Gnarled Hollow

by Charlotte Greene

  Jim was sobbing, his knees clenched to his chest, almost fetal. His pale face was streaked with blood from her scratches. He held out one hand toward her. “Emily, oh God, Emily! I’m so sorry!”

  “You’re fucking right you’re going to be sorry,” June said, still almost screaming. “You’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison, you asshole. Attempted murder! Assault!”

  “I don’t know why I did that! Emily, you have to believe me! I couldn’t stop myself!”

  He had moved forward a little, and June maneuvered her body in front of Emily’s. “Don’t you touch her! Don’t you go near her!”

  She swallowed painfully, and when she spoke, it was still barely above a whisper. “June—listen to him. It wasn’t him.”

  June stared at her, her face a mask or horror and incredulity. “Don’t tell me you believe him!”

  She was fighting an overwhelming fatigue now. More than anything, she wanted to go back upstairs and lie down and let June take care of her. But it was important for everyone to understand what had happened. She grabbed June’s shoulder. “It wasn’t him,” she croaked, making her voice as loud as she could despite the pain. She pointed at the lead soldier. “It was that.”

  Lara followed the direction of her finger and walked over to the lead soldier lying on the floor. “What? This thing?”

  Before Emily could call out a warning, Lara reached down to pick it up, and when her hand enclosed the toy she cried out in pain and flung it from herself. It hit a wall and fell to the floor behind the sofa.

  “Jesus Christ!” Lara said, clutching her hand. She was bent double in pain, and when she stood up again and held out her hand, everyone could see a dark-red imprint on her palm. “It burned me!”

  Jim was still sobbing, rocking back and forth, and Emily took June’s distraction as an opportunity to scoot over to him on the floor. She held out her arms, and he launched himself at her, making June cry out in fright. This time, however, he was simply hugging her, crying into her hair.

  “Shhhh, Jim,” she whispered. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

  “I thought I was lost, Emily. I thought I was lost,” he kept saying, over and over again.

  “You’re here now. You’re with us again,” she said. “You’re safe.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  With the summer sunlight blazing into Emily’s bedroom, the setting for the séance was the least likely imaginable. Any outsider seeing the four of them seated at the table might think they were sitting down for the most competitive game of canasta ever devised. Their faces were grim and determined, pale and drawn.

  Because Mark and Chris had become the de facto points of contact for the search teams still outside, the only man at the table was Jim. The scratches on his face had been cleaned up, but they were still angry and painful-looking. Emily had spent a great deal of time cleaning his skin from beneath her fingernails, the horror and disgust of it enough to make her gag. June had helped both of them, dabbing at Jim’s face with alcohol and gauze and gently icing the skin on Emily’s throat. Neither she nor Jim blamed the other for what had happened, and for her, having him here at the table seemed natural and somehow right, almost as if it had been fated for the four of them to be sitting there together this afternoon.

  They’d decided to hold the séance in her bedroom for a few reasons. The first was the most obvious, at least according to Lara: things happened in Emily’s room. They could, however, just as easily have used the pool house or the bathroom, except the pool house was too public, the bathroom was too small, and Emily’s bedroom door locked, so if anyone outside came knocking, they’d have warning. Right now, Chris was downstairs near the front door, and Mark was right outside the bedroom door. Should anyone insist on seeing them, Chris would text Mark’s phone, and Mark would knock. They’d also given Mark the only key to the bedroom.

  Lara had placed the Celtic hanging bowl in the center of the table. She’d also used a glove to pick up the lead soldier and placed it in the center of the bowl. Jim was staring at it uneasily, almost as if he expected it to take control of him again, but Lara had insisted that they have a few artifacts from the family to act as focal points for spiritual energy.

  One of Margot Lewis’s journals also lay on the table, under the hanging bowl. Regardless of the content, Lara argued that Margot had spent enough time with the journal to imbue it with at least a little of her energy, and they were all fairly certain the soldier had been Nathan’s at one time. They had no way to know of anything that belonged to Julia, but they’d included the bowl in the circle since it might have been important to the family.

  Lara’s phone chimed, and she turned off the alarm. It was now ten minutes to four. “Okay,” she said. “It’s time to start.”

  She held out her hands, one to Jim and one to June. Emily likewise extended her hands to June and Jim, and they were all connected. Lara met each of their eyes, and one by one they nodded, ready. Lara took a deep breath and closed her eyes before beginning.

  “Spirits of Gnarled Hollow, we call you. Margot Lewis, we call you. Nathan Lewis, we call you. Julia Lewis, we call you. Other spirits in this house, we call you. Reveal your secrets to us. Show us how to help you. Show us what you will.”

  After a long, tense pause, the hair rose on the back of Emily’s neck. June and Jim’s fingers tightened in hers, and she squeezed back. Lara spoke again a moment later.

  “Spirits of Gnarled Hollow, we call you. We seek answers. We seek to understand. Margot Lewis, help us understand. Nathan Lewis, help us understand. Julia Lewis, help us understand. Other spirits in this house, help us understand. We beseech you to show us what you know.”

  The air around them seemed to grow denser, and the light in the room dimmed. Emily squeezed her eyes shut, suddenly too frightened to see what was coming. Jim and June’s grips were now viselike and painful, and everyone was breathing heavily. When Lara spoke again, her voice sounded strained and frightened.

  “Spirits of Gnarled Hollow, we call you. You sought us, and we came. You wanted us, and here we are. Margot Lewis, use us. Nathan Lewis, use us. Julia Lewis, use us. Other spirits in this house, use us. We are ready to be used for your purposes.”

  A strange, audible pop, as in an airplane, sounded, and Emily couldn’t help but flinch and duck a little in her chair, hunching her shoulders. She could hear herself breathing, hard, but as the initial fright passed, she realized she could no longer hear the others.

  Instead, she was aware of the sound of birds somewhere close by, and then a gust of wind brushed her face, as if from an open window. June and Jim had relaxed their grips, and even straining, she still couldn’t hear them breathing. She waited for a long, tense pause, aware the whole time that the sunlight on her face was warm and hot, bright beneath her eyelids. She took a few deep breaths and finally opened her eyes.

  The room around them had entirely transformed. The table and the chairs they sat in were still here, as they’d always been, but the rest of the room was completely different. Instead of the large, canopied bed she slept in every night, a smaller day bed squatted in the corner of the room farthest from the table. The bed hadn’t been made, and the sheets and blankets were bunched in a wild tangle. The room was strangely decorated, with several paintings she didn’t recognize on the walls. Two life-sized statues of naked women stood a few feet away, the style reminiscent of Rodin. Cups and saucers, plates and silverware were strewn haphazardly on the floor and two tiny tables, and discarded clothing littered the floor. It was the bedroom of an incredible slob.

  The curtains here were drawn back, but they were heavy and velvet, a deep gold. A gauze scrim hung down each of the windows, blocking the harshest of the light, but the room was still incredibly bright with sunlight. The walls were strangely silver, from paint or paper, she couldn’t tell, and the floor beneath the mess was now a bare, golden wood. All the windows on the front side of the house were wide open, a warm breeze blowing in and occasionally rustl
ing the scrims.

  She looked back at the others in order to tell them to open their eyes, but one glance at their faces and her voice died in her throat. Something was strangely still about the three of them—unnaturally so.

  “June?” she asked, pulling her hand a little. June didn’t respond, that same waxen stillness seeming to immobilize her. Her eyes were closed, but her face was calm, almost slack. Jim and Lara were similarly waxen.

  “Jim? Lara?” She jiggled her hand in Jim’s loose grip, horrified when hers slipped out. Lara had told them not to let go of each other’s hands for fear of breaking the spell. Jim’s hand stayed exactly as she left it, slightly open as if it still held hers. She pushed on his shoulder. “Jim? Jim!” She pushed harder, but he didn’t move. His body felt stiff and cold.

  She looked back at June on her right and touched her face. It was cold and dry, and she jerked her hand away. June felt neither waxy nor wooden, but rather fake and artificial—almost rubbery. She was reminded of the hands that had held her underwater in the bathtub. She slipped her right hand out of June’s and stood up quickly, her chair falling backward onto the ground. Fighting her instinct to avoid touching the unnatural bodies of her friends, she went around the table and shook each of them, one by one, by the shoulders. They were frozen, their stillness so complete she couldn’t move them even an inch. They felt like soft stone, rooted in place.

  Again, she was aware of her own rapid breathing, which made their stillness and quiet that much eerier. Fighting an almost overwhelming disgust, she bent her head close to Lara’s face and realized she could detect no breath coming from her slightly open mouth. She placed two shaking fingers on Lara’s throat and then ripped them away a moment later. Lara had no pulse.

  Reeling, she backed away from the table, stopping only when the window hit her back, the gauze scrim brushing her skin and making her jump away, startled. She stood there, staring at the three people still seated at the table, putting her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.

  She heard the click of a door and spun in that direction, cringing with fright. The door that opened was in the center of the wall she normally shared with the bathroom—a door that didn’t exist as far as she knew. It opened a fraction of an inch and paused, as if waiting for something, and then opened farther, about a foot. A moment later, a face appeared, peeking around the door at her, much lower than she’d expected. It was a young girl.

  At the sight of the girl, her fright drained away, and her breathing and heart rate slowed almost at once. The girl eased one shoulder into the room, revealing the corner of a white, old-fashioned dress. She looked directly at Emily and then motioned for her to follow before slipping back behind the door again. She left it open.

  “Wait!” Emily called out, then put her hand over her mouth, startled by how loud it had been in the room. Gingerly, she touched her throat, amazed that it no longer hurt. Her voice had sounded normal because it apparently wasn’t injured.

  She walked toward the open door and then paused, glancing back at the others still seated at the table, eyes closed. Before she could lose her nerve, she went directly to June and bent down to kiss her cold, dead lips.

  “I’ll come back to you, June. I swear it.”

  She turned and faced the partially open door, squaring her shoulders. She took another deep breath and walked toward it, flinging it open, ready for anything.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The room behind the door was an artists’ studio. Easels were set up in several places, and a drafting table took up one corner. Paintings were propped on the easels, each a work in progress. Emily recognized a few as paintings that normally hung in the sitting room downstairs and elsewhere in the house, but some were wholly unfamiliar. A chaise lounge dominated the middle of the room, draped with a velvet blanket despite the summer weather. A few pillows were arranged on it, and others had fallen to the floor. She stepped farther into the room to examine one of the paintings and then heard the door to the balcony opening to her left. She spun in that direction, heart leaping.

  Two young people entered the room, both of them laughing. The girl wore a high-necked, lacy white dress and high leather ankle shoes. The boy was in loose velvet trousers and an open-necked, cream-colored shirt. His hair was unkempt and wild, hers tied up almost primly in braids pinned on top of her head. Their clothes and hair immediately suggested another time period, as the careworn clothes were clearly not costumes.

  They were laughing so hard they had to clutch each other for balance, and both of them collapsed on the chaise lounge, still laughing. The girl looked briefly in her direction, but if she saw her standing there, some ten feet away, she said nothing. Emily moved an arm wildly, and when neither of them reacted, she felt safe to assume they couldn’t see her. She cleared her throat loudly, and again they didn’t react. Her anxiety eased. They couldn’t see or hear her.

  The boy calmed first, wiping his eyes and chuckling lightly. He was handsome, with wavy, light-brown hair and startlingly blue eyes. He was perhaps in his mid-to-late teens, something like her freshman college students, though perhaps a little younger. He had clearly tried to grow a mustache, but the patchy, pathetic thing barely dusted the top of his lip. When he’d fully calmed, he watched the girl continue to laugh, his grin slowly fading and replaced with a sneer.

  The girl looked to be about his age, and her face caused a dim bell of recognition to ring in Emily’s mind. She’d seen this girl somewhere. Unlike the boy, acne marred her face, which was also a little too long and pale to be attractive. Her nose was oversized and hooked, and her teeth were slightly crooked.

  “Stop it,” the boy suddenly said.

  The girl stopped laughing, her face falling slightly when she met his eyes. Haughty anger replaced her disappointment a moment later, and she frowned.

  “Stop trying to boss me around, Nathan. You thought it was funny, too.”

  Nathan’s smile returned and he laughed, once. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  The girl seemed to accept this apology, as her expression cleared a little. “That’ll be the last of Aunt Mildred, I hope.”

  Nathan was still grinning. “She was dad’s final cousin. If I’m not mistaken, we don’t have any more relatives for her to call on. No more replacement parents.”

  “Maybe they’ll leave us alone now.” Her voice was wistful.

  Nathan sighed and got to his feet, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Somehow I doubt that. Especially as I’m leaving next month.”

  The girl groaned dramatically and lay back on the chaise, throwing one arm across her eyes. “Do you have to go?”

  Nathan laughed, but Emily could see that his expression was humorless, bitter. “You know I have to, Margot.”

  Margot flung her arm off her face and groaned louder. “Curse Father and his stupid rules.” She sat up, pouting. “I don’t want you to go.”

  Nathan frowned, shaking his head. “And I don’t want to leave you. But I have to. I don’t inherit if I don’t finish school.”

  The girl grabbed his hand in both of hers. “But can’t you fight it? In court, I mean?”

  Nathan shook his head, slowly. “The lawyers said it wasn’t any use and would end up wasting a lot of money. At least they agreed to let me go to art school and not to some stupid business program.”

  Margot flung his hand away and started pouting again, her color high. Nathan knelt in front of her and took both of her hands. “You know I love you, Margot, and I always will. I’ll be back between terms—more often if I can.”

  She continued to frown, and he let go of her hands and got up on the chaise with her. A moment later, he was unfastening the little hooks on her dress at the back. Margot’s eyes closed, her face twisted in triumph. He slid her dress down to her shoulders and started kissing her neck and shoulders. Emily turned away in disgust.

  The door opened, and the same little girl she had seen earlier came into the room, freezing when she caught sight of the two
on the chaise.

  Nathan cursed and threw a pillow at her. “Get out of here, Julia!”

  Margot laughed. “Yes—get out. Get out, or we’ll lock you in the attic again.”

  Julia turned and fled, running out of the room as fast as she could, slamming the door behind her. Nathan and Margot started laughing, but a moment later the laughter turned into passionate kisses. Again, Emily turned away, tempted to go back into the bedroom she’d started in. The last thing she wanted to do was watch two teenage siblings making out.

  The door to the balcony opened again, and Emily was certain Nathan and Margot would stop. They didn’t seem to hear the sound, continuing in their furious passion. Julia stood in the doorway again, but she had changed from the little girl that had just fled. She looked quite a bit older. She glanced at her siblings on the chaise and once again gestured for Emily to follow her, appearing almost desperate now. Emily took one last look at Margot and Nathan and left hurriedly, afraid if she waited any longer she would see too much.

  When she stepped through the doorway, however, things shifted dramatically. The popping pressure in her ears returned, and she closed her eyes, suddenly disoriented and dizzy. When she opened them again, she wasn’t on the balcony outside the bedrooms. Instead, it appeared that she’d walked through the library door and into the sitting room. She turned around to verify this had happened and saw only blackness through the doorway behind her—an impenetrable shroud of swirling shadow. She looked away, quickly, too frightened to stare into that horror any longer. It took her a moment more to get her bearings and for the room to stop spinning.

  The paintings on the walls of the sitting room more or less matched what hung on them in Emily’s era, though the Turner was notably absent. The furniture, walls, and curtains were completely different from her time, however. The walls were painted yellow instead of papered, and most of the wooden furniture was heavy and Victorian. Two side tables, more modern, were completely mismatched with the large, long couch. More than the furniture, however, something about the room was disorienting. The space seemed much larger than it was in her era—roomier somehow—but it was hard to tell with all the chairs and tables in here.