The House on Hoarder Hill

by Mikki Lish

  Rose sobbed again and held out an arm to her daughter. As the trio cried together, everyone else stood and watched from a respectful distance.

  Hedy didn’t know how to feel. For the past week, her and Spencer’s lives had been filled with getting to this moment, had been obsessed with this moment. But the depth of loss that Rose, John, and Olivia had felt, now being washed over by a rising tide of joy, was almost unfathomable.

  Jelly put her head between Hedy’s and Spencer’s. “You did it,” she said.

  Hedy and Spencer shared an awestruck smile. “We did,” Hedy said. She let go of a shuddering breath.

  As Rose cried and laughed, her messy brown hair began to pale. Before their eyes, with every movement, little by little she began to age, covering the decades she had been gone. Her hair turned an iron gray, and a few very fine lines became evident in her skin. Rose either didn’t notice or didn’t care; she was too absorbed in taking in the sight of her husband and daughter. Finally, her crying subsided enough for her to lean into Grandpa John and inhale deeply. “John, you smell terrible,” she said.

  “That was the skunk spray,” Spencer said.

  Rose turned to her grandchildren. She staggered to her feet with the help of her husband and daughter, standing like a newborn colt on unused legs. “Hedy, Spencer.” She smiled, which was invitation enough for them to run to their grandmother and wrap her in their arms.

  “Gently,” Mom told them softly.

  “No, never mind gently,” Grandma Rose murmured, kissing the tops of Hedy’s and Spencer’s heads.

  The children didn’t say anything, because there was too much to say. Grandma Rose’s hands and face were cool, but her study of them was as warm as the sun.

  “So, you finally get to see your grandchildren,” Mom said, blowing her nose.

  Grandma Rose pulled her head back slightly to look at them and said, “I could see you whenever you came to this house. You too, Olivia. For the last little while, Hedy and Spencer were like bodies of light I could see through the blackness, from far away. You lit the house around you when you were here.”

  Mom broke into fresh tears, burying her face in her mother’s shoulder. “If I’d known that, we would have come more often.”

  “They saved you, Rosie,” Grandpa John murmured. “These two broke all the rules of the house and saved you.”

  “Thank you,” Grandma Rose whispered to them. “Thank you.”

  “Was it bad in there, Grandma?” Hedy asked quietly.

  A cloud passed over Rose’s face. “It was dark. And lonely.” She looked fearfully over her shoulder at the open Kaleidos, and Grandpa John hurried to close it.

  “This is Will, my husband,” Mom said, putting an arm around Grandma Rose’s shoulders and motioning to their father. Looking at Jelly, she added, “And I’m sure this must be Angelica, Peter’s granddaughter.”

  Dad wiped his own tears away with his sleeve as he led Jelly toward them. “I … I never thought I’d be able to meet you,” he said.

  “Well, come here, then,” Grandma Rose teased, embracing her son-in-law heartily.

  He pulled off his jacket to wrap around Rose. “You seem cold. Wear this.”

  “Dad, you just wiped your snot on the sleeve,” Spencer said.

  “I won’t touch the sleeve,” Grandma Rose said, unfazed. “Besides, at least it doesn’t smell like skunk.” She turned to Jelly. “How big this family has grown. Angelica, did you say?”

  “You can call me Jelly, and I have a younger brother, Max,” Jelly babbled with a hug. “Oh my gosh, Auntie Rose, do you even know what Hedy and Spencer have gone through to get you out? Hedy almost fell off the roof—oh, maybe you know that part—and gargoyles attacked her, and then a suit of armor attacked them both—he’s just out there—and then my grandad was possessed, and—”

  “And Nobody nearly took my head off!” Spencer chimed in.

  “And did you even know it’s Christmas Eve?”

  Hedy affectionately put her hands over both of their mouths, laughing, “Later!”

  “That’s right. Later,” Mom said, “but then we want every little detail.”

  Spencer put his hands up and pointed to Doug and Stan on the floor. “Wait. You have to meet our friends.” The children dragged the rug and the stag head closer.

  Stan cleared his throat. “Madame, I present my companion, Douglas, the fiercest bear rug—nay, the fiercest bear—in England.”

  “And he’s Stanley,” Doug took over, adding in a whisper, “He’ll tell you he’s the Lord of the Queen’s Wood, and after this adventure he probably thinks he has magical antlers or some such. But don’t worry, he’s mostly pretty endeering!” Doug started chortling at his own joke.

  “Madame,” Stan muttered, “I apologize if you find Douglas unbearable.”

  Grandma Rose laughed and stroked their fur with a marveling expression. “If you’re friends of the children, then it doesn’t matter what else you may be.” She slowly took in the details of the strange woodland room, the trees, the curtains, and the earthy ground. Bending to pick up a few rose petals, she held them to her nose and inhaled deeply. Then she caught sight of Mrs. Pal. “Is that you, Rani?”

  “Much older, I’m afraid, Rose,” Mrs. Pal said. “But feeling twenty years younger at seeing you returned.”

  Strength seemed to be slowly returning to Grandma Rose’s limbs. She crossed the few paces between her and Mrs. Pal and gave her a warm embrace. “Is this young man your grandson?” she asked of Soumitra, who was hovering nearby.

  Soumitra wiped a hand on his trousers and held it out to Grandma Rose. “I’m Soumitra.”

  “Thank you, Soumitra, and you, Rani. I could only see bits and pieces, but I know I wouldn’t be standing here without your help.”

  “Anytime,” Soumitra said, then in embarrassment hastened to add, “but, I mean, I hope never again. Obviously.”

  Grandma Rose peered beyond the red velvet stage curtains and through trees of a wood that should not have been there. “Peter?” she called.

  Uncle Peter had crept away from everyone and was leaning against a thick tree.

  “Peter, I hope you’re not planning to banish yourself,” Grandma Rose said.

  He half turned, hesitated, and then slowly picked his way between the trees and undergrowth. He had a wretched look on his face as he came to face Grandma Rose. “Do you know what happened?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “I heard some of it from the children when I was in there.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, Rose.”

  “I know.” Grandma Rose placed a tentative hand on his shoulder. If it wasn’t forgiveness yet, the seeds of it were there.

  The others watched them, all lost for words, until Mom clapped her hands. “Okay, someone in this room smells absolutely awful and needs a shower …” She began to shepherd everyone toward the stairs, planning a thousand things at once. Hedy led the way down with Spencer and Jelly, although she slowed herself to stay just in front of her grandparents, carefully negotiating the way down, hand in hand.

  “No doctors today, please,” Grandma Rose insisted when Mom tried to suggest it. “I’d be at the hospital all day trying to explain the impossible. Today I just want Christmas with my family.”

  Bathed and warm, everyone squeezed around the kitchen table to fall ravenously upon the grilled cheese sandwiches that the children had made with Soumitra.

  “John,” Dad asked, picking up his fourth sandwich, “do we get to hear the whole tale from start to finish now?”

  Grandpa John dabbed his mouth with a napkin and looked at Hedy and Spencer. “If you want the whole tale, you’ll need Hedy and Spencer to tell it.”

  And so the children began to recount what had happened from their first night at Hoarder Hill, slipping into the room they should not have gone into, and the photo album being pushed off the shelf.

  “Was that you, Grandma Rose?” Hedy asked.

  Grandma Rose nodded, and Spencer shivered hap
pily. “We were so spooked by that. How come you didn’t do stuff like that for Grandpa John?”

  “I … couldn’t see John from the darkness the way I could see you,” Grandma Rose said hesitantly. “You two and Olivia were like lanterns that lit the space around you, but everything else was dark.”

  “Family fire,” Mrs. Pal said, exchanging a glance with Hedy. “Blood relations can be visible across the boundaries of worlds, like a beacon. The children and Olivia are your blood kin—but, for all your love of John, he is not.”

  Grandma Rose laid a hand over Grandpa John’s and continued. “I could make out a little of what the children said, but it was very muffled, like listening through brick. Touching things here while I was in there was exhausting. I don’t know how to describe it. It took an enormous amount of energy even to write in dust or fog; those magnets too. I didn’t know where I was either; I just seemed far away. But, somehow, I could speak to the raven. When I saw Hedy take flight, I begged the raven to help somehow. Thank heavens she was able to convince those other stubborn creatures from the roof to join her. I don’t know how she could hear me; I’m just glad she did.”

  “I tasked the grotesques with protecting you,” Grandpa John said, thinking aloud, “to keep watch from above. But the raven wasn’t one of the carvings on the roof when we moved here. That’s the raven you bought in Sweden. You asked me to put it on the roof when we brought it home so it could have company.”

  Mrs. Pal tapped her finger on her lips, eyes alight. “Sweden? Ravens and crows are very powerful in Norse mythology.”

  Soft sounds interrupted her: a shhhhh and then a crrrrrrt. By the liar birds’ box, now returned to the warm kitchen corner, a dark knot in the floorboard opened up. A stone hand was pushed through the gap: Mrs. Vilums’s hand, which the Woodspies had taken from the attic. Everyone murmured in surprise. The Woodspies didn’t close up the knot until three single socks were ruefully lobbed up onto the floor as well.

  “So that’s what happens to odd socks,” Grandpa John said with wonder, picking them up along with the stone fingers. He shook his head. “I wonder how many other things they have secreted down there.”

  Hedy and Spencer leapt to his side to touch the stone fingers. “We can fix Mrs. V now, right?” Spencer asked.

  Grandpa John glanced at Mrs. Pal, who thought for a moment and then said, “We could bring you some glue glue.”

  “Magic glue?” Spencer asked.

  Soumitra whispered, “It’s glue my mother makes a bit extra. You know, a bit more super. Not quite magical. But not quite not either.”

  “Leave me some trade secrets, Soumitra,” Mrs. Pal said.

  “Can I get some?” Spencer asked Soumitra with bright eyes. “It’ll be super handy if I, like, cut off my finger.”

  Their Mom cleared her throat warningly. “Spencer, don’t even think about cutting off something, magic glue or no magic glue.”

  But Soumitra gave Spencer a wink when he thought Mom wasn’t looking.

  Later on, everyone trooped to the living room to study the Theries’ paintings. There were no signs of the skunk or the magpie. Mom and Dad poked their heads through experimentally but went no farther than their chins, and they wouldn’t let the children close to the frames.

  “It still stinks in there,” Mom reported, screwing up her nose. “What are we going to do with them, Dad?”

  “We’d best board them up to keep them out of mischief,” Grandpa John said. He released Grandma Rose’s hand for the first time in an hour. “Stand back, everyone.”

  They all shuffled to the edges of the room, the children hopping up onto the couch with Doug and Stan. Grandpa John put his head through the portal and spoke a few words. Moments later, the grotesques came hopping, crawling, and flapping out of the painting, shaking their limbs and wings as though deprived of a fight they had been looking forward to.

  “They’re less frightening when they’re on your side,” Hedy whispered.

  “Only just,” said Spencer.

  The raven fluttered onto Grandma Rose’s shoulder. As it batted its head against her cheek, Hedy overheard Mrs. Pal murmur something like huginn and muninn to Soumitra.

  Grandpa John pulled the whole tether out of the painting, and when he pushed a finger against the painting’s surface, it no longer gave way. The portal was closed; it was oil paint upon canvas once more. He ushered the grotesques to the front door, and the snowy night air blew in around the creatures as they obediently filed outside, then began swarming up the posts of the porch or fluttering into the sky, back to their places on the roofline of the house.

  Dad and Uncle Peter found old sheets of plywood in the garage, and each painting was placed facedown on a board, then securely fixed in place with gaffer tape.

  “They won’t see anything tempting this way,” Grandpa John said. “But let’s take them upstairs where they can be minded.”

  In the attic, Grandpa John leaned them against a wall and, with a soft word to Sir Roland, gave the suit of armor a new purpose—to watch over the paintings.

  When the children yawned heavily, Mrs. Pal patted Soumitra on the shoulder and said it was time for them to go, but they were made to promise to return for Christmas lunch the following day.

  Mom and Dad set up cushions, sheets, and blankets on the floor of the living room in a makeshift camp for the children, watched over by Doug and Stan. Grandma Rose took a long time to say good night to them all. She seemed to find it as soothing as the children did to stroke their hair and lay her cheek against theirs.

  At Spencer’s request, she left the Christmas tree lights on as the children settled into their blankets and pillows. It was hard to believe it was Christmas Eve.

  “We did it,” Hedy said. “I can’t believe we saved Grandma Rose.”

  “Did you see the Snowy Paw of Doom?” Doug asked. “Made that ruddy magpie thing take a turn, didn’t it?”

  “Most impressive,” Stan agreed generously. “Nor did that unearthly creature want to contend with the Lord of the Queen’s Wood! Never underestimate the ferocity of a pair of prodigious antlers, Douglas!” Stan was then undone by those same prodigious antlers as he waved them with too much swagger and toppled over onto his side.

  “I was fierce too, wasn’t I, Doug?” Spencer asked.

  “If you’re not the fiercest cubs we’ve ever met,” Doug said, “you are all surely the most courageous. And that’s a finer thing altogether.”

  The next day, Spencer stirred first—and, with a jubilant cry of “Merry Christmas! Presents!” woke the rest of the house. Hedy was thrilled with the sneakers and new novels she had been hoping their parents would give her, while Spencer gleefully unwrapped modeling clay and some modeling tools, plus a new video game. They had given Jelly some crazily colored woolen tights and a beaded necklace, both of which their cousin put on immediately.

  The last gifts they unwrapped were from Grandpa John. To Spencer, he gave a very light copper-and-paper device, about a hand span in length and shaped like winged sycamore seeds. The device helicoptered through the air just like the seeds, and when Spencer used his hands to move the air around it, it changed the direction in which it spiraled.

  Hedy unwrapped a small leather-bound world atlas with a fine brass telescope attached to the spine on the end of a chain. Inked on the pages inside were the continents and countries of the world—although with the borders and names of a hundred years ago—and the telescope allowed the maps to be magnified in terrifically fine detail. At a certain depth, the wavy lines of the ocean bobbed up and down, and drawn animals could be seen moving in their native habitats. There was an elephant that ambled across the plain of a place marked Bechuanaland (which Dad said was now Botswana), a penguin that shuffled over snow in the Antarctic, and a great many birds and insects to be spotted in the Amazon.

  “These are awesome, Grandpa John,” Spencer said. He gazed out at the backyard as though deciding how high a tree he could climb to test his small propeller. />
  “They’re amazing, thank you,” Hedy agreed. “But I’m sorry we didn’t get you anything for Christmas.”

  Grandpa John smiled at Grandma Rose, who was talking softly with their mom. “Of course you did.”

  Jelly’s parents, Toni and Vincent, arrived with Max mid-morning and were utterly shocked to find Grandma Rose returned. They had a million questions of course, but with everyone either restoring the house to some semblance of order or preparing Christmas lunch, the account was very disjointed. It wasn’t until the Pals joined them that the whole tale was satisfactorily told again, from start to finish, over turkey, roast potatoes, and all the trimmings.

  Afterward, Mrs. Pal quietly beckoned Grandpa John, Hedy, and Spencer into the hallway. She handed them a squeezy bottle of mustard, chuckling at their befuddled looks. “This is my glue glue,” she explained.

  “Will it wake Mrs. V and her sisters from the stone?” Hedy asked.

  Mrs. Pal looked regretful. “Glue will not.” Her eyes fell on Grandpa John. “You’ll need magic for that.”

  An impatient grunt was Grandpa John’s answer, which made Mrs. Pal chuckle once more and leave to rejoin the others.

  “We have to free Mrs. Vilums and her sisters, Grandpa,” Hedy said in a low voice.

  Spencer nodded. “Without her, we would’ve been mincemeat.”

  “No magic in this house,” Grandpa John said, rubbing his eyes with a hand. “Strictly tricks only. That was the rule, wasn’t it?”

  “You already broke your rule with the gargoyles. And Sir Roland. Think of all the other cool things you could do!” Spencer said, eyes gleaming.

  “The problem is I think of all the harm I could do,” Grandpa John reminded them. “I’ve spent all these years quashing the impulse to do what I’m actually good at because I know my actions have consequences.”

  “Are you really going to give up doing magic?” Hedy asked incredulously. She had thought that perhaps the events of the last day were the tip of an exciting new iceberg.