Gnarled Hollow

by Charlotte Greene

  Her heart was pounding, and her eyes felt dangerously close to tears. She squeezed June’s hands, making her meet her eyes finally. “I’d love to, June. I’ll go wherever you want.”

  They were grinning at each other stupidly, both of them near tears, so wrapped up in each other they’d forgotten the other people in the room. She snapped back into reality when Chris accidently dropped the platter he had been carrying onto the table. She and June jumped slightly at the thunk, June yelping.

  “Sorry,” Chris said. He indicated the cheese platter. “Thought I’d bring in some snacks since no one’s eaten yet.”

  “Good,” Jim said, grabbing a wedge of cheddar. “Watching these two was giving me a toothache.”

  June blushed and laughed, and Emily’s heart soared even higher. June wasn’t embarrassed to be overheard. In fact, from the set of her shoulders and her fierce expression, Emily would say she was proud, as proud as Emily was of her.

  “Oh, gosh!” June said, slapping her forehead. “I forgot. When we were all in town yesterday, I bought some champagne. I wanted to open it last night, but I left it in the fridge.”

  “What’s the occasion?” Jim asked.

  June frowned as though she was thinking. “Nothing specific. We made so much progress this week. We know so much more than before. Not everything, but we’re getting there.” She shrugged. “And it’s always a good time for champagne.”

  “Well then, by all means!” Jim said. “There are glasses in the dining room, too. I can get them if you want help.”

  Emily had started to get up, but June waved her down. “No. That’s fine. I’ll get it. You guys relax.”

  Now that the doors stayed open on their own, it was possible to see into the dining room from here, and she watched June until she turned beyond the far doorway. When she looked back at the others, Jim gave her a knowing grin and winked.

  She moved closer to the cheese, grabbing a small plate and filling it. She half-listened to the others, who were discussing the upcoming election, still focused on June and what she’d said. Emily could hardly believe it. Never in her wildest dreams would she have hoped, after meeting June, that they would reach the point of moving in together. June was so far above her level it was still hard to believe. Sex, yes, but this? Out of all the beautiful people in the world she could have had, June had somehow chosen her, instead. It was unfathomable.

  She smiled at the thought of telling her sister or her parents that she was moving to Seattle to live with a woman she’d just met. They knew she was gay, and they had met some of her earlier girlfriends, but as none of them had been very serious, no one in her family had taken them seriously, either. Now here she was, fulfilling a lesbian stereotype and possibly moving in with a woman she’d known for mere weeks. She’d made fun of friends who had done that, but that had been jealousy, obviously. Sometimes you simply knew you were meant to be with someone.

  She’d spaced out enough to lose track of time, coming out of her daydream only when Jim said, “What’s taking her so long?”

  “What? Who?”

  “June. She’s been gone at least ten minutes.”

  “Maybe she’s having trouble finding the glasses,” Chris suggested. “I’ll go help her.”

  “No. That’s fine,” Emily said. “I’ll go.”

  She went into the dining room, switching on the light as she entered. It stayed light out quite late now, but the house was situated in such a way that this side of the house was always a little darker than the other.

  The dining room was empty, and she frowned. She could see the champagne glasses in the little sideboard in the corner of the room, untouched. Perhaps June was searching for them in the kitchen. She might not have heard Jim correctly.

  A nervous dread twisted her stomach, and she hurried across the dining room and through the door to the pantry and kitchen. It was dark, but she already knew what she would find when she turned on the light.

  The room was empty.

  Her anxiety deepened. The room was bathed in a sickly light from the inadequate single bulb, but even with better lighting, looking in here would be fruitless. She walked over to the fridge and opened it, immediately seeing the champagne still on the shelf. She closed the door and took a few deep breaths. She didn’t need to panic. June might have gone to the bathroom or upstairs to change. It would be strange for her not to tell them this when they were waiting, but not unheard of.

  Repressing her rising panic, she walked as quickly and calmly as she could into the entry room again and knocked on the little bathroom door. She opened it a moment later, finding it dark. Her stomach clenched with fear, and again, she forced herself to calm down in order to think rationally.

  She went upstairs next, making herself walk. June was not in her own bedroom or in Emily’s. Neither was she in either of the upstairs bathrooms. Emily stood on the balcony, peering down into the foyer, her heart racing painfully. It was all well and good to tell herself that things were fine, but not if they weren’t. She knew. She’d known the moment she saw the champagne in the fridge.

  Like Harry, June had disappeared.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The blood rushed to Emily’s head, and she swayed. She shuddered once, shaking so hard her knees went weak. She grabbed the top of the railing to hold herself up, and a wild, piercing horror rose from within. Something close to a scream escaped her lips, and she sank to the floor, clutching the bars of the railing like they formed a personal prison.

  She was screaming so loud it didn’t take the others long to find her, but it did take them a while to figure out what was wrong. Emily, incapable of speech, had been led, sobbing, downstairs to the sitting room, held up and nearly carried there by Mark. Jim and Chris had gone off to search for June and had come back some time later with the same conclusion as Emily: June was gone.

  By the time they returned, she had stopped sobbing and screaming, and she sat there on the sofa, Mark’s arm around her shoulders, stiff and silent and staring ahead. She was beyond tears; she felt numb and dead. She couldn’t get the image of Harry’s body out of her mind. He was the last person to disappear, and he’d died, his corpse lost somewhere in time. The same thing was happening to June, and no one could do anything about it.

  “Should we call the police?” Chris asked.

  Jim laughed. “And what? Report another missing person? No way they’d let that slide. They’d think we’re serial killers or something.”

  “Even if we called them first?”

  Jim shook his head. “What did it get us last time? It’s not like they found Harry.”

  Mark made a quieting motion with his free hand, but it was too late. Emily looked at Jim, eyes filling with tears. He was, after all, exactly right. Searching would be futile.

  “Well, what should we do?” Chris asked, his voice harsh and broken. “Just let her go?”

  “Of course not,” Mark said. He squeezed Emily’s shoulders. “We’ll look, and we’ll do it together. There must be a way to get through to wherever, whenever they are. Both she and Harry found a way there, but not how to get back. We have to figure out how to get there ourselves.”

  He sounded confident, but Emily knew that his attitude was all for her benefit. None of them had a clue as to how to go about their search or to make it a success. It would take too long. Even if they did find a way to contact that other place, that other time, it would be too late. June was already lost.

  “Where should we start?” Chris asked.

  Mark slowly got to his feet. “The attic. Emily felt things there, and June did, too. And the box was there.”

  Emily stayed where she was on the couch, still unable to move, and unwilling to go on a wild goose chase. It was hopeless.

  “I’ll stay with her,” Jim offered. “You guys go on.”

  Mark and Chris left without arguing, neither of them moving very quickly. They knew, like she, that there was no point in rushing around. There was really no point to try to fi
nd her, but she wouldn’t say so. Let them have their petty hope. For her, hope was dead.

  Jim, who had been abstaining the last few days, walked over to the bar and fixed himself a drink. She watched him with dazed surprise, amazed that he could move around like a normal person. If she tried to, her limbs wouldn’t function. She’d fall on the floor and never budge again. At least here, she was sitting upright.

  Jim took his drink and walked over to the window, looking outside at the lawn. She remembered that, for him, it had all started there. He’d seen the piece of trash outside and run to get it, only to turn around and see Julia Lewis in the upstairs window. To a certain extent, everything that had happened had happened after that for him. He’d finally started to believe.

  This idea made some of the fog in her head lift a little. Something similar had happened to her, too. She’d had that strange experience on the road on the way here, and that awful feeling when she first saw the house, but the mystery of it all had really started when she saw Julia up in the window. Up in her bedroom window.

  She frowned, and more of the bleak dread that had been closing her down faded as her understanding grew. Why that window? In Julia’s day, it had been a bedroom, Nathan’s, or at least it had been his when the Lewis children were younger. So why would Julia appear there? What significance did it hold for her? The nurse had apparently taken her downstairs to let her look outside, but was that the only explanation?

  During the séance, Emily had walked from Nathan’s bedroom—her bedroom now—into the artists’ studio. The sound in the wall had come from there, right where the door had been in the past. Harry had been talking to Jim in her bedroom before he disappeared. It all came back to that room somehow. Julia had been showing them things from that room since the beginning. It was, it seemed, the only place she could contact them, the only place she could come through.

  Emily rose, surprised to find herself steady and calm. Jim had his back to her, and with the day’s dying sunlight so bright in here, he must not have seen her reflection in the window. Walking quietly, she left the sitting room and went upstairs as quickly as she could, thankful now that these stairs were carpeted. She didn’t make a sound all the way up to her bedroom.

  She stood outside the door, amazed again to find herself so cool and composed. When she opened the door, something was going to happen—something permanent and important. She wouldn’t survive it, whatever it was, but she felt at ease. Life, after all, would mean very little now that June was gone, and she might possibly find her.

  After she unlocked and opened the door, however, she found the room just as she and June had left it this morning. The bed was unmade, a few articles of clothing lay on the floor, and two cups of coffee sat at the little work table beside a pile of journals.

  She frowned, closing the door behind her. She’d been certain, was still certain, in fact, that the answer lay somewhere in here. Julia had been giving them clues all along, helping them find the answers. She had to find the newest one.

  She walked slowly through the room, examining everything. Something should be out of place, something should reveal itself, but nothing did. Walking over to the wall that her bedroom now shared with the bathroom, she stood before it, eyes closed, but when she opened them again, it was still only a wall. She ran her fingers over it, expecting to feel something, but it was, as it appeared, simply a wall covered in thick, silk wallpaper.

  Thinking suddenly that the wallpaper might be covering the door, she turned to see if she could find a knife, and then she heard something strange at her feet. She looked down and had to move to the side to see what she’d stepped on: a small puddle on the floor below her feet. When she moved a little more to let the light fall on the floor more clearly, she saw that, rather than a single puddle, there were several of them a foot or so apart. They led to the bedroom door.

  Footprints.

  Without hesitating, she followed them. They disappeared, of course, on the carpeted balcony and stairs, but she found them again downstairs in the marble foyer leading to the front door. It was difficult to tell whether they were going or coming, but she somehow understood that they had gone from inside out.

  Jim had come to the doorway of the sitting room when he heard her, and he frowned when he saw the water on the floor. “Say, what’s that?”

  Without answering, she flung open the front door and started running. Jim shouted in surprise behind her, but she kept going. She’d put on flip-flops this morning, and she slowed very briefly to kick them off before running again with all her might. Jim’s steps were behind her, but they sounded farther and farther away the longer she ran. If she slowed down, if she wavered for even a moment, he would catch her, and this whole thing would be over. She was being given one chance, one single chance, and she would never get it again. She ran and ran, the ground tearing into her feet, past the gardens, and down the path into the woods.

  When it came into view, the door to the pool house gave her a moment’s fright. She was certain Jim would catch up if she had to stop and unlock it. Then, as she came closer, a strange calm certainty ran through her, and she knew she would find it unlocked. She threw the door open and continued, running at the water, pausing only to launch herself into a graceful dive.

  The water was shockingly cold, making her body clench and seize. Rather than pool water, she might have dived into an icy lake. She fought against her instinct to get out of the water and swam toward the bottom of the pool. She hadn’t been in a pool in years, but the rhythm of swimming returned at once. She swam with strength and ease.

  She continued to go down, deep enough that her ears popped. She kept her eyes clenched for fear of stinging them with chlorine but was finally compelled to open them to get her bearings. Around her was deep darkness, and for a moment she was completely disoriented, with no idea which way was up or down. She jerked her head around, peering into the swirling gloom, panic rising, and finally saw, far off in the distance, a tiny pinprick of light. She moved toward it, the light growing stronger the longer she swam. A few moments later she was surfacing, pulling in a great lungful of air and sputtering for breath.

  She put her feet down and stood up. The water barely hit her waist, the depths she’d been swimming in now gone. She wiped her eyes before looking around.

  Margot Lewis sat on the edge of the pool in a lounge chair, alone. Her eyes were closed as if she were either sleeping or trying to sleep, her head tilted back and away from Emily. Unlike the last time Emily had seen her swimming, her swimsuit seemed nearly contemporary, tight and red and revealing. With her face angled upward, it was hard to see how it had changed with time, but her hair was entirely different than during the séance—shoulder-length and curled.

  The room had also changed, appearing now almost as it had in Emily’s era. More chairs sat around the edges of the pool, and the bottom of the pool was tiled, as it was in the future. As Emily brushed the rest of water out of her eyes, she could taste and smell chlorine. She wasn’t sure when chlorine began to be widely used for pools, but all of these things—the tiles, Margot herself, and the chlorine—suggested that a significant amount of time had passed since the murder of Nathan Lewis. If she had to guess, it might be the 1930s or ’40s now.

  She swam to the edge of the pool, frightened that Margot would hear her, but the woman didn’t move. Like last time, no one in this time could hear or see her.

  She pushed herself out of the water and sat on the edge, trembling. Her lungs still felt a little tight and hot from holding her breath so long, and she wasn’t used to that kind of exertion. Between her exercise and her worry for June, she felt an exhaustion so deep and so overwhelming, she wanted to lie down and sleep.

  She eventually made herself stand up, water dripping everywhere. During the séance, Julia had acted as her guide, showing her exactly what she needed to see. Now, though Julia had clearly shown her how to get here through the wet footprints, she wasn’t here. Emily wasn’t sure what she should do
or where she should go.

  The door to the pool house opened, and she flinched, startled. Two men in coveralls walked in and paused near the door. Margot sat up, stretching and thrusting her chest out, and Emily watched the men stare at her from across the pool.

  “Gentlemen?” Margot said eventually, tossing her hair back.

  The oldest man removed his hat. “We have the electricity set up, Miss Lewis. We need to run some tests now.”

  “Good. Please, do whatever you need to. Don’t mind me.”

  She leaned back, closing her eyes again, and the men exchanged bemused glances. They turned and walked to the far wall, where Emily saw, for the first time, that a door was there—the door that led to the steam room. The younger man couldn’t keep his eyes off Margot, and not watching where he was going, he almost tripped over a small pile of construction materials as he walked. The older man turned and gave him a dirty look, and they continued toward the steam-room door.

  Emily walked over in their direction, still wet and dripping, so she could hear what they were whispering about. From their glances in her direction, they were trying not to bother Margot.

  “We should have asked Steve to come along,” the older man whispered, shaking his head. “It’ll be hard to do this without him.”

  The younger man paused, then, also speaking quietly, replied:, “Still, it’s possible. We’ll have to be in there together when it starts up, and then one of us can go outside and make adjustments.”

  The older man sighed. “It’ll take longer that way, but I guess you’re right—it can be done.” He plucked at the canvas coverall. “We should have dressed better, too. Going to sweat our brains out.”

  The younger man glanced at Margot again. “She might not mind if we take ’em off. Seems pretty lonely out here.” He raised his eyebrows up and down a few times and leered.