“What happens if they get out?” I whispered.
“Sometimes they do. And that’s why you have to find your bluebird. You’re nothing without it.”
“Charles, where are we really?” I was beginning to feel excessively sleepy. I sank to the ground, my eyelids starting to flutter shut.
“In the woods. I’ll meet you here again someday. In the dark, amongst the trees. I’ll hold your hand so you’re not afraid, and we’ll go home. I promise.”
“No, I’m serious. Where are we?”
“Under the water that isn’t water. In the time before the accident.”
“What accident?” I barely managed to say.
“This one,” he said, and turning, he exposed the back of his head, where I now saw a deep, horrific gash.
“Who did that to you?” I whispered.
He sat down beside me. “I think you know, Bugbear.” He put an arm around me, and unable to keep my eyes open any longer, I nestled my head into his shoulder and settled into the deepest sleep of my life.
3.3SEANCES, TABLE-TURNING, AND AUTOMATIC WRITING
On the afternoon of October 24th, 1917, four days after my marriage, my wife surprised me by attempting automatic writing. What came in disjointed sentences, in almost illegible writing, was so exciting, sometimes so profound, that I persuaded her to give an hour or two day after day to the unknown writer, and after some half-dozen such hours offered to spend what remained of life explaining and piecing together those scattered sentences. “No,” was the answer, “we have come to give you metaphors for poetry.”
—WILLIAMBUTLERYEATS
I woke up somewhere in the woods inexplicably clutchingThe Book of Widows. Had I taken it from the office and not realized it? My hair was tangled with leaves and my forearms were caked with mud. I wasn’t sure where I was, but in the distance, I could see the sky-blue glint of the lake, so, pushing myself up, I started in that direction. On aching bones, I trudged back through the woods, and when I came out onto the main path, I determined by the color of the cloud cover and the stillness of insect activity that the day must be lingering somewhere near dawn.
Back in my cabana, I showered, changed, and then sat out in the back garden with a cup of strong coffee. Was I losing mymind? It was certainly plausible I’d had some kind of break with reality, a hallucination brought on by that concoction of herbs, some of which either singly or in combination must have had psychotropic properties. I knew this had to be true, and yet none of me wanted to believe it. Even though I knew that Charles must have been a hallucination, I wanted to believe he was real just to have him back.
My head was still swimming and I had something like a nasty hangover, so I curled up on the couch and slept for a few more hours. When I awoke again, I went in search of the others. I needed to find out what was true and what I’d hallucinated. I knew that I’d gone out to the island on the boat and that I’d drunk the tea, but beyond these facts, I wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. Surely Charles couldn’t have been real. He was back in New York, probably scamming some other idiot out of their research.
They were down in the apothecary garden. I could hear them laughing. I expected them to react when they saw me, but no one showed the slightest sign of interest in my presence, with the exception of a small wave from Finn.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” he said. “I tried knocking on your door earlier, but you must have been out cold. Rough night?”
I balked. “You’re joking, right?”
I looked around at the rest of them, hoping for someone to help me feel less crazy, but no one seemed even slightly perturbed. They were all acting like nothing had happened.
“What are we supposed to be joking about?” asked Aspen, slipping off her gardening gloves and tucking them into her back pocket.
“Last night,” I said, with eyebrows raised and a shoulder shrug as if to conveyWhat the hell?
“What are you talking about?”
“What happened out in the woods.” They stared back at me with blank expressions. “You have to be shitting me. Aspen gave us psychedelic mushrooms or ketamine or something. And you all told me you were alchemists or…” I tried to find the words, but my head was spinning, confusing everything I was trying to say. “You said there was an evil in the woods. You told me that there was something awful out there.”
“It sounds like you had a hell of a dream there, kiddo,” said Dorian.
“It wasn’t a dream. I woke up in the woods, for god’s sake. Lexi, you have to remember. You were there with me.”
But Lexi looked away. There was a flush to her cheek and a sadness in her eye, and I knew then that I wasn’t crazy. It had all really happened. Only for some reason they were intent on lying to me about it.
Overwhelmed almost to the point of tears, I turned to go, meaning to return to the cabana, but instead abruptly shifted direction and headed down to the lake. On the verge of a panic attack, I sat down on the cool pebbled beach and stared out at the water. How was I supposed to understand what was happening to me if I had no outside source of stability? The philosopher and critic Tzvetan Todorov defines the fantastic as the hesitation between a supernatural and a mundane explanation of an occurrence. For example, in a work of fiction, if a woman in the woods sees a monster and turns out to be crazy, then that is realism. If it turns out that there really is a monster in those woods, then that is horror. But if one can make an argument for either to be true, then that woman occupies the space of the fantastic. It was a space with which I was becoming abundantly, achingly familiar.
I hugged my knees tight to my chest, fighting back tears. Iwanted to be held, to be told I was safe and loved and that everything would be okay. Instead, I was alone, and I had no idea whom to trust. I wiped away my tears and decided to go up to the scriptorium to think.
I was at a crossroads, I knew. Funny metaphor, crossroads. Ancient cultures believed that the meeting place between two roads was a space between worlds, a place where you might have one foot in reality and another in the beyond. Crossroads were where witches went to make deals with the devil. I didn’t think I was in danger of making any deals with any devils, literal or metaphorical, but I did feel strongly that the choice I was about to make had the potential to take me in a direction that could change my life forever.
