Gnarled Hollow

by Charlotte Greene

  “Go ahead. It’s not locked.”

  June met her eyes once, and then she opened the door.

  It was the artists’ studio Emily had seen before, but much altered. The chaise lounge, which had been in the center of the room, was gone, and the whole place had an air of decay—the floors dusty, the curtains tattered. The easels, however, were here, and although Emily couldn’t be sure, it almost seemed as if there were more of them than the last time she’d been here. Each one had a painting in progress on it, and June strode to the nearest one to examine it, bending over so close her nose almost touched the canvas. Mark and Jim had come into the room by this point, and they were both smiling when June turned around, obviously stunned.

  “These are by the same artist—the one I haven’t identified yet, not Nathan.”

  Mark pointed at an enormous paint box on a table nearby. “Mystery solved.”

  June and Emily walked over to it, and there, in clear, bold letters, was a name: Julia Lewis. June let out a quick laugh and spun around to Mark.

  “Julia? But how?”

  Emily, however, suddenly remembered the gift. Julia had given her older brother his box of old lead soldiers, but she’d repainted them. She laughed at the memory and reminded the others about that part of her vision.

  “Sure, but that doesn’t explain all of this!” June said, gesturing around the room. “Painting toys is one thing, but these are masterpieces!”

  Emily shrugged. “But remember—Nathan created most of the paintings that are still in the house before he went to art school. Maybe Julia learned how to do it too, or he might have taught her.”

  June seemed thoughtful. “I’ve also been thinking, from what you told me, that their father, and maybe their grandfather, were also painters. I’d almost put money on it.” She shook her head, clearly dumbfounded. “It’s almost hard to believe.”

  “But when?” Emily asked Jim and Mark. “When did she have time to do all this? She was locked in the attic for years.”

  Jim shrugged. “She might have done it before they put her up there.”

  “Or that friendly nurse might have let her in here once in a while, or maybe her doctor. Art therapy—something like that.”

  “Amazing,” June said. She was, like Mark and Jim, clearly excited now, the remains of her fear discarded in the thrill of the find. June would most likely devote the rest of the summer to tracking down the rest of the proof she needed to publish a paper on the talented Lewis family. Their art had been essentially lost out here in the woods, and now the world would know about them. There was, in fact, enough work here for a book, and the shiny gleam in June’s eyes suggested that she realized this fact. The revelation of this find would be incredible, earth-shaking in her field. June could easily curate show after show of these paintings in museums and galleries around the world. It would be a sensation.

  “When did all of this happen?” Emily suddenly asked. “When June and I left, the house was like it used to be.”

  Jim and Mark shared a look, and something like guilt replaced their smiles. After a moment, Mark gestured for Jim to explain. Jim still seemed worried, but he finally sighed.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “We didn’t want to tell you, actually,” Mark added.

  “What?” June asked.

  They shared another guilty look, and again, Mark indicated that Jim could go on. Jim met both of their eyes before speaking. “It will sound crazy, at first. But on the other hand, it worked, so who are we to say it was crazy?”

  A low anxiety began to build inside Emily. Obviously they’d done something dangerous and were ashamed of themselves.

  Again, Jim hesitated, and finally Mark spoke. “We had another séance.”

  “In the steam room,” Jim added.

  June flushed with anger. “Are you fucking insane! You did that without anyone here? What if something had happened? What if you’d gotten locked in there!”

  Jim held his hands up. “Wait, June, let me finish. I should have said we tried to have a séance.”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “Or, at least we thought it didn’t. We were out there, just the two of us. We went out around four in the afternoon, like last time.”

  Mark sighed. “We took the hanging bowl with us, and the lead soldier, like last time, and we closed the door.”

  “Are you kidding me?” June said, almost screaming.

  Again, Jim held up his hands. “Jesus, June, let me finish.”

  June looked as if she might yell again, but she shut her mouth, face red with the effort of holding her tongue. Finally, Jim spoke again. “We wanted to ask about the house, ask what could be done to make it return to normal.”

  Mark said, “I called on Julia, mostly, and Nathan, but nothing happened. I asked them to show us how to heal the house. I asked them what was wrong with it. Jim told me some of the phrases Lara had used during her séance, so I tried to make myself sound like her when I asked for their guidance. I called on them three times, like she did.”

  Jim shrugged. “Nothing happened. I didn’t even feel weird. A little scared, maybe, but that was all.”

  “So how did it change? The house, I mean?” Emily asked.

  Jim grinned again. “It just changed. After the séance, Mark and I walked back to the house, and it had gone back to the way it was before, back to normal.”

  “That’s all?” June asked. She sounded a little calmer, but she still appeared upset.

  Mark shook his head. “I can’t explain it, but yes.”

  “A little anticlimactic,” she said, her expression finally losing some of its anger.

  “I know!” Jim laughed. “That’s a first for this place. Usually the house seems to like a bit of drama. Some flair.”

  “When do you suppose it changed? Became smaller?” Emily asked.

  Mark held up a finger. “That, at least, I can answer.” He went over to the coffee table, which was covered in stacks of papers. He riffled through them and then held two small paperclipped piles out for Emily. “These took me forever to find, but I knew they had to be somewhere. I found them in different part of the archive this week at the library.”

  “What are they?” she asked, taking the two stacks.

  “Fire-insurance forms. One from 1920 and the other from 1930. The house had to be surveyed both times.”

  Emily scanned the older one, noted the square footage, and then scanned the next. The house had shrunk. There was even a short paragraph in the later, 1930 document, that noted the change, but the surveyor seemed to suggest that the previous person had simply made mistakes, or, at least, that’s what he wrote on the form. Goodness knows what he thought when he realized how much smaller the interior of the house was from the outside, or the fact that rooms were missing.

  She met Mark’s eyes. “So you think—”

  “I think the house shrank, closed in on itself, if you will, when Julia killed herself. I think it’s been hiding all this time, or maybe Julia’s been hiding it, until the truth could come out.”

  “She was waiting for us,” June said. Everyone turned to her, and Emily was scared by the strange, distant look in her eyes. June’s face was white, pupils dilated. She seemed dazed, almost in a trance. Emily was afraid to reach out to her, but when she did, touching June’s shoulder, the expression faded almost immediately, and June shook her head a couple of times as if to clear it. She frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  Emily and the others shared a look. She held out a hand, and June took it and squeezed her fingers.

  “Nothing,” Emily said.

  A moment later, everyone jumped when the front door opened. The doors to the sitting room were wide open, and Lara and an older woman came inside. The older woman was red-faced, waving a paper fan on her face. Her clothes were raucous and vivid, but clearly well-made, maybe even designer.

  “Jesus, this heat!” she said, and Emily recognized her voice. It was Ruth Bigsby.

  Ruth sp
otted them and brightened. She held her arms up and came into the room, hugging each of the others before stopping in front of Emily. Emily had braced herself for a hug and was puzzled that Ruth didn’t offer her one right away. Instead, Ruth stared at her critically, almost as if she were searching for something in Emily’s face. Finally, she smiled and pulled her into a bone-crunching embrace.

  “Sorry about that,” Ruth said after she stepped away. “I meant to be a good sport, but it’s hard. I can’t believe it. At first, I thought I should be angry. And I was, for all of a minute—Lara will tell you. I even broke my favorite mug when I heard. But like I said, with the government on my back like it is, I realized that maybe it’s a good thing. Those taxes were going to kill me.”

  Emily was baffled, and June seemed lost as well. Lara suddenly laughed. “Oh gosh, that’s right. You don’t know yet. I thought these guys would have let you in on it by now.”

  “We wanted you to tell them,” Mark said, grinning.

  Ruth was clearly confused, and then her eyebrows shot into her hair. Ruth stared at her, clearly stunned. “My God! Do you mean to say you don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  Ruth laughed and then held up a hand. She went back to the large purse she’d dropped and bent down, digging around in it. After mumbling and fumbling through it, she threw aside a silk scarf and then pulled out a large file folder, stuffed with paper. She stood straight and returned to Emily, holding out the file. Emily took it, still confused, and then Ruth dug in her pocket. A moment later, her hand came out, holding a ring of keys. Again, Emily took them, confused.

  “What are these for? What’s in this folder?”

  Mark stepped closer and put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s your inheritance.”

  Ruth held up her hands. “Well, technically, it’s your mother’s inheritance, at least while she’s alive.”

  June’s eyes had grown huge, and her hand went to her mouth. Emily, however, was still lost. “I don’t understand.”

  Mark put both his hands on her shoulders and squeezed them, lightly. “This is your house, Emily. Nathan Lewis, your great-great-grandfather, left it to your great-grandmother, Hilda, your mother’s grandmother. You’re the heir to Gnarled Hollow.”

  Epilogue

  The applause was thunderous. People leapt to their feet as if they’d just watched an opera. The five of them had spoken for about twenty minutes each, but June’s stunning presentation on the Lewis family artwork had thrilled their audience the most.

  Eight months ago, when they’d all parted at the end of summer, Emily had felt homesick for the others. She and June were together, of course, making June’s little apartment their new home, but she often wondered what the others were doing. Even Chris, who’d been at the house only a short while, seemed like family now. She’d been afraid that, given enough time, the connection among the five of them would be lost, the drama and excitement of the summer gradually forgotten. The academic school year, with its chaos of activity, had a way of erasing the past.

  Then, in November, Mark called her. They’d emailed once or twice since they’d parted in August, but they hadn’t spoken, so she was thrilled to hear his voice again, and even more excited at his proposal. He wanted to hold a series of lectures at various academic venues around the country. All five of them could present their current work on the Lewis family and Gnarled Hollow. The lectures would act, in part, as a means of introducing their forthcoming publications and get people excited about them.

  The series had been an immediate success. They’d started in January, first in Los Angeles, on Jim’s campus. The lecture had been so well received, they’d been asked to give it again the next day. They’d moved on from there to Seattle in February, and already by then, acclaim had spread. Once again, they’d given their lecture twice, back-to-back, to a full house of a few hundred students and scholars.

  For their lecture today in New York, the last one of the tour, they’d reserved a much-larger venue, hoping to circumvent the need to do it twice. The end of the academic year was near, and she, June, and Jim could ill afford more than a weekend away from their jobs on the West Coast. Even with the additional space and seating, however, people were standing at the back of the room, and some had to sit in the aisles. Students and scholars were in attendance, as well as the general public.

  They’d decided to end, rather than begin, their tour here, partly because June’s first curated exhibit of the Lewis artwork would be here in the city this summer. It was opening in mid-May at a large American art museum. Once she and Emily finished grading their students’ finals back in Seattle, they would return to New York for the opening reception before going to their second home at Gnarled Hollow for the summer. Many of the people in the audience that day had come specifically for a preview of the art, none of which had been shown to the public before that day.

  June, still at the podium, was flushed with happiness at the applause, and she took a slight bow before returning to her seat at the table with Emily and the others. They’d asked everyone to hold their questions until the end of the lectures, so it came as no surprise that most of the questions from the audience were directed at June, who’d spoken last.

  She explained that she had been able to detect the work of four different artists, one from the era in which the house had first been built, one in the later nineteenth century, and those she’d already known—Nathan and Julia. She’d initially believed that the oldest paintings had been created by Nathan and Julia’s paternal grandfather, Roger Lewis, but subsequent research had revealed that, in fact, it was their paternal grandmother, Claudia, who had been the first Lewis artist. She had trained her son, Nathan and Julia’s father, and he in turn trained Nathan. How Julia came to be such a prolific and sensational painter was still a mystery June had to solve, but she suggested to the audience that she might have been self-taught.

  After some silence, June had to field some technical questions about paint types and carbon dating before someone finally remembered the other people sitting next to June.

  Mark answered several questions about the house, including more detailed answers about the architect, whom he had finally tracked down. While some of Mark’s conclusions about the house were theoretical, he did have proof now that the architect had made similar mistakes when he’d designed other houses. Roger Lewis had requested a Queen Anne home in the American style, and the architect had, instead, interpreted the request as a British-style home. The house had been mostly completed by the time the mistake was caught, and the subsequent lawsuit had bankrupted the bumbling architect. He’d died a pauper in Rochester, humiliated and forgotten despite leaving a legacy of gorgeous homes, including his masterpiece at Gnarled Hollow.

  After this, Chris fielded a couple of questions related to the gardens, and then Emily and Jim were asked, at length, about the new Lewis novel coming out next autumn. Jim projected his slides of the journals up on the large overheard screen again, showing once more how he and Emily had decoded them. Even now, he explained, they’d only gotten through about half of the Margot Lewis journals, which suggested that yet another novel might be hidden in the others.

  Twenty minutes later, after the chair of their panel had suggested they start wrapping up, she asked for one final question. Emily saw plenty of arms go into the air, but the student helper, who had been walking around with a microphone, clearly worn out or bored, passed it to the nearest arm.

  The man stood, and Emily was stunned to see her old boss, the chair of her previous department.

  “Hi, Emily,” he said. Even from across the room, she could tell that his face had gone beet red from all the eyes turned his way.

  She leaned forward to her mic. “Hi, Greg.”

  The crowd gave a light, awkward chuckle at their informality, and Greg’s face remained bright with embarrassment. He cleared his throat. “Um, from what you and Jim Peters have suggested, most of your upcoming publications pertain to the new fiction you’ve
found in the Lewis journals.”

  “Correct. That’s our focus for now.”

  “Are you thinking of writing a biography of Margot Lewis? It seems, in some ways, like you’re the ideal candidate. After all, you’re related.”

  The crowd engaged in a lot of hushed and whispered conversation, and the room filled with a confused buzz of voices. Emily waited until it had died down a little, raising her hand for silence.

  “For those of you that don’t know, I found out last summer that I am in fact related to Margot Lewis.”

  Jim eagerly leaned forward to his mic. “That’s right, people. You’re looking at the descendent of Nathan Lewis.”

  Emily elbowed him playfully during more quiet laughter. A light patter of applause broke out at their silliness, and Emily rolled her eyes at him before leaning into her mic again.

  “To answer your question, Greg, yes, I am working on a biography. However, my focus is not just Margot, but also her siblings.”

  She and Jim had translated Margot’s earliest, 1918-1919 journal together last summer before the school year began. As expected, they found a wealth of information detailing the twisted actions of Margot Lewis—a full confession of everything that had happened between when her brother returned from university, the resumption of their affair, and the murder after learning about the baby.

  Further research had revealed more evidence of what they found in the journal. Mark had uncovered a coroner’s report for Nathan, some psychiatric records on Julia, and a letter detailing some payments Margot Lewis had provided to keep her sister locked up despite the doctor’s eventual misgivings. Emily had also managed to track down the descendants of the two servants that had witnessed the siblings’ incestuous affair. As far as Emily and the others were concerned, they had all the evidence they needed to prove Margot Lewis was a psychopathic killer.

  Greg seemed confused. “Why? I mean, why include them in the biography?”