by Lisa Unger
“Hi, Daddy,” she breathed, sounding exactly like she had when she used to love him. When she was small and rode on his back and thought his Donald Duck impression was the most hilarious thing in the world. Never had any human being ever looked at him with so much adoration and wonder. Maybe that little person was still in there, trapped inside the teenager who looked at him lately as though he were something she wanted to scrape off her shoe.
“Hi, bunny,” he whispered.
But she was as sound a sleeper as her mother. She pulled the covers around her until she disappeared into their fluff.
There it was again, the scraping. Downstairs. Or was it up?
The hallways, the three stories, the endless rooms, most of which had stood untouched for years—decades—not to mention the back passageways behind walls, the hidden stairways to half stories with abbreviated, low-ceilinged spaces, the dumbwaiters long rusted and long unused, except by mice and rats. Sounds traveled in strange ways, bounced around.
“Some eccentric person might consider this a living art project,” enthused Avery March, as they’d made their way through the maze of Merle House.
“Some mental patient,” said Jewel, who had come along for the tour, apparently to add commentary. She had been largely ignored, though March had seemed to find her amusing.
“No, you’re right,” gushed Samantha. “Merle House is a special place. It just needs some attention. Some love.”
Samantha was already in love.
He could see that; he knew how this house, this land, had a way of glamouring a certain type of person, weaving its way into their psyche. He’d seen it first with Claire, his childhood friend and, truth be told, first love—though of the innocent-never-went-anywhere-crush-type love. They stayed in touch; she was a psychiatrist now, some big job, a researcher into criminal psychology. He’d followed her career, read her work. She often asked about Merle House, his grandfather. But they never talked about what had happened here, or about Havenwood. Apparently, she’d filed it away too. Things they couldn’t explain and would rather forget.
He wound down the long staircase to the foyer and stood beneath the gigantic chandelier, listening. The dusty crystal pieces tinkled in the draft he felt on the back of his neck. A sigh. The house was so drafty it seemed to breathe sometimes.
There it was again. This time sounding more like a moan of pleasure.
He followed it to the old man’s study and pushed inside.
Matthew had commandeered this room, which smelled of must, stale tobacco, and woodsmoke, as his own. With its tall windows and walls of bookshelves, the big old desk, the plush couch before a grand fireplace, and all the files and years of journals on the house, Merle family history, it felt like the control center of the place. His laptop on the surface of the desk was the only nod to the modern world.
He paused a moment in the doorway, heart thudding.
On the couch lay Sylvia, nude, her body glowing in the moonlight. She was propped up on one elbow, watching him with eyes that looked black but that he knew to be blue.
“Matthew,” she whispered. “I think about you all the time.”
He approached her, his body coming alive, eyes drinking in the dip of her waist, the fullness of her thighs, the luscious teardrops of her breasts.
“Sylvia.”
“Did you miss me?”
When she’d turned up at his office that night months ago, she’d primly taken a seat in the chair beside his desk. It was a tiny room, barely larger than a walk-in closet.
“What can I do for you, Miss Rowan?”
He’d slid his chair as far away from her as possible, hitting the windowsill. What had she talked about? He didn’t even remember, distracted as he was by the way the light glinted in the fire of her hair, by the delicate turn of her neck, the scent—was it lily?—that seemed to waft off her.
“I see the way you look at me,” she said suddenly.
“I’m sorry?” he said, pretending he didn’t understand.
“I see it,” she said, a slight smile on her pink lips. “Matthew, I think about you all the time.”
A flush rose to her cheeks. He cleared his throat.
“I’m married, Miss Rowan. Happily married.”
He pointed to a picture of Samantha and Jewel, both of them looking sun-kissed and gorgeous, laughing on the beach. She glanced at it, then back to him with that stunning blue gaze.
“You’re sweating.”
He was sweating. He wiped at his forehead with the sleeve of his denim shirt.
“Miss Rowan,” he said, summoning his professor voice. “If you didn’t come here to talk about your work, then I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
God, he wanted her. He wanted to close the door to his office and bend her over his desk. He wanted her flesh under his hands. He wanted to bury his face in her hair. And he wanted other things, things he wouldn’t dare acknowledge. They locked eyes; she saw his desire and smiled.
She fished something out of her bag and slid it across his desk. A card. Just her name, Sylvia, and her number printed simply in black sans serif on cream card stock. Very old school in this digital age. He liked that about her. That she wore a watch. That, in class, she took notes in a notebook, not on a laptop.
“If you change your mind, just call me. Anytime.”
He didn’t reach to touch it, and she glided from the room, leaving her delicious scent behind. He sat there, vibrating, a deep discomfort in his groin, guilt gnawing at his heart. Wasn’t it still cheating to want someone with such intensity, even if you never touched her? With Samantha at home, diagnosed a few months ago with very early-stage breast cancer.
There’d been surgery, no chemo (thank God). But she was in her third week of radiation treatments, keeping it from most of their friends and Jewel because she didn’t want people to worry. She’d be okay, most likely, but the treatment and recovery was a hard road. She cried at night, so tired, so traumatized, and he held her tight.
And here he was getting a hard-on during office hours for his too-young and brazen comp lit student.
Matthew, I think about you all the time.
Honestly, Matthew knew he wasn’t that good looking. He was okay; he had a decent build, a full head of wavy, dark hair. Samantha said he had the eyelashes of a girl, which didn’t sound like a compliment, but she swore it was. He was an uneasy runner, really a bit too big for it. He wasn’t the kind of guy who had his undergraduates swooning, usually. What did she see in him? It was a bit of an ego boost.
He sat there for too long after Sylvia had gone, just staring at the card. He swept it into his wastebasket, and when no one else showed for office hours, he packed up his stuff.
But before he left, he lifted the card out of the bin and shoved it in his bag. He never intended to call her. Just—maybe he’d look at it when he wasn’t feeling great about himself.
That would have been the end of it, or should have been. But Sylvia couldn’t let it go.
Now, here she was sprawled on the couch of his grandfather’s office. Impossible.
The door slammed shut behind him, and the room seemed to fill with a kind of strange fog. He could hear only the wild beating of his heart. The door locked; he heard the click. Again, impossible.
But he had his mind on other things. Sylvia leaned back and spread her legs, moved her hand between her thighs.
Matthew, she breathed, arching her back, please.
He went to her, took her delicate, youthful body into his arms. God, it was so good, the cream of her flesh, the taste of her skin, the silk of her hair. He was nude as well, pajama bottoms fallen away at some point.
She sighed with pleasure, dug her nails into the flesh of his back. He buried himself deep into her heat, her arms tight around him, her breath hot in his ear. The release of all those months of wanting. He shuddered with the depth of his pleasure. Disappeared into it, into her.
But then she seemed to grow hard in his arms. When he pulled back to
look at her, her eyes were blank, whites turned a horrible red, black bruising on her beautiful throat, her mouth open in a silent scream.
He leaped away from her. “I’m sorry. Oh my God, Sylvia, I’m so sorry.”
“Matthew.”
He wept then with all his terrible regret. Why couldn’t she just have let it go, let him go.
“Matthew.”
Awake. Naked. Sprawled on his grandfather’s couch. Fingers of moonlight playing on the carpet, outside the tall trees swaying in a stiff wind. Samantha standing at the door, one hand on the frame, another on her hip. He knew that look. That mingle of anger and pain, underscored by disgust and disappointment.
“Matthew,” she said. “You’re . . . dreaming.”
He sat up quickly, embarrassed. He reached for a throw pillow to cover himself.
“You were yelling,” she said.
“Was I?” He rubbed at his head, his eyes. He was dreaming. Sylvia. It was just a dream. Relief flooded him. He’d never touched her, not like that. I never cheated on you, Sam, not really. “Did I wake you?”
She raised her eyebrows at him.
“What’s going on with you, Matthew?”
Oh, I don’t know. I was falsely accused of sexually assaulting a student. I was fired from my job as a result of those unfounded accusations. We lost our beloved house—well, had to sell it because of that, had to move because in the current climate an accusation was a guilty verdict. Then, at the moment when we weren’t sure what we’d do next, we received this “inheritance”—my family home, which is a behemoth of need and disrepair that we may never be able to sell. So here we were at Merle House with no place else to go, money disappearing at an alarming pace. That’s what’s going on with me, Sam.
“Nothing,” he said instead, because she knew it better than anyone. “I’m good.”
“You’re good,” she said flatly. She tossed him his pajama bottoms. “I found these on the stairs.”
“Thanks.”
The moment expanded; she sighed in the darkness. Had she heard him call out Sylvia’s name?
“I’m sorry, Sam,” he said. “For all of it.”
She came to sit beside him on the couch. “I know you are.”
Hadn’t they just had this conversation? Hadn’t they had it a million times? He hoped one day, after enough penance, to hear actual forgiveness. Instead he heard her resignation, her acceptance that he was far less than the man she had once believed him to be, but that she still, for some reason, stayed by him. Still loved him? Maybe.
“We’ll get to the other side of this,” he said.
“Maybe we’re already here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Merle House,” she said. “Maybe it’s home.”
He almost laughed; Merle House had its ways of luring, seducing, enveloping.
You can’t have her, he told the house. We’re not staying here.
This time the scraping noise was so loud they both startled at the sound.
“What the hell was that?” asked Samantha, grabbing his arm.
“Old houses,” he said easily. “They just make noises.”
He’d come here thinking he would have the upper hand because he’d escaped it once. He knew better than to fall for its tricks. Merle House would give him Sylvia every night, if that was what he wanted.
What, he wondered, was it giving Samantha?
6.
Derisive laughter woke Claire from the depth of her sleep.
Ha ha! Ha ha!
Mocking, superior. The sound of someone making fun of her, cruelly taunting. The room was dark, but probably it was close to dawn.
Tap, tap, tap.
A sound at her window. She rose to pull back the curtains, and there on the branch outside sat a giant crow, mouth open, throat undulating.
Ha ha! Ha ha!
Claire regarded him a second, the big shadowy visitor, cast in relief by the milky light of sunrise. Claire knocked on the glass. “Go away,” she said.
He stared, beady eye blinking, shifting from foot to foot. He flapped his wings, looking right at her.
She knocked again, harder. “Get lost!”
This time he flapped away, cawing angrily. She stood a moment, watching the sun climb higher, painting the sky a cotton-candy pink. As she watched the pastel color show, she felt something she hadn’t felt in a while—a glimmer of hope. The combination of drugs Dr. Bold had prescribed had her sleeping better, seemed to be keeping visits from Archie at bay. She was feeling more solid—more herself.
The road back was long, she knew. Her license to practice had been temporarily suspended because of what Dr. Bold had diagnosed as her psychotic break due to extreme trauma. She was in twice-weekly therapy, her research all but abandoned. Her physical injuries were still troubling her, but she felt stronger. She saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel; it’s just that it’s an oncoming train. Archie had been relegated to a whisper in the back of her consciousness. She ignored him.
She made her bed. Put on her running clothes and headed out into the chill. The trees whispered, and her footfalls echoed in the quiet. By the time she hit the trailhead, she was in the zone, movements and breath in a synchronous pump. She’d do a five-mile loop, and when she was done, she’d feel calm, clear.
The days and weeks behind her were making a terrible kind of sense. She’d been viciously attacked by one of her patients. Unable to process the trauma, she’d created a dreamlike scenario to make it understandable—a kind of confabulation. Somehow, in that moment, her psyche had seen fit to return her to an unexplained, unresolved trauma from her childhood. The very reason she was studying men like Winston Grann to begin with. It all made sense to her now. The pressure of her work, the repressed memories of her past, the violent attack; it was like a psychic Molotov cocktail that had set fire to her life.
Physician, heal thyself.
And Archie was some dark construct, the shadow. Dr. Bold was a Jungian analyst as well as a clinical psychiatrist. They’d spent a lot of time talking about Archie, trying to understand what function he served in her psyche.
“When did he first appear to you, Claire?” Dr. Bold had asked when Claire had no choice but to admit to her what was happening.
“The summer I turned sixteen,” she’d said. “But that wasn’t his name. He didn’t have a name.”
“Where were you?”
“I had a friend named Matthew. He only came to town for the summer, to stay with his grandfather in this huge old mansion they called Merle House. It had a million rooms, and these crazy hidden passageways between, an attic filled with antiques, a basement that seemed to go on for miles, and acres of woods, and gardens that had gone to seed. And we spent so much time exploring it, discovering all its secrets.”
She still remembered those days, long and warm, filled with friendship and easy laughter. They climbed and explored, swam in the lake.
“We?”
“Matthew, Ian, Mason, and I—my friends then.”
They had been summer friends, really; when the days started to shorten and the air grew chill, Matthew went home. She might get the occasional email from him, or see him if his family came for Christmas. Ian lived in town, but he went to a different school so they almost never saw each other except at games and at the Halloween social.
Mason was at the same high school, but they moved in different circles, were on a different track—she was an honor roll student; he was in a vocational program, learning a trade.
Sometimes they passed in the hall, and each of them would give a low-profile wave. But it was like they all lived on different planets until Matthew came back, and the freedom of summer let them shift off their school-year selves.
“We were playing hide-and-seek,” she’d said. “And I wound up in the basement.”
“You weren’t afraid to go into the basement alone?”
“No,” said Claire. “I was never afraid
at Merle House before that.”
The sky grew lighter as she ran, the trail seeming to rise up before her. Once she hit her stride, she could run forever, legs and heart and lungs working together to create a nearly effortless lift from the ground, her mind going blissfully blank.
“What happened to make you afraid?” Dr. Bold had asked.
Claire had gone down the stairs, planning to hide in the cupboard underneath the staircase. It was musty and filled with boxes; once they’d found a dead rat.
It was widely accepted that Claire was the bravest and the boldest among them—she always raced to the rope swing over the lake first, reached the highest branches, was first to crawl into the dark spaces. She wasn’t afraid of rats, or old houses, or really anything then. She had a flashlight and a magazine folded in her pocket. She was planning to settle in for a good long hide. But when she got to the bottom of the stairs, she saw a light coming from the far edge of the space, as if it was shining from underneath a closed door. There was a tinny strain of music—jazz.
They’d been in the basement lots of times before. Though it was large, there wasn’t much to it, and she didn’t remember a separate room with a door. It didn’t seem like the same place she’d explored with Matthew, Ian, and Mason; it was different, the way sometimes in dreams things were all turned around and confused.
She found herself walking toward the space, and as she went, that same strange fog descended, surrounding her. She breathed it and felt light-headed, high. She was lifted out, just like when she was inside the painting, as if she’d entered another world that was always right there but invisible, out of reach for anyone else. She moved through the fog, even though distantly she knew she shouldn’t. She could hear the boys thundering around upstairs, calling her name, but she had no voice. She just kept walking until she was at a door that stood ajar. She pushed it open.
There was a tall, slim man dressed in black, standing over a high table, his back to her. The music—she’d sought it out over the years but never found anything that sounded even remotely like it—had grown loud, and the man at the table didn’t hear the creaking of the door, or didn’t respond to it.