, the hunting knife flashing. A graze off Hannah’s shoulder and a slicing pain.
Hannah turned and took two large steps to the door in the back of the storm shelter. She said a silent prayer that the door would be unlocked and pushed with her whole body weight. The door flew open, almost sending her spinning into a dark hallway. The lantern swung wildly in her hand, and she kicked the door shut behind her. In the hallway before her lay a stack of cut wood.
She wedged the first two-by-four between the walls of the hallway, in front of the door. From the other side the door opened violently against the aging beam. She stacked five beams, one on top of the other, wedging them between the walls of the door, just to keep it closed.
The banging against the interior door stopped, and Hannah realized what Alice must have already known: the door to the forest remained unlocked. Alice was free. The beams just bought Hannah time.
How much?
That depended on where she was.
She swung the lantern out in front of her. The tunnel stretched as far as she could see, narrow, the sides packed dirt and shored with rough-hewn beams every few yards. She understood now that the beams she’d used to bar the shelter door had been used in the construction of the original tunnel. By whom?
Hannah took off running, the lantern shaking in her hand and her breath coming in panicked gasps. The tunnel seemed to get smaller and more cramped, until she was hunched over. If she stood, the top of her head touched the dirt. When she passed the wooden braces, she had to duck. Where would she end up? The castle? What was above her? The courtyard? Would she eventually hit the Beaverkill? Would she come out in a manhole in Rockwell?
She had a momentary panic. A sudden flood of water would kill her. There was nowhere to go. It was too far to run back, and she had no idea of her destination.
Hannah pressed forward, the lantern flickering, lasting longer than it probably should have. Who knew how old the propane tank was or when it had been put there?
The tunnel wound around a curve, and Hannah slowed as she followed the sharp right bend.
And came abruptly to yet another wooden door.
Hannah took several calming breaths and pushed on this door the way she had the one at the storm shelter. It didn’t open. She tried the knob—turning one way, then the other. Locked.
Hannah removed the key from her pocket. It was a perfect fit for the lock, and the door clicked open easily. Her hand shook as she pushed it open.
She was in the labyrinth.
Oh God. The basement.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Now
The basement was dark; the lights had long ago burned out and the light bulbs not been replaced. Who would have replaced them? Stuart? There was nothing of Fae’s or Stuart’s in the basement anyway, save for the first small room. The rest, well, the rest was for them. For Julia and Hannah.
Hannah’s skin prickled, and blood rushed in her ears. She hadn’t been down in the basement since she was twelve. She remembered dropping cards one after the other. She remembered being stuck in the center room, the walls closing in literally and figuratively, Julia’s breath hot on her cheek, suffocating her, making her feel short on oxygen. They’d screamed until Stuart had come to rescue them, the door popping open easily, and he’d shaken his head, grumbling about their “wild imaginations.”
They followed him out of the maze of rooms, and the cards were numbered in order. Julia poked at one with her toe: Look! Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. In order. Unreal. They weren’t crazy; the rooms, the index cards, had shifted when they were alone. They’d both witnessed it. There were still two or more doors in every room, but Uncle Stuart walked purposefully, in a straight line, and in a heartbeat they’d been climbing the steps back to the kitchen.
Now Hannah hesitated. She hadn’t then, when they were kids, but now she stopped. The first door she came to was ajar, only slightly. She paused with her hand on the doorknob, not knowing what she’d find. The lantern sent strange shadows racing along the walls, and Hannah closed her eyes.
She was an adult now. This nonsense about shifting rooms was just that: nonsense. The first room was dark, empty. Cobwebs gathered in the corners, and strange shapes darted around the walls, thrown off by the swinging lantern and Hannah’s shaky hand. Hannah tried to remember the path, then work backward. When she and Julia had come down as children, they had made sequential rights and ended up at the center. She assumed if she made lefts, she would eventually end up back at the kitchen stairs.
She couldn’t remember the number of rooms, but as she looked around, she noticed a white card on the floor. She flipped it with her toe.
#11
Immediately Hannah’s eyes welled. Tangible evidence of a Brackenhill adventure with Julia. She bent down and picked it up. Instinctively she held it to her nose, hoping for . . .what? Julia’s perfume? Silly.
It should have been yellowed with age, dirty, curled at the edges, but it wasn’t. The card was bright white, seemingly untouched by time, the edges crisp, the writing still sharp. She ran a finger over the ink, half expecting it to bleed onto her skin. Hannah replaced the card on the floor instead of keeping it.
The second door, straight through, was closed tight. Hannah had to jiggle the handle, the doorjamb swollen with humidity. The door finally gave. The second room, too, was empty except for cobwebs. She studied the floor: dirt, no discernible footprints. Had no one been down here at all since she and Julia? Seemed impossible.
A second index card. She flipped it over. Blinked.
#2
Hannah sucked in a breath. Closed her eyes. Visualized the walk back with Stuart leading the way, watching those little handwritten index cards count down in perfect order their foolishness.
Now here was proof.
She was an adult; this was ridiculous.
The house seemed to sigh, something from deep within like bellows, the walls themselves exhaling, and the air shifted. Smelled different: stale and ripe now. Like a living thing.
Or. Something like death.
Hannah pushed through the third door, searching immediately for the white index card.
#5
Then the next:
#8
She pushed through door after door, straight from one side to the other, never using the doors on either side, just kept on in a straight line like Uncle Stuart had done on the way back out. And yet the cards were all out of order.
A simple, grown-up explanation: someone had been down in the basement and moved the cards in the past seventeen years. Plausible. But who would do that and why?
A test occurred to her. She exited number eight and entered number one.
Closed both doors and waited a moment. She heard it—or perhaps felt it—the moving of air, like the house was breathing.
With her eyes closed, Hannah pushed open the door she’d just come through. She opened her eyes and searched the floor, seeking the white square card.
Saw it lying on the floor: #11
She was back at the beginning. Or the end.
No. It was impossible. She turned and pushed open the opposite door, which should have led to number ten.
#2
Then the next room:
#8
She somehow had started over. Hannah tried to remember the initial order—eleven, two, five, eight. Her head swam, and she felt panic settle in her bones. Oh God, how was she going to get out?
Her synapses were misfiring, making her thoughts ping around like pinballs. She was desperate to get out. She didn’t care about anything: Julia, Wyatt, Huck, Virginia. She only cared about getting to the end, finding the end. Getting out of the castle, leaving Brackenhill behind, and then what?
She’d left Julia to die. Her life was never going to be the same.
How long had she been
in the basement? It felt like hours. Days.
Hannah took a breath. In. Out. In. Out. If she ran from one side of the maze to the other, maybe she’d make it. She rushed through the doors, one after each other in a straight line, leaving them swinging open. Ran, her feet pounding on dirt, leaving footprints in the dust. The fifth room made an L shape; she turned the corner easily and pushed through the doors one after the other. Not bothering to look at the cards, just 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2.
The trick was to keep the doors open.
Finally, the #1 card fluttered at her feet. She looked up the steps to the door into the kitchen.
She should just let Alice kill her. Then at least Huck would think his fiancée was a good, moral person.
Maybe, just maybe, it was this fucking house.
She who lives here goes insane. Aunt Fae’s aunt. Aunt Fae. Hannah. Alice.
She belonged here now. There was no “after” for her anymore. Alice couldn’t kill Hannah, and she couldn’t go back to Virginia. She didn’t belong anywhere but Brackenhill. Not anymore.
As sure as the Beaverkill flowed southwest, you should never prune Juliet roses in the summer, and Brackenhill was haunted by ghosts—living and dead.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Now
The kitchen was dark. Brackenhill was dark.
Hannah crept upstairs. If she could hide and text Wyatt, maybe he would come arrest Alice. She didn’t dare make a phone call. Alice could be anywhere.
It was likely that Alice knew the storm-shelter tunnel led to the basement. She could be lying in wait. Hannah ascended the curved concrete steps. A nice thing about concrete: it was silent, her feet barely making a sound.
In the hallway, Hannah turned down the lantern and listened.
Hiss, hum from Uncle Stuart’s room.
Creak, click from somewhere in the belly of the house.
Please come BH, Hannah texted Wyatt.
Inching along the wall, Hannah ducked into the first room in the hall that wasn’t Uncle Stuart’s. It was Ruby’s.
The netting floated over the bed, ethereal and beautiful.
In the moonlight, the room seemed to glow. A rustle behind her, and Hannah spun one way, then the other.
Girls of Brackenhill Page 27