17
The sunny sky of the previous day was tucked somewhere behind a blanket of ashy clouds, rain spitting down in tiny, sparse droplets. Nora shrugged her hood on and marched onto the dirt path towards the woods, one hand wrapped firmly around the hilt of the knife in her pocket, her breathing ragged.Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it. Don’t think about all the ways this could end, all the cases she’d sorted for the S.C.Y.T.H.E.’s Murder Department that started off with one stupid person doing one stupid thing, usually alone, often in the woods. Don’t think about shotguns or blunt force trauma or that one case with the poison ivy and the bear trap. Don’t think about anything at all if she could swing it, which of course she couldn’t. Nora Bird was built to think and think too much. But then she thought about Charlie, and how all those ways a person could die would very likely be used against him. And that thought, and that thought alone, propelled her forward.
The trees looked more ominous than she’d remembered them, their bark darkened by the rain. They towered high above her, their branches taunting her with the threat of falling swiftlytowards her head. She pulled the hood down lower, as if that were enough to protect her from a heavy tree limb. Even the sounds of the forest, the rustling of furry feet on dead leaves, the rushing wind, the morning birdsong, seemed to have stilled into an eerie calm. Rain spattered her half-exposed nose. She was walking into the eye of the storm, and she hadn’t even brought an umbrella.
The question now was how to get back to that strange house. She and Charlie had merely stumbled across it by chance, and stumbled away from it in such a hurry that she’d barely noticed how they got back, pure adrenaline fueling her. Now, alone in a knot of unapologetically indistinguishable nature, Nora was dizzy with the directional chaos before her. The path split in a fork just down from the entrance. She hadn’t noticed this the previous morning. Her talk with Charlie had stolen too much of her focus. Which was impressive for any talk with Charlie. One path seemed to keep towards the thinner line of trees by the entrance of the woods. Nora reckoned she would still be able to see little glimpses of the beach just beyond from that route, a trunk-curtained window to whatever passed for civilization in Virgo Bay, a tether to the world beyond the forest. The other path led deep into the heart of the woods, foliage thickening and grasping along either side so that the dirt trail was rendered nearly invisible as little as ten feet away. Nora knew exactly which path she wanted to take. And, just as certainly, which path she needed to take.
This trail turned to slick mud beneath her shoes the farther she traveled into the forest. She shuffled her feet like a penguin with a full bladder, desperate not to slip and break her neck. It was a delicate balance, keeping half her focus on the muck below her to avoid tripping over obstacles and half on her surroundingsand any threats they held. After waddling around for substantially longer than the human form was meant to waddle, Nora looked up from an especially untrustworthy-looking patch of mud to find the hint of a roughly carved stone wall peeking through the soggy trees. She stifled a gasp and poked her head around the nearest trunk, examining the structure. It was a squat thing, as colorless and rugged as the day, with only a few small windows and a heavy-looking wooden door visible from this vantage point. It reminded her of a quaint Victorian cottage, only less expertly constructed and almost definitely cursed. She’d go so far as to call it haunted, but ghosts were rare and frightened her far less than the thought of whatever, or whoever, might actually be lurking in there.
Before Nora could take in anything else, the door creaked open. Nora pulled herself back against the tree, heart thundering in her ears. She carefully rested her head against the bark so that it angled towards the house, enough to catch a glimpse of the blur of human hurrying out the front door. He was moving quickly, hands in his pockets and head bowed, but Nora knew exactly who it was. For a man who hadn’t been in the woods since childhood, he sure seemed to be making up for lost time now. Nora scrambled around to the other side of the tree as Phil hurried past. As soon as his footfalls faded and the stillness returned, Nora sank down into a squat, releasing the breath she’d been holding since she first heard the door open.
So thiswasPhil’s place. And everyone had lied to her about it. But why? What didn’t they want her to know? What was he hiding? And why would it motivate him to want Charlie dead? Nora waited until a light bout of hyperventilation had passed,and then forced herself back upright. She cut through the trees and closed the distance between herself and the stone house. Up close, it was better constructed than she’d given it credit for. Good bones, she would say if she were an architect, but she wasn’t, so she only thought it. She ran a hand over one of the cream-gray stones that made up the structure. It appeared to have been hand carved. The artisan craftsmanship of the house was something Nora had always complained was lost to time. These days buildings were tossed together with more regard for speed and cost than art and safety. Even the quaint wood and clapboard houses of Virgo Bay, sturdy and charming though they were, would likely have failed the Big Bad Wolf test. But this was a house built to last, crafted by someone with long-dead sensibilities. Richard’s father, her great-grandfather, must have been an impressive man, she thought, remembering the house’s origin as the first in town.
She abandoned the wall and looked down at the doorknob with a frown. Its metal was weatherworn but delicately shaped. Nora contemplated it. No one in this town seemed to lock their doors, and even with Phil’s suspicious activities, she doubted he would bother to lock his either, especially all the way out here. That meant all she had to do was turn the handle and she’d be inside, looking at whatever awful thing it was that the town didn’t want her to see. All that separated her from those secrets now was the wooden door in front of her. She shuddered. It would be so easy to turn around. To go back the way she’d come and leave whatever horrors the stone house contained to remain unknown.
She turned the handle.
A cough of dust tumbled out the door as it opened. Apparently, Phil wasn’t into housekeeping. Nora braced herself and chanced a look through the open door. What she saw shocked her, if only because it was so remarkably un-shocking. The floors were polished wood, coated with a thin layer of dust. An old-fashioned stove sat near the door to her right, heavyset and cast iron. A few cupboards hung above it, one open just enough to reveal a stack of mismatched dishware. There was a counter in a light wood by the oven, and a matching table under a narrow window. The kitchen area opened into a space with a fireplace in its belly, the smoke in the hearth indicating it had just recently been extinguished. Nora’s mind raced back to the kitchen in the little red house, oozing with black smoke.Oh sure, Phil puts out fires when they concern him, but he seems to have no trouble starting them when they don’t.Nora shook the thought away.
The house had the heavy stillness of a recent departure. By the fire sat an armchair upholstered in muted florals, and a rocking chair made of the same wood as the furniture in the kitchen. It didn’t feel like the house of a youngish man, though Nora supposed growing up away from any peers might have that effect. She crossed through the kitchen and spotted a narrow staircase tucked behind a jutting pillar of stone between the two rooms. So far there had been nothing out of the ordinary about the house aside from a questionable swan-shaped lamp on the end table beside the armchair. Nora looked up the stairs. There were only ten or so steps, but from where she stood safely at the bottom, in the soft embrace of the remaining warmth from the dead fire, it may as well have been the stairs to the top of the Empire State Building.
Nora looked back over her shoulder to the front door. It wasstill open, an easy escape route. She gave herself a nod of encouragement and hauled her wobbling legs up the steps.
The upper floor felt nearly as narrow as the staircase, as a sudden wave of newfound claustrophobia—which was frankly long overdue for Nora—crept its way up her spine. She opened the first closed door she could reach and stepped inside. The walls were bare, but powder-blue wallpaper still winked out from under years of discoloration. Against one formerly blue wall at the back of the room sat an old-fashioned metal crib and a small bed, a large dusty birdcage between them. Nora took a step inside, her utter bafflement clouding her logical inclination to avoid creepy old nurseries. Was this where Phil grew up? The origin of whatever evil he currently harbored? Or did he have children? But why would he need to keep that a secret? Well, Nora considered, there weren’t any women of childbearing age in town, at least not that he wasn’t directly related to. Could he have kidnapped someone? That wasn’t much of a leap from murder. Maybe it was someone Charlie knew somehow. Nora’s head was spinning. Even with her renowned worst-case-scenario-concocting habits, she was starting to sound crazy to herself. She was in over her head here.
She turned to leave the room, when the floor creaked from somewhere down the hall. Nora froze. It was the house settling. That’s what Bubbie would always say when Nora would go diving into her bed in the middle of the night, crying about monsters or intruders or really big raccoons. Houses settled, especially old ones. Though why their settling had to be so unsettling never quite made sense to Nora, even when she eventually grew up and learned how house foundations worked.
Another creak. Either this house was really making itselfcomfortable or there was someone else in it with her. Nora had seen Phil pass her outside. He was heading back the way she’d come, out of the forest and into town. No, this was someone else. Someone walking straight towards her. Beads of sweat burst onto Nora’s brow, her cheeks flushing red as blood surged into her head, presumably to pick up the slack from her brain, which had just hung a little “out of order” sign outside her prefrontal cortex. Her eyes darted around the room. Next to the crib was a small closet, as narrow and foreboding as everything else in this house. Without time for a second thought, she dove for the closet door and slipped inside.
The footsteps grew louder, closer. Nora begged her lungs to inhale more quietly, but they were too busy panting in fear to notice. The door to the nursery groaned as it opened even wider than Nora had originally pried it. The creaking approached her, slowly, rhythmically. The footsteps sounded heavy, and as they neared, Nora heard a small dragging sound accompanying them. She clapped a hand over her mouth and nose. Asphyxiation statistics buzzed around her, but she swatted them away with the assurance that whatever was on the other side of that closet door would be worse.
With a squeak of protest, the closet door inched back, slowly, achingly slowly, until the room reappeared in front of Nora, only this time she wasn’t alone. The person attached to the footsteps, the one who’d opened the closet door, stood there towering beside the crib, spine twisting into a hunch, a shock of stiff white hair above sunken eyes so dark they were nearly black, reflecting no light.
Nora screamed. No, Nora tried to scream, but she quicklyrealized the sound wouldn’t come, so she did the next most reasonable thing. Nora ran. Back down the stairs, back through the kitchen, back out the door that was still mercifully open, and back into the woods, which were now being pelted by heavy drops that hit hard with the force of a howling wind. Nora didn’t care. She didn’t care about the rain or the wind or how badly her lungs stung from running and from the scream that never came. All she cared about was getting as far away from the white phantom in that secret stone house in the woods as her slippery feet would take her.
* * *
Nora tumbled through the front door of the little red house with as much force and as little intention as a candy wrapper on the wind, the gust behind her made of sheer panic. She ran her wild eyes over the living room, half expecting to find Phil there again, another deadly trick up his sleeve. Instead she saw only Ruby and Richard sipping coffee on the couch, their serene little vignette promptly shattered by Nora’s impressively dramatic entrance. Mud caked the hem of her pants; her brown hair sprang from the hair elastic at her nape; her eyes were wide and feral.
“There’s someone in the woods,” she said, her voice foreign to her own ears, the strain making it high and tight. Ruby placed her mug on the coffee table and looked to Richard, but Nora was having none of it. “No. No. No more lies. There’s someone in that house in the woods. Who is it? Is it someone evil? Someone violent? Someone who eats faces as a hobby? What the hell is going on?”
Ruby somehow shrank despite her already-tiny stature, her proud shoulders rounding. “I suppose we’d best tell her,” she said to Richard.
“About time,” he responded. “Why don’t you have a seat, Nora?”
She shook her head. Her nerves were so shot she already half felt like she was sitting, and her feet were too rooted to the floor for her to attempt the real thing.
“Very well,” Richard said. “There is someone out in the woods, yes. The same someone who’s always been there.”
Nora squeezed her temples. “I don’t get it. You said yourdadbuilt that place, right? But he must be, like…” She squinted at her grandfather and placed his age somewhere towards the second half of his eighties. “Over a century old.”
Richard nodded. “One hundred and twenty-seven.”
“I don’t…”
Richard smiled at her, though whether in pity or apology she couldn’t tell.
“Papa will know you’re here by now, no doubt. I’m sure he was thrilled to see you, though I’m sorry he gave you a fright.”
