by Dacre Stoker
As I stood before our house, anxiety washed over me, and I leaned back against the door. I hadn’t been outside in years—I remember how Ma held me tight as she carried me to the side of the house on a beautiful spring day to lie in the grass—I couldn’t have been more than four years old at the time. I remember the vivid color of that April day, the bright scents, the warm breeze. I also remember how terrified I had been when she went back into the house to fetch a pitcher of water. She had been gone only a minute or so, but in that brief time the earth around me seemed to grow wider, the house looked as if it was moving farther and farther away until it was barely visible, and the sky hovering above seemed ready to fall. I wanted nothing more than to go back inside to the safety of my little refuge, to escape this endlessly empty place before it devoured me. When Ma came back, I told her my illness had returned and the aches and pains were too much. The truth, though, was that I simply couldn’t stay out there. She only stared at me, a defeated look in her eyes. When I had begun to cry, she relented and picked me back up and carried me into the house. Until the episode with Thornley at the chicken coop, I would not venture outside again.
Even in the heavy darkness of this late hour the open space grew around me, much too big for a little boy to wander. A vast wilderness that could swallow me whole and leave nothing behind. I wanted to turn back, but I knew I could not.
I drew in a deep breath as Matilda reached for my hand. “We will do this together,” she told me.
I wrapped my fingers around hers and felt her warmth drift through me, bringing with it a sense of calm. I summoned my strength. “We mustn’t let her slip away.”
My eyes drifted to the walls of Artane Castle in the distance. All but the tower was gone, the rest nothing but ruins. The tall monolith reached for the glowering sky and scratched at the clouds, imposing a shadow, long and wide, over the surrounding fields. I knew it had been built by the Hollywood family but knew little else of its history. Much of the stone had been carted away and picked clean over the years. Aside from the tower, only a handful of crumbling walls remained with a small cemetery nestled in the back.
We had been forbidden to enter the castle.
Matilda must have sensed my thoughts, for she squeezed my hand. “She went to the castle, didn’t she?”
“I think so.”
“But how could you know?”
I didn’t answer her. I didn’t have an answer. Much like I knew Nanna Ellen somehow left the house and stole outside, so, too, I simply knew she’d gone to the castle. I did not know her purpose, but I was certain she had gone there. I was dead certain she was there right now.
“Come on,” I said, tugging Matilda’s hand.
Matilda let out a labored sigh and faced the ruins. “Lead the way.”
The moon hung low in the sky and offered only scant light. Although Matilda struggled seeing through the gloom, I had no trouble, and I led us through the quiet town, past the fields, towards the forest and the ruins of Artane Castle. Our home seemed so small behind us that I had to turn away out of fear of the anxiety rearing its ugly head again and preventing me from venturing farther. This time it was Matilda who was pulling me along.
As we neared the tower, the weeds and trees grew thicker. Soon we found ourselves pushing through chest-high coltsfoot and scutch grass. I searched for some kind of path but found none and cursed myself for not bringing a billhook. I had watched Thornley use such a blade to clear the arbor of some spent vines, and although I had never handled anything like it, I felt I could have sliced through this jungle with ease.
While Matilda seemed to be growing fatigued behind me, I became stronger with each step. Part of me wanted to run, but we needed to be cautious; Nanna Ellen might be close by, and we dared not allow her to see us.
I had never been this near to the castle. The tower was far larger than I expected, at least twenty feet wide, maybe more. The stones which made up the façade were enormous gray limestone squares, perfectly stacked, with little gaps between, a marvel of engineering for its day. After hundreds of years, parts of the structure still appeared as if they had been built yesterday. Moss crept up its sides, covering nearly the entire north side from ground to crown. I couldn’t help but gaze up to the top of the tower, dizziness washing over me for standing so close.
There were three windows on this side, none within reach. Archers once perched there, I imagined, picking off enemy soldiers.
When the entrance came into view, Matilda and I crouched low in the tall weeds.
“Is she in there?” Matilda asked, shivering.
The October air had indeed grown chill, and although I wore my wool wrap, my skin still prickled with gooseflesh. Matilda had donned a wrap as well, but the temperature dropped with each inch of the moon’s ascent, and even the warmest of garments could only hold it at bay for so long
“I don’t see her,” I replied.
“Is she in there?” Matilda repeated with a frustration in her voice.
I hadn’t told Matilda outright that I sensed Nanna Ellen’s presence, but I had not exactly hidden the fact, either, and while she may have doubted it earlier, her words now suggested she doubted no more. I myself could not explain how or why I was able to do such a thing, yet there it was, a strange tugging, as if a cord had been tied to Nanna Ellen and she was pulling me along behind her. That pull was accompanied by what could only be described as a tickling at the back of my mind, and as I grew closer to her, that tickling redoubled. It wasn’t uncomfortable; quite the opposite—I found it soothing. This force wanted me to be close to her.
I faced the tower, my gaze tracing the tall formation from bottom to top, pausing at each of the windows not because I could see inside but because the openings somehow made it easier to feel inside. When my eyes reached the top, sight no longer necessary, I closed them and focused my mind on Nanna Ellen. I gripped the invisible cord and pulled myself along hand over hand until I was no longer in the field at the base of the castle, but floating first through the air, then passing through the thick limestone walls to the interior of the building to a winding set of stairs running along the far wall, to Nanna Ellen descending them. I saw her buttoning her cloak as she took the steps, then pulling the hood over her head. She didn’t do this out of protection from the cold but because she didn’t wish to be recognized
“She is coming out,” I told Matilda. While I heard myself saying the words, it seemed as if I weren’t the one saying them. It felt more like I was standing at a distance, watching a boy who looked like me speaking. “She’s coming out now.”
With that, my eyes snapped open, and I pulled Matilda to the ground as Nanna Ellen stepped from the gaping door of the castle out into the night. She was dressed as I had seen her from my bedroom window: a flowing black cloak buttoned at her neck fell nearly to her toes, sweeping over the crackling autumn leaves with a grace that made it appear as if she were floating just above the ground. I pictured her floating exactly like that back in her room at the house, somehow drifting over the floor’s dirt rather than traipsing through it as Matilda and I had. The tugging sensation I had experienced, the tugging that drew me to her, was strongest now, so strong I worried I might be pulled to her side. My left hand squeezed Matilda’s fingers while my right dug into the earth at my side in hopes of finding purchase.
Nanna Ellen paused for a moment at the castle’s yawning mouth, glanced both left and right, then pressed forward down a thin, winding path into the forest. I did not dare speak until she disappeared from sight. “Do we follow her?”
“Into the woods?”
“I’m not sure that we should.” I had never been in the woods before. This was, in fact, the farthest I had ever been from the house. To venture into the woods in the dead of night was foolish. But the cord that tied me to Nanna Ellen grew taut, and I wanted to go, I needed to go, even though I knew it to be the wrong course of action. Yet
with each passing second, I felt Nanna Ellen drifting farther away.
For the first time, I wondered: If I can feel her nearby, can she feel me?
“I want to know where she’s going,” Matilda said. She shivered again, and I knew we must move.
I nodded; there really was no other answer but to follow.
We stood, and I led Matilda from the weeds to the mouth of the castle. If the air was cold outside, the air drifting from the castle was colder still. I gave its wide doorway a quick glance, then pulled Matilda down the path into the woods, leaving our world behind.
* * *
• • •
NANNA ELLEN moved fast.
Only minutes had passed since she disappeared from view, but it felt as if she had journeyed for miles. The cord that bound us was unraveling, yet I grasped it, with little regard for the distance growing between Matilda and me and home. Matilda was silent beside me, her fingers wrapped in mine, as she accompanied me down the narrow, winding path.
All around us, the ash trees loomed. Most of their leaves had been shed, but the bare branches left behind were so thick that the moon had to fight to find the ground. Between the ash, rusty willow trees filled the gaps with thick gnarled boughs dotted with catkins. Weasels ran along them, eyeing us curiously, and I spotted no fewer than three owls studying us from above.
Moss grew on nearly every surface, creating a blanket of green over the large boulders and roots. The ground was damp, so much so that my shoes sunk in slightly, a sucking sound accompanying each step. We would need to wash them thoroughly upon our return home; if Ma saw our shoes in such a state, she would surely figure out where we’d been—and, like the castle, these woods are forbidden. And what would she say to me about being so far from my bed?
“Can you see where you’re going?” Matilda asked.
“You cannot?”
Matilda shook her head. “I can barely see you.”
I thought she was jesting, but the look on her face told me otherwise; her eyes were wide, her face pale with fear. She didn’t see the little animals scurrying about around us or the dark beauty of this place; her worried gaze was fixed on me.
I glanced around at our surroundings and realized I saw nearly as well as I did in full daylight. Even in the shadows at the base of the trees, I had no trouble spying the grubs feasting on rotted wood or the worms writhing in the black soil at our feet. I could even see tiny black ants crawling up the moss-riddled trunk of an elm tree nearly ten paces ahead of us.
“We need to keep moving,” I told her. “Just stay close.”
As we pressed on, a thin mist began to fill the air, and a stray wind drifted through the forest—initially only a mild breeze, but a few minutes later it gained strength, and a gust tore past us. The collar of my coat flapped against my cheeks, and I pulled Matilda closer. She wanted to go back, I sensed that much, but she would never speak the words aloud; her will was too strong. I often heard the fall winds whistle past my room, but I had never once stood in their midst; I found it exhilarating. The forest was alive around us; from the creatures to the swaying trees, I felt the forces of nature in the night air, the delicate balance of life and death.
The mist grew heavier as we continued down the path, swirling around us on the tail of the wind. It wasn’t long before even I had trouble seeing more than a few feet in either direction. The mist reeked of dampness and the briny sea, no doubt the peat that flourished in abundance in this region and the harbor not so far off. I filled my lungs, breathing better now than I could ever recall.
I couldn’t help but laugh—and the moment I did I regretted it, for Matilda stared at me as if I were a loon.
“It just feels good to be outside, that’s all,” I said, more to convince myself than her, but neither of us believed it. Something had changed within me; both she and I were aware of it, and it was then that I saw something in my sister’s eyes I never hoped to see, something no brother ever hopes to see—
Fear.
Whether fear of me or fear of what she felt had altered within me, I could not be sure.
Her eyes squinted against the strengthening wind, and this time it was she who turned away and pressed on down the path with me in tow, her once-warm hand now clammy.
We continued on for nearly twenty full minutes, our feet digging into the muddy earth with each step as the wind struggled to hold us back. The forceful gale howled at us as it weaved in and out of the trees, a demented specter no way bound to this earth. From high and low the air cursed, pushing and pulling with such fearsome force I nearly lost my footing more than once; if not for Matilda at my side, I would have surely fallen.
Was the forest trying to turn us around?
I wanted to dismiss the thought, but it grasped my mind and held firm. Could a forest prevent someone from entering? I thought not, for even though a forest does live, it lacks consciousness or free will.
With that, the wind kicked up around us, and Matilda stumbled; I pulled her close and kept her from the mud at our feet, nearly falling in the process.
And if a forest couldn’t prevent someone from entering, what about something dwelling within it?
The cord that bound me to Nanna Ellen suddenly grew taut once again, and I knew she was close.
A break in the mist revealed a large clearing before us. We came upon this place so fast there was little time to react. I pulled Matilda to the ground with me. She let out a soft cry, but my hand cupped over her mouth before any sound escaped. With my other hand, I pointed.
Nanna Ellen stood about twenty feet in front of us beneath a large willow tree. Twisted branches reached not only towards the sky but also out over the green peat-filled waters of a bog that began at the tree’s base and disappeared somewhere in the distance, the edge lost in the thick mist. Moss dripped all around, the brown of the tree trunk nearly lost beneath.
It was then that the wind ceased. Although I heard it howling through the trees at our backs, this place somehow escaped its wrath.
Another owl stared down at us from high above, eyes big and black, glistening in the thin moonlight.
Nanna Ellen had her back to us, and I watched as she removed her hood and let her hair tumble to her shoulders. Something was wrong, though. Her hair was not the curly blond locks so familiar to us; instead, it was wiry and gray, and even at a distance appeared brittle and thin, patches of scalp clearly visible.
If Nanna Ellen knew we were there, she paid us no mind. She reached up to the clasp at her neck and unfastened the cloak, allowing it to puddle at her feet. She wore a thin white nightdress beneath, and nothing else. Her arms and legs were exposed, and I nearly gasped aloud. Her flesh was old and wrinkled, hanging limply from the bones and covered in the deep-blue veins of a much older woman. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought her to be a grandmother of seventy years or more instead of the young woman I had known my entire life.
Matilda saw, too, for the mist had retreated to the nether reaches of the bog, and she clutched my forearm so tightly that I thought her nails would draw blood.
Nanna Ellen stepped from her cloak and walked into the waters of the bog. At first, the water only reached her ankles, but then she seemed to find a steep drop, and within a step it flowed past her knees; another step, and it found her waist. The white nightdress ballooned around her as she ventured yet another step, then another. With the next step, water embraced her shoulders, yet she continued forward. A moment later, she was gone, her head disappearing beneath the surface. The bubbling water had closed over her, leaving nothing behind save a thin ripple playing over the surface.
Beside me, Matilda drew a deep breath.
I scanned the surface of the calm water, awaiting her reappearance. For an anxious minute, I watched, then another minute. I began to get nervous, for nobody could hold their breath for so long. When a third minute passed, I stood and steppe
d forth from concealment into the clearing with Matilda at my back.
“Has she drowned? Has she taken her own life?” she asked.
I shook my head, even though I had no answer to offer. I could no longer sense Nanna Ellen’s presence. She hadn’t swum away; the bog was large, but not so large we would not see her break the surface at some point.
I looked out over the bog for any sign of life and found none. The location she went under was still. A thick layer of peat covered the surface, sealing the water from the night as if nothing had ever disturbed it. The remainder of the bog was much of the same. Had she come up for air, surely we would have spied her, but there was no sign.
“Should I go in after her?”
“You don’t know how to swim,” Matilda pointed out. “And neither do I.”
I quickly made my way over to the willow tree and plucked a dead branch from near the base. Nearly six feet long and about an inch thick, it snapped off with little effort. I returned to the shore of the bog and used it to stir the surface of the water where she had disappeared. The peat moss was thick at the surface, and I thought the stick would break under the pressure, but it held. I forced the moss aside. The water underneath was opaque, black, more like oil than water, and each tap of the stick sent out slow ripples in all directions.
“Can you see her?” Matilda asked. She stood on her toes, trying to peer out into the water, but with little luck.
Although she was a year older, I was taller, but my height did little good here. I saw nothing beneath the surface. “How long has it been?”
Matilda said, “Five minutes, maybe more. I’m not sure.”
“Maybe I should try throwing in a rock?”
“What good will that do?”
“I don’t know.” A dragonfly began buzzing around my head, and I swatted it away.
“That couldn’t have been her,” Matilda said.