The Door to January

by Gillian French

  “I’ll bring Jim and my Winchester. That suit you?”

  Natalie broke in. “Edith’s in the last stall, under some hay.”

  She dropped back against the pillow, watching the way the light fixture overhead doubled in her blurring vision.

  “Irene’s under the barn. I came too late for her.” She began to cry, picturing Irene’s sweet, round face the night of the Halloween dance. “I’m so sorry.” She cried harder.

  Mrs. Page rubbed her back, talking quietly to the men. “Dress warm, both of you, and for God’s sake, take care of yourselves. If you see any sign of that fella, put a bullet in him. If even half of this is true, nobody will fault you for it.”

  Eventually, there came the sound of the door shutting, the whisper of wind cut off snugly. Mrs. Page sat close, smelling of flowery talc.

  “Fix you another toddy, that’s what I’ll do. Rest now. Sleep’s what you need.” She made a frustrated hissing sound. “Go on, don’t be a pest.”

  An orange tiger cat wound around the legs of the cot. It gazed up at Natalie, its eyes round as dimes. “Is that your cat?” she asked faintly.

  “You might say. He sort of chose us.” Mrs. Page gave it a perfunctory pat on the head before depositing it on the warm hearth. “He’s a roamer, all right. Comes and goes as he pleases. He was out in the storm till just a minute ago, fool thing.”

  It was undeniably Raisa’s cat, fully grown now and apparently none the worse for his drop from a second-story window. Nine lives. As if from far away, Natalie heard Mrs. Page whisper again, wonderingly, “Where in the world did you come from, girl?”

  Natalie slept.

  When she awoke, the room was dim. The fire had been allowed to burn down to ashes. The cat was gone. Feeling more alert, Natalie sat up, looking around the room which had been so full of the sounds and smells of life.

  “Mrs. Page?” Her voice had a hollow note, as if she’d called into a deep stone well. The pale light filtering through the windows had no particular quality of day or evening, but as she watched, frost began crackling across the glass, sill to sill, quilting a patchwork of ice.

  Across the room, the front door opened slowly, as if pushed by a breeze. Light filled the entryway. In it, three globules chased each other in secret ghosts’ games. Natalie felt no fear as they came for her.

  There was faint laughter in the light. It wove around her. Natalie closed her eyes and returned to oblivion.

  CHAPTER 38

  The house waited in fields of brambles.

  Natalie walked up the path to the front door. The sun was bright and she propped her hand above her eyes.

  Raisa sat on the step, smiling, wearing one of her housedresses with a full apron over it. The sun had bronzed her forehead and cheekbones, and her dark eyes were squinted against the light.

  The day stuttered like a bad film reel, spilling the scene sideways, and Natalie blinked, disconcerted as it righted itself. A question came to her: “Did I fix things?”

  Raisa twined her fingers together, pulled them apart. “You’re a good girl. You tried to mend it.”

  Someone stood in the far field, watching them. It was Irene in her party dress, her hair blowing loosely around her shoulders. She looked back at Natalie, not quite smiling but with warmth in her expression. “But I didn’t help her,” Natalie said. “Or you. You’re both still . . .”

  “We’re ready for a long sleep.” Raisa’s gaze was bottomless. “Irene and me. Edith’s the one who wants to keep going. That’s all she’s ever wanted.” She studied her hands. “You ought to be getting home now.”

  Natalie looked at the field, where Irene waited. Beyond her, the whip-poor-will called and called. It sounded very close.

  The scene stuttered again, and then Raisa and Irene were together in the field, running and laughing, circling each other in a game of their own creation. The bird called once more, triumphantly.

  The girls waved good-bye, far away.

  The hands of time let Natalie go.

  Somewhere in the dissonance of sound and sensation, Natalie screamed as the memories washed back over her. She was on a platform shooting down a corridor of alabaster, people clinging to all sides, jabbering, repeating her name. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

  Natalie saw someone reaching out to cup her face.

  “Hon.” Mom’s eyes were wide and bloodshot as she stood over the bed. “Natalie, relax. You’re going to be okay. You’re in the hospital. Do you hear me?”

  Someone unfolded himself from the chair in the corner, tall and broad-shouldered, raising his hands up from his sides. Natalie let out a thin scream, covering her face.

  “What in the world?” Dad, who’d been half-asleep in the chair while Wheel of Fortune contestants exuded muted fervor on the TV screen, stopped where he was. “Deb, you better press that button now.”

  Natalie had a gauze bandage on the left side of her head. A patch of her hair had been shaved, the doctor told her, so that they could stitch up the gash left by the bullet that had grazed her.

  The doctor explained her injuries. Her head wound had resulted in a subdural hematoma and a period of unconsciousness lasting about three hours. He asked her about her injured throat, frowning as he reexamined her bruises.

  “You don’t remember anyone choking you, grabbing you?”

  She said no.

  Later, he let her parents back into the room.

  “Remember me?” Dad gave a nervous chuckle as he stopped several feet from the end of the bed.

  “I’m so sorry, Dad.” She burst into tears.

  Her parents held her hands. When Natalie finally got herself under control, she sniffed, looking up at them. “Where is everyone? Teddy, Lowell, Delia? Are they okay?”

  “Everybody’s fine.” Mom looked haggard, as if this one day had aged her a year. “Delia flagged down a car and got some help. Lowell stayed with you until the ambulance came.” She frowned a little, as if his name was bitter on her tongue and would take some getting used to. “I’m told he pressed his shirt against your wound, slowed the bleeding. We might not have you here with us if he hadn’t. Jason was shot too; Teddy stayed with him, kept him conscious. He was coughing up a lot of blood.”

  “What about Grace?” Natalie took a deep, unsteady breath.

  Mom was some time in answering. “Grace shot until the bullets were gone. We’re lucky she didn’t kill all of you. Apparently she just sat there until the police came. She won’t speak to anyone. Jason’s here now, under guard. The bullet collapsed his right lung. He came through surgery okay, and they think he’ll recover.”

  Dad rubbed his face. “Jesus. Will this ever end?”

  Natalie closed her eyes, drifting in exhaustion. “After the bullet hit me, I woke up on the other side of town.” She laughed a little, her voice scratchy and weak. “And the house was full of snow.” She fought to keep her eyes open. “I really need to see Teddy. Will you bring him?”

  Her parents exchanged worried looks. “In the morning. Rest now.”

  Delia called later.

  “Teddy put himself between me and a gun.” She laughed shakily. “I can’t stop thinking about that. What if she’d shot him? You think . . . he really would’ve stood there and taken a bullet for me?”

  “Most likely, yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s just like that. There when you need him.” Natalie tugged at a loose thread on her hospital gown. “He’s something special.”

  Natalie spent the night under observation. The nurse who came in to wake her every few hours grew increasingly dismayed to find that she was never asleep.

  “You should really try to rest,” she said, taking Natalie’s pulse and studying her pale, drawn expression.

  Natalie rolled onto her side. Her head hurt. Her throat ached. Think about nothing, she told herself,
nothing at all; then you can’t be afraid of moving branches outside the window, the whisper of crepe-soled footsteps in the hall, a grinning beast in hospital garb with eyes of brass and blood in his teeth, leaning over the bed—We’ve caught a thief, yes we have . . . fox in the henhouse—

  The next morning, the rest of the family arrived. Cilla sobbed as she hugged Natalie.

  “I am so sorry. I never dreamed—I should’ve driven you straight home myself, not wasted a second—”

  Natalie wiped her aunt’s tears with her thumb. “You couldn’t have known how far gone Grace and Jason were. Nobody did.”

  Teddy was hollow-eyed, lingering toward the back of the group even as his gaze locked with Natalie’s. She rose up from her pillows, hardly noticing as the conversation trickled to a stop.

  “Can I talk to Teddy alone?” she said. The baffled silence continued. “Please?”

  Cilla was the first to speak. “Of course. We’ll be right outside.” She squeezed her son’s shoulder as she passed.

  Teddy took a seat. His cheekbone had bruised to a deep shade of plum, and he actually appeared to have lost weight. When had she last seen him, twelve hours ago? A lifetime.

  “Thought you were a goner,” Teddy said. “There was so much blood.”

  “I heard you had the honor of keeping Jason alive.” She watched as he rolled his eyes and glanced away. “You know he wouldn’t have done the same for you.” Natalie looked at him for a long moment, her eyes filling. “I went back, Teddy. I was there.”

  He didn’t react.

  “The girls took me. In that moment, when the bullet hit me”—her eyes stung with tears as she gestured to her bandage—“I could’ve died. But the girls snatched me up, like they’d always planned to. I did what they wanted, so they let me come home.”

  Teddy was silent. “You were in 1948?” He leaned forward. “Tell me.”

  She hesitated in places, cried in others. When she was done, he said, “You think it really happened? You fixed things?”

  “The girls are gone. I can feel it.” She touched her chest. “There’s a hollow place inside me now. I can’t think of a better way to describe it. I never knew they were there, but now that they’re gone . . .”

  “So . . . that means Edith must’ve made it. If the Pages got her help in time.”

  There was a knock, and Lowell looked around the curtain. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “No, no, come in.” Natalie sat up.

  Teddy got to his feet. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  The boys edged around each other, but at the last second, Lowell said, “Hey.” Teddy stopped, facing forward. “Look. I just wanted to say . . . you did really good out there. In the woods. If you hadn’t told me to put pressure on her wound, Nat could’ve died. Jason, too.” He put his hand out. “So, thanks.”

  Teddy looked at his hand for a long moment. When he shook with him, it was fast and hard, over in an instant. Then he was gone.

  As Lowell leaned over the bed, she hugged him tightly. He took a seat; his eyes were bloodshot and it looked like he hadn’t slept.

  “I can’t believe what happened. Grace was so messed up. I just never knew. I mean, I knew she had problems, but hell, who doesn’t?”

  Natalie gave a small shrug. “It sounds like she’d cut herself off from everybody except Jason. And he ground it in, what she’d done. Made everything worse, made her paranoid. I guess as long as she felt like dirt, he could control her.” She paused. “Is he really going to be okay?”

  “The doctors say he’ll be fine after some rehab. Then, back to lockup until they set bail.”

  “Grace is going away for a long time, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Lowell took his cap off, shoved his hair back, and clamped the cap down again. “I guess she finally talked, told the cops everything. They understand how it was with Peter now.”

  “So you believe her? You think it was an accident?”

  He nodded. “I’ve been up most of the night asking myself that. Running through everything I remember about the four of us, the way we were back then. Grace and Peter were buddies. She had no reason to want to hurt him. He was an ass and he could drive you nuts sometimes, but he was one of us. Yeah, I believe her. I think it was a stupid mistake that turned into something a lot worse once Jason got in the middle.” He was lost in thought for a moment, and then said, “Cops talk to you yet?”

  “The doctor said they’ll be sending somebody over.”

  “There’s going to be a trial, you know. Probably not until next year. But we’ll need to testify.” Lowell frowned, a shadow passing over his face as he straightened up. “Déjà vu all over again, huh. Bet you’re wicked glad you came back to your old hometown.”

  She smiled and held his hand. “In some ways.” She ruminated. “I can’t believe Grace thought that I was keeping the secret for her. For two years. She was so messed up that it must’ve made sense to her that I would hold the truth over her like Jason, play games. I wish I’d known.” She squeezed his hand. “Do me a favor. Don’t go anywhere for a while, okay?”

  Lowell kissed the back of her hand. “No place I’d rather be.”

  CHAPTER 39

  One Year Later

  Natalie parked her ’98 Accord in Cilla’s driveway and went up the porch steps, knocking once on the screen door before letting herself in.

  Teddy was waiting for her in the kitchen, looking over some papers.

  “How was the drive?” He craned his neck to see around her as she came in. “So that’s the new ride. Very cherry.”

  “Oh, absolutely. And there’s plenty of room in back to carry your bike.”

  She laughed at his sour expression and sat. They hadn’t seen each other since Christmas, but as always, she felt easier when Teddy was around. He’d texted her last week, said he’d found some new articles that she had to see, and maybe it was time for another visit to Bernier.

  She picked up the newspaper printouts he was reading. “You kept them all.”

  “Yeah. I read through them sometimes. You know, to convince myself that it all really happened.” He rubbed his eye beneath his glasses. “Sometimes even then I don’t believe it.”

  The top articles were all stories Teddy had run off from microfilm last fall, researching what had come next that winter of 1948. old orchard beach girl escapes kidnapper; corpse found under barn. Owen and Jim Page had found Edith unconscious in the hay, right where Natalie had left her. They’d risked a drive through the worst snowstorm since 1942 to get her into town for help.

  good samaritan never came back, says o.o.b. abductee; police search for clues. According to Edith and the Page family, another girl in her teens had escaped from George Dawes that night, one who they claimed to have rescued from the snow and spoken with at length. The girl—Natalie—had vanished from the cot in Mrs. Page’s kitchen after the older woman left her side, leaving nothing behind but rumpled blankets and unanswered questions.

  “Are you sleeping okay these days?” Teddy watched her.

  “Not bad.”

  The dream of the house was gone, replaced by occasional nightmares of running down corridors, of having the life choked from her. She rubbed her throat absently.

  “So you said you found something new.”

  Teddy flipped to the bottom of the pile. “I called the Old Orchard Beach Library a couple weekends ago. Had them search the microfilm.”

  In 1952, the local paper had run a short human interest story titled survivor goes west. Edith, something of a local celebrity after her ordeal, was moving on. The gossipy little article reported her plans to move to California in May and look for work in the film industry.

  “There’s nothing after that,” he said. “Who knows what happened to her, where she ended up.”

  Natalie was silent a moment. “I guess Edith didn’t have to be somebody spec
ial, or famous, or the mother of a future president or anything. She was just a girl who wouldn’t give up on her own life.”

  It took her back to the woods, the darkness and the snow, the honest belief that she was going to die. She could still feel the weight of the lantern in her hands.

  “I hit him so hard, Teddy. I swear to God. He wasn’t moving, and there was so much blood. I just—couldn’t make myself check to see—”

  His voice was firm. “Hurt that bad, he couldn’t have gotten far. Not in the middle of a snowstorm. They never found his body, that’s all. Lots of times they don’t. You know what those woods are like. If you’re lucky, some hunter might trip over your bones ten years later.”

  The kitchen fell quiet, only the sound of the ticking clock, a bird chirping outside.

  “Listen, we need to go to the house,” he said.

  She looked at him sharply.

  “Trust me. You need to see this.”

  Natalie drove them to Morning Glory Lane. She hadn’t been back since last July, hadn’t been sure she’d ever want to come this way again.

  “Here we go.” Teddy sat forward. “Look.”

  The land suddenly opened up, entire fields unfurling where trees had stood a few months earlier. White split-rail fences began shooting by. Natalie sat forward, gazing at the panorama before them.

  Belted Galloway cows, black with a white stripe around their middles, were scattered across pasturage on either side of the road, maybe a hundred and fifty head in all.

  When they came upon the house in the distance, Natalie didn’t hit the brakes. Her foot simply slid off the gas pedal and, after a fashion, the car came shuddering to a stop. She pulled onto the shoulder and they both got out of the car, Natalie holding the edge of her door for support.

  “I don’t believe this,” she breathed. “You didn’t tell me.”

  The house had new owners. It had been painted dark green with white trim, and a copper cow weathervane turned slowly upon the cupola. Work was still being done—it would take more than a year to get the building 100 percent—but people were obviously living here. The barn was in the process of being torn down, and a new prefab outbuilding sat back on the hill to house the cows.