Gnarled Hollow

by Charlotte Greene

  “You can turn the light on,” Emily said. “I’m still awake.”

  June didn’t respond. Instead, she came directly to the bed and crawled up on it and over Emily, pinning her underneath the sheets. Her lips were on Emily’s a moment later, and Emily relaxed into the pillow. June’s kisses became more frantic, and Emily tilted her face upward to give her access to her neck. A moment later she was nibbling on her pulse point, making Emily squirm. She struggled a little, trying to free her arms from underneath the sheets, but June continued to pin her down.

  “I’m stuck,” she said, gasping for breath. “Let me get my arms free.”

  In response, June squeezed her breasts through the sheets. The sensation was intense and painful, and she hissed in pain. June continued to kiss her—quickly, desperately, wordlessly.

  Something was wrong. This wasn’t like June at all.

  “June, stop,” she said in a firm voice. June ignored her, continuing the onslaught. “June, please. I can barely breathe! Slow down. Let me get out of these sheets.” The kissing continued, and her panic rose. She struggled harder, but still she was pinned.

  “June—”

  She was about to yell when the kissing stopped, instantly. The sensation of being pinned down vanished at the same time, and she was able to sit up. She put her hands out to find June, but no one was there.

  The light in the room had changed. It was no longer pitch-black. Instead, remnants of dusky sunset filled the room. Out the window, she could see the tops of the trees again. Only moments ago, she hadn’t been able to see anything beyond the dim outlines of large pieces of furniture, but now she could make out details again.

  She heard the key turning in the lock, and a moment later a silhouette appeared in the doorway again. It seemed to hesitate for a second, and then the light came on.

  June was standing there, her expression confused.

  “I’m sorry. Were you sleeping already?” She glanced down at her watch.

  Emily looked around, panicked, but again, nothing was here. June must have seen something in her face, as she rushed over to her and sat down next to her on the bed.

  “What’s wrong? What is it? You look like—” June paled.

  “Like I’ve seen a ghost?” She shook her head. “I didn’t see it—I mean I did, for a second. In the doorway.” She pointed. “Like now, when you came in. Then I didn’t see anything concrete. It was too dark.”

  “Too dark? What do you mean?”

  “It was black as pitch in here. I couldn’t see any details.” She shuddered at the memory and clutched June’s hands. “I thought it was you, June. It-it got onto the bed with me.”

  June gripped her hands even harder. “What happened?”

  “It was on top of me—it was kissing me.” She shook her head, her mouth suddenly sour and sick. “I thought it was you.”

  June pulled her into her arms, and they stayed that way for a while. Emily knew she should be terrified, horrified about what had happened, but shame, not fear, was twisting her stomach.

  She moved back and met June’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, June. I thought it was you.”

  June seemed confused for a moment, and then her expression hardened. “Goddamn it, Emily, you have nothing to apologize for. That-that thing,” she spat out the word, “comes in here and does that to you, and you’re apologizing.” She got to her feet and started pacing. “Christ! The nerve! I think it’s fucking with us now. Of all the people to do that to…” Her expression darkened even further. “It’s like it knows how we’ll react. Anyone else, if that happened, would be scared, terrified, maybe running for their car. But it knew you would feel like this.” June met her eyes. “You feel guilty, am I right?”

  She nodded. Yes, she was a little frightened, but that emotion was nothing in the face of her guilt.

  June frowned, her face pinched with anger. “It’s toying with us. It’s getting something out of making us feel this way.”

  She came back and sat on the edge of the bed again, taking Emily’s hands once more. She met Emily’s gaze. “Emily—you do not have to feel guilty. I’m not upset with you. I’m angry with whatever’s in this house—not you. Do you understand?”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  Again, after a pause, she sighed. “I guess. I mean, I want to.”

  June was quiet for a long time before she burst out in anger. “Christ on his cross. It knows just how to push our buttons. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wanted me to react this way. It made you guilty, and it made me angry. It’s hitting all the emotional highs and lows with us—through us.”

  Emily was somehow sure what she’d said was right. The house, or whatever was here, was feeding on their emotions, manipulating them to get what it wanted.

  “So how do we stop it?” she asked. “How do we avoid reacting to the things it does to us?”

  June shook her head. “I don’t think we can. I couldn’t have been less angry or less scared with the things it’s done to us. I can’t stop my feelings. But I am starting to think we need to be more careful. No one should be alone anymore while we’re here, especially you. I agree with Mark. Things have happened to the rest of us, but the house is focused on you.”

  “Why?”

  June laughed. “How should I know? Maybe it’s because you’re the only person here not terrified of it. Maybe it has to try harder with you to get a reaction.”

  For the second time today someone had pointed out that she wasn’t afraid of the house. When Mark had brought it up earlier, she’d accepted it with little thought, but now she couldn’t help but feel a little ashamed. Why wasn’t she scared? The others were clearly terrified, and she wasn’t. Why not? Once again, she’d become an outsider.

  The anger drained from June’s face, and she put a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “Are you okay? Did it…do anything to you? I mean, besides kiss you?”

  Emily blushed and broke eye contact. “It touched my chest a little, on top of the sheets.”

  June was silent before she asked, “Can you talk about it? What made you think it was me?”

  She shook her head. “A few things, I guess. It came into the room, for one thing, through the door.” Early this evening, June had followed her into the bedroom and taken the keys with her when she went back downstairs. Besides Mrs. Wright’s and Ruth’s, there was only the one key.

  “Did it unlock the door?” June asked.

  She frowned. “No. I don’t think so, anyway. I don’t remember hearing the key. It just came in.”

  June went over to the door. She opened it and tried the knob from the outside. “It’s definitely locked. But you didn’t hear it unlock the door?”

  She shook her head, firmly. “No. Definitely not. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I’m certain now: I didn’t hear it unlock.”

  “What else do you remember?”

  She tried to piece the whole experience together. “It was a woman. That was the main reason I thought it was you.”

  “I thought you couldn’t see it?”

  “I couldn’t—not really. I saw an outline, when it was standing in the doorway. I remember a skirt, like you’re wearing now.” She paused, blushing at the memory that followed. “Then, when it was on top of me, I felt hair—longer hair, like yours.” The memories welled up, and she remembered her rising panic as she was pinned under the sheet. “But when it kissed me, it was different from you. Harder, mean even.”

  “But it seemed like me otherwise?”

  She tried to picture the thing’s size and weight in the dark. “Yes. I never thought it was someone—something else. But it did feel different, somehow.”

  June stared at her for a long time without saying anything, and again, Emily could see her face harden in rage. June finally looked away. She walked across the room to the wardrobe, threw open the door a little too roughly, and pulled out the scotch. Emily had taken a couple of nice tumblers from the kitchen, and June
quickly filled both of them nearly to the rim. She came back and handed Emily the second glass, then drank most of hers without stopping.

  “I’m so angry I could kill something,” June said. “You don’t deserve this, Emily. I think—maybe you should leave.”

  She flipped the covers off her legs and got out of bed to stand in front of June. June finally looked at her, still seemingly enraged, but Emily took her other hand.

  “I’m not leaving, June. In fact, if anyone should leave, it should be you. I don’t want it to hurt you. You’d be safer somewhere else.”

  June’s laugh was bitter. “This damn house has us right where it wants us. Both of us want the other person to leave, and neither one of us is willing to.” She grinned. “With the artwork here, it’s given me a mystery to solve, one guaranteed to make me want to stay. And it’s pissed me off—several times, but especially now. I’ve never been angrier in my life, and anyone that knows me knows I won’t back down from a fight. This house knows me well. It knows all of us better than we know ourselves.”

  She finished her drink and then took Emily’s full glass from her and set both of them on the nightstand. She turned back and took both of Emily’s hands in hers and leaned down to kiss her. Her lips were gentle, searching, and Emily wondered dimly how she could have ever thought those earlier kisses were June’s. She kissed her back, pulling their bodies tightly together, and their heat increased with contact. June gasped and pulled away for air, and Emily moved her hands up June’s body, lightly touching her breasts.

  June was breathing hard, but she put a hand on Emily’s. “Are you sure you want to? I mean after what happened?”

  In response, Emily slipped off her nightgown.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Emily recognized the sound immediately. She’d heard it before, the first night June came into her room: an even, steady knocking, coming from the wall she shared with the bathroom. At the time, she’d forgotten all about it. The sound was the last thing on her mind after June stayed over that first time. She hadn’t thought about it or heard it since.

  Jim looked over in that direction, his brow furrowing. “What the hell is that?”

  “I don’t know. I heard it before, but it stopped after a couple of minutes.”

  “That’s the bathroom over there, right?” Jim asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe it’s a pipe or something.”

  He went back to the notebook he was working on, clearly dismissing the noise. She didn’t remind him that no one had used that bathroom since she’d been attacked in there—it wouldn’t do any good. Jim was clearly a little under the weather the last day or two. His face, normally clean shaven, was marred by an unattractive, patchy five o’clock shadow. He had deep circles under his eyes, and his clothes were wrinkled and stained. He looked like a man fighting a bad night’s sleep or maybe a hangover, and she wasn’t about to ask him about any of it. He’d been testy all morning.

  He’d taken to carrying around one of the little lead soldiers he’d found in the attic, and it perched on the edge of their work table. Instead of the usual gun or sword, this soldier held a telescope, and right now the scope was pointed at her as if it were looking for somewhere to land. As with Jim’s disheveled appearance, she hadn’t commented on the toy, expecting that should she do so, he would snap at her and become even more irritable.

  It didn’t help that what they were doing was trying and dull. Despite working steadily yesterday and this morning, both of them had yet to get through a single journal since they began last week. Yes, she had taken off part of yesterday and the entire day before that, but since she’d started before him, she and Jim were more or less at the same point in their current work.

  One of the major obstacles for them was the shorthand Margot Lewis used in her notebooks. At first, Emily had assumed the same shorthand was used throughout all the journals, but, as she and Jim had found, Lewis often switched from one shorthand code to another. Once she or Jim came across a new code, they had to stop what they were doing and break it. This, too, would have been okay if it were an infrequent occurrence, or if Margot reused codes they’d already broken, but it could switch mid-page, seemingly at random, and was always new. They weren’t terribly complex codes, but it could take upward of an hour to break a new one.

  Further, the findings so far, at least in the two journals they were working on, were not revelatory, either. They’d found snippets of poems, yes, but the poems themselves were often incomplete and, if Emily was honest, not very good. Most of the journal she was reading described day-to-day activities. This had been interesting reading, at first, but grew tiresome by the hundredth day of basically the same thing.

  She and Jim had started on the earliest journals they could find—1934 and 1935—the first two years after Lewis came back from Paris. Even in 1934, the journal Emily was occupied with, Lewis was already isolated and alone, which, once you’d read more than a few pages, became boring. Occasionally, she would talk about her walks around the estate, a swim she took in the pool, or a book she read, but most of the entries traced the repetitive minutiae of someone living alone in the woods. Even when Lewis took longer walks, she only occasionally remarked on something interesting—generally she simply noted her route and the animals she saw. Emily had been hoping that even should they not discover new fiction hidden in these journals, they would at least find her memoirs—perhaps of her time in Europe or of her childhood—but they’d come across nothing like that here so far.

  Each of the twenty-six years Lewis had lived here in Gnarled Hollow had a single journal associated with it, all of them written in shifting code. The folders of paperwork that had been put in the desk held things typewritten or handwritten in normal English, but they consisted of tax records and some letters to her lawyers and editors, nothing personal. So far, what they’d uncovered reflected the dull, lonely life of a recluse. Because of the codes, it was impossible to read ahead, so Emily could only hope that a novel, or at least some short stories, were hidden somewhere in the pile of journals.

  “Christ!” Jim said, pushing the journal away.

  “What?”

  “Another entry about the fox in the herb garden. Goddamn! How many days can a person watch a fucking fox?”

  “At least yours has a fox in it. The last four entries I read detailed cleaning a bedroom. First she did the carpets, then the curtains, and then sheets. And that was just one room. I think the next entry talks about a different room.”

  Jim barked a laugh. “And I thought the fox was bad!” He shook his head. “Can you imagine how we’ll feel when we get to bottom of that pile, and all we have to show for it is Margot Lewis’s cleaning schedule and a fox in the garden?”

  She laughed. “That’s if we finish the pile.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How much more do you have?”

  Jim opened the journal again, found his place, and flipped to the end. “About fifteen pages.”

  “I’ve got about the same. We’ve both been working for about, what, ten days each so far? So it’ll be maybe eleven or twelve days altogether to finish these first two journals.”

  “I mean, we might get a little faster with time.”

  “Not necessarily, but sure, maybe we will. Let’s say we can get down to ten days per journal. There’s still twelve journals for each of us after the ones we’re working on now. That’s a hundred and twenty days with no breaks—again, assuming we speed up.”

  Jim let out a low whistle. “You’re right. I mean, I knew we’d be doing this all summer, but yeah—there’s no way we’ll finish before the school year.” He blushed slightly, looking away. “I mean, before my school year.”

  They hadn’t talked about her layoff, but it had been in the room with them since Jim arrived at Gnarled Hollow. He’d made a couple of snide comments about her in front of the others, though not enough to reveal her secret. June and Chris, as far as she knew, had no idea she was essentially
unemployed. Jim had, however, told Mark, and she was still a little pissed at him for that. She stared out the window, breathing in and out of her nose in slow, deep breaths to calm down.

  Jim touched her hand. “Listen, Emily. I’m sorry. About your university, I mean. I know it’s not your fault. Christ—it could happen to any of us. If I hurt your feelings joking about it, I’m sorry. Sometimes I say things without thinking.”

  She was surprised and touched. She squeezed his hand and gave him a bright smile. “Thanks, Jim. And don’t worry about it. Already forgotten.”

  He grinned and bent back over his journal again. She watched him briefly before going back to her work. Time and again, this man surprised her. He seemed like one type of person only to reveal himself as another. She needed to get better at letting people show their whole selves to her before judging them.

  “Goddamn,” Jim muttered a few minutes later.

  “What?”

  “That sound is driving me crazy.”

  She had forgotten about it or become so inured that she had basically stopped hearing it. She turned her head in the direction of the bathroom now, frowning.

  “Is it louder?” she asked.

  “I think so. At first I thought I was imagining things, but it’s definitely getting louder now.”

  “What do you think it is? Some kind of pipe?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. Could be air in there. No one has been using that bathroom, so maybe that has something to do with it.”

  He got up, and she followed him a moment later, grabbing her keys at the last minute. He went into the bathroom, turned on the light, and they stood there listening for a long while. Distantly, she thought she could hear the sound, but it was so faint it seemed far away.

  “That’s strange,” Jim said, frowning. He walked closer to the wall between the bathroom and her bedroom and put his ear to it. Then he leaned away and shook his head. “Can barely hear it in here.”

  “Maybe the plaster on my side isn’t as thick?”