Winterwood

by Shea Ernshaw

  “No!” I shout, pulling again on the knob. But it won’t budge. Shit.

  I press my ear to the wood of the door, listening to see if they’re still there. But then I hear the clomping of footsteps moving away, back down the hall.

  “Wait!” I scream against the door. “Please!” But there’s only silence.

  And the dark of the room.

  I turn and lean against the door, pressing my head back. I think of what Mr. Perkins told me, how more miners died at the hands of one another than in the cruel dark of the forest.

  It’s the hearts of men we should fear most.

  But they can’t keep me in here. Not for long.

  The camp counselors will discover the boys have snuck out from their cabins. They will hear the music thudding from across the lake. They will come to investigate. Search the house. They will let me out.

  But what if the counselors don’t come? What if Suzy was right and they no longer care what the boys do, no longer care if they sneak away, as long as they’re back in their bunks by sunrise?

  If I’m left here, locked inside, how long until they come back to let me out?

  “Hey!” I call, feeling desperate again. I pound my fists against the door. Bang. Bang. Bang. Maybe one of the other boys will hear me, come let me out. Though I doubt they can even hear my shouts over the music. Or that they’d even care.

  Drowned, I think again.

  Max drowned in the lake, sank to the bottomless bottom, maybe froze to death before the water even had time to fill his lungs.

  Then where is his body? Where is it hidden?

  I’m missing something.

  Some great big part of it doesn’t make sense.

  I breathe in slowly. I stay calm. Calm, calm, calm.

  I think I hear a voice.

  “Nora.”

  I whip around to face the door. “Hello?” I ask against the crack in the doorframe.

  “Are you okay?” It’s Suzy.

  “No,” I say back. “You have to let me out.”

  I think I can hear her breathing. The soft inhale of her throat, the wobbly exhale against the grain of the wood. “I can’t,” she says after a moment.

  “Why not?” I feel the pinch in my heart growing tighter.

  “They’ll lock me up too, if I help you.…” Her voice trails away, like she’s looking down the hallway, listening for anyone approaching. “They’re really paranoid. Rhett thinks they’re all going to jail.”

  They’re so paranoid they’re willing to lock me inside a room. They’re so paranoid they’re hearing voices in their cabin—they think they’re being haunted by something. By Max. They’re not thinking clearly, about anything, and I feel my heart clawing at my rib cage. Beginning to panic. “Just let me out, Suzy,” I plead. “If they catch me, I won’t tell them you helped me. But I can’t stay in here.” The dark feels like it’s swallowing me up. A gulf of black.

  Another long pause. I think maybe she’s gone, left me here.

  “Please, Suzy.”

  But then I hear her breathing again. She’s still there. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I have to go back downstairs before they realize I’m gone.”

  I slap my palm against the door. “No!”

  “They’re just drunk,” she adds quickly. “I’m sure they’ll let you out in the morning.” Another pause. “I’ll talk to Rhett. I’ll tell him you don’t know anything. I’ll try.”

  “Suzy,” I beg. “Just open the door. Don’t leave.”

  But I can hear the quick pace of her footsteps down the hall, moving away. She’s already gone.

  “Shit,” I mutter again, dropping my hand from the doorframe. I press my palms to my eyes, hard, like I could press myself right out of this room. When I open my eyes again, the room is too dark, and it’s hard to tell one wall from the other, the ceiling from the floor. My head spins and the same feeling I’ve felt before sinks over me, the shiver and tremble of air, the buzz and crack of it. Seconds becoming minutes, then wavering back again.

  Tick, tick…

  “No,” I breathe. I don’t want to feel this now.

  I push away from the door and move across the room until my shin hits the corner of the bed. I wince at the sharp pain, buckling over, before continuing forward, hands out in front of me to feel for other obstacles. I reach a wall and a window, and I push aside the curtain. Muted light spills into the room from the half-moon. I touch the glass and peer out into the snow. But the drop to the ground is too far down, far enough to break bones. There has to be another way out. The thrumming noise of music pumps louder through the floors, and the walls vibrate, but I hear something else. Something distinct. Something I’ve heard before.

  The whisper of an insect on glass. Of wings.

  A sound so faint I’m surprised I can hear it at all. It grows louder, thudding against the window. Black eyes and swollen belly.

  I drop my hand from the window and take a step back, fear clawing up the rungs of my ribs. No, no, no.

  The moth found me, even here, even locked in this room. And the certainty burrows deep beneath my skin.

  “Go away,” I whisper, my words desperate and thin.

  It spins and thumps against the window—thump, thump, thump—searching for a way inside. To reach me. So it can brush its wings against my skin, mark me, so death can find me more easily.

  Death is coming.

  My body pulses and I slide against the wall, dropping to the floor, tucking my knees to my chin. Anything to block out the sound. Thump-thump-thump. “Stop it!” I scream, I plead.

  My heartbeat is a percussion in my chest, the same rhythm as its wings.

  “Go away. Go away. Go away,” I whisper into my hands. Until it’s all I hear.

  All that fills my ears.

  OLIVER

  I have to find her.

  The lake is impossibly dark; it swallows up the stars as I circle around the shore. Certain this place, these mountains, are watching every move I make.

  I remember enough now—enough to know I can’t trust the others. The past is a blurred wreck in my mind: the cemetery, the taste of booze in my throat, the laughter. The feeling of my fists clenched at my sides, ready for a fight. Still, I recall enough to know that they are capable of awful things.

  And I think only of her, of Nora.

  They don’t trust her. The witch in the woods.

  I need to find her, make sure she’s okay, and keep her safe.

  Turning away from the lake, I hike up through the pines toward her house. I know she won’t want to see me. I know that whatever I say, she won’t want to hear it, she won’t let me in—and this hurts worse than anything. But I have to try. I don’t need her to trust me, I just need her to stay away from Rhett and Jasper and Lin.

  I knock on the door and hold my breath until my lungs start to burn and ache.

  Memories flit through me. I remember the way Max tipped his head back in the cemetery, taking a long gulp of whiskey. How he eyed me like he was daring me to make the first move, to say something that would piss him off. But I wasn’t afraid. I felt something else: anger.

  I bring my fist to the door again and knock harder, waiting for Nora to come, to peek through the curtains. But she never does. Something’s wrong. The house is too dark, no candlelight through the windows. And I can hear Fin—the wolf—whining from the other side, a sad whimper. I try the knob and the door swings open.

  Night swallows the place whole. No candles. No fire in the woodstove.

  The wolf darts out past my legs, down into the snow, and cuts through the trees. “Fin!” I call, but he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t even slow his pace.

  I run before I lose him, before he slips into the trees and is gone. Maybe he knows where she is, maybe he’s found her scent. I chase his narrow path through the snow, along the row of summer homes, until he finally stops several houses down, his tail dipped low, ears forward.

  Music wheezes out from inside the house, and through the lo
wer windows I can see several boys from camp. They’ve broken in—they’re having a party.

  Fin whimpers again, nose sniffing the air, and I touch his head—unsure why he’s come here, to a house that isn’t his. I follow his gaze up to the second floor of the home.

  Someone is at the window.

  A girl, face barely visible from the other side of the glass.

  Her.

  Something’s wrong, some hint of panic in her eyes. I don’t go to the front door—I don’t want the others to see me. So I leave the wolf in the snow and use the lowest window to hoist myself up to the edge of the overhanging roof. My fingers grip the gutter, and I swing a leg onto the upper ledge, just like when I used to climb onto the roof of my neighbor Nate Lynch’s house, when we’d drink beers he’d swipe from his dad’s garage. It feels like a hundred years ago now—a whole different life, far away from these mountains. But scaling up the corner of this house is no different. Aside from the wet, slick snow.

  I reach the window on the second floor, crouching low away from the wind, and tap against the glass.

  Nora lifts her head to face me. She scratches her hands through her hair, her eyes cautious and dark in the shadow of the room.

  “Nora,” I say against the glass, pointing at the window for her to unlock it. But she doesn’t move toward me. She takes a step back. And maybe I don’t blame her. Maybe I’m the villain. My feet slip an inch on the snow, but I right myself before sliding toward the edge of the roof. “Please,” I say, unsure if she can hear me.

  She closes her eyes, as if she doesn’t think I’m real. As if I might vanish if she wishes for it hard enough. But when she opens them, I’m still here. Her mouth sets in place and she takes two swift steps toward the window, reaches out for the lock, and slides it free.

  I place my palms against the sides of the window and push it up in the frame, then duck into the room, bringing the cold air and snow with me.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, afraid to move too close to her, afraid I’ll scare her.

  Her mouth pulls into a line. “What are you doing?” she asks. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I followed Fin.”

  She glances at the closed door behind her.

  “What happened?” I ask. “Why are you in here?”

  She backs away from me again, her fingers tugging at the hems of her sleeves.

  “They locked me in,” she says, her voice turned sour, and she rubs her hands up her arms, making herself small, closed off. I hate that she’s afraid of me; I hate that she looks at me with darkness in her eyes; I hate that every move I make causes her to shiver, to twitch away from me.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Rhett and the others.”

  Anger boils up into my chest, red-hot. Fury that makes me want to break down the door and go find them. Make them pay for doing this to her.

  My eyes flash to the locked door, and another part of me thinks maybe I shouldn’t have come at all, seeing the fear in her eyes, the mistrust—but I also can’t leave her here. Caged like this. Awaiting some fate that’s yet to be decided.

  “I think they’re hiding Max’s body,” she says cautiously, like she regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth.

  Max’s body. The words feel wrong. A body hidden, concealed. The idea doesn’t fit with my memory, so I push it away. I swallow and hold out a hand to Nora, but I don’t move any closer to her. “We need to get out of here,” I say.

  Her fingers release the sleeves of her coat, but they curl into fists instead of reaching for me. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she says, her voice rising.

  Footsteps pass by outside, probably just one of the boys looking for the bathroom, then they vanish down the hall.

  “I found the watch,” Nora blurts out, her voice lower this time. “Max’s watch.” In the dim light I can see her features change, the soft roundness of her cheeks turns hollow, her eyes crease at the corners, like she is trying to see something at a distance, just out of focus. “In your coat pocket,” she adds. “You had a dead boy’s watch in your pocket.”

  My chin dips to the floor, then back up to her. I knew this moment would come, that she would ask about the watch. And a cold thread of ice trickles down my spine, down my fingertips, settling into my toes. “I know,” I say.

  “Did you kill him?” she asks, the thing she really wants to know the root of her fear. I don’t blame her for it. Still, the words hang in the air, dissolving there, like broken pieces of glass—sharp edged—ready to tear me open.

  “No,” I answer, but my voice sounds tight, the word forced out. A little white lie so tiny it’s easily forgotten, glanced over. Hardly there at all.

  She shakes her head. “I don’t believe you.” And her voice rises too loud again, eyes watering at the edges, holding back tears. Yet, I see doubt in her, uncertainty shifting just behind her pupils—she’s trying to see if I could really be a murderer. If I could take someone else’s life and lie about it. If I’m a killer.

  She steps back, slinking into the dark, farther away from me. “Why are they protecting you?” she asks, she shouts. “Rhett and Jasper and the others? Why are they covering up what happened?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think they’re protecting me.”

  A second passes and snow collects on the carpeted floor at my feet, music screeches from downstairs, rising up through the floorboards. It feels like we’re stuck in an odd-shaped dream. In a room, in a house, where neither of us belong.

  “Then what’s going on?” Her voice sounds frightened and small again. Like a tiny shell cracking open, revealing the fragile thing inside. And I want so bad to reach forward and touch her, tell her that it’s okay, that I’m not what she thinks I am. But I can’t. Because I’m not sure. I might be the monster.

  I might have done something bad.

  Nora clears her throat. “I don’t know what to believe,” she says, a tiny whimper against her lips. Her eyes lift and she’s about to speak again, but I move forward, pressing her up against the wall, and place my hand over her mouth—silencing her.

  She tries to push against my chest, to push me back, but I put a finger to my lips—a sign to be quiet. Someone has stopped outside the bedroom door, the floorboards creaking beneath their weight. They grab the knob, like they’re checking to be sure it’s still secure. They pause and listen. Maybe they heard us talking.

  If they find me in here, I don’t know what they’ll do.

  My exhale stirs against her dark raven hair. We’re so close I can hear her heartbeat against her throat, the rising rhythm of her lungs with each breath. I don’t want to move away from her—I want to move closer. But I know we’re not safe in here.

  The footsteps plod away, back down the hall to the stairs, and I lower my hand from her mouth. “Sorry,” I whisper, still only a few inches from her face.

  She doesn’t push me back, she doesn’t yell at me, she just blinks and breathes and peers up into my eyes.

  “Nora,” I say, barely above a whisper, blood rushing into my ears. “We have to leave this room.”

  She chews on her lower lip, breathing, breathing, and I think my heart might rise up into my throat. And then she nods.

  NORA

  Oliver is so close—too close—I can smell the wintergreen scent of his skin. See the soft waves of dark hair along his temples, snow melting in the strands. I could touch a single snowflake and let it rest at the tip of my finger; I could graze his cheek, his collarbone. I could press my hand to his chest and feel the cadence of his heart, listen for the thrum of someone capable of murder. Someone who has pushed another boy beneath the surface of the lake and watched him drown.

  But I don’t.

  I don’t because I’m afraid of what I will feel. I’m afraid of letting myself sink closer, closer, into him.

  So I let him take my hand in his—the hands he may have used to press the life from Max’s lungs—and he pulls me to the open window.

&nb
sp; In one swift, effortless motion, he hoists me through the window and onto the roof.

  The wind is at our backs and Oliver goes first, scaling down the corner of the house. I should be terrified, knowing we could fall, but with his hands on me, bracing footholds, I feel safe.

  My fingers start to go numb where they grip the rain gutter, my feet barely touching the top of a first-floor window, and the final drop is another six feet below me. I hesitate and Oliver whispers, “Let go.” I squeeze my eyes closed and release my hands, feeling only a half second of weightlessness before Oliver catches me. His hands tighten around my torso, my ribs, and he lowers me to the ground.

  Fin licks my palm. “I’m okay,” I whisper, running a hand down his coat. He must have sensed something was wrong, heard my cries echoing through the trees. He found me.

  Oliver gives me a look, and I know we need to get away from the house. We move up into the trees, into the dark where we won’t be seen, weaving along the backside of summer homes until we reach my house.

  I let Oliver follow me inside and I lock the door behind us, sliding the dead bolt into place. I close the curtains over the front windows.

  I keep out the things I fear. But I lock Oliver inside with me, who perhaps I should fear the most.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t stay here,” he says, drawing back a curtain to look out into the dark. He thinks the boys will come for me. That once they discover I’m gone from that room, they will come beat their fists against the door and drag me out into the snow.

  “Where would we go?” I ask.

  “We could hide in one of the other homes?”

  “If they really want to find me, they’ll check all the homes anyway.”

  Oliver’s hand taps at his side, and he walks to the back door to make sure it’s locked, then scans the trees. But no one is there. The boys probably haven’t even realized I’m gone yet.