The Woods

by R. L. Toalson

  “Why are there so many secrets at Stonewall Manor?” Lenora asked. She couldn’t help it. “I’ve never liked secrets. And the people who keep them are selfish.”

  She hoped that hit its mark. Lloyd covered his mouth with his hand, but not before Lenora saw his smile. Mrs. Jones stared at her, her mouth open a smidge.

  “What do you think I’ll do with your secrets?” Lenora said. “I’m family.”

  Mrs. Jones shrugged her thin shoulders. “Ask your uncle.”

  “I will, then,” Lenora said.

  They waited. Lenora didn’t intend to say anything else, so her anger and annoyance would sink into Mrs. Jones, perhaps make her feel bad for her silence. But her curiosity, as was often the case, got the better of her. “If my uncle never comes to town, how do we have food at Stonewall Manor?”

  “He orders it,” Mrs. Jones said. “Someone delivers it every Wednesday or I pick it up for him.”

  “But you don’t drive.”

  “Lloyd drives me,” Mrs. Jones said.

  “What about fresh vegetables and fruit?” Lenora said. “We always had a garden in Texas City.” Mother had tended that one, too, though Lenora and Rory were supposed to weed it. Neither of them ever did. “But the only garden I have seen at Stonewall Manor is a flower one.”

  “Your uncle doesn’t have time for a garden,” Mrs. Jones said. “Your cousin used to tend the one his mother planted, but . . .” Mrs. Jones stopped abruptly.

  Uncle Richard dropped into the booth a second later, and all conversation ceased. “It’ll be a few minutes,” he said, and he folded his hands together and rested them on his nose, closing his eyes, as though he was praying. Lenora watched him, unsure what exactly he was doing. She glanced at Lloyd, who also stared at her uncle, and Mrs. Jones, who stared at her own hands.

  After a moment, Uncle Richard opened his eyes, excused himself from the table, and disappeared into the men’s bathroom. By the time he came back out, the food was waiting on their table. Lenora wondered if he had hidden in the bathroom on purpose and watched for the delivery. Perhaps he didn’t want to engage in conversation at all.

  But he could not avoid it while they were eating. And Lenora only waited a few minutes to ask, “Can you tell me about the accident, Uncle?”

  The sandwich Uncle Richard was holding slipped right out of his hands. He stopped mid-chew and flung a fierce glare at Mrs. Jones and Lloyd, his eyes blazing.

  “Hush, love,” Mrs. Jones said sharply. “Let us enjoy this meal today.”

  “But no one will tell me anything,” Lenora said. “My father didn’t tell me about his brother or my cousins or my aunt. Why didn’t he?”

  Uncle Richard said nothing. He merely pushed his plate away. It screeched into the middle of the table.

  Lenora shook her head. The question had soured the whole meal, and she wondered, not for the first time, why it was so hard for her to tame her curiosity, to keep her questions inside.

  They were quiet all the way back to the car, all the way back to the house, all the way into the front door. Uncle Richard played the gentleman and held the door for Lenora and Mrs. Jones, waving to Lloyd as he pulled out of the drive in a shiny black car. As she crossed the threshold of Stonewall Manor, Lenora hugged her uncle around the waist with a teary “thank you,” after which he let the front door slam, extracted himself from her arms, and hurried away toward the east wing, offering no words in return. Lenora stared after him. The light in the hallway dimmed with his retreat.

  Would she ever have a family again?

  The woods, it turned out, were not enough. He wanted something new, something that lived beyond the woods. He craved it, the ache so enormous at times he thought it might swallow him completely.

  All he needed was patience and time. Patience had always been a weak spot, but time—he had plenty of that. He had waited two centuries already, or very nearly so. Two centuries was all the time required; he could feel it in the flex of his fingers, in the stretching of his solidifying spine, in the heart that had begun to pulse once more, if erratically.

  Almost there. Soon he would become flesh and bone and blood again.

  He only needed one more.

  April 22, 1947

  The town was just as I remembered—nosy, peculiar, judgmental. I should not have visited. But Lenora . . . she needed me. I have never been good at recognizing these things, but I could see it for once. Perhaps it is the deep pain we share. Or perhaps I simply do not want to make the same mistake with her that I made with Bobby, and that has catalyzed my vigilance.

  I have not visited the deli since Edith and Mary died. It was difficult walking through the doors and ordering as I had always done when they were alive and well. It was more difficult sitting at a booth, eating the same sandwich I would eat all those times we sat there as a family. Lenora made it somewhat bearable; she appeared, for a time, almost happy. And then she began digging into the past. She said the last words I heard my son say: “No one will tell me anything.” Lenora and Bobby were right. I have always been hesitant to share the troubling details of life. It is a flaw I have never quite overcome.

  Bobby didn’t know the details of the accident. He didn’t know the real danger of the woods.

  One day I will have to tell Lenora. One day I will have to tell her a great many things. But for today, I must focus on my work. I must clear my mind of its distractions and finish what is demanded of me. I must vindicate the memory of my son, break the tie these woods have on our lives, and restore Stonewall Manor to a fraction of its former glory.

  Time, I fear, is running out.

  So sorrow—and those it plagues—must be set aside, boxed up, kept from the spirit in the woods.

  There is a great deal of work to be done.

  —excerpt from Richard Cole’s Journal of Scientific Progress

  INTO THE WOODS

  33

  Lenora walked the grounds of Stonewall Manor. It was late afternoon, the hottest part of the day, but she found herself drawn to the garden. There was still much work to do, but she thought that if Mother saw what it had been and what it was now, she would be proud of Lenora’s labor. She stood with her chin resting against the iron gate and imagined what the garden could possibly become—perhaps close to what it had been—if her mother were here to coax beauty from the disarray. She shoved herself away from the metal bars, which curled in graceful arcs like bowing branches of a tree, and moved on.

  It was strangely quiet on the grounds. The birds had silenced their songs. Lenora looked up at the sky, but it was still perfectly blue and clear. No cloud on the horizon, no storm waiting to drench her with its fury. She tilted her head and listened. Not a creature stirred. It was the strangest thing. She whistled, but nothing whistled in answer. The mockingbirds had vanished.

  Lenora looked back at Stonewall Manor. A shadow clung to this side of it, making it appear mysterious—even sinister—in the bright sunlight that touched everything else. It looked like an old Gothic mansion, something from the pages of Sherlock Holmes—a place where secrets were kept and crimes were hidden in stone crypts.

  Lenora shook off a chill.

  She was letting her imagination get the better of her. Perhaps it was the heat.

  The thing that bothered her most, what haunted her so relentlessly, was the quiet in the halls of the house. She scowled at her feet. What was life without voices and noise and laughter? How could one live in a silent place on a silent hill with a silent existence—and call it pleasant? When would they—Uncle Richard and Mrs. Jones—realize that Lenora could not carry on without people when the only life she had ever known had been filled with people?

  She could not.

  Lenora lifted her face to the burning sun. The silence was louder than anything she had ever known. It was as though the entire world had been drained of all its animation here on the grounds and inside the walls of Stonewall Manor. Lenora was completely and utterly alone. Everywhere. Even in nature.

 
; The chasm in her heart quaked.

  A resounding crack startled Lenora. She squinted toward the woods, which were much closer than she had thought. Darkness was all that met her. She turned her back on it, unwilling to see what might be hiding within. Was something watching her? The hairs on her neck seemed to think so.

  Lenora walked quickly toward the tower on the east wing. The west wing had a tower exactly like this one, though Lenora had not been able to locate the stairs that led up to it—another mystery of the house. Would she ever uncover them all? She thought it likely impossible. There were too many secret passageways, too many mazes that called themselves halls, too many closed and locked rooms. If someone else were here, if . . .

  Lenora closed her eyes, trying to breathe, trying not to cry, trying to drown out the thoughts that twirled through her mind by listening to her breath. But the thoughts were too loud.

  They should be here. They’re not coming. You’ll always be alone.

  Her legs exploded into motion, as though trying to outrun the words. She would never be able to run fast enough, but she would try. Her steps filled the quiet path with a storm of sound. She burst through the iron gate and fell to her knees just inside the garden, where she plunged her hands into the loose earth and pressed her cheek to the ground.

  “I miss you, Mother,” she said, her voice thick and wet. “And you, Father. And Charles and John and Rory. I miss you all so much.”

  Something shifted deep inside her. She felt sickened, choked, emptied out of everything she had been. The tears came in shaking waves. She closed her eyes. She wanted to disappear. She wanted to return to Texas City, to the day of the explosion. She wanted to begin the morning anew, pretend she was sick like Rory had, so at least they would all be together, dead or alive.

  “Please come get me,” she said. “Please be alive.”

  What was the last thing she had said to her father? Nothing. She had ignored him on her way in to school. She had been so angry with her sister. She had been angry with Mother. She had not said goodbye to any of them. And now she might not ever get the chance.

  She struggled to breathe. The missing swept over her. She missed hearing her mother talk about the swamp hibiscus and the parasol flower she was growing in the garden and how the ridiculous heat had withered them. She missed seeing John stretched out on the entire expanse of their couch while he was reading. She missed hearing Father’s stories about the fires he’d put out and the lives his men had saved over the years. She missed feeling angry with Rory. She missed Mother’s and Father’s hugs before bed and the way they would dance in the kitchen when they thought no one was looking.

  She missed being scolded for not acting like a proper lady, for always coming home with a dirty dress, for the notes—her scientific observations—she left all over the house. She didn’t write those notes anymore. She was not the same person without her family.

  Her mother’s pearl necklace slipped out from beneath her collar and rested against her lips. It felt right, even if it didn’t quite feel like hope.

  “Please come home.”

  She could not bear it if they didn’t.

  She said the words again and again and again, as though these ones she loved could hear her somehow, as though her whispers might pull them from the rim of death and construct a wedge of protection around them, as though it weren’t already too late.

  And then her ears heard a magical sound. A voice. It was only a whisper, but it was the loudest thing in her world.

  Lenora.

  34

  “Father?”

  Lenora sat up, pulled her feet beneath her, rocked back on her heels. It was not the proper way for a lady to kneel, but Lenora was not concerned with dainty etiquette when she had heard her father’s voice, calling her name.

  Was it possible?

  Lenora. I am here.

  Lenora’s head twisted toward the woods. “Where?” she called. “Where are you, Father?”

  Was her father inside the woods, waiting for her? Had he come for Lenora after all? Had he been trapped in the woods all along, because of exhaustion or an injury?

  She had to find him.

  Lenora’s more practical side introduced another question: Why would Father be in the woods?

  But Lenora did not care about the practical side of things, not when her father might be alive. She had lived too much in the world of practicality; Rory had always teased her about that. Perhaps there was magic and miracle after all.

  Besides, hadn’t she overheard Mrs. Jones say that Father loved the woods?

  And Uncle Richard said Father had tried to warn him—about what?

  She could find out and find Father.

  Lenora stood, turning in the direction from which the voice had reached her. She squinted her eyes, trying to see into the line of trees that stretched out across the grounds. They bent slightly in a breeze she could not feel. Were they beckoning?

  No. Of course not.

  Lenora. I am here.

  Where? She squinted.

  She waited for some minutes, expecting a form—her father—to emerge, but when nothing did, she took matters into her own hands and moved toward the trees. At the edge of the woods, she stopped. The trees were still, as though holding their breath. They remained as dark as ever. She glanced back toward the house, checking every window for movement, but there was nothing. She hesitated, listening.

  What waited for her within these woods? Her uncle had called them dangerous. Were they? And, if so, did that mean Father was in danger?

  Was Father really inside? What if he wasn’t?

  But what if he was?

  “Father!” Lenora said. Her mind was made up. “I’m coming!”

  She held on to her mother’s pearl necklace and stepped inside.

  The world exhaled. The trees bent majestically, as though bowing to Lenora, but surely that was only a trick of her imagination. The air brightened with a golden glow. Lenora blinked. The trees had straightened again. And then, before her very eyes, they shifted, each one of them bending the bottom of their trunks in such a way that turned them into flattened seats, inviting her to sit and stay awhile. She touched the smooth bark of one and moved along to another. She stopped at the third. Its leaves hung around her, hissing. It sounded musical, not threatening.

  “Where are you, Father?” Lenora said, but her father did not answer.

  She sat on the platform provided by the tree, resting her chin on her fist. She looked toward the entrance of the woods, but the manor seemed very far away. She could just make it out. How had she traveled so far, when it didn’t feel as though she had gone more than a few steps?

  A dark cloud hung behind the manor now, transforming the stone walls and gabled roof and wraparound porch from a home into a menacing, frightening fortress. Lenora drew in a sharp breath and tore her gaze from it.

  Perhaps the danger was in Stonewall Manor, not in these woods.

  Lenora. I am here.

  Lenora stood abruptly. Where was the voice coming from? How would she ever locate her father in these vast woods? She was not a hero like him.

  The despair crashed into her, and Lenora could do nothing more than cover her face with her hands and weep.

  “Lenora,” said a voice, off to her left. It was the voice of a boy, the voice of her brother Charles, soft and gentle and curious.

  “Charles,” she said, searching the trees. She could see nothing. “Where are you?” Her words came out hushed, a piece of panic clinging to them.

  “Lenora.” This time the voice was not soft, it was loud, a voice that shook the trees so they sizzled. It vibrated through her chest.

  “Charles!” Lenora said, and then again: “Where are you? Please. Tell me how I can find you.” She turned around and around and around, but as far as she looked, she only saw trees. Emptiness. Despair.

  Her vision blurred, and she tripped over something on the ground. She did not even look to see what it was.

  She
needed to get back to the grounds of Stonewall Manor. Something was wrong.

  But there was no break in the trees now. There was only the dark woods.

  35

  “Lenora.” The voice called her again, and this time it was so unlike Charles’s voice that she ceased her running and stood, rooted, unable to move. Her eyes widened. Someone was here with her. What had she done?

  She had put herself in danger—and for what? A mirage of the people she loved. They were not here.

  Her head felt cloudy.

  “Who are you?” Lenora said. “Why have you brought me here? What do you want? Where is my family?”

  “So many questions,” the voice said. It was not unkind; it was merely strange. A purring kind of voice. “And they will be answered, in time. But first we must find out if you can see me. So look.”

  Lenora looked. She saw nothing.

  “Down at your feet,” the voice said.

  She dropped her eyes. There was no person, not even a little one—which would have made Lenora think she was dreaming—but there was what looked like an unusually colored salamander—which made her think even more certainly that she was dreaming. Its skin was an opaque pink color, its eyes like beads of gold with a black circle pressed into the middle, and it wore a crown of pink fur around its neck, similar to a lion’s mane.

  Lenora felt a laugh bubble into her throat, and it was so unexpected she could not stop it.

  The creature frowned, its tiny pale eyebrows drawing low over its golden eyes. The golden light in the woods dimmed. “Now, that’s no way to greet a Scorlaman,” it said.

  “A Scorlaman?” Lenora said. She had never heard of such a thing. She didn’t think she could conjure up a creature like this, not even in her dreams. Charles was the imagination in the Cole family, not Lenora.