A Dark and Starless Forest

by Sarah Hollowell

  She was my sister. Whatever she turned into in order to survive Frank, she was my sister.

  Piece by piece, I pull myself back together. I splash cool water on my face and dry it. I breathe normally.

  I can’t keep doing this. We can’t keep doing this.

  As soon as Frank leaves, before the sounds of his car have even fully faded, I’m in the tunnel. I don’t tell the others where I’m going. They’d want to come with me, and I don’t have the strength to look after anyone right now.

  Claire is easy to find. She’s always waiting for me.

  “I believe you,” I say. “But what do I do about it?”

  Claire walks up to me. “I’m sorry,” she says, before placing a hand on my cheek.

  All at once I’m underwater, flailing, screaming out bubbles. It’s only gradually that I realize water isn’t filling my lungs. I’m not drowning. I’m probably not even really here, though I know exactly where I am. I’m in the lake.

  And before me is a vast graveyard of cars.

  My veins buzz buzz buzz. There are dozens of cars in front of me. I squint and still I can’t see them all. It’s like an underwater parking lot. Some appear to be rotted through, others are hanging on. That means something, I know it means something, but I can’t put it together.

  My stomach is rolling and my veins are full of bees and I don’t understand. And yet, if I thought I had more than a few moments left in this vision, I’d go digging among the cars, looking for what I’m missing.

  It clicks. I see what it means that the cars are in different states of ruin. They went under the water at different times. Years apart. Decades apart.

  No.

  I’m flashing back to years of nightmares, of a car crashing into water, of screaming.

  Did my parents leave me, like I always believed?

  Or are they buried in the lakebed?

  I’m back in the forest, gasping for air, even though I’m sure I never left dry ground.

  “Did you see?” Claire asks.

  “What was that?”

  “The truth.”

  “That wasn’t real,” I say shakily. “That was—an illusion, or—”

  “You know it wasn’t.”

  I clench my hands in and out of fists, trying to deny what I know, horribly, to be true. It wasn’t an illusion. Claire showed me what’s really under the lake.

  “Do you understand?” Claire asks. “This is important, Derry. You’re learning a lot at once and you need to understand all of it.”

  “He doesn’t just kill alchemists,” I say. “He . . . he does whatever is necessary to make sure he can have us.”

  “And you understand why he thinks you’re worth killing for?”

  I furrow my brow. “You said he’s immortal, and he takes it from us.”

  “Yes. He takes what isn’t his. He grabs on to beings that should thrive for centuries, and he cuts their lives short. He’s been doing it for a very, very long time, Derry.”

  Claire cups my face in her icy hands. I shiver. I can’t break away from her gaze, from those dark eyes. If I look deeply enough I think I’ll see stars. She leans in close and whispers, “Don’t you think it’s time someone did something about that?”

  19

  ‘We need to search his rooms.’

  I can’t believe I’m suggesting it. My siblings stare at me in shock, and I nod, signing again, ‘We need to search his rooms. We need to know what we’re up against.’

  “We’re not allowed in Frank’s rooms!” Olivia squeaks.

  ‘No, we’re not,’ Irene signs. She’s not crying, but the tear tracks still stain her face. ‘But she’s right. There’s too much we don’t know.’

  ‘We shouldn’t all go,’ I sign. ‘Someone needs to keep watch.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ Violet signs.

  ‘I’ll stay with you,’ Brooke signs. ‘London, Olivia, you too. Don’t argue.’

  They do argue, of course, but not that hard. They’re curious and want to be included, but they’re scared of the punishment if Frank catches us. I’m not sure they really understand that this is life or death, not something that would just land us in time-out. I don’t know if they even understand what it means for Elle to be dead. They’re eight and overwhelmed and they cling to Brooke as they watch us go, eyes wide and watery.

  It breaks my heart.

  The door to Frank’s rooms is just beyond the time-out room. He doesn’t lock it. Like the time-out room, it’s a test.

  And here I am, standing with my hand on the doorknob, preparing to willfully fail that test. I feel sick. I want to run.

  From the look on Irene’s face, I’m not alone in that.

  Don’t you think it’s time someone did something about that?

  I open the door.

  “It’s like his own apartment,” Irene says as we wander in. She whispers, like we’re in a library or museum. I feel the same.

  She’s right, too. Frank has his own bathroom, a little kitchenette, a bedroom, even a study. He’s obsessively neat. The kitchen is spotless, the bed is made. The study is full of books, and—

  “A computer,” Irene whispers in awe. “Do you remember the last time you saw a computer?”

  “Barely,” I say. “I don’t even know if I’d know how to use it anymore.”

  “I do,” she says. “And if there’s going to be anything anywhere, it’s gonna be on here. Or his iPad, but he’ll have that with him.”

  Irene slides into Frank’s desk chair and wiggles the mouse. The double monitors come to life.

  “No password protection?” I ask.

  “Makes sense,” Irene mutters. “He’s that certain we’d never disobey him.”

  “Until now, he was right,” I say. “What does that say about us?”

  Irene looks up at me. “Nothing. It says something about how he’s treated us.” She turns back to the monitors as her words settle on me. “Let’s see what he’s got on here.”

  I hope she’s right. I’m just not sure it’s in my heart to believe it. Not yet.

  There are about half a dozen folders in the upper corner of the righthand monitor, and a desktop background of sand dunes at night. Strangely peaceful.

  “What’s that one?” I point to the folder labeled Surveillance.

  Irene gives me an impatient look. “Pretty sure it’s self-­explanatory,” she says. She opens the folder and the screen displays a list of subfolders labeled Gen 13, Gen 14, and on and on. Irene sorts by most recent, and we get Gen 19. She opens it. Ten folders: Basement. Bedroom #1. Bedroom #2. Bedroom #3. Bedroom #4. Hallways. Kitchen. Laundry room. Living room. Time-out.

  “He’s been recording us,” I whisper.

  Irene opens Living room. It’s full of more folders, labeled by month and year. Irene, again, opens the most recent—and now we finally hit files, labeled by the full date.

  “Video files,” Irene says. “He’s recording us.” She opens one at random from a few months ago.

  “Fuck, does that mean he could see our ASL conversations this whole time?”

  “Probably some,” Irene says grimly. “But depending on where we were sitting in relation to the camera, and also how good his fluency actually is, maybe not that much.”

  It makes me dizzy to think about all the things he could have eavesdropped on—all the complaints, all the more seditious talk—so instead I concentrate on the screen.

  It’s security footage. The camera is up in a corner, I think near the kitchen. A tiny me is on the screen, working a puzzle with the little twins. A tiny Violet demonstrates glamours for Frank.

  Jane is on the couch, drinking tea, watching. My heart squeezes.

  Irene opens a dozen files, and they’re all the same angle. The videos aren’t a full twenty-four hours. It looks like Frank examines and edits the footage to just the times when one of us is in the living room. Or maybe it’s motion activated? I can’t imagine him having the patience to do all that editing.

  “
The little twins’ room,” I say suddenly. “Check it for last night or the night before, I went out both.”

  Irene looks up at me in horror. “The tunnel. He can’t know. If he knew—”

  “Check.”

  She does, and it’s the strangest thing. At the time marker when I know we should have been opening the wall, the camera glitches out. It’s just static, for minutes at a time. Irene checks several other times when we were going out, and it’s the same thing.

  I sigh in relief. Whatever magic built the tunnels and protects it from sight extends to cameras. I also have to wonder exactly how much of these videos he watches. Wouldn’t it be suspicious enough if he saw me sneaking into the little twins’ room every night, disappearing after the static, reappearing, walking back up to my room? Maybe the same arrogance that keeps him from locking his door or putting a password on his computer also makes him dismiss the idea of any nighttime shenanigans.

  “What about the other folders?” I ask. I’m pretty sure I know what at least one of them is, but I’d like to be wrong.

  Irene has backtracked and opened Gen 18. The same labeled folders for different parts of the house, and then the dated folders.

  “These are from a little over ten years ago,” Irene says. “Jane only got here nine years ago.” She opens a video from the living room folder.

  More security footage. The same living room.

  Different girls.

  Different magic tests.

  Frank holds up cards where a redheaded girl can’t see them, but she appears to correctly identify them every time. Irene skips ahead in the video, and we find an Asian girl hovering several feet off the ground. She soars up to the ceiling, laughing. When she touches the floor again, Frank is smiling, but there’s a familiar hard look in his eyes.

  “Who are they?” Irene whispers.

  “They’re wearing our clothes,” I say. I feel like I’m going to throw up.

  Claire was telling the truth.

  Irene covers her face for a moment. Her breathing is fast and shallow, too close to hyperventilation. I touch her shoulder, and she shrugs me off. “I’m fine,” she says into her hands. “I just—” She shakes her head, dropping her hands. “I’m fine.”

  She opens another video, and now we see those girls being examined by Dr. Sam. I recognize all the equipment.

  “He knew?” I hiss.

  “Gen 19. Generation 19. Is every generation a new set of alchemists? How long has he been doing this?” Irene asks.

  “A long time,” I say. I’d never thought too much about how Claire is dressed, but isn’t it kind of old-fashioned?

  Irene goes back to the desktop and opens a folder called Profiles. That one has folders going back to Gen 1, and Irene opens it.

  There are only two files, alphabetical. Bertha and Josephine.

  Irene opens Bertha.

  There’s a photo of a girl. A really old photo, like back toward the beginning of photography photos, with that weird sepia quality they always seem to have. Her clothes are old-fashioned. She’s pale all over—her skin, her hair, her eyes.

  Along with the photo, there’s information. Bertha Smalls. Adopted when her parents abandoned her at twelve. She was a powerful pyrokinetic.

  “Amaryllis,” I say. I point at a line in the profile. Connected to the amaryllis. “They used the flowers, too. She had the amaryllis, like Winnie.”

  “Born 1877,” Irene says in a shaky voice. “Died 1891 when the generation was . . . terminated.”

  Without warning, Irene launches out of the chair and to a nearby trash can. I look away as she throws up into it. While she stays hunched for a minute over the trash, breathing hard, I grab the mouse.

  I try to remember what Claire said. She talked about the first two, then I think she said it continued for five more cycles before she arrived. I open the folder for Gen 8.

  There are seven files, all alphabetical. Ada. Audrey.

  Claire.

  I open that folder, and there she is. The picture is in black and white, but I know her dark eyes, and that unreadable expression she apparently had even in life.

  “Who’s that?” Irene asks. She’s still on the floor, face gone pale, but she’s turned so she can see the computer.

  “That’s the girl I’ve been talking to in the forest,” I say. Irene crawls back into the chair. “Claire Whittaker,” she reads aloud. “Born 1921. Parents sought help—resisted and were terminated. Died 1939 when the generation was terminated.” She closes her eyes. Swallows hard. Shakes her head, then keeps reading. “Ability to manifest physical objects.” She looks up at me. “You had the same flower. The poppy.”

  I reach out, touching a finger to the black and white girl’s cheek.

  “This can’t have all been Frank,” Irene says. “He’s not old enough.”

  “Claire said that he takes our magic to become immortal,” I say. “But I guess it doesn’t stick—he has to keep refreshing it. Why else would he have taken on so many generations?”

  “So what you’re saying is . . . he’s going to kill us,” Irene says. “When he’s done with us, he’s going to terminate our generation. Is that why Elle’s dead? Because he started the process?”

  Irene sits up straight, steeling herself. “Let’s find out.” She navigates back to our generation’s surveillance folder, then to the night Elle disappeared.

  “Irene,” I say. “Are you sure you want to . . .”

  “Of course I don’t want to,” she says. She’s already pulled up the videos for each part of the house, dragging them into different parts of the two screens. “I have to.” She takes a moment to inhale once, deeply, and exhale, before playing the videos side by side.

  The first we see of Elle is her slipping out of her room. We track her to the downstairs hallway. She goes to Frank’s rooms, and paces. She keeps looking at his door, pacing back and forth, chewing her nails.

  “What is she doing?” I whisper. But I think I know. This wasn’t long after our fight, and Brooke trying to burn down the forest. “Fuck. She’s trying to decide if she should tell Frank about me going to the forest.”

  “She can’t have actually told him,” Irene says. She’s defensive, but she’s also right. If Frank knew what I’d been doing, I’d be dead.

  Would she have told him, though, if she hadn’t died first? Would she have betrayed me that badly?

  My heart sinks. Yeah. She would have. She was convinced the forest was hurting me, convinced it had killed Jane and Winnie, and she’d just seen that not even Brooke could destroy it. She would absolutely have told Frank . . . if she thought it was the only way to protect her siblings.

  Elle finally stops pacing, and knocks on Frank’s door. Moments later, he opens it. They talk briefly before Frank steps aside and lets her in.

  I look up. From where we sit at the computer, we have a line of sight to his front door. Elle had stood right there.

  There’s no surveillance in Frank’s rooms. We don’t know what happened in there. We can’t know what led from Frank willingly inviting Elle into his rooms, and the moment when his door opened again, to when he walked out with Elle in his arms.

  Irene whimpers, hands over her mouth.

  “She saw something she shouldn’t,” I whisper. “She came to confess, and Frank trusts her so he let her in, but she saw something she shouldn’t—”

  We watch as Frank carries her down to the basement. The basement camera shows him setting her on the floor, right where his laundry would sit for days after. I don’t understand why he’d take her to the basement when he could have hidden her in his rooms for as long as he wanted, but . . . maybe he panicked? He doesn’t look like calm, collected Frank on the basement surveillance video. He paces. At one point he punches the washer. Does he feel guilty for killing Elle? Or just upset that it wasn’t according to his master plan?

  Eventually, he returns to his rooms. Just as his door closes, I walk out of my room. I get a glass of water. Before I go upsta
irs, I pause. I walk right up to the basement door.

  I make myself watch. On one screen, Elle writhes in the basement. On another screen, I press an ear to the basement door. I remember the sound of her moaning.

  I was right there.

  Then I run, and seconds later, Frank’s door opens. Another few minutes pass and he carries Elle upstairs, out the front door.

  I know how the rest of it went. He put her in the forest. He pretended to search while he figured out his next move and waited for her to die, but she kept not dying, so eventually he smothered her and we all watched the light in her flower go out.

  Irene closes all the surveillance videos. We’re silent except for her hitching breath. Her fingers curl against the desktop, into fists, and out, spreading over the wood. Her anger spreads out of her like a toxic cloud, and I welcome it. It’ll have plenty of company with my anger.

  “I can’t . . .” she says. She groans, slams a hand on the desk. Her anger withdraws as she gets control of her magic again. “Not now.” She’s talking more to herself than to me. “I want to know everything this fucker has been doing.”

  She navigates back to Frank’s desktop. I don’t know what she’s searching for, or if she’s even looking for anything specific. She double-clicks a file. The map it opens covers an entire monitor. It’s centered on Indiana—where we are—and stretches out east to Pennsylvania, up north into Canada, west to Nebraska, south into Alabama. Across the map are a few dozen scattered, glowing dots.

  Irene clicks one. It brings up a profile, like the ones on the alchemists in each generation, but this is a girl who’s still safe in her home.

  “Alexandria Mason,” I read. “Fourteen years old. Edinburgh, Indiana. Talks to animals.”

  Irene clicks a dot farther west. “Tara Brody,” she reads. “Eight years old. Des Moines, Iowa. Can breathe underwater.” One to the north. “Ashleigh Reese. Three years old. Toronto. Specific power not yet manifested.”

  “He must have gotten this all from his psychic friends, right?” I ask. “He’s tracking potential alchemists to bring into the house.”

  “But why?” Irene asks. “He doesn’t—I mean, he doesn’t just take us from our homes. Elle and I were brought here by our mother.”