by Nick Scorza
Copyright © 2019 by Nick Scorza
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
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Cover design by Kate Gartner
Cover photo credit iStock
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5107-4516-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-4517-9
Printed in the United States of America
“What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?”
—Arthur Machen, “The White People”
Contents
I
II
III
IV
1889
V
VI
VII
1777
VIII
IX
X
1934
XI
XII
XIII
1725
XIV
XV
XVI
c 1400
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
Acknowledgments
I.
The first bus took me as far as Ithaca. It was full of college students going back for summer classes, or else just trying to get away from their families. I sunk lower in my seat, feeling too young and out of place—a stowaway in a world I couldn’t wait to be part of. I just had to survive two more years at Queens Academy for Inhumanity, not to mention a summer with my dad.
As all the students left the station, they laughed about things I wished I could laugh at too—jokes I was sure would be hilarious if I were just a bit more adult. Instead, I unfolded the schedule I’d printed, frayed and deformed from hours in my pocket, and looked for the bus that would take me to my father.
When I finally found it at the other end of the station, I checked the ticket and the schedule three times to make sure I’d found the right vehicle. It looked more like an airport courtesy shuttle someone had decided to drive off into the country and commandeer for the local bus service, but it was definitely the right bus.
On board, I smelled cigarette smoke and cheap air freshener—the neon-orange pine tree kind. The only other occupant was an old man, smoking in defiance of the bright red NO SMOKING sign and muttering to himself.
We sat there for half an hour while I fretted that I had somehow mixed up the numbers or the bus lines when a sour, middle-aged woman in a gray uniform finally clambered onto the bus. She looked at each of us, as if giving us one last chance to get off, before grunting once and turning the ignition.
The bus hummed to life, rattling in a way that was less than reassuring, and for at least the fiftieth time that day, I wondered if I was making a terrible mistake. There was still time to hop out and catch the next ride back to the city. I looked at my phone, thought about calling, then put it away again. Things at home would be just the same as when I left, maybe worse. The Woodchuck had probably moved his stuff into our apartment as fast as possible so my mother couldn’t change her mind, and I bet he was already sprawled across the sofa asking her what was for dinner.
Anger had taken me this far, and it seemed able to take me a little further yet. There was a new feeling, though—an anxious twist in my insides at the thought of seeing my father. Since the divorce, I’d only seen him for two birthdays and two Christmases, or more accurately on the nearest weekends before or after those days. This would be the first time I stayed with him—and I wouldn’t have friends or a whole city to fall back on if I couldn’t deal with the memories. Dad was quiet, and when things were quiet for too long, I couldn’t keep my mind from drifting to thoughts of Zoe. This trip was exactly the kind of crazy, impulsive adventure my twin sister would have loved, which made it even harder to be doing it without her.
There was something else, too. Somehow, even before the fight with my mother, I had this feeling I was supposed to come out here, to see the place my father grew up. The place he never used to talk about but went running back to as soon as my parents’ marriage fell apart.
Before I knew it, the bus had left Ithaca behind and was wending its way through one of those state roads that isn’t a highway but isn’t a normal street either. On either side, the trees grew taller and denser, until we were riding through a tunnel of green and gold light. Sometimes the tree-cover would suddenly clear on one side, and we’d look out over an expanse of wooded valley fading to blue in the distance before plunging back into the forest. I laughed quietly to myself. This bus was taking me farther from home than I’d ever been without my family along. It was like falling—totally free and yet only one way to go.
The bus passed through a tunnel in the hills, and for a moment, the green half-light was replaced by darkness.
When we emerged, the forest was different—the trees seemed older, knotted and bent and dense with vines. We passed a whole section of forest that had been taken over by some kind of invasive creeper, a great mass of dark and impenetrable green. Then we left the state road for an even narrower country lane. I thought that meant we were close, but there was at least an hour more to go. My anger at my mother faded a little, and I thought about how long I’d last out here before I took the trip back to civilization. Then I thought about the Woodchuck making us watch the latest prescription drug commercial he was in, and I resolved to become a good country girl.
I got drowsy as the bus rattled along, half-asleep on a seat that felt like it was upholstered in stiff motel carpet. I had uneasy dreams of Zoe, and all the times she’d made me follow her down dark wooded paths in the little park by the house we grew up in. She had this way of making even a leafy New Jersey suburb seem like a grim enchanted forest. At the darkest part, she’d always look back, daring me to follow—a wicked half-smile on a face identical to mine.
“Arala mir,” she whispered in my dreams—“Follow me,” in the secret language we made up together—before she vanished down a tree-lined trail and left me scrambling after her, always hoping to catch up beyond the next bend. All my life, I’d been running after her, until the day she finally left me behind.
When I woke up, groggy and bleary-eyed, the bus was pulling in to what looked like an old New York City bus stop. It was as out of place as the lamp post in Narnia, a little bit of the city stuck way out here in the country—the town’s one reminder of a wider world.
Redmarch Lake—I had been calling it Lake Podunk in my head since my father moved there (Dr. Bellamy said it was d
ue to resentment from my parents’ divorce—I said, gee, ya think?). Now that I was here, I swore myself to no urban snark, no Queens-girl attitude, for at least a few days. These people didn’t need my sarcastic comments about what looked like a lovely little town, even if I couldn’t guess why my father chose it over New York City where his daughter lived.
The bus dropped me in the tiny town square area, and already I saw a café and a few shops and restaurants. Down a steep little cobblestone street, I could just glimpse a strip of blue that must have been the lake. The sidewalks were lined with trees and flowers, and there was a statue of what looked like a Revolutionary War officer in the middle of the square. Everything looked like it had stayed just like this for decades. I thought of what Zoe would do if she were here with me—no doubt she’d be grabbing my hand and pulling me off to explore the lake, but I didn’t have time to act on the impulse. I caught sight of my father getting out of his car and hurrying over to me.
Because I didn’t see him very often, he looked older every time—aging like a flip book with a little less hair and a few more lines under the eyes each visit; but he still had the sad eyes and shy, little-boy smile my mother said first drew her to him. He gave me a big hug and a kiss, and he told me how wonderful it was to see me.
“I talked with your mother, and I know I shouldn’t be happy given the circumstances, but damn it, it’s good to see you. Let me show you the house.”
As we drove through the town, he pointed out the café, the diner, a Chinese restaurant, and a fancy one with white tablecloths that people went to on special occasions.
“Used to be a hotel,” said my dad. “This was a tourist destination for a little while, in the 1920s.”
I imagined flappers and jazz bands jitterbugging all over the streets, and wished I could have seen it then. A minute later, we were out of the town center and driving along a little country road. The trees on one side parted and I caught my first glimpse of the lake. It was nowhere near the size of the Finger Lakes, which were near here, but it was beautiful: bright blue and calm as a mirror, surrounded by deep green swathes of trees and gray, rocky cliffs.
There was something eerie about how still it all was—like I wasn’t looking at the real lake, just a picture of it. I almost expected to see VISIT SCENIC REDMARCH LAKE floating in the sky—a postcard come to life.
There was a little island near the far side, a rocky outcropping crowned with some kind of ruin. Behind it on the shore was an old mansion at the top of a hill surrounded by rows of grapevines.
“Wow, it’s beautiful—but that’s not quite the right word. It’s more, I don’t know, intense?”
“That’s true,” my father said.
His expression changed when I brought up the lake. He went pale and made a kind of nervous swallowing noise.
“You . . . well—I wanted you to come here, but you maybe shouldn’t have. . . . I mean, you shouldn’t fight with your mother like that.”
I felt all my anger flood back. My parents barely spoke to each other, and now they tried to put up some kind of unified front, even with my mother moving in with another man? They were still ganging up on me, and without Zoe by my side, it wasn’t a fair fight. Just then, absurdly, I hated her for dying and leaving me to deal with my parents’ stupid divorce all alone. Then, of course, I hated myself for thinking that. I felt like I lost half of me when I lost Zoe, yet I could still manage to be selfish.
“I thought you were glad I was here,” I said.
“No, I want you here, I just . . . I wish it were under different circumstances. Never mind, it’s good that you came.”
Already my father’s need to paper over every conflict was making my blood start to boil. I hated to let things simmer unsaid. Whatever was bothering him, I wished he would tell me.
“Mom’s boyfriend is moving into our home. Why are you worried about pissing her off?”
My father was silent for a long moment, as if desperately searching for a way to say something he’d never put into words before. From the look on his face, he didn’t succeed.
“It’s not that. I just worry you won’t like it here. It gets a little odd out here on my own. I start worrying about all kinds of things.”
Now it was my turn to be quiet. I’d been thinking of Mom and the Woodchuck on the whole ride down and trying not to dwell on Zoe. I hadn’t given any thought to what my dad was going through out here alone. Still, no one had forced him to move back.
I took one last look at the weird, still lake as we drove along its shore. This place was doing bad things to my father. Even though he was already driving me crazy, I was glad I was here to keep him company, if only for the summer.
Dad had a little wooden house on a leaf-shadowed street at the edge of town. I said little, but it was still bigger than Mom’s two-bedroom in Forest Hills (which would feel even smaller now that it was thoroughly Chucked). It had a wide front porch and a back yard with deck chairs and a grill—all things I hadn’t had since the place in Jersey when I was little. Dad’s house was painted brown with white trim, and I couldn’t help but think of it as gingerbread—not that my father was a witch, more like a grown-up Hansel moved back to the witch’s house.
Dad showed me around without saying much of anything. He had quiet spells—once one of them came on, he just wouldn’t talk for a while. He worked from home as some sort of data management consultant. To be honest, I didn’t really understand what he did, but I worried that he didn’t leave the house enough. He didn’t even have a pet for company. After he quietly showed me the living room, the kitchen, and the room that would be mine, he seemed to forget whatever had made him regret my visit, and I tried not to let it get to me.
Against my will, I texted my mother to tell her I arrived safely. She responded Good, we’ll talk when you’re ready. I thought about adding something snarky about Chuck, but I was honestly tired of thinking about it. Avoiding that whole situation was the whole reason I was here—that and making sure Dad was okay.
My father made fish sticks and mac and cheese for dinner like I was still a little girl, but I didn’t object, and we watched old movies as the sun set and the fireflies winked and danced in the back yard. So far, life in the country wasn’t bad, as long as we didn’t acknowledge all the family drama.
After a while, Dad started feeling talkative again, asking me about my friends and where we liked to go in the city. Questions like that always brought me back to those first horrible years after losing Zoe, and all the ways my parents had tried to monitor my moods and push me to rejoin a world I had never been part of in the first place. I gave Dad a few vague answers—he was always easier to appease than my mother. Then, to my surprise, he asked how Mom was doing. He kept his tone the same, but I could tell it was hard for him to bring up.
I thought of everything that had led me here and made a sour face.
“You already know about Chuck,” I said.
My father nodded.
“He doesn’t make you . . . uncomfortable, does he?”
It took me a moment to realize what my father meant by this. When I shook my head, he visibly relaxed.
“He’s never been creepy toward me, unless you count stupid jokes as creepy. He . . . I don’t know, he puts his feet up on the coffee table, he sleeps way late when he’s over, which I guess is all the time now. And he leaves his crap everywhere. He doesn’t act like a grownup. I have no idea how he conned Mom into this.”
“Clara, I think you should give him a chance. I don’t know him, and I don’t care to, but he makes your mother happy, and that wouldn’t be the case if he weren’t a good person in some way.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Charlie Woods had to drive my dad nuts, but here he was trying to act like he was above it all—and talking down to me on top if it.
“What the hell, Dad. You can’t be this relaxed about the whole thing. Another man is moving into your home! Maybe if you’d fought back, all of this would be different!”
My father looked ready to shout something back at me, but his mouth just hung open and nothing came out. Even now, with me, he would rather be silent than deal with anything hard. I couldn’t stand it. I got up and ran to the room he’d set up for me, slamming the door behind me.
Way to go, Clara, I imagined Zoe whispering to me, off to a great start.
“He’s impossible,” I muttered. “Why does he have to keep pretending everything is okay?”
He means well. I could imagine her replies as if she were right there with me—sometimes it was the only thing that kept me going. You know how much he loves you.
I sighed. Even my imaginary recollection of my sister was lecturing me. I shouldn’t have yelled at Dad, even if I did have a right to be angry.
Imagining what Zoe would say about my life today was a defense mechanism I’d worked out with a series of therapists. Having a twin means never having to be alone—most people who don’t have one can’t grasp that, or what it’s like to lose it. Dwelling on our memories together left me mired hopelessly in my own head, cut off from the world—but banishing her from my thoughts was too painful, too much like losing her all over again. Trying to carry her with me through my life was an uneasy compromise, but it was the only way I could go on. And of course she was usually right about things like this.
The room Dad had set up for me had everything I’d need for a long stay: a bed and a dresser and even a desk stocked with pens and pencils. It was nice, though it reminded me a bit of middle school. It made me wonder how long my father had had this room set aside in hopes I’d come visit. He could have asked sooner, or at all, if that was what he wanted.
There was a picture of me on top of the dresser, maybe six years old, in a little plaid dress with ribbons in my hair. Somehow dad had found one of the few childhood pictures of me without Zoe. Or more likely he’d cropped her out of the picture, which was just too hard to think about—my twin sister erased from my life. I guess I couldn’t blame him. I tried to imagine her with me, making new memories together, but I couldn’t imagine looking at her picture every day, staring straight into the face of everything we’d lost.