Gnarled Hollow

by Charlotte Greene

  “Maybe. Let’s go back in there and check it out.”

  They returned to her room, and the difference in the sound was immediately recognizable. Not only was it much louder than in the bathroom, but it was much louder than before they left to investigate. Now, rather than an insistent tapping, she would characterize the sound as something like a knock—dull and just shy of being loud. She and Jim went directly to the source of the sound, and she touched the wall. She quickly wrenched her hand away.

  “You can feel it.”

  His eyes grew large, and he too felt the wall before jerking his hand back. He laughed a second later. “I mean, you can feel any loud sound, really, but it’s definitely creepy. I can’t even begin to imagine what it is. When do the Wrights come back again?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Well, we should probably call them. If that’s some kind of pipe, it might burst any second. If it’s not, they might know what it is.”

  “Their phone number is by the house phone downstairs.”

  Jim grinned. “Top-of-the-line technology around here.”

  As they started walking toward the door, the sound grew noticeably louder. She flinched, and Jim reacted the same way. They both looked back at the wall, and he raised his hands.

  “It sounds really bad. Maybe we should get the Lewis papers out of here.” He had to raise his voice slightly to be heard over the sound.

  She agreed immediately. If a pipe burst through the wall, the room might flood, and most of the journals and papers were piled on the floor.

  “Do you have something to carry it all in?” Jim asked.

  She went over to her wardrobe and searched until she found her messenger bag. It wouldn’t be big enough to hold all the notebooks, but between it and their arms, they should be able to get it all in one haul.

  By the time she returned to the table, she was fairly sure the sound had become louder again. The knocking, if you could call it that, was still steady and stable, each sound following the last after about a second. Each time it had grown louder, the pace had stayed the same, neither faster nor slower, never skipping a beat or hesitating.

  Jim hurriedly crammed the notebooks into the bag, and she was annoyed to see that he bent the soft cover of one of the journals in his haste. She opened her mouth to chastise him and suddenly saw something that made her hurry as well: the water in her glass was shaking with the sound.

  Before they could finish, the volume rose again. Each knock now sounded and felt like a deep bass drum. She couldn’t help but react to nearly each beat, cringing away from the wall and expecting it to blow apart any second.

  “That’s all of it!” he yelled. He appeared to have spoken at the top of his lungs, yet she barely heard him. She grabbed the last six notebooks, he put the little lead soldier in his breast pocket, and they went to the door.

  Just as in the steam room, she knew what was going to happen a second before her hand touched the knob. It was locked. She jiggled it, hard, twisting it, then gave Jim the notebooks in her other hand. She dug into her pocket and pulled out her keys, leaning down to see where the key went on this side of the door, but found no space for it. The door unlocked only from the outside.

  Seeing her face and having watched what she’d done, he held out the notebooks in his hands and they traded. He jiggled the doorknob first and then bent to examine the lock. She saw him start slamming at the doorknob a second later, and then he stood up and hammered on the door. She could see his mouth moving, but the knocking from the wall was so loud now that her ears rang too much between the beats to hear his words.

  After a while, he turned around, and she saw desperate panic in his eyes. He mouthed something at her, and she shook her head. She couldn’t hear a thing. Jim dug around in his pockets and pulled out a little notebook and pen. He wrote something on it and held it up for her to read.

  WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE

  She nodded as vigorously as she could but also raised her shoulders. How could they get out if the only door was locked?

  He raced over to a window and struggled to raise it. She could have told him it was useless—she’d never been able to open any of the windows—but there was no point. He’d never be able to hear her. He tried every window in the room, pushing and pulling as hard as he could. The edges of his hands were bloody from pounding on the door, and he left little smears of red on every window.

  After he’d tried to open the last window, he whirled around, his eyes crazed, not looking at her. He peered around the room, his head and body jerking with his gaze, and focused on one of the smaller chairs. He raced over and picked it up, and before she could even react, he heaved it at the largest window. The chair bounced back as if it had hit a rubber wall, and the window remained completely untouched. He picked up the chair again, and this time, rather than throw it, he swung it like an ax. His body absorbed the impact, and he dropped the chair, clutching his hands to his chest and doubling over. She dropped the notebooks and ran over to him. When she put her hand on his shoulder, he flinched away.

  He stared up at her, his face wild. A second later, he touched her nose, and when he showed her his fingers, they were dabbed with blood. She could feel the wetness around one of her nostrils, now. Her nose was bleeding.

  They both crouched down near the floor, and she covered her ears with her hands as tightly as she could. He followed suit, and both of them sat there, squatting on their feet, grimacing against the sound.

  It was so loud now it seemed to be echoing through her. She could feel it in the air behind her—a deep bass-drum beat of noise that shook the room between breaths. She pressed on her ears more tightly and felt blood dripping down her chin from both nostrils now. She and Jim made eye contact. He seemed one step from losing it. Any second now, she thought, he would either start screaming or crying.

  Fighting against the pressure of the noise, she struggled to stand and stumbled over to the window, hands still pressed against her ears. Outside by the lawn, she saw Mark’s car parked in front of the house. He had returned at some point and left it by the front door. She tried to see if she could spot him, but no one was on the lawn. The sight of his car, however, gave her hope, as he would no doubt come up here. He’d left for Plattsburgh on Friday, two days ago, so it would be strange if he didn’t at least stop by to say hello, even when they were working. Any second, he would knock on the door, realize there was a problem, and get help. If they could hold on a little longer, they would be okay.

  She turned back to where Jim crouched on the floor, eager to share this information with him in order to, at the very least, alleviate some of that panicked helplessness she’d seen in his eyes. While she’d been at the window, he’d collapsed onto the ground and was rolling around, his mouth open in an inaudible scream, hands still pressed to his ears.

  Forgetting the sound for a second, she relaxed her hands and was nearly overwhelmed by the next booming knock. She tightened her hands against her head again and hurried over to him, kneeling beside him. She had to stop him. He was going to hurt himself. She hesitated and finally reached out for him.

  The instant she touched him, the sound stopped. Jim stopped screaming a second later, the echo of it dying in his throat. He looked up at her, eyes glazed with shock, and then sat up into her arms, sobbing. She clung to him, squeezing him, realizing dimly that she was getting blood all over his shirt. She felt a hard lump in his shirt pocket, and it took her a moment to remember that he’d put the lead little soldier in there.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” he repeated.

  “Shhhhhh,” she said, rubbing his back. “It’s over. It’s over now, Jim. We’re okay.”

  After a while, he stopped sobbing, and when he moved away, his eyes were red and puffy. He snuffled once or twice and wiped his nose on his hand, making a face of disgust. He met her eyes and managed a weak laugh.

  “I haven’t cried like that in…Christ, I don’t even know. Sorry.”

  He was, she knew,
speaking quietly since they were so close together on the floor, but his voice sounded muffled, dampened. She remembered a similar experience after she attended her one and only rock concert in college—her hearing had been muted for days. She touched her ear and pulled her fingers away a moment later. It wasn’t blood, but some kind of clear, slightly viscous liquid was leaking from her ears. She and Jim would be lucky if they didn’t have permanent hearing damage.

  “Can you stand?” she asked.

  “What?”

  She raised her voice. “I said, can you get up?”

  He nodded, and the two of them struggled to their feet, swaying for a moment, legs shaking, clasped together for balance. She tried to walk and staggered. He held out a hand to steady her, and she took it, smiling at him gratefully.

  “I’m a little dizzy,” she said.

  “What?”

  She laughed and raised her voice. “Dizzy!”

  He laughed. “Me, too. And clearly deaf now, on top of everything. Can we get the hell out of here?”

  She was still unsure if she should be up and about. The dizziness made sense—the inner ear was responsible for a lot of the balance system in the human body, and hers had undergone a severe shock to its delicate system. She felt drunk.

  Before they reached the door, they both heard a key turning in the lock, and a moment later Mrs. Wright came into the room. June, Mark, and Chris pushed past her soon after, all of their faces pale and terrified.

  June rushed to her and gave her a rough hug before holding her out at arm’s length. “What happened to you? Your face is covered in blood!”

  “Nosebleed.”

  “Why wouldn’t you open the door? We’ve been trying to get in here all day!”

  “What’s that?” Jim asked, cupping his ear.

  Emily waved vaguely at her ear. “You’ll have to speak up. We both can barely hear.”

  “Why?” June asked.

  Emily sighed. “It’s a long story. And what do you mean all day?”

  “I came up here at lunch to see if you could take a break, and no one answered. It was weird, but I didn’t think a lot about it at the time. I thought maybe the two of you were downstairs somewhere and I’d missed you. I was working on the paintings in my room today.”

  “I came home about an hour ago,” Mark said. “I found June but not you guys. We knocked on the door, looked around the house, and then outside.”

  “They met me by the flower garden, and I told them I hadn’t seen either one of you all day,” Chris said. “It was like you disappeared. We checked the garage, of course, but your car was still here, Emily.”

  “I thought we should check your room—see if we could find any clues to explain where you’d gone,” June added. “But we didn’t have the key, so I had to call Mrs. Wright to come over and unlock the door.”

  “So what happened? Why is Emily’s nose bleeding? Were you guys in here all day?” Chris asked.

  “You keep saying that,” Emily said, shaking her head. “What time is it?”

  She already knew, so when Mark held up his watch and said, “Just before four,” it came as no surprise.

  “I need to get out of this room,” Jim said, pushing past the others. When he reached the balcony, his shoulders sagged with apparent relief. “Goddamn. I thought we’d be in there forever. I’m starting to think we ought to take all the doors off the hinges.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Mrs. Wright said. They all looked at her, but her face gave nothing away.

  “Why not?” Jim asked. “I know for damn sure that we could solve half the problems we’ve had if there weren’t any doors.”

  Mrs. Wright shook her head again. “It wouldn’t help, I assure you.”

  Mark walked closer to her and stood squarely in front of her. “What are you talking about? Do you know something?”

  Her face remained impassive. “All I know is that removing the doors won’t help you at all.”

  Mark’s face clouded with anger. “And how, may I ask, do you know that?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I really couldn’t say.”

  This was enough to compel Jim to come back in the room, and he stormed up to Mrs. Wright. She neither flinched nor backed down, only met his anger evenly. His face was red, fists clenched.

  “You know plenty,” he said. “And if you don’t start talking, I’m going to make you talk.”

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Wright,” said a voice from the doorway. “You can leave now.”

  Everyone spun toward the new voice, and Emily saw a young woman standing beyond the doorway to her room. She wore somber, dark clothes, her hair tied back into a tight, unflattering bun. Her plain face was devoid of makeup.

  Mrs. Wright inclined her head at this woman in a kind of bow, and, after a brief, almost triumphant glance at Jim, she left the room without a word.

  They were all still staring at the woman in the doorway. She remained standing there without explanation, her expression bland.

  “Who the hell are you?” Jim finally asked.

  The woman looked at him as if stunned. “I’m Lara, of course. Who did you expect?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Emily’s hands were shaking as she set her cocktail down on the coffee table, afraid she would drop it. Jim was likewise shaken, his face ashen, almost green. He was clutching his drink in both hands, but, like her, not drinking it. His eyes were glazed, and he stared into space, unblinking.

  They were sitting on the sofa next to each other. After she’d had a few minutes to calm down and get the blood off her face, she had joined the others in the sitting room and told the story of the sound and the locked door. Now they had nearly identical troubled expressions. The only person who seemed unfazed was the newcomer, Lara. She’d broken in once or twice for clarification as Emily told the story, but otherwise she remained immobile, her expression serious and somehow knowing.

  “That’s it, that’s all of it,” Emily said. She glanced over at Jim to see if he wanted to add anything, but he was still staring straight ahead, eyes still glazed.

  “We’ve done what you asked,” Mark said to Lara. “You wanted to hear what happened, and now you have. You promised answers.”

  Lara’s eyebrows shot up. “I did no such thing. I said I would tell you what I could. Whether I’ll answer any of your questions is another thing entirely.”

  Mark huffed and lurched to his feet, walking over to the bar for a refill. They all watched him, and when he turned around, his face was still cloudy with rage. “At this point, Lara, I’ll settle for anything you have. For one thing, Mrs. Wright said that removing the doors wouldn’t solve anything. Do you know what she meant?”

  Lara nodded. “We tried it. Six months ago, when my aunt inherited this house, we hired some workers to refurbish all the rooms. As you’ve no doubt seen, we haven’t been able to finish, in part because of the doors. Workers kept getting locked inside different rooms. It was very inconvenient.”

  Chris laughed. “That’s one way of putting it.”

  Lara ignored his sarcasm. “The doors locked, but nothing else happened. Nothing like what Emily described—just doors locking, making more work for everyone. I take it from the way you’re all behaving you’ve experienced other things? In addition to this sound Emily described?”

  Everyone agreed, and Lara’s eyebrows went up. “I’d be very interested to hear the whole story. But to continue, after the workers had been locked in several rooms, they decided to remove the doors. They had other reasons to take them down temporarily, anyway, for moving the furniture and paintings, so of course we gave them permission.”

  “What happened?” June asked.

  Lara looked at her. “The doors came back. Overnight.”

  Emily leaned toward her. “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly that. The workers took them off the hinges one evening, put them in the attic, and by the next morning, they were back where they’d been, hanging up as if they’d never b
een touched. Ten men had spent most of the afternoon removing them, and it would have taken that many to put them back where they’d been. But there they were.”

  “Jesus,” Chris said. He got to his feet and walked across the room, rubbing his mouth anxiously. He stood staring outside, his back to the room, before turning around. “Is that all?”

  Lara nodded. “Yes. But it was enough. Every single person we’d hired quit that very day. That’s why we haven’t completed renovations. We’re going to have to hire people from another county to finish once you’ve all left.”

  “Did anything else happen here? In the past, I mean?” Emily asked.

  Lara shrugged. “We don’t know. The woman that owned the house before my aunt—Margot Lewis’s cousin—left no records of any kind related to the house, beyond tax records, of course. And, from speaking to Mr. and Mrs. Wright, it seems as if she never visited, at least not in the years they’ve worked here.”

  “And what do they say?” Mark asked. “Mr. and Mrs. Wright, I mean. Have they told you anything?”

  Lara shook her head. “They were hired about ten years ago to replace the previous caretakers. According to the Wrights, they’ve never seen anything out of the ordinary. Except the doors, of course. You’ll notice Mrs. Wright always carries her set of keys with her.”

  “And she always closes the doors behind her,” Emily added.

  Lara pointed at her. “Exactly. I’m not sure if they’re lying, or if they really haven’t seen strange things. Either way, I haven’t heard about anything else happening before all of you showed up.”

  “What happened to the previous caretakers?” Mark asked.

  Lara shrugged. “No idea. They were hired shortly after the cousin inherited in 1960, and they stayed on until the Wrights came ten years ago.”

  “That’s a long time,” June said. “Almost, what, fifty years? Jesus. I’ve been here less than two weeks, and I can hardly wait to leave.”

  “I wonder if anyone in town knew them, or of them,” Mark said.

  “One would think,” Lara said, “but so far, no one in town will admit to knowing them or anything about the house.”