In the Night Wood

Charles stared at his plate, his mouth set in a thin line, while the girl complied. She moved slowly, cradling a pitcher in her small hands. She studied Erin from under her bangs as she refilled the glass.

The landlady smiled. “I’m very sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Charles said. “Accidents happen.”

“Ever since her mother passed …” The landlady shook her head. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No,” Charles said. “Thank you.”

“You’ll let me know if you need anything, then.” The landlady turned back to the kitchen, herding the girl before her. Just before the child disappeared, she glared back at the table, and for an instant — the space of a heartbeat — she reminded Erin of Lissa once again. It was like the blink of a camera shutter: Sarah, pudgy and resentful; then Lissa. Lissa glaring back at her, her eyes reproachful and unafraid.

You let me die, those eyes said.

Then the shutter blinked again and Lissa was gone.

“Charles —”

His hands busied themselves with his silverware.

There was something wounded in his silence, something fraught and sorrowful. He looked like a little boy, scowling at his shoes lest a flash of further intimacy send pent-up tears spilling down his cheeks. Erin had wanted to touch him then, too, and in that moment of weakness, a confessional impulse seized her. A fresh start, he’d said. And why not? You didn’t start fresh with lies.

“Charles —”

His knife chattered against the rim of his plate. A dull reflection alighted trembling on the flat of the blade. He stared at the table.

“I saw her, Charles. It was her. I mean … I know …”

Then he did look up, his face pale and cold, his expression set.

“She’s gone, Erin. She’s —” He drew a breath, shook his head, sighed. “She’s … gone.” He stared at her a moment longer. “I’m sorry,” he said. He hesitated as if he wanted to say more, and then, biting his lower lip, he pushed back his chair and left the dining room.

“Madam?” The landlady stood in the kitchen door, wiping her hands on a towel. “Is there something wrong with the meal?”

“No,” Erin said. “The food was fine. Everything’s fine.”

But everything wasn’t fine. Nothing was fine. Nothing would ever be fine again. Erin leaned her head against the cool window and focused on the thrum of the tires, the hum of the engine. It would be all right, she told herself. Everything would be all right.

Yet the wood, vast and green and vigilant, still oppressed her.

Gone, Charles had said.

He was right, of course. That was the hell of it. Last night at dinner, she had seen not Lissa but another child, a dark, heavyset child with griefs and burdens of her own. If Erin’s heart had chosen to see something else, it was an illusion, nothing more.

Perhaps she’d gone mad. Sane women did not see dead children cruising the canned fruit aisle when they did their weekly shopping. Sane women did not see ghostly shapes in the shadows underneath the trees.

Charles downshifted, and the engine’s tone deepened. Tidal pressure swelled through her as the car leaned into a curve. A bulwark of ancient, moss-damp stone — ten feet at least, and maybe taller — shot up from the forest floor before them like the fossilized spine of a buried dragon. As the car hurtled toward it, Erin’s heart quickened.

Then the road dipped and a narrow aperture, hardly wider than the car, appeared in the stone. The car shot under an archway. The suffocating omnipresence of the wood, that sense of contained energies churning just beyond the range of perception, retreated. An instant of speeding darkness followed — how thick the wall must be! — and then they surfaced on the other side, into a treeless meadow, sunlight breaking across the windshield.

Charles slowed as the road dropped down into a deep, round bowl carved into the heartwood. He nosed the car up to a second wall — hand-stacked stone, perhaps waist high or a little higher. He killed the engine.

Erin reached for her satchel. “I guess we’re here,” she said.

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They got out of the car and stood there in silence, transfixed.

About a hundred yards away, Hollow House — three stories of gray, castellated stone — stood at a slight elevation, moated by sculpted grounds, meadow, and walls. Like a stone cast into a pool, Charles thought. Axis mundi, still center of the wheeling world.

“Something else, isn’t it?” Merrow said.

Something else indeed. The photographs had not done justice to the house’s implacable aspect — its grim solidity, its tower and turrets, its dormers and crow-stepped gables.

Merrow said, “The original structure burned in —”

“Eighteen forty-three,” Charles said. “Everything but the library.”

Merrow gave him a perfunctory smile. “You’ve done your research.”

“Charles is all about research,” Erin said, adjusting her bag. “It must be hell to heat.”

Merrow laughed. “It’s been decades since the entire house was in active use. Mr. Hollow — Edward, that is, your immediate predecessor — lived in a thoroughly updated suite of rooms, though ‘suite’ hardly does it justice. It has good proximity to the library — handy for your research, Mr. Hayden. In any case, you’ll find Hollow House quite livable, I should think.” Merrow led them along the perimeter of the wall. “Shall we?”

“Where’s the gate?” Charles asked.

Merrow uttered something that might have been a laugh. “There’s a gate for deliveries at the back. Otherwise the wall is unbroken, one of the house’s eccentricities. I thought you’d prefer the front view — a formal introduction, if you will. Here we go.” She waved at a set of stone risers built into the wall — a stile, Charles thought, summoning the word out of dusty memories of some obscure Victorian novelist — Surtees maybe.

“Let me give you a hand,” Charles said, but Merrow ignored him, flitting up the stairs on her own, so that he found himself gazing at the curve of her rear end, sleek beneath her clinging skirt.

She looked down at him from the crest of the wall. Charles averted his gaze, heat rising in his cheeks. “You’ll want to be careful,” she said. “It’s a bit steep.” Before he could reply, she started down the other side.

Charles followed, the steps slick beneath his feet. He paused atop the wall to reach for Erin’s hand.

“I’ve got it, Charles,” Erin said.

The steps on the other side were broader and overgrown with moss. He’d just reached the bottom and turned back to look at her when Erin’s foot slipped. Charles lunged for her too late. She slid helter-skelter down the stairs, spilling her satchel, and smashed to the earth on one shoulder, breath bursting from her lungs with a plosive grunt.

“Are you all right?” he asked, but she waved him away.

“I’m fine.” She pushed herself to her feet, wincing, and reached for her ankle. “Just get my stuff.”

But Merrow was already collecting it: makeup and lipstick, her passport, an assortment of pens and pill bottles. A sketchbook. A framed photo. Merrow stood, looking at it. “Your daughter?” she asked, scraping mud off the edge of the frame. “She is very beautiful. The glass has cracked, but that can be mended easily enough, can’t it? Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I just twisted my ankle. I’ll be fine.”

She didn’t look fine. Mud streaked her jeans. She was flushed. When she took a step, she favored the bad ankle.

“Here, let me help you,” Charles said.