Keepers Of The Gate

by E. Denise Billups

  “Children can be unkind,” Cristal says, tapping her fingernails on the mug. “Twyla, Anson died because he stole the land from your family. Tessa said KWD are still watching. I fear Harrison’s in danger if he remains much longer at Twilight.”

  18

  The Steamer Trunk

  After the eye-opening chat with Cristal and Jayson, Twyla paces in front of the parlor fireplace with the steamer trunk on her mind. She glances at Tessa’s picture above the mantel, working up the courage to do what she believes she wanted her to do. “You left me the locket for a reason, didn’t you, Grams?” she mutters, thinking about the panic attacks whenever she nears the trunk. “Why didn’t you leave the locket to Mom?” For months, Twyla considered giving Skylar the key inside the locket, but suspects Grams wanted her to confront her childhood fears. But after talking to Cristal, she surmises there’s another reason.

  Grams and Young George were the only ones who knew of her scare in the storage room. When she described the specter woman’s raven hair, widow’s peak, and pale skin, Tessa’s brows rose in awe and recognition. Twyla lost moments on that hair-raising night. Waking to the woman in the Grand Hall is vivid, descending the stairs, obscure. Even now, the woman’s translucent features haunt her. What else besides the ghost crept into her psyche to cause such unease? If it occurred during somnambulance, the chance of remembering is zilch. Perchance in dreams, but her nightmares are as much a mystery as her sleepwalking.

  With time, her fear receded until Grams bequeathed her the locket 13 years later. Soon after Grams’ death, paralyzing anxiety reawakened when she ventured to the cellar. Her heart raced, a sweaty rash broke across her face and her clammy palms trembled around the key. She froze a few feet away from the trunk, turned and raced upstairs, just as she’d done as a child. But Young George wasn’t there to allay her fears as he’d done years ago. Now, with growing suspicions, curiosity overshadows fear.

  She suspects she’d seen the woman more than once and believes she pines for the trunk or an item inside? From what she was told, the steamer holds photos, antiques, family memorabilia, precious lifetime collections. Grams stored every painting she’d ever drawn inside that metal box.

  Over the years, a noticeable pattern of restlessness overtook Grams. When it struck, she’d take hikes around the garden, near the lake or to the trunk in the cellar. Twyla was too young to name Grams’ agitation. Now, more insightful, with losses of her own, the death of both Grams and Papa, she understands Tessa’s deep sigh-laden introspection whenever she spoke of ancestors. It was nostalgia. A restive longing for a bygone time? Ian recognized her wistfulness and said, “Don’t revel in the past, cherish the present, Tessa.” Twyla thought it just a wise aphorism, but now, she’s sure Grams longed for an erstwhile place where her restless feet itched to roam.

  Once, Twyla found Grams seated beside the trunk, admiring her plastic-protected sketches inside the black leather portfolio on her lap. As she thumbed through drawings as if a family album, a furrowed-brow grin lit her face. Maybe a fond memory. She’d raised the portfolio, kissed the cover, then laid it in a hidden spot.

  “What’s your secret, Grams?” Twyla whispers, assuming Grams’ intense, piercing stare at the painted image above the mantel. She lingers on Grams’ eyes with a keen realization. “You left me the key because there’s something you want me to see inside the trunk, right, Grams? What secret did you hide there?”

  Twyla wanders from the parlor toward the back stairs, descending into the renovated basement. On the western side of the cellar, the treadmill whirs with Cristal’s steady jog as Twyla strides toward the sliding doors that divide the storage room from the rest of the basement. Her boots clack across wooden floors that sit above sacred bedrock beneath the house and in cellar walls. Ruins once buried underneath an Iroquois village, Twilight Ends now sits.

  Twyla’s mind fills with startling questions. Our ancestors protected the stones because they were aware of their powers. Did they see their history as Grams had? Past or future?

  At the eastern end of the basement, Twyla enters the sizeable storage room she once imagined as a fabulous suite. But given the scarcity of storage, it remains a storeroom. Snow mounds crest three arched awning windows, spreading a hazy film across the room.

  Twyla switches on the light, brightening a room akin to an antique shop. Remnants of Twilight’s past, vintage furniture, lamps, mirrors and assorted antiquities fill the chamber. Ten tall racks lined up tidily in rows along each wall are filled with labeled boxes. In the far corner, two gray steel file cabinets hold several years of business documents.

  She strolls toward a red Victorian settee and five mismatched chairs circling a large leather ottoman, Grams’ private retreat, a place where she’d often read or sketched. In the back, against the wall, hidden behind an antique armoire, hides the vintage steamer. Grams’ Pandora’s Box. “Don’t tamper with the trunk, sweetie,” Tessa’s voice proclaims from her memory.

  Twyla’s chest tightens and light-headedness threatens her balance as she approaches the frightful domed box.

  “It’s just childish fears,” she whispers to herself.

  Twyla walks toward the trunk with her gaze sweeping the corners and rows of racks. Nothing will harm you in Tessa’s prized chest, she tells herself firmly. But it’s the ghost’s return that frightens her, not the contents. The wailing woman’s insubstantial hands emerge in her mind, fiddling with the lock. What earthly object holds a preternatural captive? Maybe the real fright lies within the trunk.

  Twyla stops a few feet away from the refurbished antique trunk, recalling its lackluster state before Grams restored it to polish. Five pine slabs engraved with a double “M” traverse the ornate, domed top, gleaming as though new, even though it’s older than Twilight.

  She draws a deep breath and steps closer. Her heart pounds with the angry storm at the window. A rush of sweat covers her top lip.

  You can do this. Nothing will happen.

  As if appeasing a treacherous beast, her hand hovers above the trunk a long, deliberative second before pressing her palm on the solid alloy. She snaps her eyes shut, expecting a shrill cry of protest. But there’s no jangling latch or wailing woman, just the treadmill’s whirr and the storm’s howl.

  Twyla peers through one eye and releases a sharp breath when the woman doesn’t materialize. She strokes star-motif-adorned clamps and metal hardware, an act she’d imagined years ago. Clutching the locket at her décolletage, she thumbs it open to a brass barrel key and oval photo displaying her own unsmiling 10-year-old countenance.

  The family picture evokes her stubborn pout when the photographer said, “Cheese.” Tessa, Skylar, and Ian surround her with toothy grins. Ever defiant, she’d refused to fake a smile, thrusted her lips out, and sat frozen until the photographer gave up and clicked. She’s always admired the natural expressions of guests captured in Tessa’s sketches, with genuine miens, oblivious of Tessa’s scrutiny. Throughout the years, she’d withheld a smile in front of a camera unless she had reason.

  Twyla removes the key from the locket with an immediate awareness. For the first time in years, she’ll open the dreaded, forbidden trunk. Isn’t this what you dreamed of doing since you were a girl? Exhilaration and fear muddle her emotions. Uneasy, she inserts the key in the heavy-duty cast-iron lock and gives it a slow twist. Mimicking Grams, she opens her arms the width of the steamer, unhinging the left and right finger lifts. She draws a breath and raises the domed top, exhaling loudly when it meets the wall with a dull thud but without ghostly protest.

  “I did it, Grams,” she whispers, clenching the pendant to her chest with a triumphant grin.

  Fear subsides when Victorian lithographs emerge beneath the cover and on several trays, evoking a memory of her seven-year-old self. She had believed the pictures were portraits of the original owners until Grams explained the manufacturer had designed the images.

  She recalls her childish curiosity. “Are the same illustrations o
n every trunk?”

  Grams shrugged and replied, “I can’t answer that because I inherited the chest, and it’s the only one I’ve ever seen.”

  Twyla wanted to plaster a photo of a winsome, smiling-eyed Tessa over the rosy-cheeked, blonde, Victorian woman wearing a blue bonnet with a flower in the front, and the older woman in a crimson dress and outlandish yellow hat.

  Grams had shaken her head and said, “No, sweetie. It will destroy the trunk’s authenticity.”

  “Au-then-city?” she’d asked.

  Grams had smiled at her seven-year-old mispronunciation and carefully spoke each syllable, “Au-then-ti-city. The lithographs prove it’s a genuine Martin Maier trunk.”

  Over time, Twyla understood that lithographs and other elements allow skilled eyes to discern an antique’s authenticity, a word she’d repeated until it grew hackneyed and tiresome. But what did it matter? The trunk isn’t for sale, but a genuine Newhouse family fixture.

  She’d wondered if Grams inherited the trunk from her parents, but when she’d inquired, she’d said, “No, from a special friend, a woman as important as our ancestors, Mercy Dox.”

  After the fascinating chat with Cristal, Mercy Dox intrigues her more than ever. Why did Grams call her special friend? Mercy died years before Grams was born.

  She drops to her knees, meeting the trunk at her chest, and opens the first compartment, expecting to find Grams’ portfolio on top. Instead, she finds her archery case containing a crude birchwood longbow and arrows made with ancient flint arrowheads, not Grams’ Deerseeker archery set. Twyla can’t imagine why she’d replace it with such a primitive weapon. Grams adored her longbow. Maybe Skylar stored it in the family suite.

  Twyla lifts the longbow and flint-head arrow, running her fingers along the ancient timber, animal sinews, and feathers. Energy surges through her arm and across her body, knocking her backwards. The storage room fades to dense wilderness. Bramble snaps beneath her feet, startling a buck ahead. She senses the quiver laden with arrows on her back as she reaches over her shoulder. Another’s hand nocks the arrow, arm flexing with the arching bow limb, drawing the bowstring backward. Her eyes, the other’s vision, aims with eagle-sharp precision. The buck glances at her just as the speedy projectile hisses in her ear. Her heart, the other’s heart, thrills with the hunt and love for a man praising her skill, a man whom she is aware of beside her. Another hunter. The sensations flee when the flying missile pierces its target.

  Twyla jolts upright with a gasp, flinging the bow across the room. “What the hell was that?” She rises from the floorboards, crosses the room, and stoops to the longbow. Hesitantly, she grazes the wood with her fingertips, fearful her touch will blitz her sight again. After many years of archery, she’s never aimed with such precision as in the vision.

  Is this what happened to Grams? Visions, past remnants? But it felt so real. Grabbing the archery set, she shoves it into the case, fearful of what else awaits her in the trunk.

  Inside the steamer’s top compartment lies Twilight Ends’ letterhead, several folders, and an envelope from the Geneva Historical Society containing worn maps of Geneva, New York. A leather sheath embossed with the emblem of Keepers of the Western Door catches her attention. The hush-hush society she overheard a conversation about years ago. Twyla runs her finger over the gold insignia above a dogwood tree guarded by two Iroquois sentinels and wolves. Inside the folder, KWD letterhead stapled to the inside fold, lists members of the society. Teresa and Ian Newhouse show under Clan Mother and Chief. Dante Whelan and 10 other members comprise the Board of Directors (Wolf Clan Longhouse Members).

  The conversation she’d overheard years ago resounds in her memory. “Keepers of The Western Door Society requires a formidable leader whose values align with our mission. We need an individual who understands our people and honors our culture. A person with your character, Dante. I wish you’d reconsider.” The gold band she’d seen on Dante’s finger and the list confirms his acceptance as a member. With the deaths of Papa and Grams, has he assumed a leading role?

  She sets the top compartment on the floor. Several boxes of various shapes and sizes, a few decorative, others plain, brown cardboard boxes sit on top of one another. Inside an olive-green carton marked fragile lie items wrapped in aged tissue paper. The crisp wrappings crackle as she unwraps white porcelain china plates, cups, and saucers engraved with a simple blue etching of a boat on a lake snaking past a simple farm with willow trees.

  Clank! Clank!

  Twyla gasps. Jerking her head toward the trunk’s corner, she clutches the saucer to her chest with a glower at the fallen latch for a second.

  It’s nothing. It just slipped into place.

  She loosens her grip on the fragile porcelain, noticing a thin crack trailing from the center to the edge of the saucer.

  “Shit,” she murmurs, rewrapping the plate, afraid it will break in her shaky hands. “Sorry, Grams,” she murmurs, gently depositing it back in the box.

  Rummaging through the steamer, she finds a ceramic pitcher and bowl used as washbasins during Colonial times. Several more boxes contain delicate vases and kitchenware, enough to fill an entire cabinet. Maybe they’re priceless collections of sentimental value to Grams. Otherwise, she’d have sold them to an antiquarian or museum as she’d done with various pieces over the years.

  “Ah,” Twyla exclaims. “I’d forgotten this,” she mutters, running her fingers over Grams’ faultless, seldom-used beechwood paint box with palette and paintbrushes. Tessa rarely opened the set, preferring Faber-Castell graphite pencils over the brush. Unopened art supplies fill a large satchel and a black leather case holds brand-new unwrapped pencils. Twyla draws a lungful of leather and graphite scent, imagining Grams doing the same.

  Inside a handcrafted basket sit a jumble of Native American jewelry Grams often wore, bracelets, necklaces, cuffs and rings, but not the expensive jewelry she’d left to Skylar in the family suite. Twyla sets the trinkets on the floor and stares, perplexed, at the remaining contents.

  “Ah-ha! I wondered where Grams had hidden you,” she whispers, lifting Ian’s Coromandel Game Compendium. Many nights, seated near the fireplace, Grams and Papa had played a game of chess, weighing their next move for hours. Grams removed it from the parlor when papa died, the sight of the veneered satinwood set too painful for her.

  Where’s her artwork?

  She rummages through boxes of pottery and miscellaneous decorations, straight to the bottom of the trunk. When she lifts the last box, a wooden plank jiggles, exposing another compartment. Inside, a deerskin jacket conceals a leather case. “There you are,” she mumbles, removing Grams’ portfolio from beneath the jacket. From underneath the leather, 10 ledgers tied with wampum ribbon emerge, along with three timeworn books and Grams’ trusty vintage Argus C-Four camera.

  “The Argus was the best present I’d ever received.”

  She still hears the glee in Grams’ voice as she spoke of her 17th birthday. She explained she’d drawn her best sketches from photos taken with the Argus. Six years ago, she’d scoffed when Twyla raised her mobile to take a picture of her. “You young people and your cellphones will put camera makers out of business.”

  Twyla laughs. How ironic. When Grams relented and bought an iPhone, she never used her faithful camera again. She’d take photos at every event, formal, casual and at random times nonstop.

  Placing the Argus on the floor, she retrieves the portfolio, noticing a white item wedged beneath a wooden slab loosened from the trunk’s bottom right corner. She pinches the unyielding cloth with her fingertips, pulls the creaking board back and draws out a piece of stained white fabric, revealing a manila envelope underneath the narrow gap. Did someone hide it there?

  She frees the package, carefully pushes the board in place and unrolls the yellowed fabric. An antique infant’s gown. It looks as if it’s been under the plank for ages. Who does it belong to? An acute thought chills her as she examines the cotton pintucked-eyelet dres
s. Is this what the specter was seeking, her infant’s gown? With that frightening notion, she folds and places the frock back in the trunk, imagining the wailing ghost seizing it from her hand.

  Twyla rolls off her heels, crosses her legs on the hardwood floor and opens the manila envelope, extracting four aged documents, land deeds and testaments. Narrowing her eyes as she struggles with the faded ancient calligraphy, Twyla deciphers the first lines.

  This indenture made the twenty second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ninety-four between Captain William Dox of the city and county of Geneva, Commonwealth of New York and Mercy Dox, his wife herein called the Grantors…

  She peers at the next faded paragraph. “Impossible… I need a microscope to decipher the rest,” she mutters, raising the deed closer to her eyes. The timeworn words detail the purchased acreage and description of the land. At the bottom, the signatures of William and Mercy Dox are prominent in bold script. The second document, an amended land deed, shows Mercy and Kane Dox as joint owners, dated 1804.

  An amended will dated 1820 bequeaths the property to Garrentha, Olivia and Billy Newhouse. The final testament, signed by Anson Dox and validated by Zachary Salomon, Esquire in 1938, cedes the property to the original owners, the Newhouse family.

  “This is it!” Twyla exclaims and springs from the floor, pacing with her eyes fixed on the documents. “The original deeds and testaments. Proof the property belongs to the Newhouse family,” she murmurs. Her intuition warns her there’s more. This can’t be Grams’ secret.