My heart nearly explodes and I crab-crawl away, wincing as shards of glass cut into my palms. Even though I know it’s just a doll, a very old doll imprisoned by weeds, I’m terrified.
Just a doll.
That’s all.
A toy.
Like all those dolls in my room that night eight years ago during the storm. The night countless eyes stared back at me.
I stop moving in order to look at my sliced hands. The bigger shards drop onto the broken tile, making a tinkling sound, like crystal. I look back at the doll.
She hasn’t moved.
Of course she hasn’t moved. God. I’m an idiot.
A little girl must have had a tea party here a long time ago. A very long time ago. That’s all this is.
But then that feeling is back. Like someone’s watching me. I shudder but force myself not to look at the doll as I get to my feet. I want to get out of here.
Blood smears my palms. It hurts, but there isn’t anything I can do about it until I get back to the house.
I hurry out of the solarium as the rain picks up. Disoriented, I stop once I’m outside. Is this the entrance I used? No, the table was on the other side then, wasn’t it? Is there more than one table?
Turning a circle, I see too many paths to choose from. Before I can panic, however, I decide on one, hoping it’s the way I came.
I glance over my shoulder at the abandoned building. Why did I go in there? It’s creepy, all of it. The broken railing. The china cracked and ruined. That doll forever alone in the dark, rain-soaked woods.
Shudder.
I hurry away. Night is falling fast. How long have I been out here? Clouds overhead hide the last of the waning light as rain falls heavier, plastering hair to my face. I realize now just how cold I am.
Tripping over rocks and tree roots, I try not to break into a run. I guess it was a ten-or fifteen-minute walk to get here from the house, but after walking for what seems like a lot longer than that, I realize I’ve been going in circles.
Because I’m back at the solarium. Back to where I’d started.
It takes all I have not to panic. Not to think there’s something not right about this.
My hands throb with the glass embedded in them, and I know it’s stupid, but I feel like something led me back here. Something old and eerie.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I tell myself. Turning a circle, I look around, trying and failing to get my bearings. All I hear is the constant sound of the rain, and all I feel is the presence of that hulking, broken solarium with the doll trapped inside.
After looking left and right and back at the solarium, I start to walk. I just need to be away from here, but fifteen minutes later, when I’m again back in the same place, I can’t stop the panic that takes hold of me.
I want to rub my face but remember the glass in my hands. I walk a few paces back the way I came but stop. I’ll just end up walking the same circle again. I know it.
Pushing wet hair from my face with the back of my hand, I turn again, crossing to the other side of the solarium, giving it a wide berth as I do. When the cold wind whistles, I give in to that panic, hurrying my steps backward, keeping my eyes on the structure as if that would keep some monster from charging out of the place after me.
I trip. I’m not watching where I’m going. But I can’t drag my eyes away from the solarium so when I crash into something hard behind me, all the tension I’ve been trying to keep tamped down bubbles up, releasing into a scream so loud, it sends birds I didn’t know were even there noisily flying from the branches of the trees.
I bounce off whatever it was that was behind me almost falling to the ground until a strong pair of hands catches me.
I scream and scream until I hear him. Until he turns me, pulls me to him, and I feel his chest against my face and his hand cupping the back of my head and big, powerful arms holding me tight.
I scream until I know it’s Damian.
Damian again, like last time.
Damian rescuing me from yet another ghost.
And those tears I’d almost managed to hold back pour out in relief even as I see the dark look in his eyes when he glances at the solarium, that haunted place.
He turns back to me and searches my face as if to know what I’ve seen.
Does he know about the doll? The broken railing?
Does he know the place is haunted? Because I have no doubt it is.
15
Damian
I only found her because of the location device in her phone.
She’s soaked through, hair plastered to her face, coat sticking to her, useless against the rain.
She shifts her gaze to her hands. I glance down at the broken skin, the smears of blood. But when I look back up at her face, I see fear. The panic of the little girl I remember.
I want to shake her. Ask her what the fuck she thinks she’s doing out here in the woods, in the rain.
In that solarium.
But she’s shivering, so when she glances back at the hulking skeleton of the once-beautiful structure with a strange look in her eyes, I wonder if there are ghosts here after all. If Cristina sees them and if Annabel still haunts what was once her favorite place to play. If I’ve been waiting for her in the wrong spot all this time.
This is where everything changed for her.
Where she became the cripple who couldn’t crawl out of the burning car to save her life.
Guilt slashes my heart.
My fault.
Lucas is right. I break everything I touch.
I look at Cristina. At the sobbing, terrified girl she’s become. Helpless. Helpless against us. Against me. Vulnerable. Breakable.
So much like Annabel.
You’ll break her too.
He’s right.
“We need to get out of this rain,” I tell her as I hurry her along, catching her when she trips. I know these woods like the back of my hand, and I’m surprised that of all things, she found the solarium.
By the time we get to the work shed, rain is coming down hard. I decide to take shelter there and wait it out before going back to the house.
Cristina looks around as I fish my keys out of my pocket to unlock the padlock on the door. At least she’s not crying anymore.
Her eyes fall on the tree stump with the ax sticking out of it. Wood that needs to be chopped lies in a jumble around it. Stacked against the wall of the shed is cut wood covered by a tarp.
“Firewood for the house,” I tell her as I push the door open and gesture for her to enter. We source it from the forest, and I chop it myself mostly. It’s excellent stress relief.
Once inside, I light the lantern.
“Stay here.”
I leave her looking around as I exit to collect dry logs. She’s standing in the same spot when I return. She watches as I stack the wood in the stone fireplace and set about building a fire.
“Take off your wet things,” I tell her as I ball up old pages of an old newspaper and stack them along with smaller branches for kindling before lighting it. I watch it take, blowing on it a little before wiping off my hands and straightening.
“I can’t,” she says as she tries to undo the buttons of her coat with trembling hands.
Going to her, I take her wrists to look at her bloody, cut hands, then back at her face. She’s spooked. “You’re all right. You’re safe now, Cristina.”
After a very long minute, she nods, but I’m not sure she believes it.
“What did you do?” I ask about her hands.
“I fell. There was a lot of glass.”
I walk her closer to the fire and start to unbutton her raincoat. “What were you doing out there? How did you even find the solarium?”
“I…” Her teeth chatter. “I was following your brother.”
“Lucas?”
“I saw him from my window.”
“Lucas was at the solarium?”
“No. I don’t know.” She shakes her head, and I can’
t tell if the sudden shiver is from cold or fear. “Can we go to the house? I don’t want to be out here.”
“I’ve got you.”
“I’m scared, Damian.”
I take her shoulders and squeeze. She’s not only scared. She’s terrified. “I’m here. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
Her forehead wrinkles, but her shoulders relax, and she finally nods.
“Now tell me where my brother went.”
“I don’t know where he went. I only saw him going into the woods then coming back out of them.”
“He left you out there alone?”
“He never saw me.”
“I doubt that.”
She looks at me with a confused expression on her face.
I peel off her coat, taking care not to hurt her. Her shirt’s wet, too, and her jeans. “You’re soaked through. Do you know how long you’ve been out here?”
She shakes her head. “I couldn’t find my way back.”
“And that’s why you won’t go into the woods alone again.”
“I don’t ever want to go back there.”
“Why? What happened? Apart from your fall.”
Her forehead creases as she studies the fire. “It’s just creepy. There was a doll, God, it was the scariest thing when I saw it.”
“You got scared of a doll?”
She looks up at me. “It was old. Maybe an antique or something. When I’d bent to pick up the broken tea things, there it was, staring up at me from a tangle of weeds.”
“Hmm.”
“It was creepy, Damian. That whole place is creepy. I just…I felt like someone was watching me.”
“No one was out there. We have soldiers, so no one would have gotten through.”
But the way she looks at me, I know what she’s thinking. Not a person. At least not a living one.
“You were going the wrong way, by the way,” I say, moving off the topic of ghosts.
“How did you find me?”
I take the phone out of her coat pocket. “Location.”
“Oh.”
I’m about to set it aside when I feel something else inside the pocket. I take that out, too, momentarily confused when I see the switchblade.
When I turn to her, she looks from the knife up to me like she’d forgotten it was there. And she looks guilty as sin. Like she did the other night.
I recognize it, of course. The intricately carved hilt. Pushing the button, I open it.
She jumps when I do.
I touch the blade—sharp as ever—and when I turn it to read the initials on the handle, I shake my head.
That’s what my sister was up to that night.
I set both phone and knife on the mantel and turn to her.
She meets my gaze, shivering as rain taps on the tin roof.
“You’ll explain that later. We need to get you warm and get that glass out first.”
“It hurts.”
“I can’t clean them until you stop shivering so we need to warm you up.”
She doesn’t fight me as I take off her wet clothes. Only when she’s in her underwear and bra does she seem to notice and try to wrap her arms around herself.
“Here. Sit down.” I take off my coat and put it over her shoulders. I make her sit down on the chair closest to the fireplace before taking off her wet boots and socks. Her feet are freezing. She must have been outside for some time. If my brother saw her and left her to wander out there, I’m going to fucking kill him.
Grabbing the bottle of whiskey from the nearby bench, I bring it to her.
“Here.”
“No, no more of that.”
“Just a sip. It’ll warm you up.”
Bringing the bottle to her lips, I tilt it back so she can swallow a sip. I, on the other hand, take a big swig before setting it on the mantel.
After adjusting logs on the growing fire, I get the first-aid kit. She’s lucky I’ve always kept a well-stocked one out here. Mom’s rules when she was alive. I’ve just kept it up for some reason although I’ve never needed to use it.
“What is this place?” she asks. She’s taking in the large space as I return to her. I wonder what she makes of the covered furniture along all the walls, only the few pieces I’m working on uncovered in this old, dusty shed.
“Work shed.”
I drag a stool over, set the first-aid kit on the low table by the chair, and pull her hands into my lap.
“It’s a little bigger than a shed,” she says.
I shrug a shoulder and open the kit.
“Is this where you come when you go into the woods?”
I nod, finding the tweezers to pull out the glass.
“Ouch.” She tries to tug her hand away when I remove the first shard, but I don’t let her.
“It’s going to hurt, but we have to get the glass out. Maybe this will teach you not to go snooping since you clearly didn’t learn your lesson the night you wandered into my brother’s rooms.”
“I wasn’t snooping,” she says as I get back to work. “I was just curious what your brother was carrying into the woods and where he was going.”
The definition of snooping. But I don’t comment. I’m curious too. “What was he carrying?”
“I don’t know. He had something in each hand, like barrels or something. They were heavy I could see that much.”
“You don’t know where he went with them?”
“I didn’t see. By the time I got out here, and after I backtracked to find the path twice, he was returning to the house. I think he was, at least. And he didn’t have the things with him anymore. That’s when I came across the solarium. How old is it, anyway?”
“Old. My father had it refurbished for my mother a long time ago, but it’s been on the grounds since at least my great-grandfather was alive.”
“Whose doll was that?”
“Annabel’s,” I say, keeping my eyes on my work.
“Your sister. Ouch!” I drop a small but sharp shard into the corner near the fireplace.
“Almost done.”
It’s quiet for a time. “Do you ever go there?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“When I was trying to go back to the house, I kept walking in circles, ending up back there. It was eerie.”
I look at her. “Stay away from the solarium. Just stay out of the woods altogether.”
“Did something happen in there?”
“Just stay away, okay?”
She nods and silence falls again, the only sound that of the rain on the roof and wood crackling in the fire.
“Is this your workplace? Do you make these things?”
“Used to be Lucas too, but now it’s just me.” I pick out more glass.
She surprises me when she turns her hand around to touch a rough spot in my palm. “I knew you did something with your hands.” She circles it, and I watch her delicate hand inside mine. It’s all I can do for a long minute until I drag my gaze to look at the top of her head, her attention on my hand.
“Lucas made that switchblade,” I say.
She meets my eyes.
“Made one for each of us. I didn’t realize my sister still had hers.”
“When?
“When we were kids. Maybe twelve.”
“You had those sharp blades at twelve? Why?”
I return my attention to picking out glass. “My father was never a gentle man. I guess Lucas thought he was doing his part to protect us.” Does she hear the sarcasm in my voice?
She’s quiet, and when I look at her, I find her eyes on me. “Did you make the doors at the house?”
“Yes,” I say, picking out the last of the glass and getting to my feet.
“That’s a lot of work.”
I grab one of the bottles of water I keep out here and go back to her. “I like doing it. Gets me out of the house and out of my head.”
“If you don’t want to be here, why don’t you just leave?”
I ex
hale and smile. “Things don’t work that way with us.” She studies me. “Hold out your hands.”
“The Gates of Hell doors. They’re appropriate, I guess.”
She’s got that right.
There’s no running water, so she stretches her arms out in front of her. I wash the cuts as best as I can with the water before grabbing a towel and resuming my seat to dry them. I hold onto them, her hands closed in prayer, mine over hers in the same position around the towel.
“Did Michela give you the knife on our wedding night?”
She searches my eyes and gives a quick shake of her head. “I took it.”
I cock my head to the side. “Really?” She’s lying. “From where?”
“It hurts,” she says, gesturing toward our hands.
I guess I’m squeezing a little too hard. I let up, set the towel aside, and get antibiotic solution from the kit.
“This’ll sting.”
She sucks in a breath but lets me apply it before I bandage both hands and close the kit.
“Thank you,” she says, hugging my coat closer as I arrange her wet things near the fire to dry. She keeps her eyes on the fire. “For finding me. And for taking care of me.”
“You’re welcome.”
A moment passes.
She shifts her gaze to the ground.
I grab another bottle of water and hand it to her while I drink straight from the bottle of whiskey.
“Are you warm enough?” I ask her.
“Warming up.”
“So you took Michela’s switchblade,” I circle back.
She glances up at me then away and nods.
“Where did you find it?”
“I don’t remember.”
“No? I’d think you’d remember something like that.”
“Can we drop it? You have it now.”
“I don’t like being lied to.”
She turns her gaze to mine but struggles to hold it. “I’m not lying.”
“I know you didn’t take it, Cristina. What did she do, come to your room the night of the wedding while I was still downstairs? Were you trying to hide it when I walked in later?”
“She was only looking out for me.”
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