I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay
She floats, facedown, her brown hair a fan around her head. Her red sweater has a hole in it; She still wears her sneakers. The water is murky and shallow, reeds and stems poke up around the edges. Dragonflies flit among the stalks. The early morning air is chilly, crickets and cicadas rumble in the thicket. A lone frog cries his frustration. The trees stand guard over the scene, a gentle breeze passing through them, making them shiver and drop their leaves in horror at the sight below.
A fly lights on her shoulder. I should call the police. I’ll have to take the car and drive out. There is no service here, which is why we chose it. No wireless, no cell service, no interruptions. Where is everyone? The silence is overwhelming. Why did it have to be me who found her? Why?
I watch her bob there, the water holding her in its gentle embrace, kinder and better than anything she got from the rest of the world, and think, It couldn’t have ended any other way, and start to scream her name.
There are five of us heading to the lake, a long-overdue get-together to commiserate, drink, and in general, catch up. Oh, we are supposed to be working—that’s what we’ve told our better halves. A working weekend with the girls. No Internet, no phones. We’ll be unreachable, in a small cabin in the woods, only the house and lake and laptops as our companions.
Justifications abound.
We have plans. (There is enough wine to drown a regiment.) We have an agenda. (I’ve brought all of my Harry Potter discs.) We’re going to alternate writing with business discussions. (We’re going to gossip until our lips bleed.)
The better halves help us pack—most, at least; there’s one who stormed out and didn’t come back until after she was gone, so she left a note with the caretaker’s phone number, just in case—fill up our gas tanks, carry the bags to the car, kiss our pretty little heads goodbye, assure us they will be just fine, it is only three days, after all, and wave as we drive away.
I remember thinking, It’s a retreat. It will be a few days to gossip and eat and drink and hopefully write. What can possibly go wrong?
We meet up at a travel gas station on I-65 South. Five cars—that’s silly, so we park and all get into mine. No sense wasting all that gas; like I said, we’re writers, which means we’re all on a budget. I drive—I have control issues and anxiety issues and the idea of not having my own car on a road trip is enough to send me into paroxysms, so everyone agreed in advance that it will fall upon me to take the wheel. They’re good friends. They make it sound like it is their idea.
The drive is four hours, south, into the mountains between Tennessee and Georgia. We stop for road trip supplies. We sing to the radio. There is the sharp scent of rum from the backseat—Ellie has her tiny flask out already. I glance in the rearview and to the side. Ellie, Tess, and Carter are in the backseat, Frances is up front with me.
Ellie, Tess, Carter, Frances, and me. Rebecca. The dream team. The five musketeers. My besties, my team, my crowd, my peeps. The girls who get me through every high and low of my career, as I do for them. Everyone in town is jealous of our bond. We came into publishing around the same time, met at a local author event at the local bookstore, and have been thick as thieves since.
I can’t imagine my life without any of them.
It’s hard to believe that before the weekend is out, one of us will be dead.
It is dark when we arrive, dusk, really, the sky a light gray, but the forest is thick around us and it’s dim enough that we have to break out flashlights to find the front door and the keys that were left by the owner for us. This is my fault, though no one wants to blame me. I took a wrong turn, and we got lost on top of this strange mountain, where the trees reach over the road and stop the perspective views we had from the highway. The GPS stopped working halfway up, as the rental company warned us would happen. The paper map they provided, though, is worthless. Later, we will find out the sign has fallen, rotted out from the heavy winter weather, but at the time, it is downright creepy driving up and down the small country roads trying to find our way in.
That’s why I missed the house at the end of the lane.
Once our supplies are hauled in from the car under cover of flashlight, we drink some of the wine and tell a few stories, but the mood is ruined by our late arrival, and eventually, we peel off, one by one, to the various bedrooms and nooks and Murphy beds responsible for our weekend rest. Carter and Francie take the bunk beds—they’ve always been in each other’s pockets and don’t mind sharing—and Tess claims the small room behind the kitchen. Ellie climbs the stairs to the loft. Once I straighten the kitchen and lock the doors, I head to the master suite, the biggest room, with the private bathroom. I am paying more than the others so I can have this privacy. They understand. I am not holding myself apart. I am simply uncomfortable around people for long, even my dearest friends.
The sky is darker than anything I’ve ever seen. I pull the curtains, suddenly uncomfortable with the idea of someone being able to look in on me as I sleep. I hate first-floor bedrooms. Someone can watch, someone can climb right in while you’re sleeping and you wouldn’t ever know. On a second floor, or even a third, there are stairs that creak, hallways with floorboards that pop and crack, so no one can sneak up on you. When my floor, my bed, my most vulnerable self is accessible by anyone—
Stop.
Don’t do this.
You’re safe.
You’re fine.
Quit acting like a child. There are no bogeymen in the woods waiting to take you away.
But as I stand in my pajamas in front of the spotted mirror, brush my teeth and hair, the little voice that lives in my lower spine says, “You should have taken the loft.”
I wake early (I never really slept) and decide a walk is in order. No one else is awake yet, though I hear small sounds from the loft, Ellie is dreaming.
I leave through the back door. I press five feet into the brush down a tiny path, and a charming lake appears. There is a dock, canoes, seats. We saw none of this last night. The girls will be thrilled. I am already envisioning yoga on the faded wood, the cool night air caressing our unblemished skin. There is a path that I assume goes around the lake, which is rather small. Probably two miles around; I can see the other side. I know from the website there are four houses that share the acreage. I set off, grabbing a large stick to use as a shillelagh in case of snakes, or bears.
Most of the path is choked by brush; no one has tended it. But after a few minutes, the track widens, and I walk freely. I’m beginning to feel the sun on my bare shoulders when I see it.
There is a house at the end of the lane.
We must have driven by it as we wound our way into the woods last night, because as the crow flies it’s on the opposite side of the lake, but it’s not in plain view. There is only one road, which means it’s either the first driveway or the last, but I wasn’t paying attention.
The house is gargantuan. Symmetrical. Stately stone chimneys rise from either side, fronted by a three-peaked roof. Cream stone blocks are overlaid with crawling ivy; there are ten mullioned windows. A mansion in the middle of the woods. So incongruous! It is the kind of house people build to be admired, not to be hidden away. But it looks as if no one has lived there for a very long time.
Maybe this land belonged to the owners of this majestic place, and they were forced to sell it off to pay the taxes. Or does that only happen in England? It is an English house, one that would suit the countryside in the Lake District or Devonshire perfectly. It is not what I’d expect in Rising Fawn, Georgia.
I realize I am still, staring, one hand wound around the wrought iron gate. The gates themselves are huge, too, well above my head, and stand open in readiness.
For what?
Impressed, I drag myself away to finish my walk. There is much writing to be done, and I am pleasantly hungry. The house stands guard behind me, watching. Waiting.
I turn at the curve of the lake. It sparkles serenely, catching the light above. The trees are a shroud, but the sun is strong this early morning, and the water rises up to meet it happily.
I feel good. This is going to be a fun few days. I love being with my friends, I love being in a new place. Yesterday’s frustrations are beat out of my body as my feet pound the path. I check my steps: 4,500. Excellent. Well on the way to my goal.
I am so fixated on my wrist that I almost miss it.
The sign is crooked, a pointed arrow, and weathered gray.
Come See the Cave at Catwood
Catwood?
Is that the name of the house? Or the land here? And there is a cave? I love caves. I like how each one is a microcosm of the world, living unto itself, not at all concerned with the outer world. Like blood in a vein, doing its business regardless of the external forces driving it. Nourishing and restorative.
I follow the tiny offshoot path deeper into the woods, mindful to check myself for ticks when I get back, though it’s early in the season, they might not be out yet. I don’t usually pick up ticks or mosquito bites, some odd, freak-of-nature genetic lottery that makes me untasty to the seeking bugs. But these long grasses are full of them, so check I must.
Who was it that lived in a cave in Greek myth? Pan to the nymph of the Corycian Cave? Or am I thinking more of Plato and the allegory with which I’ve always been fascinated?
I’m upon the cave with almost no warning. The mouth is jagged, the grass waist-high. There have been no visitors here for some time. It is untended, and that makes me sad. Perhaps an animal or two make a nest inside, but I sense great emptiness and loneliness. The disuse is a shame, really. It’s a perfectly good cave, and not at all far from the house and the lake. It feels friendly, as if it would like to be rediscovered.
I step to the edge—I’m not so stupid as to go deep inside without supplies—and stick in my head, using the flashlight on my phone to assess the state of things. I see nothing to fear, so I move inside, carefully.
The wind sounds different in here. The walls are cool and lined with lichen and moss. I imagine what it would be like to live in this quietude, day in and day out, alone, a hermit, and find the thought suits me. I’m a great romantic when it comes to the idea of solitude—I crave it, seek it out, and yet always find myself surrounded by people. I’ve never understood this.
I stand in the darkness and breathe deeply.
It is a good cave.
Happy and sated, I walk back to the cabin. Ellie is making breakfast; there are mimosas and friends whom I love waiting for me. I will write a story for them, my friends, and do yoga with them on the dock, and feel the breeze rustle the leaves and our hair and fill us, and tonight we will drink wine and talk more about our dreams and our fears.
And that is how our day goes.
There is a hole in the side of the mountain. People are lined up to go inside. It is a cave, my cave, clearly, and it must be a very deep one, because all the people disappear inside but don’t come out again for a very long time.
A natural wonder of the world.
A small lady with wildly curly gray hair and blue cat eyes stands outside, waving the people in. I get in line. I move closer, ever closer, until I am face-to-face with the woman. Her pupils are vertical, her skin unlined. Her face is years younger than her body.
“Leave your fear behind. It will only cost you a dime.”
“But I have no money.”
“Then give me your hand.”
I do, anxious now. I need to get inside. I feel the wind begin, deep in the valley behind me, and I know I must be inside the cave when the wind comes or I will be in serious trouble.
“Ah,” she says, standing over my hand, stroking and caressing. “You are one of us. You have been chosen. You may go inside.”
I scurry in before she changes her mind so the wind will not get me. I am the last person in line. The woman steps to the entrance of the cave behind me, and screams.
My hair stands on end. The pitch hits a note inside me and I want to wail and rend my clothes in response.
Her cry carries into the valley, and the wind rushes faster to greet her. It is shrieking and screaming, moaning as it tries to get inside, wanting, so wanting. But she holds firm, standing with arms up and legs spread, a barrier between us and the soul stealer.
I was in a hurricane once. The wind blew and blew, the trees bent sideways, the fences came down, and the birds were all killed because they were caught in the eye for hours and couldn’t land. Exhausted, they dropped like stones, and washed up on the beach a few days later, littering the sand with their plump, bloated bodies.
I sense the birds in the wind, caught in the maelstrom. They are coming, closer and closer, and the old woman stands firm in the face of their fury and screams, “Catwood!” at them. We stand shoulder to shoulder in the cave, screaming the word with her. Chanting over and over.
Catwood.
Catwood.
Catwood.
The wind stops with an unearthly howl of anguish, gushing up against the invisible barrier the woman has cast between us. The birds drop dead at her feet, hundreds of them, all different kinds, and she lies down and dies with them.
I come awake with a start. My heart is pounding in my chest, so hard it hurts, and I realize I’ve been screaming aloud, because Ellie is standing over the bed with her cell phone flashlight on saying, “Rebecca, Rebecca, it’s okay, it’s just a dream.”
Oh God. It’s just a dream.
But when are my dreams only dreams?
“I’m okay, Ellie. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s okay, sweetie.” She hugs me, and her breath smells like piña coladas, like the beach. “I had a strange one, too. Must be this cabin. So many creatives have stayed here, they left some of their crazy behind.”
“What was yours about?”
Her face drops. “Vera left me.”
“Oh, that’s harsh. I hate dreams like that.”
“No, I mean she left me, for real. She’s moving on. She took a job in Seattle, and didn’t invite me to come with.”
“Oh, Ellie.” This explains the heavy drinking that’s been going on. I wrap my arms around her, and hold on tight, waiting for the tears. They don’t come. No sobbing, no shaking. She’s stiff as a board with tension, but otherwise, resigned.
“You okay?”
“I think so. I’m all cried out. Maybe I’ll kill her in a story. Might make me feel better.” She stands up. “You want me to shut your curtains, so the morning sun won’t wake you up?”
“It’s all right. I’ll do it. Good night, honey. Thanks for waking me up. I really am sorry about Vera.”
“Don’t tell the others. I’m not ready to be dissected.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
She tiptoes away, and I look to the windows, dread filling me. The curtains are all wide open.
The next morning, to shake off the dream and the sad news of Ellie and Vera’s demise, I set off on another walk.
I go the opposite direction this time. The words I’ve written the previous day—what few there were; we talked as much as we wrote—glow brightly in my mind. They are good words. I am on to a new story, something challenging and exciting. I don’t normally write about happy things, my work tends toward the dark and dramatic, but I was hit with the idea as we drank our wine and ate our chicken salad and talked about how we like to be loved.
Love. Why not write a story about love for once? A happy love, with a happy ending. Can I do it? Can I write something that isn’t so dark?
I am consumed by darkness. There is a reason, I’m not being dramatic. I’m over my Goth years. Mostly.
When I was in my early twenties, a friend had a party, and hired a palm reader to entertain.
I had no interest in joining the fun. I didn’t want to know my fate, even one custom-made to please by a house medium.
One by one, friends and acquaintances and strangers disappeared into a dark corner of the ballroom, separated from the rest by a long, silver curtain. One by one, they came out again, eyes wide, smiles huge. I’m going to be rich, I’m going to be famous, I’m going to marry Tad!
Simply ridiculous, I thought to myself, having another drink. Who would waste their time on such frivolities?
I was the only one in the room who didn’t disappear behind the curtain, though my friends egged me on. Finally, the hostess, being a royal canine bitch, tracked me down. “You’re being a spoilsport. Everyone else did it.”
“If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you expect me to follow suit?”
“No, Rebecca. I’d expect you to have the good manners to go along with something utterly harmless so people will stop talking about you. Why do you always have to be the center of attention?”
Now, that last was unfair of her. Being the center of attention was the very last thing I wanted. It was not my fault that I stood out from the crowd—tall women always do.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Yes, you are. You’re ruining my party,” she cried, flouncing off to be ministered to by her minions.
Oh, for God’s sake. Drama queen much?
So now everyone was paying attention to me, and I had no choice but to slip behind the damn curtain myself.
The woman was older, not plain but not pretty. She would be easily forgotten if you bumped into her on the street, if you didn’t look closely. But when I stepped in, she raised her face to mine curiously, her eyes violet, as dark as a midnight sun, with an eerie gold ring around the irises.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Why? Why didn’t you just leave?”
“I promised the hostess I’d read all the guests’ palms. It was in our contract. You’re my only holdout.”
“Great.”
“Not into fortune-telling?” The hint of a laugh in her melodic voice made me take a breath. I relaxed.
“No, I’m not. My friend guilted me into it.”
“You don’t want to know your future?”
“No. A—I don’t believe in it. B—I want to live my life without some random prediction hanging over me. I believe we manifest our own destinies. If you look at my hand and tell me I’m going to die of cancer in three months, then I’ll spend three months worrying about dying, instead of living. I’d rather be ignorant and have bliss.”
“Commendable. How’s this? I’ll make you a deal. If I see something bad, I won’t tell you. Promise.”
“Whatever.” I sat down and thrust out my hand. “Let’s just get this over with.”
She hesitated only a moment, then took my hand in hers. She didn’t look at it, simply ran her palm against mine, as intimate and startling as a lover’s kiss. She turned my hand over in hers; cool and soft, it was a gentle caress, careless even.
Her brows knitted, and she turned my hand palm up, tracing her fingers lightly over my skin. Her hand tightened on mine.
“Oh, honey. You’re one of us.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“You can see death. You can see it coming. You’ve been doing this since you were a child, you poor thing. You must be…”
“Stop. This is ridiculous.”
But I knew it wasn’t. She spoke the truth. I had a weird sort of knack for predicting death. It had been with me as long as I could remember, and it was something I never, ever discussed. With anyone. No one knew.
Her violet-and-gold eyes were empathetic and kind, the slight horror she’d shown when she first took my hand gone now, replaced with understanding. “We can teach you how to control it. So you can shut them out. You don’t have to live with the fear and chaos anymore. You don’t need to be their conduit.”
I jerked my hand away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Please. Take my card. Call me. I have people I can introduce you to…”
But I was gone, out the curtained wall, out of the party and the simpering gazes of my gullible friends.
Back at the house, I sip my morning tea, watching my friends goof off at the breakfast table, Ellie slightly quieter than the others, and wonder—if I had listened to the medium back then, would anything have been different?
We have each found our place in the house. I prefer a view of the water, and so the deck couch is mine. It is under a pitched cedar roof, and it’s early spring, so I’m a bit chilly in the shade. I light a fire, and it warms things up nicely. I write my love story, praying it won’t take a turn for the worse. It’s hard for me to write anything that doesn’t have a death in it. Thanks a lot, fortune-teller, for manifesting that destiny for me. Though maybe it’s better. Since my run-in with her, I’ve learned things. How to shield myself. How to look away when the small movements begin out of the corner of my eye. How to protect my dreams from the dead. It almost always works. Almost always. Last night’s bizarre dream aside, I haven’t had a dream about death in months.
So far today, none of my characters have died, so there’s a bonus.
For our afternoon break, I tell the girls I want to show them something special, and they faithfully troop out the door with me, down the path, to the mansion.
The gates still stand open and welcoming.
“What a wonderful house,” they cry.
“Let’s go inside,” I reply.
“Rebecca,” Francie says, “we’ll get in trouble if we do.”
“No, we won’t. It will be fun. I promise. No one’s here, it’s clearly abandoned.”
“Not a good idea, sugar,” Tess says. “We might get hurt, you never know if there’s a floorboard loose, or something else. We’d be trespassing.” Tess, the mother of the group, always looking for hidden dangers.
Ellie shushes her. “Come on, don’t be a baby. I think it’s a great idea. Here’s what we should do. Let’s go in and check things out, and tonight, as a writing exercise, we can all write a short story about the house. Something quick and easy, but it will be a fun exercise. I like writing about inanimate objects.”
“All right, Ellie, I think that’s a great idea,” Tess says, fluffing her hair off her shoulders. “God, it’s hot right here. The breeze has died.” She manhandles the mass into a ponytail, fans her neck. “Ah, that’s better.”
Francie is still staring at the house, unmoving, but I set off toward the drive, and Tess and Ellie follow.
Carter, though, shakes her head. “I’ll see you guys later. I’m not one for ghosts and haunted houses.”
“It’s not haunted, silly. It’s just someone’s lake house,” I reply.
“If that’s the case, then you’re going to be trespassing. You and Tess and Ellie go on ahead. I think Francie and I are going to go back. We’ll make lunch, have it all ready for y’all when you come back with the details of what’s inside. Right, Francie?”
Francie, who is reluctantly stepping toward the house, sighs in relief and hangs back. “Great idea. Do be careful, ladies. Come on, Carter, I’ll race you.”
They run off giggling like schoolgirls, and Ellie shakes her head, takes a wee nip from her flask, offers it to me. I take a sip gratefully, the sting of the harsh alcohol rising up in my sinuses and warming my stomach.
“Those two are wimps,” Ellie says.
“Come on,” I reply, surging forward, emboldened by the drink. “Let’s see what’s what.”
The front door is conveniently unlocked. I have no idea why I thought it would be, but am relieved to find it so.
The house itself is empty. No one has been here, or lived here, in quite some time. Not weeks, not months. Years. It has an abandoned air. A thick coating of dust lies on all the tables in the foyer. We leave footprints as we make our way in.
“Who would just leave a place like this?” Ellie wonders aloud. Her voice rings in the hallway, and the house seems to sigh in relief.
Someone is home.
It doesn’t like being deserted. It is a place to laugh, and to love. To be cherished. Not to be left alone with an encroaching wood and an empty cave.
I don’t realize I am speaking out loud until Tess says, “You speak like it has feelings, Rebecca. It’s just an old house.”
I clear my throat. “You know me, always spinning stories. I can’t see a cloud without wanting to write its tale.”
“You really are weird,” she replies, fondly, and wanders toward the stairs.
I take the left parlor, Ellie takes the right. The furniture sits uncovered. Mice have taken up residence in the damask chairs, birds in the fireplace chimney, a scattering of feathers below on the marble. The thought of birds trapped in the chimney brings back my strange dream, and I shudder. I do not like dead things.
Through the formal parlor is a ballroom. I feel like I am spying on a moment in time, frozen in amber, unchanging all these years.
It was clearly a grand ball. The vestiges are left, champagne flutes on the mantels, as if their owners were called away to dance and left them, forgotten, in the detritus of the party. Silver trays, now darkened to black with bits of ancient mold stuck to them, balance on small tables. A grand piano stands open, with four other seats to its right—a cello, two violins, and a harp sit abandoned.
It is as if the party ended, all the people left mid-dance, disappearing entirely, including the servants and the owners.
“Rebecca, let’s get out of here. I’m getting creeped out.” Ellie is standing at my elbow, whispering to me, and I nod. I’m getting creeped out, too. “Where’s Tess?”
“Here.”
She is standing on the opposite side of the room, holding something in her hands.
“What do you have there?”
“A guest book. The last entry is from 1929. Seems there was a big party, everyone’s name is listed. The Rookwoods, the Wrights, the O’Connells, the Archers, the Bouchers. It goes on and on. There must have been a hundred people here for this party.”
The paper is old and crumbling. I take a photo of the pages so we won’t disturb it more.
“It’s so strange, isn’t it? Something clearly happened to everyone.”
“Something wicked happened here,” Ellie says. “It feels all wrong. There must be something in the papers about it. We can look it up when we get home. Come on. Let’s bolt. This place is giving me the willies.”
As we are walking to the front door, a portrait in the hallway catches my eye. There are several portraits in a row, the family, clearly. But only one holds the visage of a woman with cat eyes and wiry gray hair. Looking at her, I can almost feel her breath on my face. She seems so alive, so annoyed to be stuck in the painting. Like she wants to walk out of the house with us. To be free.
I don’t realize I’ve stopped in my tracks until the girls beckon me, and with a last glance at the woman who saved the valley from the wind, I go with them gladly, closing the door gently behind me.
That night, we decide to go out to dinner. I think everyone feels disconcerted by the story we bring back from the house, and want a moment to connect with the real world.
The restaurant is ten minutes away, on top of the rise, with a view of the valley below. It is a BBQ joint, and the smells of hickory and vinegar permeate the air of the parking lot and make my mouth water. It feels odd to be back in civilization; though we’ve only been gone two days, we’ve become accustomed to the quiet rhythm of the lakeside cottage. It has a magical air around it, a perfect spot for creatives. We’ve all been writing up a storm, and now it is time to celebrate.
And maybe check our e-mail. Or even do a quick bit of research on who belonged to the lost house in the woods.
Both prove fruitless to me. I have a few e-mails but nothing of import, and I can’t find anything about the house.
The food is delicious, though, and we eat until our sides creak, and drink two bottles of wine. I steer clear after the first glass, I’ll have more when we get back to the house. Someone has to see us safely home.
When the waitress comes over to hand out the checks, Ellie asks what we’ve all been wondering about.
“Are you familiar with the history of this area?”
“Well, sure. Y’all visiting?”
I only want to stab out her eyes for a moment—clearly we are strangers, and as such are visiting—but I refrain. “We’re in a cabin nearby for a few days.”
“Ah. Girls’ weekend,” she says with a knowing smile, and I don’t correct her. I don’t like strangers knowing my business.
“There a big abandoned house across the lake from our cabin. Do you know anything about it?” Carter asks, her words a challenge.
“The old Atwood place?”
We’re silent. We don’t know what it’s called.
“It’s abandoned,” she adds helpfully.
“That’s the one,” Ellie says, and I hear the laugh she’s biting back. “Do you know anything about it, or the people who used to live there?”
The waitress has been friendly until now, but her face grows wary. “The Atwoods, they owned all the land in this town. Used to be mill owners, I think. But they all left decades ago.”
“Who owns the house?” I ask.
“I don’t know. No one really goes up there. It’s kind of scary, and it’s private property. I wouldn’t want to get caught snooping around.”
A man I take to be her boss walks by at that exact moment, giving her a hurry up look—a line has begun to form outside, the chairs in the restaurant’s porch and foyer are full. A popular place. The only restaurant on top of the mountain, I suspect.
When he turns away, she gives us a pasted-on grin. “Y’all have fun with your computers. Come back and see us.”
It’s not until we are searching again for the drive in that I realize what she said. We never said anything about working or writing.
I can’t shake the eerie feeling that parades down my spine.
They are watching us.
The Atwoods.
The name rings a bell with Carter, who is our resident historian. The small cabin has a small library, which she took apart the day we arrived, and there is a little book on the area that she found the first night. She pulls it off the shelf, sits at the battered kitchen table, and reads.
“The Atwoods made their money logging the mountains around here,” she announces, pushing her glasses up on her nose and taking a sip of wine. “The family settled in Rising Fawn in the 1800s. They were carpetbaggers, from Maine originally, drawn down to the South by the promise of large tracts of land and good prices on the logging. Caused all sorts of a stir when they bought the mountain and built their house.”
“Maybe they were tired of being cold in the winter. Can you imagine Maine in the 1800s? Brr,” Ellie says, shivering. She pours us each another glass of wine. I’ve lost count now, but it is our last night, and we’re planning to sleep in, and clean the cabin in the morning instead of working, then get on the road by early afternoon. I am pleasantly tipsy.
“Does it say what happened to them?” Tess calls from the kitchen, where she is manhandling open another bottle with a wine key.
“Nope.” Carter flips a few more pages. “Worthless piece of crap book. All it says is that the house has been kept in trust since the ’30s, and the whereabouts of the family remains a mystery.”
Tess cracks the bottle. We hear her giggling and saying, “Oops,” then she appears in the door, wavering slightly, the bottle clutched in her hand.
Francie takes it from here. “We’ll just have to do some more research on it when we get back, I guess. Who wants to watch a movie?”
The mysterious house is forgotten then, as we sail away to lands unknown on the back of a writer we all admire.
But I can’t help myself. Ten minutes in, I get up and draw all the curtains in the house.
A storm rattles through overnight. Rattles, literally: We are under a tin roof, and the acorns fall from the trees with a clatter, waking everyone up. They sound like gunshots, and we cower, laughing nervously, as they ping and pong off the roof. Lightning flares, and the lights flicker.
“Make a fire,” I tell Carter, who listens without arguing, for once. We don’t want to be left in the dark entirely.
The moment the flames go up, the lights go out, and Carter gives me a thankful look. We look for candles, find a few, line them up on the table. No one can sleep now, the wind and rain are howling, howling, up from the valley, and I can’t help myself, chills crawl up and down my arms. That wind feels familiar. It feels malevolent.
We huddle together in front of the fire, hoping for the lights to come back on. I debate telling them about my dream, about the wind and the cave, but decide against it. I fear I will manifest something if I speak it aloud. It’s one of the reasons I never speak my dreams. Maybe I should have talked more to the palm reader all those years ago. As it is, all I do is write them down and pray death does not come knocking.
We huddle together, telling jokes and stories. Eventually, Ellie admits her secret, and the rest of the night is passed in drunken anger toward a woman we all love. But we’ll side with Ellie. She is ours. Fuck Vera.
We wake early by the still-warm ashes of the fire. The electricity remains out, which means no way to run the dishwasher or clean the sheets and towels. Everyone is exhausted. I am in favor of packing up and paying the fine for leaving the house as is, but I am overruled. In a huff, I take another early morning walk.
The lake seems so much less ominous when the sun is out.
I want to go to the cave again, but I can’t find the sign. The storm must have knocked it down. Standing on the edge of the lake, I realize much of the thicket has been cleared out, the grasses lying flat against the still-steaming earth. The landscape looks different. I can see small gray lumps in the distance.
I find the graveyard in a squashed copse beside the lake.
The Atwoods are heavily represented, but there are other names, older names. Names that match the guest book we found in the house.
I wander quietly, until I see a grave with a Gothic marble angel perched on top.
Charlise Eleanora Atwood
1898–1929
Beloved
C. Atwood.
Catwood.
The word we screamed in my dream at the mouth of the missing cave.
This must be the woman from the portrait.
“She was a great woman.”
The voice comes from my right, and I startle like a hare from the brush. The waitress from last night is standing on the edge of the cemetery. She is wearing shorts and running shoes, her long brown hair done up in a ponytail, earbuds in.
“Out for a run?” I ask, proud that my voice only wavers slightly.
“Day off. Finally. I’ve been stuck pulling doubles all week. Hey, sorry if I was rude the other night. I couldn’t tell you more about the Atwood house, my boss doesn’t like us talking about it. He’s worried people will start gathering again, like they did the last time. He’s an O’Connell, you see.”
“The last time? O’Connell?”
“Devon O’Connell was Charlise’s betrothed. They never got a chance to marry, their daddies hated each other, and wouldn’t consent to the match. So they ran off together, and a year later, Charlise came home alone, pregnant, looking like she’d been through a war. Only twenty, but her hair was as gray as my granny’s. She would never say what happened, would never tell where Devon was. The families were already at odds, it drove a spike right through them. Legend has it the Atwoods threw a party, a big party, to welcome her home, and the O’Connells showed up en masse to find out once and for all what happened, and killed every one of them Atwood folk.”
“Good God, that’s horrible.”
“It surely was. Charlise, she got away, they say, managed to hide out in a cave somewhere on the land up around here, had her baby in secret by herself. She wandered, alone, raised that baby, sent her off into the world, then lay down and died.”
“How sad.”
The girl looks into the distance, shading her eyes. “She was touched, in a way, when she came back. Some say she had the sight, some say she could talk to ghosts. I don’t know the real truth, but whatever happened that night, after the massacre, there were no bodies. All the Atwoods disappeared, along with everyone at that party. A whole community, gone. No one knows what happened. Only a few people from the families survived, the children who were home with their nannies while their parents died, and disappeared. This whole place is populated by strangers now.”
She spits out the word and I feel it as strongly as if an arrow has been shot into my heart.
“If everyone disappeared, where did they go?”
She shakes her head, plays with the cord of her earbuds. “I don’t know. No one knows. The wind took them, that’s what the legend says. But that’s silly. Old wives’ tale. You have a good day. Be safe getting back up to Nashville, you hear?” She starts to jog away, but I yell, “Wait!”
She stops, jogging in place.
“If there aren’t any bodies, why is there a graveyard?”
She shrugs. “Gotta honor the dead somehow. Besides,” and she grins, “you never know who might come along to tend it.”
I try to make sense of this tale as I hurry back to the cabin. This is the second time that girl has said something about us that we haven’t shared, and I am damn good and ready to get out of here as quickly as possible. The bucolic pond has suddenly become alive and hateful, and I fear we are not safe.
I shouldn’t have gone to the cave.
We shouldn’t have gone into the house.
My dreams are letting in something old, something evil, and I must stop it, I must stop them.
They are watching. They are waiting.
I round the last curve and realize the path has been washed out. I am forced to turn around, go back the way I came, toward the running girl and the graveyard. The idea fills me with so much dread I decide to cut across the marshy thicket, knowing if I head toward the sun I will run into the cabin.
But I am disoriented, and as the reeds part in front of me, I realize I have gone in a circle and have ended up back at the cave.
“Rebecca,” a gentle, mother’s voice calls, the words a whisper on the wind. “Come and see.”
The rushes begin to move, the breeze settling in, the updraft from the valley below growing stronger. I am powerless against it. My feet move without my consent.
The maw opens to welcome me back, and I begin to shake. I am inside now, deeper than before, the light flickering on my phone. The smell is different, rancid, wrong. I know it’s only mud kicked up by the storm, by the rain, by the wind, but something is stirring in my primordial brain, and I stumble. I go down hard, on both knees, falling forward into the muck.
I land awkwardly. Something juts into my ribs, and the pain makes me lurch to the side.
I see the faces then, the skulls, the mouths agape, the bones of their lost bodies white in the darkness.
The family is here. The Atwood family is inside the cave. The rising water has unearthed their bones. The wind can’t get them anymore.
I run until I can run no more. I am covered in mud and muck and the dust of a nearly century-old grave. I still have no real idea what happened in the cave, how I have manifested this horror, but if I can make it back to the lake, make it back to the girls, all will be forgiven. We will leave, and never come back.
The girl is standing in the trees. She has approached silently, sneaking up behind me. When she steps from behind the trunk of the ash, I no longer see the modern running shorts and bra top, nor earbuds, but an odd black dress, a braid, the glint of silver eyeglasses, all in a blur because she scares me and I run. It’s the only reasonable thing to do, considering there is a strange woman approaching me. I run as fast as I can back toward the house. The girls will save me. The girls will shelter me.
“You there. You. Girl. Stop! What are you doing? That woman needs help. What have you done? My God, is she…?”
She stops her pursuit to stare into the lake. It’s a trick, my mind says. Keep running. But I look back once, in time to see her face clearly in the reflection of the lake light. Her face changes, brows coming together as if she’s just had a thought. It is shaded in blue.
And then she smiles. And I feel the wind begin to stir beneath her hands.
Shit. Oh, this is not good. Not good at all.
I am fast but she runs me down easily, her feet pounding on the hard earth behind me, closer and closer, until I am down in the dirt on my knees, and she rolls on top of me, breathing heavily.
“Stop fighting. This is your destiny. You have to come with me. Mother wants you.”
On the ridge, I see her, standing, arms up, as if she is beckoning me home.
“Catwood,” I whisper.
Charlise smiles benevolently, and her words float down from the hill. “You are chosen. You are one of us.”
My face is in the water before I can draw a breath. The girl holds me there until I can see the small things crawling in the mud below, small silver fish come to explore my nose, my mouth, my eyes and ears. And then I am adrift. The fear and horror have fled. It is a beautiful place, green and gold and silver. I love looking at the microcosm. It is like the cave, but wet, and willowy.
When I am fully relaxed, the girl helps me from the water, and together, side by side, we march up the hill to protect the land below.
From a distance, I hear my friends, crying, calling, and one voice above the rest, Ellie, shrieking my name over and over, as if I am a lost dog.
I glance back over my shoulder as we walk away.
Ellie is pulling the body from the water.
My body.
Why did it have to be her who found me? She will never recover from this. She will always blame herself.
My friends gather on the muddy bank, crooning my name, speaking as one, a chant being taken up by the hillside and the crickets and the birds and the frogs, and the wind catches the tune and whistles along. It starts as one word, then becomes another, one more sibilant, more cunning, more familiar to the fallow fields.
“Rebecca Catwood, Rebecca Catwood, Rebecca Catwood.”