A Dark and Starless Forest

by Sarah Hollowell

  Brooke and Elle are cooking. When Frank isn’t here for breakfast, we tend to default to cereal, but when he is, it’s a full home-cooked meal. I walk over to the kitchen island to get a peek at what they’re making. Elle is chopping her way through a cantaloupe. Brooke is at the stove, making what smells like eggs.

  Brooke turns, sees me, and purses her lips. Elle remains uncharacteristically silent, but with a very characteristic smug smile on her face.

  After making sure Frank has his back turned to us, Brooke starts signing angrily. ‘Are you very stupid?’ she asks. ‘What were you thinking?’

  Great. I was right that Elle wouldn’t tell Frank I snuck out. I just didn’t think about her telling Brooke.

  ‘I thought I saw something from my window,’ I sign, giving the same excuse I gave to Elle. Brooke, however, wants the explanation more than she wants to have caught me, so that’s not enough. She just stares at me, eyebrows raised expectantly. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I was at my window and I thought I saw Jane or someone in the forest. I didn’t think. I just ran for it. It was reckless, and I’m sorry.’

  Before Brooke can scold me further, Frank says, “How’s breakfast coming?” He hasn’t looked up from his newspaper.

  “Almost there,” Elle says. She piles the cantaloupe into a bowl and sets it on the table. “Over easy on the eggs, right? Toast well-done?” She knows the answer. We all know the answer. He’s never changed it. It’s almost a compulsion for her, wanting the pleasure of Frank knowing she knows.

  “Yes, thank you,” he says.

  “Derry, will you finish up the toast?” Elle asks. The toaster chimes, signaling that the latest batch is done. Because it’s Elle who asked, I almost say no.

  But Brooke is still glaring at me. I need to get back in her good graces as quickly as possible. I take on toast duty, carefully extracting the slices and putting them on plates already stacked with a dozen pieces. A last round of four and we’ll be good to go. Once I’ve pressed down the levers—the dial on the right turned almost all the way up for Frank—I’m just standing awkwardly at the counter while Brooke angrily scoops out the scrambled eggs that will be for me, Winnie, Violet, and the little twins, and checks on the eggs in other pans. Elle, humming, pours drinks. Coffee for Frank, tea for Brooke, Irene, Violet, and herself, orange juice for the rest of us. I spring into action to carry glasses of juice to the table.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” I say, then scurry out.

  Maybe if Brooke just can’t see me for a little bit, her anger will tone down. Brooke doesn’t get angry often. She doesn’t start fights, she inserts herself calmly between the fighting parties and de-escalates.

  Not often being angry doesn’t mean she’s not skilled at it. On the rare occasions Brooke is angry . . .

  Well. That’s why I’m trying out my own de-escalation.

  Even though I don’t actually have to pee, I sit on the toilet and count slowly to ten. I wash my hands. When I return to the kitchen, Violet and the little twins are helping to load and distribute plates, and Frank’s put his newspaper down. I take my seat. I don’t look at Brooke. I don’t look at anyone.

  Who else did Elle tattle to? Did she just go to Brooke, or did she gather everyone for a little meeting to detail my indiscretions? I know she didn’t tell Winnie, because Winnie sure wouldn’t have been that nice in the bathroom.

  After everyone has had a few minutes to eat, Frank takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and places it on the table. “Today’s schedule,” he says. “Who wants to copy it onto the whiteboard?”

  Following our own private chore wheel, Violet raises their hand.

  “Wonderful. Once you’re finished eating, of course.” He clears his throat. “I think a good deep clean of the house could really help us clear our minds. I’ve written down everything that should get done today, and some suggested assignments.” Not really suggestions, of course. If he wrote that I should do the dishes and found Irene doing them instead, we’d both be on his mental bad list for the day.

  Next, Frank points a finger at me. “Derry. After breakfast, we’re going to go out into the forest.” A few eyebrows shoot up around the table at this announcement.

  “Can we go?” Olivia asks immediately. “We can help!”

  Frank smiles at her. “Sorry, kiddo, this is a special assignment.” He winks at me, like we have a true partnership. “Derry, don’t think it gets you out of doing chores. We should be back by lunch, and afterwards I want you on linen duty.”

  We pass the paper around to see our part in the day’s schedule, to see who has dishes, who’s on sweeping and vacuuming, who’s stuck with the bathrooms.

  “Look good?” Frank asks, as if there’s an option other than smiling and nodding.

  I eat fast. Frank won’t leave any sooner than he wants to, but I’m feeling eager to get away from Brooke’s accusing stares and Elle’s quietly smug smile and the growing confusion among the rest of my siblings. It’s becoming clear that Elle only told Brooke. Everyone else just gets to be concerned about what’s happening between us.

  The moment my plate’s in the sink, I sprint upstairs to change. I’m not alone. Brooke is close behind with Elle and Winnie.

  ‘Did you really see something?’ Brooke asks as soon as we’re in my room. ‘Is that why you went out?’

  ‘Went out?’ Winnie asks. ‘What’s going on? What were you talking about before breakfast?’

  ‘Derry’s been sneaking out to the forest by herself,’ Elle answers.

  The wounded expression on Winnie’s face makes my stomach twist with guilt. She hides it quickly behind her usual scowl, and that only makes it worse.

  ‘You make it sound like I do it all the time. I did it once.’

  ‘Plus the night Jane disappeared,’ Elle adds.

  ‘Yeah, because I was following her. Like last night, except last night, it was nothing. I thought I saw something from my window. I was tired and wasn’t thinking straight. For all I know, it was just moonlight and trees rustling around in the wind.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Winnie asks. I know now that I wasn’t the only one feeling the opportunity for us to trade vulnerabilities. She’d been waiting for me to answer her call, and now she’s finding out just how much I ignored it.

  I throw up my hands, that stomach-twisting guilt coming out as exasperation and anger. ‘It was nothing!’ I sign nothing particularly vigorously, my loosely closed hands pulling apart and punching the air on either side of me. ‘I thought I saw something, I went outside, I was wrong. There’s nothing to tell!’ I jam a pointed finger toward the door. ‘Interrogation time is over. Please, leave me alone.’

  It takes real effort to ask politely instead of screaming GET OUT. It’s what I want to do. I want to scream and I want everyone to just leave me alone and give me a second of silence.

  But whatever’s happening, I can’t take it out on my sisters.

  Brooke whips around and leaves with the sharp slaps of her bare feet on hardwood. This is definitely not the last I’ll be hearing from her on the matter. Elle follows her. Winnie hangs back. Our eyes meet. The vulnerability is gone from her eyes. I’ve brought the anger in. With each heartbeat, her little pet poltergeist rustles her hair with more force. I look away first.

  “Have fun in the forest,” she says, making it sound like a curse. Then she’s gone.

  I close the door, and slump against it. I cover my eyes with the heels of my hands, pressing in until the black becomes polluted with pinpricks of light and color.

  I’ll have to apologize. The pestering still makes me want to explode, but I know why they were pestering me. They’re worried. I would be, too.

  I’ll have to apologize, and I’ll have to tell the whole truth to everyone so that they can stop worrying. It’ll be easier on them if they know the details. I’ll tell them.

  Later. After the forest.

  I put on my customary outside-with-Frank outfit. It’s different from what I’d wear
on my own. Frank likes us to be protected from bugs and sunburn and poison ivy and all the other little harms that live outside. So, jeans, T-shirt, the sneakers that live in the shoe cubby downstairs, a quick slathering of sunscreen over my arms and face.

  Frank is already waiting at the front door when I get downstairs. He flashes me a patient smile, as if I’m late but he’s gracious enough to forgive me.

  “Let’s get going,” he says. “It’ll be best if we can do this before it gets too hot.”

  He watches as I pull on my shoes. When we go out in secret, we go barefoot. It’s easier to clean feet than it is to clean shoes. The sneakers I’m tying—white when they were given to me, glamoured a deep purple by Violet some years ago—aren’t even usually worn when we go out with Frank, not unless it’s too cold for bare feet but not snowy enough to bring out the snow boots.

  I flex my toes uncomfortably inside the sneakers. The shoes still fit, but it’s more than a little claustrophobic to have my feet contained by something so unyielding. The most I’m used to is the fluffy socks I basically live in once it gets cold.

  Outside, the first thing Frank does is douse me in bug spray. I hold my breath at the first hiss of aerosol, but it somehow still gets in my mouth. It always gets in my mouth and makes the whole world briefly chemical.

  “I wanted to start where you saw Jane last,” he says. He gestures around to the circle of forest around us. “I know that it can be disorienting, especially at night, but do you know where she was?”

  I point across the lake. “It was near the dock. I’ll be able to tell a little better once we’re there.”

  Frank leads the way. When we’re closer, I try to direct him to the exact spot where I followed Jane into the forest.

  “So you saw her run in,” Frank says as we navigate through the trees, “but that was the last time?”

  “Yeah.” I walk ahead of him. “I think I was about here when I stopped.”

  “This is where you had the feeling you talked about, that Jane’s alive? Do you feel it now?”

  I don’t respond because the girl suddenly appears a few feet behind Frank. She only has eyes for him, and those eyes are full of fury.

  I clear my throat. Her glower doesn’t falter. “Yes,” I say. My voice quivers, and I clear my throat again. I look at Frank and only Frank, even as her anger grows in my peripheral vision like a gathering storm. “I felt it as soon as we walked in. She’s here, somewhere.”

  Frank looks over his shoulder. “What are you looking at?” he asks.

  It doesn’t surprise me that he can’t see her. I’m more surprised he can’t feel her.

  I’m about to answer him, but the girl’s mouth opens, and she screams. It rips out of her throat like something broken and wild. I clap my hands over my ears as my eyes water with the primal force of her yell.

  And then she’s not behind Frank anymore. She’s in front of me, inches from me, shouting, “Get him out get him out GET HIM OUT GET HIM OUT!”

  I grab Frank’s arm and I run. It’s probably only the shock that makes him follow instead of pulling me back and standing his ground. Once we’re back in the sunlight, I let go. In the aftermath, my hand is tingling unpleasantly, knowing I touched something I shouldn’t.

  “What the fuck was that.” Frank’s face is red and contorted, but his anger can’t match the girl’s. For a brief moment, I look at Frank, aware that I’ll be lucky if I don’t get an hour in time-out when we get back, and instead of being terrifying, he seems . . . petty. Compared to the girl’s bone-shattering, heart-rending scream, Frank’s anger at being dragged from the forest feels so totally inconsequential.

  But the moment is brief. It dissipates and leaves fear in its wake.

  “I, uhm—I felt something. But . . . bad. A bad something.” I close my eyes tight for a second. That sounded so stupid. “I felt Jane, like I said. She’s there. She’s lost, but she’s alive. But there’s something else in the forest with her, and it was angry. Violently, violently angry.” I shudder. I don’t know if the girl would have hurt me or just Frank, or if she could even touch either of us, but I don’t ever want to find out. “It hit me like—like a train. I panicked.”

  The red in Frank’s face is fading, but only because his expression is turning stony.

  “Clearly, it was a mistake to allow you this much leeway,” he says coldly. “I should have predicted that it would be overwhelming for you. Combined with Jane’s loss, well . . .” He shakes his head. The look he gives me is still tinged with anger, but there’s something else, too—pity? “I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t have taken your . . . feelings so seriously. Maybe we should be talking to Dr. Sam about new medications if you’re having these kinds of—” He rolls a hand in the air, searching for the word. “—​emotional hallucinations. Delusions. It’s not a good sign, Derry. It could make a person think that you’re broken.”

  “I’m not,” I whisper.

  Now it’s definitely pity on Frank’s face. “It’s possible to be so broken that you can’t see it. Only the people around you can.”

  I think about how I did something so beyond the pale that Elle even briefly considered telling Frank I’d snuck out, which would require revealing the tunnel. I think about how I worried Brooke into anger, how I betrayed Winnie’s trust, how I’m sure I would have actually screamed if they hadn’t left my room when they did.

  Am I broken?

  Frank doesn’t speak on the walk back to the house. He doesn’t say anything at all until I’ve taken off my sneakers and stored them back in the cubby. Even then all he says is, “Go change. Get on linen duty.”

  So I do.

  Linen duty is straightforward, but not my favorite. I like the chores where I can stay in one place and really get into a rhythm. Dishes, for instance, or folding laundry.

  Linen duty is an all-over-the-house sort of chore. I go from bedroom to bedroom, removing sheets and pillowcases and tossing them out into the hallway. Frank leaves his outside his door.

  I spend a long time staring at Jane’s bed, uncertain if it’s better to leave it unmade so that I can pretend she’ll walk back in at any moment, or to strip it and put on new linens so it’s fresh and clean when she returns.

  It could make a person think that you’re broken.

  Find me.

  I don’t have it in me to make that choice. That’s a job for Future Derry.

  All of those linens then have to be taken down to the basement, where the washer and dryer are, and the process of cycling through the multiple loads it will take to clean them all begins. Meanwhile, I go back to the ground floor and the linen closet and distribute clean sheets and pillowcases for everyone. I don’t have to put them all on, at least—just leave them neatly folded by their beds—or, in Frank’s case, outside his door.

  Depending on Frank’s mood, whoever’s on linen duty can sometimes spend the rest of the afternoon in the basement with a book while everything’s going through the machines. It’s my favorite part of my least favorite chore. There’s something peaceful about sitting on the cold stone floor with a book in my hands and the washer and dryer rumbling beside me. It requires a good mood from Frank, though, because otherwise he’ll get upset at you for being lazy.

  I’m guessing that, considering how everything went in the forest, Frank’s mood will not be on my side today.

  Instead, after each load switch, I go back upstairs and check the whiteboard. It takes up a huge part of the kitchen wall it’s mounted on. Down one side, magnets spell out MORNING, AFTERNOON, and EVENING. More magnets line the top, giving us each a column labeled with our name, and one “Miscellaneous” column. Each chore from Frank’s paper has been recorded in Violet’s neat handwriting. Violet separated them by his suggested assignments. Any leftovers go in “Miscellaneous.”

  Linen duty was my only assigned chore, so, to stay under the radar and to get back on Frank’s good side, I tackle the “Miscellaneous” column between laundry loads—organizing t
he Tupperware. Checking the pantry for anything that’s expired. Checking the levels of all our cleaning products and toiletries, to see if anything should be added to the shopping list. I cross each one off as it’s completed. I dedicate my day to being unobtrusive and productive.

  One by one throughout the day, Brooke finds us and prods us into showering. It’s easy to forget something like “showering” between chores and missing sisters.

  She doesn’t forget about me. Mercifully, she also doesn’t question me about the forest or anything else. She just shoves me into the upstairs bathroom with a pair of clean pajamas and closes the door.

  I wash my face and brush my teeth, and get into the shower. The moment I feel warm water on my skin I’m transported. I’m somewhere where we’re all whole and together. When I’m out, Jane will be in our room. She’ll be putting her pillows into the fresh cases I dropped off, and her bed will be made with a freakishly perfect neatness. She’ll roll her eyes at how carelessly I make mine, and I’ll insist that there’s no point in being perfect about it if I’m just going to make the top sheet and blanket into a cocoon anyway.

  By the time I turn off the water, it’s pooled in the tub up to my ankles. I get out, put my glasses back on, dry off, put on the new pajamas, wrap my hair in a towel. The water hasn’t gone down.

  Shit.

  I’m not exactly handy. I’m good at cooking, I’m good at growing us new and interesting produce, I’m good at spelling lessons. I’ve spent my life at the lake house worming out of fixing anything. It’s usually not a big deal. Several of my siblings can do simple things, and Frank fixes basically everything else.

  A clog is probably a simple thing.

  Winnie can fix it. Even pissed at me, she won’t make me ask Frank.

  But I open the door, and Frank’s passing by in the hallway. He must see panic flit across my face.