by JT Ellison
“Commendable. How’s this? I’ll make you a deal. If I see something bad, I won’t tell you. Promise.”
“Whatever.” I sat down and thrust out my hand. “Let’s just get this over with.”
She hesitated only a moment, then took my hand in hers. She didn’t look at it, simply ran her palm against mine, as intimate and startling as a lover’s kiss. She turned my hand over in hers; cool and soft, it was a gentle caress, careless even.
Her brows knitted, and she turned my hand palm up, tracing her fingers lightly over my skin. Her hand tightened on mine.
“Oh, honey. You’re one of us.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“You can see death. You can see it coming. You’ve been doing this since you were a child, you poor thing. You must be…”
“Stop. This is ridiculous.”
But I knew it wasn’t. She spoke the truth. I had a weird sort of knack for predicting death. It had been with me as long as I could remember, and it was something I never, ever discussed. With anyone. No one knew.
Her violet-and-gold eyes were empathetic and kind, the slight horror she’d shown when she first took my hand gone now, replaced with understanding. “We can teach you how to control it. So you can shut them out. You don’t have to live with the fear and chaos anymore. You don’t need to be their conduit.”
I jerked my hand away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Please. Take my card. Call me. I have people I can introduce you to…”
But I was gone, out the curtained wall, out of the party and the simpering gazes of my gullible friends.
Back at the house, I sip my morning tea, watching my friends goof off at the breakfast table, Ellie slightly quieter than the others, and wonder—if I had listened to the medium back then, would anything have been different?
We have each found our place in the house. I prefer a view of the water, and so the deck couch is mine. It is under a pitched cedar roof, and it’s early spring, so I’m a bit chilly in the shade. I light a fire, and it warms things up nicely. I write my love story, praying it won’t take a turn for the worse. It’s hard for me to write anything that doesn’t have a death in it. Thanks a lot, fortune-teller, for manifesting that destiny for me. Though maybe it’s better. Since my run-in with her, I’ve learned things. How to shield myself. How to look away when the small movements begin out of the corner of my eye. How to protect my dreams from the dead. It almost always works. Almost always. Last night’s bizarre dream aside, I haven’t had a dream about death in months.
So far today, none of my characters have died, so there’s a bonus.
For our afternoon break, I tell the girls I want to show them something special, and they faithfully troop out the door with me, down the path, to the mansion.
The gates still stand open and welcoming.
“What a wonderful house,” they cry.
“Let’s go inside,” I reply.
“Rebecca,” Francie says, “we’ll get in trouble if we do.”
“No, we won’t. It will be fun. I promise. No one’s here, it’s clearly abandoned.”
“Not a good idea, sugar,” Tess says. “We might get hurt, you never know if there’s a floorboard loose, or something else. We’d be trespassing.” Tess, the mother of the group, always looking for hidden dangers.
Ellie shushes her. “Come on, don’t be a baby. I think it’s a great idea. Here’s what we should do. Let’s go in and check things out, and tonight, as a writing exercise, we can all write a short story about the house. Something quick and easy, but it will be a fun exercise. I like writing about inanimate objects.”
“All right, Ellie, I think that’s a great idea,” Tess says, fluffing her hair off her shoulders. “God, it’s hot right here. The breeze has died.” She manhandles the mass into a ponytail, fans her neck. “Ah, that’s better.”
Francie is still staring at the house, unmoving, but I set off toward the drive, and Tess and Ellie follow.
Carter, though, shakes her head. “I’ll see you guys later. I’m not one for ghosts and haunted houses.”
“It’s not haunted, silly. It’s just someone’s lake house,” I reply.
“If that’s the case, then you’re going to be trespassing. You and Tess and Ellie go on ahead. I think Francie and I are going to go back. We’ll make lunch, have it all ready for y’all when you come back with the details of what’s inside. Right, Francie?”
Francie, who is reluctantly stepping toward the house, sighs in relief and hangs back. “Great idea. Do be careful, ladies. Come on, Carter, I’ll race you.”
They run off giggling like schoolgirls, and Ellie shakes her head, takes a wee nip from her flask, offers it to me. I take a sip gratefully, the sting of the harsh alcohol rising up in my sinuses and warming my stomach.
“Those two are wimps,” Ellie says.
“Come on,” I reply, surging forward, emboldened by the drink. “Let’s see what’s what.”
The front door is conveniently unlocked. I have no idea why I thought it would be, but am relieved to find it so.
The house itself is empty. No one has been here, or lived here, in quite some time. Not weeks, not months. Years. It has an abandoned air. A thick coating of dust lies on all the tables in the foyer. We leave footprints as we make our way in.
“Who would just leave a place like this?” Ellie wonders aloud. Her voice rings in the hallway, and the house seems to sigh in relief.
Someone is home.
It doesn’t like being deserted. It is a place to laugh, and to love. To be cherished. Not to be left alone with an encroaching wood and an empty cave.
I don’t realize I am speaking out loud until Tess says, “You speak like it has feelings, Rebecca. It’s just an old house.”
I clear my throat. “You know me, always spinning stories. I can’t see a cloud without wanting to write its tale.”
“You really are weird,” she replies, fondly, and wanders toward the stairs.
I take the left parlor, Ellie takes the right. The furniture sits uncovered. Mice have taken up residence in the damask chairs, birds in the fireplace chimney, a scattering of feathers below on the marble. The thought of birds trapped in the chimney brings back my strange dream, and I shudder. I do not like dead things.
Through the formal parlor is a ballroom. I feel like I am spying on a moment in time, frozen in amber, unchanging all these years.
It was clearly a grand ball. The vestiges are left, champagne flutes on the mantels, as if their owners were called away to dance and left them, forgotten, in the detritus of the party. Silver trays, now darkened to black with bits of ancient mold stuck to them, balance on small tables. A grand piano stands open, with four other seats to its right—a cello, two violins, and a harp sit abandoned.
It is as if the party ended, all the people left mid-dance, disappearing entirely, including the servants and the owners.
“Rebecca, let’s get out of here. I’m getting creeped out.” Ellie is standing at my elbow, whispering to me, and I nod. I’m getting creeped out, too. “Where’s Tess?”
“Here.”
She is standing on the opposite side of the room, holding something in her hands.
“What do you have there?”
“A guest book. The last entry is from 1929. Seems there was a big party, everyone’s name is listed. The Rookwoods, the Wrights, the O’Connells, the Archers, the Bouchers. It goes on and on. There must have been a hundred people here for this party.”
The paper is old and crumbling. I take a photo of the pages so we won’t disturb it more.
“It’s so strange, isn’t it? Something clearly happened to everyone.”
“Something wicked happened here,” Ellie says. “It feels all wrong. There must be something in the papers about it. We can look it up when we get home. Come on. Let’s bolt. This place is giving me the willies.”
As we are walking to the front door, a portrait in the hallway catches
my eye. There are several portraits in a row, the family, clearly. But only one holds the visage of a woman with cat eyes and wiry gray hair. Looking at her, I can almost feel her breath on my face. She seems so alive, so annoyed to be stuck in the painting. Like she wants to walk out of the house with us. To be free.
I don’t realize I’ve stopped in my tracks until the girls beckon me, and with a last glance at the woman who saved the valley from the wind, I go with them gladly, closing the door gently behind me.
That night, we decide to go out to dinner. I think everyone feels disconcerted by the story we bring back from the house, and want a moment to connect with the real world.
The restaurant is ten minutes away, on top of the rise, with a view of the valley below. It is a BBQ joint, and the smells of hickory and vinegar permeate the air of the parking lot and make my mouth water. It feels odd to be back in civilization; though we’ve only been gone two days, we’ve become accustomed to the quiet rhythm of the lakeside cottage. It has a magical air around it, a perfect spot for creatives. We’ve all been writing up a storm, and now it is time to celebrate.
And maybe check our e-mail. Or even do a quick bit of research on who belonged to the lost house in the woods.
Both prove fruitless to me. I have a few e-mails but nothing of import, and I can’t find anything about the house.
The food is delicious, though, and we eat until our sides creak, and drink two bottles of wine. I steer clear after the first glass, I’ll have more when we get back to the house. Someone has to see us safely home.
When the waitress comes over to hand out the checks, Ellie asks what we’ve all been wondering about.
“Are you familiar with the history of this area?”
“Well, sure. Y’all visiting?”
I only want to stab out her eyes for a moment—clearly we are strangers, and as such are visiting—but I refrain. “We’re in a cabin nearby for a few days.”
“Ah. Girls’ weekend,” she says with a knowing smile, and I don’t correct her. I don’t like strangers knowing my business.
“There a big abandoned house across the lake from our cabin. Do you know anything about it?” Carter asks, her words a challenge.
“The old Atwood place?”
We’re silent. We don’t know what it’s called.
“It’s abandoned,” she adds helpfully.
“That’s the one,” Ellie says, and I hear the laugh she’s biting back. “Do you know anything about it, or the people who used to live there?”
The waitress has been friendly until now, but her face grows wary. “The Atwoods, they owned all the land in this town. Used to be mill owners, I think. But they all left decades ago.”
“Who owns the house?” I ask.
“I don’t know. No one really goes up there. It’s kind of scary, and it’s private property. I wouldn’t want to get caught snooping around.”
A man I take to be her boss walks by at that exact moment, giving her a hurry up look—a line has begun to form outside, the chairs in the restaurant’s porch and foyer are full. A popular place. The only restaurant on top of the mountain, I suspect.
When he turns away, she gives us a pasted-on grin. “Y’all have fun with your computers. Come back and see us.”
It’s not until we are searching again for the drive in that I realize what she said. We never said anything about working or writing.
I can’t shake the eerie feeling that parades down my spine.
They are watching us.
The Atwoods.
The name rings a bell with Carter, who is our resident historian. The small cabin has a small library, which she took apart the day we arrived, and there is a little book on the area that she found the first night. She pulls it off the shelf, sits at the battered kitchen table, and reads.
“The Atwoods made their money logging the mountains around here,” she announces, pushing her glasses up on her nose and taking a sip of wine. “The family settled in Rising Fawn in the 1800s. They were carpetbaggers, from Maine originally, drawn down to the South by the promise of large tracts of land and good prices on the logging. Caused all sorts of a stir when they bought the mountain and built their house.”
“Maybe they were tired of being cold in the winter. Can you imagine Maine in the 1800s? Brr,” Ellie says, shivering. She pours us each another glass of wine. I’ve lost count now, but it is our last night, and we’re planning to sleep in, and clean the cabin in the morning instead of working, then get on the road by early afternoon. I am pleasantly tipsy.
“Does it say what happened to them?” Tess calls from the kitchen, where she is manhandling open another bottle with a wine key.
“Nope.” Carter flips a few more pages. “Worthless piece of crap book. All it says is that the house has been kept in trust since the ’30s, and the whereabouts of the family remains a mystery.”
Tess cracks the bottle. We hear her giggling and saying, “Oops,” then she appears in the door, wavering slightly, the bottle clutched in her hand.
Francie takes it from here. “We’ll just have to do some more research on it when we get back, I guess. Who wants to watch a movie?”
The mysterious house is forgotten then, as we sail away to lands unknown on the back of a writer we all admire.
But I can’t help myself. Ten minutes in, I get up and draw all the curtains in the house.
A storm rattles through overnight. Rattles, literally: We are under a tin roof, and the acorns fall from the trees with a clatter, waking everyone up. They sound like gunshots, and we cower, laughing nervously, as they ping and pong off the roof. Lightning flares, and the lights flicker.
“Make a fire,” I tell Carter, who listens without arguing, for once. We don’t want to be left in the dark entirely.
The moment the flames go up, the lights go out, and Carter gives me a thankful look. We look for candles, find a few, line them up on the table. No one can sleep now, the wind and rain are howling, howling, up from the valley, and I can’t help myself, chills crawl up and down my arms. That wind feels familiar. It feels malevolent.
We huddle together in front of the fire, hoping for the lights to come back on. I debate telling them about my dream, about the wind and the cave, but decide against it. I fear I will manifest something if I speak it aloud. It’s one of the reasons I never speak my dreams. Maybe I should have talked more to the palm reader all those years ago. As it is, all I do is write them down and pray death does not come knocking.
We huddle together, telling jokes and stories. Eventually, Ellie admits her secret, and the rest of the night is passed in drunken anger toward a woman we all love. But we’ll side with Ellie. She is ours. Fuck Vera.
We wake early by the still-warm ashes of the fire. The electricity remains out, which means no way to run the dishwasher or clean the sheets and towels. Everyone is exhausted. I am in favor of packing up and paying the fine for leaving the house as is, but I am overruled. In a huff, I take another early morning walk.
The lake seems so much less ominous when the sun is out.
I want to go to the cave again, but I can’t find the sign. The storm must have knocked it down. Standing on the edge of the lake, I realize much of the thicket has been cleared out, the grasses lying flat against the still-steaming earth. The landscape looks different. I can see small gray lumps in the distance.
I find the graveyard in a squashed copse beside the lake.
The Atwoods are heavily represented, but there are other names, older names. Names that match the guest book we found in the house.
I wander quietly, until I see a grave with a Gothic marble angel perched on top.
Charlise Eleanora Atwood
1898–1929
Beloved
C. Atwood.
Catwood.
The word we screamed in my dream at the mouth of the missing cave.
This must be the woman from the portrait.
“She was a great woman.”
The voice
comes from my right, and I startle like a hare from the brush. The waitress from last night is standing on the edge of the cemetery. She is wearing shorts and running shoes, her long brown hair done up in a ponytail, earbuds in.
“Out for a run?” I ask, proud that my voice only wavers slightly.
“Day off. Finally. I’ve been stuck pulling doubles all week. Hey, sorry if I was rude the other night. I couldn’t tell you more about the Atwood house, my boss doesn’t like us talking about it. He’s worried people will start gathering again, like they did the last time. He’s an O’Connell, you see.”
“The last time? O’Connell?”
“Devon O’Connell was Charlise’s betrothed. They never got a chance to marry, their daddies hated each other, and wouldn’t consent to the match. So they ran off together, and a year later, Charlise came home alone, pregnant, looking like she’d been through a war. Only twenty, but her hair was as gray as my granny’s. She would never say what happened, would never tell where Devon was. The families were already at odds, it drove a spike right through them. Legend has it the Atwoods threw a party, a big party, to welcome her home, and the O’Connells showed up en masse to find out once and for all what happened, and killed every one of them Atwood folk.”
“Good God, that’s horrible.”
“It surely was. Charlise, she got away, they say, managed to hide out in a cave somewhere on the land up around here, had her baby in secret by herself. She wandered, alone, raised that baby, sent her off into the world, then lay down and died.”
“How sad.”
The girl looks into the distance, shading her eyes. “She was touched, in a way, when she came back. Some say she had the sight, some say she could talk to ghosts. I don’t know the real truth, but whatever happened that night, after the massacre, there were no bodies. All the Atwoods disappeared, along with everyone at that party. A whole community, gone. No one knows what happened. Only a few people from the families survived, the children who were home with their nannies while their parents died, and disappeared. This whole place is populated by strangers now.”