The Darkhouse

by Barbara Radecki

  “No, Aidie.” Tears muddy my eyes. “Please, don’t do it.”

  Then why else are we here?

  The last of the fog clears away and the rising sun shines a spotlight on the ocean. The spotlight ripples toward me. “You’ll fall.”

  Don’t worry, I’ll be okay.

  “I’m sorry, Aidie.”

  For what?

  There are too many feelings and not enough words. “It was my fault.”

  No.

  She flutters her arms and jumps and lands and jumps and lands again on the narrow rail.

  “Please don’t.”

  I’m ready to leave.

  “No!” I reach for her. “You can’t!” I lose my balance and my hands lock onto the rail. Tears keep falling. “Don’t go.”

  Don’t worry. I’ll be okay, she says. Don’t follow me.

  And before I can say another word, she swings her arms and leaps. Swirling and silvery, she flutters into the sky.

  “No!” I reach for her.

  Aidie curls and loops into the wind. Already she is smaller. You can let me go.

  “I can’t, Aidie. Please come back.”

  As delicate as leaves in autumn, or sand dollars, or Peg’s white hair, she flutters higher and higher, dwindling into the sky, away and away.

  “Help me!” I call after her. She’s the only one who can. “I need you.”

  You don’t. I can hardly hear her anymore.

  She looks so happy.

  “Oh, Aidie.” My voice is no louder than a whisper. Like her, I’m fading. “I don’t want to forget your face.”

  I stretch up to see the last bits of her, but she is going then gone. Now I’m all alone in the hush.

  Lindsay or Leah is dead. I don’t know which.

  And Aidie is gone forever.

  Icreep back to the house. The sun is still new in the sky, and I don’t think Jonah will be up yet. I go to his lab and find the key for it in my knapsack. I unlock the door and push through it. The hooks with the garden tools are just inside. I calculate what might be useful and choose the shovel and spade.

  Tiny, piercing, urgent calls stop me. The voles inside their enclosures. Generations 54, 55, and 56.

  I lean the tools against the wall and go deeper into the lab. As if they’ve been waiting for me all along, every vole inside every cage is alert on hind legs, whiskers twitching.

  “Hello,” I say. “I’m back.”

  Their paws clutch the air, curved around wishes.

  I start to pull enclosures off shelves and carry them one by one out into the woods behind the house, setting them on the ground side by side. When each cage is outside, I unlock the miniature doors and fling them open. The voles stand alert in curious groups examining the leaf and needle pulp that makes up the forest ground. I imagine them dazzled by the promise of a new life.

  Too dazzled, maybe, because none of them moves.

  “Hey,” I say, trying to make light, trying to convince them, “at least you have each other.”

  The first one, alone, sniffs and scurries closer to the opening. Then it sets its front paws on the ground. The others watch, intent, skeptical. The brave one steps out of its cage and darts a few inches into the woods. It makes some calculations, then darts a bit further. Then, so quickly it takes everyone by surprise — the left-behind voles strain higher on their hind legs — it dives into the brush alone and burrows away.

  “Okay,” I say to the others, “I have to go. Good luck out there.” I turn away from them and head back to the shed. I grab the tools, close the door, and make my way down to Biscuit’s hole by the lighthouse.

  The sharp edges of the spade cut through the grass roots clumped together under the surface. It’s almost too hard for me to dig, until I remember I can stand on the top edge and use my weight to bear down. Pushing down with my body, I slice around the shape I assume the trap door will be, lifting up chunks of grass and dirt and piling them off to one side. I cut all the way around Biscuit’s hole, thanking him in my mind for starting this work.

  Once, when the sun reaches a specific spot in the sky, I check the ocean, expecting to see it. And, sure enough, the ferry is sailing away from Keele’s Landing across the silky gray-green water. The Spirit flies toward the mainland, right on schedule, as if nothing is different.

  I keep cutting the earth.

  When all the grass has been gutted away, I change the spade for the shovel and start to dig, flinging clumps of red dirt and mud off to the side. I dig for hours. For so long, my muscles start to seize and spasm. But I keep digging, stopping only a few times to catch my breath, always digging again. Even when I can barely lift the shovel anymore.

  Finally, I hear the shovel hit something hard. The thunk and crack of contact is a relief. Now that I know where the trap door is, I can follow the shape of it, noting when my digging goes off course and using the spade again when I need to open up more ground.

  Slowly but surely, I excavate the whole shape of the door. I notice that the wood is harder than any wood I’ve ever seen. It looks like the marbled tombstones down in the island cemetery. I remember reading in one of Jonah’s textbooks about forests with petrified trees, and how a lack of oxygen combined with running water full of minerals can change wood into stone.

  When I have the dirt mostly cleared from the door, I stop, carefully checking inside the hole. I don’t see any hinges on the door and figure they must have rusted away a long time ago. I drop the shovel and pick up the spade again. Now I jam the sharpened edge into all the seams around the door and lift at the same time, trying to loosen it.

  After I’ve cleared enough soil from the edges, I crouch down and use my fingernails to scrape away the dirt around a latch that’s carved into the top. I brace myself and pull on the latch, but nothing moves. I get the spade again and jam as hard as I can into the seam of soil beside the latch, then I push with all my strength. The spade enters the soil by millimeters, but finally edges into the seam enough for me to get some leverage. I push and push against it. Sweat runs down my face and into my eyes. The door is heavier than anything I’ve ever lifted.

  Tears start to mix with the sweat. I hear Aidie’s voice again and it keeps me going. Gemma, Gemma. I can’t give up; Aidie is counting on me.

  The voice keeps calling, the sound not floating away like Aidie’s body but moving in then out, quiet then loud, almost like the sounds from a shortwave radio. Around and around.

  Gemma. Gemma.

  Except Aidie should know I never want to use that name again.

  Gemma. Gemma. Gemma.

  It starts to make me angry to hear it. I push my anger into the spade, digging harder and harder.

  Gemma. Gemma.

  But the door won’t budge. It only steals breath from my body. I close my eyes. I want to lie down and give up. Then I realize the calling voice isn’t Aidie’s, but a different one.

  “Gemma! Gemma!”

  As soon as I recognize it, I turn to see Marlie running down the path, her hand reaching toward me like it’s the most important thing she’s ever done. “Gemma! Oh my God, Gemma! Thank God!” I know I want to grab that hand.

  She pulls me close and hugs me, kissing my head and saying the wrong name over and over. “Oh, Gemma, I had to keep looking.” She bursts into tears. “I thought you’d jumped. I thought I gave you the idea.”

  Her worry chokes me. I shake my head against her chest.

  Marlie keeps sobbing and gathering breath and whimpering into my head. “I thought you wanted to jump. You were so sad.” She kisses my hair and whimpers again. “I kept checking the cliffs, praying not to see you in the water. I couldn’t tell anyone. Couldn’t say the words to any of them. Thank God you’re alive. Thank you, thank you for being alive.”

  My body shivers and trembles and I fight it. I don’t have time for tears, not hers, not my own. If I don’t tell Marlie the truth, it will disappear under rocks, under dirt, under pretty swaying grasses. It will sink away.

&n
bsp; “Jonah took me,” I say, looking over her shoulder as she holds me and cries. “He took Aidie. And my real mother and father never knew.” My words push past her tears, over the sound of her gasping for air. “I left the island to find my real parents. But I couldn’t stay with them. And now the boys are dead.” A wave of tears fights to come out of me. It has to be turned into ice and locked in my chest. “They didn’t do anything but help me. And now they’re dead.”

  “Oh my God.” Marlie pulls her hand back. It’s covered with strings of my coagulated blood. “What happened?” She examines the wound on my head. “Oh, Gemma.”

  “Please don’t say that name.”

  “We looked everywhere.” She hugs me again. She doesn’t understand. “Jonah went to the police on the mainland in case you’d crossed without us knowing. He looked for you everywhere.”

  “For the wrong reason.”

  “He was so worried. He had the police send out a missing persons alert.”

  “He lied.” How can I make her understand?

  Marlie leans back to look at me properly. “We were all so worried, Gemma.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, looking at her properly too. She’s very pale. “I should never have left you here. I should have told you. I should have told the police.”

  “Are you okay?” Marlie checks my forehead for fever.

  She doesn’t understand. She still doesn’t understand. “I have to show you.” I back away from her. “I need your help.”

  “Of course. Anything.”

  “You have to help me lift the door.” I show her the hole in the ground with its huge mound of excavated dirt piled to one side.

  Marlie shakes her head, confused. “We should get help. We should wait for Jonah.”

  “No!” I yell. “We have to do it now, and quickly.”

  I pick up the spade again and push it into a ridge. Marlie doesn’t say another word. She reaches for the shovel and also wedges it under the ridge of the door a foot or two away from my spade. Together we press our bodies against the tools. We grunt and groan together, pressing and pushing. Then the edge gives and heaves up, ever so slightly. We push the tools under the open seam and lift again, jamming the tools in deeper and deeper.

  When we get both tools jammed fully underneath the door, I tell Marlie to wait and I run into the woods and find two thin trunks that had split off during the ice storm with wood still dry enough to be strong. I run back to Marlie and shove one trunk under the door edge near her shovel and one under the door near my spade. We push against the posts. We brace ourselves and lean against them with all our strength. Finally the door begins to move. We crank it up like the lid of a casket, angling our bodies underneath to keep it opening. We keep pushing up until the door is fully open, until it’s leaning to one side against the pile of shoveled dirt.

  For a moment, we need to catch our breath and wipe sweat from our faces. Then I pull myself up and look down into the opening. The smell of must and wet earth scramble out, sticking to our bodies. Marlie stares down at the stone steps disappearing into darkness. “What is that?” she whispers. “A dungeon?”

  I pick up my knapsack and lead the way down the stairs. Marlie takes a shaky breath and follows close behind me. Her fingers trace the stones as if measuring how far it’s safe to go.

  The tunnel and cavern are dark. I remember a bulb breaking and splinters of glass raining down. Determined to show Marlie the truth, I surge ahead and fumble in the shadows for the lantern I brought when I first came. I turn it on, hand it to her, and step back. Confusion furrowing her brow, Marlie shines the greenish light around.

  She sees what I saw and the damage I wreaked: dozens of jars filled with preserved voles and torn sheets covered with diagrams and charts lying on the ground like gutted waste. Her expression shows that she’s trying to understand what everything is and why it’s here. The lantern light swoops around and it lands on the chart that’s still tacked to the wall. It has her name on it: Experiment Marlie Luellen. Her face hardens when she reads the words, although I can see she still doesn’t fully understand.

  Now the lantern light finds the box on the ground. As Marlie walks toward it, her hand starts to shake, making the light flit this way and that. The lid is off where I left it, lying to one side. The light puddles over the shapeless bundle inside the box: a small heap of branches in shadow. The beam is a firefly darting over it, trying to land on the tangle but only able to brush past it and back, past it and back.

  Marlie slumps down to her knees. Her fingers reach toward the dirty cloth. Her hand lifts the cloth away.

  “Lindsay. Or Leah. I don’t know which.” My voice sounds weak. Marlie looks up at me, her hand resting on the baby’s head; under her hand the baby’s smile is carved in bone.

  I pull a few experiment charts from the ground and lay them out so she can see. Gemma, Adria, two babies, a chronicle of their activities. Marlie shines the lantern at the sheets, drawing circles of light over the graphs and charts.

  “You have to watch the video,” I say. “Then you’ll know.”

  The tv is still on from when I was last here, and so I rewind the vcr to the important part and let it play.

  As Marlie watches, she very slowly places the lantern on the ground, as if it’s the thing that’s too heavy to bear. Her mouth opens, but no words come out. I watch the images too: the worried faces; a mother’s and father’s eyes, hopeful and then hopelessly staring. And not two unknown parents who are worried, but Lindsay and Leah’s mother and father. And then, last of all, the photo of twin baby girls filling the screen, them huddled in matching green frog blankets, pink bows in their hair, silver birds in their earlobes.

  “That’s where I went.” I rewind to show the parents. “To see them.” I freeze the image on their worried faces. “But they have a new family now. So I came back.”

  Marlie reaches her hands up, clawing the air for answers. “What is this?” Panic fills her voice. “What is this?! ”

  “One of the babies is me.” I sound so far away.

  Behind me, Marlie’s voice chokes. “No.”

  “And the other baby is Aidie.”

  “No. No.”

  “But not Gemma and Aidie. They’re Lindsay and Leah. I don’t know which.”

  Marlie stumbles to the window. She sticks her head out and gasps for air.

  “I came back for you,” I say. “I had to tell you.”

  I look at the box again, the dead baby inside it. I kneel down and unzip my knapsack, then very carefully pick up the bundle cradled inside the frog blanket. I make a nest inside my clothes and gently tuck the skeleton between them. I also came back for Aidie.

  When I’m sure the bones are safe, I zip up the bag and loop it around my shoulders. I wipe my tears and grab Marlie’s hand to pull her away from the window. “We need to hurry.”

  Irun up the path from the lighthouse, Marlie right behind me. The weight of my knapsack makes me feel better — the baby is with me.

  Marlie and I have to get back to town. If we can get to town, we’ll all be safe. I’m starting to believe that people will help me. That they can.

  As we head toward the house and then down the road away from it, I notice how it already feels like a place where other people live. It could be a stranger’s house whipping past me through the open doors of a train.

  Marlie stumbles behind me, slowing us down. She grasps at the air between us. “Gemma, stop.” Her voice is cracking. “Stop, please, Gemma, stop.”

  But all I have in my head is the need to get to town before Jonah comes back. The fact that he hasn’t returned to the house yet means the ferry is either grounded again or running late. Is he busy on the mainland trying to find news about my death in a car crash? Is he pretending to the islanders that he’s trying to find me? Or worse, is he searching for a place to work, another reliquary of science, another secluded laboratory where he can take Marlie and make babies and start a new experiment — clomiphene in her water, incisi
on in a prophylactic?

  Something snags me and jerks me back. My neck hurts from the force.

  When I turn to look, Marlie is clutching my knapsack in both hands. Her face is blotched with red, smeared with tears. She can’t catch her breath and has to let go of me to heave herself over her bent knees.

  I try to pull her forward again. “We have to hurry!”

  But her feet are locked to the ground. “Please, Gemma, please.” She gasps for air. “Please tell me it’s not true.”

  “We have to hurry. We need to get back to town before he does.”

  Marlie looks around. She commands the trees, the sky. “It can’t be true. Tell me it’s not true.”

  “We have to hurry,” I beg her. “If we don’t get help, he’s going to take you. He wants you to have his babies. He’s going to do the same experiment with you. Don’t you see? You have to run.”

  Marlie’s breath sputters and gasps. Tears rain down her face. Her own thunderstorm.

  Desperation fights inside me and makes me shake her.

  Finally she looks at me, and I stop moving. The wildness in her eyes passes, and I watch her breathing even out.

  “Yes,” she says to me, “I see it now.”

  She grabs my hand and leads me down the road. Now we run together.

  When we round the bend between East Island and West Island — right where the hedge of bushes opens up to the Roberts’ field, right where you can see the whole island laid out in front of you like a map on a table — we see the ferry has arrived back at the dock and that Jonah is driving his van toward the road that leads to us.

  We both freeze, skidding to a stop and throwing up gravel.

  Behind us is a winding road back to the house that we will have to run faster than we’ve ever run so we can maybe get to the phone and call for help or maybe get to some kind of protection. The road is edged with bushes so thick you can’t see past them, with thorns so sharp they’ll tear you to pieces if you try to go through them.