A Dark and Starless Forest

by Sarah Hollowell

  “Something wrong?” he asks.

  “Oh. Uhm,” I say. “I think the tub is clogged? It’s not draining.”

  Frank sighs, and pushes past me into the bathroom. “You can’t be doing this, not now.” I remain pressed against the door frame and stay quiet. He rummages under the sink and comes out with a couple of tools, and kneels over the tub. “There’s too much going on. The least you can do is clean up after yourselves.”

  My whole body heats with shame. He doesn’t say anything else, but I feel like I can’t move. Like I have to witness the mess I made—somehow just my mess, instead of a fairly natural occurrence, instead of this being a shower used by multiple people. If I walk away, I’m certain Frank wouldn’t just shrug and continue the work and never bring it up again. He’d remind me that good girls don’t make these kinds of messes.

  I stare hard at a corner of the shower over his shoulder. My shame shifts to anger, then back to shame, back to anger, then back to shame again, but this time because I’m too scared to act on my anger. My arms start to ache from being crossed tightly over my chest, but I don’t move. I try not to breathe too loudly. I can’t leave, and he can’t be too aware that I’m here.

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

  In the end, he retrieves a decent glob of hair out of the drain. It plops into the trash. Frank washes his hands, and leaves without a word.

  I look into the trash, at the tangle of wet hair, and wonder how that little thing could lead to me feeling like my whole body would explode from shame and fear and anger and guilt.

  I shouldn’t go back to the forest. With my siblings watching and Frank already pissed at me, I should toe the line for a few days.

  She’s waiting.

  I pretend I’m invisible when I sneak out of the house after dark. If I believe it enough, it might just come true. I imagine that my feet are made of clouds, and I hold my breath when I open the wall. On the other side of the tunnel, I look back at the house only once. All the lights are off. It doesn’t mean there isn’t someone watching.

  I go to the forest anyway. Lightning bugs greet me, swarming me with their warmth and light. They’re pleased I’ve returned.

  Jane isn’t waiting for me past the tree line. The girl is.

  10

  The girl watches me approach. Lightning bugs dance in the air around her, welcoming me. The girl’s expression is unreadable.

  For a moment, all we do is stare at each other. That rising tide of horror is back, threatening to overtake me. I dig the nails on my right hand into my left wrist. The pain clears my head a little.

  “So,” I say. My voice shakes even as I adopt a casual tone. “I take it you know Frank.” Then I laugh, because this whole thing is too absurd not to.

  “Know Frank,” she repeats. She shakes her head, hard, and clears her throat. Her mouth moves, but nothing comes out. She realizes it quickly and stops trying, her face contorted in frustration. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m still . . .” She takes a deep breath. Each word seems to take tremendous effort. “Learning.”

  “To speak?”

  “Speak,” she whispers, again as if she can’t help it. I’m pretty sure at this point that she isn’t the wendigo Winnie’s parents warned her about, but her repetition does remind me of it.

  After her reaction to Frank, I’m also pretty sure that my theory about her being a stray alchemist in need of a home isn’t right. So . . . who is she?

  What is she?

  Her brow is furrowed in concentration, seeking her own words. I don’t speak—I don’t want to interrupt her and send her off repeating again.

  “My name,” she says, “is Claire.”

  “Claire,” I say. What a normal name. She could be one of my siblings. “I’m Derry.”

  “Der—” She stops herself. “It’s nice to meet you. You—you—you.” She’s got her own voice, but now it’s skipping like one of Frank’s old CDs.

  “Nice to meet you,” I say. I bite the inside of my cheek to quell—good word—another burst of laughter.

  Claire smiles. She makes it look difficult. She doesn’t speak again, so after a minute I say, “I also take it you don’t really like Frank.”

  She opens her mouth. Closes it. Settles on a nod.

  I nod too. “I don’t know how you know him, but . . . I get it. He’s not an easy person to be around.” She raises an eyebrow, and I laugh. “Understatement. Living with him is having your entire day centered around his moods and only his, but you never know what the mood is going to be.” I don’t need to be telling her all this, but similar to how she couldn’t stop compulsively repeating, now I can’t stop talking. “One moment, you’re his favorite. He makes you feel like you’re special, and he sees you, and you’re a team. You and him against the world.” Me and Frank, searching for Jane. “But make one little mistake, and you become . . . nothing.” I spread out my fingers in an explosion effect. “Poof. He gave you a chance, you failed, you don’t exist anymore until he decides you do.”

  I stop. That makes him sound terrible. And it feels terrible, but—I’m explaining it all wrong. Of course it feels bad to know I disappointed him. All the rules, annoying or strict as they may be, are there to protect us.

  Jane and I broke one of the biggest rules, and now she’s gone. He just wants to keep us safe.

  Claire’s hard to read. I don’t look in her eyes. I’m scared they’ll be distant, like Dr. Sam’s. I want to believe she understands what I’m saying.

  “I don’t know why you hate him so much that you went all . . . vengeful spirit at the sight of him,” I continue. “I don’t know what he did. He’s complicated, I guess. He’s family and all, but sometimes it sucks that he’s the only one who can help us.”

  “He can’t help a—a—anyone.” Claire’s voice is still skipping. “He hurts. He only hurts—hurts—hurts—hurts—hurts—” She’s stuck. Her head jerks and she repeats hurts, hurts, hurts. I reach out, but I don’t touch her. Her head stills and she presses her hands against her eyes. “—​hurts—hurts—hurts—”

  Maybe Frank’s right. Maybe I am broken. If I am, I’m in good company.

  It’s unfair of me, but I still think: seems like there’s a lot of broken things that pile up around Frank.

  I stay with Claire. That skipping repetition takes a few moments to stop, but it does, and then she doesn’t talk again. After an hour or so, she disappears. I go home. Tomorrow’s Friday, which is our free day, so I’m hoping to sleep in.

  No such luck. Elle shakes me awake bright and early. Her face is blurry without my glasses, but I can still make out her huge, annoying smile.

  “You went to bed pretty early last night,” she says. “So I figure you got plenty of sleep and you’d be able to join me for morning yoga!”

  I glare at her. Her smile doesn’t waver. Maybe she doesn’t know that I went out to the forest last night, but she suspects it.

  “Great,” I say, forcing my own smile. “Love morning yoga.”

  On a normal day, my actual feeling on morning yoga is ambivalence. It’s like Jane’s candles—not exactly my thing, but nice, and I participate occasionally. Today, my feeling is much closer to hate.

  Violet, Olivia, and Brooke all join in morning yoga with me and Elle. Irene is up, too, but she’s sitting on the sidelines, nursing a mug of coffee. Elle guides us through a routine that seems both excessively long and excessively intense. I didn’t even know yoga could be intense, but I’m left sore and sweating.

  The others seem fine, especially Olivia and Brooke, so maybe it’s just that I never made much effort at morning yoga before. I didn’t used to have Elle watching me like a hawk and correcting every single pose I attempted.

  I escape to shower before breakfast, which gives me some relief. Breakfast itself gives me very little. Elle asks a lot of passive-aggressive questions—“How did you sleep last night, Derry?”—and Frank doesn’t look at me at all. He reads his newspaper and talks pleasantl
y with the others, but I’m invisible. I barely eat.

  Everyone falls into their free day patterns easily enough. Frank returns to his rooms. Olivia grabs colored pencils and the princess coloring book she got for her birthday last year. She settles at the coffee table and peruses the pages, selecting one carefully. She’s been rationing because she’s unlikely to get another until her next birthday. Brooke sits on the couch behind Olivia, reading a thick book about the history of space travel.

  One corner of the room transforms into the knitting area. A couple months ago, Violet started teaching Winnie and London to knit. Violet learned from their grandmother. They have almost boundless crafting energy, but at the lake house it became a little stifled. Most of it was focused into puzzles that, once complete, were saved and hung on the wall, and then on origami. The wall was full and a thousand paper cranes made within Violet’s first year. They were starting to lose their mind before Frank finally agreed they could be trusted with knitting needles.

  Winnie’s little pet poltergeist is particularly active when she knits. She’s not very good at it. She’s too impatient to do each row neatly, the way Violet and London do. She’s determined, though—more than once I’ve found her alone in the living room at odd hours, muttering curses as she knits and purls. Violet’s offered to take Winnie’s clumsy scarves and glamour them into order, but Winnie never accepts.

  London is more focused. Each stitch is precise. She graduated from scarves and hats to a sweater that’s too small for any of us to wear. She’s said her next attempt will be a sweater big enough for Olivia, while the small one can make a nice bed for Gabriel, if beetles need beds.

  My usual spot is in our biggest comfy chair with my legs over one arm and a book in my hands. I’m in position, and I’ve got the book open in my lap, but I didn’t even glance at what I picked up. I’m staring through the window that faces out to the forest.

  I’m pretending I don’t notice Brooke watching me, or that I haven’t noticed Irene and Elle are off . . . who knows where.

  It’s barely half an hour before a groan and a clatter of knitting needles signals the usual end of Winnie’s knitting endeavors. “I’m going to work on the garden,” she says. She can’t storm off dramatically right away, since she has to ask Frank for permission, but moments after she disappears down the hall, she comes back through the living room. Storming.

  The back door slams. No one breaks a stride in their activities. Getting frustrated with one project and stomping off to do another is Winnie’s main hobby.

  Irene and Elle return to the living room shortly after Winnie leaves. Elle takes up a spot next to Brooke, signing something to her I can’t see from this angle. Not that I should be trying, but they’re probably going to talk about me, and that’s rude, too.

  I don’t see Brooke’s reply because Irene appears in front of me, smiling.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “Hey,” I say, a little suspicious. “Elle send you?”

  Irene’s smile drops, and she sighs. She drapes herself across the ottoman next to my chair. “I told her you’d know.”

  “She could just talk to me herself.”

  Irene laughs. “Yeah? Because you’ve been so open with her so far?”

  “There’s nothing to be open about,” I grumble, turning a page I definitely didn’t read. “She saw me go into the forest once. So what? I was looking for Jane.”

  “Twice,” Irene says softly. “She saw you last night. She went to check on you and you weren’t in your bedroom. She saw you through the living room window.”

  I don’t respond to that. Of course she checked on me. Of course she saw me.

  “What are you doing, hon?” Irene asks. “I know you’re worried about Jane, but going into the forest at night, alone . . . it’s dangerous.”

  “I can take care of myself.” I proved that well enough in the clearing.

  “That’s not the point. We stick together.” I can feel Irene watching me, but I don’t look at her. I stare at the book until my vision blurs.

  No one but Jane knows what happened. None of my siblings know there’s this gap that’s been growing between me and the rest of them for over two weeks. They don’t know how Jane’s disappearance pushed it a little further.

  Claire knows what I did. She must. The way she finished my sentence yesterday. She knows, but she’s always in the forest when I come back. She’s not scared of me.

  My siblings would be.

  “Right,” I say to Irene. “Together. That’s why Jane’s still here.”

  Before Irene can respond, I’m on my feet. Winnie might be mad at me too, but at least she won’t talk to me while she’s mad. I don’t bother asking Frank for permission. Winnie’s already in the backyard, so it’s not like I’ll be alone.

  When I step outside, I notice the silence right away. Winnie doesn’t do quiet. Winnie talks to herself, sings to herself, drums on any surface that can be drummed upon. It’s quiet in the backyard, and she’s nowhere in sight.

  “Winnie?” I call. It’s a big backyard, but not get-lost-in-it big. It’s just big enough for all the garden plots and a fire pit. There’s not a lot of places she could hide. I look anyway, of course. I search behind our largest plants, behind the little tool shed, in that one little corner between the fence and the house.

  It takes me an absurdly long time to notice that the back gate is unlatched and oh-so-slightly open. Or to notice that one of the watering cans is on the other side of the gate, between us and the forest, unceremoniously tilted onto its side and leaking water.

  “WINNIE!” I scream, even though it’s too late. Shadows are shifting between the trees, and the forest has stolen another of my sisters.

  11

  Frank’s face is the closest thing to real panic I’ve ever seen on him when I tell him Winnie’s gone. It’s still only a widening of the eyes and a small drop of the jaw, but for Frank, that’s significant. That little bit of real panic is probably the only reason he doesn’t stop the rest of us from joining in the search for Winnie. Elle gets the little twins to patrol the tree line with her instead of actually going in, but the rest of us run right into the trees with Frank, shouting Winnie’s name.

  We already know that we’re not going to find her. Her amaryllis, like Jane’s camellia, is drained of its color.

  I don’t think she’s dead, just like I don’t think Jane is dead. It’s the same feeling. Winnie’s here, but she’s not. She’s alive, but she’s lost, so lost that no one can reach her.

  Isn’t that kind of what dying is? Being so lost that you can’t be found? I think as I walk deeper into the forest. I cup my hands around my mouth and yell for my sister, knowing she won’t respond.

  I see Claire only once. She speaks, but she’s too far away to hear, even if there’s actual sound coming out this time. I still know what she says.

  Tonight.

  I nod, and she’s gone.

  We search until dusk. At some point in the afternoon, Brooke comes around and shoves sandwiches into everyone’s hands so that we eat something. As it gets close to dinner, Frank calls the search off. We file back inside, careful to make sure we have everyone.

  Frank’s last inside. He locks the door, enters the code into the alarm, takes a deep breath, and punches the wall.

  We stumble back as one. Trembling arms wrap tight around me—London. I pull her close. Violet joins in, then Olivia, and soon we’re all one huddle shielding each other.

  I’ve never seen Frank be physically violent, ever. He doesn’t even slam doors. Now his fist is nestled into a dent he punched in the wall. He’s frozen there, the only movement a small tremor through his body. Like he’s restraining himself.

  When he lowers the fist, there’s little spots of red left behind.

  Elle’s going to have to heal that. She doesn’t step forward to volunteer. None of us move at all. One of the twenty-­seven DVDs is Jurassic Park, and right now, we act as if Frank is the T-Rex. Don’t move and
he won’t see us.

  “I apologize,” he says, his voice rough and ragged. He doesn’t offer an explanation. He just turns and walks past us.

  It breaks the spell. Elle trails after him, her hands outstretched to heal the broken skin on his knuckles. Brooke ushers Violet and the little twins away. If there’s another outburst, they don’t have to be here for it.

  Irene and I stay. Irene can’t leave Elle. I can’t leave either of them. If it does escalate, I can protect them. I did it before, didn’t I? I protected Jane in that clearing.

  Frank lets Elle heal him without a word. He even graces her with a smile.

  “I’m going to head out immediately,” he says. “My friends—the ones I told you about, Derry. They couldn’t find Jane, but maybe now that two are missing . . . maybe I can motivate them to try a little harder.”

  He straightens his spine, smooths back his ruffled hair. He smiles at all of us. “Take care of your siblings while I’m gone. No one leaves the house. I’ll try to be back by morning, but it depends on how many I have to see before I get answers.”

  Elle nods, with Irene and me lagging a few seconds behind.

  “You’ll find them,” Elle says confidently. “I know you will.”

  I might be imagining that Frank’s smile wavers when she says that. It comes back so quickly, I can’t be sure.

  Frank stays only long enough to get his bag and to pull out the TV for us. Any movie we want, he says, as many as we want. As soon as he pulls out of the drive and heads off down the road, Elle turns on me.

  “You won’t leave this house tonight,” she says. “You have to promise me that.” When I don’t answer, she says, “If you can’t manage a promise, that’s fine. I’ll sleep in your room tonight. Irene will sleep in the little twins’ room, right in front of the wall.”

  “You can’t just come sleep in my room,” I protest. “I’m not a child.”

  “You’re acting like one! And we’re older than you—”

  “By like four months—”

  “So we’re above you in the chain of command, and I don’t think you’re going to get Brooke to side with you, do you?”