by JT Lawrence
“Derek!” I shouted. “Derek! It’s Cameron.”
An eerie sense of deja vu hit me and trailed with it a cold, stagnant dread. I shook it off and hurtled downstairs, calling my son's name. Shivering with fright and cold, I switched his light on and checked the room, hoping I had imagined the empty bed on the screen. I had not. I called for him repeatedly, rushing from room to room and cursing myself for the unnecessary number of rooms we had. Derek crashed around the house behind me, opening cupboard doors and shouting for Cameron. I was freezing despite the heat of anxiety pricking my chest and scalp.
“He’s not in the house,” said Derek, his mouth slack with terror.
“Of course he’s in the house!” I shouted. I had checked the locks twice before turning in, but when we got to the kitchen, we saw that back door swinging gently in the breeze.
“I locked this door,” said Derek.
In my mind, I pictured Houndstooth's bunch of keys, a filthy leather tag as a keyring.
No, no, no, I panicked.
“Houndstooth,” I said, my whole body shaking. “Houndstooth has taken him.”
Derek tried to call the emergency service, but there was no signal. He ran up to our bedroom to try with my phone while I grabbed a flashlight and ran outside, calling for Cameron.
Had that awful man taken my son? Was he trying to exact revenge for my firing him? Fear bloomed like ice crystals inside me, cutting into my heart and lungs. I tried to bring my breathing under control, tried to think of the best plan to find my boy, but the static of the baby monitor screen had moved into my brain, and I found I couldn’t think clearly past the blizzard.
I jogged haphazardly through the back garden, to the stream, sweeping the flashlight-beam as I went. I tripped over stones and tree roots but didn’t fall.
"Cameron!" I kept shouting, not recognising the sound of my voice. I couldn't see him at the water's edge. I followed the trickling water; desperately searching. After what felt like hours, my feet were aching bricks, and my body was insisting on rest, but I ignored it. My mounting panic energised me. Finally, I heard what I thought was a child’s murmur. There was a movement behind a bush.
"Cameron?" I yelled, my voice hoarse from calling. I rushed to the where I thought the sound had come from, but I couldn't see him; just trees standing like motionless people in the moonlight. Just black bushes and wild grass. The next step I took sent me tumbling into a pitch-black pocket as if the earth had swallowed me up. With a skull-shaking thud, I was at the bottom of a deep pit. I could tell from the newly chopped roots in the walls that it had been freshly dug, and it just happened to be the right size for me—that is, deep enough so I couldn't climb out. The bulb faded and flickered out, probably because of the fall. I shook it and slammed it on my palm, but it was dead. Everything disappeared into the dark, everything but my frantic breathing.
“Cameron?” I shouted. “Are you there? I need help!”
There was someone up there, then a scraping sound. A shovel forced its way into the earth, and the first load of soil rained down on me. I screamed, but the soil kept coming. Someone was going to bury me alive.
I don't remember what happened next. Derek thought I must have passed out from the panic. But I somehow escaped the hole because he found me wandering in the dark outside the house. He'd found Cameron inside, after all, curled up into a little ball, under his bed. You'd think he hadn't been outside at all if it weren't for the soil smears on his feet. Derek ran a bath for me; he washed the sand off my skin and out of my hair while I cried.
I couldn’t make sense of what had happened. I went looking for the hole at sunrise, mist shrouding the castle grounds. The hole was gone, and Houndstooth’s polished shovel was in the shed. I thought of his dirty coat and patronising sneer. The sound of his voice when he said You’ll be sorry.
"He's trying to drive me crazy," I said to Derek. "First, the shed. Then the hole."
“Houndstooth?”
“Of course, Houndstooth! He’s the only one, apart from us, who has keys to the house.”
Derek frowned at me.
“Don’t look at me like that! How else do you explain it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
I made Cameron scrambled eggs and buttered toast soldiers for breakfast. Neither Derek nor I had an appetite, so we shared a mug of black coffee.
“Cameron,” I said, speaking past the constriction in my throat. “What happened last night?”
“Nothing,” he said, scooping the eggs up onto his fork.
“You went outside,” I said.
He looked up at me, blinking, his face blank. “Outside?”
“When Dad found you, you were sleeping under your bed.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t remember going outside?”
“I remember my dream.”
I tried to swallow the stone in my throat, but it was stuck. “What happened in your dream?”
“Victoria had something to show me.”
There was a sudden searing heat on my stomach and in my lap. It took me a moment to realise I had spilt the coffee all over myself. I gasped and jumped up. "What did you just say?" I whispered.
Cameron's eyes grew wide, and he dropped his fork. "Sorry, Mom."
“What did you say?” I asked again, my scalded skin glowing.
Derek was motionless, pale, frowning at our son.
“Victoria?” I demanded. “Is that the little girl who visits you at night?”
Derek stared askance. He hadn't seen the girl on the baby monitor screen.
“Cameron?” I said. “Speak to us. What did you mean when you said—”
The air was vibrating with tension.
"Nothing," he said, and left the table, leaving Derek and me to stare at each other, horrified.
Exhausted and on edge, I spent the day vacuuming and tidying the attic. I filled it with books and toys, and a cupboard full of snacks. I hauled Cameron’s mattress up there, and his favourite plush puppy. I installed the baby monitor camera and booster so I could watch him sleep.
“We can’t keep our son locked in the attic,” said Derek, scrubbing his scalp with the tips of his fingers.
“It’s only till he’s out of danger,” I whispered.
“And when will that be?”
I lost my temper. I threw down the bucket I had been holding, shocking both of us.
“What do you want me to do?” I demanded through jaws wired shut with frustration. “Houndstooth is out there. He has keys to our house.”
We didn’t mention Victoria. We were both in shock.
Cameron played happily in the attic for a few days. He’d go digging in the old chests and boxes filled with the things we had yet to unpack. I’d take him out for a run around the garden, but I never let him out of my sight, and we no longer visited the river. One day when I took his lunch up to him, what I saw almost made me drop the tray. “Where did you get that?”
He looked up at me, holding the little yellow polka dot dress. A brown box lay open on the attic floor. The box I hadn't realised was up there.
“This is what she wears,” he said. I slammed the tray down on the desk and grabbed the dress from his hands, locking the door on the way out. Derek took him his dinner.
Thoughts and memories rushed through my head like the babbling brook outside. I pushed the sad thoughts away. The castle was supposed to be a new start, away from the trauma of before, but my mind would not let the dark thoughts go.
“We need to tell him,” I said to Derek. “And we need to get out of this house.”
Derek sighed. “We can’t afford a new house. And no one will buy this one.”
“Speak to the agent.”
“I have spoken to him. I spoke to him after the first incident. The baby monitor incident.”
“So you believed me?”
“I don’t know what I believe. All I know is that the hair on the back o
f my neck sticks up every time I walk into this place. We can’t stay here, but we can’t afford to move.”
“We’ll stay in a hotel.”
It was desperation talking. I knew there was no money for a hotel. We weren’t earning an income, and all of our savings were tied up in the house.
I felt like I was choking. "Cameron found her dress in the attic."
“What?”
“Victoria’s dress. The yellow one.”
I don't know why I said "the yellow one". It's not like we had kept any other clothes of hers. The polka dot dress broke our hearts because she had never grown into it. I had spotted it before I was pregnant and bought it without hesitating. It was the epitome of the happy future I had imagined for Derek and me; a ray of sunshine never realised. We had never told Cameron about his twin sister dying in her cot. We thought we could leave it all behind, but we were wrong.
“Do you smell something?” I asked. Was there the scent of smoke, or had I finally lost my tenuous grip on reality? Derek stopped and sniffed the air, then his expression crumpled in worry. I rushed to the front door, but it was locked, and the key was gone. The back door was also bolted.
“We’re locked in,” I said, my mouth dry.
We ran up the stairs and sprinted for the attic where we saw smoke unfurling from the bottom of the door like a grey silk sheet. I knew before I tried the doorknob that the door was locked. There was a searing pain and a hissing sound; my hand came away branded by the handle. I held my wrist and cried out in pain and terror.
“Cameron!” Derek shouted, and hammered on the door. His eyes were streaming.
“It wasn’t me!” shouted Cameron, crying and coughing.
I remembered the box of matches in my son’s pocket; the reason Houndstooth had reprimanded him, and then I understood a slew of things I had not yet been ready to see before that moment, caught in the crosshairs of love and terror. I saw it all now, and the fear almost flattened me.
Derek began kicking the door, but it wasn’t budging.
“Axe,” I gasped. “Get the axe. In the workshop.”
Derek flew down the stairs.
“Cameron?” I shouted in a shaking voice. “Cam? We’re going to get you out of there. Put something over your mouth so you don’t breathe the smoke.” There was no answer. “Cam?”
I felt my sinuses sting, but I was too shocked to shed any tears. I couldn’t believe it was happening. He would have been safer in his stonewalled bedroom than in the timber-trussed attic. My eyes were swelling; I began to see stars. Derek was taking too long. I needed to fetch the axe, myself.
“I’ll be back! I’m coming back! We’ll get you out of there!”
I imagined his small body passed out on the floor, and the adrenaline pushed me down the stairs, coughing and spluttering.
It wasn’t me, Cameron had said, and I knew he was telling the truth; a version of reality where impossible things happen, like a little girl ghost who leads her surviving twin brother into danger. Houndstooth had never been the dangerous one. It had been Victoria all along.
Derek lay unconscious at the foot of the stairs, a halo of liquid crimson around his leaking head. Later he would say he tripped over something he didn’t see, and people wouldn’t understand that, but I would, because I knew Victoria would do whatever it took to keep Cameron in that room until he died. She needed him to die; she wanted him to join her in Everland. That's why she took him to the deepest part of the river—hoping he would drown—and why she tried to get him to fall into the hole in the garden. I had saved him twice, but it had not been enough. Even if we got out of this godforsaken manor, she would forever be there, tempting him into peril.
As I stepped over Derek's body, a flash of guilt shot through me. I needed to stop and see to him, but I also needed to get the axe. When I reached the back door, I looked for something to barge it open with, but came up empty-handed. My panic stopped my brain from working, and I didn't know what to do next, except beat the door down with my bare hands. I pictured Cameron's body lying on that attic floor, soon to be devoured by Victoria's hungry flames. I used all the strength I could muster, and I ran against the door, smashing my shoulder into it again and again. When I heard my arm break, I switched my efforts to kick the door with all my might. My arm began to ache in a deep, dark way, but I kept up my assault on the door. I was weeping; hopeless. I was sure the attic was already a furnace by then, and I didn't know if Derek was still alive. Even though I felt the flood of despair, I couldn't give up. It was as if my whole life and everything in it came down to this one moment where I could turn our fortunes if I tried hard enough. I couldn't give up, no matter how broken my body felt. There was a small amount of power in the feeling.
It was the exact opposite of the feeling I had on the morning five years before when I had found Victoria lying in her cot, blue-skinned and breathless. Cameron had woken early and was sobbing in the cot next to hers as if he understood what had happened. My poor little Victoria; there was nothing I could do to save her. I was too late for anything but the overwhelming feeling of futility and heartbreak. The shock had blackened my insides for years, but my love for Cameron healed me. Finally, the screws holding the lock in place gave way, and the door flew open. I sprinted out into the night air, gasping for oxygen to fortify me. Suddenly there was a shadow the size of a bear. I recognised the smell of his dirty coat.
“Houndstooth!” I croaked. “Fire! Cameron’s locked in the attic!”
We ran to the workshop together. I passed him the axe, and a mask to cover his nose and mouth. We hurried into the manor and up the stairs. I coughed as the thick smoke cascaded into my lungs. I wanted to shout for Cameron, but I couldn't catch a deep enough breath without choking. My eyes were almost swollen shut. Houndstooth let out a roar and began hacking at the door, razing it in seconds. The extra oxygen we had introduced into the attic made the flames leap towards the trusses. The curtains were already on fire. Cameron lay in the middle of the floor, exactly as I had pictured him. Houndstooth scooped his limp body off the floor. I was so grateful, sobs bubbled up in my throat. We made our way through the bitter smoke, down the stairs, where the groundskeeper passed Cameron to me while he lifted Derek and levered him up onto his shoulder. We walked over the splinters of the back door and out into the vast garden, black and beautiful and fresh under the moon. Houndstooth laid Derek down on the grass and listened for breath. I stared at him until he looked at me and nodded.
“Alive,” he said.
I looked down at my son in my arms, skin powdered with soot, and felt his wrist for a pulse and wept in relief. I hugged him closer and nodded at Houndstooth. Alive.
Houndstooth's face melted in relief. It was then I understood that Houndstooth had known Cameron was in danger all along and had been watching him, hoping to keep him safe. It's why he had tried to take Cam's matches away from him. He knew what the house was capable of. It was a portal, a doorway, an alarm bell that unsettled spirits and brought them to the surface like dead fish in a stream. Houndstooth came with the house because he knew this; he was the guard. His eyes were haunted with the things he had seen.
We sat on the grass, watching the house burn.
“You removed that shed in the garden,” I said. “The one I was locked in.”
“Yes,” said Houndstooth. “It wasn’t safe.”
“And you’re the one who helped me out of the hole. You filled it so I could climb out.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were burying me alive.”
“I wasn’t,” he said.
“And that day that Cam said you were mean. It was because you stopped him playing with poison.”
“And matches,” Houndstooth nodded. “I tried to take them away. I know the dangers of this place. Easy thing to land up in the wrong hands.”
“It’s my daughter,” I said, and his eyes flickered with emotion.
“I guessed,” he said. “They have a strong connection. The boy and h
er.”
“He doesn’t know he had a sister.”
The groundskeeper looked at me, and I saw the flames reflected in his eyes. “Yes, he does.”
Despite the heat, my blood ran cold. “Victoria won’t give up, will she?”
Houndstooth shook his head.
“She’ll keep trying to get him to cross over to be with her.”
“That’s my understanding, yes,” he said. “There’s only one way to save him.”
The realisation of what I had to do struck me like a lightning bolt; like the shock I'd felt when I'd found baby Victoria lifeless in her cot that strange dawn. It was blinding, and there was so much pain—as if it had sheared my body in two.
Derek began to cough.
"I need to go before he wakes up," I said, and Houndstooth's mouth turned down as he gave a slow nod. My throat burned with emotion. "You'll look after Cameron?"
“I will,” said Houndstooth.
I uttered my thanks, hugged my unconscious son one last time and kissed his forehead, my heart bursting with love and grief, then laid him down next to his father, whose hand I squeezed in farewell. Tears streamed down my cheeks. The core of my body was glowing with a pain I had only ever felt once before, and I would never feel again. I gazed longingly at my family, and walked into the fire, to join Victoria in Everland. I'd keep her away from Cameron. My heart was aflame. I was burning up from the inside and didn't notice any pain from the fire that ensconced me. When I glanced back to get one last look at my family, all I saw were flames.
2
A Homemade Coffin
Robin Susman cradles the calf in her arms. The animal's mother had rejected her; turned her away from feeding. Usually, nature has its own way of dealing with such things—a cruel reality that asserts itself often on a farm like this. Susman's neighbour, a third-generation cattle farmer, tells Susman she's too soft with the animals.