At last, the trees thinned, and we came to a large clearing. Where the grand hotel once stood was only a vast cellar hole, the broken and burned remnants of timbers, piles of slate roofing. It smelled of ruin.
Gone was all sense of a familiar place, a place I was meant to be.
I walked up to the edge of the hole, which had a small lake of water pooled at the bottom, black and filthy. I could see bent and broken copper pipes sticking out of it. There was a bathtub down there. Part of the crystal chandelier from the lobby. I felt dizzy and swayed slightly. Will grabbed me, pulled me away from the edge.
“Be careful, Ethel,” he scolded, not releasing his grip on me.
Broken window glass was everywhere, crunching beneath our feet. The heat must have caused the windows to explode outward, away from the building. I tried to imagine it: the hotel on fire, the people inside. The screaming.
I was sure I could hear it still; some echo trapped forever down in that cellar hole.
“Do they know what caused the fire?” Will asked as he pulled me a safe distance away, the mud sucking at our shoes, trying to trap us.
“Benson Harding,” said the boy, the name coming out like a snarl. “He burned it down.”
“Why on earth would he do such a thing?”
Phillip shrugged, kicked at the mud with the worn toe of his leather boot. “Folks say he was sick over what happened to his wife. Went crazy,she did.” There was a funny gleam in the boy’s eyes. “Said she’d seen a monster in the springs.” He turned and spat in the dirt.
Will and I looked at each other. Margaret stirred, breath wheezy, against my chest. I looked at Will, said with my eyes:We have no choice.
The boy led us to the springs. We stepped around the wreckage and found the old footpath hidden amid the dead, overgrown grass. Off to our right, astonishingly, the rose garden was flourishing: the leaves green, the untrimmed vines overtaking the trellises, the early buds offering unsettling explosions of color. It didn’t seem right, to see a lush oasis of green in such a dead place.
We smelled the pool before we saw it: a rotten, sulphurous stench.
The wooden gate that had once been around it was knocked down, a sign still tacked to it:The Pool is CLOSED. Will reopen tomorrow at 9 a.m.
The grass was overgrown. The deep pool lined with stones looked the same as it had when we visited. I wondered what had happened to the peacocks as I looked down into the black water and thought of Eliza Harding drowning there.
I held my breath as I watched the water, half believing that Eliza might surface—that she’d come up from the depths and swim as she had when Myrtle had seen her.
“It’s bottomless,” the boy said now. “My daddy, he says you shouldn’t even touch that water. Poison, he says.” He looked around at the water, the sun falling behind the hills, casting us in deep shadows. “Reckon you can find your own way back,” he said. Then he scurried off like a frightened rabbit.
I watched him, thinking,Could we? Could we find our own way back? Or would we be lost here forever?
I got down on my knees, laid the baby on the ground. She squirmed, her breathing fast and hard like a chugging train.
“Please,” I said to the water, to God, to Eliza Harding maybe, to whoever was listening. “Please save my baby girl.”
I scooped up some icy black water, dabbed it on her lips, put some in her tiny mouth. She opened her eyes wide, looking at me. I rubbed it into her skin, on her hands and feet.
“Do you think we should bathe her?” I asked.
“The cold will kill her,” Will said, eyes steely. He stepped away, studying the burned-out timbers, kicking at the ashes. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was frightened.
I gave Margaret a sponge bath with the water, cooing to her, promising that the water would make her well. “This water is magic,” I whispered when Will was far enough off not to hear us. “It’s the reason you’re here. And I think that maybe, it may help keep you with us. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, little sparrow? To stay here with us?” She made a sweet cooing sound as if to answer:Yes, Mama. Yes!
Then, I wrapped her back up. Before leaving, I filled four large canning jars that I’d brought along in a satchel. We began the long walk back to the trees that blocked the road. Will took out the flashlight to help guide us. I kept thinking I heard something behind us: footsteps, the sucking sound of shoes moving through mud. But when I turned, I saw nothing, only shadows.
“Should we look for a hotel?” I asked once we were back at the car at last.
“I don’t think there is one anywhere nearby. Let’s drive back.”
The drive home was slow and tedious. There were no other cars on the road.
The canning jars full of water clanked together in the backseat. Margaret, breathing easier now, squirmed on my lap, making contented little sounds.
We arrived back in Lanesborough near midnight. I brought Margaret in and undressed her, got her ready for bed. Her hands and feet were pink, her breathing was normal. And she was hungry.
