Gnarled Hollow

by Charlotte Greene

  “Any luck?”

  He shrugged. “Not exactly. If anything, my research confirmed my conclusions about the oddity of the house. It was very unusual to build a house in this style at the time. In fact, I couldn’t find a single example in the entire Northeast, and only two elsewhere in the States.”

  “What style is it?” Emily asked.

  Mark set his juice glass down and folded his hands. “It’s a little complicated. In the late nineteenth century, right around when this house was built, there was a movement called Queen Anne Revival. Like Neoclassicism, it took elements of any earlier architectural style and changed it. The original Queen Anne style buildings were early eighteenth century, in the 1700s and 1710s, but the revival took place after 1870 or so. Here in the States, Queen Anne Revival houses have very little in common with the original Queen Anne style in England. In fact, if you compare the original English Queen Anne buildings with American, you don’t see much of an overlap at all—they’re almost entirely different, alike in name only. It would make sense, then, if this house had been built in the American, Queen Anne Revival style—it was very popular then. But it’s not. This house is in the original English Queen Anne style from the early eighteenth century.”

  Jim laughed. “Sounds like someone got their wires crossed.”

  Mark shrugged. “It could be that simple. It’s possible that Roger Lewis, who commissioned this home, asked for a Queen Anne house and got this one. It’s technically Queen Anne, yes, but the wrong one by one hundred and sixty years. I can’t imagine how any architect could have bungled it so badly unless he was asked specifically to design it in the original English Queen Anne style.”

  Jim sat at the head of the table, so Emily had taken the seat across from Lara, as far away as she could. She noticed Lara watching Mark and the others closely, a slight smile twisting her lips. She seemed to sense Emily’s gaze and looked at her, still smiling.

  “You seem happy about something,” she said.

  Lara continued to grin. “It’s simply that nothing in this house is easy. Everything is off and nothing fits. In fact, if you can count on one thing, it’s this house not making any sense.”

  “And that pleases you?”

  Lara hesitated. “In a way.” She leaned forward, resting her arms on the table and lowering her voice. “When my aunt inherited this estate, we never thought we would find something so wonderfully strange. At best, I thought we’d find a money pit we’d either need to tear down or sell. Instead, this entire estate is like a revelation.”

  Emily went cold. While she wasn’t afraid of Gnarled Hollow like the others, she did have a certain wary respect for it. Lara’s amused glee seemed dangerous, even reckless. She was about to say something to this effect when Mark caught her attention.

  “Hey, Emily?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m heading into town today. I thought maybe I would check the census, birth, and death records for the town. I asked the town historian to get them out for us to see if we can find some more names. I also asked if we could see the town newspaper. Something else might be there, too. The last time I spoke to him, I told him to dig out whatever he could find related to the Lewis family. Want to come?”

  She was about to decline, but she caught Jim’s eye. He was staring at her evenly, coolly, and the expression in his eyes made her blood run cold. Seeing it, she was almost certain he remembered exactly what had happened last night. He broke eye contact first, and she had to suppress a shudder. The idea of working alone with him all day horrified her.

  “Okay,” she said, glancing at June. “Do you want to come, too?”

  She shook her head. “No. I may head in later this week, though, if only to get a decent cup of coffee. I want to start examining the next painting in the sitting room today.”

  “Also, I was hoping June and I could talk this morning,” Lara said. “If that’s all right with you, June.”

  She hesitated. “Of course.”

  “And I’ll talk to you, Chris, and Jim, afterward, if that’s convenient.”

  Chris shrugged. “I’ll be outside all day, but if you don’t mind talking out there, by all means.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” Jim said simply.

  “Jim, be reasonable,” June said.

  He shook his head, glaring at Lara. “The rest of you can do what you want. I couldn’t care less. But I’m not saying a word.”

  Lara didn’t seem perturbed. She spoke to June. “Shall we?”

  June threw Emily a quick look and got to her feet. “Okay. Want to go to the sitting room?”

  “That sounds fine.”

  June looked as if she wanted to kiss her good-bye, but as they hadn’t yet done that in front of the others before, they hesitated long enough to make doing it awkward. She gave Emily a quick smile and followed Lara out of the room.

  “You ready, Emily?” Mark asked.

  She jumped slightly and blushed, sure she’d been caught staring at the retreating figures. “Sure. Let’s go.”

  The day was stunningly hot, which surprised Emily until she remembered that the last time she’d been outside, it had been hot then, too. The house stayed remarkably cool regardless of the outside weather. She was about to ask Mark about this, but when she looked over at him, his expression, even in profile, silenced her. Like Jim, it seemed as if he hadn’t been sleeping well. His eyes were ringed, and his skin had an almost sickly pallor.

  They climbed into his large car, and he started driving them off of the estate at a quick pace, the little shells and stones of the road kicking up against the sides of the car. Turning in her seat, she watched the house disappear around the corner of the road and felt a strange sinking sensation of loss. She sat forward again and caught Mark watching her strangely before he looked back at the road.

  “You’re going to miss it, aren’t you?” His voice was quiet.

  She didn’t respond, not wanting to admit it out loud. He sighed. “I can’t understand how it doesn’t affect you like the rest of us. I’m a nervous wreck, and the others aren’t doing so well, either.”

  “Was it better when you were in Plattsburgh?”

  He shook his head immediately. “No. In fact, if anything, it was worse. I think the idea that I was going to have to come back here…haunted me all weekend. In fact, except for going to town, I think I’ll stay the rest of the summer, or I might never come back.”

  Before she could stop herself, she asked, “Why don’t you leave?” She’d been wanting to ask everyone that question. Surely at this stage, despite the interesting findings at the house, everyone must be thinking about leaving. Everyone but her, anyway. She understood, or thought she understood, why June was staying—a kind of determined stubbornness—and Jim was like her, too. But she wasn’t sure about Chris or Mark.

  He didn’t respond for a long time. They pulled up in front of the gate, and he turned the ignition off, shifting in his seat to face her. “Why don’t you leave, Emily?”

  She opened her mouth to respond and then shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean. I’ve told you—I’m not going. Not until we have answers.”

  He stared at her a long time, his eyes narrow and searching as if he was trying to gauge her honesty. Finally, he sighed. “It’s a little like that with me, too.” He paused, breaking eye contact and staring out the windshield at the gate. “I guess part of me knows that if I left today, I’d always wonder.”

  “But you could stay in town,” she suggested. “Everyone could.” She meant everyone but herself, but she let him interpret what she’d said without clarifying.

  Again, he shook his head. “It isn’t that simple. I don’t know how, but it wouldn’t be enough. The house sticks to you—even when you’re not there. At least that’s how I felt when I was gone this weekend. I would have to give it all up, without intending to come back, and even then, I think it would still be with me for a long time.” He looked at her and grinned. “And anyway, I’d hate
to give up now and have some other architect solve the mystery. I feel like it’s mine now.”

  They got out of the car, and she helped him unlock and open the gate. They drove through, closed and locked it behind them, and started driving again. Leaving was a strange sensation. She again felt an odd kind of desperate longing sweep over her, and she had to bite her tongue to not ask Mark to turn around. She’d never, in all her life, felt so connected to a place, and the power of the emotions swelling up in her chest left her shaken and frightened. For a moment, she was certain she would start crying, and she turned her face to the side window to hide her reaction from Mark, blinking back tears.

  The village of Last Hope was much larger than she thought. She’d pictured a kind of pause in the road, with perhaps an old diner and bad antique market, but in fact the little town was charming. On the main street were a few cafes, a couple of upscale clothing stores, and a beautiful old school. She could see other establishments on streets branching off from this main one. On the whole, the place was prosperous, even cute.

  Seeing her surprise, Mark said, “We’re right on the road to a state park here. The town gets a lot of tourists on their way in and out, since Last Hope is the only place this big for a hundred miles or so.”

  They pulled into the parking lot for the tiny municipal building that seemed to hold all the government offices for the town, including the library. Mark led the way into a large, one-room affair staffed by a couple of middle-aged volunteers and a single librarian.

  “Hello,” the librarian said when he spotted Mark. “Nice to see you. And I see you have company again.” He held out his hand. “My name’s Jacob.”

  “Hi, Jacob—I’m Emily.”

  “What have you found for us, Jacob?” Mark asked.

  “I have those census records you asked for—all the way from 1876, when the house was built, to 1960, when Miss Lewis died. I also pulled the death and marriage records for the same years. I haven’t had a chance to examine anything yet, I’m afraid, because of the storm.”

  “Storm?” Emily asked. She didn’t remember any storm. The weather had, in fact, been remarkably clear since she arrived.

  Jacob looked at her strangely. “Yes. The storm yesterday. You must remember it. Took out the electricity in the whole area for hours.”

  She and Mark shared a glance, and she saw the same puzzlement in his face. Surely they’d remember a big storm yesterday, and the house was only a few miles away—they would have felt it, too. Admitting this, however, might raise questions they couldn’t answer. Gnarled Hollow was isolated and separate from this town, yes, but the idea that it might have its own weather system would clearly suggest something more supernatural and possibly sinister than simple physical separateness.

  “Oh yes, of course, the storm,” Mark said, clearly trying to move on. “But anyway, don’t worry about not finding anything. I’ll go through the records myself today. Did you get a chance to read through the newspaper index?”

  Jacob’s face fell a little. “I did, but I haven’t found very much. The index is, of course, incomplete. None of the papers before 2000 have been digitized yet, which means the index before that was typed or handwritten. It gets pretty spotty in some years. The librarians usually only note major events in town or worldwide affairs, like wars. But we have all the newspapers on microfilm, going back to 1900, when it began.”

  “There’s nothing before that? No town minutes or anything?”

  Jacob shook his head. “And it’s a real shame. I’ve been the town historian for three years now, and I have yet to find a single thing before 1900. I’ve found evidence of a newspaper before that—a small, four- or six-page weekly—but none of them have survived, as far as I can tell.”

  “So there’s nothing for the first twenty, twenty-five years the house was here?”

  Jacob shook his head. “Nothing I’ve found yet, anyway. It’s taken me three years just to start to get this place organized, and it still needs a lot of work. You wouldn’t believe the state of this archive when I was first hired.”

  Mark looked at her. “What would you prefer—town records or newspapers?”

  “Newspapers, I guess,” she said.

  “Okay. You start whatever year you think best while I begin reading through the census and town records. Those go back all the way to when the house was built, at least.”

  Jacob led her to a dusty area of the basement, where the only microfilm machine was awkwardly crammed into a corner. She sat down next to the boxes of microfilm he’d piled up for her and scanned their edges. Each box held about six reels, and each reel held about half a year’s newspapers. The pile teetered from the floor nearly to the machine itself. She’d never be able to read every single newspaper between 1900 and 1960, even if she had months. And, as there was only one reading machine, it would be difficult for her or the others to split up the work beyond taking turns. She had to figure out how to speed up the process and read only what was important. She’d done archival work like this before as a student and as a professor, and it was always a matter of starting somewhere, finding clues, and skipping ahead or backward in time.

  She decided to start with what she knew: Margot Lewis’s death date. The New Yorker had included a small obituary for her, but she was fairly certain a local minor celebrity would also be written up in the town’s newspaper. It took her a while to get a feel for the microfilm machine—it had been a few years since she’d used one—but she managed to scroll to the correct date fairly quickly. She saw nothing in the paper on the official death date, but when she scrolled forward a little, she found a notice when the body had been found. A week after the death date, she found a long obituary written by an English teacher at the local high school.

  Loss of an Icon

  Harold Arnett

  March 21, 1960

  The body of a local legend was found last week at her estate just outside of town. The author, Margot Lewis (1899–1960), may not have had the kind of notoriety some of her contemporaries enjoyed, but her work was every bit as important. In fact, I very much believe that future generations will wonder how people in her era and ours didn’t seem to recognize her genius.

  I had the great privilege to meet Margot, completely by chance, one rainy Sunday outside of town about two years ago. My bicycle had gotten a flat tire, and I was pushing it back to town in the rain. She appeared suddenly before me, almost seeming to come out of nowhere, and I recognized her on sight, having seen a few pictures of her over the years. People in town always said that she never left her estate, and yet there she was, several miles from it. She was surprised to find me there, yet she greeted me like an old friend. When I told her how much I admired her work, she was humble and gracious, and thanked me for reading. We talked for perhaps five minutes, and then she disappeared down the road. I wrote her one or two letters but stopped after getting no response. I never saw her again.

  Margot’s life was marred by tragedy. Her parents both died of tuberculosis, leaving all three of the Lewis children orphans at a young age. Relatives were brought in to help raise the children, but from what I have gathered from town rumor and memory, the Lewis children were essentially raised by tutors and governesses. Tragedy struck again when Margot’s older brother Nathan was drowned when they were all still young, and Margot left for Europe soon after. Her sister Julia died of TB while Margot was abroad, so that when she returned, Margot was all alone.

  I don’t know if these tragedies fueled the awesome genius of her work, but Margot Lewis may quite possibly be one of the most important forgotten geniuses of the last fifty years. I think she was a pitiable figure, too far ahead of her time to be taken up by the literati of her day, and too old-fashioned to be recovered by our liberal times. Perhaps future scholars will do her the justice she deserves.

  Emily read the article several times, the excitement of the first reading still with her each time. While the article provided very little she hadn’t known before she read it, sh
e did, at least, learn the names of Margot’s siblings, which hadn’t been in the New Yorker obit she’d found online again a couple of days ago. Nor had she known, until now, how Nathan had died. The fact that he’d drowned sent excited chills up and down her back every time she read that passage. It was important, but she didn’t know how yet.

  She heard footsteps and turned to see Mark walking toward her, a notebook in hand. “Find anything yet?”

  She got up to let him read the obituary, and when he finished and turned back to her, she saw that same strange excitement she’d felt reflected in his eyes.

  “Nathan Lewis drowned. It makes sense, somehow. I’m not sure how, but it does.”

  She thought it might explain something about the bathtub and the pool incidents, but she didn’t want to say yet. She wanted to think about it until she could put her thoughts and feelings into words.

  Mark handed her his notes. “If you want, I have some dates for you to try next: Nathan and Julia’s death dates. I noticed each of them missing from the one town census to the next and then looked at the death certificates for the years in between until I found them. For some reason, only the months and years are mentioned, not the actual day. I’ll dig around some more to see if I can find them. But Nathan died in July 1919 and Julia in June 1925.”

  “How old were they when they died?”

  Mark scratched his head. “They both would have been about twenty-one.”

  “Margot’s a little younger than Nathan, then. She was born in 1899. She must have left for Europe right after he died, since I know she was already in Paris later that same year, 1919.” She frowned. “So she left her sister here? Alone? How old would Julia have been in 1919?”

  “About fifteen.”